Habits, good and bad, almost always die hard. When I’m traveling or settling down for a while in another culture, I leave behind the routine of home with a mix of excitement and relief. It’s good to walk away from the familiar and see how well I’ll adapt to the strange.
I’m always able to integrate well, short term or long term, as long as where I’ve landed appeals to me. If I love the culture or even just my surroundings, I can adjust to most anything. The call to worship emanating from the mosque down the street here in Sharjah stopped awakening me long ago. I’ve grown accustomed to sweating in the winter sun. Seeing people in Western clothing now catches my attention much as seeing someone wearing an abaya used to catch my eye back in the U.S.
Comfort is another matter I have to redefine when away from home for a long time. How well will I sleep without the perfect king sized mattress I selected with exquisite care? Can I tolerate wearing the same clothes over and over and over and over and over? Can I face each and every day without a deliciously brewed cup of my favorite coffee? Of course I’m able to adapt to the lack of perfect comfort, just as I’m able to happily integrate into the newness of another culture. I have discovered one exception, though.
Instant coffee is the norm in the Middle East. Regular coffee brewed in a coffee pot does exist, but ask for a cup of coffee in a casual little restaurant and you will be handed a tiny cup with the last bit of instant crystals dissolving into the water. Walk into a hotel or the kitchen of a furnished apartment, and you’ll find not a coffee pot but a little teapot or electric carafe with which you are expected to adequately satisfy your coffee cravings.
I have been ingesting instant coffee now for five months. Even while in Australia before I traveled to the Mid East, with the exception of one blissful month when I lived in a house where I was able to make plunger coffee every morning, I have been unceasingly exposed to fake coffee like during no other time in my life. Yesterday, when I polished off yet another plastic jar of Nescafe and walked across the sand parking lot to buy another, I stopped. I thought about the second time I traveled to Europe, when I’d found myself in much the same fake coffee situation and had gotten myself out of it long before five months passed. Now, standing in the sand, I remembered how I’d handled it then.
I walked into the store, selected a bag of finely ground Lebanese coffee which, as it turns out, was less expensive than the Nescafe I’ve been suffering under, then walked several aisles down and grabbed a double roll of paper towels.
I headed back home, filled my little electric carafe with water and heated it. I then put into action the coffee coping mechanism I’d last employed ten years ago. I fashioned a filter by placing two paper towels one on top of the other (a real filter won’t do because it’s not big enough to fit over the cup without collapsing into it). Then I carefully poured a couple teaspoons of real coffee onto the top of the paper towels. Holding them in place, I next gently poured boiling water from the carafe onto the coffee. It slowly seeped through, and I poured in a little more, then repeated. I lifted up the paper towels slightly from time to time to let the water seep more slowly through. Finally, I lifted out the paper towels holding the coffee. Before me, after five long months, a cup of slow brewed real coffee sat.
I brewed my coffee using this method again today. With just one day of recent experience to guide me, today’s cup tasted even better than yesterday’s. The little bag of very strong Lebanese coffee I picked off the shelf tastes like the best coffee ever created on earth. Maybe it is. But I think the stellar taste might have a little to do with the fact that I’ve gone so long without.
How about you? Do you have any comforts of home you just cannot live without long term? Or do you gulp instant coffee for years with glee?
Great post….made me smile. I totally get it and would be doing the same thing. I just can’t deal with instant for more than a day or two (the tea bag style is slightly better, btw). When I was living in Ecuador, a country that exports the better quality coffee and serves up the lame stuff, my mom actually sent me gourmet coffee from the US (Green Mt. from Vermont), which I ground, brewed and enjoyed as a special treat.
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Sabina Lohr Reply:
December 4th, 2010 at 11:40
Hi, Lisa. I’ve never heard of or seen the tea bag style. Do you find it in stores?
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Now am beginning to question my Nescafe packs. I have never seen the tea bag style either! Such a wonderful post!
Yep, real coffee beans are way better than instants.
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Sabina Lohr Reply:
December 5th, 2010 at 08:24
Hi, Kristina – Nescafe definitely should be a very temporary solution, at the most.
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I’m almost embarrassed to admit this, but I grew up drinking instant coffee, because that’s all my grandparents had. So when someone gave me a coffee maker years ago, I almost never used it. I didn’t like the way the coffee tasted (plus I hated having to wash it out after making just one cup). I’ve recently converted to the coffee bags (like tea bags), and I love them. Now, I’d have trouble going back to instant crystals. They travel really well, too. You should try to get your hands on some.
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Sabina Lohr Reply:
December 6th, 2010 at 04:52
Hi, Gray – no embarrassment necessary. I once worked in an office with no coffee pot so I drank the instant stuff rather than buy a cup every day. I’m glad I didn’t get used to it, though
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The good old paper towel trick has probably been tried by all coffee lovers at one time or another. The tea bags you should be able to find somewhere around there. They have small teabag sized and huge ones you could make a whole pot of coffee with probably anywhere people use herbs. In Japan, most of the large grocery stores carry them.
The only thing good about ugh, instant coffee in a jar is, when there’s no water available, I just take a teaspoonful and eat it to get my caffine fix!
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Sabina Lohr Reply:
December 6th, 2010 at 04:51
Ohhhhh, my gosh- eat it?! That is blog post worthy, Mike.
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I have to admit that coffee is my weakness too. I have to have it while traveling. It just doesn’t seem like I’m traveling without it. In fact, drinking coffee was one of the best parts of traveling through Costa Rica. The coffee there is super strong, but tastes really good.
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Sabina Lohr Reply:
December 6th, 2010 at 11:21
I am sure that is strong coffee. I wonder if they make instant coffee any stronger than you find on shelves elsewhere in the world.
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I’m not a big coffee drinker anymore, but when I have a cup I want it to be good. The other day I bought some coffee bag to take with me this winter (I leave in a week and a half!), and I’m curious to try them.
I miss a half decent towel when I’m traveling. Instead of carrying a big, bulky one I’ve compromised and also throw in an extra sarong that I use as a towel. SEA is so hot that a sarong works perfectly and it’s so much bigger than the poor excuses for towels that you often get in SEA hotels.
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Sabina Lohr Reply:
December 7th, 2010 at 19:41
Hi, Nancie – I might have to try those coffee bags. They’ll only be a last resort, though, if some day I’m stuck without real coffee again.
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Ahh coffee. The stuff that travellers are made of. LOL
This is my favourite brand of tea-bag style coffee: http://www.roberttimms.com/OurProducts/ForHome/CoffeeBags/tabid/70/Default.aspx
It was my morning sunshine every day in Australia.
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Sabina Reply:
August 3rd, 2011 at 08:33
Thanks, Anny.
I keep on hearing about these coffee bags but have yet to find them. I’m so used to my method now, I think I might just keep it up even when I’ve got a coffee pot in my possession again 
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