The Yunus Emre Institute welcomed six guests for its first official Turkish Coffee Happy Hour of Fall 2019. The Turkish Coffee Happy Hour is designed to give the guests the chance to relax after their long day of work with a cup of Turkey’s famous coffee. The Institute held several practice sessions over the summer to fully explore the best time of the week and settled on the first available Monday of each month. The Happy Hour is capped at just a handful of guests to create a comfortable, intimate setting that will foster easy conversation and new friendships.

The Turkish Coffee Happy Hour is divided into four parts to teach visitors why coffee is so important to Turkish culture. Guests start in the Misafir Odası, the guest room, to learn more about Turkish coffee’s history and its place in Turkish culture. The second part takes place in the Mutfak, the kitchen, where everyone learns how to brew authentic coffee with traditional Cezve pots. Sohbet, Chat, allows our guests to transform from strangers into new friends. These new friendships are cemented with a Hediye, a gift, which is a postcard with a polaroid photo of the recipient with a cup of coffee. The Institute is also working on making a collage of all the pictures and comments from their new friends.

Jocelyne, the institute employee, welcomed the guests and led an informative discussion in the Misafir Odası. She also showed the room a Cezve and explained how its unique shape contributes to brewing a perfect cup of coffee. In the Mutfak, Jocelyne demonstrated how to brew coffee in a Cezve on a traditional copper sand brewer machine. Jocelyne and Casey Kim assisted each of the guests with brewing their own cups. Everyone enjoyed chatting over coffee and Turkish Delight. As they received their postcards, all of Yunus Emre Institute’s new friends said that they enjoyed the program, the staff, and the delightful company at the end of their hectic DC day.

The Yunus Emre Foundation is a public foundation formed to promote Turkey, Turkish language, its history and culture and art, make such related information and documents available for use in the world, provide services abroad to people who want to have education in the fields of Turkish language, culture and art, to improve the friendship between Turkey and other countries and increase the cultural exchange. If you are interested in receiving more information, please email washingtondc@yee.org.tr.