Coffee House Culture In Europe

Coffee is no less than a mistress for some people, seducing them into addiction and eventually, leading them to a lifelong love affair. It would not be an exaggeration to say that coffee has bewitched people, irrespective of their position within the social matrix, since ages and continues to do so even today. However, a coffee is not merely a beverage to be consumed. For some, it is a way of life with the day marked the coffee that one consumes and the thoughts that it invokes while for some; it is a way of changing the society. When T.S. Eliot measured his ‘life with coffee spoons’ in his poem ‘The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock’, he revealed the triviality and anxiety of human existence. Thus, Coffee, as a beverage, has held an important role in the domain of human imagination as well as reality. Vienna Apartments

 

 

An important characteristic feature of Coffee is the fact that it gathers crowd. The smells of coffee and thoughts have brought about significant changes in the human history and time stands as testimony to the fact. Coffee houses have been the catalysts in bringing about small and big revolutions and many socio-political and cultural changes within the social demography. This article post aims to shed a little light on the coffee house traditions in Europe.

 

Coffee houses, as a social hub and a cultural centre, emerged during 14^th Century in the Asian country of Turkey. However, coffee houses assumed their importance as the centers of intellectual activity and artistic interests in cities like London and Paris. In the late 17^th and 18^th century, with the acceptance of the individualistic philosophy all over the world, coffee houses emerged as definite ways to assert  one’s presence within the social circles. Scholars like Jean Paul Sartre and Simone De Beauvoir have been associated with the tradition of coffee houses and lent to it a memory of a successful tradition of academic interaction among people of varied social backgrounds, which inspires the circles all around the world even today.

 

History of Coffee Houses in England

 

Within the social circle of England, coffee houses came to assume an importance which was unlike any other social organization. Europeans first discovered coffee in the ‘oriental’ Asia. Initially appreciated for its medicinal qualities within the academic circles, coffee came to be gradually accepted within the social demographic scenery with quite ease. During the 17^th and 18^th century, when England led a series of invasions and established its colonial rule over a significant portion of the world, coffee houses catapulted into little mock parliaments, where the citizens debated on important issues of social and political importance. The coffee culture, then, spread to the rest of Europe and came to be accepted with equal vigor.  

 

The coffee houses of today carry in them a little lightness of spirit and a pint of commercialism in their environs. What began as a rebellion against the mainstream politics and as incubator of ideas and revolutions has now become a way of assimilating oneself with the society. With coffee houses now becoming a part of the holiday itinerary rather than a daily activity, the tradition of coffee houses lies dormant while the trend of acquainting oneself with the underbelly of the place by going to a coffee house is gradually catching up. Cities like Paris, London and Vienna, among many other European cities have now seen a proliferation of holiday homes, which are located in the vicinity of these coffee houses. The holiday apartments Vienna, Paris and other European cities support, are built with the idea to allow the visitors to explore the city in a way, which is new and refreshing in its essence, thus allowing a freshness of sort in one’s perspective of the city.