fikapaus
as anya [Elisabeth Ericson] explains it, fika means
having coffee, yes, but also tea, or any other beverage, and usually a sweet baked good of some variety
… [most importantly] it is a social occasion.
I’ve yet to find a satisfactory translation.
also mentioning that “the idea of a swedish espresso bar is just awesome/hilarious in itself,”
at 41 West 58th St. in midtown Manhattan no less.
Garngamen (on restaurantgirl.com, which gives the cafe a 9/10 rating) says
fika, as a concept, is really the time to solve world and personal trouble
for the sake of adding the credibility of popular, democratic academia to this rapdily growing post, I might as well cite wikipedia which defines it as
a social institution in Sweden: [meaning] taking a break from work or other activities and having a coffee with one’s colleagues, friends, date, or family.
and, to keep it well rounded, everything2, which also mentions its unusual etymology; (unfortunately, not repeated here for the sake of a, now desperate, attempt at brevity).
The word fika is proof, if proof were needed, that Sweden is the most civilised country in the world … Fika is proof of Swedish sophistication.
The verb form is usually ‘ta en fika’.
Wikipedia also mentions that ‘Swedes [are] amongst the heaviest consumers of coffee in the world,’ citing [a study] by, none other than, the International Coffee Organization (ICO) in 2005,(http://www.ico.org/historical.asp) published in earthtrends.
Ironically, I naively suggested that ‘having a coffee,’ in the Queen’s English (surely, an equally civilized language), could mean the same thing, without even having myself anything but a superficial understanding of the word’s meaning in Swedish (I often catch myself being rather rash, making baseless and perhaps defensive statements like that, only after having said it), however, it turns out, wikipedia’s explanation of the history behind ‘fikapaus’ suggests that it might actually be originally derived from my example of ‘have-a-coffee:’
The word itself is an example of the backslang used in the 19th century – where the syllables of a word are reversed – deriving from kaffi, an earlier variant of the Swedish word kaffe (“coffee”).
[In fact,]
In northern Sweden and some of the more rural areas, fika is synonymous to coffee without any treats:
Ta en kopp fika (“Have a cup of coffee”)
