"Sagxons" and "Goffee"

The land of the Saxons is situated around Dresden and Leipzig. Dresden is its cultural centre while Leipzig is the moneyed one. Even in earlier centuries Leipzig's marketfair was visited by merchants from all of Europe, and also by sellers from outside Europe, as the passion for drinking coffee proves.

That early love has left its traces in various places. The most well known is probably the Coffee Contata by J. S. Bach. Yes, what should parents do whose children were serfs to that destructive drug-taking, besides complaining through song. Possibly you know that song:

C A F F E E, trink nicht so viel Caffee!
Nicht für Kinder ist der Türkentrank,
schwächt die Nerven, macht dich blaß und krank.
Sei doch kein Musulman, der das nicht lassen kann!

With more difficulty one finds a typically Saxon expression like "Bliemchengaffe", i.e., flower coffee. Do you divine the significance of this word? No? Then it's probable that, because you are rich enough to make coffee so strong, you can't see through it to the flowers on the bottom of your cup of Meissen china. Or you are too poor to have any Meissen china. (Meißen).

That seems to be a contradiction, that the ancestral Saxons lacked money for coffee, but not for the valuable china. But certainly coffee at that time was still not obtainable in the supermarket for 5.99 Marks a pound. And on the other hand the cups with the two swords beneath could be bought in the country, where they were produced. For the rest, the typical "Goffee-Sagxon" drinks coffee black as the soul and sweet as love.

Wolfram Diestel, Leipzig, Germany
diestel@rzaix340.rz.uni-leipzig.de

English translation by:
Marvin Entz, Vancouver, Canada