As an American, Jean-Paul Lorimer was always annoyed or embarrassed, or both, every time he arrived at Vienna’s international airport. The first thing one saw when entering the terminal was a Starbucks kiosk.
The arrogance of Americans to sell coffee in Vienna!
With such a lurid red neon sign!
Dr. Jean-Paul Lorimer, Ph.D.—a very black man of forty-six who was somewhat squat, completely bald, spoke in a nasal tone, and wore the latest in European fashion, including tiny black-framed glasses and Italian loafers in which he more waddled than walked—had written his doctoral thesis on Central European history.
He knew there had been coffee in Europe as early as 1600.
Dr. Lorimer also knew that after the siege of Vienna in 1683, the fleeing Turkish Army left behind bags of
“black fodder.” Franz Georg Kolschitzky, a Viennese who had lived in Turkey, recognized it as coffee.
Kolschitzky promptly opened the first coffeehouse. It offered free newspapers for his customers to read while
they were drinking his coffee, which he refined by straining out the grounds and adding milk and sugar.
It was an immediate success, and coffee almost immediately became a part of cultured society in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. And spread from there around the world.
