KuBa Kulturbahnhof

Since 1 December 2018 the station building of Donaueschingen has belonged to a pub with a stage. The KuBa calls itself “the alternative pub in Donaueschingen, right on platform 1” – open daily from 4 pm, until two on Fridays and Saturdays. Inside, a bright room looking out onto the platform and a second one with a table-football game; outside, tables under the station canopy facing the tracks and towards the street. On tap, mostly beer from regional breweries.

The programme is the reason this place is listed here. In its first year alone there were more than 70 events – concerts, readings, theatre, film, exhibitions – and today the calendar already reaches into next year. The focus is on soul, funk, rock and pop; the bands come from Nashville, Tokyo, Finland, Lyon, Graz or London, mostly names you do not know yet. In between, a reading, a pub quiz, the regular skat card night.

I have not been there myself yet. The KuBa is here nonetheless because of the people who write about it on Google: 123 reviews, 4.8 stars on average, and three things come up again and again. First, the host – mentioned more often than the beer: “fantastic”, “an original”, “a real institution”; one guest writes that we can be glad there are still people who keep something like this alive with such passion. Second, the concerts: one of the very few places in the region with international artists beyond the mainstream, good sound, not too loud, and prices described throughout as fair, moderate, affordable. Third, the railway. Several guests got stranded here – replacement bus service, a missed connection – and afterwards describe the evening as the best thing that could have happened to them. One puts it in a sentence: anyone who passes by on the train without dropping in for an hour has only themselves to blame. The only criticism I found: at one concert the sound system reached its limit.