This blog post is on a subject dear to my heart--coffee. Russia is a tough place for a coffee connoisseur. I'll admit that I'm a bit of a coffee snob and a full-fledged coffee drinker (I stop short of calling myself an addict because, theoretically, I can go all day without a cup of coffee, by why would I want to do that?). Like much of Europe, Russians don't usually drink American-style big cups of black coffee. Instead it is common to order an espresso or an americano at cafes, and Russians usually drink it with a lot of sugar and often cream or milk. This coffee, however, isn't usually very strong, and it's expensive: A very small americano (maybe three ounces) at a normal cafe will run you somewhere around 100 rubles ($3).

Us coffee-swillers face an even bleaker picture outside of restaurants and cafes. At home or in the office, instant coffee is the standard. That's the kind of black substance that comes freeze-dried in a can, and you simply add hot water to create a coffee-like hot beverage. I've allowed far too much Nescafe Gold to enter my body here in Russia, and let me tell you, that stuff isn't real coffee. But most people drink instant coffee, and they usually doctor it up with about three spoonfuls of sugar.

Instant coffee gives me weird stomach pains and an irregular heartbeat, and so I try to limit my intake of that nasty stuff and brew my own coffee like a normal person. The trouble is that brewing coffee here is an expensive hobby. Ground coffee is expensive (comparable to prices in the US), and the quality is pretty poor unless you're willing to spend upwards of $10 for an 8-ounce bag, which is a little unrealistic on my teacher's salary. Also, drip coffee machines are really pricey and hard to find, so the people who brew coffee do it in french presses or in a little pot on the stove (by far the worst method--the resulting coffee is half coffee-ground sludge). But hey, at least it's not Nescafe.