A coffee for the traveller
Bucharest, the european capital for cafes
There is an important aspect that you should know about Bucharest especially if you are a coffee lover and drinker: the city is the center of specialised coffee shop, after London ( UK ), according to the European Coffee Trip publication. București has a cafe with specific for 52,000 inhabitants, a fact that ranks the romanian capital ahead of Berlin.
The coffee shops are either developed by locals or a part of same larger international brands like the one I write about in the following article.
Where to drink a coffee in Bucharest North Railway Station?
Being a student in Bucharest and changing my location very often from the city to my hometown, I am always on the go and on same roads or railways and I find myself being or passing by the București Nord Railway station ( Gara de Nord ) pretty often.
The romanian train infrastructure is not the best and because of that I have problems with the departures, sometime the trains are delayed and other times all of the tickets for the train I was supposed to take has been sold out which means that I have to wait for the next train for a couple of minutes and, who knows, someday even for more than one hour.
Whenever something like this happens I chose to go in the coffee shop located inside the railway station to somehow call down my negative thoughts and frustration because I get to lose precious time due to the train loss or there is no available tickets to the train I wanted to go home with.
So!Coffee, a good cafe for a traveller, for the person who doesn't like to lose time
The cafe I am talking about is called So!Coffee and the place is actually designed for travellers and internationally renowned being usually located in the transit areas such as the main railways and the aeroports.
Over the years I have learned to always prepare myself for unexpected delays and waiting time while travelling by bringing with me the things I can work on anywhere like my laptop, notebook or books, so in this way I can use the time efficiently and not losing it.
I enter So!Coffee, order either an espresso when I feel like I need a boast and something strong to wake me up or an american coffee when I have to wait longer so I can sip on it for a long period of time.
What kind of coffee, drinks and food So!Coffee offers?
These are the coffees that I prefer, but they serve other types of coffees like cafe latte, machiato, ristretto all in small, medium or large sizes. Besides the coffees, here you can eat something sweet like a piece of cake or cookie and if you are much hungrier you can have a sandwich. They have cold drinks too such as lemonades, iced teas, vitamin waters, sodas, fresh orange juice and smoothies and maybe others that I don’t know about.
How are the prices?
The prices are also reasonable. For an espresso I pay 5 lei which means almost 1 euro and for the american coffee I pay 5 lei too, both in the small size. A smoothie is approximately 10 lei ( a litlle more than 2 euros ) and a lemonade is 5 lei.
How are the employees and the atmosphere?
The employees are very nice with the customers and fast in preparing or serving the clients.
I forgot to mention about the smell, oh, yeah! When I enter the cafe, the smell of good coffee hits meand wakes me up immediately.
The atmosphere is chill and relaxing. The decor is kind of simple with a music vibe going on, since some of the tables are round and decorated with an old vinyl. The music played is so on my taste and maybe that’s why I like So!Coffee that much. When I hear bands like Imagine Dragons, Coldplay or Of monsters and men I forget about my lose train and I get into a very good mood, perfect for relaxing, working on the computer, reading or just staring around at the people passing by.
Sometimes the cafe is to crowded..
In the middle of the day, between 12.00 and 14.00 I noticed that the place is getting kind of crowded and it is difficult to find an empty table. In this case, you can take the coffee on the go or you can wait until a table gets free or if you are very open you can share a table with a stranger? Why not? I did that that once with some romanian people and it was quite a nice experience. We spoke about where everybody was travelling to, with which train, exchange some opinions on various staff and so on.
