It can, at least in London, and most likely if you get your coffee from one of the Change Please stalls. They employ formerly homeless people who have been trained as baristas to help them get off the streets. Behind it is The Big Issue homeless magazine, comparable to Germany’s Hinz & Kunzt, but above all Change Please is driven by Cemal Ezel.

I saw him last year at The Next Web Conference in Amsterdam, where he rightly won first prize in the Chivas Venture final. I was struck by the metaphors in his talk alone. “Change Please” as a request from a homeless person for spare change, but also as Cemal’s plea to please finally change something, and the to-go coffee cup, which is not uncommonly used for begging. The rest is equally well thought out, as you can see here:

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Change Please coffee is continuously sold at more and more mobile and fixed stations, getting more and more homeless people off the streets and into jobs, and in cooperation with the British supermarket chain Sainsbury’s, they sell their own coffee blends. Of course, I had to pick some up on my last visit to the island, instead of Grind.

It was mentioned during his talk that Change Please would expand to other countries. I would love to see that happen. It feels so straightforward and good in so many ways.
Until then, we’ll continue to drink our coffee at home and happily spare a euro when asked, or buy the Hinz & Kunzt magazine (at least in Hamburg).

You can find out more about the project on the Change Please website: changeplease.org

This post is part of my coffee page and my All Things British page.

As with everything, you can become an extreme nerd to get the last bit of flavour out of the bean. For me, I have reached a good enough standard. I leave everything else to shops like Espressolution or Public Coffee Roasters. In my neighbourhood there is also the very interesting Stockholm Espresso Club, and the other day I happened to visit the really good Nord Coast for the first time, which I discovered through the Hamburg Coffee Guide by The Coffeevine.

They’re all a bit bonkers, to be honest, but that’s brilliant! They also all have their own house bean, either from their own roasting or from selected origins. My current favourite is Moonlight from Public Coffee Roasters, along with Saicaf Oro from Espressolution. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to try the coffee on the other side of the fence. Recently it was a coffee from the island: Grind.

Grind is a chain of cafés and restaurants that grew out of a music studio in London’s Shoreditch. Their house bean has been resting in my grinder for some time now and feels a little finer in the cup compared to Moonlight. The note becomes fruitier if you have a little too much in the basket, so you need to be careful. If you are, a well-balanced nutty, almost chocolatey aroma will convince you. Less is clearly more and can make the coffee almost syrupy. Absolutely fabulous!

Grind House Blend is available as beans or ground in various sizes in a bag, and the tin is ideal for trying it out. The bag and tin can be ordered online, but the shipping costs are a pain. I’ll definitely be picking up the next pack myself from one of the shops: grind.co.uk

This post is part of my coffee page and my All Things British page.

I stood in front of this sculpture for a while, looking at it half-consciously, without really knowing why. The fact that art can trigger something like that in me, literally captivate me, was foreign to me before, and this photo, unfortunately, doesn’t come close to triggering the same feeling.

After that visit, I had no idea who it was by. I only found out about another Moore sculpture at the Hamburg Kunsthalle through an Instagram post that has since been deleted.

The visit to the Kunsthalle was then obligatory and initially only had the aim of seeing this sculpture. I was pleasantly surprised to realise that the Kunsthalle has much more to offer, and so the next visit is equally obligatory. After that, curiosity drove me on and made me order the book by Herbert Read. I don’t know why and where this will lead, but it remains interesting!

I can recommend a visit to the Tate to anyone who hasn’t thought of it before, and if you don’t want to go to London, the Kunsthalle in Hamburg is just as good. On Thursdays, the Kunsthalle not only has longer opening hours and therefore a quieter atmosphere, but also a cheaper entrance fee.

This post is part of my reading page.