The Best City to Visit and Revisit In Europe
On September 12, 1683, after weeks of skirmishes and the undermining of the great walls of Vienna by Ottoman sappers, the final battle for the city, the goal of the Turks for over a century, had begun. Over 400,000 Janissary, sipahi, Tatars, and goat-boys smashed into the great relief army of Poles, Germans, Austrians, and a Frenchman* across the Viennese countryside, from the surrounding small fortified villages up to the breaches in the great wall itself.
The day ended with the greatest defeat of the Ottoman Empire; the conflict that started the first stone downhill in the landslide that finally obliterated the remains of the Turkish state at the end of WWI in the West, in 1918 (though the Austrians and Ottomans, strangely, were on the same side by then!)
The loot stretched for miles, including thousands of bags of coffee along with the equipment to brew the strange little beans.
And so began the story of the Austrian coffee houses.
If my heart could stand it, I would drink coffee from the time I got up until the time I finally staggered into bed at 3AM with enough Sangiovese in me to counteract the liters of blackest…
