Coffee and a Tour of the City

August 3, 2009

The day is once again young. I wake up early again (5-5:30ish) to meet fellow students Tyler and Melodhie for traditional Viennese coffee and a light breakfast before class. Coffee is an important staple in Vienna’s culture and, according to professor Kathy Stewart, is rumored to date back to the second Turkish siege if 1683. The Habsburg army found a stash of strange beans left by the retreating Ottoman Turks and originally tried to use the discovery as horse feed. The Polish king John III Sobieski apparently gave the beans to one of his soldiers, Jerzy Franciszek Kulczycki, and Kulczycki is now credited with (after much experimentation with milk and sugar) opening the first café. Germans refer to Kulczycki as “Georg Franz Kolschitzky” and of course, like any important figure in European history (or folklore), there is a statue dedicated to him.

Lucky for us that two doors down from the Amerika-Institut is Julius Meinl, a Vienna-based coffee house with an interesting history. The company has diversified since its origins under the original Julius Meinl over 145 years ago. It is a manufacturer and producer of coffee, gourmet foods and I believe at one time the company in banking. The company has passed through the generations and, according to the New York Times, Julius Meinl V is a really ostentatious and extravagant person. The paper reports that Meinl's “claim to fame” is that he has never had to walk more than 300 meters because anything longer than that he can use his Bentley or private jet. (Good for him.) Meinl V recently got in some trouble for insider trading on the Vienna Stock Exchange, so maybe acting like a pompous ass doesn't always make you a winner in life.

Anyways, the coffee itself was very good so I can’t really complain. I asked the German woman behind the counter if she spoke English (Entschuldigen, spretchen ze English?), which she did, and then asked her what she suggested for both breakfast and coffee. Somehow we all ended up with three different coffees and three different cakes, all of which were tasty! Melodhie had the Mélange (coffee and milk) with a Truffeltorte (dry chocolate cake), Tyler had the latte with Sachertorte (rich chocolate cake, frosting and cream) and I had the Brauner Klein (mocca) with Esterhaszytorte. That cake was my favorite because it was a sweet white cake with that had an almond taste to it. We did not have to pay up front and the coffee was served to us at the table with a glass of tap water. In another blog I am going to go over the etiquette and importance of a Viennese coffee house because it is very different than in the states. For now I will just say that it would be very easy to spend all day relaxing in a coffee house and nobody would look at you any different for it! I will also be writing a small blog on the water situation in Austria and the fascination with prickled vasser vs. tap water. Below are pictures of my Esterhaszytorte and coffee with the Meinl logo imprinted on the cup. If you are able to see the logo than you will notice that the man has a Turkish hat on which is in reference to their involvement with the coffee bean and its origins.

Class was (of course) interesting and we learned about the rise of the Babenberg and Hapsburg Empires in Austria and the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. Not to cop out of telling you the origins, but there will also be another blog that is going to explain these origins to everyone. We are still at the beginning of class and I am trying to make sense of all of the marriages that were arranged by Maximillian I to form the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It took careful planning and consideration to set up the alliances within the empire and the phrase that comes out of this is: "Let others wage wars. You, fortunate Austria, marry."

After a lunch of Frankfurter, the rest of the class and I went on a tour of Vienna with Dr. O. I have to warn the reader of this blog that we went to multiple places as an overview of what we will experience in the coming months. Therefore I will not go into each place in detail (yet!) but share a little about my reactions to places. I had a couple of favorite places that I am definitely going to be returning to multiple times during my stay in Wien. I thought the Belvedere summer home of Prince Eugene of Savoy way amazing! We are going back in a week to look through the museum, but the outside is full of baroque gardens, sculptures and one GIANT guesthouse. The picture below is the prince’s gust house, which shows the amount of money and prestige the man had after defeating the Turks. The pond that is in front of the guesthouse was meant to be a reflection point of the grandiose house, and it must have been amazing to see the home lit up while riding up to it in a horse-drawn carriage. The gate that encloses the home has the seal of the Savoy family as well as angels with the “Golden Fleece”, which was a chivalric society meant for the Hapsburgs and societies elite. Unfortunately (or fortunately, if you want to look at it that way) while we were on the Belvedere grounds another tour bus backed into out bus and shattered our windshield and mirror. We had to wait for another bus to come and the policie to arrive and take a report. Below is a picture of the guest house of the Belvedere as well as a close up of an angel ornament on the front gate of the palace holding the "Golden Fleece".

After the unexpected adventure we took a new bus through the sites of Wien to point out museums and monuments that would be interesting to visit. I want to see the statue of the Russian soldier that helped “liberate” Austria after WWII as well as the Secession Building with its gold dome. We took the bus into the forest of Wien, up to the church that was used to give last mass before the Poles helped narrowly save Veinna during siege in 1683. From that church you can see the entire countryside of Wien and one must use their imagination to picture two armies advancing down the hill to stop the Turks nearly successful invasion. The other really impressive site that we visited was the eclectic housing project by the artist Friendensreich Hundertwasser. His focuses in art were on bright colors, organic forms, and incontinuity in shapes, colors and sizes. The Hundertwasserhaus has an uneven walkway with numerous types of bricks and stones (including headstones!), a roof and windows that have trees and shrubs growing out of it, and a multi-colored façade that he encouraged tenants to help paint. Hundertwasser is also known for his work on Wien’s incinerator, which he decorated with various colored tile and bright materials. The artist died in New Zealand in 2000, which was a great loss for Wien, but his architecture and ideas have remained a popular part of the country’s cultural heritage.

All of theses places and more will be visited in the near future. After the tour I decided to go back to my room because I was not feeling well after eating torte and drinking coffee for both breakfast and my “dessert” after lunch. There is saying that one can have to much of a good thing, and that is definitely the case for torte and espresso. I will write again soon and hope that all is well!