Mama needs her coffee
Apparently we Finns are the biggest coffee drinkers in the world. In this case, biggest meaning we consume it the most, not our actual size, even if in some video games and other fantasy genre, people of the Northern Origin are depicted as taller and bigger as other humans. Almost giant-like in some cases.
According to some data, which seems to be unable to be found at the moment (we tried, really hard, at least for like ten minutes) we Finns consume up to 12 kg, around 26 lb, of coffee per person each year. We don’t know if this includes babies in the math, or just adult Finns, but we can assure you we don’t usually let our babies have coffee. Only on special occasions.
We loooove coffee. When we go visit other Finns, rarely, because Finns, we sit at the kitchen table, sometimes if people are fancy we could use the actual coffee table in the living room, and have a cup or two of coffee. Black, or with milk, or sugar, or both. No fancy options here. We like our coffee plain and honest, just like our people. No wonder we have less than ten Starbucks in the whole country. Maybe exchange a few words if the coffee needs time to cool down. And after coffee we leave. Perfect.
There are other coffee shops too. But the fancy kinds don’t seem to last too long here. You get your coffee after lunch at the restaurant, or morning coffee at the gas station if you want a little human contact. The fancier coffee shops are to meet people, if you like to do that. Like for dating. We meet, we ask if the other one would like to go have coffee sometime, usually after work, and in Finland it’s never too late for coffee, we go have coffee with them (if they said yes, otherwise it would be close to kidnapping). And again, we sit and drink the coffee, maybe try to get to know each other a bit, mostly by staring at them in silence. After coffee we leave, since it was just that, just coffee. What comes after is yet to be seen, maybe there’s texting, maybe another coffee, maybe nothing. You decide.
Maybe we need our coffee to survive the long winters of no sun at all, maybe we need the hot drink to warm us in the cold. Or maybe it’s more of a tradition dating back to old times, when coffee was considered a luxury and you could be proud of yourself if you had real coffee to serve to your guests.
The word “coffee” was used 26 times in this post, this last chapter included. That’s how much we love coffee.
— Editors
The writer of this story is a member of the Mom of Finland community.
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