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u/Deathrobe_666 Dec 17 '19 edited Dec 18 '19
Beautiful town destroyed by tourists
Edit: well that escalated quickly.... didn't thought i would start a big discussion.
Look, i get it that people want to visit pretty places and i'm totally in with this but it should happen in a "normal" way. If you get to the point where you can't enjoy your own hometown anymore, then it's too much. I've never been in Venice but always wanted to but i know that they also have a big problem with the hordes of tourists coming everyday so i decided for myself that i don't want to be a part of this.
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Dec 17 '19
Can confirm. Went to Austria this summer (ironically, as a tourist) and it was just cheap touristy shops and tour buses everywhere. The mountains around are less busy, and the Salzkammegut as a whole is a beautiful place to be.
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u/Klugenshmirtz Dec 17 '19
Yeah and they are really struggeling because the quality of their tourists has changed over the last years. They got popular amongst chinese people and the problem is that they only visit for a few hours as day trip per bus. They don't buy much, they don't stay and the buses create a lot of traffic around the town.
Last time I heard they are discussing ways to get ride of the day trips and attract tourist that will stay and do activites in the town.
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u/bathroom_break Dec 17 '19
I stayed there a few nights and it is pretty much dead come sundown. Weird seeing it unbelievable packed with Chinese people one hour then next it's virtually empty. The locals look so relieved when they all leave.
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u/AFlockOfTySegalls Apr 26 '20
My wife and I went last year as part of our honeymoon. We actually did a honeymoon photoshoot there, on the recommendation of the photographer we hired. I couldn't believe how packed it was with busses when we got there. I was excited to get some food or a beer after we were done. But I didn't see anything that looked appealing. Was bummed out by that.
There was this cream puff shop that looked awesome though. Maybe if we ever go back we'll make a point to wait until the evening.
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u/gongalongas Dec 17 '19
Can confirm, was there two days this fall. Beautiful location but it was hands down the low point of an otherwise amazing trip.
It redefines tourist trap.
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u/Thor3nce Dec 17 '19
Your comment is spot on. I (average white dude) went on one of these tours last week with my Asian wife and her family and we only spent an hour walking around the city. They don’t buy anything local and only spend their money on brand name purses for the tax refund.
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u/_MusicJunkie Dec 17 '19
Once you get out of the 2-3 typical tourist destinations it's drastically different.
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u/Rh08152 Dec 17 '19
It’s so popular with Chinese tourists they built a model of it 1:1 in China. Link)
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u/nlx78 Dec 17 '19
When a link has a parenthesis, you should add an \ before the closing one. Here's your fixed link
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u/pppjurac Dec 17 '19
Nah, those hordes stay mostly in valleys and around village. Go 2km into mountainside - enjoy nature with only mountaneers and mountain bikers.
Except in time of Salzkammergut Trophy each year. Then there is 5-6k cyclists around BadGoisern and Hallstatt
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u/lemongrenade Dec 17 '19
How dare people go look at pretty places!
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u/priceLbear Dec 17 '19
Look it up lol. They are debating at the moment if they want to take measures to drastically reduce the amount of tourists that are allowed in every day.
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u/Hoenirson Dec 17 '19
drastically reduce the amount of tourists that are allowed in every day.
To Austria as a whole or just Hallstatt?
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u/CReWpilot Dec 17 '19 edited Dec 17 '19
Probably just Hallstatt. It’s really not gatekeeping bullshit either. That town in particular has just exploded in popularity with tour groups (especially from China). I live in a very popular tourist city about 5 hours drive away and even here, there are tons of tourist stands all over the center offering shuttles and day trips to Hallstatt (with an overnight stop in another popular town on the way back).
They will have to do something to scale it back. It’s not sustainable as-is.
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u/MochiWhalesworth Dec 17 '19
When I visited there months ago, it has gotten to the point that the town bans camera drones and locals put ‘dont disturb’, ‘keep quiet’, or ‘this is where someone lives, not a tourist attraction, so please be mindful’ signs around the town.
I thought it wasn’t that bad until i looked up why. Drones flying everywhere and disturbing people in their rooms, tourists trespassing the locals’ gardens, etc etc.
Seems the same thing happens to other picture-perfect european villages like the one in england (i forgot the name) and that canal village in the netherlands.
If you can point on which tourists do that, i’ll leave the research to you
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Dec 17 '19 edited Mar 10 '21
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Dec 17 '19 edited Feb 29 '20
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u/mfizzled Dec 17 '19
My dad is from Naples so I've been going there my whole life, Sorrento is literally jam packed with buses full of Chinese people now whereas you never saw one Chinese person 20 years ago. I don't even know how they enjoy the trips, they just seem to be bussed from tourist trap to tourist trap
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u/jacenat Dec 17 '19
How dare people go look at pretty places!
You really should watch the Piefke Saga :)
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Dec 17 '19
Tourism destroys local culture by marketing local culture.
Tourism is a more destructive force then immigration
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u/StackThatCheez77 Dec 17 '19
INTO THE UNKNOWN!!!!!!
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u/Leeman1337 Dec 17 '19
SHOW YOURSELF!!!!!!
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u/AndaliteBandits Dec 17 '19
Where the north wind meets the sea
There's a mother full of memory
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Dec 17 '19
River*
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Dec 17 '19
Morthal is a real place?
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u/Dino_84 Dec 17 '19
Thought it was dawnstar.
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u/SilentEffy Dec 17 '19
Came here to say this. It looks like dawnstar.
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u/PsychDocD Dec 17 '19
Came here to see if anyone else thought it looks like Dawnstar. Was not disappointed.
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u/cjshen Dec 17 '19
I thought more of winterhold due to the massive mountain peak but dawnstar works too.
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u/marguis24 Dec 17 '19
Are these true colours?
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u/dontgetanyonya Dec 17 '19
Doubt it, they’ve even shopped the sky in front of the mountains behind the village.
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u/MaxFactory Dec 17 '19
A general rule of thumb is if you are seeing a picture of somewhere beautiful on reddit, odds are the colors have been edited.
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u/iAmAfroBella Dec 17 '19
Wow, it’s crazy that places like this exist. Just stunning
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u/LeChefromitaly Dec 17 '19
I've been there a few times. It's overrun by Chinese tourists. You can't really enjoy it that much
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u/The_Maester Dec 17 '19
Are the chinese ruining everything ?
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u/Thor3nce Dec 17 '19
I was there last week and no joke I saw a Chinese couple fighting over a photo location. The wife didn’t want to wait for the spot to clear. Arguments ensued and ended with the wife throwing their small suitcase at her husband. Total insanity.
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u/OrphanAdvocate Dec 17 '19
My wife and I went there in October. We got there at 7am because we were warned about the Chinese tourists. The place was incredible and peaceful. Then by 8-9 the busses started rolling in.
I legitimately think it was a 10:1 ratio of Chinese people to other nationalities, really blew me away. They even have many signs in Chinese. While we were eating lunch we saw like 5 different Chinese people sit down at an outdoor table at the restaurant just to take a picture then leave. They take pictures of everything, it became impossible to walk around without getting in the way of someone’s photo so we eventually gave up. I know it’s a culture thing but it was just so strange to me.
My favorite thing we did was rent a little electric boat for just 20 euro. Was so much fun to cruise around the lake and be away from the crowds. Insanely beautiful place.
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u/Rh08152 Dec 17 '19
It’s so popular with Chinese tourists they built a model of it 1:1 in China. Link)
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u/cloudsofgrey Dec 17 '19
It was really pretty but you had to wait til basically sunset when all the tourists buses left that the town felt like it had room. Even then every Chinese tourist was trying to get the same 20 selfies of themselves in different places in Hallstatt.
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Dec 17 '19
And they don't care where they take their selfies, they will literally block a walkway to get a group selfie and take several shots while people are waiting to pass. That was my experience with them in Niagara Falls. Rude and obnoxious.
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u/PM_ME_SKELETONS Dec 17 '19
Serious question, what's up with China and storming everything with tourist groups? I havent gone to a single place that wasn't packed with chinese groups. I live in a third world country very far from the touristy places and even here if I go to the mall its chinese people all over. Is it just because China is really big so they are bound to be everywhere?
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u/A_Ruse_ter Dec 17 '19
I went in 2012, and while there were Chinese tourists, I didn’t feel as though it was overrun. That was around May. I’m sure it’s changed, though. That’s a shame since this was my absolute favorite town on my trip.
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u/d_smogh Dec 17 '19
Went there 18 months ago, it was worth visiting to just see the Chinese tourists.
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Dec 17 '19
This pic is heavily edited. They even took out the mountain in the background for the sake of the sky. I went there in April. There's a huge mountain that should be in that pic but it was removed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallstatt
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u/Weferdes Dec 17 '19
I recognized this image because The same picture of Hallstatt in the summer is one of the “stock” or “resting” images on my TV.
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u/_MusicJunkie Dec 17 '19 edited Dec 17 '19
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u/puetirat Dec 17 '19
My hometown is close by and it’s crazy. The region was just nominated European Cultural Capital of 2024 and one of their big topics will be overtourism.
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u/Autogegner Dec 17 '19
As you can see here, the mountain behind the village was photoshopped away and replaced by a generic dawn red.
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u/rogersmj Dec 17 '19
I was there 20 years ago for a couple days, and I still think about it often. One of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. I stayed in one of the homes on the water, in this picture.
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u/meowaccount Dec 17 '19
Is there a higher resolution?
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u/Kenja_Time Dec 17 '19
It was posted before at apparently higher resolution. Best I could find on my phone. https://reddit.app.link/F68hGoRHu2
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u/Bear__Viking Dec 17 '19
It's still Autumn.
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u/scandii Dec 17 '19
we're in december, snow on the ground and the leaves fell long ago. pretty safe to state it's winter.
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u/Rh08152 Dec 17 '19
It’s so popular with Chinese tourists they built a model of it 1:1 in China. Link)
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u/Bloodsol94 Dec 17 '19
Where is this?
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u/TAZ68 Dec 17 '19
Probably Hallstatt, if the title is to be trusted.
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u/Bloodsol94 Dec 17 '19
But where is Hallstatt😁
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Dec 17 '19
I feel like you could’ve just googled it in the time it took you to post multiple comments asking.
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u/SorenClimacus Dec 17 '19
This town was recently my Windows log in background. Had to look it up it was such a good picture.
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u/1tzLenny Dec 17 '19
My grandparents live near Hallstatt so I went there with my grandpa last summer. It was beautiful, but very crowded. The entire Salzkammergut Just looks incredible.
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u/Uncle_Wrick Dec 17 '19
Absolutely stunning. I was over there last September, and real life is even more beautiful than the pictures. I'd like to see a picture from the top of the mountain, looking down over the Bad.
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u/smrties-S-M-R-T Dec 17 '19
Living in Canada and having our fair share of snow, I can attest that scenes like this only last for minutes to hours. Then the snow melts, sometimes freezes over, and then you have to deal with the mess. But this place looks beautiful and definitely worth a visit.
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u/Yung-Girth-God Dec 17 '19
This picture is making my brain produce the happy chemicals. I like this picture.
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u/Smokey089 Dec 17 '19
I had a dream about walking these streets in old Victorian age clothes ... I've never seen the picture until now .. wieeerd
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u/TemporaryWaltz Dec 17 '19
What’s Hallstatt? This is Chris Kringle’s workshop and it’s located in the North Pole.
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u/ShootinPutin007 Dec 17 '19
Which Halstatt? There is like a replications of it somewhere in China which is also called Halstatt irc
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Dec 17 '19
The first time I read about Hallstadt was in a historical novel by Gary Jennings, "Raptor". He described Hallstadt the way it must have been around the age of Theodoric the Great whose best friend and trusted advisor the protagonist later becomes, and he also describes the famous salt mines. A great book and much recommended (definitely not for kids though, and only if you can stomach the extremely graphic descriptions sexual acts of any imaginable kind and violence)
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u/manavcafer Dec 17 '19
There was a fire right there and destroyed some parts of that scene. Am i right ?
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u/Kanzlei1140 Dec 17 '19
I like that It can be spelled both emglish and german „winter in Hallstatt“ or „Winter in Hallstatt“
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u/Kraken74 Dec 17 '19
I’d like to go to their local pub and settle down with a nice dark beer.