Mugg & Bean

In today's coffee-crazed world I sometimes think that you measure your friends by their association to common coffeeshops. I was just reading my good friend Trish's blog, where she was writing about returning to her favorite coffee shop in Amman, Jordan. Sadly, I haven't any place as charming as hers, but at least I've tracked one down that is reasonably close to the Radisson. Mugg & Bean is a chain that you see a fair bit overseas and I went there today with Liane, my Kiwi friend and one of the ZU professors squirrelled away at the Radisson, and her friends Jen and Bruce, who teach at the Dubai campus of ZU. As it turns out I had actually met Jen before on the shuttle that runs between the two campuses, although we didn't remember it until around an hour into the discussion. It is always sobering when I meet some many folks overseas who have travelled a lot more than me, and by American standards I've travelled quite a bit (of course, since only around 15% of Americans actually have a passport I guess it's nothing to get too worked up about). Anyway, they had all sorts of suggestions about places to travel from the UAE, including some great low price carriers, even one down in Sharjah. They told me it's very easy to get to Zanzibar from here, so that trip is definitely on my radar. I'm still working out the logistics of my trip to Samarkand. My friend Mike Lange has a friend in Kabul, Afghanistan, and I'm considering the notion of a Kabul-Samarkand trip. Now that would be cool. In the meantime, however, it's just tnice to continue to meet folks and get settled. I think the Mugg & Bean might make a good weekly Saturday lunch trip.