It is essential to tell about how a student who came up many years ago managed to engage the rather great Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard in an unforgettable conversation in the “Café Bräunerhof” in Vienna, but more on that later.

This story is supposed to begin in Linz, at the address Promenade 16, where the “Café Traxlmayr” is located, and has been for five generations or almost 150 years.

Somewhat older is by Austrian standards - and these are not insignificant when it comes to coffee houses - only the "Café Thomaselli" in Salzburg, which has belonged to the eponymous family since 1852 in alternating generations.

Michael Martens

Correspondent for Southeast European countries based in Vienna.

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However, the range of print media in “Traxlmayr” is likely to be unsurpassed by any standard.

An Austrian coffee house, as you know, has a selection of newspapers.

However, the once rich offer is sometimes quite meager in some restaurants.

Sometimes there are no more international newspapers at all, and as far as typical country-specific print products are concerned, the range on display in some places, in categorical terms, beats the barrel out of the crown.

There are even reports of coffee houses in which there are no longer any printed newspapers at all.

What shady people may gather there, and why?

Only three newspapers at a time, please!

Fortunately, “Traxlmayr” has nothing in common with such establishments. The menu includes the menu item “Reading” on a whole page, and rightly so. Around 100 current issues of various daily newspapers and journals are available here. Whether you want the Corriere della Sera, Le Monde, the New York Times, the Linzer Rundschau, the Večernji List from Zagreb, the Neue Zürcher or the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung explained to you: the most popular are to avoid quarrels Several sheets available. The Oberösterreichische Nachrichten delivers eight copies a day to the “Traxlmayr”, but there are at least two of the FAZ. This is also necessary because even in the best houses there is always someone like the gentleman at table 41 who hides behind half a cubic meter of newspapers,like there's no tomorrow Behind his paper fortress he has been holding on to the standard for a good half an hour, but is still hogging half a dozen more sheets, although the menu says: Only three newspapers at a time, please!

But even the insatiable won't let the ephemeris treasure of “Traxlmayr” melt away.

Today, for example, the Salzburger Nachrichten is still available, as is the Upper Austrian Volksblatt, the Kurier and the Wiener Zeitung.

In a pinch, a South German would also be there.

In addition, more than a dozen weekly papers, three of which are from Hamburg alone.

19,000 euros for newspaper subscriptions

"Until some time ago we also had a Czech newspaper, but the delivery was unfortunately stopped," says Ulrich Traxlmayr, who runs the coffee house founded by his great-great-grandfather with his wife and never forgets to greet or greet regulars attentively during the conversation saying goodbye. "We now have a French newspaper, but no longer a Czech one - although the Czech Republic is only 30 kilometers from here," regrets Mr. Traxlmayr. If it were up to him, a Czech paper would still be on display in his house: “If you want to be a coffee house, you need a wide range of newspapers. That shouldn't be an economic question. ”Of course it is. Before the pandemic, his house spent more than 19,000 euros annually on newspaper subscriptions, says Mr. Traxlmayr,and the brilliant selection suggests that it will be similar again this year.