50 beans | Coffee Crawl – Vienna

The second city in this series is Vienna. 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. Kulczycki opened a coffee house in Vienna at Schlossergassl named the Hof zur Blauen Flasche ('House under the Blue Bottle'). This  helped popularize coffee in Vienna, and was instrumental in establishing the coffee culture there. While the blue bottle coffee house is no longer there, other cafés have sprung up to take it's place.

Since 2011, Viennese coffeehouse culture has been listed in the Austrian list of Intangible Cultural Heritage (put together by UNESCO). The Viennese coffee house is described in this inventory as a place "where time and space are consumed, but only the coffee is found on the bill."

Café Tirolerhof
Located directly across from the Albertina, Café Tirolerhof is a nice quiet place to sit, pour over a local paper (english available), and enjoy a cup of coffee. Upon walking in, you're invited to seat yourself at any table in this nicely decorated viennese café. As you sit you'll notice the velvet fabric that is on each seat, well worn by the butts of many viennese from years past =) I was able to enjoy an einspänner and homemade apfelstrudel here.

Café Sacher
This café is situated down the street from the Vienna Opera House inside the Hotel Sacher, and sits on the site where Antonio Vivaldi once lived. This café is famous for it's sachertorte, a chocolate cake with apricot jam filling, which was first created here. They offer the full sachertorte slice or a mini-sacher, depending on your mood/appetite. Since I already had breakfast at Café Tirolerhof, I opted for the mini-sacher, which is a 1x1 inch cube. I also opted to try the Viennese iced coffee, which is pretty much Vienna's version of the affogato, and consists of coffee, vanilla ice cream, and some whipped cream. The Viennese iced coffee was alright, the sachertorte was kind of dry (not a big fan but I figured I had to try the original here).

Café Landtmann
Founded in 1873 on the Ringstrasse next to the Burgtheater and across from the parliament building, this coffee house is known as a local meeting place for many of Austria's leading industrialists and politicians, and historically as being the preferred coffee house of notable Viennese such as Sigmund Freud and Gustav Mahler. The Viennese melange is great here.

Demel
Hofzuckerbäckerei Demel, or simply Der Demel, is a famous pastry shop and chocolatier in Vienna. Demel is located a block away from the Hofburg Palace and was once a purveyor to the Imperial and Royal court of Austria-Hungary. While I did not try the coffee here, I did come to buy some sweets for some relatives, and got a chance to look around inside. This place is a bit on the pricy side for candy – three small boxes of chocolates for €42 =/ but their sweets are pretty and creatively made. The flower in the picture above is a handmade piece of candy.

That's all for Vienna, the last and final post is coming soon and will feature the location where I spent the bulk of my trip: Prague. Until then, auf wiedersehen!