The chilled white wine splashes into the glass, the sound of sizzling grilled meat can be heard from the neighboring garden – balmy summer evenings on the terrace often have a relaxing effect. But suddenly unfamiliar sounds break through the tranquil suburban idyll in Feldkirchen: “I sing a Liad für di” resounds in a broad Austrian dialect through the evening air – so loudly, as if the music were coming from the playground around the corner. Is the Volks-Rock’n’Roller, as the Styrian musician Andreas Gabalier calls himself, giving an exclusive concert there in an intimate atmosphere? Such events with a manageable audience have become very fashionable, especially in times of a pandemic.
The reality turns out to be much less comfortable: A night-time bike tour reveals that the sound is coming from the exhibition center a few kilometers away, where a good 90,000 fans dressed in traditional costumes are in a blissful swaying mood. According to Gabalier, this is a “size dimension that has not yet been seen” – but it should soon be surpassed: this Saturday hit queen Helene Fischer will appear in front of the crowds in the trade fair city, a week later the British pop star Robbie Williams announced – both want to break the mark of one hundred thousand visitors.
So things won’t get any quieter in Feldkirchen over the coming weekends. As a suburban resident, you may be annoyed at first about the forced Hulapalu yodelling and breathless ecstasy.
But then the business sense is awakened – after all, the coveted tickets for the open-air events cost up to several hundred euros. So why not sell tickets for your own garden, where you can clearly hear every word of the lyrics anyway? 100,000 listeners would not find space there, but a nice sum could still result. Or you demand parking fees in the streets of the neighborhood: At the Gabalier concert, they were full of companions from all over Germany, from Rosenheim to Frankfurt to Berlin. If you didn’t come by car, you could, for example, walk from the Feldkirch train station to the exhibition center. You can certainly make a profit here too: the masses on a pilgrimage could be provided with beer and snacks on the side of the road.
With all the money won in this way, you can easily buy earplugs so that you don’t have to endure too much of the Gaudi music yourself.