EuroLife: Day 106

And now for another post about Leipzig! This one should, if I can manage it, be brief. As I said a few days ago, Michael and I went for coffee in one of the oldest coffee houses in Europe. Well, depending on who you believe, it is first or second oldest continuously running coffee house in the world! They first served coffee in 1694, though the building itself is much older than that. It's a beautiful building, actually. (You can see a nice picture of it at http://www.coffebaum.de/)

There are three separate floors, each with a distinct atmosphere, and a coffee museum as well. The museum seemed to be very interesting--they had a number if very cool artifacts--but as it was written entirely in German, I had some trouble following the exhibits. (It's one thing to read Harry Potter und der Gefangene von Askaban, and another entirely to read pages of history on coffee.)

We sat on the third floor, which is a lovely cafe. (There is a complete restaurant on a lower floor as well.) Michael had a Turkish coffee, I had a delicious Hot Chocolate and, of course, we shared a pastry. My hot chocolate was very interesting, actually. It tasted as if it was not at all sweetened, but it was delicious. Surely it must have been sweetened some; pure, unsweetened chocolate is not at all delicious. Still, it was the least sweet hot chocolate I've ever had and it still managed to be absolutely delicious. (Michael actually said "If hot chocolate always tasted like this, I'd drink it all the time.")

Despite how delicious the hot chocolate was, I was a bit sad to be in a historic, wonderful coffee shop and to hate coffee. When Michael's Turkish Coffee came out, I had the fleeting thought "Ooh, maybe I'll just have a sip!" (I have only had Turkish Coffee once, but I loved it.) Then, the waitress passed it to him under my nose, and that thought went out the window. It's so strange to hate even the smell of something that I've loved for so long.

Michael tells me that it was an excellent coffee. If you've never had Turkish Coffee before, it's quite unlike American drip coffee. It's very strong, served in an espresso cup, and the grounds remain in the coffee. They sit nicely at the bottom of your glass, provided you are careful not to tip the thing to severely. When Michael was finished, he started playing with the coffee grounds and was really very impressed with what they looked like. (Thick, black mud to be perfectly honest.) We had to share!

One more thing: If you look at the windows in the picture of Michael, you get a sense of how old this building is. The glass was so warped, the view of the outside was tremendously distorted. I love old glass.