Then there is the Café des Westens in Kuerfuerstendamm, the old one, where dreamers and poets congregate. It is called also Café Groessenwahn, which means that persons suffering from an exaggerated ego are conspicuous by their presence and their long hair.
At almost every table one may find a poet who has written a play that is bound to enrich its author and any man of means who will put up the money to build a new theater in which to produce it.
Saxony and Thuringia are proverbial hotbeds of coffee lovers. It is said that in Saxony there are more coffee drinkers to the square inch and more cups to the single coffee bean than anywhere else upon earth. The Saxons like their coffee, but seem to be afraid it may be too strong for them. So, when over their cups, they always make certain they can see bottom before raising the steaming bowl to the lip.
Von Liebig's method of making coffee, whereby three-fourths of the quantity to be used is first boiled for ten or fifteen minutes, and the remainder added for a six-minute steeping or infusion, is religiously followed by some housekeepers. Von Liebig advocated coating the bean with sugar. In some families, fats, eggs, and egg-shells are used to settle and to clarify the beverage.
Café Bauer, Unter den Linden, Berlin
Coffee in Germany is better cooked (roasted) and more scientifically prepared than in many other European countries. In recent years, during the World War and since, however, there has been an amazing increase in the use of coffee substitutes, so that the German cup of coffee is not the pure delight it was once.
Greece. Coffee is the most popular and most extensively used non-alcoholic beverage in Greece, as it is throughout the Near East. Its annual per capita consumption there is about two pounds, two-thirds of the supply coming via Austria and France, Brazil furnishing direct the bulk of the remaining third.
Coffee is given a high or city roast, and is used almost entirely in powdered form. It is prepared for consumption principally in the Turkish demi-tasse way. Finely ground coffee is used even in making ordinary table, or breakfast, coffee. In private houses the cylindrical brass hand-grinders, manufactured in Constantinople, are mostly used. In many of the coffee houses in the villages and country towns throughout Greece and the Levant, a heavy iron pestle, wielded by a strong man, is employed to pulverize the grains in a heavy stone or marble mortar; while the poorer homes use a small brass pestle and mortar, also manufactured in Turkey.