The Viennese Café Philosophy
And in Vienna we have …
The Viennese Café
Das Wiener Kaffeehaus
A Viennese Philosophy
It is these people who go to the Coffee House,
“who want to be alone, but need company for it.”
Alfred Polgar
You can not praise it enough, the Viennese Café. It is a deeply human institution. It is a truly Viennese tradition. A place where each and everyone will be blissful in his or her own little way.
There are as many Cafés, as there are human characters. It is only a matter of time, until one finds “his” Café. You can sit for hours with a “kleiner Brauner” and study the daily paper and the people around. No one will ask you to leave ore consume more. It is the extension of the living room of the Viennese.
The “Kaffeehaus” stands to the apartment,
as love stands to marriage,
and the Mocca is just the entrance fee.
Hans Weigel
Some come to read the paper, (which you would have to buy otherwise); others come for a date.
You don’t have to do anything, but you can do a lot. But first of all you are human, and you are treated as such. And the treatment you get from the “Ober” (waiter). You have to have the “call” to be a “Ober”. As he belongs to the Koffee House, as the marble tables belong.
Really happy in a Café, is only the “Regular”.
And to a “Regular” appoints you only the “Ober”.
Otto Friedländer
And works like this: You go to the same Café at the same time every day, and order the same thing (every day). After one week the latest, the Ober will stop coming to your table, will confirm only by eye contact “The usual?” and with your “Kaffee und Kuchen” will also bring the paper.
Sounds like a fairytale? This is tradition, and it is upheld by the Viennese coffee house waiters, like the glass of water with your coffee. Which will be regularly changed, until you leave.
The Viennese Café tradition looks back at a three hundred-year history. Myth and legend at the same time. A place where revolutions found their beginning, where famous love affairs began and ended. But most of all, it is a place where life happens. Until today. Without it’s Cafés, it’s philosophy; Vienna would be not Vienna.