I sat last night and watched the prime-time ARD (German public TV, Channel One) chat forum at 9 PM. The topic? Well.....vacations.
I know....it's an odd public forum chat topic.
So here's the thing. Germans are beginning to notice this problem not only in Germany but around Europe, and the world itself.....TOO MANY Tourists.
Yes, they now believe there are too many Chinese tourists coming into Germany. They believe (if you watched the moderator and the guests)....that there are too many folks visiting Amsterdam, Paris, Greece, etc.
It's hard to imagine that they sat and spent almost an hour chatting about this 'issue', and I sat kinda amazed.
Two years ago, I was standing in Heidelberg one morning (one of my day-trips) and here came five tour buses dumping off near 300 Chinese tourists. They were basically given a map each....some basic details and couple of hours to walk around. To be honest, if you really wanted to experience Heidelberg....you need six to eight hours, so this was a marginal way of seeing the city. They scattered in a matter of ten minutes.
I saw the same issue when I visited Iceland two years ago.....crowds were creating problems at various points of interest.
Fixing this? The Green Party gal felt that more carbon taxation would be the appropriate measure. Is it even a problem that you could solve?
At the end, I asked my German wife....is this really a problem worth chatting for an hour on public TV? Her response was that she thinks they have orders to pick lousy topics instead of serious ones, and start getting people disinterested in public forums and arguments. Maybe next week, they will start discussing German women's provocative clothing choices, or the amount of dog poop left on the streets....thus proving my wife correct.
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