Coffee, Then and Now

There’s a kind of magic in sitting at a coffee shop in Amsterdam, cup in hand, and watching boats glide along the canal. The water moves at its own pace, steady and sure, while bikes stream past on the bridges above. It feels timeless — like slipping into the city’s heartbeat.

But my mind drifts back, as it often does, to the two years and two months I spent in Vietnam during the Covid lockdown. There, the view was different. Instead of canals, I’d lean out from my window and see street vendors passing by, their bamboo hats bright against the humid sky, baskets balanced carefully on poles across their shoulders. Even in silence, the streets pulsed with life.

During those months, coffee was a private affair — a slow drip through the little tin phin filters, or a sweet treat with condensed milk poured over ice. No shops open, no tables to share, just the ritual of making it at home while the outside world grew still.

Now, sitting here in Amsterdam, I find the same quiet but in a new form. Boats instead of vendors, bridges instead of alleys, a cappuccino instead of a phin. Two different worlds, yet the same thread: coffee as a pause, a way to watch life unfold.

And after all that waiting, after all that silence, it feels like the simplest, most beautiful freedom just to sit here — cup warm between my hands — and watch the world go by