Public drinking banned in wine-happy Heidelberg

After Freiburg and Marburg the tourist Mecca Heidelberg will be banning alcohol from its streets on weekends and holidays from 9 pm to 5 am. City Hall is blaming the increase in brawls on informal congregations of drinkers who buy their booze in neighboring shops and gather in public squares and streets, getting drunk, disorderly and aggressive.


So it seems to be ok to get roaring drunk at rip-off tourist wine-gardens and use the public streets afterwards. One item in the quoted article really caught my eye: The further west and north you get from Munich the less control drinkers seem to exercise. Or the authorities in Munich are too tolerant of public drinking.

Well I can't really say that I have noticed many people drinking from cans/bottles in Heidelberg, except every now & then on Bismarkplatz & they are usually teenagers or winos, i assume this must be happening relatively late or something, or presumably not in the downtown area which is always patrolled by cops.

I really hope they don't bring such a law in in Munich. I also hope there is never a need for it.

When I was in Hiedelberg last, the only drunks on the streets that I saw were underage teenies, tourists (again, underage for the most part) and Ami soldiers. In an amazing turn of events, the latter were not as obnoxious as the former. The teenies and the tourists were definitely over baked!

Watch out Hutcho as this is a possibility for some areas of Munich too.
One area is likely to be Gärtnerplatz as we can't people sitting on the terraces of the trendy bars being confronted with people swigging the "Penner Glück" they bought out of Penny can we?

It would never happen in Cologne!

Now for Heidelberg...

this public drinking ban now stems from recently bigger clashes and brawls in the Old Town, with usually 3-5 people seriously injured, and 10-20 arrested every weekend. There also was a death (a US soldier) in such a brawl in the Old Town half a year ago. All of that within a very small area btw, around Untere Straße and Marktplatz. For a small city of about 160,000 (including US Army personnel and dependants), that's a lot to take.

Teenagers in Heidelberg often congregate around a number of places outside the Old Town to get drunk, then move in to "have some action". Examples for such places are a number of gas stations, in particular the S-Bahnhof Weststadt/Südstadt, and a number of Kiosks both in Altstadt Bergheim. The Bismarckplatz and other heavily-patrolled areas have been getting less interesting.
This has been getting a bit more pronounced as of late, since Heidelberg's "network" of clubs and discos has been shuffling around their priorities, and only one club remains that allows minors (over 16) to enter; the entire rest is targeted at students or over-30-yos only.

In addition to that all, since 9/11, Heidelberg police has been heavily overworked with security tasks; state police (BSP from Bruchsal and Karlsruhe) permanently have to support it in patrols and such, including in the Old Town btw. US Military Police, which used to occasionally help out in such situations (since US soldiers were and are also "regulars") has completely ceased all joint operations.

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Schriesheim, a small town 5 km north of Heidelberg, imposed a public drinking ban at it's very popular Mathaisemarkt festival last month. The Mathaisemarkt has been known over the past couple decades to be the spot for kids of the region (including Heidelberg) to get drunk off their asses.

The ban included both drinking and carrying alcohol, within a more-or-less defined zone in the city center of Schriesheim for 10 days, excluding the Festzelte at the Markt themselves. Within that zone, suspected alcohol "smugglers" would be searched, the alcohol confiscated, and the perpetrators filed with a misdemeanor charge. In case of minors, those would be brought home to their parents with a stern lecturing, and a midemeanor charge for the parents.

Supposedly, the police there had some good results with that actually, due to some decent enforcing. Presumably Heidelberg officials were also watching that.

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edit: Also, wine-happy? Please, we drink beer here. It's the surrounding towns (to the north in particular) that are wine-happy.

All I ever got to drink in Heidelberg was wine. But we were staying with a vintner at the time ...

Might have to do with Heidelberg itself not having any (notable) winegrowing industry. There's a couple patches on the hills between Rohrbach and Leimen, and some more out north towards Dossenheim, but that's it - and pretty much all owned by quite a number of different families. The hillsides in other suburbs don't lend themselves to wine, too much forest ;-)

I think there might be some tradition towards drinking wine in those two suburbs too, but most of Heidelberg is in the firm hands of local and national beer breweries.
Schriesheim to the north and Wiesloch to the south are about where the real wine-growing in the area starts. Those also are really into it, with wine filling the same role as beer in certain parts of Bavaria.

There are at least two brewpubs in Heidelberg, plus a pub that sells a wide range of beers from different breweries – an almost alien concept here in Munich. So very much a beer town in my mind.

A couple of them even.

Often "Heidelberger 1603" Pils (or Leimener Bergbräu) along with at least a second Pils not from the region (something like e.g. Jever) - plus one or two kinds of Export, one or two kinds of Weizen, and in a number of places something more international like Guiness or a US market Lager (for the US soldiers) as well.
The wine selection is usually not as good

Might be the Weisse Schwannen or something like that anyway, its also called the beer museum, they sell various different beers, including budweiser/budvar and more importantly Augustiner also paulaner. The local stuff is pretty shitty compared to Munich beer.

There are also several wine bars around where they have a pretty good selection.

I am shocked. I leave and all hell breaks loose in that city. I wonder whether they will actually enforce it though. Botellóns are illegal here too apparently but that doesn't stop anyone from drinking on the street at night... it's pretty fun too, sitting at the beach at 2am with a bottle or sangria.
But yeah, Heidelberg is not really a wine town. All I ever drink there are cocktails when I go out. But it is definitely more of a beer town.