Thou Shalt Keep Holy The High And Low

Claim back luxury! Daniel reminds you that luxury is not what you've been told, it's for you to define yourself - whether it's a remote island with nothing to do, or a quiet moment in a museum. No preconceived notions allowed. #travel

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Everywhere, a production of I Heart Radio. Hi.
I'm Daniel Scheffler, and I have some strong feelings about travel.
This is Everywhere weekly. He'll hear me talk about the
travel commandments. And as much as commandments sound like a
religious thing in my context, they are not. They are, however,

(00:22):
laced with a touch of ethics and a splash of
moral imperentive. But please take these with a large pinch
of salt and then throw it over the wing of
the plane or wherever. What they really are intended to
do is to offer up a suggestion. So feel free
to use them and add them to your travel life.
For me, they've done wonders. You will also notice my

(00:45):
commandments on the positive, thou shalt opposed to the usual negative.
So by all means go fromth and shelter away, and
let's see what happens this week. Perhaps thou shalt keep
holy the high end low of travel. I hear the

(01:08):
word luxury much too often in the travel world. Luxury experiences,
luxury hotels, luxury linens, luxury beaches, luxury. This luxury that
the best, the finest, the most, the mostest. To me,
somewhere between common sense and lunacy. We misappropriated this word

(01:29):
luxury and we now use it as a door stuff
for pretty much everything. Luxury has lost its luster, and
it's very much all of our fault. The word luxury
originates from the words lust and interestingly enough lucherers, but
it's now used to describe anything that vaguely resembles wealth

(01:50):
or perceived affluence, or even just something that seems nice.
But what most people don't realize is that the word
is laden with so much more than just a development
of overly shiny condos in Mexico or Florida. Back in
twenty eleven, the BBC premiered a mini series on the

(02:11):
history of luxury and its ambiguous meaning. Cambridge University academic
and host of the show, Michael Scott said, luxury isn't
just a question of expensive and beautiful things for the
rich and powerful. It feeds into ideas about democracy, patriotism
and social harmony, as well as our values in our

(02:31):
relationships with the divine. I'm taking divine as a britishness
and much less of a Christian theme. The problem is
luxury is just not special anymore. Real luxury isn't what
the travel industry has force fed us real luxury is personal.
It's actually something truly special. It's understanding space, time, and freedom. Actually, stop,

(02:57):
listen to those three words, roll over my tongue, space time, freedom.
What does that mean to you? If you can find
that somewhere in your deepest cabins, you've touched luxury something
money couldn't assist with and conn out right by. We

(03:18):
travel for those three things, not to be an opulence
or splendor, because in the end that's immaterial to the
full I don't know human experience. So yeah, like a hotel,
for instance, the Amanoi in Vietnam, upon these beautiful pink
cliffs overlooking the East Sea, would never have been built

(03:39):
if it wasn't for a giant monetary investment to get
roads to this place. And yes, it takes an iconic
hotel group with drew imagination to show us how to
find this space, time, and freedom. And then note how
cautious those starry eyed leaders are of the wood luxury.

(04:00):
Yet again, if you understand the power of this word
and the ones who do use it very wisely, So
basically I want to reclaim the word. I want to
use it when it's truly a thing of I don't know,
great comfort or grand ear. Maybe the luxury police could
come and check out its overuse and gently tapped the

(04:20):
knuckles of the overusers, because that hotel and that experience
in that spa, like it is in luxury, it's just
a room or I don't know, car ride or massage
table with bad background music, without the consciousness that people
actually deserve more. Of course, the luxury is personal. It's
a feeling and you can anoint anything you'd like with it.

(04:43):
But the word organic and artisanal they've stopped meaning anything
at all. I'm calling on you in Brooklyn, and that's
why travel is better when you take it from high
and low. If you always do it on the high,
you're missing the real moments from the ivory tower of

(05:05):
your hotel and your black limo, you can't see the
beauty that's right in front of you. But I'm not
saying that you shouldn't stay at nice hotels, because I
love a gorgeous hotel. But then come eat on the street,
or stay on the street I don't know, at an
air By and B or a tiny inn run by locals,
and book one meal at that incredible Michelin star Chef's restaurant.

(05:32):
If we all use the word luxury less, perhaps then
we'll be able to reclaim it as I suggested, and
only utter the word when things are really and truly
luxurious for you, like when you're on the road and
that feeling of magic washes over you. You're not remembering
the luxury, You're remembering the lessons, the stories, the people

(05:55):
you've met. Because as it stands now, the word means enough.
And that's where the country of Estonia fits the bill perfectly.
Estonia is this land of odd sagas and dizzying fables,
some sultry and some truly tragic, the most northern of

(06:16):
the less explored Baltics and one of the least populous
countries in Europe is the continents most serially underrated. I
think in Paris I met Merint, a forest born, beautiful
Estonian nymph who had singlehandedly stopped all the traffic around
the Arc de Triomphe. I've seen it again and again.

(06:37):
She told me these enchanting stories about her home country,
and I was mesmerized. For a country that's the most
tech in all of Europe. Mythology and sharing of folk
history is what locals just do instead of watching bad
television or fixating on their smartphones. Elders share stories like
the child who came from an egg, or the classic

(06:59):
the young Man who would have liked to have his
eyes opened. The real housewives have nothing on these stories.
In fact, Estonian mythology dates back to pre Christian times,
and it's largely dotted in traveler's accounts or told to
you by your great grandmother. Of course, in some runic song,
picture this a Viking singing about giants and animistic beliefs.

(07:24):
The world of Lord of the Rings feels so tame
and dull after you spend some time with Estonian blood. Luckily,
the old world prevails, and it brings about a great
touch of supernatural. And that's what I was seeking out.
Determined to see the entire country and how its inhabitants
differ from the rest of the world, I decided to

(07:45):
drive from north to south, from east to west, and
everywhere else I could possibly squeeze a tiny car through.
The roads lapped me right up. With the post recession glow,
Estonia has managed to pull itself up by its proverbial
foot straps and renew the country's appeal through infrastructure, updates,

(08:05):
a new entrepreneurial visa program, and keeping it all under
wraps for the die hearts willing to venture beyond stuffy
Paris and already seen Budapest, and really just being the
final frontier of unexplored Europe. It has its advantages. The

(08:25):
country is easily criss crossed, and as it's mostly flat
in the good sense. The earlier lies not in the
overt scenery from the freeways, but it's revealed that every
little town, donning little steeples, cobbled streets and the soft
surrounding meadows. It's understandable if you want to just jump
out of the car and go lie in these fields

(08:46):
with the farm animals around you, napping or escaping if
you will. It's that kind of place. Your weirdness and
firm attachment to nature will make you fit right in.
Tallin the country's capital, is where I commenced my explorations.
After a plush night of deep sleep at this gorgeous hotel,

(09:09):
a former wartime post office, I contemplated Estonia's resistance during
World War One and their second independence after the wreckage
of the Soviet Union and today Russia is waiting on
their doorstep. I wonder what Nabokov would say about this
little tryst. So it makes sense to me that the

(09:29):
country that invented Skype sees communication and the Internet as
the ultimate delivery of the independence. In fact, they often
commended for being one of the most wide countries in Europe.
Take that Russia. Okay, but enough of this. The open
road called que the opening scene from cruel intentions. Driving

(09:53):
along the northern coastlines of Estonia, with Finland just in
the distance. Across the sea, the bottomless forests come assumed me.
Locals called these forests traveling forests, as they believe that
when people are cruel in some place, the forests will
leave the area. The smell of briny ocean air mixed

(10:14):
with deep scents from pine trees is so unique and
filtered into my car and right into my mind. It
should have probably been bottled by some chic French perfumer,
if they haven't already done that, because in a world
of stereotypical smells, this one felt worth spraying behind my
knees and my ears. I very seldom saw people along

(10:35):
the roads walking by, and only in the many petite
towns were stopping for a rhubarb pie or swig of kaffer,
which they call peam. Some smiling, shy residents appeared. The
car found this comfortable pace as I headed with no agenda,
through villages and villages that could easily car pool their

(10:57):
entire population. The RADI you love traditional music for some reason,
and so this tribal fantasia overtook the airwaves. I was
in trance. That was magic. Estonians are beautiful and big eyed,
homely people, and as I got out in these small

(11:19):
villages call them hamlets deep inside the forest like the hula,
I saw how people lived here comfortably, with fresh produce
picked from the forests, and the family all around for
connecting all the time. Most homes have a sauna. And
nearby neighbor told me and we started to chat about

(11:42):
Estonia and all its many secrets. I of course love secrets,
so I was eagerly leaning in to hear it all.
I've decided to hold some of these to keep you
at the edge of your seat for now. The holder
of secrets guided me to a nearby bog called Veru Raba,

(12:05):
which is a maya that accumulates peat and moss. And
creates this incredible ecosystem like nothing on the planet. How appropriate,
of course, Estonia creatures of the yawn its forest seemed
to watch from the trees as I explored this strange
marsh like water Ali Khara, Visaya, the Estonian healing elf

(12:27):
of the springs, or Savanna, the Estonian guardian spirit of
the wetlands might be on sun lounges nearby. Estonia is
just like that, just when you don't expect it, a
strange ecosystem, more mythical creature or abandoned manor house, or
sometimes a sort of operational lighthouse or wink it you

(12:47):
and nowhere, and nobody has mentioned the word luxury to me.
The custom here is to stop for coffee and fishing,
with big signs on every road indicating with this can
be best done. It did take me a while to
figure out what these signs meant. Fished with coffee has
never been first on my sort of pallid of fancy.

(13:09):
I decided to venture further south to explore the Setoma district,
and en route I found locals happily sitting at a
rest stop with a hot drink in hand, perhaps hoping
for the catch of the day come on. You cannot
possibly slow down more than this, and if you need
of more of a substantial rest stop. Estonia has this

(13:31):
culture of courts or beer halls that are located every
couple of miles. Locals meet here from all over the
country on their way somewhere to laugh and share local
delicacies like smoked or pickled herring and a potato salad
with of course, deer sausages. A few of these respits
and you can get totally drunk, overly fed, and with

(13:54):
a collection of new friends from all over the country.
Set Tomm is in habited by the Center people in
an area in the southeastern part of the country. Here
locavore and handmade is original and not manufactured as an
shortage in Brooklyn. Besides their protected culture, they also have

(14:16):
their own kingdom and appointed a new king a few
years ago who happily rules this odd little patch of
the world with utmost charm. I tried to get his counsel,
but he was busy milking goats with no time for
a New Yorker. Set Us listed by UNESCO as part
of the world's Intangible Cultural Heritage. Live without the rest

(14:40):
of the world for the most part, they have carved
out their own vision and here live out of the
dreams of their ethnic and linguistic minority, as they should,
and not in that we hate the world. Let's wear
white sheets of our heads and only allow white people way.
It's respectful and inclusive of and beautiful. And their language,

(15:02):
which is part of the uralic language, is sounded less Russian,
less finish, and definitely less Estonian to me, the generous
and fascinating woman dressed in red embroidered long dresses are
everywhere and overly friendly, just about to enjoy a feast
with anyone, So please bring your happiest self hair ready

(15:25):
for anything. I was naturally invited to sit down at
a long wooden table and indulge as much as possible,
and several pies stuffed with pretty much anything the land produces,
and enough potatoes to feed a small colony of lemurs.
I think I may be still recovering from this meal.

(15:47):
Of course, there's no fancy hotel here. You stay in
a little cottage in a family's garden, or you rent
a tiny house on the lake, all decked out and
everything you may need in a loving family providing home
cooked meals this is luxury. Sitting cross legged with some

(16:08):
locals around a fire, I signently listened to their local language.
I wasn't understanding anything except that I think there was
a meal being lovingly prepared another meal. The most maternal
of the group, a beautiful alder woman who had lived
a whole life and said to mar took my hand
and started telling me a fable in her native language.

(16:30):
She looked me in my eyes and said, you either
with nature or against nature? Life is? That's simple. The
translation came from someone sitting next to me, and I
sat quietly, mesmerized by the country's love for a simple
life of pure sharing the fable as they do taught

(16:52):
me again to see the little magic in the simplest things,
and to heat wisdom when it comes to your norse.
The world could only see that religion won't help them,
only nature can and shall, and that I think it's
real luxury. I'm gonna pause this right here for a

(17:14):
moment for our sponsors to weigh in, but do come
back to hear more about where I've been scooting around
this week. You've just been somewhere. What say we go everywhere?
Let's dive right in with me today, is Holly a

(17:38):
real connoisseur of luxury? I don't know if that's the case.
I don't think of myself as a particularly luxury human, right,
I mean I'm pretty like relaxed and groovy. I don't
need fancy things. Yeah, but that's the whole point. Like,
you celebrate luxury in a way that's not the conventional
way I think of you. The way that you luxuriate

(18:00):
your life by sewing and making your home beautiful in
ways that I think it's very luxurious. It's very self indulgent,
which I think is luxurious in its own way. Like
my husband and I always say that, like weird grown
ups and we're defining what that is. So if we
want to have a house that looks like a giant cartoon,

(18:20):
that's fine, and it's us and to us, that feels
very luxurious. But that's about reclaiming luxury, right, It's about
being Like, for instance, I think all travel is luxurious.
The very idea that you could travel and get on
an airplane or a boat or a mechanism that gets
you from A to B. That's luxurious. Yeah. That well,

(18:41):
it's interesting because you get into a place very quickly
of comparative luxury. Right, Like, if you traveled back to
seventeen sixty and you told someone how much you travel
in a year, they would think you're a sorcerer. Right.
Whereas now technology and in some places not everywhere, prosperity
has led a point where things that we once thought luxurious,

(19:03):
like traveling all over the world, are now much more
accessible to a lot more people. So a lot of
these experts in luxury and I have to use the
air quotes there because that gets into a weird thing
of like how do you become an expert on luxury?
And what does that mean? Right? The meaning shifts a
lot of their kind of predictions is that luxury has

(19:23):
stopped being about acquiring a lot of things. It's much
more about a bespoke experience that is yours and yours alone,
Which is interesting because I think that's kind of more
in line with what you want to reclaim, but I
also know it will get commercialized. Well now everybody wants
to have that experience, so it's a reproduction of that thing. Right.

(19:45):
Whereas I have this theory that what you need to
do is you need to fall in love with life
and luxury for yourself will come from that. Like I'll
give you a perfect example. Michael and I went to Lapaz,
Puerto Cortez, this incredible little place um north of crazy

(20:06):
Baja California, Mexico. And the beauty of the whole thing
was you could go down to the harbor, get a
boat for hardly any money, and head out into the
open gulf basically and see whale sharks and park off
at a deserted island really, which is like a remote

(20:31):
nature reserve, park off, barbecue on the beach, fresh seafood,
which you just caught yourself with no one around. So
that ties in with my whole thing about time, space
and freedom. It was giving me all these things, and
it ties into your thing about experiential like that is
the experience. No one should want to replicate that. They

(20:53):
should only want to go have their own version of that.
And that's what makes it special because then you're in
love with your life. That's the thing too, that rob's
what could be luxury travel of its luxuriousness is it
becomes a little bit performative. Right. I have these little
things that I always tell people that that make travel

(21:15):
more luxurious in a very personal way. For instance, you've
been to many of my hotel rooms. I always bring
my own little coffee set up, grind, a little packet
of beans and a V sixty so I can make
coffee as if I'm at home. I can make any
hotel room like that. If I'm staying at a bad hotel,

(21:37):
I take little spa goodies with me. And it sounds silly,
but if I haven't a stick of incense which I
got from India from the Ashram, and maybe a candle
and maybe some essential oils, suddenly my room becomes the
essence of healing and wellness. And that's where luxury needs

(21:58):
to be reclaimed for those things are luxurious. Like I've
seen what you travel with you you make home and nest.
So I'm messy, so it spreads out in like twelve
seconds when I walk in the room, so it looks
nesty and constable. Like I also travel with a kikoi
ois and a kickoi. Is this thing from Africa. It
comes from like an Indian slash African tradition of having

(22:22):
a cloth which is big you can wear. The Indians
wear it like a lungi around their waist in the
south of India, but in Kenya. Kikois are like what
African women would wear around their bodies. It's basically a towel,
a hair scarf, a next scarf, a little bag. You

(22:42):
can make it into a tote, and I always travel
with one. Sometimes I have it so Ella has something
to lie on. I put it on the plane to
sit on. So the KIKOI becomes this luxurious item from home.
That item brings me home. Anyway I am on the road,
I I'm thinking about you cause me to reflect on

(23:04):
what like the most luxurious experience I have had is,
And what keeps coming to mind is kind of surprising
even to myself right, Like it's not a thing where
I would be like, this is a legal experience you
have to have. Um. Have you ever been to the
Dolly Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida? So I went last

(23:25):
year with two of my best friends. We just ran
down there. The Museum of Fine Art there was doing
an exhibit that we wanted to see about Star Wars costumes. Um,
but we also wanted to hit the Dolly Museum. And
that museum is fascinating for many reasons. It's an wonderfully
strange architectural achievement, but also whether or not you love

(23:46):
Salvador Dolly and his work. It's a very interesting space
and in terms of how the docents tell his life
story as they're leading people through the galleries, it's really lovely.
But for me, the moment that keeps springing to my
mind is when I first turned around this edge and
saw in person for the first time the hallucinogenic tory

(24:06):
a Door, which is a painting, I mean, a painting
that will rock you back one. It is massive, and
there's always like just the the very nuts and bolts
kind of wonder of like how does anyone work at
this scale? But too, I mean, that's just a painting
that I really love anyway, and I had seen it
reproduced many many times. You know, it's got a lot

(24:27):
of interesting visual things going on, where things are not
quite what they look like at first glance, and when
you look deeper you see multiple different things in there,
you know, faces hidden in them. And but what felt
very what keeps jumping to my mind that felt luxurious
about it, is that I was very taken with it.
And this I am not what I would call a
snootie art person. I don't need to know who painted it.

(24:49):
I mean, I eventually want to find out, but if
I see a piece of art that I connect to,
it usually has nothing to do with knowing its history.
Like it's just visceral. It's like falling in love and
standing before this painting, which is like immense, It's the
size of a room. It's huge. Just I mean, I
was almost frozen on the spot. And the greatest thing
to me, and what made it feel luxurious is that
as I'm there and I'm talking and I'm drinking it

(25:12):
with my eyes, the docents that are leading tours around
just keep like making sure that they lead their people
and leave me a little space. Like they're not moving me.
They're not They're just letting me be with that painting
for like way longer than most people are going to
stand there and look at it. And to me, I
was like this is it felt very luxurious because like
I was just being allowed, even in a space with

(25:32):
a lot of other people, to just have my personal
interaction with this thing that I was shocked at how
deeply it moved me. So to me, that's like a
moment of deep luxury. And it's not a particularly expensive trip,
you know, it's just even if you put all of
the pieces of like your travel down there, staying at
a hotel for a couple of days. As trips go,
I doubt people are like, this is my apex luxury trip,

(25:56):
But to me it was a very luxurious I love
that holly hour of my life. Well, that's the whole point.
It's about finding ways to reclaim that yourself, which is
exactly what you did there, and you didn't plan it,
but in the moment you were able to just accept
that beauty. Right. I think like that ties into this

(26:19):
high and low thing that I've been thinking about and
travel and talking about if you live in the high.
I understand that some people can only live in the low, right,
because you travel and you'd like to travel, and you
don't have money to do things that may cost extra money,
but you can make that amazing And as a traveler,
I feel like I want to experience at all. Why
must I only stay at the five starhood or only

(26:42):
stay at the MBNB. I think part of why I
never quite feel completely at ease and like a fancy
pants unicorn accommodation is there's always, like the voice of
my father in the back of my head going this
is very wasteful. Oh I don't have that. I just travel,
just travel instead. Instead of feeling guilty, I just travel.

(27:03):
My parents instilled that in me. There's nothing that inspires
me more than just to travel. And it's not I
get teased about loving beautiful hotels and fun things, but
it's the people. It's everything. It's moving about the world
and existing there that inspires me. And that's high and low.
That's all the highs and all the lows. Amusing high

(27:25):
and low in an example of like the hotel versus
the eating on the street, but it's the high and
lows of the entire experience. There will be beautiful highs
where you're standing watching turtles lay their eggs on a
beach somewhere so remote in Costa Rica, and then they'll
be the low of driving through Cape Town to downtown

(27:47):
and seeing the squatter camps. But they part of travel.
Both those highs and lows need to exist for you
in order for you to be able to understand the world.
Like if you only went to the high and you
flew private and you only stayed at the fancy hotels
behind the high walls, have you really traveled or if

(28:10):
you only went to the slums of Brazil and hung
out there, could you really tell me that you understand Brazil?
I mean that's the thing, right, Like you can lead
an insulated life of highs, in which case you probably
never appreciate the highs you're having, or you can lead
a life where you do both of these spaces and
all of the myriad in between. But you also see

(28:32):
that again, I mean, I'm kind of a hippie. Can
you tell that fundamentally those who are wearing a pant
suit with flowers on them, they are daisies? But yeah,
you those people living in less fortunate circumstances are still
just humans. And you can see that if you travel
in all of these places, like I think that's it, right,

(28:54):
Like you see the united nature of humanity and you
appreciate the gifts and the privileges you of with an experience,
but in a way that also makes you appreciate the
world in its entirety. Well. I have had this experience
in India where I was driving by and I saw
a woman on a street corner with her two kids

(29:16):
literally sitting in the dirt with a cow next to them,
and with my western I. I looked at them and
thought that must be difficult. And then she lifted her
hand and she was holding an ice cream that she
was sharing with her kids, and she was beaming. She

(29:36):
was smiling, and the kids were laughing, and that for
them was luxurious. They was sharing like a ice cream
cone that cost a penny, and they turned it into
something so magical, and they were happier than what I was,
and I could see it. I looked at them, and

(29:57):
I laid on all my privilege and they looked happier.
And I'm not suggesting that. Yep, there's an inherent hardship
to it, understand But in that moment, in that one
exact moment, she had more happiness than I had had.
Now for a slight respite, and I'll be right back

(30:17):
with Everywhere after a word from our sponsors. Welcome once
again to Everywhere. Let's hop back to it. Hello again.
I'm with Emily Davis from Counterculture Coffee. If you're tired
of listening to me talk about coffee, well too bad.

(30:39):
Emily Davis is the coffee teacher we all need. Thanks
for coming into studio with us today in Atlanta. Emily
is pouring us a little coffee. Do tell us we
are brewing up a honey processed coffee from Kenya, and
the honey process is a really interesting process. So I
would say probably eighty nine point nine per Some of

(31:01):
the coffee you've had in your life has been a
wash process, which is when you remove the cherry skins
from the seeds coffee beans. That's a misnomer. It's actually
a seed, it's not really a bean. So you remove
the cherry as quickly as you can, and then you
wash off all the muselage, let that dry, and that's
your typical wash coffee. What we're doing with this is
instead of washing all that muselage off, we're letting it

(31:23):
stay and ferment a little bit longer, so you're gonna
get some more honey characteristics and more fruit characteristics than
you would in a normal wash process. This is the
thing that I do when I travel. Before I go
to a city, I type in the woods, pour over coffee,
and then enter city. Now. But that's usually my way

(31:43):
of finding like minded people that I would probably want
to spend time with. It's like an easy way into
a city. Some people do Irish pubs, right They go
all over the world they find an Irish pub. This
is my version of that. I find the poor of
a coffee and it enters me into a world which
I think could be familiar. Tell me how counterculture fits

(32:04):
into that philosophy. Yeah, you're looking for that, because you're
looking for people who are paying a little bit more attention.
They're spending a little bit more time, they care a
little bit more than just pushing a button and getting
a product. So counterculture goes above and beyond in many ways,
much to the chagrin of even our importers. Our standards
are very high and meticulous about how we source our

(32:25):
coffee and how it's processed and um the way that
it scores, and the way that it brews and roasts,
and putting all that attention to every little detail I
think makes us a good match. We're often in cafes
that are spending more time brewing their coffee than just
hitting a button, just trying to service people in and out,
you know, but also trying to offer them and experience
that translates. It translates to the cap it really does so.

(32:48):
In Milan. One of the interesting things that I found
when I typed in the woods pour of a Coffee
was a tiny little shop in the southwestern part of Milan,
which is not a touristy section of the city, and
it was full are sisters that broke on from one
of the most famous Italian coffee families from the south
of Italy and started this independent third wave coffee company

(33:11):
where they promote the idea of better coffee. I always
talk about how bad the coffee is in Italy and
how I'm such an advocate for getting the Italians to
do better coffee. Italians think that it's okay to pay
eighty cents or one euro for a cup of coffee.
In the conversation they having is if you're paying so
little for coffee, how much is the thinker the farmer

(33:33):
actually receiving. How is it possible that you're getting a
quality product at a price like that. I love the
culture of Italian coffee because it's communal and it's only
in Europe where the sidewalk cafe chairs face outwards right.
So the idea is that you're taking in people in

(33:54):
the landscape and what's happening on the streets. So why
is the coffee so bad in both Italy and France. Oh,
there could be numerous reasons for that, but to speak
a little bit to what you're saying about paying a
dollar and asking yourself like, well, how much does the
person that makes it get? You know, when you're in
Italy and France, you're typically paying per a cup of coffee,

(34:18):
which you can find that here too, but it is
it's an important question to ask, and it's very near
to countercultures ethos thinking about the c price, the market
price for coffee, and how it's dipped below a dollar recently,
and that is a very tragic thing because you know
that the producers are not making a living wage. Counterculture
has kind of we've been doing this for twenty five
years and we've kind of set the bar for um

(34:40):
sourcing transparently and sourcing fairly into where people are actually
not you know, everybody on the supply chain is being
taken care of and they are making a living wage
that that is a paramount value of ours. So I

(35:20):
think I think people love the pomp and circumstance of
going to get a poor over because the roost is
extending themselves to you. They are part of what you're getting.
They're not just delivering a cup of coffee to you,
but they're extending a service. They're engaged in what they're doing.
And I think that that's part of what when you're traveling,
getting to slow down and watch somebody engage in what

(35:44):
it is that they're making you. I think there's something
beautiful about that. It is artistic. It's I call it
my zen zone when I'm making a poor over, just
getting really involved in focusing on this thing that I
know I'm going to thoroughly enjoy. And you can pay,
you know, four or five dollars for an incredible coffee
at a cafe and get a pore over that's brewed

(36:05):
specifically just for you. It hasn't been sitting in an
urn for who god knows how long. It's brewds specifically
for you. It's less than a glass of wine, and
you're still having this incredible experience that you can sit
down and enjoy and rest and like engage maybe with
somebody or maybe just by yourself and soaking in what
it is that you're there to see in whatever city
that you're in. Um And it's nice that you can

(36:26):
kind of get it anywhere. Nice YEA. So the idea
of keep holy, the high and low the travel commandment
is really about there's Michelin style restaurants and then there's
eating on the street, and they equally amazing. Yes, let's
talk about how coffee fits into both those things, how
coffee is both high and low. So the origin of

(36:49):
when you think about the origin of coffee culture is Ethiopia.
Ethiopian coffee ceremonies. That's how coffee culture began. And I
love talking about this specifically because in Ethiopian coffee ceremony
as it was always the woman of the village who
made the coffee for everyone. It was her job, it
was her honor to get to do that for everyone,
and it really involved taking green coffee seeds and roasting

(37:10):
it over fire, all in one sitting, and then crushing
them up with a mortar and pestil and then pouring
boiling water on it, and then just pouring the cups
for everyone in a gibanna out of a gibanna and
rebrewing the same ground. So that sounds horrible to people
who like us, who are like I want my you know,
filter coffee pour over. I would prefer can egs blah

(37:31):
blah blah. But you think about that and it's still
such a beautiful experience because everything is handcrafted, everything has
paid attention to by somebody who feels that it's an
honor to do this for you, to host this for you.
And so when you think about that being how coffee
drinking began, like that's the culture of coffee. It's still
to this day. People want to sit down and drink
coffee together and um, however you do it, whether it's

(37:54):
in a French press or you know, roasting it on
a fire with this tiny little tusip beverage that you're
considering coffee that's really strong, or espresso if you're in
Italy and it's just fast, like you know, a train stop.
All of those different experiences originate from that culture of
like sitting down, it's an honor for me to do
this for you, and it's just beautiful. It is beautiful.

(38:17):
I love that. When I met my husband, we had
our first sleepover and it was Atti's apartment in Yorkville,
which he called the Nosebleed of Manhattan. And I remember
waking up I'm an early riser at six or something
o'clock in the morning and it was a Saturday morning
and he was clearly going to sleep in and I

(38:39):
didn't know his behavior morning behavior as yet. So I
sneaked to his kitchen and I started opening up some
cupboards and I find a giant tin of already ground
coffee from the supermarket. Next to that, I found the
standard Mr Coffee coffee sheen and a pack of five

(39:03):
hundred thousand filters. And I looked at this situation and
I thought, by myself, I could still run, like I
still have the opportunity to get out, because I don't
think I could date someone who doesn't care about coffee.
So I had this moment where I stood in the
kitchen and I looked at these items with such judgment

(39:25):
and then I thought, no, Daniel, you don't want to
be that judgmental person. It's not who you really are.
So I sneaked downs. Now, maybe seven o'clock in the morning,
I was trolling the streets on the Upper East Side,
and I found a small coffee shop that was setting
up for the day, and I bought a Harryo Japanese

(39:45):
hand grinder, a tiny V sixty ceramic pour over, and
some filters, and I bought beans. And I went back
to his apartment, and when he woke up, I sent
to him. So if this is gonna work, this is
how you're gonna have to drink coffee. And he laughed
at me, and I told him how, and he changed

(40:08):
the way he saw coffee for the first time. So
he was a good New Jersey Italian boy whose mother
would go to the big box grocery store and stock
him up with coffee for the month. This was his
introduction to coffee. That's amazing. So I have a plane

(40:30):
to catch, but if you'd still like to reach us,
go to Everywhere Podcast on Instagram, everywhere pot on Twitter,
or the website at everywhere podcast dot com. Thanks for
hanging out. I'm Daniel Scheffler and I'll see you everywhere.

(40:56):
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