Bavarian smoking ban won't apply to Oktoberfest

I'll definately be enjoying my night's out much more starting Jan 1st. So, does that include half of NYE?

Well from people’s comments on here on smoking in pubs threads over the last year or so it seems indeed that the experience of noise and pubs is fairly unique to Munich, (or possibly urbanised Bavaria). We’ve had people from BaWü, Hannover, Berlin and Hamburg say it doesn’t happen there.

Pubs are under serious threats as institutions. They are closing left, right and centre, for various different reasons. Their situation is quite precarious. Particularly the smaller pubs that used to be at the corner of every street in inner Munich for whom for many even a tiny fall in business or takings or increase in expenditure means the end of the business.

There are exceptions in the Bavarian law for beer tents. There are exceptions in the Bavarian law for pubs that build a separate smoking area. Originally, there were exceptions for the small city centre pubs that a ) physically cannot and b ) financially cannot, build separate rooms. This exception is now gone and smokers in there bars, VERY often in the majority of their customers will have to go outside.

Because the majority of these pubs are situated in inner city areas they will be in conflict with the noise / Freischänkfläche laws.

3 out of 4 of these small types of bar closest to where I live have disappeared and I don’t doubt due to this law more will follow. Hansi’s Stüberl will be gone forever but who cares, we can all drink a smoke free skinnymokkalatteccino on an Ikea sofa in some fucking lounge with wifi.

Oh and BTW, talking to a UK colleague last week, he says all you can smell in pubs in London now is the smell of old stale beer, skanky carpets, dodgy toilets and other punters BO. Lovely.

gross! Why do punters not bathe? Why do pub owners even have carpets actually, they're difficult to get clean. Why would they not air the place out enough so the beer smell gets out? And obviously they don't clean the toilets enough. It's a wonder that restaurants don't have this problem.

Actually I wonder if I just frequent cleaner places than MT's mate does. I hope to continue patronizing locations with clean toilets, floors, and customers...

and if "Die Kleine Kneipe" and "Crazy Bavaria" close down in my neighborhood, well then the average age 65 people who go in there will have to find somewhere else. Only ten fit in at a time anyhow. And I think Crazy Bavaria must've just changed hands anyway as it was just newly... renovated. Or those small places will have to stop serving food, isn't that an exception? Nobody's mentioned it yet.

Indeed! All that smoke was covering that up!

Yep, I noticed this in Ireland: BO, farts and a variety of other smells which smoke used to cover. I prefer the smell of smoke to the smell of arse & armpits.

I'm going to throw a cat amongst the pigeons:

Why is there a presumption here that the anti-noise rules are a bad thing? They don't affect me either way as I live in a Rückgebäude and go to bed after most bars close anyway, but I must admit that if I had a young children or a job that made me get up at the crack of dawn, then I would also want things to quieten down no later than 11. There are two sides to the coin and there has to be some regulation if you have bars in residential areas.

You have to ask whose rights have priority - the revellers' or the residents'? Frankly I feel the residents have a right to (and indeed pay for) "peaceful enjoyment", and the bar hoppers - difficult though it may be - should just learn to shut the fuck up. Of course there are questions of degree - a humming outdoor device that only someone with bionic hearing can hear doesn't necessarily belong in a soundproof box.

It may sound utopian, but the simple solution is indeed for the people outside to learn to be quiet - maybe regular "noise stings" (as mentioned above) would be an effective way of making this happen if it doesn't occur to people of their own volition, and I'm sure the police would sign up to it as it would be the best money-spinner since parking tickets. It goes without saying that as long as police rely on telephone calls it's the bars who will have to pay, as the people talking will invariably have left by the time the police arrive.

I don't know whether anyone here knows "The Chaser", but they would have a lot of fun with this...

That Fabmuc is the quintesence of the noise argument.

On the one hand, if people need to go to work the next day, they need their peace.
I sleep onto a back courtyard and I don't get disturbed by pub goers.
What I DO get get distrubed by are the bells of the big catholic church on a Sunday morning or the happy clappy pentecostalists singing.
I've tried complaining, but didn't get very far.

But if someone is stood outside a pub at 2310 the police will come.

What happens is that people live in densely populated inner city areas with a busy nightlife but expect that nightlife to turn off when THEY want it to.
If your life situation changes, consider moving to a quieter area. If you have kids or want peace don't move to an inner city area.

Any fool can work out where is noisy and where is quiet.

The most OUTRAGEOUS letter I have EVER seen in the SZ was from a father who had recently moved into a flat DIRECTLY above a large pub with beergarden slap bang on one of the busiest stretches of GBV with another 8 pubs within 50 metres threatening to sue the Bavarian Government if they relaxed the beer garden closing times as his childrens bedroom was just 10 metres from the beer garden. SO WHY THE FUCK MOVE IN THERE?

No. Sorry. Saying "I'd rather have smoke-stink so that I can ignore how disgusting this place is" is a real head-in-the-sand solution.

Be glad for the eye-opener! Get the mouldy-carpet problem fixed, and the toilets cleaned! Change pub!

Oh, and that disgusting-stink-thing is something that non-smokers go through every morning when we come across the clothes we we wearing out at the pub last night.

related topic: Bavaria to introduce strictest non-smoking law in Germany

As a non smoker but regular pub goer I am perfectly well aware of that thanks!

Related topic: Bavarian smoking ban won't apply to Oktoberfest