Bavarian smoking ban won't apply to Oktoberfest

I don't know about you, but I actually like having lots of small local pubs. I wouldn't be happy to see them all have to close...

seems like i've heard all of these complaints before. In canada they put in the smoking ban over a year ago for all bars, restaurants and public places. the first to howl were the bar and restaurant owners for all of the obvious reasons. business was down for about a week. then all of the customers came back. if you think it's rough in munich to go outside to have a smoke...standing out on the sidewalk in montreal in january having a smoke in minus 20-degree celcius temperatures. they do it. they live with it. and now it's accepted. as usual it seems to be a matter of time only.

I wasn't saying it would be a good thing for small pubs to close, but simply inevitable. I think this cop-out clause is a disaster. That said, a cheap paper wall blocking off a corner of the pub will do the trick, even if it will look ridiculous.

I'm an EX smoker and I reguarly get the AC turned up in my local cos of the smoke.
Minus 20° C yeah we get that in Munich as well often enough too.

It's the FACT that after 2300, smokers outside obeying the law will be contravening other laws about which complaints WILL be made in inner Munich
-and the pubs will be fined. The fines for noise are higher than the fines for smoking.

We've had on other threads the fact that this doesn't seem to occur in other cities, even elsewhere in Germany, although it is a VERY real issue here.

I would have hoped for an exemption for pubs under X M² public floor space but that would have been too much of an easy way to protect the "ma and da" pubs that were on every street corner in Munich before the whole fucking "lounge" thing.

...And the noise laws in Canada are???

I still don't think business will decline too much. There might be a shock to start with, but then people will get just used to it. Just as non-smokers go out despite smoking, smokers will go out despite non-smoking.

A bit like the Euroeinführung - I still remember a beer costing 5 DM on 31 December, then 3 EUR and up on 1 January. Somehow we all got used to that as well, and after a period of reticence people now go out as much as they ever did.

I mean, they have successfully implemented the smoking ban in Lithuania, so I reckon Munich should somehow be able to pull it off...

But you still are not addressing the fact that people are not allowed to congregate in front of bars after 11pm - by law...Or why do you think that every single beer garden and outside area in residential areas close, with people moved inside at that time??

So basically, anyone who wants a smoke after 11pm has to go home...tell us that won't harm business.

Bit of a myth that. It's didn't jump from DM 5 = EUR 2,50 to EUR 3,00 overnight and there are other reasons behind the increasing retail price of beer in pubs.

Will the neighbours of pubs "get used" to smokers outside pubs after 2300 and stop calling the police?
Will the police and KVR "get used" to pubs breaking the Freischänkfläche laws and stop dishing out EUR 150 fines for each time they are called out?

to be honest I think it'll have a huge impact on the pubs here, especially the smaller ones..

Since the smoking ban came into Ireland 7000 pubs have closed (ok, we did have a lot to start with, but still). Now obviously I'm not suggesting that they all closed due to the smoking ban - but in most cases it's had a massive impact. I was home a few weeks ago - two of the biggest/busiest pubs in our area, pubs that are practically landmarks, have closed for good and are now being turned into apartments. Even down my local, the atmosphere has completely changed - the pubs inside are much quieter with everyone outside having a fag. Me and the other non-smokers were looking wistfully out the window while the smokers seemed to be having a great time outside.

Aren't these laws (noise pollution) the same in every Bundesland?
The smoking ban seems to be going just fine in Baden-Württemberg where it was introduced over two months ago. So why wouldn't it go well in Bavaria?

I am very much looking forward to the smoking ban being introduced in Bavaria. Sadly here you can still smoke in bars and restaurants ... but when I go back to Germany everywhere will be non-smoking.

I am not sure if the laws are the same in all Bundesländer or even cities.
Even if they ARE the same they can be applied VERY differently, look at the federal law on pocession of small quantities of cannabis for example.

We had a poster on another thread from BW a few weeks back and her stories of people outside at licencsed premises is TOTALLY different to what happens in Munich at least.
She was on about a rock pub in an urban area with people outside till 4AM or something whereas in Munich they can and WILL fine the pub if they catch ANYONE outside after 2300.

I guess it depends very much on the area, was it residential?

Here in Barcelona there is a bar where you can also not stay outside the bar on the street (after midnight or so). They have people (pantomimes) specifically employed to remind people to be quiet outside during the night, seemed to work pretty well the night I was there. They do also have bouncers, but the pantomimes are the ones who make sure people are quiet. I think that is actually a pretty cool idea and creative.

But well, maybe the police will have to be a little more lenient. And maybe smokers will have to learn to control their addiction a little and only be outside for their smoke, then go back inside, instead of hanging outside the bar/pub for hours smoking one cigarette after another.

munich police have never been noted for being very flexible. however, if you're going to lay a law on people like the smoking ban there is going to have to be some adjustment elsewhere. canada has noise laws the same as most every other place. there seems to be some give-and-take when it comes to the smokers and there certainly is no 11.00pm rule mainly because most bars (in montreal at least) close at 3.30am. it helps that most of the licensed bars are not in residential areas.

It is not a question if the people outside a pub after 2300 are quiet or not, Hazza has already explained anyway that they won't be.
Their presence alone is breaking the law for which pubs can be and are, fined.

Which Munich ward has the highest number of licensed premises: Number 2, Ludwigstadt-Isarvorstadt, which is also one of the most densely populated.

You would expect there to be some kind of trade off between banning smoking in pubs and the noise law issue but I have seen so far no indication that that will happen. I will keep my ear to the ground, maybe there will be some kind of "understanding" reached with the KVR but I wouldn't lay money on it. All you need is one evil neighbour prepared to sue and there are plenty of them.

Well it did in a lot of the places I go to - maybe they remained stable in bona fide pubs. Restaurant prices also went bezerk at that stage, in fact I think a large segment of the hospitality industry saw the EUR as a chance to push up prices a lot. There were even some restaurants so brazen that they showed the EUR price v. the DM price on the menu, yet the EUR price did not actually correspond to the DM price (so if you were still paying in DM you got it more cheaply).

But back to the topic at hand...if I'm following the general consensus correctly, most people have issues not so much with the smoking ban as such, but with the problems that will be created from having people smoking on the street? Well I still don't really see how you can get around having a doorman (or a Barcelona-sytle pantomime!). It doesn't have to be the type of doorman who regulates the "standard" of customer, just somone who keeps an eye on things outside. I don't know what the going rate is, but I'd still guess that paying him to work from 23:00-2:00 or 3:00 is cheaper than a fine.

And I still think things will be ok after a time. A smoking ban requires a level of resocialisation, especially for those who inextricably link smoking and drinking, but the Romans and plenty of other cultures had a fine old time without smoking, so it's not that fundamental to a good night out.

I think the smoking ban applying to the smaller pubs IS wrong.

A cash in hand no name no pack drill bouncer is going to cost you in the region of 15 Yoyos an hour upwards.
Plus a lot more if you do it legally AND if as has happened in other EU countries all door staff have to be trained and licensed and thus only available through companies.

Bearing in mind that for a LOT of small pubs in inner Munich, running the pub is a hand to mouth existence as self-employment, it would tip many over the edge as would even a tiny dip in income.

You would need to have someone on the door every night of the week. At a (conservative) €40 a night - let's make it 6 nights a week (1 Ruhetag), that adds up to €240 a week or around €1000 a month. That's €12,000 a year that a bar owner will have to do without.

You can't expect someone to just agree to take a €12,000 a year pay cut. It would meant the death of a lot of small pubs...

Well maybe the authorities could come up with some kind of compromise like making that expense absetzbar for bars of a certain size or in a residential location?

KVR, Munich Police, bitchy neighbours..."compromise" ?

There are 10 weeks to do that starting today, like I said, I wouldn't put money on it.

What they should be doing is fining the people on the street and not the bars. After a few 150 euro fines, people would soon learn to be quiet when having a smoke. There are enough cops to run sting operations to catch people riding the wrong way, or without a reflector on their bike. Take these cops and get them to sit outside a different noisy pub each night and start handing out fines.

Sounds good in theory, but it would need a change in the law (which hasn't happened thus far). Also, what level of noise is acceptable outside?

So here's the scenario - Mr and Mrs Hutcho are walking home after a romantic night out. They're holding hands and chatting away as they pass Hans' Stuberl on the way. Unfortunately for them, the cops are conducting a noise sting there. Because they were making noise after 11pm, Mr and Mrs Hutcho get €150 fine each and Hutcho starts a new thread on how unfair it was to fine them €300 for just talking...

Except its not the smokers that get fined, it's the pub.

Gee Hazza that's a terrible scenario. Did that ever happen at your bar? That people who were just walking by when a noise violation was being investigated were taken for the noisemakers and told to get inside? And the police didn't believe them when they said they were just walking by? Have you seen that happen elsewhere? I never have, but I don't get out much and haven't owned a bar ever either...

If there's a noise sting at a bar, with cops sitting outside waiting for "noise violations" as Hutcho suggested, then how could it possibly be fair to only fine those people standing outside chatting whilst having a smoke, and not those walking by and chatting??

As has been explained by Hazza MANY time before, the police can't prove which individuals were making the disturbance anyway so they fine the pub.
It is GENERALLY, not a fine for noise itself but a breaking of their alcohol licence (freischänkfläche) by allowing individual outside of their pub after 2300.
Even if it is one or two people who are making less noise than passing pedestrians.

Even if there is no real noise disturbance, LOTS of pubs have the miserable bastard neighbour who is ITCHING to call the police and does so the minute the clock strikes 2300. This has to do with the changes in the pub scene in Munich and changes in the social and demographic composition of many inner city areas where these pubs are.

Yeh, but I wouldn't be smoking - they should only be able to bust smokers

Seriously, people chatting on the street is not something I would expect them to bust people for in any case. It's the loud drunk talking that a lot of people switch to after a few beers that wakes the neighbours.

Problem is that normal talking in the street is enough in a lot of cases - particularly if it's persistent - which it will be. As one group finishes, a new group will go outside, then another, and another.

Even if none of them yell, and all of them just talk, it is consistent and persistant noise, which goes all night and the neighbours will complain and the cops will come...

So if you're gonna set up a sting outside a pub to stop noise, you would have to fine everybody who's talking..

Nah, last time I saw a place get busted, it was 2310. The owner was just cashing up with the last four respectable DINERS, on the terrace.
This particular pub/restaurant has a much greater capacity outside than inside so the landlord had already had to send half his customers away.
Some unpleasant neighbours had obviously called the police just after 2300 and they turned up and fined the place €150.

Then they demanded IDs off staff that looked like "Ausländer" for good measure.

If you've set up a sting outside the pub, and you're sitting there in your cop car watching and waiting (that's a sting, right?), can't you see the difference between people walking by and people walking out of that particular pub?

Hazza, I figure you've got more experience than most of us. Do give us some numbers: in your tenure as pub owner, how many times did you get fined for people being loud OUTSIDE the pub? Just as a reference point.

Gen, one pub I know that has a REAL problem with a neighbour has been getting fined oh at least twice a month or so over the last summer.
The fines don't happen THAT often to most pubs becasue most pubs know the story and clear off any outside tables etc at 2300 and check that customers don't hang around outside. eg: the whole Kilians bouncer stories.

But once the smoking ban comes in, smokers will HAVE to hang around outside if they want to smoke.

The law isn't neutral though. Some pubs get targeted, others don't.

I never got fined.

Mainly I think it was because we were lucky enough to have a number of the cops from the local precinct as customers when they were off duty who came and played darts at the pub. So they gave us more leeway than normal.

But having said that, cops came regularly to warn us about the noise. They made us clear the area outside of people, and it was made clear that if they had to come a second time, then they would fine us or shut us down.

Once they did come a second time and it took a lot of pleading by me to not shut us down for the night. We got a lot of letters from neighbours (mostly anonymous) and also the KVR, threatening us with action.

What people don't seem to want to understand is that the whole noise issue is enough of a headache already and you always have neighbours that will call the cops at the slightest behest. We actually had to put the motor of the cooling system (which is outside) in a soundproof box, because the gentle hum (and that's all it was) annoyed the neighbour upstairs. We had the cops come once because a neighbour complained that 4 taxis pulled up outside at the same time and they were too loud!! I once had a woman come in and demand I do something about the "English speakers" that left the pub every night, and walked down the neighbouring street talking. We were the subject of Eigentümerverein meetings where our Landlord had to fight for us when the neighbours wanted to try to take away our late night licence. We were stopped from throwing our rubbish in the hopper after closing, because it was too loud.

Now, can you imagine what it would have been like if I had been forced to allow people to go outside to have a smoke? There's no way I could have controlled the noise then. It would have been a fucking nightmare...

Just having a few people outside chatting is not a feasible option - it might be ok if it's a few minutes, but after 10 minutes, 1 hour, 3 hours of constant traffic outside, the neighbours will not put up with it.
You seriously don't understand how crap the neighbours can be.

Oh, a neighbor in our building is trying to shut down the pub downstairs. It is crap. In four years 've never even seen police there. And the pub's been there longer than he has too. They had an Eigentümerversammlung last month or so where the apt owners apparently gave their opinions, but the people actually living in the building weren't asked. We've written the pub and our landlord a letter with our support and that we'll testify at the Bürgerversammlung that'd be necessary to shut them down.

That said, I never go in that pub because -- it's too smoky. They're so fun and do cool events (children's story hours on Sundays, Tatort showings, Kir Royal parties, during the WM they didn't just have TVs outside but all the tables and chairs were on real Rollrasen with white boundary lines) and have the best posters and show all the Bundesliga which I would occasionally like to watch as we have no TV, but I can't stand to be in there. Shame.

http://valentinstueberl.com/

Case in point about social change in places like GBV.


It's worth it though for the frankly fucking gorgeous barman!

See - and that's why when people say "They'll have to just learn to be quiet outside", I can only shake my head.

If only it was that simple...

social change my ass. It's the 65 year old man who's complaining about the pub and he's been complaining about it for 25 years, the pub's been there for 30.

But which barman do you like, the blonde maybe?

And anyhow, I look forward to a large selection of places I can go to after the ban, after having oh maybe only 60 places in Munich to even try going before the ban. And completely smoke-free before the ban I know of only Degustini, Zauberberg, and Cafe Ignaz (and Vegelangelo, which is currently closed and I didn't like the food anyhow).

No, I'm sure that the smokers will be considerate to other people around them, and not want to (noise) pollute the neighbourhood.

I had once the hope that smoking would be completely passé by the time my daughter reached her teens. Doesn't look like that's going to happen though. At least, not in Germany. As someone else here said, it's hard to believe that Germany is just so many years behind other countries on the smoking issue.

Obviously only if they haven't been fined out of existence by the noise police...

I was trying to write it too simply.
One problem has been relative newbies in the 80469 area demanding this tradtional pub area be quietened down to their tastes.
but on the other side is that fact that people do go out later now and the pubs and open later and thus the noise comes later.

When I first moved to the area (Adenauer was still Chancellor then ) many (if not quite most) of the pubs in the area shut at 10 PM.


Dark haired, designer stubble, he's a friend of a friend but I've forgotten his name now.
Also works in Favorit Bar near Stachus.
He doesn't play in your Bunesliga though.

so it seems the consensus is that not only are smokers too fucking selfish not to smoke around non-smokers and need legislation to stop them they are also probably going to be too fucking selfish to keep their gobs shut when smoking outside buildings.

It's not just smokers who won't keep their gobs shut outside. Send any 2 people outside at 1am after they've consumed 8 beers and I guarantee that they'll be loud...smokers or not.

we are discussing smokers hanging around outside pubs to smoke, are we not?

Was there ever a problem, to your knowledge, caused specifically by non-smokers hanging about outside pubs?

Oh I certainly hope not, he'd be no fun for you if he did! Just curious, honest!

must google "designer stubble", it sounds interesting...

Smokers or non smokers, they'll be too noisy outside.
Point being that smokers will now HAVE to go outside.
Break one law to avoid breaking another.

Of course there was. Given that smokers were allowed in the pub as well meant that they had no more and no less reason to hang around outside. Those people who were loud outside were both smokers and non-smokers.

Of course if smokers are forced outside, then it'll probably be a majority of smokers that cause the noise - but that'll be due to the law change and not because they want to hang outside and be loud and disturb the neighbours all of a sudden.

they could just try NOT smoking, rather than breaking the law.

Yes, I suppose they could...but that's hardly a practical solution.

A bit like telling a manic depressive to just "cheer up" or an anorexic that they should "eat a bit more"

I managed to stop but there are times when you are in the pub and really fancy a puff.

<gets coat>

whatever floats yer boat I guess...as long as I can't smell it while I'm eating

anyway. So no other country has the noise laws and people calling the police about noisy pubs like Germany, right? And Germany's pub culture is doomed to become like... some other country's, which is a tragedy. Because Germany's pubs have always been unique and um... better. Oh well, I'm still not convinced the smoking ban's a bad thing.