Countdown to the Equinox

Ostensibly, the day and night will be equal tomorrow.  I'm still reeling from the time change.  Especially my stomach takes a week or so to adjust.  

It's very similar to jet-lag.  I'd fly to Vienna and within a few days be kinda OK with my sleep cycle, but my appetite would betray me.  I'd crave breakfast at midnight and awaken to a need for dinner.  Who knows what happened to lunchtime.  

At least the VIC cafe was a full-service, multi-national one.  You could get a steak and eggs at 7:00 a.m. or a turkey sandwich at 3:00 p.m.  First and foremost, you could get a wicked strong mélange anytime.  In Vienna, a mélange was sort of an up-side-down cappucino--milk foam in first, then espresso.  

Vienna has a long history with coffee going back to the 1683 Battle of Vienna.  Culinary legend has it that  the residents of Vienna discovered many bags of coffee in the abandoned Ottoman encampment. The story goes on that, using this captured stock, Franciszek Jerzy Kulczycki opened the first coffeehouse in Vienna and one of his ideas was to serve coffee with milk, a practice that was unknown in the Islamic world.  However, this story was first mentioned in 1783; the first coffeehouse in Vienna had been established by the Armenian Johannes Theodat in 1685.  

Another more likely story is that the captured stock of bitter coffee was mixed with sugar and steamed milk to produce a drink that was named Cappuccino (or kapuziner, in German) either in honor of the Capuchin Franciscan Marco d'Aviano who had inspired the Catholic forces to unity and defense of Vienna during the seige or because the Capuchin priest had a role in inventing it.

Here Travel Schlepp enjoys a gelato in Turin, Italy after a Cappuccino...

I am reminded when I glance at my covid spreadsheet that it's been a year to the day since Caro & I had our last indoor lunch at Annie's Soup Kitchen before the Governor shut things down.  I've kept track of Covid-19 cases at the state, county, and zipcode level along with short notes on who we might have had contact with.  It makes for an interesting retrospective diary of the pandemic year.