A Working Afternoon of Whiskey-Flavored Coffee

On my way to an appointment today, I had a couple minutes to kill before the S-Bahn came, so I wandered over to one of those coffee vending machines they sometimes have on the train platforms. (And yes, you can tell me I'm a coffee philistine for even touching that stuff. It's okay, because I am a coffee philistine.)

This time, when I surveyed the options, there was one I hadn't seen before: A button that read, "Cappucino Irish Coffee."

Irish Coffee? But that's coffee with whiskey in it. Surely they don't have whiskey inside the vending machine?? I pressed the button once just to check the price, and it was only 1 euro. Definitely no whiskey in it, then.

I had to buy it, just for curiosity's sake. And I was not terribly surprised, though still intrigued, when what came out of the machine was a sweetened coffee with milk foam – and what seemed to be artificial whiskey flavoring.

Yes, vending machine coffee with whiskey flavoring. What will they think of next?

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In an unrelated note, somehow today I found myself teaching my 11-year-old tutoring student (who's at a pretty basic English level, still acquiring fundamental vocabulary and grammar) the word "rune." I dunno, it seemed relevant at the time... We were playing Boggle (well, a simplified version of it, just trying to find any English words with the letter cubes) and he made the word "run," so I showed him that "run" + "e" became "rune."

In my defense, I knew the German word for "rune" was basically the same (spelled exactly the same, actually, just pronounced differently), so it wasn't like I was cluttering his language-learning with something completely unfamiliar. And I happen to know this kid is a big Lord of the Rings fan, and probably had already seen the new Hobbit movie, so I was able to explain the word by saying that when Gandalf comes to Bilbo Baggins' door and draws something on it, that's a rune.

Still, now when I walk past the Hobbit movie posters that show that rune glowing on Bilbo Baggins' door, I have to laugh at myself for the fact that apparently I thought it was necessary to teach an 11-year-old German how to say "rune"!