The Hawelka opened in 1939 on Dorotheergasse and has not changed its interior in any meaningful way since. The walls are tobacco-coloured from decades of smoke, the banquettes are worn to the correct depth, the lighting operates at the level where reading is possible but comfortable illumination is not the point. Günter and Josephine Hawelka ran the café for more than sixty years; Hundertwasser and Kokoschka were regulars, not as a marketing claim but as a fact of the neighbourhood. The Buchteln — sweet filled buns — come out after ten in the evening and are the correct order. Less grand than Café Central, more alive, darker, more itself.
Innere Stadt, Vienna, Austria