Coffee Time

In the space of one espresso, Romans both tell time and defy it.

*This piece appeared originally in Italian as Nel Tempo di un Caffè.

Nel Tempo di un Caffè

There’s an expression in Rome: tempo di un caffè.

Literally translated, it refers to the time it takes to have a coffee.

Figuratively, it means, un attimo (in Italian). In English, we would translate un attimo as ‘a moment.’

An undefined—in terms of minutes and seconds—yet unequivocally short period of time.

The word moment may also refer to a longer period of time, years even, e.g. “It’s a difficult moment for us.”

You could translate un attimo as ‘a second’ or ‘an instant,’ but that’s not quite it either.

Un attimo is something else entirely.

“The Latin root of the word comes from the Latin atomus (atom), a derivative of the Greek ἄτομος (átomos), a reference to the smallest and indivisible particle of matter.

In contemporary Italian, attimo keeps the idea of indivisibility while applying it to time: it has thus become an interval so brief that it cannot be further divided.

Therefore, tempo di un caffè, or un attimo, means a short amount of time.

It’s used as an answer to the question, how long will it take to get somewhere, or to finish a simple task, like making a photocopy.

You can’t say exactly how much time it takes, but if you’re from here, you get it.

As we say in English, if you know, you know.

I’d never given it much thought before.

It was one of many expressions I’d picked up and started using every day in Rome ever since I arrived back in 2001.

At some point, words, expressions, and habits become a part of us.

Like limbs, eyes, or ears, we take them for granted until one day we suddenly lose them or lose our ability to use them.

As so often happens in life, it took some distance for me to realize the meaning behind an expression born out of a ritual as ordinary as breathing—an espresso at the bar.

Last summer, while I was in Greece, I took a taxi to Glyfada, on the Athens Riviera.

I asked the driver how long it would take to get to prettier water, to wild and rustic stretches of sand, less built-up than the city beaches.

He answered, “Forty-five minutes, the time it takes to have a coffee.”

And just like that—in un attimo if you will—it clicked.

For, Greeks, who stretch a coffee into a whole afternoon, forty-five minutes really is just… the time it takes to have a coffee.

Unlike Romans, who treat coffee time as something that exists outside of time altogether—but still somehow only lasts a few minutes—Greeks experience coffee as time prolonged, unhurried.

That realization hit even harder while I was getting dressed one morning at a Greek friend’s house.

He had arranged a ride to the bus station for me at 11 am.

I told him I might grab a coffee before leaving. He looked at me, genuinely perplexed, and held up his phone. 10:43 am flashed on the screen. He asked, “Do you have time?”

That’s when I got to thinking about this whole idea of measuring time through coffee.

I wondered: do the Spaniards, the French, or the Germans have their version of it?

In the US, Americans make a huge distinction between having a coffee—sitting down for who-knows-how-long—and getting a coffee or grabbing a coffee to go.

Coffee runs on our time. It doesn’t claim a space of its own.

In Rome, anyone who knows the rituals and rhythms of the bar understands that even in the short span of a coffee, anything can happen.

Daily exchanges between customers and baristas are chapters in an ongoing story.

An espresso at the counter sets and resets the pace of the day. Rituals like this possess the rare power to bring order to moments that feel chaotic and uncertain.

An entire tiny universe that transcends space and time exists in un attimo, in the time it takes to drink an espresso.