Wien Kaffeehaus Culture

Kaffeehaus Culture
The Viennese say they looted sacks of coffee beans after the Turks withdrew following a failed siege. One of many legends says it was soldiers of the Polish-Habsburg army liberating Vienna from the second Turkish siege in 1683, who found a number of sacks with beans that they initially thought were camel feed and wanted to burn. The Polish king Jan III Sobieski granted the sacks to one of his officers named Jerzy Franciszek Kulczycki, who started the first coffee house. This story was published by the Catholic Priest Gottfried Uhlich in 1783. After some experimentation, the legend goes on, Kulczycki added some sugar and milk, and the Viennese coffee tradition was born.
More than 300 years later the Kaffeehaus has become an institution, without comparison in the world. Vienna has developed a whole culture around coffee drinking and elevated it to an all-encompassing attitude of life.