I almost feel the velvety fabric of the chair, the cold marble of the table, the spoon that is initially cold, but gets warm. Prominent in the sound of the Kaffeehaus are the voices - unfamiliar voices, familiar voices, my own voice among them. The Wiener Kaffeehaus , the Vienna coffee house, has been said to be a thing of the past. These coffee house frequenters of the past turn up in each other's reminiscences. Critical statements about contemporaries are mellowed by a feeling of regret for shared experiences.
Renowned writers speculate about the reasons for the decline of coffee houses.
It is a fact that after World War II, many coffee houses closed. People had no money to spend. That was the spirit of efficiency and speed. Vienna coffee brewers had been proud of their brewing skills since coffee was introduced to Vienna by Turkish invaders, and coffee house waiters, who had always had an important and dignified role in the Kaffeehaus , cultivated different ways to serve the coffee just right, naming shades of brown, the sizes of the cups, and variations in temperature and special ingredients from whipped cream to different alcoholica. So the change from Kaffeehaus to Espresso was a change in velocity, and a transition from variety to homogeneity.