Just a couple quick photos, since we are going to Bolzano / Bozen Tuesday and we will be busy.
I mentioned that cafés/bars used to have a sign outside indicating which brand of coffee they served, but I hadn’t seen that. However, today when we were walking around, I did see this one:
The name of the place is Bar Ruggiero, but it also has the name of the coffee on both signs: Caffè Vero (vero = true). Even though having the coffee name is an older style, this place is still trying to appeal to tourists, since it has pictures of some of their dishes outside as well. We did not try Bar Ruggiero since we were on another coffee quest (more about that later).
Then at lunch today at the good pizza place, I got a photo of extended branding: not only the cup but also a matching sugar packet. The brand is Pedron Caffè, not one I remember. The matching sugar packet definitely used to be a thing, and it was fun to see it today.
Coffee seems like a very important part of life there. Makes me almost wish I liked it. We had a meal on the Turkish Airlines flight to the US, and the dessert even had coffee in it. Coffee is such a social “sport”. Glad you’re enjoying your time back in Italy.
I think that as in the U.S. it’s as important as you want it to be. We certainly have Italian friends for whom coffee isn’t a big deal, and some don’t drink it all (shocking!). We are not coffee snobs never mind experts, but we do enjoy “the cafe lifestyle” as we call it.