I recently discovered in Austria, or was it in Hungary? that an Americano is a cup of drip coffee. What Starbucks calls an Americano is actually a doppo longo, made in an espresso machine. But I suppose that as long as Starbucks can sell you a cup of coffee, they don’t really give a crap about being technically accurate. However, it seems that Starbucks is dwindling here, even though they’re still everywhere, only less so these days. They’re even in Europe, which is puzzling, until you realize that anything from here is semi-exotic over there. I saw so many NY ball caps there I was flabbergasted. I wonder of any of the wearers of those caps are aware that the NY stands for the Yankees baseball team?
All that aside, most of the cafes I saw on a recent jaunt to Budapest and Vienna, were not chain stores but locally owned small cafes. Although I no longer drink coffee because it disagrees with my stomach, I nevertheless had a few lattes in Buda and Vienna, which did me no harm and were terribly delicious. Here is a lovely bookshop cafe in Budapest that drew me in to have a snoop. There were a few typewriters in the window, so I couldn’t very well not go in.
As for the cafe life, one could live it to the full in Budapest or Vienna, if one could stand drinking that much coffee, or – heavens! that much lager beer. Yes, cafes sell beer there. Beer is not a crime in Europe it seems. Sadly, it all tastes the same, pretty much, but it is beer after all.
Although I had a small sketchbook with me the whole time, I was generally too busy having coffee, beer, langos, goulash, and walking my butt off all day long, to bother to get out the watercolours. But one fine afternoon I was wandering around on my own in the north part of Vienna and I sat down for a beer at a cafe and made a sketch. There were cafes on either side of my cafe, and everywhere there were people in theses cafes. When I returned home I was out downtown walking and I passed a number of sidewalk cafes, all of which were empty. It seems that all we do here is work! Where are all the cafe crowds?
nathanguitars 