Aparte e sempre freddo! - I just want my freaking coffee

Hello dear Stemians,

as you have probably noticed I'm travelling through Italy, so I'm not working on my knives or posting about them.
My wife and I do like to travel, and we do travel a lot - for Croatian standards anyway.

source

Now, even though I do like to travel I don't like some of the things that go hand in hand with travelling:

meeting new people
crowds
stupid tourist who address me in their native language - i.e. Americans just asking something in English while in Italy
people bumping into me because they are looking at their maps/phones or whatever
people just standing at the doors/narrow pats/stairs ...
locals trying to sell me something while I'm eating or drinking at the restaurant or bar
Croatians who assume we should be friends and hang out just because we've bumped into each other in i.e. Paris

As you can probably tell from this not-comprehensive list is I don't really like people. But this is not a post about me being a misanthrope but about me not be able to get my coffee the way I like it.

If you know anything about me you know I have three things in my life that I don't compromise: coffee, cigarets and reading.
Anywhere I go, I bring my cigs and my e-reader so that part of my little world of pleasure is not a problem.
Taking coffee with me is a bit of a problem because I drink a lot of it, and I do mean a lot.
And before you start thinking so what a lot of people drink coffee...
NO!! Stop right there!
Two, five, seven is not a lot of coffee. I drink anywhere between 15 and 20 of them each day.

And I like my coffee the way I like it - kava s hladnim mlijekom.
Now, for those few of you that don's speak Croatian - a calque translation to English would be coffee with cold milk.
If you know anything about language you know that words don't always mean what you think they mean. A lot of things come into play with language and concepts - culture, geography, socio-political stands... I don't want to go into the theory of linguistics, let's just say

Consequently, getting my coffee the way I like it when out of Croatia or my kitchen is a hard days work.

There's a simple formula for making my coffee right - espresso in a mid-size cup (cappuccino) and pouring cold milk into
it until it's three-quarters full.

For all the hipster baristas out there - I don't give a flying fuck what you think is the proper way to make a coffee is!.

So, where was I?
Yeh right, so even though the formula is simple, explaining that to someone who a) hasn't done that ever and b) doesn't speak your language can be a bit tricky.

Crazy, right?

I usually start my trip full of enthusiasm and, full of research on local language and culture, I do my best to get the message trough. By the day two or three I most often give up and just order espresso with cold milk on the side.
As you will see from the pictures that follow, even that sometimes results in some really strange table setups.

In most cases, cold in cold milk just doesn't register so I get something discusting like this




Sometimes the "barista" is a colseted artist so you get a nice piece of an art with some coffee flavoured stew



Often the "barista" doesn't understand how the universe works and basic concept of volume is beyond their grasp




Every now and then your frendly barista is IKEA aficionado so you get your coffee with some-assembly-required tag




If you order in English when in non-Englis-speaking country, they can assume you are American so you get americano wich is just wrong on so many levels I can't even...

There are so many such examples - some of them so profanely strange that I was so shocked I didn't even manage to take a pic.

The phrase from the title was a stern educational bark I got from the barista in Rome.
I've ordered espresso e late freddo aparte, and I've heard him screaming to the kitchen

Caffee e late aparte!

I was kinda tired of walking and of not getting my coffee the way I like for almost two weeks I may have been a bit harsh and told him

Late freddo, prego!

Then he looked me like I'm a culturecide Slav that I am, and told me

Aparte e sempre freddo!

Or if you don't know Italian - milk aside is always cold.