The Café with Five Faces Read online

  Copyright © 2020 Chaelli Cattlin

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  The Café with Five Faces

  What the Walls Heard, 2018–2019

  Chaelli Cattlin

  A fictionalised autobiographical collection of often interconnected short stories charting the social history of the dis-United Kingdom and some of its citizens during a turbulent period.

  Dedicated to all those I have travelled with,

  to those I have met on my travels,

  and to my fellow European citizens.

  Some names have been changed to protect the innocent.

  And the not-so-innocent.

  The Café with Five Faces is a dedicated supporter of the European Union.

  About the Café and its Stories

  The Café with Five Faces, hardly surprisingly, is a café with five distinct areas. Although there is some crossover between the rooms, both in terms of characters and storylines, each space has its own central themes:

  •Beirut: a room for personal stories and aspired or failed romance, usually of the latter variety.

  •Budapest: a room for aspiring artists, writers and musicians, usually of the thwarted variety.

  •Cape Town: a room mainly for men and mainly for politics, exclusively of the pro-liberal and anti-Brexit persuasion, with a bit of football thrown in for good measure.

  •Granada: an outdoor space of travel anecdotes for those with wanderlust.

  •Hebden Bridge: a Yorkshire tearoom for the over-fifties and just a little bit gossipy.

  About the Author

  A traveller, an observer and a coffee fanatic, Chaelli has, to use a turn of phrase, been around a bit!

  Born in the north of England but an adopted European, he has travelled the world in his capacity as a trainer, working primarily in Europe, but also in North and South Africa, Central and South America, Australia and New Zealand, the Middle East, and Central and South East Asia. During this time, he has developed a particular affection for, and affinity with, Beirut, Budapest, Cape Town and Granada, along with the much closer to home Hebden Bridge. Having spent many months or years in all of these places, he has named a room in his café after each of them, hence The Café with Five Faces.

  His ‘day job’ involves a lot of observation and he has used these ‘skills’, also known as ‘nosiness’, to put together The Café with Five Faces, a book of the stories his café’s walls have overheard and will continue to overhear.

  Delving back into the annals of time, Chaelli studied history and politics at Leeds University and maintains an active interest in the latter, being a vociferous opponent of Brexit, a mistake he views as a form of national suicide. He was a founder member of the now-defunct Independent Group for Change, and was a big supporter of first Remain and then the European Movement and Rejoin EU.

  These days, he is studying for a diploma in coffee skills and has, so far, taken courses in Beirut, London, Huddersfield, Cape Town, Bogotá and Villa de Leyva (Colombia).

  He has been a writer for years too many to mention, starting with children’s adventure stories written when barely a teen, through to materials and courses for English language teachers, and an as-yet-unpublished travelogue.

  www.thecafewith5faces.com

  All the photographs included in this book were taken by Chaelli and the customers of The Café with Five Faces. Most were taken with an iPhone 6 or an iPhone XR, but those which pre-date 2015 were shot using a variety of cameras, so apologies for any resultant lack of quality! Additional photographs to accompany each chapter are on my website https://thecafewith5faces.com/2020/04/29/photographs-to-accompany-the-book-the-cafe-with-five-faces-2018-2019/

  CONTENTS

  2018

  Prologue

  2018: 01: Budapest: The Room

  2018: 02: Beirut: The Room

  2018: 03: Cape Town: The Room

  2018: 04: Hebden Bridge: The Room

  2018: 05: Granada: The Room

  2018: 06: Cape Town: Land of the Rhetorical Question

  2018: 07: Hebden Bridge: The One Where Nothing Happens

  2018: 08: Budapest: Promnice

  2018: 09: Hebden Bridge: Splendid Isolationism

  2018: 10: Granada: Tales of the Unexpected Coffee

  2018: 11: Beirut: The Curse of Innocence

  2018: 12: Granada: In Bandit Country

  2018: 13: Budapest: Fifteen Minutes of Fame

  2018: 14: Hebden Bridge: Fish Without Chips

  2018: 15: Cape Town: Damn the Lunatic Fringe

  2018: 16: Granada: Of Ladies of the Night and a Sharp Slap on the Leg

  2018: 17: Beirut: Me Too

  2018: 18: Granada: The Cons of Standing Out in a Crowd

  2018: 19: Hebden Bridge: The Odd Couple and the Rat

  2018: 20: Cape Town: Drifting to Extremes

  2018: 21: Granada: For the Love of Lebanon

  2018: 22: Hebden Bridge: The Things One Will Do...…

  2018: 23: Budapest: The Long-Term Cost of a Misspent Youth

  2018: 24: Beirut: Monogamy on Trial

  2018: 25: Cape Town: How to Become a Comedian in Just Two Words

  2018: 26: Granada: Under the Weather

  2018: 27: Budapest: Break-Up Breakdown

  2018: 28: Cape Town: How to Keep Attention Focused on You

  2018: 29: Hebden Bridge: The Nutshell

  2018: 30: Granada: We’re on the Road to Somewhere

  2018: 31: Cape Town: Strange Paths Indeed

  2018: 32: Budapest: The Right to Unhappiness

  2018: 33: Beirut: The Grass is Always Greener Somewhere

  2018: 34: Hebden Bridge: The Book Behind the Cover

  2018: 35: Granada: The Facebook Syndrome

  2018: 36: Hebden Bridge: A Snog and a Pillock

  2018: 37: Cape Town: A Tale of Two Standards and Dubious Labels

  2018: 38: Beirut: The Ménage à Trois

  2018: 39: Budapest: Jimez and the Plastic Pollution

  2018: 40: Cape Town: Resolution

  2019

  Prologue

  2019: 41: Cape Town: Ever-Decreasing Circles

  2019: 42: Beirut: The Hypocrisy of the Ostrich

  2019: 43: Hebden Bridge: Back from the March

  2019: 44: Granada: The Descriptive Rules of the Road

  2019: 45: Budapest: The Gift

  2019: 46: Cape Town: Life is a Roller Coaster

  2019: 47: Beirut: Torture Beyond the Drapes

  2019: 48: Cape Town: Over One’s Dead Body

  2019: 49: Beirut: Uncorking the Bottle

  2019: 50: Budapest: The Silesian Toilet Episode

  2019: 51: Hebden Bridge: Bring Back the Nineties and Noughties!

  2019: 52: Cape Town: The Malevolent Frying Pan

  2019: 53: Granada: A Picture Painted in 147 Words

  2019: 54: Budapest: In the Presence of The Presence

  2019: 55 Cape Town: The Kipper and the Boris

  2019: 56: Budapest: 2020

  2019: 57: Cape Town: The Clouds of Autocracy Gather Over a Dis-United Kingdom

  2019: 58: Hebden Bridge: The Youth of Today

  2019: 59: Granada: Around the World in Sixteen or so Massages

  2019: 60: Beirut: The Thrill of the Chase

  2019: 61: Budapest: The Invasion of Privacy

  2019: 62: Hebden Bridge: A Diet of Language

  2019: 63: Granada: From the Hills of Amman

  2019: 64: Beirut: Malinka

  2019: 65: Granada: Offending Greta Thunberg

  2019: 66: Cape Town: Gutted, Trussed, Stuffed, Roasted, Carved Up and Devoured

  2019: 67: Budapest: Oral Rambling

  2019: 68: Cape Town: The End is Nigh

  2020

  Epilogue

  2018

  Prologue

  The engine of my Vespa stutters to a standstill, smoke from the exhaust blending in with the early-morning haze. It really is no time for a would-be bohemian to be awake. Needs must, however, and cafés rarely, if ever, open themselves. Metallic shutters noisily disturb the calm to reveal windows which once again seem in need of cleaning. I’m sure I only did them yesterday…
It never ceases to amaze (and depress) how much time accelerates the older one gets, even in the small matter of windows, never mind life itself.

  The key clicks in the lock and the door swings open into my world. Welcome to my five-roomed empire (five if you exclude the kitchen and toilets and include the courtyard), each rather small area named after a place I hold in deep affection.

  Walls have ears, so the saying goes. Well, the walls of my café have very perceptive ears. That’s my excuse, anyway. Others will say it’s the café’s owner, yours truly, who is endowed with extremely large and intrusive listening devices, often known in my part of the world as lugholes and, perhaps more commonly, as ears. Whoever, or whatever, is to blame, the following pages are the result; stories from a range of people and a range of contexts, all exchanged in the hopefully convivial environment provided by The Café with Five Faces.

  The author doing what the author does best (drinking coffee), outside Kafeterija in central Belgrade. Remember, additional photographs to accompany each chapter are on my website https://thecafewith5faces.com/2020/04/29/photographs-to-accompany-the-book-the-cafe-with-five-faces-2018-2019/

  2018: 01: Budapest: The Room

  I am, as will probably become crystal clear, if only due to the company I keep in my café and the customers I attract, very much in favour of the global village, but there is one drawback to it as far as I am concerned, that being the fact that what used to be very different places can blur into one, partially in my ageing mind but partially due to real changes in terms of spirit and feeling, if not in physical architecture and style. As a consequence, when I think of the several Eastern European cities I have loved for over two decades and still love today, even though Budapest remains a favourite, the differences between it and some of the others are not as obvious as they were when I first got to know them in the 1990s. However, in terms of café culture, the Hungarian capital edges out Ljubljana, Minsk and the southern Polish trio of Katowice, Wrocław and Kraków, and thereby gives its name to one of my rooms.

  I have been a regular visitor to the city of Budapest since 1991. My first visit was a fleeting one, hastened along by a girlfriend who felt uncomfortable in the newly liberated world of Eastern Europe and wished to move on to more palatable western environments. Staying in a campsite a few kilometres to the north, with news stories reaching us of tanks on the streets of Ljubljana, our next scheduled destination, exposure to the city itself was limited to a few short hours. Whatever we saw, or perhaps more likely didn’t see, it was enough to encourage me to visit many, many more times in the 1990s and eventually to take up residence in a small studio flat on the Buda side of the Danube for almost six years.

  Famous for its architecture, culture, thermal baths, anti-Soviet uprisings and perhaps more dodgy modern politics, amongst a list too long to mention now (or, indeed, ever), the city is also home to some of my favourite cafés. There are several new players in the market, such as My Little Melbourne, Madal, Espresso Embassy, the simply and wonderfully named Fekete (‘Black’), and Tamp & Pull, all of which make really good coffees, but my greatest love has always been for the group often referred to as ‘turn-of-the-century coffee houses’, the century in this case looking back to the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth (perhaps because their age makes me feel young). This number includes Művész Kávéház, Ruszwurm Cukrászda, Auguszt Cukrászda, Europa Kávéház (seemingly now closed), Café Gerbeaud and, often my favourite of all, Centrál Kávéház. It is the latter which provides the main inspiration for my Budapest room, although the scale is rather different to say the least!

  For the connoisseur, it has to be said that the new boys listed above make the better coffee, but the experience and cake is often better in the ‘originals’. Both deserve attention and, so long as you’re there for a few days, all can be sampled and savoured, although the cost to one’s waistline might be far less palatable than the cakes involved.

  Mine is a room which serves more traditional teas and espresso-based coffees, along with specially imported Hungarian cakes. Whatever else one likes to say about the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and people are known for saying a lot of not always very complimentary things, baking was not, and remains not, a weakness, and there is nothing quite like a decent coffee and a slice of fresh Eszterházy torta, my personal favourite now that I’ve finally been weaned off over-indulgent amounts of whipped cream.

  There was a time in the not-too-distant past when I, and the occasional friend, used to amble from café to café in Budapest and its environs with the sole aim of deciding which made the best Somlói galuska (literally a dumpling from the town of Somló but with more in common with a trifle), a dessert made with what now seems an obscene amount of whipped cream, but which at the time was an essential ingredient of a day’s city walking. That, along with Hungarian beer and an obsession with Gulyás (what we call Hungarian Goulash, although in reality, it’s a soup and not a stew) in my pre-pescatarian days, was largely responsible for what one might term my middle-aged spread. None of these three enemies of the belly makes it on to my menu, even though fond memories of each exist.

  In the tradition of the grand Budapest cafés, so many of which claim to have been the second home of literary greats and semi-greats, this room caters to artistic types, or would-be artistic types, despite the rather more modest dimensions. It’s the ambience which counts, I would argue, and the polished marble tables, both (and yes, there are only two) surrounded by Biedermeier chairs (unfortunately reproduction) with the dark-stained wooden flooring and wood-panelled walls interspersed with dark mirrors and selected artwork (also reproduction) all no doubt help to provide this. I can’t say the surroundings have inspired any great works of music or literature to date, but some customers have made, and are making, considerable efforts to merit a name plaque on the wall!

  One of my turn-of-the-century coffee house favourites in Budapest is Művész Kávéház on Andrássy út, particularly for the atmosphere, the décor and the cake selection (more on the latter later).

  2018: 02: Beirut: The Room

  Beirut, like other cities beginning with ‘B’ I have spent a lot of time in, such as Belfast, Belgrade and Benghazi, is often associated with negative press due to past or, in some cases, present troubles. I felt some trepidation before my first visit to the Lebanese capital in 2005, but I have now lost count of the months I have passed in this city of beauty and contrast, and I have always felt safer here than in many other cities, even London (although these days, that might not be saying much).

  At first, I found café culture here not to my taste, although I never realised the main branch of the wonderful Café Younes was only two blocks away from my regular hotel in Hamra, where it has been since 1935! Since late 2016, however, there have been major developments and I am often spoiled for choice between Kalei, the Australian-styled Sip, Backburner and Hook, all newly established. The first three named have already opened second branches, so I assume people like them! (One week after writing the previous sentence, I walked past the Backburner in Hamra to find it gutted – sigh!) Unfortunately, the originals of Kalei and Sip along with the surviving Backburner branch are all located within a mile of each other, making it rather difficult (due to the quality and strength of my preferred coffees) to visit them all in the course of one walk! All of the cafés above serve good food and/or cakes as well, the latter nowhere near as sweet as the more typical Lebanese dessert offerings. Kalei was the first one I discovered and remains a favourite because of the relatively fly-free garden and the fact I did some of my training there.

  Lebanese food, particularly the mezze, is outstanding. Mezze could be seen as the starter in a larger meal, but there is such a range of choice (also for vegetarians) that I never see a reason to go beyond it. The only negative in my opinion is that mezze is made for sharing and, as a frequent solo diner, I often have to restrict myself to two or three selections, which can prove to be something of a challenge! Having said that, whole parties of Lebanese diners often order to excess (seen through English eyes, anyway) and restaurant bins can be embarrassingly overflowing with surplus goodies. As I am unable to offer a good enough range of mezze from my limited kitchen resources and culinary ability (plus being conscious of the fact that Lebanese food outside of Lebanon rarely attains the same heights), I restrict my menu in this room to a product I do not know how to spell correctly. Feel free to choose from manouche, man’ouche, man’ousheh, manakish, mankoushe and probably more variations. Some may call it a Lebanese pizza, although I doubt the Italian or the Lebanese would appreciate this. I was trained how to make these in Beirut, but even with that invaluable lesson, I somehow fail to match what can be so easily bought on a Beirut Souk El Tayeb stall on a Saturday morning. Even the saj I imported specially doesn’t help me attain the levels I want. Incidentally, for visitors to Lebanon, the best mannouche (yet another spelling) I have tasted is from Em Ali on Gemmayzee, one of Beirut’s main party streets (also subject to various spellings), or from a bakery in the middle of seemingly nowhere opposite a petrol station on the long and winding mountain road to Zahle with a menu which is useless unless you can read Arabic or, as I do, have local help.