Sip a Moment, Let it Linger

When you’re an American and you order a coffee in Italy, you’re not really ordering a coffee, not in the American sense, anyway. When you order a coffee in Italy, it’s fast, almost too fast, and you’d better have the exact change for your order in hand and ready to be placed in the tray in front of the register, so as to avoid any exasperated glances from those standing at the bar, those waiting behind you, and the man behind the register. This man will greet you kindly with “bonjourno” or a simple “ciao”, the sound so musical you almost forget your order altogether. 

With 4 euros clinking together in your sweaty palm, you order a simple cappuccino and a cornetto di Nutella as nothing within the display case is labeled, and the coffee options are nowhere to be seen. Better to play it safe, you think, although this is far from your complicated order in America with ice and oat milk and a sprinkle of brown sugar atop a delicately designed milky swan. The man behind the register will then announce your order for the baristas to hear, along with every other person in the bar, as you place your change in the tray. You’re still €0.50 short and fish the rest from your pocket, thinking they must be changing these prices daily. They’re not. The man’s responding “grazie” is so beautifully tilted at the end, so artfully released, that it hardly deserves a “prego”, so you, too, tell him “grazie” for his patience, for his thoughtfulness, for his pretending not to notice your Americanness in that split-second encounter. 

You wait at the bar for the baristas to call your order out, not your name or order, amongst a group of Italians, solitarily sipping their coffees from small white demitasse cups. They stand close to each other along the short bar as they quickly sip, some clad in bright yellow construction uniforms, some in freshly pressed suits, others in simple daily attire, no sweatpants or slippers in sight. There’s no room at the bar at this busy hour, so you sit at a small table behind them all, watching, waiting behind the small book you brought, not to read, but for the very purpose of seeing these individuals in their most unebashed state. The woman calls your order out, and you swiftly bring it back to your table, anxious to taste the coffee, to feel the effects of the caffeine, to scrape the never-ending foam from the sides of the small cup.

The thick foam on top is exceptional and completely separated from the wonderfully bitter espresso below. There’s no frilly art on top, just the simple singular combination of coffee and milk. The espresso is dark and nutty and when you sip from your cup, you receive the perfect balance of cloud-like milk and dark-like-soil espresso. The foam on top is your favorite part of it all, though, as it melts on your tongue, releasing the flavors from the coffee below and the milk itself onto your tongue in rivulets of sweetness and richness. It’s beautiful. And yet it’s over as quickly as it began, and you’re off to your next destination, as are those at the bar, the strangers sitting among you.

You think it’s a wonder to have received such a delicious cup of coffee for so small a price, but you know you are, again, thinking in American, where maximizing any and every chance of profit is commonplace. There’s no trace of that here, in this little eastern-centered town of Umbria, where time is like a pendulum as it swings from fast moments like these to the slowness of siesta, from the cars zipping down the streets to the three-hour four-course meals at dinner. You think you might be beginning to understand it all, though, these conflicting moments, these seemingly backward timeframes. There’s something about it that feels so incomprehensibly human, as the Italians have perfected simplicity, honor it every day, in terms of their own effortless desires. So when you’re an American and you order a coffee in Italy, you’re not really ordering a coffee. You’re ordering a moment, a thread in the complicated tapestry that is everyday life in this beautiful country.