Do you know that thing about the specialty coffee where you are forbidden to spend more than x time with your laptop? Well, there was a moment in Europe when a writer could spend half a day occupying a table, order little, receive correspondence, and turn a coffee house into an office without anyone suggesting they free up the seat. Peter Altenberg went so far as to use the Café Central in Vienna as an address; Sartre and Beauvoir worked for hours in the Flore; in Budapest, cafés supplied paper and ink to their literary patrons. The idea of laptop bans is a sign of our times.
The culture of the great European café belongs to a time when sitting in public was an activity in itself. People would go to read newspapers, discuss, conspire, write, flirt, and check who had entered through the door. Its architecture was not secondary either: mirrors, velvets, marble, lamps, frescoes, and waiters capable of remembering a regular’s order.
Many of those venues disappeared. Others survived and today face a curious contradiction: the greater their fame, the harder it is to find within them that everyday life that made them famous. Still, all of these deserve a visit.
