I grew up in Brasschaat, a small civil town outside of Antwerp.

Where I was either playing outside with my brother and sister or sitting at the table with scissors and pencils.

I studied in Antwerp and that is what brought me here. Also my friends, the culture and liveliness of the city.

Already as a kid my favorite thing to do at school was drawing, painting, cutting and pasting, ... and it never changed.

I graduated as a graphic designer at Sint Lucas Antwerp in 2009.

After that, I worked for two years as a graphic/web designer and since I am very bad at being quiet and sitting on a chair all day, than ended up working in Normo :-)

Clouds and colored skies, trees and plants, structures and textures, organic lines, old books and pictures, soft colors or black and white.

And in the end, I collect all these things and create my own landscapes by cutting and pasting everything together.

Not yet :-) on Jerry’s shop.

Pretty exclusive.

I am still figuring out everything.

This is a “primeur”.

You can follow my Instagram to see my latest stuff.

I am not a great connoisseur of galleries but I recently went to an exhibition at the Valerie Traan Gallery in Antwerp and was really surprised.

I am gonna keep an eye on this one.

I also like going to the Photography Museum in Antwerp (FOMU) from time to time.

People who know me know that I always wake up really early.

“Ochtendstond heeft goud in de mond”, and coffee.

The first thing I do in the morning is make an Aeropress filter coffee.

Preferably something sweet and fruity.

When I go to say Hi to Wouter (my lovely colleague at Normo) I prefer a silky smooth cappuccino.

Also a good tip: bring your own cup.

Better for momma nature and tastes 100 times better than out of a paper cup.

It will bring a smile to many faces.

It’s the little things that matter.

Have a nice day!”

Where are we from :).

It’s a very good question with many possible answers.

Of course as we all… from planet Earth, but ok, let’s get into it more seriously. .

We were both working as medical laboratory technicians.

Without going into too much detail, in essence, our job was about making things accurate and precise (those two are not the same!).

Coffee was always there with us (as it is usually with medical staff).

We were drinking it to try origins, to feel caffeine in our veins, to make our time there bearable…and it was quite a toxic job!

Soooo...  we decided to twist things 180 degrees. .

Start making coffee.. you know, accurate and precise:-)

It was a struggle at the beginning, trying to make a mental switch from being an employee to playing a real-time strategy game called Coffee Roastery.

Other than that, having a pharmaceutical and analytical background proved to be very helpful.

After all, roasting coffee is a “Process” not so different from a “Process” of measuring C-reactive protein concentration in serum:-)

You just have to dial into variables hard enough.

It’s a tricky part because we have something that I call the game of words when you are forbidden to say a word, instead, you have to describe it using other ones… so we have a crane in the logo,.

The bird and shipyard crane on his back as well.., how to say crane when this word is not permitted… literally Nieczapla means “not a heron”..

Get it.:)?

We`re both geeks in some areas.

Especially cosmos (for Patryk) and 3d graphics (for Filip).

All graphics that are available to see on Instagram or FB are made by Filip, who got really geeky about 3d graphics in some part of his life, and he`s using his skills to make some eye-candy stuff for us.

Most of the stuff is being driven by my cosmos addiction as you already noticed :-)

The designer-type graphics (our logo etc.) are made by Marek Marciniak.

Progress in the quality of the coffee.

This is the biggest geeky feature of ours.

We even make our own analyzers for coffee.

We`re constantly seeking, exploring and acknowledging specific conditions that make coffee perfect.

We`ve got some wild ideas about what is needed to make coffee from our roaster better.

And making those ideas real is what we do daily:)

Or just lay on a couch waiting for a customer and playing Diablo II.

Complex question.

I would like to talk about the metropolitan area rather than Gdańsk.

Agglomeration counts about 1milion people and is composed of Gdańsk, Gdynia, Sopot and surrounding cities.

You can take here what the city can give, you can rent a car and after 70min be at the open Baltic see, you can walk in the forest which we have a lot even in the city, we have a lot of bike paths, we have excellent conditions on Hel Penninsula, which is really safe and relatively shallow water reservoir to learn windsurfing and kitesurfing.

We have beaches so for all sunbath enthusiasts we also find something interesting.

Architecture from the gothic-renaissance center of Gdańsk, and very interesting architecture from the breakage of 19th/20th century, which was typical for the Free City of Gdansk, which you will easily find in Sopot and many districts of Gdańsk to the modern style of 20th Century in Gdynia…

In a radius 40km from Gdansk many picturesque landscapes, lakes, and flowering Cassebian fields can give a lot of restful feelings to people who want more peace and less crowded places.

I recommend visiting the city from late May to the end of August.

Originally, I came from Russia but I spent a lot of my time living abroad.

I spent my childhood in Italy, then I went to school in Russia but ended up finishing school in the UK.

Although you might not know, I am by far not the only one standing behind The Miners.

There are 3 of us, the founders, and we have different citizenships and share a diverse experience of living in the US, the UK, Russia, Austria and of course, the Czech Republic.

We have always wanted to be an international team and so far we have succeeded in that:)

However, I was the first one to get into coffee back in 2016.

It was just the beginning of the specialty coffee wave in the Czech Republic with very few coffee shops around the city.

People could have spent a lot of time getting to the nearest specialty coffee shop back then, crazy times.

Now you can find one within 5 minutes walking distance in most areas.

Most of my time I spend in one of our 4 coffee shops or the roastery.

We have quite a lot of people involved and they always come up with new ideas which we are bringing to life 24/7/365.

On the days when I want to be off work mentally, I travel around the Czech Republic which has so many amazing places to visit.

I was introduced to coffee by my friend who used to work in the field.

He walked me into a coffee shop and ordered Aeropress.

We sat there watching how it was being done and then I had a sip.

My feelings were mixed, I still remember it like it was today.

A week later I realized I wanted to have one more cup, but it was never the same as the first one.

That's how my interest in coffee started to rise and I decided to open a small coffee shop myself.

A year later this coffee shop was a place where we met with my other 2 partners and decided to launch The Miners Coffee & Characters which will be about the people as much as it will be about coffee.

So here we are.

Nowadays, Prague is a great place to drink coffee.

One can definitely find a coffee shop & a roastery they will adore.

There is a great variety of coffee shops for not such a big population.

Where else then the Miners?

Well, it depends on the preferences of course.

Ema Espresso Bar is definitely a great place to visit or Café Tout va bien for those who like it small and cozy.

Regarding Czech beer, it's another huge craft market with hundreds if not thousands of small breweries located all around.

My favorite are these two: Zihovec and Sibeeria.

Sibeeria has a bar called Beer Geek near our coffee shop so I'm a frequent visitor coming to enjoy sour ales.

Now, everyone is able to roast great coffee but not everyone is able to put an idea behind it."

It started out as hanging around in coffee bars as a student product development.

As it helped to get the study work done.

After that, I worked as a consultant for one year for a big firm.

But that wasn’t completely my piece of cake.

So I turned back to my passion, slurping coffee all day long in a coffee bar.

But as my studies were done I needed to have an income so I started a new coffee bar.

This was 2008, and from there on I lost it completely, all the geeky coffee stuff came into my life and we started roasting in 2011.

So that is how it went.

Normo meant to be a constant striving for better coffee in the world.

So doing better then, more, than the existing norm.

The roastery is run by my own, and a student if we get really busy, the coffee bar is run by Stefanie and Wouter, the most friendly baristas on earth.

If I go upstairs then work stops, although I’m sometimes tempted to do the administration where I live, it’s just more comfortable.

But that is fine, my work is my passion so I don’t mind if it sometimes mixes.

Especially when you can drink great coffee.

We play a lot of Radio Centraal when we are roasting, but we also like a good piece of metal and stoner, afro jazz or reggae.

Hopefully more from the same after the “ it don’t mention the word” shizzle.

We just invested in a color sorting machine to get our coffee even better, so that is something we are working on now.

“More better coffee all over the world!”