Queer Base Café

HELLO AND WELCOME! A tender, loving and caring community for everyone

The Queer Base is a special place and our Queer Base Café has seen a lot of different people from different backgrounds and stories and it is providing a space to come and feel welcome.

The Queer Base community is in its mix of people one of the most vital environments Vienna has to offer. It is full of joy and full of stories from queers that had to take a lot of risks to make it here.

Everyone here is looking for safety to live our lives to the fullest and not to be ashamed anymore because you are lesbian, bisexual, gay, trans or inter.

Together we also need to care about the spaces we open up, so everybody can feel welcome, respected and loved. How can we do that?

Imagine it’s someones first time at Queer Base, does anyone say hello? We are all guests here, but some of us already know a few others. Introduce yourself and see if the newbie is ready to respond.

We all have different ways of saying hello, some shake hands, some kiss on the cheeks, others hug or tap with their hand on the chest. We show our respect to the body of the other person and ask what their preferred ways of greeting are. Are you a huger? Please be sensible to what signals people are sending. We all have our timid moments.

We all want to respect personal borders. Sure!

Everybody should feel welcome, also not on their best days. Sometimes we don’t want to be touched at all, even though we might have shared a hug the week before. If someone shows with their body that they need more distance please be respectful. When somebody says „no“, pushes you away and obviously feels uncomfortable, stop what you are doing and give space to breath.

It is vital to all of us, that we can feel safe and respected within our own community. For many it is a resting place, joyful and exciting. We want to keep the space open for as many as possible.

At Queer Base Café we also don’t serve any alcohol, even though it is very common to drink alcohol in Austria. In our experience we know that people can communicate better when they are not drunk or otherwise intoxicated. Please, don’t bring any alcohol and if you drink alcohol, do it with restraint, don’t do any drugs at the Café.

We don’t want to look away when conflicts happen!

Sometimes people get upset, a conflict might happen, drama is at the horizon, a discussion is getting heated. Think to yourself what it needs to calm yourself and a situation. Our greatest goal is to provide tender, loving care and space open to very different stories and experiences. If we look, we can find a lot of conflicts but if we look with the intention of love and respect we can also can find a more peaceful way. Their are a lot of reasons to be frustrated and angry but we don’t want to direct this anger to our own community. If you are overwhelmed it could be helpful to ask someone from Queer Base to have a talk, get some extra time and make an appointment with us. We are here to listen.