Heine Brothers

So, I thought I'd write a little bit about the coffee shop near Bellarmine where I hang out. It's about 15-20 minutes walking from our dorm. Down a hill, up a hill, and then mostly flat through a pretty neighborhood. I like to come up here to a) get off campus a little bit, and b) get work done. Yep, work. I've been working a lot on fellowship applications, GRE math, and tonight, I finally started to teach myself Coptic!

On the walk over here, there are two sweet pieces of sculpture, which really make the walk a lot more enjoyable. It's part of the mood of Louisville that I really appreciate: open, kind of weird, and totally non-judgmental. While that's certainly not universal, who of my Northern readers expected me to meet all kinds of activists, work with a the queer captain of a roller derby team, go to an enormous gay club with the nation's #1 drag show, etc, etc? I certainly didn't expect it!
Heine Brothers itself is a local coffee chain. There are now seven branches of Heine Brothers Coffee throughout Louisville. They sell all organic, fair trade coffee and tea, and a lot of it is shade grown. They're extremely green: my favorite green feature is the coreless toilet paper in the bathroom. They're also pretty particular about coffee and tea. As a tea drinker before a coffee drinker, I appreciate the care they take in making tea. They use loose leaf tea, properly hot (not just HOT!) water, and they steep the tea for you, calling you when the tea is ready and taking out the leaves. This means you can't just get distracted and way over steep your tea (something I do basically every time). I'm a big fan.