How To Goof Off in a Café

If this essay sounds familiar that is because I have plagiarized myself and distilled a couple of essays to come up with this one.

My introduction to European café etiquette started when I was a 19 year old summer school student in France—my first time in Europe. I would go to a café for a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, drink it, pay the check, and leave. I quickly noticed that everyone who was there when I arrived was still there when I stood up to leave. I became self-conscious of my haste. I quickly began to see cafes as a sort of game; a waiting game.
 
I began to take note of the other patrons when I first took a seat. I would nurse my coffee or glass of wine to make it last while I waited for other people in the café to call it quits. I would write letters to pass the time, or read, or simply people watch. I quickly learned that there are worse ways to spend time than sitting on the terrace of a Parisian café. I have since come to believe that there are few better ways to spend and hour or two or three.
 
I got pretty good at the waiting game my first summer in Europe, but I never won. It didn’t matter how patient I was; I could have been in the middle of the best book I had ever read; I could have been engaged in the most interesting conversation of my young life (that wouldn’t have been saying much at 19); it didn’t matter. There would always be some grizzled old French guy in a beret and a seemingly bottomless glass of red who wasn’t about to be hurried out of his café by some hyperactive American kid raised on too much sugar and television. I would tip my imaginary beret to him as I left. “Today you win, but tomorrow is another day, yes monsieur?” For all I know that old French guy never left that table, ever, but I liked his style.
 
Back in America this sort of behavior would be called loitering. Loiter: to spend time idly. In America we have equated loitering with not spending money, or not spending enough money, or not spending money fast enough, and we have made that illegal. After several years of living and traveling around the Mediterranean, the most café-influenced culture on the planet, I learned that if loitering were against the law there you’d have to build a pretty big fence to contain the guilty. In the Mediterranean they have a different word for what we would call loitering. The closest English equivalent to this word would be ‘living.’
 
It is almost impossible to exaggerate the importance of the café in the quotidian life of many Europeans. Cafes are a meeting spot for friends, or a place where you won’t feel out of place sitting by yourself. You can read the morning paper, or write a letter. They are a place to be among people, or a refuge from the crowded street. A café is a good spot to begin an evening out with friends, or the last stop on the way home. A café terrace is like your living room with better coffee and a view.
 
I had been brought up to believe that consumption was the purpose of going to a bar or restaurant. I soon learned during that first summer in Europe that what you bought at the café was definitely not the main point of the whole exercise. That glass of wine was merely the rent you paid for the wonderful piece of café real estate that you had chosen or had chosen you. The food and drink aspect is a secondary concern.
 
When I go to Europe the first thing I do is head for a café.  When I come back home cafes are what I miss the most.  The explosive growth of coffee shops in America is a response to this basic human need for community.  Coffee shops aren’t quite the same thing, they aren’t as utilitarian, they are a lot more casual, but they are a good start.   
 
The primary function of a cafe is to offer a shared public space. The public space you are sharing may be next to some movie star at an ultra chic Parisian café, or next to a shepherd in a remote Greek mountain village, but the idea is still the same. It doesn’t matter what language you use to order your beer, the same rules of the café apply. Sit back, slowly sip your wine, and try not to think of loitering as a bad thing.