As the highly relevant contemporary thinker Byung-Chul Han writes, “Not the active life but the contemplative life makes man into what he should be.” Rolling this phrase around in my mouth like a piece of candy, I approach Green Cafe, located almost on the corner of Maironio Street and Laisvės Avenue, in front of the National Kaunas Drama Theater.
An entrepreneur, a photographer, another entrepreneur, a physiotherapist, and a freelancer, this tribe has “about fourteen” members in total. Four met with me in person, another joined later remotely from Spain, and the last one showed up just as we were finishing the conversation, joking that all they’re missing is a doctor and a priest. But doctors are usually very busy around late morning, and as for the priest, you never know. Still, the tribe (which can simply be called a coffee club) gathers, and I quote, “Each and every morning, like clockwork.”
I was invited, in my capacity as a journalist, into this rather closed yet perfectly visible to all of Laisvės Avenue club by one of its members, my colleague, photographer Teodoras. When I lived on A. Mickevičius Street and worked on Laisvės Avenue, I actually saw him sitting in the company of relaxed men every morning, only in the now-closed Green Cafe, where the staff of the prosecutor’s office, operating nearby, and other walkers of the not-yet-renovated Laisvės Avenue also had “their” tables and passwords. But the coffee club, stronger than paving stones, food service capital, political views, or leisure hobbies, started somewhere else.
In search of that first cup of coffee, the one that became the reason to race every morning to Laisvės Avenue, even from Mastaičiai or Dievogala, one has to walk over to S. Daukanto Street. It was there, more than twenty years ago, that the “first real” café, Bella Toscana, opened. The depth of the interviewees’ memories and their perspectives differ: some mention 2002, others 2004. But one thing they agree on unanimously: the coffee there really was good, indeed, the best in the city. Bella Toscana was famous for making a type of coffee, seldom heard of in today’s coffee culture: Triestino Doppio.
Strong coffee, lightened with milk, following the custom of the Italian port city of Trieste, was enjoyed not only by the then equally charming and courageous (only slightly younger) protagonists of my text, but also by the groups from the nearby Special Investigation Service and other law enforcement institutions, along with their clients. As I have already mentioned, the still very green coffee club still has no official name, statute, or membership cards. Only a Messenger group where coffee is no longer the dominant topic, and morning contemplations are replaced by late-night wisdom and even more humor. They say that there is no need to arrange the next day’s meeting because there is always someone waiting at their “VIP” table, and baristas simply ask anyone not belonging to the group, or those who wander in by accident, to move. Incidentally, there is even a fan club of the club, whose members try to sit nearby, perhaps to overhear what the men are talking about, perhaps simply to soak up their positive energy.
But let’s return to history. After Bella Toscana, the mornings moved to the first Vero Cafe, which is also located near the Drama Theatre. That was when the Green Cafe era began: one café was replaced by another, spacious and bright, capable of containing a sometimes slightly over-excited group. “Sometimes you come out of the restroom and realize you need to turn the volume down,” they laugh again.
During the pandemic, they had to improvise, armed with paper cups, huddling together at a safe distance from one another on barrels set up outside the Rock’n’Rolla bar. Yes, restrictions are not an excuse not to meet, just like business trips or vacations. As I already mentioned, one club member had coffee with us via video call. Those in Kaunas try not to schedule work meetings between eight and ten in the morning, and colleagues, employees, and people around them understand this well. And do they drink coffee at home before heading to the club? It varies. Some drink it with their wives; others save their caffeine dose for Laisvės Avenue.
The most important thing is not to take everything, even the approaching old age, too seriously and dedicate time to that.
The members of the informal coffee club are united by similar age and lifestyle, that is, by earlier choices that now allow them to begin each workday without being stuck in traffic with the rest of the city or rushing to the office before everyone else. From eight to ten in the morning is time for what philosophers call contemplation, and what other specialists might describe as a kind of therapy circle. That said, everyday troubles are not shared here; friends would simply laugh at them. “We all know everything about each other, and that’s great. It’s not worth complaining about minor things,” they conclude. Of course, if an issue more serious than a domestic one arises, which they will laugh about but also help solve, you can always stay one-on-one with someone, and the solution will be found.
Still, more than two decades of daily meetings are stronger than steel. “But don’t think we don’t talk about theater because we do, for example, how during Peer Gynt, my shoe was too tight,” one of the interviewees recalls a story of how the treacherous shoe rolled down into the next row. Club members always greet the director of the theater, Egidijus Stancikas. He is a local, after all. After so many years, these coffee drinkers know the dynamics of Laisvės Avenue perfectly well. They note that although the renovation took a long time, there haven’t been many changes in this pedestrian artery over the past couple of decades; only the paving stones have shifted sideways.
Okay, so how much coffee can one have? The interviewees quickly calculated that over 20 years, they have spent about €170,000 on coffee altogether. A whole apartment worth. Another version of the club’s arithmetic: one of their tables generates enough monthly turnover to cover a barista’s salary. That’s why they’d like a closer relationship with the place where they spend so much time. At the moment, things have cooled down a bit, but the club members simply don’t see a better option in the city center. By the way, as long as the weather allows, until around October, they prefer to sit outside, and for that very reason, they have become a striking, essentially immovable feature of the Laisvės Avenue bubble.
Just as the club members’ lives differ outside the club, so do their beverage choices, which have changed over the years. Some prefer cappuccino, others stick to a good old black coffee, some go for decaf, and others drink tea instead. At first a bit reserved, the men, once halfway through their drinks, begin talking over one another. They openly admit that in every season, they talk about everything, just never seriously. They lie to each other, gossip about passersby, debate politics (though sometimes they agree not to), business, and life.
As you’ve probably gathered, this is a strictly male company. A few times a year, the club organizes “work parties,” but even at these “corporate events,” there are no women. They tried inviting them, but it didn’t work out, because “men’s and women’s worlds don’t mix, like water and oil.” Still, they genuinely wish for their partners, and for women in general, to try forming such a contemplative circle of their own, where seemingly nothing happens, yet a great deal is accomplished.
What are the club’s future prospects? As retirement approaches, moving to Spain en masse sounds like a good idea.
Here it’s worth returning to Byung-Chul Han, the author of a couple of dozen works, four of which have already been published in Lithuanian by Kitos knygos. In his latest book, “The Disappearance of Rituals: A Topology of the Present”, the Korean-born German philosopher invites us to reflect on whether every human action truly has to result in physical, spiritual, or financial growth. After all, life is not merely production, and the self is not a project. We are reminded of this by rituals that drag us out of the rushing, racing, “only forward” driven everyday life and stabilize the existence of the whole tribe as well as each of its members.
The most important thing is not to take everything, even the approaching old age, too seriously and dedicate time to that. Every morning. Forever, like Laisvės Avenue.
