Konstanz Working Cafés #16: helga

It's been a shockingly long time since I've posted one of these, but here's another café review for your reading pleasure. This time it's helga, styled with a lower-case h.

helga exterior.

Just down the road from the Voglhaus, which is hopelessly unsuited to being a working café, this one is more promising. Advantages:

• Location: in the pedestrian heart of the city, with rail station and bus stops 5-10 minutes away.
• Opening hours: 9-7 every day. There's a sign politely asking you not to use laptops at weekends, from which I infer that it's fine the rest of the time.
• Wifi: they have it.
• Food: if you're in the market for this, they have a decent range of Mediterranean and eggy options.
• Music: when I came in for the second time, they were playing Numb, by Linkin Park (2003). This was immediately followed by In The End, also by Linkin Park (2000), Bohemian Like You, by the Dandy Warhols (2000), Mr Brightside, by The Killers (2003), Run, by Snow Patrol (2003), and Chasing Cars, also by Snow Patrol (2006). All of these are (in different ways and to different degrees) bangers of early 2000s alt-rock, the pinnacle of humanity's musical achievement, and I could pretend that I was an undergrad again.

Coffee by the window.

Eggs benedict.

Disadvantages:

• Although there are power sockets, there aren't very many of them. (Well, I had to be negative about something.)
• I imagine it could get busy, though it wasn't when I was there mid-week.
• A bit pricey.

Price of a regular black coffee, which tastes just fine: €3.10, with a larger option for €4.30.

Overall rating: ☕️☕️☕️☕️☕️ (4.8/5). I could definitely see myself coming back here regularly.

Konstanz Working Cafés #15: Kaffee Blende 8

Despite notionally being on research leave, I haven't been able to pursue my Monday café habit for a while. But here's a new one: Kaffee Blende 8.

Sunny courtyard.

This place hasn't been here for long. It's attached to the Leica gallery, which is some sort of paradise for camera hipsters. Advantages:

• Location. Very close to Sternenplatz bus stop, and not far from the city centre, near No. 11.
• Ambience. If you're not turned off by the black-and-white photos of photography hipsterness, this place is great. There's a lovely courtyard (pictured) where you can sit outside, in the sun or the shade. The inside is a thick-walled, high-ceilinged old building that's perfect for staying cool in the unpleasantly muggy Konstanz summer. Cooling drinks are available too...

An iced latte.

• Wifi. The place has its own wifi! It just works!
• Prices. Given the hipster vibes, I'd have expected more tbh.
• (Torn. As I was writing this, Torn by Natalie Imbruglia came on, which is a banger.)

Disadvantages:

• No savoury food. Only matters for work if you're long-hauling it, though.
• Inattentive service. Despite at least three people serving, it took ages for any of them to notice me, and the place wasn't even particularly busy.
• Few power sockets. You'd have to get very lucky with your table.

Price of a regular black coffee: €2.50 small, €3.50 large.

Overall rating: ☕️☕️☕️☕️ (something like 4.3/5).

Konstanz Working Cafés #14: Backhaus Mahl

A new contender, in the brand new building off Sternenplatz. I don’t normally include bakeries in this series, but this one is unusual, as you’ll see!

Fake plants

Advantages:

• Location. Right next to Sternenplatz bus stop, just outside the city centre. Easy to reach by foot or by bus.
• Wifi and power sockets, the latter at pretty much every table. Amazing!
• Food. Nothing fancy, but alongside the usual bakery fare of filled rolls and cake there are some very nice hearty brunch-style options, including omelettes and salads.
• Spacious. There’s a deceptively large seating area at the back.
• Open every day. Even Sundays!
• Cheap and cheerful. Omelette and coffee for €8.05.

Disadvantages:

• Ambience. Clean and bright, but unlovely, I’d say.
• Kids. It's right opposite a secondary school, and at certain times of day it is full of teenagers.

Coffee here is decent, though nothing to write home about.

Price of a regular black coffee: €2.90 for a generous “normal”, with a small option for €2.

Overall rating: ☕️☕️☕️☕️☕️ (5/5). I’ll be back!

Konstanz Working Cafés #13: Auszeit

Where better to find a nice café than in Paradies?

Advantages:

• Guest wifi. Hallelujah!
• Good range of stuff, including various coffees, vegan options, etc. etc.
• Nice food, ideal if you want to stay there in the middle of the day. Pictured: a quiche with side salad.

Disadvantages:

• Out of the way. Not to the same level as Heimathafen, but it’s not central: it’s about a 15-minute walk down dull but affluent residential streets from the city centre. The 9A bus goes past, but, still, unless you have the good fortune to live in Paradies, it’s not convenient.
• Busy. I was there at 11:30 on a working Wednesday, hardly peak time, but the place was packed. I ended up sitting outside in distinctly autumnal weather.
• Very expensive. Coffee + quiche worked out to over €14. Even city-centre places tend to be cheaper than this. Well, who needs to worry about money in Paradies, I suppose.

Ambience and coffee fall into the “neither advantage nor disadvantage” category.

Price of a regular black coffee: €4.00, the most I’ve seen. In fairness this is reasonably chonky (though not Pano chonky) and a smaller option is available for €3.30, but that’s still a lot of money.

Overall rating: ☕️☕️☕️ (3/5, actually more like 2.5).

Konstanz Working Cafés #12: Café Arôme

A hidden gem this week.

Advantages:

• Concealed location. Although it’s central, you have to go through an unprepossessing parfumerie, down into a dungeon, and out the other side in order to find it. This makes it unlikely that it’ll ever be too crowded.
• Open on Mondays. Many cafés aren’t.
• Great cake. The Google reviews for this place rave about the cake, and boy, they weren’t wrong.
• Lovely garden. The café opens out onto a peaceful, pleasant courtyard garden where you can sit. The inside part of the café is also nice, with bookshelves and art.

Said lovely garden.

Disadvantages:

• No wifi. Par for the course but, still, sigh.
• No savoury food. (But you could just have more cake.)
• Okay coffee. It’s not bad, but there are better ones around.

Price of a regular black coffee (here “Café Schümli”): €3.20

Overall rating: ☕️☕️☕️ (3/5).

Konstanz Working Cafés #11: No. 11

Not a typo; it seemed appropriate to deal with the famous No. 11 at this point in the series.

Advantages:

• Fantastic coffee. This is pretty much indisputably the most hipster place in town. You can get a delicious filter coffee here with your choice of bean (they usually have a darker one and a fruitier one on offer). Ideal if your taste in coffee is like mine.
• Great location. Central and near the cathedral, with seats outside in good weather.
• Nice sweets. Not many places in Konstanz do a pastel de nata. The banana bread is good too.
• Good music choices.

Quaint on the outside, hipster on the inside

Disadvantages:

• Small and popular. A lot of the time it just feels wrong to sit here taking up a table with a computer. (And the tables are so tiny that either your coffee or your computer is going to be on your lap.)
• Expensive. You pay through the nose for the advantages above.
• No savoury food. Not even a crumb.
• No wifi. Not only that, but even the 4G signal here is pretty ropey; one of the disadvantages of an old building in a maze of streets.

Price of a regular black coffee (Americano): €3.80

Overall, it’s a great place to take visiting hipster friends, but not ideal for working. Rating: ☕️☕️☕️ (3/5).

Konstanz Working Cafés #10: Doppio Dolce Vita

Another café to work in! This one, Doppio Dolce Vita Konstanz, is special and different in some ways.

Advantages:

• Good coffee.
• Reliable wifi.
• Power sockets.
• Special working space. It’s called a “coworking space” but you can also just go in there and work on your own.

• Good location, a stone’s throw from the Münsterplatz and close to Konzilstraße and Schottenplatz bus stops.

Disadvantages:

• Rental cost for the working space. It’s not very expensive – €5 per hour, with 10% off drinks – but I’d rather not pay anything at all. There’s no meaningful reduction if you’re there for longer, either (€1 off if you’re there for 4 hours, or buy 7 get 1 free).
• Underwhelming food options. A decent food selection is hardly a sine qua non for working cafés, but it’s a nice to have.
• Not very attentive staff. The first time I was in the working space, I was basically ignored for the three hours I was there. When I wanted another coffee I had to go back to the main area and get their attention. This was a Saturday, admittedly, and crowded, so I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt. But I came back on a weekday afternoon and the same thing happened.

Price of a regular black coffee: I don’t remember, and it doesn’t have it on the website. I’ll update this when I get the chance.

Overall rating: ☕️☕️☕️☕️ (4/5).

Konstanz Working Cafés #9: Heimathafen

 New year, new café: Heimathafen in Fürstenberg.

Advantages:

• Good coffee. ‘Nuff said.
• Functioning wifi. Non-trivial.
• Plug sockets next to tables.
• Nice ambience. It’s in a modern, grey, nondescript concrete building, but the interior is quirky and welcoming, with mismatched old furniture and hipster lighting.
• Very nice food, including options with egg, which are not that easy to find in Konstanz. Below is the avocado toast I had. (Don’t @ me, I’m a millennial, and anyway I already bought a flat.)

Disadvantages:

• Annoying music. We literally had Never Gonna Give You Up by Rick Astley a bit ago, as well as a cover of Toploader’s Dancing In The Moonlight.
• In the middle of nowhere. It is hard to overstate just how far this place is from civilization, nestled as it is between the industrial part of town and a yawn-inducingly tedious residential area. It takes two buses to get to it either from where I live or from the university. You’d hardly stumble upon it by accident – though it is worth the trip, if you plan to spend a decent amount of time there. (And it’s within spitting distance of Konstanz Fürstenberg railway station, for all the use that is.)
• Closed on Tuesdays. (But my Tuesdays are full of meetings on campus anyway, so I don’t care.)

Price of a regular black coffee: €2.80.

Overall rating: ☕️☕️☕️ (3/5). Honestly, it’d be well above 4, were it not for the bad location.

Konstanz Working Cafés #8: Stadtkind

Today’s instalment deals with the sweet little Stadtkind. This is a café I’ve spent quite some time in over the years, so I feel bad about giving it the rating I do below – but in short it’s just not that well suited to working in, however nice it may be in other respects.

Advantages:

• Nice location. It’s not as central as some of the other places on the list, but still easily reachable: 10 minutes on foot from the centre, maybe 15 minutes from the station, and it’s on the 9A bus route. It’s in a pleasant old building (see picture) opposite the Ellenrieder school, in a posh, leafy part of town.

• Great, healthy, reasonably-priced food. This ratatouille with pasta in a jar at €6.90 was tasty. They also have homemade cakes and local ice cream for the sweet tooth.

Disadvantages:

• No wifi. Le sigh. Mobile data is also ropey here.
• Always full (or close to it). The place is popular and small, so you’d be a dick to sit there for hours while working on a laptop, even if you get a table.
• Twee vibes. It’s cosy and all, but it feels like it’s run by your favourite garrulous, eco-friendly maternal aunt whose favourite pastimes are cross-stitching and flower-pressing. YMMV.
• Coffee style is not my jam. At least, the most recent one I had was on the bitter side, and a bit groundsy. They do nice cappuccinos though, and always provide a tiny biscuit, which is a hallmark of class.

Price of a regular black coffee: €3.10.

Overall rating: ☕️☕️ (2/5), maybe even a bit less, for working purposes. For a chilled-out lunch with a friend it would score much higher, though.

Konstanz Working Cafés #7: Seegold

This one is new to me! Thanks to HK for the tip. Café Seegold is a small-to-medium-sized place near the Swiss border. I’ve been here twice now, and will definitely be back!

Advantages:

• Really good coffee: to my taste, at least. Below is a coffee here, complete with tiny biscuit.

• Really good food: here’s a picture of a Mediterranean-style platter you can get here. Caveats: they don’t have a broad savoury selection, and the kitchen is closed on Sundays.

• Quiet: there never seem to be many people here, which is ideal for working. (Though they also have a rack with toys and classic board games like Ticket to Ride, if that’s more your thing.)
• Wifi: it exists and it mostly functions. ‘Nuff said.
• Minimalist feel: while a lot of Konstanz cafés lean into the baroque and/or the twee, this place is clean, modern and sparsely decorated (see picture). It also has solid tables you can sit at for working. Haven’t spotted any power sockets yet, but maybe there are some somewhere.

Disadvantages:

• Minimalist feel: not everyone loves this.
• A bit out of the way: for me, at least, it’s not exactly on the beaten track. But it’s only about 15 minutes’ walk from the station and town centre. Top tip for the Swiss of Kreuzlingen, though!
• Not open on Mondays.

Price of a regular black coffee: €2.80, which is fairly middle-of-the-road for Konstanz cafés.

Overall rating: ☕️☕️☕️☕️☕️ (5/5). Actually pretty much bang on a 4.5, but there are no half emojis.

Konstanz Working Cafés #6: Heinrich

The latest instalment in the series is brought to you today not as a “working café” as much as it is a “café to slump exhaustedly in while drinking a smoothie after a long day at work”. But I’ve been to Heinrich many times before to work, and hopefully the reasons for this will become clear below.

Advantages:

• Good coffee and great food: see pics. Here you see a smoothie with a banana & courgette tart (top pic) and a piece of cheesecake with a cappuccino (bottom pic), and there is much more.

• Wifi that works and is free: this shouldn’t need to be stated! But unfortunately is still missing from way too many nice cafés here.
• Great location: it’s central, near the bus stops, the station and the cathedral, and is good for people-watching, as well as just being surrounded by nice-looking buildings.
• Decent size: it’s rarely completely full, even at peak times, and yet is small enough not to feel too industrial.
• Reasonably priced: for a place with as many pretensions as this one clearly has, it’s unusual to see prices this low.

Disadvantages:

• Weird music choices: they’re unconventional, I’ll give them that, but neither thrash-metal nor grime are really what I’m hoping for from a working café – just too distracting. In fairness, though, it’s usually inane pop music playing.
• Danger of sugar coma: beware of the brownies and cheesecake in particular.

Price of a regular black coffee: €2.50 (small)

Overall rating: ☕️☕️☕️☕️☕️ (5/5). Since I’m from the British academic system and hate giving full marks to anyone or anything, I should point out that this is rounded up from a 4.7 or something. Still, it’s my current favourite place to go to work in the city centre.

Konstanz Working Cafés #5: Coffee Fritz

Next up in our series is Coffee Fritz, a little place near the Swiss border that has only been here for a few years.

Advantages:

• Excellent coffee: you can always get a very nice coffee here. It was set up on the model of an Australian coffee shop, complete with flat white, long black, etc. If you just ask for a coffee, you will be asked to specify further - which in Konstanz is the mark of a good coffee place. They have a very small range of food options, mostly pastries and muesli, but it’s all high quality. Depicted: cappuccino.

• Lovely staff: the small team that run it are super friendly, and also speak excellent English, in case language is a deal-breaker for you.
• Nice ambience: full of coffee-related paraphernalia, see picture. Range of seating.

• Rarely completely full, despite not being very big. For the summer months it has outdoor seating with good people-watching spots. Its location is marked by a sign with amusing things written on it (see picture).

• Good location: it’s next to Schnetztor, on the number 9 bus line to the university, and 5-10 minutes’ walk from the station and city centre, as well as 5 minutes’ walk from the Swiss border.

Disadvantages:

• No wifi, and mobile internet doesn’t work particularly well here either. Bring the files you need.
• Not open every day. It’s always closed on Sundays and (more importantly for working purposes) Mondays.
• Slightly on the expensive side, though it doesn’t really matter if you just nurse one or two coffees over a couple of hours.

Price of a regular black coffee (here americano/long black): €3.50

Overall rating: ☕️☕️☕️☕️ (4/5). Rounded up from 3.5ish, since the lack of internet is a big deal for working.

Konstanz Working Cafés #4: Café Bloggers

Our fourth entry is the aptly-named Café Bloggers. Now, I must confess to being negatively biased from the outset with this one, since it’s replaced Café Zeitlos, which was my favourite breakfast spot in all of Konstanz. Still, I found myself quite pleasantly surprised.

Advantages:

• Great food: this isn’t the ideal attribute of a working café, but true nonetheless. The menu is quite short, but full of interesting and tasty-looking things, with silly names like “Naan-Masté” (for a naan with hummus and feta). I had the “Pop Eye”, a sort of toasted brioche sandwich with truffle oil, depicted below. The coffee is fine too.

• Wifi: yes, it just works, and the password is on the menu. You’d think this would be the default for Konstanz cafés. You’d think wrong.
• Attentive service.

Disadvantages:

• It’s a bit out of the way, hidden behind the Stephanskirche. But maybe I’m being too harsh here.
• It’s small and noisy. Better to go there with a friend for breakfast or lunch than for working.
• Relatedly, it gets full/booked up quickly. Tables can be reserved. While I was there, many people were turned away. I’d feel bad about sitting here with my laptop and nursing a coffee for long.

Price of a regular black coffee: €3.00. (I’ll add this to all future café posts.)

Overall rating: ☕️☕️ (2/5). I feel a bit mean for giving this rating, so I should explain: as somewhere to go for a meal or a drink with a friend, I’d give it a ☕️☕️☕️☕️ (4/5), but it’s not really that well suited for working (or, ironically, blogging).

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)