At first, the administration will tolerate this: The council will not make a decision until its meeting on 8 December. However, Ghomorlou and co-owner Katharina Müller already have a new contract of use. "That is important for us," says Ghomorlou. The café, which the two moved into in December last year - it was previously home to Frau Holle - will look more attractive and lively even in bad weather. In good weather, the customers sit outside even when the temperature is low, and the smokers anyway: a warm jacket, a blanket over your legs, that's how you can stand it. The café only sets up outdoor catering during the day. The last winter showed that people used it, says Ghomorlou.

The draft resolution for the council also stipulates that the parking areas may continue to be mobile, i.e. fenced and roofed, as the guardhouse on Heerstrasse has done, for example. Most landlords, however, have only erected seats, at most a small fence. You see this picture mainly in the old town - Pinte, Embassy and Steinbeck, Tresor, Artbistro Banks by Liz, Restaurant San Telmo, Café Blüte, several snack bars and many others use parking areas there - but it is allowed everywhere in Bonn.

Philipp Strohm also received the letter from the city. He is the manager of the Irish pub Flynn's Inn in Wolfstraße and is somewhat ambivalent. "On the one hand, it's a good decision," he says. On the other hand, he says, the Corona pandemic has made the staffing situation so difficult that it is not always possible to easily cater for the outside catering trade. "We are at the end of our tether. More space also means more work, but financially it also means a bit more security," says the restaurateur. In times of inflation, he says, one has to rely on this security.

Serving people in the Irish Pub starts when Café Camus has already closed its outdoor catering. In the past two years, the mulled wine walks in November and December had worked well, says the landlord, in which Flynn's Inn had participated. But there is no word yet on "mulled wine to go" in Bonn for this year. In the meantime, it's dark and cold early, so at some point even blankets won't help. "Not many people are sitting outside," says Strohm. It remains to be seen whether outdoor gastronomy will pay off.

Georg Merziger, owner of the Lichtblick in Dorotheenstaße, wants to sell mulled wine outside this year. For this purpose, he wants to set up bar tables in the car park, which tapers off. "We are planning a bit of a Christmas market feeling," says Merzinger. Last winter he had no catering in the parking bays, but he thinks it's good to have that option. "It can only get better," he hopes. "The industry is suffering. Because people continue to be cautious and prefer not to go to the pubs.“

He says he has lost some regulars to Corona, who preferred to stay at home because of the possible risk of infection with many people in confined spaces. "The turnover figures are significantly lower than before," says Merzinger. So he wants to use every option to get people to stop at his place.

Whereas in previous printings on the subject, the administration had still allowed radiators to be placed outside, this year it is more restrained. Instead, it appeals to Bonn's restaurateurs "to avoid harmful environmental effects" in the sense of the Federal Immission Control Act as well as "to do without heating systems as far as possible in their outdoor restaurants in order to reduce energy consumption". For the respondents, this would not be an option anyway. "It's not worth it, it costs a lot of electricity," says Ghomorlou. Strohm is also sceptical. "It's a question of whether it still pays off." And for Merziger, it's an environmental no-go anyway.

(Original text: Stefan Knopp; Translation: Mareike Graepel)