Konstanz Working Cafés #3: Coffee Fellows

A chain offering for our third café in consideration.

Advantages:

• Good location: this branch is inside the station, right next to the main bus stop. Not a lovely spot, but a highly practical one.
• Good free wifi: this sets it apart from almost all other cafés in Konstanz.
• There is usually space to work, and even a few power sockets.

Disadvantages:

• Despite being in a genuinely lovely building, this branch has all the ambience of a hospital waiting room (see picture).

• The best thing that can be said about the food and coffee here is that it’s basically fine. I once got a bagel that didn’t have a hole in the middle.
• It’s ludicrously expensive, even compared to the pricey town-centre places.
• Staff try to sell you stuff you don’t want.

Overall rating: ☕️☕️ (2/5)

Konstanz Working Cafés #2: Das Voglhaus

Following on from the previous instalment, Das Voglhaus is another central café popular with the tourists.

Advantages:

• Location: central, not as close as Pano to public transport, but on a pedestrian street with good prospects for people-watching when you get board.
• Decent coffee and great food, mostly in the light bites category, like the depicted spinach and feta quiche with red onion chutney. Perfect when you’re working and don’t want something heavy. Plus it’s all vegetarian and organic, which makes one feel virtuous.

• Range of seating options: benches, stools, beanbags (but see below).
• Friendly staff.
• Aggressively pro-European (they have little badges with the EU flag).

Disadvantages:

• Smallish and usually packed at key times of day, so difficult to get in. Especially since, as a single working dude, I have to queue with my stuff before getting a table, by which time any free seats might have disappeared.
• Bad acoustics. It’s really loud in here.
• On the wall is the below terrible poem, a paean to libertarianism (see picture). It’s attributed to Dr. med. Albert Schweitzer, and widely cited in right-wing interwebs circles, but actually isn’t by Schweitzer: it’s a translation of an American English poem by Dean Alfange.

• No chance at all to get an internet connection; it’s like the place is lined with a foot of lead.

Price of a regular black coffee (Café Natur): €3.20

Overall rating: ☕️☕️☕️ (3/5)

Konstanz Working Cafés #1: Pano

This new irregular series looks at cafés in Konstanz where you can go and work. Since it’s hard to find the perfect place here, I hope this information will help others.

Pano is a big place in the centre of town, so a good place to start.

Advantages:

• Great location: 3 minutes’ walk from the central bus stop and train station.
• It’s big: finding a seat there won’t be a problem.
• Coffees there are also big (see picture).

• The vibe is nice and Olde Worlde (see picture).

• Sometimes sparrows get into the building, which is cute, and then you get to watch the staff trying to chase them out, which is funny.
• There is a variety of seating options, from comfy sofas to long tables to high stools.

Disadvantages:

• There is pretty much always a massive queue to order anything, regardless of what time of day it is or how many people are there. Not for people in a hurry.
• Relatedly, the system for ordering is incredibly stressful and intimidating. Everyone queues together, then you order food (if you want any; but you have to queue for it regardless), and then you go to the till and also order drinks, then wait to pick everything up. There are sometimes some other counters open, but I don’t know what they do, and I’m not about to queue for 20 minutes to get shouted at for being in the wrong place (and, yes, this is Germany, so they won’t hold back).
• There’s no guest wifi, though this isn’t the end of the world here, as a variety of free networks are just about close enough to be connected to.
• Depending on the time of day, the place may be full of absolute wankers drinking bubbly.

I haven’t listed the coffee here as either an advantage or a disadvantage, since it seems fine, but nothing to write home about.

Overall rating: ☕️☕️☕️ (3/5)