2
Terri Kostenko -
2 years ago
On my last night in Kassel I came here with my partner for a few drinks before and after a movie, I came again after as it was the only non-nighclub style place still open.
The staff there were really young and friendly, and impressed me with thier language skills. German, English, Albanian etc. The bar itself is also decorated quite nicely with lots of space and a large menu for drinks. The bathrooms are also clean.
The only negative experience was the owner. He made me feel really, really uncomfortable. In the UK single use plastics like straws, cutlery etc are banned and where I live even using take away boxes, take away coffee cups and plastic/paper grocery bags are really frowned upon socially among younger people. Even paper straws have become unpopular and most bars/ resturaunts here dont even provide them unless you request one due to having a disability by which you require one to eat and drink or similar instance. So I'm not in the habit of requesting "no straw" in a bar. I acknowledge this isn't the case in Germany and even big places like McDonald's and Starbucks still use plastic straws there.
However, upon recieving our drinks they had plastic straws inside. So we removed our straws and placed them on the rubber mat. This guy almost immediatley came over making a fuss, wiping around bar and the menus, even taking them away from us while we were still looking at them. He then proceeded to passive-aggressively ask me questions about my phone case and the quality of my clothes, which I calmy explained to him was a recycled phone case from my univesity made from industrial crates and my clothes did not contain polyester. He then started talking about Climate Change Protests on Fridays and Greta Thumberg (for some reason). I made no complaint about it but he basicallyreacted to me simply removing my staw from my drink so personally he felt the need to insinuate I was hypocrite. He didn't do this as a joke privately either, he did this to the amusement of two patrons to my left who were laughing along with him, he even looked to for confimation and another patron on my right who unlike the other two, stayed politley quiet.
I stayed calm and didn't let him embarrass me but it did mildly piss me off, but when our next round of drinks came they were straw free. Two less pieces of plastic in the ocean so I consider it worth the cost of this weird interaction. As I'm kinda shy I thought perhaps I took it the wrong way, but thinking about it after it was a really weird way to project such defensive and passive aggressive behaviour on two young people, by trying to embarrass them out of doing small harmless things for causes they care about.
After that we just got beers to avoid the whole plastic staw drama.
It's a shame, because the staff are awesome, but I don't want to give my money to someone who thinks it's clever or funny to attempt to make of fun of young people infront of other customers for trying to do what they consider the right thing and who are literally hurting no one while doing so.