No Coffee To Drink
These days, I make my home in Zurich which ranks consistently as the most expensive place to live in Europe. Mark Twain might have countered with “There are lies, damn lies, and city rankings,” but he chose prudence and lived in Weggis, not Zurich. I, not possessing the smarts of the aforementioned humorist, moved to Zurich from another ridiculously expensive place-Silicon Valley. I come from a place where the denizens’ favorite social entertainment is outdoing each other with incredulous but true examples of cupboard-size dilapidations selling for millions of dollars over asking prices. Given that I’d marinated for multiple decades in that environment, you’d imagine it would take something really rich to curdle my enthusiasm for the land of cheese and chocolates. The curdling happened on my first day in Switzerland when I heard the barista say, “That’ll be $12 for your Caramel Macchiato,” at a Starbucks just outside Zurich’s HauptBahnhof. That was also the day that my dreams of sipping cappuccinos in trendy cafes while debating Kierkegaard and Kafka with erudite Zurichers gave up the ghost.
A few days later, I was back at the HauptBahnhof and seated in one of the always-on-time Swiss trains, watching the denizens of Zurich bustling about on the platforms. One platform pedestrian caught my attention because he was holding a cup of coffee from which he took frequent appreciative sips. I, on the other hand, was low on caffeine and still in denial over Zurich’s sky-high brew prices.
I watched my coffee-sipping friend as he traversed the platform at a brisk pace only slowing down in the vicinity of garbage cans placed on the platform. As he approached each, he stooped and bestowed a quick peek at its innards. He was relatively young, decently attired, professional-looking-someone you’d expect to bump into in your neighborhood Migros. My encounters thus far with the legendary Swiss bureaucracy prompted me to chalk this behavior up yet another example. That, I assumed, must be the official who’s entrusted with compliance with Rule #4421: “No garbage cans exceed 77% capacity,” which is right after, “No power washing your car.” At the fifth container, my assumption was totally trashed. There, my friend reached in and carefully extracted a paper cup. With nary a second look, he emptied the contents of that into his coffee cup. He then took a sip of his new blend, gave a barely perceptible nod of satisfaction, and hurried away.
My train must have pulled away from the platform but I continued to mouth unintelligible confused sounds for the next few minutes which mercifully ended with my wife delivering a discreet poke in my ribs. None of the other passengers seemed to have found the trash-fishing episode out-of-the-ordinary. Or maybe all the cellphones they were bent over had even stranger events to report. I sat back in my seat stunned and uncomprehending.
Swiss landscapes are always picturesque and calming but that day, I paid no heed to the countryside zipping past my train window. My brain synapses were firing in complete disarray. How could anyone reach into a garbage can, pick up discarded coffee, who-knows-what was in that leftover cup, pour that into your half-finished coffee, and walk away contented with that combo? There were so many things wrong with that picture. Was Mr. Mülleimer (to give him a local moniker) desperate for a fix that walking over to the Cafe in the train station was an impossibility? Was Mr. M on such a tight schedule for a critical meeting and this was the most expedient way to get his caffeine fix? And what was so wrong with his coffee that coffee from the garbage can tasted better? What he picked up had been discarded, implying something was clearly wanting in that concoction. There was no coffee shortage I knew of. And I doubted there were any TikTok dares to drink coffee out of trash cans. Finally, Mr. Mülleimer cannot have been poor. To cross into Swiss territory, you have to demonstrate wealth needed to buy your daily government-mandated retinue of cheese fondues, raclettes, and chocolates-a fortune for the multitudes who are fated to live with their unrequited desire for the Matterhorn country.
I’ve already alluded to not possessing a great deal of those “little gray cells” like a certain Belgian detective. But, mon ami, here’s the only explanation that explains this most curious incident on the platform. Mr. M is a spy (Gasp! who’d have thunk it?) who’s supposed to pick up a microfiche… What’s that, you ask? That, as any grizzled IT veteran knows, is not a marine animal, but an ancient way to store information. But, why use microfiche? Because, we’re in Switzerland, where they pride themselves on glacial changes (Alpine farmhands still yodel every night for their cows back home). Back to the literal twirling-of-my-Poirot-mustache: Mr. M was to look for a microfiche in one of the garbage cans on Platform 12 once the morning train from Zug arrived. The microfiche was obviously inside this waterproof capsule which had been dropped into a cup of coffee. That cup, with it’s payload, was conveyed from Zug by Mr. M’s associate who must have expertly lowered it into a trash can on platform 12. Expertly, since finding a “clean” spot in a trash can on a platform on which lots of people were walking their dogs is not a job for amateurs.
More evidence: Once the surreptitiously-placed coffee cup was located, Mr. M verified the presence of the microfiche capsule by pouring that coffee into his cup. Mr. M and his associate had one final check to make sure this capsule was the legit one. It was prearranged that both would be drinking cappuccino from the same roastery and origin-something special like Milanese-roasted single-origin coffee from the Volcan region in Panama. The taste of the combined coffee had to be exactly the same as the sips Mr. M had been assiduously taking in preparation for this check. That satisfied nod at the very end was as much for the secured microfiche as for the satisfying taste of the final blend.
Despite this “Herculean” deduction, the skeptical among you will want to paint me with the same brush as James Thurber’s protagonist. I would too if it weren’t for what happened 2 weeks after the Mr. M incident. I got off the train at Zurich HB on platform 43 alongside a couple of other folks, including a young man sipping a cappuccino which was clearly a single-origin from Matas de Minas, Santos (you could tell from the hint of chocolate and almond wafting in the air). I was right behind him when I saw a somewhat older man walking towards us. The older man motioned to the young man, who shrugged his shoulders, gave his friend a grin, and tossed his drink at the older man. A well-practiced, mid-air handoff was completed. The recipient took a swig of the coffee, nodded his thanks and walked on by, oblivious to my look of utter incredulity.
There you have it-the root cause of my coffee woes. Obviously, the European espionage business is mushrooming in Zurich. Spies at the top of their game are ferrying their trade using expensive imported coffee from the best Italian roasteries in the world. This is driving up demand and the price of coffee, good and bad. But, what you ask, about famous old British spies who stubbornly stick to ordering not coffee but martinis they want shaken, not stirred? I fear time’s running out for them to wake up and smell the coffee.
Originally published at http://teepeem.com on February 5, 2022.
