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Berlin doesn’t like tourists? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Cultural Experiences in Foreign Languages |  | |
| Kugel Senior Member United States Joined 6349 days ago 497 posts - 555 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 10 09 September 2011 at 3:05am | IP Logged | ||
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This article is quite funny in that Berlin is having a backlash against tourism.
Tim Mohr's article: Tourists Raus! Mohr full of it? What other cities in Europe have this sort of thing going on? 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4639 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 2 of 10 09 September 2011 at 3:22am | IP Logged | ||
Can't blame them really. I'm not too keen on tourists myself. Me? I'm a traveller, not a tourist :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6514 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 10 09 September 2011 at 3:30am | IP Logged | ||
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Last time I visited Berlin I didn't see Neues Museum because there was a long queue, and the same thing repeated itself at the the Pergamon Museum where there was an even longer queue because of a temporary exhibition. But my guess is that most people in those queues were Berliners or at least Germans. And Berlin is big enough to absorb a lot of visitors - it is definitely not dominated by hordes of Foreignese speaking aliens.
However the article is more about another thing, namely protests caused by 'gentrification' - and that's a totally different thing from tourism. Edited by Iversen on 09 September 2011 at 3:37am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6250 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 4 of 10 09 September 2011 at 11:11am | IP Logged | ||
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I second everything Iversen said.
I also spend a couple months a year in Berlin - I'm typing this from Berlin, actually. I've never seen most of the stuff the article talks about - and I was in Prenzl'berg a lot this year, and hung around some very anti-gentrification places. I saw absolutely nothing against tourists. Plenty of "f**k yoga", "f**k fashion", and anti-gentrification slogans, sure, yes; anti-tourist stuff, no. People are routinely polite to me too, despite my being very clearly foreign. There's quite a lot of anti-gentrification political campaigning as well, and it's sad to hear everyday Berliners who have moved across the city because they hardly recognize the districts where they were born. But as a tourist (or whatever your preferred term for someone who spends a couple months a year with locals in a city one really likes), Berlin is great. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4820 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 5 of 10 09 September 2011 at 11:13am | IP Logged | ||
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The tourism as we know it has some advantages and some worse sides. One of the worst thing is the "mass" tourism.
I mean those groups of 20+ people lead by a guide. As I live in Prague and need to go through the center often, these crowds are very unpleasant and I understand why people in other cities dislike them as well (unfortunately most czechs travel like that as well). The more that the most loud and rude crowds quite wherever in Europe seem to be always from the same few nations (therefore I find it funny that Germans (even if only berliners) are against tourism, perhaps they should think first about what kind of tourists are they). Those groups are not ideal for their members as well, who are happy to not take care of anything but don't realize how much money they pay for it and how less experiences they are going to gain. So, instead of anti-tourism, cities (and tourist industry) should be friendly for small groups or individual tourists. That means hotels and such tourist places should have employers speaking not only English but some of the neigbouring languages as well. There should be no huge groups sales in museums and other such places but ways to support individuals etc. This way would bring more money to the cities and their tourist-industry and save money for tourists. The only ones who are against are travel agencies who often abuse clients' lack of knowledge concerning prices. And the less countable but even more important result would be better atmosphere for both residents and tourists. edit:What probably got lost in my long post:I believe Iversen is right that anti-tourism is not the most serious issue here. But I must say that anti-crowd-tourism is not that wrong as long is it is lead by polite means. Edited by Cavesa on 09 September 2011 at 11:15am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6250 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 6 of 10 09 September 2011 at 11:35am | IP Logged | ||
For what it's worth, Prague is the place where that kind of mass tourism is the most obnoxious, of everywhere I've been. It happens in Berlin, but far less obtrusively. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5131 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 7 of 10 09 September 2011 at 12:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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I live in Berlin and I haven't noticed any signs of anti-tourist sentiments here. On the contrary, most places try really hard to attract tourists.
However, many people are not happy with the increasing gentrification that's going on in some neighborhoods. BTW, many of the car arsonists caught by the police in Berlin turned out to be people from places far away from Berlin who traveled to Berlin to get a "piece of the action." 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4639 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 8 of 10 09 September 2011 at 3:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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With cities like Prague and some others, there is a phenomenon which I really don't understand (generational thing), but which is quite common, or at least has been.
Not tourism exactly, but "stag nights" (and "hen nights") from Britain, tempted by cheap flights and generally cheap prices. I think Dublin used to be a target. Now it seems to be the former East Bloc countries. Because of the unfortunate British tendency (increasingly among women as well) for "binge drinking", these are reputedly pretty obnoxious affairs. In "my day", stag and hen nights were relatively quiet affairs, held locally (literally in your "local", at least for men). Now they are increasingly elaborate and expensive and quite ridiculous really. I think it's partly a reflection on changes in society, i.e. at one time, people would get married relatively young, having not lived with their fiancée before, and people wouldn't have had money to waste on elaborate stag "do"s. Now marriage is often an afterthought to a long period of living together; the couple are already established in a home, and probably have money to spend. The stag/hen night, like the whole wedding is sometimes a way of showing off what they have. (Weddings are more elaborate as well). Yes, I know, I'm just getting old ... Edited by montmorency on 11 September 2011 at 4:00am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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