§ Café Europa, Vienna, autumn 1907. İsmail Kapancı examines a hand-
colored postcard depicting street life near the Kaiser-Franz-Josef Bridge.
Red electric tramway cars share the streets with sepia horse carriages,
their image blurred by movement. Sharply dressed men, wearing hats and
topcoats, and women in long black dresses, wearing hats and carrying
umbrellas, pass one another. One man stands in the middle of the street
between a horse carriage and a tramway car, hand on one hip, looking at
the camera. An overweight man waits to cross the street. Another man
hurries, taking long strides, briefcase in his right hand.
İsmail’s family business, Yusuf Kapancı and Sons (Youssouf Kapandji
et Fils), established in the 1880 s, specializes in the textile trade and does
business in most of Ottoman Europe.^1 By now the firm has branched
out into insurance as well, with an agency in the European quarter of
Salonika.^2 İsmail turns over the postcard and writes on it in Ottoman
Turkish, with a smattering of French words, to his brother Osman in
Salonika:
October 24 , 1907
My dear brother Osman Kapancı Efendi,
Last night I arrived safely in Vienna, twenty minutes late. Today I shall
inform father [Yusuf Kapancı] by telegram of my arrival. And I plan to
set out for Berlin immediately, since I cannot make this decision on my
own. I showed the man next to Café Berlin the print seal that you gave
me. He said it would be ten crowns for a new one, so of course I offered
three crowns. Finally, he said he would not be able to make it for less than
seven crowns. Let me know right away if you are willing to pay six crowns
and I’ll have it made. Later, I asked at several other places. Every single
§ 3 Traveling and Trading
