I don’t usually take my coffee in a cafe that is part of a chain of cafes because I like the one-offs, the singular cafes.
But this Green Caffe Nero purports to be the site of the oldest coffee house in Warsaw, although it’s difficult to discern exactly when the original coffee house stood here – around 1700 maybe?
Around 1820, however, the cafe was called ‘Mrs. Brzezinska’ and was famous for having both domestic and foreign newspapers.
Chopin played concerts here as a teenager for his friends before emigrating to Paris.
Since then, there have been many names and proprietors, beginning with a Swiss owner in the 1830s, who made the cafe much more elegant.
By the end of the First World War, it was called the ‘Clotin and Botta Cafe’.
During the Second World War, the cafe only allowed German clientele.
The building was destroyed in 1944 during the Warsaw Uprising, and then rebuilt in 1949.
In 1989, a journalist and jazz musician bought the cafe and added live music and an art gallery.
Since 2013, it’s been the Green Caffe Nero.
And today, in the long history of this cafe, sits a traveling Canadian, drinking coffee, eating a chocolate muffin one day before its best-before date, sitting in a large striped chair by a window, listening to contemporary versions of 70s and 80s music, 1970s and 80s, that is.
On the walls, variably blue, purple, and green, are framed black-and-white photographs of customers, going back to the 1930s, when having a telephone at a table was a novelty.
The people in the photos are common, just like myself, simply taking their daily coffee.
Though I sit alone, I feel as if I’m with friends.
