Hint: You don’t have to visit these houses and buy their coffee … 
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Isn’t that just code for the naked mermaid place or are there other American coffee chains active here? (Not counting the scary clown which tends to have surprisingly decent coffee.)
Not in Germany, this is the only American coffee chain here. btw: I thought that this is the only coffee chain that America has … 
Are there any other noteworthy coffee houses?
Noteworthy is a matter of opinion, but there’s Dutch Bros, Pret a Manger, donut places like Krispy Kreme, Dunkin’ Donuts (those are in Germany) and Einstein Bros, Tim Horton’s, and doubtless plenty of others that aren’t found in Chicagoland. Most of those are better than the mermaid place.
Yes, but I wouldn’t consider them as coffee houses like Starbucks.
Costa is my favourite over here. I hate Starbucks coffee. We also have Nero, which is quite nice too.
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Creepy Clown might have only one or two types of coffee, but Tipping Cup has a couple dozen different roasts and origins. They’re definitely a coffee place imo. I mean, even their logo is a freaking coffee cup!
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In Germany “Tchibo” is a big and most popular coffee company. Here in my area we have a lot of small coffee houses too. And some coffee houses import coffee from Italy (like Segafredo).
@Someone
Sometimes, if you’re travelling in America, your choice is quite narrowed. 
@Frenzie
No direct reference to Starbucks. I was in an independent “breakfast provider”, managed by a chinese guy. Pros: cheap, wide variety of foods and drinks. Cons: mixed and unpredictable quality. They had 7 (seven) coffee blends to choose from. All served in paper cups with a strong paper taste. And I thought: funny, in Italy even the most luxurious bars have only two blends (caffeine/no caffeine), but the serving is everywhere obsessively cured. So you can be sure about service, but that doesn’t mean your coffee will be good. It means that coffe flavour will be enhanced at its best: good if good, bad if bad. In America service doesn’t seem so important as much as a huge variety prior to choose and a huge amount after you choose. And, side note: funny you are expected to tip even if you’re in a self-service facility.
Sorry, this conversation is going to resemble Travolta’s and Jackson’s talk about “little differences”
@PiecesOfKate
I don’t miss Costa coffee houses when at home, but I go 
when I spot one abroad.
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Yeah, I don’t get the obsession with having 50 types of coffee available, particularly when they’re not that different anyway. Unless you have a single type of bean from a single plantation, who cares if they’re all from Colombia? How is that single origin? Colombia is freaking huge. That’s like making a wine with grapes from the Rhône and grapes from the Chablis region and calling it “single origin wine.” Or making a cheese from North Holland milk and Ardennes milk and calling it single origin Benelux cheese. It just doesn’t make any sense.
Marketing-based “single-origin” nonsense.
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Yes, I didn’t spend a minute in reading the descriptive tags. I just chose the strongest on the provided scale. 
(Which everybody thinks it refers to caffeine content, but it doesn’t. The feeling of strongness of the coffee is peculiar of its quality kind and above all its toasting)
Their coffee is fine, but the taste of the underwear they sell is terrible.
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This forum was clearly missing my special brand of humour that past week.
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Yesterday I’ve searched for the Marmite chips, but haven’t found them. But I can get the Walkers products here, so I bought these:
I will try them in the next days and will report which one of them has to go to Room 101… I can get more different flavors, so I still hope to find the Marmite ones.
But a colleague of mine has found the termites extract:
I’m not sure if I should buy one glass, because the smaller ones are still too “large” just to try the stuff. 
(One of the smallest glasses costs 4 Euros in that particular shop.)
Side note: They are selling here British flour and baking powder… @tasse-tee: What’s the difference to German flour and baking powder?
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I don’t know, I’m afraid.
Looking forward to your thoughts on the Walkers crisps! I haven’t tried the one on the top-left.
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the country of origin
the side of the road the baking powder drives on
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Can you taste that in the cookies…?
I’ve tried them first (yesterday). They are very spicy (for my taste) and I haven’t tasted the lime in it - the chili “overlays” all other flavors. And if you eat more than a hand full of them, they start to taste like dried tomato-chili-ketchup. I would eat them again, but I don’t think that I would buy them again. On a scale from 1 (best) to 10 (worst) I give a 5. But if you like spicy chili chips, you should try them.
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I’m not a big fan of spicy things, so I’ll probably give them a miss. I might have tried them if there had been more lime flavour.
Then don’t buy it - I haven’t tasted any lime.
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