Tag Archives: food

Things I Learned this Week

Among the things I learned this week:

* A significant number of music videos from Russian artists have Soviet- or tsarist-era imagery and symbolism. (Courtesy: Music Box)

* I live as well (better, really) as Kim Jong Il, based on the brands of “luxury” goods he has imported. (Courtesy: North Korean Economy Watch)

* Jazz, or at least open jazz clubs, do not exist in Athens during the summer. (Courtesy: Athens)

* Pigeon houses (for more, see this description and this photo) are a serious deal in Tinos and directly connected to its arts/sculpture tradition. (Courtesy: Tinos)

* Bootlegging in the US is often dominated by immigrant populations. I suspect this is because of the high capital costs of creating a legal distillery and emigres’ limited access to capital and credit. (Courtesy: NYT)

Things I Learned this Week

Among the things I learned this week:

* Mannequins are more complex, expensive, interesting, and industry supporting than I expected. (Courtesy: NYT)

* My local farmer’s market is pretty good, but it lacks the ready-to-eat variety–including any real coffee options–for which I had hoped. (Courtesy: Farmers)

* Fortified milk is one of the few sources of Vitamin D for vegetarians. (Courtesy: Internet)

* Scalable vector graphics aren’t too difficult to work with, although learning new software is always a pain. This is independent of the JRK as YSL piece I did. (Courtesy: Inkscape)

The Last Coffee Crisis

Coffee futures continue to rise without an end in sight, meaning we are due for our own coffee crisis (my local coffeeshop has already stopped selling two origins). Not among the many coffee crises of the past about which I did know, I just learned of one in East Germany during the late 1970s. From the decade-old-Wikipedia entry on the history of East Germany:

Due to the strong German tradition of drinking coffee, coffee imports were one of the most important for consumers. A massive rise in coffee prices in 1976/77 led to a quadrupling of the annual costs of importing coffee compared to 1972-75. This caused severe financial problems for the GDR, which perennially lacked hard currency.

As a result, in the summer of 1977 the Politburo withdrew most cheaper brands of coffee from sale, limited use in restaurants, and effectively withdrew its provision in public offices and state enterprises. In addition, an infamous new type of coffee was introduced, Mischkaffee (mixed coffee), which was 51% coffee and 49% a range of filler including chicory, rye, and sugar beet.

Unsurprisingly, the new coffee was generally detested for its awful taste, and the whole episode is informally known as the “coffee crisis”. The crisis passed after 1978 as world coffee prices began to fall again, as well as increased supply through an agreement between the GDR and Vietnam – the latter becoming one of the world’s largest coffee producers in the 1990s. However, the episode vividly illustrated the structural economic and financial problems of the GDR.

You can find more information in footnote 17 on page 15 of Hans-Werner Hess’ Collapse of a Closed Society: The End of East Germany. I have not found more solid sources or information in my quick searches thus far.