Well the grumpy waiters are an important part of the Viennese caffès.

Moved to Vienna somewhat recently. A lot of these places are really nice to just sit down and read at. The ones that have adapted a little more to our modern requirements and implemented wifi and charging ports are also pretty great to sit down and work in. I also like that they double as cozy pubs for the evening, when they are really nice to hang in imo. The tourists are a bit of an issue though because they take up a lot of space in these cafe's and also have probably resulted in prices getting higher and service getting more and more grumpy (although the grumpy waiter is already a Viennese staple). As a non-german speaker I get mistaken for a tourist and (understandably) get a pretty cold treatment from the staff. You're definitely better of looking for these places outside of the first district xD

I am from Vienna and many of your points are true. Young people, and that definitely includes me, very rarely do frequent them at all. It's kinda like the traditional Viennese Würstelstände that are kept alive by older people and tourists and hence that many of them closed down except in very touristy areas. In case of the Würstelstände I do like what they offer, but as they rarely are any young people (and kebap is very popular here and obviously superior) it would feel weird for me going there and I would never even be brave enough to suggest it to my friends. It's similar with the traditional cafés whose majority you can also find in like 3, 4 districts of Vienna but in most it's Starbucks and other international café shops that dominate the city. And thereby together with the availability of smartphones and yes, a shortening attention span, these traditional café houses aren't really needed anymore for most of the local population (however I am still happy that they exist, just for the sake of it)

Austrian/part-time viennese here: I am not one for going out a lot and those coffee houses are usually too expensive for someone who isn't a coffee enthusiast. However, I WILL say that these places make a great location for a second or third date or a less formal meeting with business partners. But really, you have to think about these places as part of a theme park, together with Schönbrunn, the Hofburg and other tourist attractions in Vienna. Amusement or water parks in Florida aren't THAT appealing to locals either, but that isn't their target audience. These coffee houses try to be a time capsule and modernizing them would just turn them into a starbucks with tables serviced by grumpy waiters.

I’m a Highschool student here in Vienna and I personally love to go to these coffeehouses (sometimes for studying and sometimes just for fun) Regarding the grumpy waiters, I think that’s just Vienna in general sometimes (we’re the most unfriendly city in the world)

I love café culture of Vienna. In Portugal 🇵🇹 there is a very strong café and Pastelarias culture. In Lisbon the Café -pastelaria are a Must to try once in your life time. You should go there and try it.

I'd say that the younger generation usually frequents coffe shops in their area. To me at least going to the famous ones (like landmann or sacher) is more like a thing we do when friends or family visit.

Man, I'm astonished that for someone with a small channel has this much skill at making thumbnails. Props to you.

Great Video, as someone who was born and grew up in Vienna I would say that cafes here arent really frequented any more by young people, since they are kinda expensive, especially in the center, when you go out of the center a bit, cafes are sometimes a nice way to get drunk in the evening and I think thats the most usual way young people go to them, (for example cafe europa)

Viennese here. Some of the classic Wiener Kaffeehäuser have turned into tourist traps, especially in the 1. district. That said, most of the young people I know visit coffeehouses or Beisl (Old pub) regularly. Tough it's getting less and less every year, due to inflation and living cost crisis. The real reason why coffeehouses aren't what they used to be, is because they were considered living rooms by the locals. Apartments were often shared and cramped, so they met and socialized at the coffeehouses. For the price of a coffee, you had a place to hang out for the day. Nowadays, the housing situation has gotten better and there are a lot of other options in Vienna to spend your free time at.

Student from Vienna here. The traditional famous cafes are mostly kept alive by tourists (while also charging them insane prices), rent has become much more expensive and younger people generally like to visit the current hype spots from insta/tiktok where they can take pics in the fancy interior with their cheesecake/matcha whatever.

Viennese here, I agree partly, but also disagree at the same time. Coffee houses are all over the city, so there are not only the fancy inner-city tourist traps you have shown, although mostly beautiful and resembling the past...so...coffee houses are still being used as a social hub, when I was at the university, I went to our local coffee house to study, like many others there. So, apart from "working", new friends were found. Or now, after work, we casually meet up, because you always will find someone there. Or the newspaper ;) So, I think it still works as a social meeting point, even without tourists. Which is something I like a lot. No need for reserving tables, having dinner or having the pressure to leave after an hour or so. Personally, i am avoiding the well-known inner city cafes because of obvious reasons (no seats available, expensive). But there are LOTS of cafes, so chances are always good. btw, the grumpy waiters are a must ;) Btw part 2, the story with Armenians, Turks etc is that within the very large entourage of Turkish troops were many civilians to traded with locals and so on. It was not like the siege you think it was, outside th3 city walls there were also folks living and the turkish army had obviously no interest in starving, slaughtering them or whatever. So life went on and when the Turkish Army was defeated, some Armenian guys in the trading business stayed and opened a coffee shop. That´s the part of the legend I know, at least ;)

Love your videos! You're due to be huge in this culinary history content niche

Just visited Vienna for the first time. My local friend took me to Cafe Central for breakfast. No queue. ... and also to Café Schopenhauer cafe/ bookstore a couple of times. Staudgasse 1.

Your videos are amazing! Keep on with the good work!

When I was a kid I heard the "Coffee found in the Turkish camp gave rise to the Coffee Houses" story and believed it for years, it is now debunked. The elements you mention are all true. Most people have their own favorite Coffee House, my mom's was Aïda, she used to meet with her friends there once a week. My dad's was Landtmann, handy because it was a stone's throw away from his ophthalmologist; mine was Sacher but it's been a tourist trap for decades, so now I guess it's Hawelka. I left Vienna as a young man decades ago but return whenever I can.

I live in Vienna and I only go to those cafes when friends come for tourism. Normally, they are expensive, the waiters are rude (apparently it is part of the charm according to my Austrian friends), the coffee is bad. They are beautiful, but outside tourism I do not see the appeal. I like to think that in the old days the atmosphere was vibrant and that is how they became famous. Now they are pretty disappointing.

Man I love your videos, keep doing what you're doing!

I agree that these place where you can stay aren't common now. You can stay a long Time in a café on France but i think i would be rude to stay more than one hour with only one café. Interesstingly enough, you can stay as long as you want on place like doutor in Japan. It's like a modern café. I also have seen some café in France where you dont pay for the coffee or the food but for the time you spend here , inversing the concept completely . (You're not supposed to eat like an american at an all you can eat buffet of course ) PS: For the comparason between France et Austria architectural style , it have some real bond but i don't remenbered well about it .

I really love these videos!!!

oh you're wild for this one 💀 perfect youtube clickbait title, but if I were to guess, I would think youtube might suppress recommending videos with Hitler in the title Another great video, yeah I've heard a little bit about famous people meeting or working in Vienna's cafes, but never thought much about it. Those cafes looked really cool and I'd love to visit some of them in the future, but yeah it always sucks when something becomes too touristy

You should have a bigger audience, the aesthetic side of your videos is great, you have factual knowledge and everything is so nicely put together, perfect to watch with morning coffee or afternoon tea, I love your content, keep growing your channel, good luck from Poland

This Chanel it's gonna be huge!!! Great content, greetings from México!!!

I really like your channel. I think the content is great and is helped by the deft editing of your videos. Here is a suggestion... perhaps use a gimbal camera or a gimbal for your "walk and talk" sections... barring that perhaps use a stabilizer that is provided in editing software. Cheers and adventure on!

In the 19th Century Architect George Eugene-Haussmann redesigned and transformed the architecture of Napoleon III's Paris from its medieval layout into the modern Second Empire style city that enchants us all now. The Second Empire style became a chief architectural style that influenced the 19th century rebuilding of Vienna and its sister Austro-Hungarian Empire cities of Prague and Budapest while retaining much prior Baroque style architecture. The 2nd Empire style as well as well as additional pseudo-Gothic Art Nouveau was used in Vienna in multiple buildings when the Ringstrasse ( the grand circular road with its grand buildings), "The Ring", was re developed beginning after 1858. The opera house, the Vienna Staatsoper was a conglomeration of Second Enpire and French Renaissance styles bound into an architectural harmony. So that sense uncertain familiarity that you expressed when walking through Vienna comes from this common melding of the then common 19th century architectural styles seen in the great European cities. What we now call old Vienna, old Paris, Old Prague, was developed with the burst of great developing industrial wealth seen throughout Europe in the latter half of the 19th Century, when you would have called those cities, "New Paris", "New Vienna", etc. Thanks for you video. Next time, if there is a next visit to Vienna, please actually talk about how the coffee's tasted.

Read Friedrich Torberg's TANTE JOLESCH books (if you read German). They give a fabulous description and background about Vienna's cafes and all the literati, artists, musicians and famous wits that were found there.

I actually love the cafe coulter in Vienna because of the history architecture and paisstrie not for the Cafe themselves

Awesome video. Thanks for sharing.

Fuming that I went to Vienna two years ago without knowing about these 😂

I think there's a tendency of people in Vienna who do not use coffee houses to assume there's been a general decline but it isn't something I've really seen. The customer-base tends to be older, because younger people have less stable finances, but that isn't universal. One can often find younger queer people in Cafe Savoy, for example. It's true that first district cafes tend to have more tourists and be sustained by that but, having said that, the division between local places and tourist places is much less pronounced in Vienna than in similar cities. Sure, Central and Demel are largely aimed at tourists but you'll still get a mix of locals and tourists even at first district cafes like Korb. And outside of the first district, tourists are less common but coffee houses still quite prevalent. They remain a part of locals lives and those cafes outside the first district retain the 'sit and stay' philosophy. Rent and cost of living are an issue for these places too, as they are for any venue, but also, again, less so in Vienna. Rent is high but lower than one might expect for a city of more than 2 million, especially if one has grown up in Vienna or been here long enough to benefit from a city flat (i have a friend who pays less than €600 a month for a 1-bedroom flat with a balcony next to a tram stop). But what increases there have been are also not necessarily bad for coffee houses. Myself and lots of friends have had to take on smaller flats or more flatmates as time has gone on to save money but this has made coffee houses more attractive as a place to meet if one has a limited but stable and predictable income. One can also find the image of the Viennese coffee house in things that don't call themselves that. More modern cafes often still serve the same kinds of drinks and Viennese confections remain popular. This also connects to age. You'll find more younger people in 'bars' but the difference between a cafe and bar in Vienna is extremely thin, where a division exists at all. Additionally, one should also consider Turkish cafes in the city here, which still maintain a strong customer-base and serve many of the same functions and often blend the coffee cultures of both countries. Tl;dr: some have closed and cafes struggle globally and in Vienna but they remain a part of people's lives and that doesn't seem set to change.

You're so intelligent and well informed

ima foreigner living in Vienna and never been to Cafe Central. why ? because the queue is about 2 blocks long every time i pass by.. im not willing to wait 3 hours !!! to get a coffee no matter the history of the coffee house... how did you film the entrance with no queue ?it has to be at 6 in the morning or something.. and i work in the 1st district so idkn wtf is wrong with cafe central that has queues like that

I need to see more cafes

I visited Vienna years ago and I can completely relate to the arrogance of the waiters! I speak German almost perfectly and I was with a male colleague at Cafe Central. After we were done, I requested the waiter to get the bill...thrice. He understood, responded by saying he would get it, but the bill never arrived until my male companion asked for it 😅 I didn't know females weren't allowed inside cafe houses until the late 19th century. This somehow seems to explain the waiter's odd behaviour 😅

They only do bad things if they lose and only great things if they win!

Stopped the video as soon as I heard Expresso

It’s believed Yemenis discovered coffee and used it to stay awake all night worshiping Allāh

Let’s be real. Young people don’t read!

I'll never for the life of me understand why someone who knows nothing about a place thinks they should go there, film themselves saying what they read on wikipedia, and present it to the world as if they were some kind of authority. Then you have the audacity to say at the end that you 'don't know how local people feel about coffeehouses these days.' Gee, maybe you could have asked some folks when you were there? You don't address the difference between a Kaffeehaus and a Konditorei - even though some of your footage is clearly from examples of the latter rather than the former. You also don't mention Cafe Sperl, where Hitler actually frequented and which is still around, or that the Cafe Central of lore was located in a different location down the street. I live in Vienna and - yes - some coffeehouses have become the more well-frequented, touristy ones, but they are not all like that. The country's intelligentsia as well as its political leaders and journalists can all regularly be found in the city's cafes. Some of the shabbier, out-of-the-way locations have struggled financially as of late, but the story is much more nuanced than you present. I also find the title of the video particularly clickbait-y, not to mention something a bit rude about labeling a cultural heritage as 'weird.'