Sometime in early 2018, toward the end of winter, Vienna was hit with an unusually harsh freeze. If I remember right, nighttime temperatures dropped to around –15°C (about 5°F), maybe even lower. Back then I worked in three sweaters, three pairs of pants, and a hat, brewing coffee while looking like some Bavarian farmer. There’s even a photo of me from those wild days in a magazine. Oh, and for the record—I weighed 101 kilos at the time. Sorry for the extra details.
Later I dropped from 101 down to 82. Now I’m back at 97. I guess I somehow sensed the cold coming and grew a little insulation in advance.
That was also when I moved into a new apartment. My old lease had ended, and since we hadn’t paid the so-called Kaution there (a deposit worth two to three months’ rent), I had to come up with it for the new place. Rent was €425 a month, so I had to pull about €1,500 out of circulation to cover it.
And then came February. And February was merciless. The cold lasted the entire month. All thirty days. Which meant fewer and fewer people came by for coffee. But I didn’t have the luxury of giving up—I desperately needed cash. On a good day back then I might see under €100 in the till. On the really cold days it was more like €20–30. But every euro counted.
For heat, all I had was a tiny 150-watt heater. Useless. My only real warmth came from the espresso machine and the coffee itself. It was so cold in Fenster that you could see your breath inside.
Every night I worried that if I left the machine, the temperature would fall below freezing. The lowest morning reading inside was 3.8°C (about 39°F). That’s when I decided to close Fenster for the day. The register had barely made €25, and the cold showed no sign of letting up. So I hung a sign in the Window saying, “Sorry, I’ll be back tomorrow—otherwise I’ll freeze to death today.”
Funny thing is, about ten people called me that day asking why I was closed, upset because they’d come for coffee. That’s when I made a decision: from that day forward, Fenster would always be open, every single day. I never wanted regulars to feel the disappointment of a shuttered café again.
Still, my “cold vacation” stretched out for three days—the freeze wouldn’t let go. I didn’t reopen until March 1, when the first signs of a thaw appeared.
Those three days I stayed home. Slept, lay around, and scolded myself for leaving customers without coffee—and myself without money.
Without money. That month, after paying all mandatory bills, I had just over €1,000 left in my account. That was my emergency reserve—money I had set aside as a last-ditch fund for moving back to Ukraine if things collapsed.
And at that moment, collapse felt real. I had no money for rent. No money for the café. No money for anything, except maybe renting a car to drive back home. That was it. The story looked like it was coming to an end.
Those were my thoughts in those days. I was already planning how the move back would work. At the same time, I didn’t fully believe it would come to that. Somewhere inside me, there was this stubborn confidence that spring would come, things would pick up, and I’d survive. I held on to that belief, even while preparing for defeat.
And then, something strange happened. My landlord offered to trade two months’ rent in exchange for my help programming and managing her website. I nearly jumped out of my own skin. It felt like a miracle. A real one. For the record, later that year I did end up paying for those two months anyway, when my situation had improved. But at that moment—it was salvation.
So, I dipped into my emergency fund, paid for the apartment and other small expenses for March, and waited. March came. Spring came. And spring saved me.
It turned out those cold days had been the lowest financial point I’ve ever faced. From there, the curve went up. The feeling was like bungee jumping—only longer, and far more intense.
I still think about that time often. As a reminder to never let it happen again. As one of those thin, sharp lines (and there will be others) that Fenster barely crossed, after which it might not have existed at all. As a private kind of brag to myself—look what I survived. And honestly, that matters. It motivates me to move quickly and never slip back into that place. It also makes me grateful for everything we’ve built since. That dark little shade eventually became one of the brighter colors in the picture that is Fenster—and its success.
By the way, that was also the time when Valentina joined Fenster. But that’s an entirely different story.
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