It is well known that Albert Einstein was born in Ulm in 1879, but his family moved almost immediately to Munich where his father Hermann and his uncle Jakob set up a small engineering company. Later he went to Milan, and he studied in Zurich. It is much less well known that for a few years Jules Shloer, who was then studying mathematics but later went on to found the famous soft drink company, lived in an apartment block next to Einstein. Not far away was a corner shop, with a cramped partitioned section at the rear which served as a café. Here Einstein and Shloer would often meet, to drink coffee and talk. The shop was run by an Italian immigrant, Antonio Mezzi, and the only kind of coffee that he served was thick, dark, and enormously strong, made from beans imported from one particular Arabian village. In later life Shloer and Einstein both attributed their success to the remarkable mental clarity induced by Mr Mezzi's special coffee.