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Muesli. There was a time when I didn’t know what it was; maybe nobody did. But then they did, and I was caught unawares. Those were innocent times, to be sure, and yet I suppose I was raised that way: be aware of what’s around you, but don’t poke at it; never disturb anything that does not know your name -and then, check with it first. And so it was with muesli.

I was brought up in the post WWII Canadian prairies, and the closest I ever came to muesli in those days was Quaker Rolled Oats, or maybe porridge before you added the milk and sugar. The very name would have bespoken foreignness: them in other words. Other.

But in the spinning infinitude of Time, all that changed. I travelled to new Zealand somewhere near the end of the last century for work, and quickly became enamoured with both the word and the taste of Muesli for breakfast.

As far as I was able to determine, it came in two varieties both resembling granola, only muesli had smaller seeds, or whatever they’re called. In fact, I wondered if it was a seedy offspring from the miscegenation between prairie oats and an assorted melange of other cereals and dried fruits and nuts -any of which I suppose I would have recognized, but never thought of mixing. Granola, on the other hand, was just a more clumpy, older member of the same family -the awkward older sister who was relegated to the shadows even when, or if, she was ever  asked to dance.

At any rate, when I began to work in New Zealand, Muesli was all the rage. You couldn’t go into a coffee shop which didn’t keep some behind the counter, or in a backroom even if it wasn’t advertised on the chalkboard menu. It wasn’t just for those of us with pierced ears, or long curly hair; you could order it even if you didn’t use talcum powder for an antiperspirant or wear tie-dye shirts. I began to love the creature -crave it, even.

But then, it went mainstream and was openly flaunted on official menus; I should have guessed its fate: things remain popular only as long as they aren’t.  Soon, muesli followed the path of bell-bottom pants, and when memories dragged me back to New Zealand after retiring from another job in a faraway country, it had all but disappeared from view. Even the word seemed tainted, and to inquire about it was greeted with shrugs or else the way the young of the world react to elders with our cryptic stories about William Shatner and the early iterations of Star Wars on TV.

But the modern disappearance was deceptive: it was still considered a badge of honour, the sign of a real coffee shop, in the nether parts of the South Island. And since that was where I started my journey, I was lulled, and memories tugged softly at my requests in coffee shops in Dunedin. I was greeted with smiles and reassuring gestures that yes, of course they served muesli.

That all changed as I drove further north, though, and young baristas in even trendy coffee shops (judging by the number of clients glued to their cell phones) told me that although they remembered their parents asking for it in the ‘old days’ there was no longer a market for it. One cheeky young male barista, busy doing noisy grindy things behind his counter, went so far as to look me in the eyes and tell me he’d never heard of muesli. Was it like porridge, or something, he asked me with an innocent grin, and then glanced at his female co-worker and winked.

Fine, I gave up asking in places like Petone, or Lower Hutt on the North Island where I had worked so many years before. But when I took the little commuter train from there into Wellington, I decided that the capital city of New Zealand must have retained some remnants of the ‘old days’ and renewed my quest for the grail.

Wellington may not be a large city, as cities go, but it is nonetheless confusing. Streets veer off at unexpected angles and unless you’ve taken your phone off airplane mode (left on, to prevent roaming fees) to call forth a GPS map, or paid attention to the direction the harbour was in, you quickly found yourself lost in a cacophonic maze of traffic and tall buildings -especially so if your stated aim was to examine the menu of every coffee shop on every street for muesli mentions.

After wandering randomly and unsated along hot and confusing streets, for almost an hour, I finally decided to ask a barista about whether or not I might find muesli somewhere in the city… hopefully nearby.

I found one who looked like a friendly chap, standing behind the counter in his coffee-stained apron in a rather un-busy shop on a madding street somewhere downtown. As I was the only customer, he smiled hopefully at me. ‘Make me busy,’ he seemed to say, and his smile faded only slightly when I asked about muesli. I think he still had hopes of business, but I was adamant about the muesli, even when he shrugged -politely, I should add.

But his continuing friendliness in the face of losing a potential client rendered him patient and I girded my loins and asked him if he knew of any place that might serve muesli nearby. He shook his head and turned to the other barista standing beside him and asked her if she knew.

She thought about it for a moment and told me there was a place further down the street that used to serve it, but she wasn’t sure now. She closed her eyes for a moment; Pravda, or a name like that was what it used to be called… And at any rate, it was a long way to walk for a slim chance of success. I could see a faint hope in her eyes that her advice might yet persuade me to take one of her coffees with me on my hopeless journey. But I was Muesli-determined, and even the slightest hope of success was enough of a goad to spur me on.

She was not exaggerating about the length of the walk, however; I once again renewed my quest, and walked and walked and walked past so many coffee shops they began to blur, but none with the name she’d thought it might still be using. It had been a long morning of wandering, though, and I was getting tired. I decided to give it one more block and then resign myself to Fate.

I had no idea where I was… But, thus far there was no rainbow at the end of my quest, and so I shrugged and crossed the road, determined at least to find a place where I could sit down and order an Americano with hot milk, and maybe a cookie…

And suddenly, there it was, like Brigadoon appearing for its brief once-a-century visit: the Pravda. And, perhaps understanding my travails, they prepared, just for me, the best muesli I’ve ever tasted!

There is a reward waiting patiently at the end of some rainbows, you know. This is, after all, the way New Zealand rewards hope: like a young child, you sometimes just have to be patient with it…