I miss my Mr. Coffee

    Like many Americans of a certain age, I am addicted to coffee. My nutritionist friends disagree, of course, but I consider coffee a major food group, as essential to my life as bread, water and pizza are to others. Therein, as the Bard once so aptly said, Lies the Rub: Reusians make their coffee in these tiny little pots that brew two small cups at a time. It's not a terribly complicated process and after a couple of attempts I learned to make a reasonably good cup of coffee. The problem is, to brew the five-to-seven cups I normally drink in a day I have to keep repeating the process.
    The result: I am pining for my old Mr. Coffee, which reliably produced 10-12 cups at a time. Friends here tell me that making that many cups of coffee for one person in a day is something akin to barbaric. "Making two cups is more civilized," one told me. Perhaps, but I miss my Mr. Coffee nonetheless and if I ever find one in a store I'm going to don bearskins, become a full-fledged barbarian, and buy it.
    That aside, adjusting to life here has been surprisingly easy so far. Reus is a city with many small parks and squares and it's not unusual to turn a corner and be delighted by something new and interesting. Recently, for example, I discovered a tiny square dedicated to the artist Fortuny complete with a statue of a young nobleman copied from one of his paintings. A couple of hours later I discovered that there is an exhibit of Fortuny's paintings at a museum here in Reus and, in the company of a friend who is an architect, I went to see it. Fortuny was born in Reus and in the latter half of the 19th Century he literally took the Paris art world by storm. He died at 33 before he realized his enormous potential but what he left behind is extraordinary.
    Now, if only I didn't have to make a fresh pot of coffee when I returned...