Posts Tagged ‘caffeine’

So it’s been no secret to you my readers, or my friends here, that I like having Starbucks in ‘my’ Prague. I also love that I have relationships with the guys that manage my usual store and the guys that are opening them here. Recently I read an article over at the Washington Post, entitled
A Starbucks State of Mind. It was interesting, here is a quick portion of the whole of the article.

By the same token, when you don’t have an especially nice place to live — if you live, for instance, in a dormitory — you might well prefer to spend your afternoons in an attractive coffeehouse. And this is where the Starbucks ethos meshes so well with the cultural history of Central Europe: At the height of their popularity, the coffeehouses of 19th-century Vienna, Warsaw and Budapest were famously frequented by people who didn’t live in particularly lush apartments and thus preferred to spend their time in rooms decorated like the salons of the upper classes. Hence the association of coffeehouses with poets, literati, revolutionaries and other assorted riffraff. Hence the attraction for students today. As for the stockbrokers, they are simply back where they belong: Many of the world’s stock exchanges got their start in coffeehouses, since merchants and traders were once outsiders, too.

Will the St. Bucks of Central Europe build an ethos that fueled “poets, literati, revolutionaries and other assorted riffraff” of the 19th century? I don’t know, but I love that they are here and I have the hook up from them! Booyah! Check out the whole article, click here.

The title kind of says it all, the “West” has finally made it’s last stand to conquer my beloved Prague. Last Tuesday, while I was in Hungary for a conference, the long awaited Starbucks showed up. The first (yes, the first there are plans to have 20 new locations between Czech and Poland within the year) one ever in the Czech Republic and Prague has set up at Malostranské námÄ›stí to conquer yet another country and city with its green apron clad baristas!

You are probably picking up on a wee-bit of cynicism with this. I really don’t know what to think. I’m torn up a bit about this, and probably investing too much mental energy into it. I did enjoy my drink on Friday and I will probably be back there before the week ends, but I feel a bit reluctant with it all. I’m not sure why. However, I was impressed with the design and the set up of our, for the time being, only Starbucks at Malostranské námÄ›stí. It still has that welcomed Starbucks feel, but it definitely has a Prague feel, which was cool. Moreover, it wasn’t too gaudy. I was impressed that as I walked up to the store I was overwhelmed with a gaudy exterior of green letters. All in all, I’m going to enjoy it and at the same time lament a bit because sooner or later there will be more and more stores here. Seeing them on every corner, as I did in London, was a bit too much for me. Well, I should get rolling… Oh HERE is a little write up about the store from Radio.cz, and the pics below are from the article. You have to love those green aprons!