The Hungarian Pastry Shop

I’m not the only one in here trying to do work, so I have no illusions about my originality or anything. 

However, it does seem to be all older students. So, ha!

The Hungarian Pastry Shop is on 111^th and Amsterdam. I would prefer a seat outside but they are all filled by many, many babies, so I’m inside. The lights are dim (sad face), it smells like coffee (smiley face) and there’s no wi-fi (it’s called the 21^st century, people, enter it). So I’m writing this on Word. This coffee had better [insert crude sexual reference here].

The Hungarian Coffee: American Coffee, Almond, Cinnamon, and whipped cream (I think that’s it). It’s a bit underwhelming; I always forget that I prefer the simple coffee.  It’s thick and heavy on the cinnamon. I’ll go get a regular coffee in a minute. The croissant is as luxurious as a starch can be, even though these prices are not all right with me. But that’s my reaction to basically everything sold in Manhattan.

I would report on how the HPS is as a work environment, but that would involve me working, and if I wanted to do that I wouldn’t have a blog.

Okay, enough whining. I am an adult. I’m going to go refill my coffee and then do some actual work and report back. Right…now. Now. Now. Okay, but actually now.

(Note: The coffee refills are free, but there’s no cream or milk available. And to wussy coffee drinkers like me, milk is very important. )

…

So I’m sitting here in the almost dark reading Epicurus, and though I rather like Epicurus, I’m thinking how many things I would rather do than go to my philosophy class. I guess this is my sophomore slump; I see what I want in life, finally, and now I just feel like I’m wasting time and bushels of money. My last post was full of enthusiastic plans, but now I spend too much time in libraries or alone in coffee shops and I’m tired.

Accurate depiction of me at the coffee shop today

And all this philosophy I’m reading, all these old guys sitting around trying to figure out how to be happy, has me thinking. Everybody seems to think that they can structure the world to make people happy. Plato tries to make a perfect city and Aristotle talks about virtues and justice; the world tries monarchy and democracy and communism; we follow the rules of Christianity, Buddhism, the law; we make communication easier and faster and always with us (except in this wi-fi-less pastry shop), but happiness is always elusive. Maybe it’s not something we can construct at all. Maybe it’s just a capacity that you have. It’s either easy for you to be happy, or it’s very difficult, or somewhere in between, and that’s all.

I say all that here because no way can I say it in class. I said last post that I'd get to thinking big thoughts at college, but I’m no philosopher. I’m just some chick reading Epicurus in a dark coffee shop, and I’m not pretending to be anything else.  So let me get back to it.

The emphasis here should I guess be on the pastries, since this is a pastry shop, see what I did there (not a thing, that’s what I did), and there seems to be many more pastry types available than what’s on display at the counter. That’s not fair, how am I supposed to know what to pick? What, am I expected to read all the pastry descriptions and make a decision based on that? Hogswash! There are many variations of what looks to me like baklava, so I guess Hungary does baklava too? I usually associate baklava to Greece. Is Hungary close to Greece? I’m just a film major, comrades. I’d look it up, but I can’t get on the internet. (Note: Hungary to Greece: https://maps.google.com/maps?client=safari&q=hungary+to+greece&oe=UTF-8&ie=UTF-8&hl=en )

All this griping about the lack of internet is really just a reflection on the fact that my phone is broken this week. I only have a dumb phone, but I feel distant and disconnected. No one can contact me, not that people do that often anyway, and I can’t contact anyone else. It’s so strange. I’m fairly certain that people lived without cellphones or even home phones for thousands of years, but a few days with nothing and I feel like a dinosaur. I’m only two blocks from my dorm but I can’t tell my roommate about the group of men that whistled at me on my walk here.

Hey girl, can I get you some coffee?

In other news, the carrot cake looks delicious. And the elderly British couple eating it is talking about the deli from When Harry Met Sally, seeing Bring It On (“quite a load of fun”) and Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark (“the biggest load of garbage I ever saw”) on Broadway. These are the things I take for granted, being lucky enough to have this time in New York. So let me stop faux-losophizing and complaining about technology and be happy that there are so many more coffee shops in this city that I can try, also with foreign men (though hopefully young, attractive, and shirtless foreign men in the future).