Austrian Café culture

A Note about Austrian café culture: Coffee houses -- Kaffeehäuser -- are a tradition dating back to the early 19th century. Over the past couple hundred years they have become an integral part of the Austrian social scene, meeting places par excellence for a population addicted as much to caffeine as to pastries. In the mornings, you see elderly women hunched over coffee and strudel, the afternoon crowd tends to be office workers on coffee breaks, and in the evening it's lovers seeking a quiet corner to be with one another, possibly before carrying on to a noisy bar, club, or disco. The late-night crowd is usually made up of theater- or concert-goers who come to chat about the performance.

Coffee is served in a variety of styles, particularly in the coffeehouses of Vienna. An Austrian Mokka or kleiner Schwarzer is similar to espresso, but is extracted more slowly. From the Mokka are prepared other styles:

• großer Schwarzer - a double Mokka
• kleiner Brauner or großer Brauner - single or double Mokka plus milk
• Verlängerter - "lengthened" (i.e. diluted) Mokka plus milk
• Melange - half Mokka, half heated milk, often topped with foamed milk
• Franziskaner - Melange topped with whipped cream not foamed milk
• Kapuziner - kleiner Schwarzer plus a few drops of whipped cream
• Einspänner - großer Schwarzer topped with whipped cream