I am not an Adele fan, but when the British singer announced her series of concerts in Munich, I quickly realized that attending one of them would probably be in the cards for me.

Just as with the Blackpink concert we went to—and under the “Happy Wife, Happy Life” rule—I had little choice but to get tickets and plan a trip to the Bavarian capital. Any excuses not to had little chance of flying: I was born and raised a stone’s throw from the city after all.

So, we forked out an ungodly amount of money for two tickets and made it part of a European road trip that we had planned for a long time already. Adele’s concert venue in Munich was a custom-built 80,000-seater pop-up stadium that managed to make the Philippine Arena feel small.

And it was the Philippine venue that quickly came to my mind as we prepared to attend the event. In particular, I thought back to the total shambles that was traffic management during the Blackpink concert we had attended.

Wanting to avoid a repeat of such a soul-crushing experience, we examined the various ways to get to and from the venue in detail and discovered that German efficiency was in full effect here.

Yes, there was a car park, but you needed to buy a ticket in advance and it wasn’t the best option. That’s not surprising, as Munich is a city where cars have long played second fiddle to public and alternative transport. As all car parking tickets had been sold out anyway, we decided to use public transport and quickly got our first pleasant surprise.

All categories of Adele’s concert tickets doubled as public-transport tickets for the greater Munich area on the day of the event. No need to worry about what ticket to buy if you were not from there. Just hop on any bus, subway, or tram and you’re good.

Naturally, that was what people did, and when we went there in the afternoon, a steady stream of fans kept emerging from the bus stops and the subway station. There were also separate areas for taxis and Uber, buses, and even e-scooters. Whatever you used to get there or travel home by, it was well-organized and easy to figure out.

The show itself was fantastic, even if I wasn’t really a fan of melancholic ballads about broken hearts and seemingly permanent bad luck in love. The venue alone was breathtaking, and she did sing Skyfall as well, so there was at least one song I liked, even if just for the James Bond and Aston Martin angle.

For me, the most amazing thing happened after the concert. Again remembering the utter chaos and mess from Blackpink at the Philippine Arena, I fully prepared myself to spend hours trying to get out of there—only to be pleasantly surprised.

Germany is a broken country in many ways, and not as shiny or organized anymore as people abroad may think. But on this night, the nation and the city of Munich showed that we could still do things right if wanted to. That our reputation for being well-organized and efficient was still anchored in some truth.

A crowd of 80,000 fans left the arena all at once, and were directed by huge signs, marshals, and PA announcements toward whatever travel options they wanted to use. Someone spent a lot of time working out the best crowd flow-out and a pretty flawless transport concept.

It seemed that most people traveled by subway, and the queue we joined to do the same initially made me think we might be here a while. But then everything happened really fast, and I still don’t know how they managed it.

Despite tens of thousands of people doing the same thing, we managed to get from our spot in the stadium to a nice comfy seat on the subway in a little more than 20 minutes (and all on foot). Less than an hour after the concert, we were back at the hotel, all while not touching our own car at all. It seemed like transport wizardry.

Of course, there was no magic involved. The announcement at the subway station even said they were simply running on maximum capacity and frequency, with trains leaving the station every 3.5 minutes. Once you have seen this many people being shifted this quickly, you’ll look at private cars and wonder why anyone would ever voluntarily use one of them to go to an event like this.

The fact that everything around the concert was so well-organized meant that there was no bad aftertaste to the event. No negative memories of getting stuck in traffic chaos; no lost sleep from spending hours just trying to get out of the car park; and no feelings of organizers not giving a hoot about paying fans.

It was an all-around happy experience, and once again showed that venues like the Philippine Arena must try an awful lot harder when it comes to treating fans right.

Public transport over private cars and a solid event management plan with detailed crowd control are pretty much all it takes, and you can direct over 80,000 people in and out of concerts without drama.

Maybe we can get Adele and her events team to say hello to the Philippines and pull off the same feat here. I’d even go and watch her again just for that.