It’s still early hours when Hans Schnitzler walks into one of his favorite bars – Café Chrome on Utrechtseestraat. “It’s not the most obvious time for me, let’s put it that way. The pub is where I prefer to come at the end of the afternoon. At drinks time.”

Because an empty bar is not a good bar? “No. Because ultimately a bar is about meeting people from different backgrounds and different stories. People you know a little bit, sometimes a little better, sometimes you don’t know at all. In short, it’s a place where life happens to you. With all its little quirks and special beauties.”

Schnitzler writes in Bar philosophy That we have forgotten the art of living together. “You could say we live in a time where anything and everything happens, where everything is at stake. Society has become hot and at the same time a little hot. We’ve lost each other a little bit. I’m looking for places where we can get closer without suffocating each other.” Some. I think that the traditional pub is a place where people can communicate with each other at a distance but also in a close way. The pub is not the only place, but also as far as I am concerned, it is one of the most important places where the idea of ​​closeness without suffocating each other is important .

“I think the problem is that – partly because of social media – we’re in each other’s skin. We always want to tell each other the truth and we actually need spaces that are a little more neutral. In fact, you’re ignoring where ‘I’m coming from somewhere.’ As if you were coming from that kind of place. There you can practice the art of living together.”

The common thread in Schnitzler’s book is the search for the human dimension. “For me, the human dimension is about how much space we allow each other and how much we pay attention to skewed rhythms. For me, the bar is a kind of microcosm, a kind of ‘little community’ in which that aspect of that human dimension can exist. It’s a place where you give each other some space, no matter how close you are to each other, and where there may be different rhythms. To me, this is a small community that is an example of how to maintain a livable community. They are places – and this is in my book too – where you have to play the game between distance and proximity well. You don’t get too close to each other, you know some people reasonably ‘but not too closely, but you’re definitely not indifferent either. I sometimes compare a bar to a lover. It’s always someone who knows how to seduce you, you always want to come back again, this person is also interested Really, but it doesn’t make any demands on you. And that is exactly what this traditional pub represents to me.”

For Schnitzler himself, the bar is a refuge where he can find “a portion of daily comfort in gossip.” “I am by turns an observer who likes to enter when I feel like it. For me, they are social microcosms from which I can gain a lot of knowledge. I see a lot, I hear a lot.” Hermann Kesten is a poet as soon as he wrote the book: Poet in the café. he is writing “I watch dozens of comedies every hour, and I hear echoes of tragedies that no one knows about.”. I think these sentences are really beautiful. This says a lot about the microcosm of what a café can be.”