I was just a regular traveler only a couple years ago. Doing sightseeing, covering touristy spots that I liked, went out to restaurants, bars and such, when doing a city trip, and hiking tours and other explorations in the nature around my travel destination, when doing road trips to e.g. Scotland or in Japan.
I never felt quite satisfied with me traveling these countries, cities and places, though. I only touched the surface, I only saw what everyone saw…
What happened then pretty much changed my whole life. And, I’m not exaggerating here…
Why coffee?
My journey within coffee started in fall 2013 after a trip to Amsterdam and Vienna – I loved the coffee house culture of both cities so much – and me realizing that there must be more to my working life than sitting at an office desk from 9 to 5 working for the goals of other people…
My first thought of escaping the corporate world was to open a coffee shop myself… Pretty naive and super risky, said my family…
I haven’t opened that cafe, yet, but I made my way into specialty coffee anyhow.
After weeks and months attending seminars and workshops, reading books, magazines and blogs, working as a barista part time besides my full time job…
I built an online coffee business (which I’m no longer doing) and set up this Blog. Both in 2016.
“To do what?”, you’re asking?
Well, at some point during my discoveries, I noticed that traveling to the coffee shops, cafes and roasteries in other cities and countries is actually super fun and exciting.
Plus, I even got to experience, what I was missing with my travels before – I got in touch with the locals and the local coffee community!
Coffee is connecting people
So, I started actually planning my next trips based on specialty coffee and the specialty coffee scene of the very city I was visiting. Exploring these cities mostly on foot or public transport, getting in touch with the street culture, crashing on couches (and beds, of course) of friends and strangers doing couchsurfing.
And, what can I say, I got hooked!!!
This was so much more FUN than doing those boring sightseeing tours, than only getting a glimpse of my travel destination…
After Amsterdam and Vienna, which have been rather a mix of sightseeing and coffee/cafe culture, Bruges and Ghent in Belgium, Tokyo and Kyoto in Japan, London and all the bigger ‘coffee cities’ in Germany – Berlin, Hamburg, Munich and Frankfurt, where I live, followed.
The longest and actually the first trip that I solely planned on visiting coffee places was in summer 2016 to the US. I spent 7 weeks traveling along the East coast and West coast to New York City, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Seattle, Portland and San Francisco.
The trip to the states was actually just the start to my coffee traveling journey. Between October 2017 and April 2018 I explored East and South East Asia one cup of specialty coffee at a time.
Read more in the Guides section on this website.
With me I brought tons of ideas and inspirations for this blog as well!
And, I knew, after receiving feedback from other like minded coffee lovers who were planning their travels pretty much around coffee places as well, that I had to create a platform for all of us.
A platform that not only offers reviews of the coffee places, I visited, but is also making suggestions for coffee walking tours, providing tips and ideas for (coffee) traveling as well as recipes for coffee beverages and drinks I brought back from my coffee travels.
I want to inspire you, to exploring your travel destinations in a different way – based on coffee and with the locals!
Inspiring coffee travels
If you like
- exploring your travel destination off the known paths,
- exploring a city based on its coffee scene and culture,
- experiencing street art and street culture,
- meeting locals and
- seeing the city through their eyes,
than you found the right page!
Here’s more about me.