50 beans | Coffee Crawl – Salzburg

Two weeks ago I had a conversation with my boss which led to a conclusion that with a new project coming up, if I don’t take any time off now, I wouldn’t be able to until june/july. So, sort of on a whim, I got my vacation approved, checked for flights to Europe, and booked myself a flight/hotel for Prague (Reykjavik wasn’t feasible and Zurich would’ve been too much $$). 7 days later I was on a flight to Prague. Of course, the first two days I was in Europe solo, as Mike wasn’t able to make it till Friday, so I decided to book some rail tickets and check out Austria as well. This is a three part coffee crawl series – highlighting the cafés visited during my stay in Salzburg, Vienna, and Prague.

The first city is Salzburg, which is known as the birthplace of Mozart, and also the setting for The Sound of Music. It's a smallish town with many churches and old buildings, and the local people are very friendly. Coffee has had a long tradition in Austria. After the Turkish army was defeated during the second siege of Vienna in the 17th century, sacks of coffee beans were discovered in the abandoned Turkish camps. Legend has it that Jerzy Franciszek Kulczycki, a Polish officer, was given the bags of coffee as a gift. Having spent some time in Turkish captivity, he must have learned what these beans were used for, and used the beans to open the first coffee shop in Vienna. Back then, Salzburg was still an independent principality, but they didn’t have any coffeeshops yet, so if Vienna had coffee, why shouldn’t Salzburg? In 1703, Café Tomaselli opened its doors, and the Salzburg coffee scene started.

As the coffee scene in Austria flourish, they began to develop their own coffee habits. Here, coffee is traditionally served with a small glass of cold water and some sugar, and there isn't really much of a to-go concept. A visit to a café is an experience, and you should expect to spend at least an hour or so per visit, but the atmosphere will be warm and pleasant. Anyways...enough background stuff...the following is a run-down of cafés visited in Salzburg (sadly I couldn’t visit them all):

Café Mozart
Located on the famed Getreidegasse, this place was definitely geared toward tourists, but had decent coffee. They offered English menu’s and free wifi, and had the full range of Austrian coffees. I ended up going with an Einspänner, which is a strong black coffee with whipped cream. It was pretty good, but it seems that they kinda overdo it on the whipped cream a bit. I guess it is a good substitute for the creamer and sugar, as it can easily be mixed in to make a lighter cup.

Café Tomaselli
Founded in 1703, Café Tomaselli on Alter Markt Square is the oldest and most well-known of the Salzburg cafés. Salzburg’s famed son, Mozart, had coffee there and so did generations of local and international artists such as Max Reinhardt, Michael Haydn or Hugo von Hoffmannsthal. The old-fashioned interiors, worn velvet seats, and Austrian café culture make this place worthy of a visit and so is the coffee. The coffee I got here was the viennese melange, which is a cup of strong coffee with milk and a bit of whipped cream and almond shavings...it was pretty good.

Café Fürst
Came here too late in the day to actually enjoy a cup of coffee (didn’t want to be overly wired at night), but dropped by for a visit and to sample the original mozartkugeln (mozartball). Just around the corner from the Café Tomaselli in the Brodgasse, Café Fürst is the site where mozartballs were immortalised in chocolate for the first time in 1890. Notable for being the first handmade chocolate candies to have a perfectly round shape with no flat sides, mozartballs, of course, were named after the famed Salzburg composer, Mozart.

Ok...that's pretty much it for Salzburg...next up in this series we'll be visiting Vienna, where we'll get to explore the viennese cafés to experience what has been described as a place "where time and space are consumed, but only the coffee is found on the bill."