I'm back in New Zealand in person but not completely in spirit, yet. I'm still comparing how life is lived here to how life is lived where we've been for the last month. Two things I particularly loved about Spain were coffee and Cadiz.

Not that the coffee is bad in New Zealand. How long New Zealand had such a strong coffee culture? Longer than you might think. Mum remembers coffee houses being the bohemian hangout of choice in her University days in the 1950s. The internet agrees with Mum. Apparently, the European influx after WWII (of which Mum and her family were part) brought coffee to New Zealand and a new social culture developed of coffee houses where art and women were welcome as opposed to pubs with the six-o-clock swill and floors that could be washed down with buckets of water. Espresso machines were imported in the 1950s but a lack of parts and repair expertise meant the machines moved out of common usage in the 1960s and did not reappear for twenty years.

Instant coffee remained common (a factory was established in Auckland in 1962). However, I consider instant coffee an entirely different drink to brewed coffee. My student days were fuelled by instant coffee – I got up to thirteen cups a day during my BScHons which left me jittery and sleepless. Sleepless can be a good thing when you are trying to finish a thesis!

By the mid 1990s, New Zealanders were sourcing coffee machines from Australia and coffee beans from New Guinea and Indonesia – places more accessible than Europe where Italy ruled the coffee realms. Italians led the world in espresso coffee from the late 1800s. France disputes this, in a similar vein to the NZ-Australia pavlova debate. And, it turns out, there is also an NZ-Australia coffee dispute  – who invented the flat white? New Zealanders claim the Flat White was the result of a ‘failed cappuccino’ at Bar Bodega in 1989, while Aussies argue the real Flat White was first available at Moors Café in Sydney. The truth is...NZ will always be morally superior to Australia because we didn't do the underarm bowl.

Today, New Zealand is a mecca of locations for coffee lovers with a plethora of coffee options (to the point you can be overwhelmed by choice). Going out for a coffee with lovely creamy froth on top has become an everyday pass time and quite an expensive one, given it's easy to spend $6-7 on a coffee. This was an eye-opener for us in Spain – coffee doesn't have to be expensive. A coffee in Spain generally cost 1.25 euro, equivalent to 2.20NZD. Adjusting for the difference in the average wage in Spain vs NZ, that would be 3.30NZD for a coffee. Sure, the Spanish coffees were smaller, but do we really need huge bowls as well as options to order even bigger ones? What it seemed like in Spain was that both coffee and beer (which were similarly priced in bars and restaurants) were more financially accessible to the public than they are in NZ. Or at least more accessible without having to mortgage an arm or leg to get a daily fix.

Partially linked with affordable drinks, was the street culture in Spain which was particularly notable in Cadiz (on the western coast of southern Spain). Cadiz has to rate as one of the most attractive cities I have had the fortune to visit. Just about every street in Cadiz ended in a plaza. So, whichever street you went down, you were drawn to a square where people sat on benches or in bars and cafés, drinking, chatting, watching their children on rollerblades hare in mad circles around the trees and the pigeons, or chase after soccer balls, wearing tutus or football shirts and boots. Every evening of the week, groups converged, mingled, departed. Hanging out in the plaza appeared integral to the Cadiz way of life.