Cafes

I love a good cafe. (And it seems this town can feel it. When I moved here seven years ago, there was not a single real cafe, now there are half a dozen.) (I hope not too many of them will go bust since I now have an espresso machine myself.) But maybe the Starbucks culture is a little out of hand, particularly "pay fifty bucks (or whatever) for a cup of coffee the size of a Hummer, then get out of the shop in a hurry". For me, cafes are for sitting in, looking at life (meaning girls, mostly).
I did so today actually. The waitress was Petra, a foreign girl with good English, who I hadn't met before. She had a smile exactly like my friend Bettina's, and I told her so. She used it too, copiously and sincerely, very nice.