For me, it’s always about the cafés when I travel someplace new or am looking for a new haunt near home. Parks, bookstores, maybe a library or two, a specific street or route, those are all part of it too.
But when exploring a city–whether I live there or not–cafés end up being central.
Why?
Let’s rewind to the spring of 2015. I’m sitting in a café in Vienna sipping a mocha coffee, taking a much-needed weekday off from researching and writing my dissertation to…write for fun?
(Um. You’re writing a dissertation, and you’re writing in your free time, too? Whaaaaat? Are you nuts?)
But for me, like a lot of other writers, that’s just what I do. And what better place to write than a cozy café, the extroverted introvert’s paradise?
I’m catapulted back to a memory of me doing the very same thing during my first year in New York, when a Saturday afternoon in Manhattan would consist of perusing a used bookstore, exploring new streets, and stumbling across a café where I could sit and write while taking in another dose of caffeine.
Or the many afternoons spent in Steyr, Austria, or Tuebingen, Germany, writing in my journal after class or reading whatever I was reading at the moment.
Many of the enjoyable times I’ve spent in any city have been in cafés reading, writing, meeting friends, or genuinely sitting down and getting hardcore work done. (OK, that last one isn’t exactly “enjoyable,” but being in a cafe makes it semi-pleasant.)
Being neither in an office nor at home–two spaces I usually need to separate–creates a neutral zone where I can either work or chill, be around people but still do my own thing.
The nice thing about such a special space? Every city, large or small, has at least one. (Side note: Asheville, NC, currently holds the honor of the most cafés I’ve enjoyed in the shortest amount of time.)
Of course, a comfortable atmosphere is key, so “my” cafés in New York, Vienna, DC, Boston, and a few other places I’ve either visited or lived have largely been found through trial and error.
But trial and error is part of the fun of exploration.
The café I visited that day in Vienna, for instance, was one I’d passed on the streetcar no fewer than two dozen times, and I finally found the time to go in. And yes, I’d be back; I had found one of “my” places, and returned a couple of times before leaving Vienna.
So check out that bookstore, head up to a park you’ve heard about, wander down the street that looks like it has some cool shops, or take the bus or the tram or the subway or your car out to a new neighborhood. Go! Do it.
Today. Why wait to find “your” places? For me, it’s cafés and parks. For you it might be something else.
Discovering your favorite spots in a city–whether you use that space to socialize, relax, do some work, or get creative inspiration–can give you a connection to a place that you might not have found otherwise.
A version of this post was originally published on Suite.io in June 2015, after I had discovered yet another café in Vienna where I enjoyed writing.
