Starbucks is  opening its first store in Italy.

Promising to enter the birthplace of espresso “with humility and respect”.

The first Starbucks is planned for Milan early in 2017, apparently in partnership with and Italian company.

I just returned from Malaga, Spain. The sight of a “Costa Coffee” as a conspicuous lump on one side of the most central Constitution Square, is a disappointment every time I visit, probably the only disappointment!

The purveyors of bad coffee, in mediocre surroundings…why would anybody want it there or even anywhere? And don’t we in part, travel to be free of the dross and survive the local good, great and bad, yet all refreshingly of the place? And do those locally embedded, residing in the environs really need, want, enjoy or thrive with these tepid imitations?

Every time I hear the story that Starbucks’ founder Howard Schultz, had his epiphany while he was in Italy, to bring espresso coffee to every corner of the United States, I cringe. Because what he brought was none of that, nothing resembling (except for the shape of the cups) the taste, experience and joy of espresso coffee and drinks derived from it – in Italy, to the USA, more a watered and mass-pandering weak-at-the-knees version.

I know. It is likely that Starbucks in Italy will become gathering places for local and visiting humans alike. But with a mischievous pain, I ache for the plan to spread to Italy, to fall through or flicker out like a candle exposed to a cooling breeze.