Busking in Munich

We spent some days in Munich and we tried to figure out how the busking law is working. We published it before, somebody sent us a link where you can find informations on how you can get a permit.

(here's the link again)

The place where you can get the permit

Same thing from a different angel

Laws:
So if you want to play in the pedestrian zone you have to go to the München information (Marienplatz)the day when you want to play(early in the morning). There are five permits per day. We don't recommend to play in the pedastrian area without a permit because the police will fine you  the first time they catch you. BUT there are places where you can play without any problem.

Experiance:
We spent less than a week in Munich, so we didn't have time to play in many places and also the city is huge. We just played at the English Garden entrance (close to Odeonplatz) where we found a passage where the acoustic is really good. We made there around 15-30 euros per hour. :) In the English Garden there were many bands playing on the holiday(1th of May).

Band playing in the English Garden

Another band in the English Garden

English Garten passage

English Garden in Japhonese style:P

We played about an hour in Hofgarten too, but the cops came and stopped us 'cause you need a permit for that place. But it's a really good spot to play.

Hofgarten

We saw bands playing in the Hofgarten's entrance from Odeonplatz. It might also be a good place to play, but it's a bit noisy. Somebody recommend us Münchener Freiheit but when we got there somebody was already playing there.

So that's it for now :)

Busking in Salzburg


We mostly just rested and enjoyed the sun while we were in Salzburg, but of course we tried to play a bit in the center and we think it's a nice place to make money (and other musicians told us the same thing).
I expected more street musicians (especially classical musicians)than I saw, because Mozart's birth-house as well as the house he lived in is in Salzburg so the city has a huge historical backround. But It might be like this because it's not really the "tourist season" yet but still there were a lot of people.

Shopping street in Salzburg

Laws:
You are not allowed to play in the shopping streets but people still play there. We met a guy with a guitar(he sang really good) who told us that he has been playing in Salzburg for some years and usually he plays in illegal places but he never really had big porblems with the police. Of course there are some free places. Like the bridges, Mozartplatz and generaly squares (It's ironic that you're not allowed to play in front of Mozart's birth house :P) and you have to move every hour to another place but that's all.:)

Close to Mozartplatz

Our experiance:
We played a bit on the walking bridge without any luck and the last day we tried to sing in a little passage close to Mozartplatz where we saw a musician playing before(actually it's an illegal place) and we made our usual amount of money(15-20 euros/hour). But we didn't struggel to play more because we had to carry around all our luggages with us. 

Me and our stuff

The conclution:
Salzburg should defenetly be on every buskers/travelers list, just because its one of those small, beautiful cities where you can either chose to sing and probably make good money, or just go and relax for a couple of days if you are tired and happen to be near by.

Salzburg


We left Salzburg some days ago and now we are in Munich and we got a bit of time to update the blog :)

In Salzburg we mostly chilled a bit and enjoyed this beautiful little Austrian city. We got 3-4 days of "summer". The sky was clear and The sun was really strong so we got a bit of tan too :D We had a wonderful 3(or 4?) days there.

Salzburg

We used carpooling again to get to Salzburg. On the way we could see some peaks of the Alps. We couldn't take our eyes of the landscape. I grew up in Hungary so it's pretty amazing to see huge mountains for me:P

view from the highway

Alps

We arrived at around 9 in the evening to Salzburg and our host(Jonnas) gave us a quick tour of the city. The streets were empty and everything was quiet. The main turist attractions were lighten up and the darkness was hiding the snowy mountains from our eyes.

Salzburg at night

The first day we decided to discover Salzburg. Small little streets everywhere with beautiful baroque architecture. You can find in the center Mozart's birth-house and of course a lot of souvenir shop full of Mozart things :P. Even this period of the year there were many turists everywhere.

Small street in Salzburg

Later we went up on a hill (where the modern art museum is)where we could see the whole city and The Alps. It was just amazing standing there and watching this gorgeus view. I even had time to paint! :D Unfortunately we didn't went up to the castle because we would've had to pay entrance.:( But for the christmas market is free.  In the end of the day we were really tired.

Up

Salzburg

We decided the next morning that we will climb up on Gaisberg. It's the closest big mountain to Salzburg. It takes about 2 hours to go up(for us it took around 3 hours but we stopped a lot:P)

flower

on the way up

If you are lazy you can take a bus up there or if you have your own car you  can drive up to the top. Theres a small pub there where you can enjoy your beer in front of a beautiful background. But the Austrians are not lazy at all! they bike up the mountain and than they ride down between the rocks! Or just "simply" run up the mountain at the age of 50. For us it was really amazing watching these people.

almost the top

close to the end

On the top what we saw is undiscribable. The pictures can't give back fully the whole experience, being there... The landscape brought tears into our eyes.

on the top

on the top together

view from Gaisberg

It was one of the most beautiful days of my life. The effort to get there was nothing compared to the feeling that this view gave me.
The next day we had to camp but fortunately the weather was beautiful and we didn't have any problem. We just had to carry around our heavy backpacks for one day but we survived:P

with the full arsenal:P

With the other half of the arsenal :)

We tried busking a little bit too witch wasn't bad:P. Actually I expected more musicians than we saw but maybe it's not the season yet. At night we went up on the hill. The sleeping bags were even too hot at night, and we saw the most beautiful sunrise we have ever seen.

Sunrise

Salzburg in Orange

Salzburg is one of those places that you have to see before you die!:P And more about busking coming soon!:P

Last day in Graz

Three days ago we arrived to Salzburg. We didn't have time to write till now.

Our last day in Graz was wonderful. The clouds finally dissapeared from the sky and it was nice and sunny. :) We went up on a small hill where we could see the panorama of Graz in a different angle than we saw it before.

the three crosses

View from up

In the top there are 3 crosses , symbolizing the crucifixion of Jesus. It's not that impressive but the view is beautiful. Later we went down to the river Mur and we were sitting on the bank for a while. The river was flowing slowly and the sun was reflected on the surface and it sparkled like little diamonds. :)

Mur bank

little duckies hiding

Than we went to the city center and sang a bit for the last time(made about 20 euros) and we said goodbye to our friends.They helped us a lot!Thanks!:)

Center of Graz

Markus and Thomas

We spent  wonderful week in Graz. Though the weather was bad we really enjoyed ourselves. I can't say any bad thing about Graz and I recommend you to visit this small city if you have the chance and sing on its italian like streets!:)

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:)

Visiting Vienna

This is the last night in Graz and it's still raining so I have time to write on the blog about What is worth to visit in Vienna in my opinion.:)

This time when we were in Vienna we didn't really have time to visit many places but a year before we spent 3 days and looked around in the center.

Karlsplatz

But we still took "a day off" from busking and we went to Albertina Museum and saw the best exibition of my life. It was impressionism and in the other floors you could see drawings from Klimt and the little collection of paintings between Monet and Picasso. It was amazing!
And of course this is not the only Museum in Vienna. In the Museum Quarter you can find out more information about the exibitions in Vienna.

Museum Quarter

Albertina Museum

If you just want to walk around you can start from the center(Stephansplatz). In the center there is a huge, beautiful, gothic cathedral,Stephansdom . You will meet in the main walking street with many street artists with different kind of perfomances (spray paintings, puppet show, music and so on).

Stephansdom

Stephansdom

And if you can't stand the crowd anymore you can go to Stadtpark. It's a small park about 5 minutes away from Stephansplatz. You can find their the Strauss statue. A lot of turists go to that park to see the statue. The lake is full of ducks and they are really friendly :) They come really close to you of course for food.:)

Stadtpark

The other nice park close to Stadtpark is Karlspatz. One of the most beautiful baroque church is Karlskirche. The big square makes the building more monumental and it takes your breath away. And if you really like parks than you should defenatly go to Danube park(Donau park). We got one beautiful day in Vienna when we had no clouds in the sky and we found that beautiful place.:) All the flowers were blooming and everything was green :)

Danube park

Danube park

There's a little colorful train that is going through the park. It's so cute and small.I loved it:)

little train:)

little train going between the trees

The whole park belongs to the newest part of Vienna, called Donau City. It's like a future city from 2050. Maybe for other Western-Europeans it's not a big deal to see skycrapers and such modern structures but for me, being an Eastern-European, it's like being in a sci-fi movie.:P

Donau City in Vienna

Oh,.. And I almost forgot about the Hundertwasser house. It's "hiding" in a small street in Vienna but it's quite easy to find it. It's about 15 minutes walk from Stadtpark. He knows how to combine nature and architecture :) And there is a factory designed by him on the U6 line that is also worth visiting. Unfortunately I don't have good photo of it:(

Hundertwasser houe

And of course you should defenatly visit the palaces in Vienna (Schönnbrunn, Belvedere).I visited Belvedere(10-15euros the entrance) a year before but unfortunately We didn't go to Schönnbrunn:( But i am sure that I will see it soon :D

Maybe what I wrote is a bit chaotic but that's how thoughts came to my mind and I just wrote them down.:P But I still hope that you found something interesting in it.:)
Click here for more pictures!

Busking laws in Munich

These days I 've been trying to find informations about busking in Munich, but what I found it was outdated(like 2007), and it seemed that the law is really strict.

Today while we were searching couch in Munich, we recieve an answer and a nice girl sent us a link about busking laws in Munich. It seems kinda hard how it works and how they give the permission(day by day? or they giving you a date when you can sing a month later?).

But what is sure:

They give five permit per day for the morning(11.00-14.00) and five in the afternoon(15.00-22.00)

You have to go to the City Hall (Marienplatz, 80331 Munich), Monday-Friday 10 am -
8 pm and Saturday 10 am - 4 pm.

For holidays it's different and it doesn't mention any free places...

But here is the link where you can see clearer: busking law in Munich (first pdf)

Anyway, when we will arrive Munich we go to the City Hall and see ourself what is going on.