We all want happiness, to be happy. I've often thought about what makes me happy and I've often wondered if I know what happiness is. Because you have to understand the meaning of the word well so that you can say, safe in the knowledge that you are not wrong, if and when you are or have been happy!
I looked it up in the dictionary...
happiness (noun)
1: a state of well-being and contentment: JOY
b: a pleasurable or satisfying experience
... and I found that my understanding is close to this definition, so I can go further.
My opinion is that happiness is directly proportional to the passions and hobbies you have. More hobbies = more happiness!
I think I am one of the (happy) people with many passions, from which it follows logically that I am happy more often. That's why it's hard to choose just one thing that makes me happy at the weekend. It's hard and it's not hard, I realized in the end that I thought about that happiness that is repeatable and that I don't get bored of, daily happiness, but that has a greater intensity on the weekend.
Coffee!
Happiness is consumed in small sips.
To be more precise, it's about cappuccino, this way of brewing coffee in a softer, more velvety way. I can say more feminine.
A good cappuccino, as I understand it, is made up of two espresso shuttles, only Arabica coffee, of origin, on top of which a layer of quality milk foam is placed! It must be drunk without sugar.
With each sip, just dip your lips in the warm milk foam and smell the warm milk aroma. Then, trying a more vigorous swallow, your mouth fills with the aroma and strength of the coffee. For me, there is no more enjoyable taste experience!
In general, in all coffee shops, the cappuccino is the same size. A size that is too small for me now. Luckily, I found a café in Bucharest, the city where I live, that sells three sizes: small, large, and grande.
For my taste, the small one is too... small and the grand one is too big (for now).
The large size is the right one!
I like to drink sip by sip trying to prolong as long as possible the pleasure and happiness of always having a good cappuccino and loved ones nearby.
Every Sunday my wife goes to church, actually a small monastery over three hundred years old, in the center of the city.
Although the religious service is not long (only two hours), and is of high quality and refinement, I am not a fan and I do not like to accompany it... but my wife found the solution.
Sunday coffee at our favorite cafe, Coffee Shop, halfway between our house and the monastery.
Victory Square is a starting point for our walks around the city.
Thus, cappuccino (coffee) is what makes me happy every weekend!
I started drinking coffee about fifty years ago. Little and shy at the beginning, when we had guests and coffee was a delicacy that could not be missed, more for the feeling that I had outgrown adolescence and was a man too. This is happening in Romania, a communist country at the time, a country cut off from the rest of the world and where such delicacies were rare and hard to find.
In those days, the method of preparing coffee was in a kettle and we put in quite a lot of sugar. The coffee I had access to was not of good quality and then the sugar made it seem tastier.
For decades I drank coffee without much attention, I understood its stimulating effect, and it became a habit. I drank coffee every morning before going to work and then, after a while, I got used to drinking coffee at work too, most of the time for the break I took from work.
Because I used to make my own coffee and didn't go to coffee shops, I didn't notice the changes that went through both the preparation of coffee and the quality of the coffee beans, the way they were roasted, and the multitude of tastes and aromas. I discovered this in Iasi, an important city in Romania, where I lived for a year, in 2019.
In Iasi, I found the right cafe, the right people (barista), and the best cappuccino. It remained my reference. Since 2020, when I left Iasi, I've been looking for a similar cafe and can't find it. This cafe "Coffee Story" remained my nostalgia, just like the nostalgia of my childhood or youth!
Here was the God of coffee. Iasi is a very beautiful and interesting city. Full of history, full of art, full of greenery, full of young people... and I only remember coffee!
It was only after I left there that I realized what I had lost. Since then...
I'm looking for that cappuccino from Iasi, I'm looking for it on all my holidays abroad, in Greece, Thassos Island...
...and in Bulgaria, in Balchik.
I'm looking for that cappuccino both in Bucharest and in other places in the country, such as Sibiu...
... but I can't find what I want, although all these places offered good cappuccino. But something is missing and now I don't know if this is real or just in my imagination!
