Columbiahalle

A fan of the venue. It's not too big and the acoustics are great. The only bad part was the queue for the coat check after the show (best leave during encore to get your coat..) and they had a sweet cleaning lady in the redtroom but it meant you were guilt tripped into paying at least 50¢ each time you had to pee.

This would be a solid 5 stars if I was only rating the show, sound and space (Fever Ray, 28/02/18). Unfortunately I feel pretty let down by some basic organisation issues at the venue.

All bags over A4 must be left in a separate cloakroom outside the venue, which is understaffed and costs €2 per item. Queues were huge, and poorly separated so some people waited twice. Because it was -8° (felt like -15°) we had to choose either to leave our coats in our bags outside and still have to queue in the freezing cold to get into the venue, or queue three times - once for the bag, once for entry, and again for the indoor "coats only" cloakroom.

Luckily one of our group decided put her coat inside, while we had ours in our bag, so she kindly collected our bag, however while waiting inside for her to finish we actually got kicked out by security who wanted to close up.

This is a seriously inneficient system, and nowhere on our tickets did it state that bags would have to be left outside the venue (photography and videos are explicitly forbidden on the ticket)

The second, more serious issue for me is that the clearly marked non-smoking policy does not seem to be enforced in any way. Continuous puffs of vape and smoke could be seen rising from the crowd. Other than the obvious health issues, I actively avoid smoky places due to asthma and allergies to e-cigs. Suffice to say I had to take my inhaler 4 times during the show, and all my clothes reek. Luckily my coat was outside getting frozen solid.

To round off this review I want to say a couple of positive things - the sound quality was good, venue layout was good, the upstairs area has really great views, and the bars are not massively overpriced.

And Fever Ray were awesome!

I'm very disappointed that I have to give this place only two stars- was here for the alt-j concert two days ago.

We arrived pretty early so it wasn't crowded at the entrance, and my friend mentioned it could be problematic when crowded, so we were extra cautious.

The place wasn't too crowded yet so we were able to put our coats in the garderobe downstairs, grab a beer and pick a good place before everyone squeeze in.
Picked a nice spot with a great view upstairs, it was a really good decision (concert-wise).


About an hour later the concert started- the sound wasn't so amazing for the two warm up bands but the waiting time between each one wasn't too long so that's a good thing.

A while after - Alt J came, I'll save you the details (amazing! Giving them a 100 stars) because it's not very relevant at the moment- and we tried to get down the stairs towards the ground level- disaster!

So many people, with guards blocking the staircases and letting only a few people at a time to go downstairs, it took forever!

And just when we thought we were done - don't forget there's another staircase for the coats, and if coming down from upstairs was hard... So getting our coats was twice as tough.

This is a pretty small place and it took us about an hour to leave, it was not fun.
At least the concert was worth it.

WHat can you really say about a concert hall? For me It only needs 3 things, a good view. The view is fine almost everywhere except around the lighting desk, especialy if the person working there stands all the time rather than sitting, hint hint!! The second thing it needs is a bar. It has one of those, with the traditionaly expensive and busy bar. The third thing is a toilet which you will need if the music is very bad or the beer is too good. Unfortunately the former is perhaps more likely but fortunately not on the evening I was there.

I thought this was a really great venue. Although small, it doesn't seem like any spot on the floor is a bad spot. I was there for 2raumwohnung and it got super packed, but overall a good experience.


The bar area is pretty decent as well, and stayed relatively empty during the showwhich was nice for taking a breather. It's really easy to get to and if there is a show there you'll most likely be pleased with the venue as well.