Somewhere in the summer of 2020—August, right in the middle of my very personal COVID experience (my first round)—I found out we had to move out of the original Fenster. In that moment, it honestly felt like life was over and that was it. Add to that two weeks of COVID with a 42°C fever. That’s how this insane, crucial, defining chapter in Fenster’s life began.
Here’s what happened.
Fenster was in its original space on a sublease. I rented from the main tenant, and our contract was properly registered and approved by the actual landlord. But still—a sublease is a sublease. For various reasons that I won’t dig into in this piece, the main tenant and I couldn’t come to any agreement about the future of our contract, and the only real option I had was to move out within a pretty short time.
At first, I couldn’t even pull my thoughts together. I just sat in this helpless, painful haze, realizing that Fenster—as I had built it and grown it—was dissolving into the wild currents of the entrepreneurial ocean. That was it. And in a sense, that’s exactly what happened. The “old” Fenster was living out its last weeks of its three-and-a-half-year life (from May 13, 2019 to November 12, 2020). It was sad. And later, strangely, it became something joyful.
After a couple of days, it became clear that nothing would be the same. I tried to fight for the past, of course, but that didn’t really go anywhere. So I started doing what entrepreneurs do: thinking, searching, asking, looking for a new home for Fenster. It was incredibly hard. Finding a tiny space with a window, at a semi-sane price, in the center of Vienna is not exactly an easy task. At that time, it was almost impossible. I wasn’t totally discouraged, but I also didn’t have much hope. I just kept going, one option after another, knowing this might take months. So I just did the work.
There was also one more factor weighing on me: just a few weeks before all this, we had gotten a car (a Peugeot Rifter) on a lease for Fenster. Walking away from that would not have been simple. So on top of all the other problems, I now had a mandatory monthly payment for the car.
And then, somehow, a small miracle happened.
This miracle has a name, and I respect that person deeply for always reaching out a hand exactly when nothing else seems to work—but I’ll keep their name private.
Through that connection, I was introduced to the owners of a shop in the very same building where the old Fenster was. They had an incredible space that ran straight through the building—you could walk in from one street and out to another. It was huge, around 300 square meters, I’d guess.
They had been hit extremely hard by COVID. It was a souvenir shop, and for a long time Vienna either had no tourists at all or just a trickle. The rent, of course, didn’t stop. So they started seriously considering ways to cut their costs. And somehow, their urgent need to reduce space lined up perfectly with our desperate need for a new home.
Negotiations about subleasing part of that giant space were tricky, with plenty of ups and downs. In a deal that complicated, there are always hidden traps. But we were incredibly lucky: technically, the space was made up of two units, and the one Fenster now occupies could be handed over to us without any additional technical complications. That alone saved us from yet another massive headache in the already dramatic story of Fenster.
The discussions, the final decision, and the signing of all the documents took about two weeks. By the end, I was so emotionally drained that I wasn’t just empty—I was in the negative in terms of life energy. So once everything was finally decided and our future was secured, I made a choice: I needed to rest. I drove to the closest sea to Vienna—the Slovenian coast—for a few days, in that very same car I mentioned earlier. And it was incredible. I got the final signed documents on the way there, and I was over the moon. I celebrated properly when I arrived by the sea.
And now comes the wild part.
Just a few days—days!!!—after everything was settled with the new space, the property management company that runs our building reached out and offered me the entire space that included the unit where the old Fenster was. Meaning: if I had agreed and wanted to, we could have kept Fenster in exactly the same place without ever moving out.
That’s the kind of plot twist that makes your brain spin like a particle in a collider. I literally couldn’t sleep for a few nights. It was that intense.
Of course, emotions are everything, and I said yes to that offer.
Later, it turned out that this was one of those epic screwups I’ve decided to write about separately someday—a truly legendary misstep in Fenster’s history. But at that moment, I felt like I owned the world, like I was the coolest guy on this side of the European Union.
Checkmate. We not only found a new space for Fenster, we also managed to keep the old one.
But after some serious thinking, I decided we were moving to the new location. And that was absolutely the right call—one of those rare decisions that permanently change a business for the better.
The reasons were simple. The new space is much bigger: 120 square meters versus 12. The window is three times the size. Instead of a narrow little street where people can barely pass each other, there’s a huge pedestrian area in front. Heating, water, electricity—everything is much better. All these “little” advantages added up and pushed me firmly toward the new spot.
But the most important thing? The lease has no fixed end date. As long as I pay the bills and honor the contract, it never expires.
And that’s how we arrived at the next chapter in Fenster’s life: the day Fenster opened its window in a new space—at the same address, but in a completely new form. In the next piece, I’ll tell the story of how we launched the “new” Fenster.
In the meantime, I want to say something very clearly and sincerely. I am deeply grateful to everyone whose decisions and actions led to this move and helped make it possible. Out of respect for their privacy, I won’t name anyone, but in this particular story—and really, almost from the very beginning—I haven’t felt any negative emotions toward any of the people involved. I genuinely liked how everything turned out. It works for me.
And in the end, Fenster became the best coffee shop in the world, largely because of this very turning point.
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