My favourite cultural venue: Central Laundry

The party of the previous night is still in the walls of Neue Hard 12. The interior walls of the Zentralwäscherei look a little exhausted in the daylight, and even the best make-up of posters, graffiti and lots of greenery can only do so much. The smell of cigarettes secretly puffed on the dance floor hangs in the air and mingles with the aroma of freshly baked focaccia wafting through the small laundry - the bistro, living room and, to a certain extent, the headquarters of the so-called ZW. One of the employees is polishing the counter with a cleaning cloth, while a young couple sinks deeper and deeper into one of the Brocki sofas in the corner. Perhaps they are still listening to the bass of the night, perhaps they want to be the first when the lights go out and the speakers come on again in the hall next door in the evening.

As much as the concrete walls of the former laundry are made to shake and sweat, as often as they have to serve as a cinema screen and art museum, as a theatre backdrop and performance hall - by the time the lunch table in the bistro has been cleared away, the tiredness is gone again and the battery recharged for the next event. In the evening, a panel discussion takes place in the hall, the following day there are various workshops on the programme, people eat and drink in the evening and party and dance at night.

Over the past three years, the Zentralwäscherei has blossomed into one of the city's cultural venues that is hard to imagine life without. Yet the association behind the temporary use of the space by the city will probably have to pack up its boxes again in two years' time. Is it perhaps this fleeting quality, the knowledge that the place is not forever, that makes it so special? Would I still be mourning the holiday days on the small island off Dubrovnik with such longing weeks later if it hadn't just been five, but five hundred? Probably not.

But it's not so much the realisation that the days of the Central Laundry are numbered that draws me to Kreis 5 time and time again; it's above all the relaxed atmosphere, the playful ease and naturalness with which music and culture are experienced here, but also the way uncomfortable political and social issues are tackled. Not only are the doors wide open here at almost any time of day or night; people and ideas that have to fight for visibility elsewhere find a place here.

ZW - for a friend, the two letters mean one thing above all: a safe space, a safe place. "It's a place that feels humble and easy to blend in with," she writes to me on Telegram. Like many other young people, the Central Laundry is one of the few places in the city where she feels like she belongs, where the bubbles in which we all move are burst.

That's why: May the clocks tick a little slower and may the year 2026 take its time to descend upon us. Stay a while, you are so beautiful, dear ZW!