Tine Lund: Coffee in Sydney

When I go to work at 8am, the city is wide awake. People are sitting in cafés having breakfast, drinking coffee and chatting. I make sure that I  have enough time to notice all of that because I just love the big city life and coffee is so deadly cheap here in Sydney, about AU$3.

The Aussie people love their coffee and you do have to know how to order a real cup of coffee when you are in Sydney. You can't just come up and say, "A cappuccino, please."  The choices include Flat White, Latte, Macchiato, Long Black...small, regular or large size...not to mention if you want skim or regular milk. Me myself prefer skin Cap! (Cappuccino made with skim milk. I do know it tastes better with the regular milk, but as a woman past 40 I have to take my figure into consideration every morning and live with skim milk.)

You will see mothers with cars full of kids pull in to a coffee shop and run out 2 mins later with a a large take-away coffee, then it's off to the kids' soccer game or dance lessons. Another common sight is having coffee on outdoor tables and chairs... Sydney likes to take advantage of their sunshine!

My workmate talks of a place in the Italian District called Leichhardt where there is a coffee shop that takes their coffee very seriously...they refuse to serve skim milk because they say that it takes away the real experience of how a coffee should be. Old Italian men sit at the tables or stand at the counter discussing the latest soccer games. There is a large Italian community in Sydney and they are the experts in coffee!

In cafés everywhere, societal sinners can confess their "sins" of the week. A mild offence taken here, a raised eyebrow there. Coffee gets the mind going and the lips moving. Out comes the gossip and the soul is cleansed.

I've noted that some of the pubs also open up early in the morning (and you can get coffee there!) and some have the same soft padding out front as children's playgrounds do. I like to imagine that it is so people don't hurt them self when they fall out of the pub and can't stand on their two feet!

I find it amusing that also the local supermarket is extremely busy in the mornings. In Denmark, we always do it after work, but here, people are shopping for lunch or dinner on their way to work and other people even sit on a bench reading a book or take a break from the everyday life.

Sydney is the spot to be!