One of the things we enjoy doing in cafes is chatting with the baristas. We always learn something, sometimes about coffee but often not, like all the music recommendations from the VCR baristas — thanks!
Here in Verona we’ve had a couple interesting chats with baristas. One was in a “specialty coffee” shop. As I mentioned in part 3, most cafes here do not roast their own beans. To be fair, that is true in the U.S. as well. We happen to live in an unusual location with several artisan coffee roasters in the area. Out of curiosity, I wanted to see if I could find a cafe that roasts its own beans here in Verona. Looking online, I could see that there are several coffee roasters in Verona, but I wasn’t finding an associated cafe. Finally, I came across Garage Coffee Broswhich has a location in Verona. We made our way over there, which wasn’t completely trivial due to lots of road construction, and it is on an alley.
It turns out that it wasn’t really a cafe, but more of a tasting room. They have won some national awards for “specialty coffee”, which involves non-traditional methods of roasting, like adding yeast during part of the process. We first came across this process on our trip to Vancouver, when we went to Funk coffee.
We had a nice time at Garage Coffee Bros, and tried a couple different roasts, one roasted with yeast and honey. Very interesting. We didn’t try any of the award winning roasts, though (too expensive for our tastes(!)).
At some point at the beginning of our visit there, the barista/clerk mentioned that she wasn’t Italian. However, her spoken Italian was excellent. It turns out that she is Lithuanian and has lived in Italy for 3 years. We exchanged anecdotes about language learning, which was fun. She mentioned her frustration with not getting corrected, and coincidentally an Italian friend mentioned that same thing a couple days later, about learning English.
Now, my Italian friend and I are on both sides of the issue: we are second language learners but we are also first language speakers interacting with second language learners. I think we see both sides: as the first language speaker, you want the conversation to progress without stopping to make corrections, and often that is true of the second language learner. However, as the second language learner you often want to improve. I think that the desire to communicate far outweighs the desire to improve / be helpful, which is what makes getting corrections from friends during a conversation difficult.
A nice alternative, which we discovered in Bolzano, is the tandem: two adult language learners meet to have conversations but also to improve their speaking ability, so corrections are a built in part of the situation. L did a few tandems in Bolzano, some good, some just OK. The ones she tried in Tübingen didn’t work out, since she never found the right partners — students just had other interests.
Interestingly, when we were in Bolzano this time, we saw a billboard advertising a formalized version of the tandem, sponsored by the province. However, it is really more one-way, with the goal of getting (more) people to speak German (better). The program is apparently “Sprachfreunde” (= language friends, in German). The large slogan on top is Italian for “Let’s talk to each other in German”, while underneath it says in German “Find new friends and help them learn German”. While locals can correct me in the comments, it seems like its pitch to Italian speakers is to speak German, and the pitch to German speakers is to make new friends (but nothing about speaking Italian). There’s a whole lot of interesting history behind that sign, but I’ll leave it at that for now.
Anyway, interesting coffee and conversation. (With a nod to the discussion groups L’s parents used to participate in, were called Coffee and Conversation.)