Saly Noémi: Café?! Változatok és változások Időszaki kiállítás 2007. február–május (Budapest, 2007)

turn of I he last century and also during the inter-war period, though it was dwindling by then. None of the present café proprietors has dared to test, in a 'grand café' space, how u would lare if it offered only coffee and the traditional café drinks, cold cuts, soft-boiled and scrambled eggs. I believe there is a chance such an attempt might succeed; in many of my regular haunts in Vienna, it seems to have stood the test. Meanwhile, however, the fact remains that the main inheritors of the calé spirit in Budapest today are the small or medium sized coffee slums, with or without grilling facilities, and - ill may be permitted to voice my own inclinations - our dowdy but beautiful, sole surviving real espresso bar, lovable beyond any other, more or less unchanged since l%2: the Bambi. Finally, here too, 1 would draw attention to one of the principal inadequacies ol the new era. As opposed to many other professions resuscitated (rom the (halD dead, which often re-established professional trade associations years ago, we see no sign of any such intention among Budapest café proprietors today. True, the coffee places of today - as we have seen - or those places that call themselves coffee houses, cafés or coffee shops are too diverse to be drawn together under uniform trade law regulations in the mode of the old cafés. It is also self-evident that a new organisation safeguarding professional interests could not be established or operated according to the model ol the highly respected old trade association of café proprietors. Yet there is great need for such an organisation. As if there were not enough already, situations will proliferate where the authority's superiority in strength exploits individuals whose own capacity' to assert their interests is negligible; but a strong professional organisation representing their interests could achieve something. The history of the Professional Trade Association ol Budapest Cafe Proprietors provides ample example and prool of this. Beyond extremely efficient protection ol interests, the organisation was also a symbolic expression ol the social status ol the calé owning community. Today, it would give this status to a social layer on the way to being created again, a layer so important lor the city.