Cafe Culture

The Viennese love coffee. They love pastries. For some reason, they think both of these taste better while smoking.

I've been doing a lot of reading and research in the past week and I often like to go to the cafes to do this work because I can only concentrate for limited periods of time in the library. Listening to every page turn, every footstep, every keystroke of a student frantically pounding out a term paper is enough to drive me berserk. So I thought what better city than Vienna--the capital of cafe culture--to do some reading and people-watching while enjoying a pot of green tea in one of the city's hundreds of cafes.

Inevitably though, I walk into cafe after cafe and walk right back out again. The rooms are so smoky that I can see a gray-blue haze rising from the tables against the back wall. One cafe owner even thought to display a sign in his window: "Smoking establishment, but non-smokers welcome, too." Oh, thanks for making me feel welcome as I hack up a lung. How thoughtful of you.

Today I finally found a cafe with a non-smoking section, thanks to a Viennese guidebook of eco-friendly establishments. A smoke-free anything is way too much to ask for here, so I was delighted to find a cafe with a non-smoking section. The section was even physically partitioned from the smoking section, as opposed to simply being labeled "rauchfrei". What a concept!

So today I finally enjoyed some green tea, read some more baseline studies for my research, and was able to breathe freely while doing so. I will surely be returning to Welt Cafe soon.

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By the way, the non-smoking section of this cafe was packed! I know of a few other establishments who could improve their business by following this example.

Word of the Day: rauchfrei = smoke-free