Residents of the communities of Haar and Feldkirchen were concerned about the concert marathon of the British singer Adele in the nearby Messestadt Riem. They did not have the best memories of the 2022 show season. At that time, Robbie Williams, Helene Fischer and Andreas Gabalier had performed several times, each time in front of between 90,000 and 130,000 spectators, some of whom traveled from all over Germany and from abroad. At that time, some residents of Haar and Feldkirchen had to listen to the concerts involuntarily. There was particular anger about the “traffic chaos” that had occurred on the streets at times because there was no functioning concept.
With ten concert dates in August, where almost a million visitors from all over the world were expected in the specially built “Adele World”, the fears of constant noise pollution and fans parking illegally were certainly justified. However, according to some residents of Salmdorf, these fears were hardly confirmed at the first six concerts. The Haar district is in the immediate vicinity of Adele’s pop-up stadium; both the arena and the toboggan hill in Riemer Park, where fans without tickets can watch the concerts when the wind is favorable, are within walking distance from here.
Yes, the shows and everything that goes with them can of course be heard, says Brigitte Karg from Salmdorf, who is still there late in the evening on the sixth day of the concert. But the municipality had informed us of this in writing long in advance. “And my God, in this weather you’re not in bed at this time. And they finish on time,” says Karg, shrugging her shoulders.
Petra Otto, manager of the Hotel Bauer in Feldkirchen, even describes the concert series as “great”. “Of course, this has been very positive for our booking situation, but it is also simply good for the mood in the country and this summer,” she says. She finds the fans, who have traveled from countries such as South Africa, Lithuania, Belgium and Slovenia, to be “completely positive” and considers the entire organisation to be “very safe”. There is no doubt that the concerts are “a bit noisy”. But the positive aspects, which she also includes a good security concept, outweigh the negative ones in her opinion.
On the sixth “Adele evening”, hardly a sound of the ongoing concert can be heard at first; only around 9 p.m. is the sultry evening air in large parts of Haar and Feldkirchen penetrated by occasional bass and piano fragments.
One exception is Seidlhofstrasse in Salmdorf, from where a footpath leads towards the Riemer exhibition grounds and the dancing spotlights of the show become visible. Here, the concert can be heard so clearly that even the song titles – Adele has just started singing her James Bond anthem “Skyfall” – can be recognized. That’s why acoustic engineer Claus Mündel has also stood here, holding a sound level meter. “51.6 decibels,” he says, looking at the display. “The limit is 70 decibels – so it remains well below the permissible value.”
Mündel explains that he was commissioned as an “official meter” by the city of Munich to check the volume of concert evenings in the nearby residential areas. In addition to Salmdorf, his route also includes Ueberreiterstrasse in Aschheim, Riemer Strasse and Willy-Brandt-Allee in Munich, as well as Olympiastrasse in Feldkirchen. According to him, the latter is currently the loudest at around 56 decibels. 68.2 decibels was the highest value he had measured at Adele concerts so far, including the fireworks display at the end. “So perfect,” says Mündel. He had certainly received complaints, but some of them could be traced back to the up to 12,000 fans who celebrated on the toboggan hill after the concert.
In an email to the SZ, a local resident also complained about the “noticeably negative effects of the events”; in addition to the “massive noise pollution”, there was also talk of “traffic chaos” in the towns near the concert. However, the situation is not quite as dramatic – at least not on this evening. This year, the communities of Haar and Feldkirchen have designated no-through and no-parking zones on Johann-Karg-Straße (Haar) and Olympiastraße (Feldkirchen). Not everyone is sticking to this; Feldkirchen’s Olympiastraße is pretty full of parked cars and there are a few cars parked all over the place on the lawn in front of the Gronsdorf church.
On the other hand, the maximum permitted parking time of two hours for non-residents on Seidlhofstrasse in Salmdorf is strictly enforced: when the last firework of the evening burns out in the night sky at 10.11 p.m., almost every second of the 20 or so cars parked there has a parking ticket stuck under the windshield wiper.