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Social Experiment: Pop-Up Café in Studentstaden

Pop-up shops, restaurants and venues have been popping up everywhere like mushrooms after the rain and appear to be the latest hipster trend.

So why not try out this concept with a Café?

That is exactly what we did today here at Lost in a Cup HQ in Studentstaden – Uppsala. The name of the neighbourhood in Swedish means literally ‘the city of students’  and it is the part of the city with the highest concentration of student rooms; Uppsala in general is also known as the most important university city in the country. You can’t get more student-centric than this!

 

The amazing part is that although so many students live in proximity of each other they rarely say hello to each other, let alone engage in conversations with neighbours.

So here came the idea: to attract people with good coffee and create a social space where strangers would actively be encouraged to engage with each other. Truly a social experiment. One of the attendees pointed out how this was ‘so not Swedish’ and chuckled and the fact it was something out of the ordinary attracted her to visit in the first place and would come back to future events.

 

Factors such as the size of the venue, limited to one 13 sq. meters plus a corridor and the authenticity of the Pop-Up Café being in an authentic student corridor made the setting ideal for spontaneous social interactions. Like a student house party but without alcohol and blaring music, just a chilled atmosphere and good conversations.

Only glitch in the project was the out-reach as the idea and development of the Café came around 24 hours before the actual event took place. Many Swedes plan their schedule with at least a week in advance so Italian spontaneity does not work as much as the organiser had hoped so the crowd was fairly small.

However, Sunday the 25th of November it will happen again! This time with more people and maintaining the good coffee and gingerbread biscuits which really went down a treat.

 

Will you join?

Check out the link to the Facebook event with all the details.

 

#PopUpStudentstaden

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White [Milky] Friday

Today is ‘White Friday‘ on Lost in a Cup. Today we celebrate white, milky, some say ‘weak’ coffees such as the popular ‘Latte’ or to be correct ‘Latte macchiato‘ you can see depicted below.

Mixing milk with coffee in Italy is usually done in the mornings, for breakfast and there is the unwritten rule of ‘no cappuccinos after midday’. Often touristy destinations offer Cappuccinos on the menu of restaurants and pizzerias but be aware it is just for tourists! Most Italians would not have milk in their coffee after breakfast. The only exception is when they ask to stain their espresso with a splash of milk called a ‘macchiato’, which literally means ‘stained’. Macchiatos can be done with hot steamed milk, ‘a caldo‘ or with cold milk, ‘a freddo’.

 

Spoiler: next week will be “Black [Coffee] Friday”

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Trick or Treat? MERINGUE-UCCINO!

One of my most scary experiences in recent times..

 

Whilst visiting friends in UK, I decided to stop and check the coffee scene and see how the English ‘Barista hype’ compares to the Swedish one.

So I went to a really popular café on the main road of a London suburb and ordered a regular Cappuccino.

A few minutes later the waitress arrived with this to which I wondered if it was a mistake or if it was supposed to be like this.

After consulting a few local coffee lovers I figured this was the standard, not a ‘Halloween special’ meant as a practical joke or even to scare you!

If you really love froth you most likely would be a fan but in terms of shape and consistency it would be more correct to call this a Meringue-uccino or something to that effect.

If kids knock on your door tonight asking ‘trick or treat?’ why not treat them to one of these?

Happy Halloween!

 

Disclaimer: there are also amazing coffees in London with outstanding Latte Art but this is not one of them!