I'm lovin' it

It started about a year ago, with one innocent visit. I was with a friend in Bucharest and she decided to get a coffee at Starbucks. I was just going to go in and look around and chuckle at how the chain really does not vary in appearance no matter where in the world you are, but then I decided oh what the heck, and bought a coffee for myself. 19 lei worth. It brought back a lot of memories. Good memories. Coffee shop memories. Non-Starbucks coffee shop memories.
We sat at a table with comfy chairs and chatted, warming our hands around our mugs, just like I used to do at my old favorite coffee shops. Up until then, I hadn’t had a Starbucks coffee in a very long time. Years. Up until then, I had done a very decent job of cutting a company I had somewhere along the line deemed unworthy out of my life. That’s where it started. Or, you could say, that’s where it ended. At a Starbucks in Bucharest, my long-term avoidance of corporate America and fast food nation ended.
What followed was a sad downward spiral into some of the horrible places I had taken measures to avoid for years. Dinner at Pizza Hut, followed by a McFlurry at Mickey D’s. Wake up to a scone and a latte at Starbucks. Repeat. I soothed my feelings of treachery by telling myself it was only while I was in Bucharest, which was once every other month or so. But a nagging guilt tainted each sip and every bite. I remember the first few times I went abroad and snorted at the other American tourists eating in places like TGI Friday’s or Ruby Tuesdays or McDonald’s. Why on earth travel if those are the places you are going to eat? Silly American tourists.
Back then it never would have occurred to me that maybe those Americans weren’t tourists. Maybe they lived there and maybe that was their occasional treat to themselves. A treat that made them feel guilty and weak and ashamed, but gave them a few glimpses of a comfortable place far, far away. It might not be the restaurant or the coffee shop they would have picked if they were in America, but because it’s the only option for something some-what familiar, they went with it. To those American diners who I snorted at years ago, I am sorry.
And now that not one, but two Starbucks shops are only an hour-long bus ride away, tempting me every day I have off, I have to put myself in check and rationalize the glee I’ve started feeling every time I know that a Starbucks is near. There is a part of me that still, deeply and possibly irrationally, dislikes the chain and I will never go to a Starbucks in America. I will spend the extra 30 minutes and dollar to hunt down a local coffee shop. That’s because those local coffee shops exist in America, where here, Starbucks is the coffee monopoly and I have not found another option that provides both decent coffee and a comfortable place to drink it. The day I find Chongqing’s version of Bibo, I will be there in a heart beat, thankful for no longer having to feel the guilt I now associate with drinking coffee, a habit I have found impossible to shake.
All of this has been coming about in my head because there’s a WalMart in Chongqing. It’s only 15 minutes away from my campus. I’m going there tomorrow and, this is the worst thing I’ve ever said in my life, I’m excited about it. I’m excited to go to WalMart. Good gracious, what has happened to me? It’s such a strange feeling, being excited about going to a place that I loathe. Starbucks is one thing, but WalMart? I am a horrible let-down of a human being. A traitor no longer eligible for the title semi-cool. Good night.