Starbucks in Paris

For Americans making their first few trips to Europe, it’s usually an absolute point of honor to scoff at any McDonald’s or Starbucks or any such ultra-American chain and not go anywhere near it. The whole point is to get away from American consumer culture, after all.

Over time this compulsion can erode for various reasons. A few trips into my Europe travelling career, I found myself going into McDonald’s any time I craved a soft drink with ice, a rather American serving option (we all love it) that Europeans usually view contemptuously as being about as appealing as pouring vinegar into the Coke. But you can always count on McDonald’s pretty much anywhere to give you all the ice you need.

Starbucks in Paris feels pretty ridiculous, until you realize that plenty of French people go there. I’ve only been once on this trip, and it’s because I craved an iced mocha and a cinnamon roll. And to continue my recent run of coincidences— I ran into a current DePaul philosophy graduate student there.

(And to continue the theme of “American things that foreigners often find disgusting”: peanut butter, cream soda. But I love them both. We had a grad student at DePaul from Israel. Once she tried cream soda and thought it was the most sickening, ridiculous substance ever invented, and I’ve seen others from different countries react the same way towards it.)