readyforbusking

Busking in Graz

It was a wonderful experiance to play in such a city where you can play everywhere you want at almost any time(ofcourse at 12pm you shouldn't play on the street:P). On the other hand because of this there are quite a few people who want to play in such a small city(compared to Vienna) and sometimes they don't care about others and they start playing almost next to you.

But we weren't lucky with the weather. it was rainy and cloudy all the time except some hours of the week. I think if the weather would've been better maybe we would have made more money but who knows.

Center in Graz

There is a gypsy family from Slovakia(or at least that's what we heard) who are playing on Graz's streets for years. They are always in their places and every day you can meet with them. We didn't really talk with them but mostly they seemd peaceful.

Graz has one big, main street devided by a tram line in the middle(Schmiedgasse). That's where the bands are usually playing. It's pretty loud because of the traffic so with just a guitar it's not the best place to play. In Hauptplatz, there is a tram stop where we first played, in front of a shop. It was quite good because the peaople were "forced" to listen to you so they had time to really listen and not just pass you by and after 10 meters away they realize that they heard "something".  . it's still very noisy.

Hauptplatz

The best place where we played was Sporgasse. It's a long walking street, full of shops. The first street on the right from Hauptplatz. There are some nice street corners where you can play. this is where we made a small crowd(though the weather was bad).:P We played there maybe a bit more than 40 minutes and made about 25 euros, which for us is good money:)

Sporgasse

As always the weekends are the best time to busk but also there are a lot of musician playing on the streets in the weekends. on Saturday when the weather was nice we went till the end of Sporgasse and we found a little arch. The acoustic is just amazing in that little tunnel. :) People going up to the hill or down from the hill through this arch so when the weather is bad I don't recommend it.

The arch

close up:P

So it's a wonderful small city without any busking rules. Maybe in the summer is better here, but as I said we got really unlucky with the weather, but it wasn't bad at all :)

So those who wanna busk and enjoy the beautiful city and the freedom they should come and play here :) Plus, the people are very tolerant with musicians here. If you play in front of a shop and you are realtively good, they will even open the door to listen to you:)