san francisco coffee company and so on

there's a final post by me coming later (there was, but i don't know how to work this blog thing so well, so now this is the final and the real final post came before) but i wanted to add these thoughts here, not so much about munich as a city, since it's a great place and you all should just go ahead and visit, but about a big theme of our trip; relaxing in the morning with a good (or terrible) espresso and taking it easy until we were ready to hoof it once more.
i'm generally okay with eating or having a drink, beer or coffee, at the slightly larger perhaps more touristy spots while travelling. it's generally a matter of availability and more often than not the places i might otherwise be interested in finding are a bit out of the way. thus far i think we've hit 3 places or so that have really felt comfortable and more to my liking: cafe duddel in köln, schlenkerla in bamberg, and cafe kopfeck in münchen. there have been a few places in freiburg as well and now that i've been through hamburg there's also the Pudel Club. these are at least the most memorable. there are a few cities, though, that i believe deserve further exploration, namely freiburg, ulm and, despite all previous bashing, Basel. sitting in the san francisco coffe company in münchen, i was reminded of the reasons why i like those smaller, out of the way places. here was a novelty chain, playing on american popular coffee culture, so much so that you can't even order a double espresso, it's either a small or a medium (could be worse, i guess. could have been tall or grande or something). it's a chain and the baristas even have a bit of the american barista attitude readily at hand. and for some reason they want to speak english. the design elements are easily mass produced so as to fit into any space and with somewhere near or over ten locations in münchen i guess that makes sense. objectively, the design is not terrible, just a little to stagnant or impersonal maybe for my taste. and above all, the coffee isn't even all that. perhaps the biggest novelty here is that there isn't even a san francisco coffee company in san francisco.

but that's not meant as a diss on anything in particular. we've had some great fun finding the out of the way places and sometimes when you just want an espresso, you go with what you got. so in a Prosht to one of the main themes of our trip, i'll leave you with that.