Why a culture café — and not just another venue

A word you can check

„Kulturcafé" — culture café — is part of our name. It is one of those words that always looks good on a sign and usually costs nothing. You can write it up and then sell coffee like everybody else.

Hence this text. Not as an explanation but as an invitation to check: you come to us at Karmeliterplatz 1 in 1020 Vienna, sit down and take a calm look around. At the walls. Then listen for a moment to what is playing. And if you feel like it, go down the stairs once. After that you will know for yourself whether the word holds.

We claim nothing here that you cannot verify yourself in ten minutes.

The walls make a start

The first thing you see hangs on the wall: posters of the Polish poster school of the 1960s.

If the term means nothing to you — no problem, hardly anyone knows it, and you do not need it to like the things. It is enough to know that these posters are pretty much the opposite of what is pasted up at bus stops today as advertising. They explain nothing. They sell you nothing either. They are graphic, oblique, often rather cheeky — and they leave the work to you. You look at them and think: hang on, what is that supposed to be?

That is exactly the point. A picture you look at once and understand immediately is forgotten two minutes later. With these ones it regularly happens that somebody stops mid-sentence and says: tell me, what is actually hanging behind you there?

And already you are talking about something other than the weather. That is reason enough for us to have them on the wall.

What comes out of the speakers

The second part is the one you do not see but hear — and it is far more often underestimated. Music in a venue is not decoration. Music decides how loudly you talk, how long you stay in your seat and whether after twenty minutes you feel tired or awake.

We play Polish jazz and classical music. No radio with advertising breaks, no playlist that runs exactly the same three streets away.

That has a very practical effect: this music does not push itself into the foreground. It fills the room without drowning out the conversation at the table. You do not have to get louder to be heard — and that, honestly, is half the difference between an evening on which people talk and an evening on which they sit side by side and shout at each other.

If you happen to listen closely and recognise a piece: lovely. If not, it works anyway. Good background music is recognised above all by the fact that you are not hoarse at the end of the evening.

Black and white on the wall

Then there are the films. Black and white, projected onto the wall, without sound.

That sounds like an idea you come up with to sound special — but it is actually the most practical thing in the whole room. A silent black-and-white film does something a television never manages: it does not pull you in. Nobody stares at it for an hour. You look over when there is a pause in the conversation and look away again when somebody says something.

It is a bit like a fireplace, only with a plot. And for anyone who comes alone with a book, it is the perfect companion: never intrusive, but never entirely still either.

We rather like calling our place „a living room for Vienna". The room with the posters, the music and the flickering film on the wall is pretty much the reason for that. In the evening the living room turns into a bar — the walls and the music stay.

And downstairs there is a piano

The final piece of evidence is one flight of stairs down. Our cellar holds 80 seats and a piano.

The piano is the reason we carry the word „culture café" in our name with a reasonably clear conscience. An instrument that permanently stands downstairs is a statement: something happens down there regularly, otherwise the thing would be in the way upstairs instead of standing on the stage below.

What goes on there is a colourful mix: our open stage „Floorspot", readings, concerts, cabaret. Evenings for songwriters, for young artists, for musicians and for people who write. We work on this with the Polish Institute Vienna among others — and our boss is a member of the Austrian Chopin Society, which claims nothing about this house but simply means: somebody here listens very closely when somebody plays downstairs.

Anyone planning something of their own talks directly to Marcin. The cellar can also be hired, outside our opening hours too.

Culture is not a decorative word here

To sum up: posters on the wall, jazz and classical music from the speakers, a silent film above people's heads, a piano and a stage downstairs. None of it is coincidence, and none of it is meant as scenery.

We are a venue in the 2nd district where people cook, talk and play. Sometimes all on the same evening. With culture in the cellar and culture on the plate — that is not a slogan for the website here but the description of a perfectly ordinary Wednesday.

And if you would rather check the whole thing yourself than read about it: our opening hours are at the bottom of every page. Before that you might glance at the menu, and anyone who wants a guaranteed seat can book a table. The rest is on the wall anyway.