“Hajde, pijme një Kafe”

Thankfully, Albania is a country with a coffee culture. Being invited to drink a coffee is usually a way of opening up communication lines. Coffee is usually informal, meaning that Albanians haven’t grasped the concept of doing business over a cup of coffee. I’m fairly certain “business lunch” isn’t in the Albanian vocabulary either. Instead, coffee can be a one to two hour opportunity to just sit around, talk, and relationship build. It’s another hangover from the Ottoman Empire.

For the most part, Albanians drink “express.” These are powerful little cups of coffee tasting burnt to varying degrees. When you go to a café in Tirana, you’ll be disappointed with the selection. No lattes or cappuccinos really, just express and macchiato.

Coffee is usually brewed in the espresso manner (high pressure), but there’s also kafe turke and kafe filter. Kafe turke (Turkish coffee) is made in a small steel pot and the coffee and sugar are poured in along with the water and heated until it inevitably boils out all over your stove. I like this every once in a while, but a lot of people complain that it’s too gritty since the fine grounds are in the bottom of your cup. Kafe filter, or filtered coffee, is uncommon. I’ve only ever seen it in the one American restaurant, which is a testimony that tall, filtered coffee is mostly a foreign concept.

The only problem with the coffee culture that preaches, “Go strong or go home,” is the number it’s done on our taste buds. I’ve had this discussion recently with other PCVs, and we’ve all reached the same conclusion: drinking “kafe filter,” when available, tastes like drinking nothing. This is a problem when it comes to thinking about going home, since I complained to my parents years ago about their weak coffee. I made a beautiful cup of Jacobs Kronung from a big pack of coffee that cost more than I spend on groceries in a week… and it tasted like nothing. I thought maybe I made it wrong. But in the end, it was my taste buds that were wrong.

Some people hold out when it comes to high-powered espresso by splurging for French presses. Others buy Nescafe instant coffee, the gold standard in countries where drip coffee isn’t popular. I’ve seen a particularly wonderful rigged creation in Pogradec: the bottom of a French press combined with a coffee filter that rides in the top and into which hot water is poured. One thing is for certain: our close of service conference in February should have a standalone session entitled, “Reverse culture shock: American coffee.”