entry 2004
No, Not Bourbon and Coffee. Bourbon Coffee.
This is exactly what the home page blurb for Caffè Borbone has up in English:
A monday morning, on the 10th of May 1984, Charles of Borbon, before coming to Tokio, wanted to stop in the convent of Minimi Friars, just outside Porta Capitone. He wanted to taste that dark beverage, rich of intense scents, with strong and decided taste, that was told to possess the property to strengthen the body and the soul, and that was prepared so scrupulously by the friars for the new King. That was the period during the which the Neapolitan taste in preparing the coffee was born. And 2500 years later, the technologies change and get better, but the passion and the care in preparing the real coffee in the Neapolitan way is stronger for us, as only neapolitan people are able to do.
Astute historians will note
that the merry prankster webmeister (whose grandfather
apparently took two Berlitz lessons in English in 1949) is
goofing around. I looked at the Italian page and it has
the correct “ Napoli” for “Tokio” and, correctly, “Porta
Capuana” for “Capitone” (a large eel). It also has the
correct “250 years” for “2500” years. Strangely, however,
the date is wrong even in the Italian, which has “1894”
and not “1984.” The correct year for Charles III of Bourbon to have
entered Naples as the new king would have been 1734. (Of
course, there was
a descendant Charles of Bourbon
alive in 1984, but his kingdom had long since gone belly
up.) (Interestingly —or maybe not— that wrong date, 1894,
is the year in which the last Bourbon king of Naples, Francis II, the
great-great-grandson of the first Bourbon king, died;
furthermore, I will bet you one coffee with lots of
Bourbon in it that the people who run that website don't
know that.)
It appears
to be the real Charles III (simply called Charles of
Bourbon), the benevolent and capable first king of the
Bourbon dynasty. He's better looking than his son, the
moronic Ferdinand —the Lout King, King Big Nose, who
used to wander down to the harbor and help the fisherman
sell their wares after the morning’s catch. Now
his old man stares out at you from the billboard next to
the filling station, holds up his cup of Caffè Borbone and
asks, “And you? —What do you drink?” Now he’s selling
coffee. He would not be amused.
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