Coffee Roads that Cross to the Future and Rome

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Coffee's Road to the Future Raising Coffee From the Dead
However one chooses to believe that coffee came to Europe -- abandoned by fleeing Turks at the walls of Vienna after their unsuccessful siege, shipped in by Venetian galleys as prizes of war -- it is indisputable that the stimulating drink caused a revolution in Western Culture. Coffee house quickly spread from Vienna and Venice to Paris and London.
The "cafes," as they came to be known, were far more than our espresso bars. They became the collective depository of those supercmharged explosives of culture -- political thought and radical art.
The European cafe became something of a common man's parliament of free speech and thought. This is why the geniuses of the ages have adored them, from Bach to Voltaire. Far before the advent of the Euro or the bureaucratic corridors of power at the EU in Brussels, they existed in all European nations and were a nexus of thought and energy -- a pan European stimulation by the dark and aromatic bean.
How many revolutions were plotted over cups of cafe coffee; how many schools of art found their beginning at those wobbly, wet tables and on such uncomfortable chairs? It is not hyperbolic to suggest that the cafe and coffee were perhaps second only to the University and the book in bringing enlightenment and a commonality of shared ideals to play in the rapid advancement of Western culture from the 17th century well into the past century.