That glass of water in Viennese coffeehouses has been under fire for a number of years. True, you still get one small glass of the fabulous Viennese tap water with your coffee, but you can no longer count on it being considered “perfectly normal to ask for another glass, or even several extra glasses” as my Baedeker’s Vienna assured its readers in 1988.
In fact, a year or two ago, I was breakfasting at Landtmann. Knowing that they had started charging for tap water, I pointed, to be explicit, to the small glass that had come with my coffee and said, “Noch ein Glas Wasser, bitte.” They brought a mini carafe and charged EUR 1.50 for it. A reason not to go back, if you ask me.
In the Kurier, picked up at the supermarket yesterday as the Trafik is still closed, there was a story about precisely this — but Café Landtmann came off better this time. A family had been celebrating the birthday of a great aunt at Landtmann. Once all the others were gone, one family member asked if he might stay for a bit and read the newspapers. The waiter’s answer? “We close at 11 p.m.” (Quite an open invitation these days when, even in Vienna, you are sometimes informed that you have the table for two hours only.)
The author of that piece, Wolfgang Kralicek, is himself the owner of a café and added a story from his own experience. The record for number of glasses of water to one coffee is seven(!). He then writes that the guest in question left such a large tip that he could easily have ordered a second Melange. Just goes to show it’s not always about the money.
ecbinvienna 