They Finnish Their Cup

You probably wouldn’t have guessed the nation who according to Euromonitor consumes the world’s largest quantities of coffee. My first thought was Brazil, what was yours? Italy… France… Columbia? All of these countries seem like plausible places for who reigns supreme in their love for a fresh cup of coffee in the morning (and at midday, and the evening… yikes).

But no! It’s none of those! Sorry for the exclamation points, too much coffee…

It’s the land known for its clean and liberal lifestyle, its 200,000 or so lakes, and its saunas – Finland. Per capita, the Finns consume 12kg of coffee per year, which equals out to around 4.7 cups a day per capita. In Finland, it is a regulation for workers to have coffee breaks, the only nation in the world where this exists.

Dipping pastries in coffee is commonplace, and the Finnish style of brewing “kahvi” is similar to that of the Turkish style in which the coffee and water is brought to a state of boiling repeatedly, with a whole broken egg (that’s right, a whole broken egg cracked into the brew, that’s some real coffee-lovers stuff right there).

Special occasions are also met with an abundance of the caffeinated beverage as smorgasbords of food – cakes, cookies, sandwiches, are accompanied with cup after cup of fresh Finnish coffee.

A country with no tuition fees for university and a love for coffee? Take me there.