Regular visitors to Travel Between The Pages are well aware of my coffee obsession. It all started with an old school stove top percolator when I was just five years old. My Mother taught me how to set-up the coffee for breakfast and allowed me an espresso-sized cup before school. Over the years, I’ve accumulated dozens of coffee makers from a custom moka pot to a handy AeroPress. And the apotheosis of my coffee mania came when I became a coffee roaster six years ago.

So, it will come as no surprise that I am dead chuffed to find that Rotterdam is set to open the world’s first coffee hotel. Paul Sharo, owner of Man Met Bril Koffie roastery and café in the Dutch city is poised to lauch the Hotel Blend this year after a crowdfunding campaign. The 20 hotel rooms are not just for tourists. Sharo: “I want to expand the international coffee community by bringing the best baristas and roasters to the coffee hotel where they temporarily live. We have a training room at the new location where we train people and we have a large terrace that enjoys the sun all day long. If it shines then.”

The coffee hotel residency program will offer both pay and  a free place to stay at the hotel while you are working there. Personally, I’d be happy to stay at the hotel and hone my roasting skills.

To create some media buzz about the coffee hotel project, Sharo is embarking on a road trip to visit about 20 European cities and organize events in conjunction with local coffeeshops and roasters. he will be making the tour in style in a tricked- out and electrically converted Citroën Hy old-timer named Laura. The classic French truck from 1971 isequipped with a.o. a Kees van der Westen Spirit, nitro cold brew system, EK 45, Mythos grinder and 3TEMP batch brew.

“It’s a pretty out there idea, a stupid idea maybe”, explains Sharo. “Who drives an electrified old timer with a range of about 100 km through Europe just to invite some people you don’t know to come work and live with you? At the same time, it’s a trip of dreams, a trip of a lifetime. So why not?!”