Last evening unfolded gently, the way only late December evenings can. The air carried a festive softness, illuminated by strings of Christmas lights and early whispers of the New Year. I was walking without an agenda—one of those rare, unhurried walks where the mind loosens its grip and allows the senses to lead. The city, dressed in lights and decorations, felt briefly kinder, almost conspiratorial in its invitation to pause.

I was quieter than usual, carrying one of those indefinable moods—not unhappy, not particularly joyful either. Thoughtful, perhaps. The kind of mood where memories surface without warning and questions hover without demanding answers. Walking helps then. The rhythm of footsteps has a way of loosening knots the mind cannot.

As I walked past illuminated shopfronts and cafés spilling warm light onto the pavement, I found myself slowing down. That was when I noticed Vinery Cafe.

I don’t remember making a conscious decision to enter. It felt instinctive—drawn by warmth, by light, by the promise of a pause. Inside, the contrast with the evening chill was immediate.

Like most contemporary cafés, Vinery had done away with physical menus. A small QR code on the table stood in quietly for human interaction. I scanned it, more out of habit than hunger, and began scrolling. Coffees, desserts, sandwiches—then a word that stopped me mid-scroll: Affogato.

It had been a long time since I last had ice cream. Even longer since I had thought about affogato. There was something about that word—Italian, elegant, almost philosophical—that felt oddly aligned with the evening. Without much deliberation, I ordered it.

The Simplicity of Affogato

Affogato, in its purest form, is deceptively simple. A scoop of vanilla ice cream or gelato, served in a cup, onto which a shot of hot espresso is poured. That’s it. No elaborate preparation, no excess ornamentation. Yet within this simplicity lies a remarkable depth.

The word affogato itself means “drowned” in Italian. Ice cream drowned in coffee. Cold submerged by heat. Sweet yielding to bitterness. It is less a dessert and more an event—a moment of transformation that happens right in front of you.

When the affogato arrived, it was understated and elegant. A small cup with a perfectly shaped scoop of vanilla ice cream. Beside it, a cup of freshly brewed espresso. No unnecessary embellishments. Just two elements waiting to meet.

The Moment of Pouring

There is something quietly satisfying about pouring hot espresso over ice cream. The dark liquid cascades over the pale surface, melting it instantly, carving rivulets, blurring boundaries. Steam rises, carrying with it the sharp aroma of coffee, while the ice cream softens, resists briefly, then surrenders.

It is a meeting of opposites.

Hot meets cold. Bitter meets sweet. Liquid meets solid. The transformation is immediate and irreversible. Once poured, there is no going back to what each element was before. Together, they become something else—neither coffee nor ice cream, yet unmistakably both.

Spoon or Sip—Life Doesn’t Ask

I took a spoonful first, then sipped. Soon, the distinction no longer mattered. The texture kept changing, the taste evolving with every passing second. Bitter turned mellow. Sweet gained depth. Hot and cold negotiated their balance.

And, as often happens in such moments, my thoughts drifted—this time, not restlessly, but gently.

Life, I realised, tastes increasingly like affogato.

The Contradictions We Carry

We live amid contradictions. Warmth and coldness in relationships. Hope and anxiety coexisting within the same day. Progress paired with loss. Certainty dissolving into doubt even as clarity emerges elsewhere. We often seek neat separations—this or that, black or white, right or wrong. Yet reality insists on blending.

Like the ice cream, we try to remain intact—unchanged by circumstance. And like the espresso, life pours itself over us anyway. Hot, sudden, unavoidable. But perhaps the lesson isn’t resistance.

The ice cream isn’t ruined by the coffee. The coffee isn’t diluted beyond recognition. Instead, they temper each other. They create a balance that neither could achieve alone.

Quiet Dialectics in a Café

Philosophers have long spoken of dialectics—the idea that progress emerges from the tension between opposites. Thesis meets antithesis, and from their conflict arises synthesis. Affogato, in its own modest way, performs a similar dialectic.

The ice cream is not ruined by the coffee; nor is the coffee weakened by the ice cream. Each tempers the other. The bitterness becomes rounded, the sweetness gains depth. What remains is balance—not by elimination, but by coexistence.

Perhaps this is a lesson worth revisiting in everyday life.

Contradictions need not always be resolved by choosing sides. Sometimes, meaning emerges when we allow opposites to interact, to soften one another, to create a third experience richer than either could achieve alone.

The Everyday Poetry of Small Choices

Sitting there in Vinery Cafe, spoon in hand, I felt grateful for this unplanned encounter—with a dessert, with a memory, with a thought. In an age obsessed with speed and scale, affogato insists on slowness. It invites you to watch, to pour, to wait, to taste as the flavors evolve.

It struck me how often the most enduring memories are formed in unscheduled moments. An evening walk taken without intent. A café entered on impulse. A dessert ordered because it felt right, not because it made sense.

Travel teaches us this again and again. So does food. Both invite us to slow down, to observe, to taste, to reflect. They pull us outward into the world—and inward into ourselves.

When I finally stepped back out into the Erbil night, the lights seemed warmer, the air softer. Nothing in life had changed—and yet something had shifted.

Perhaps that is the real gift of travel, food, and these quiet, in-between moments. They don’t offer answers. They offer perspective.

An affogato in a small café. A walk through a festive city. A pause that becomes a mirror.

I have always believed that journeys are not measured only in miles, and meals are never just about hunger. They are ways of listening—to places, to cultures, and sometimes, to ourselves.

And every now and then, all it takes is a cup of ice cream, a shot of espresso, and the willingness to pour one over the other—to remind us that life’s contradictions, much like an affogato, can be beautifully lived when we allow them to meet.