Tme travel within the Ringstrasse

by Alyssa Henrickson (United States of America)

Making a local connection Austria

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Sitting in a kaffeehaus within the perimeter of the capital's ringstrasse, I couldn't help but feel as if I had stepped back in time to turn-of-the-century Vienna. With the afternoon light streaming in from the majestic windows, the marble veins within the walls were illuminated to exaggerate their immaculate design. Across the dining room sat an elderly man dressed in his Sunday best, sipping his kaffee mit milch and reading an article from the day's Zeitung. With no time constraints, he was perfectly content to enjoy his newspaper from the first page to the last. I thought back to my American coffeehouses and noted the stark differences in atmosphere - the vicious clicking on laptops, the loud discussions between parents cramming in a week's worth of updates into a 30 minute window sandwiched between their child's morning kindergarten and piano lesson. I had to believe that the 19th century contentment of the Austrian kaffeehaus was still not completely elusive to the growing American way of life. With the final sip of my latte and the finalizing of my tip to the waiter, I nodded at the gentleman as I walked by to catch my plane back home.