Before this trip, I was unaware of Vienna's café culture. In my opinion, all the good coffee in Europe should be in Italy, and the resulting café culture should also revolve around Italy. Unexpectedly, during the time spent traveling in Central Europe, the time spent in cafes accounted for almost two-thirds of the entire trip, and the remaining one-third consisted of wandering on the road, hanging out in museums and hanging out at opera houses. In other words, except for the occasional check-in of some must-see attractions, most of my trip was spent in cafes.
What kind of magic does the café here have?
11AM Central Cafe
It is a café that is both traditional and popular. Because of the tradition, I became an Internet celebrity.
The location of the Central Café in the center of Vienna, at eleven o'clock in the morning, the door has been lined up not short, it is a sunny day in Vienna, the roads on both sides are passed by gorgeous horse-drawn carriages from time to time, and the light-colored and tall buildings around it are brighter throughout the city. Compared to Prague, which is full of local and fairytale charm, Vienna is an authentic modern metropolis.
The cold winter winds and the empty stomach that hasn't eaten after waking up exacerbate our desire to rush into the café. Fortunately, after 10 minutes, we were sitting close to the central café surrounded by a variety of colorful and delicate desserts, with red velvet chairs and white tablecloths.
Take a deep breath and the aroma of coffee runs through your entire body. For us who were hungry in the cold wind of minus a few degrees Celsius ten minutes ago, this is paradise!
Although the whole café was overcrowded, the man who served us was full of enthusiasm and recommended us food and corresponding portions, and also introduced the difference between different coffees. As we held up our cameras and took pictures everywhere, he also naughtily asked us to photograph him as well. The enthusiasm he exudes is something that only someone who truly loves the job has, not the kind that does it for the sake of responsibility, but a genuine enjoy.
Traditional Viennese coffee coats whipped cream and chocolate syrup over piping hot coffee, and I'm not used to drinking too sweet coffee, but I'm more accustomed to sweetening with black coffee. In the days of Europe, it was as if I had a good reason to drink 5 or 6 cups of coffee a day. Because everyone around me does this, and in Hong Kong, it seems to be classified as different.
We ordered two of the most traditional and Viennese food: pork chops and beef stew. Pork chops are served with small potatoes with skin and lemon. Beef with a red strip of vegetables, of course, has been cooked can not see the appearance of vegetables.
The pork chop is bigger than my whole face, and unlike the Japanese thick pork chop, the Viennese pork chop is a thinly cut one, and the flour is almost as thick as the pork chop. Lemon juice, while degreasing, also spoils the crispness of the flour on the outside.
Beef stew has no flavor other than salty. We also wanted the traditional egg soup here, which also had no taste other than salty.
All in all, when I took the first few bites, I felt that these foods were not bad because I felt fresh. But if you want to keep your appetite high, eat all the food. Almost impossible to accomplish.
If you're hungry for food and pay a lot of attention to the tastes of food, Central Europe is definitely not the best choice for you.
Viennese desserts are much more pleasing than meals. We ordered the signature Kaiserschmarrn, a pancake ripped into small pieces and served with plum sauce.
The pancake here is as fluffy as a chiffon cake, but thicker and more chewy. The skin is slightly burnt and the sweetness is moderate. It is served with a whole pulp of plum sauce, so delicious that you want to slide the whole person into the plum sauce.
The Central Café is also famous in the history of Vienna, and in the early 20th century, some people even wrote a special paper for it, named "THEORY OF THE CAFÉ CENTRAL", which explored the café with great interest, especially how the central café shaped the daily life of the Viennese people.
The Café Central lies on the Viennese latitude at the meridian of loneliness. Its inhabitants are, for the most part, people whose hatred of their fellow human beings is as fierce as their longing for people, who want to be alone but need companionship for (The Central Café is on the city's loneliest meridian, and people who come to this café hate humans as much as they desire humans, and they want to be alone but want companionship)
The paper's positioning of the Viennese café is close to the discussion of the third space that has emerged in recent decades, a place independent of home and workplace, and in Vienna, the use of this space has been a habit of the local population for a long time.
For me, the pleasure of a café is simple, with a hot drink that excites you and relieves sweetness, and a dessert that allows you to temporarily forget all the pains of the world, and that's all. If I have old friends who talk a lot and have a comfortable and spacious environment, I feel that I don't want anything more from life.
The cafes in Vienna met me almost all the time.
2PM Sacher Cafe
It is also an internet celebrity café. On the day I came to Vienna, it was raining coldly, my friend was unwell, and after trying to finish lunch, I said don't go anywhere, find a café and sit down.
Rainy days should have gone nowhere. If you can hold a hot drink in your hand, you will be even happier to sit and watch the raindrops cross the glass. If you can still have a soft dessert as a companion, you can almost orgasm. If there are friends who have known each other for many years to talk about happy things in the past, it is almost a heavenly day.
Heaven is the rainy Vienna today.
Sacher Cafe is on the ground floor of the Sacher Hotel, and the chocolate cake named after the shop once made Princess Sissi fall in love. When we were queuing, we saw the red velvet sofa and the gold-rimmed porcelain outlined inside through the window, so the decoration was just right with a kind of reserved ornateness, and no one should not love such a café.
We drank many, many pots of tea at the Sage Cafe and ate layer after layer of refreshments from mid-afternoon until dusk. The café is lit with crystal lights and the floor-to-ceiling glass is dappled with rain, thank you Sacher Cafe for a very warm afternoon.
That evening, we bought the last two tickets to the VIP box for the last show before the New Year's concert. And it was once the hotel we hated so much that enthusiastically helped us book and deliver the tickets to the room, my friends and I happily ate passion fruit in the room, and after putting on beautiful makeup, we were satisfied when we walked to the State Opera, Vienna was just at the beginning of the lights, the road was like a river of lights, and the red tram seemed to come from the fairy tale world. Everything was just right.
What a lucky day it was!
4PM Cafe Sperl
Lonely Planet says that There will be a piano play at 4 p.m. at Cafe Sperl on Sunday. The day we wanted to go to Cafe Sperl happened to be Sunday, and in order to get there before four o'clock, we quickly walked through Princess Sissi's house in almost an hour. I don't really want to hear the piano playing, but I just want to know what it's like to listen to the piano in a place full of city culture like a café. Wondering how Vienna perfectly blends the two together
Arriving at Cafe Sperl was just four o'clock in the afternoon, but we missed the piano play perfectly, and the waiter said that the performance had just ended ten minutes before we came. No way, I have to sit down and drink a cup of coffee when I come.
I sat down with my back to the piano, and at 1 o'clock in my direction was a man sitting alone with his back to the window, holding a pen and a notebook, in a daze. At three o'clock, the direction seems to be a couple who have been together for many years, two people eating food by themselves, with pleasant faces, but rarely communicating. At nine o'clock in the direction were two young lads, discussing something lively. The whole café seems to be the only two of us who are passers-by, while the others are all homemakers.
This café doesn't have the hustle and bustle of the central café, nor the sophistication and sophistication of the Sager Cafe, but it's the closest thing to local life is the one we've ever been to in Vienna, and it really shows us how the people of Vienna think of a café as their own living room.
The only person who partakes of the most essential charm of this splendid coffeehouse is he who wants nothing there but to be There. (The main charismatic person who knows how to enjoy this wonderful café understands that his whole purpose here is here)
The bonus is that the chocolate waffle in this shop is very delicious, with a thin layer of hazelnut sauce under the crispy skin, which complements the chocolate. The sweetness is also just right.
When we left, the couple's family joined them at three o'clock, and the four of them huddled in a two-seat seater looked very warm, and the family called for egg soup, goulash and other traditional Viennese foods, and started dinner directly here. Cafe Sperl was packed all afternoon.