Bars and restaurants are "supposed" to be non-smoking in Germany. However, there are small loopholes in certain states that allow for some smoking inside and Rheinland-Pfalz happens to be one of those states.
Not cool, RP, not cool. I tried to meet some friends for a get-together in a bar. It's actually somewhat difficult to find completely non-smoking bars around here that are good for meeting up and have some forms of entertainment such as Kicker (table soccer) games or pool tables. Some bars get away with having a smoking "room." Well, unless it's somehow in an air lock, the smoking room still poisons the rest of the building with the polluted air, to varying degrees.
We went to the Hardrock Cafe (NOT affiliated with the chain) in Kaiserslautern, thinking that it would work since it had a non-smoking room. Well, their concept of "non-smoking" is to have a door between the two sections but it's kept open, and to place smokers directly on the other side of the door. For all intents and purposes, it was a smoking room. My friend tried to shut the door so we wouldn't choke on smoke but the waitress scolded her and shooed her away.
I lasted about 10 minutes but my head ached and my lungs were heavy from the smoke. I removed myself before I broke into a full-blown asthma attack.
It's incredibly frustrating that there are so many loopholes to the smoking ban. It is especially rotten for the bar and restaurant staff, to have to be constantly exposed to poison like that.
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