Stage

Is not for bluffing I’m writing in English. Is just that in the last 2 years, I’ve met so many people becoming my friends, speaking so many languages, and I would just like to share this simple lines with them all.

Two years ago I left home. I think I have more than once said it in previous posts.  Just to refresh a bit: I came to Europe to study the local food industry, its characteristics, realities and challenges for the future. I lived in four countries: France (Angers, Clermont-Ferrand, Saint-Roman de Popey & now Bordeaux), Italy (Piacenza), UK (Newport) and finally and sporadically passage in Spain (Valladolid and León).  Besides, I was received in plenty others by good friends keeping memories I would always remind: in Poland was the first place when I felt home again, in Croatia I found a new family, in Switzerland was nicely impressed by the quantity of Latin Americans living in Geneva (and was also gently received by a Methodist church one no-place-to-stay night!), I met quite interesting persons in Netherlands (and had conversations won’t forget) and so on.

However, student’s life finishes one day. Stage is the French word for internship, and mine found me at Bordeaux, with 15 cm of snow freezing some fresh tears caused by my lover going to Argentina. And a promise of a dream, related to coffee.

I started in somehow what can be a dream and a curiosity for others. A pure blood coffee producer, living the other side of the chain. And it was maybe not as I expected, but a thousand times better. At Bordeaux, I found a home with Belco, and a family.

Cupping, roasting, talking about coffee every day, with people having the same passion you do about coffee, is a dream. Maybe more than that, I guess if you also consider that this people are nice with you and besides, listen to you.

I’ve cupped coffees from all over the world, I’ve learned plenty of things concerning coffee (I can’t say all about coffee, because every “all” in coffee, comes to an end one day, you never stop learning concerning coffee) I’ve met plenty of people working in the sector, tasters, roasters, baristas, connoisseurs… If I can add (just to be a bit shallow and cause some envy), I had a 2-day-wine unforgettable experience, by visiting and tasting Petrus, Cos d’Estournel & Grand-Puy-Lacoste.

I should perhaps think that I’m so intelligent, that when I sold my soul to devil for happiness, I included a clause saying that I shouldn’t be able to remember about the agreement we had… or I’m just lucky.

There’s a book of Hesse named Demian, at almost the end he said to his interlocutor “every man would be ready to die for a dream, as long as it is not a dream of his own” (perhaps my translation is not a hundred percent loyal, but keeps the sense); I personally have a dream, and perhaps, I would be able to go really far for it. Passing the message about coffee, about producer’s work, being loyal to the soul of this lovely product, that’s how Europe will find me… because I’m staying for a while, in a small coin de la Place Pey Berland…