3 cafés I’m not coming back to

September 6th, 2010, 18:58 | 3 comments

1. Bierhimmel, Berlin

Why: Their laptop ban.

I can understand why a café has a ban on laptop use. First of all, solo visitors who wifi all day long over the same cup of coffee is bad business. Second, solo visitors who facebook all day long is boring customers who don’t contribute to the good atmosphere of the café.

That’s the reason the waitress gave me when she asked my friend to shut down his laptop: It’s simply nicer without laptops.

Again, I can understand the reasoning. But I would add that it’s nicer without mobile phones as well. Or at least I can understand that some people would think that. Personally I would love a café with a ban on too short jeans. Seriously, get a fashion sense. Or a baby carriage ban. Or even better: A baby ban. That would make for a really good atmosphere, according to me, and probably most visitors.

But wait a minute. There is something that destroys a good café atmosphere more than laptops, mobile phones, babys and poor style. Namely: Bans.

Not to mention policing the visitors. Since we didn’t know about the ban, the waitress let us use the computer a little. But after a few minutes she came back and said: “I was serious about the ban. Please shut it down now.”

Nice! NICE! It must be NICE!!!

So we had to go, since our whole purpose with visiting a café was that my friend, who had just come back from Israel, wanted to show me some photos from Elisabeth Ohlson Wallin’s upcoming photo exhibition Jerusalem, in which he participated. We figured a gay café would be the right spot for this private preview of gay culture, but there you go.

At least, put up a sign on the door, please.

2. The Globe, Prague.

Why: Their ban on less than 4 persons per big table.

As you’ve figured by now, I don’t like bans. Not in cafés. As I said, I can understand that guests are more and less good from a café owner’s point of view, when it comes to both money and atmosphere. But you’re a café owner, so you’ll have to put up with the fact that not everyone spends lots of money, that teenagers sip on their teas for too long, and what else.

When I visited The Globe today, they had put up laminated signs on the two bigger tables opposite the bar. The signs read something like this:

Only 4 or more guests at this table!

I didn’t intend to sit there, but as I walked by these signs into the half-empty café, I was overcome by a strong feeling of bad energy. I made a little round through the smaller tables and then returned to the bookshop part of The Globe to regroup.

Yes, café owner, we understand that you want to reserve these tables for bigger groups, in order to make more money. But these signs is not the way to go.

I wonder if they have had problems with solo visitors sitting at these big tables? Which solo visitor would choose those big tables anyway? Actually, I sat at one of them earlier this week with a friend. (Since both of them were empty.) Not anymore. The Globe has become worse and worse since my first visit in 1997 (!), but this was it.

(So what did I do? I ordered a coffee and sat down at a table in the bookshop. No coffee ever came. Touché, The Globe. さようなら)

3. Lucerna, Prague.

Why: Their surveillance cameras.

If there’s something I dislike more than bans in a café, it is surveillance cameras. Lucerna has 17 of them, “for your safety”.

Lucerna is a classic. My Czech boyfriend showed me the rundown movie café back in 1997. We drank Martinis and red wine with the old ladies there while an old man played the piano. Lucerna was our café.

That’s why Lucerna is special to me, and that’s why I keep coming back. In the first years, it was getting even more rundown than it first was. It started to attract thugs and peddlers from the street, since it’s located at Václavské námestí. Then it was renovated and got a big extra section of tables, with fancy chairs. But the ladies stayed throughout these changes, and so did the piano player.

Now they are all gone. The piano is gone too.

I asked my waiter about the cameras. I said I spotted 5 of them, but he said there were 17 in total, and that the purpose probably was to keep track of the staff, to check that they are not lazy. (He informed me he often works from 8.30 am to midnight.) I told him to tell his boss that I, as a guest, don’t like to be surveilled while I have my coffee. He asked me to explain why, so he could give my reasons to his boss, and I said:

Because this is a café! Today you are surveilled in all places: On the street, in the shops, even on the Internet. Cafés are supposed to be a zone where you can relax knowing no one watches you on a monitor. Surveillance cameras simply don’t belong in a café!

I could also have added that the communist secret police of the 1970s would have been proud, since they surveilled the dissidents in Café Slavia in similar ways.

So, you think I’m just negative? I can admit to being sensitive. Small things usually mean a lot to me, but as much in the positive direction as the negative.

Category: English, Personal
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A little holiday

August 23rd, 2010, 23:43 | 11 comments

I went to Prague last Friday. I stay at a couple of friends’ apartment. They are away the whole week and it’s my duty to water the plants and feed René, their intersexual African snail. I don’t have a very good record of keeping plants alive. Never tried the snail thing, so hold your thumbs for me will you.

I’m here to supervise the printing of my next project. No secret what it is, but also no need to get into the details right now – that’s another post. I visited the printing plant today to give them a colour sample for the cover and just to say hello. Turns out they will start printing my thing on Thursday the earliest, or maybe even early next week.

So in the meantime, I’m simply on vacation.

Yesterday, I followed my friend J, his boyfriend M and their friend R to Kutná Hora, where we saw the bone chapel and St Barbara’s cathedral. R is a 23-year-old construction worker, but he also makes a living as a prostitute. The main purpose of the trip was to visit his girlfriend and his two kids. We had so fun that in the end, they decided to join us back to Prague.

The bone chapel in Kutná Hora, Czech republic.

The Czech beer is more wonderful than I ever remembered. Fresh, tickling! It’s not that strong either – you can drink it instead of water. I mean that! Pivo is so integrated in the Czech culture that even 4-year-old kids know how to order it (at least R’s kids). And what other country would have a children’s animated series where a dog goes to buy beer and drinks it? This episode of Maxipes Fik (Fik is a giant dog that can talk) is very entertaining (the beer part starts at 3:00, but the whole episode is lovely):

I started learning Japanese last Wednesday. I have a private tutor in Berlin – my friend W joined in on the first lesson which almost cut the price in half (15 euro per hour for the both of us) – I hope he’ll continue. While in Prague, I rely on a book. I’m so glad I got it before I left Berlin, since my stay here will be prolonged and I will have lots of time on my hands. With languages, as with all kinds of learning, you’ve got to act while the iron is hot. There’s no better learning tool than passion, and right now I possess it.

The day before yesterday I even found myself a tutor on the street. I walked up to a guy who looked Japanese and asked him if he wanted to help me with my studies. He turned out to be a lone 19-year-old traveller from Tokyo who would continue to Budapest the same evening. So I bought him dinner in exchange for his services as my substitute せんせい (sensei). Before we parted he invited me to come visit him in Tokyo. You bet I will – just don’t know when.

Yeah, the energy never dies.

Something sad happened this morning. I live in the suburbs, they look very “Eastern” from a “Western” perspective. (I don’t like this mental division of Europe, but you all know what I mean.) Think huge complexes of high-rise buildings at the end of the subway lines. But they’re not that bad actually, and many of the houses are being renovated and painted in brown and orange colours that actually look quite good against the lush surroundings. My friends chose to live here because they like the outdoors.

Anyway, there was a police car at one of these houses and a blanket covering a body. My first instinct was to take up my camera. How tragic isn’t that. My next instinct was, thank god, not to. I asked a young woman with a baby what had happened. “Some guy jumped from the 17th floor,” she replied. How unfathomably tragic. I’ve never been so close to someone ending his life like that.

At the moment I’m reading André Gide’s L’Immoraliste (in Swedish). For the first time. I’m half through it and I love every single sentence.

What’s more to say? I saw two men holding hands downtown today, and two lesbians who didn’t hold hands but had crewcuts and were dressed in the same kind of camouflage clothes, so I’d say that equals holding hands. The Czech republic is openminded and I think there’s a correlation with the fact that they are least apt to attend services in Europe – see this chart.

I wrote this post at The Globe, a café I used to hang out at back in 1997. It has moved since then though, and despite its fabby space it’s just a remnant of its cosy past. And the internet was so slow I had to wait till I got home to post. Therefore I can also report that the cikadas are singing in the suburb.

Category: Personal
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