40 Europe The EconomistAugust 8th 2020
G
ermans havelong dreaded the prospect of a European “trans-
fer union” that would hand their hard-earned money to poorer
southerners. Yet every summer they are happy to do the job them-
selves, travelling in their millions, and spending in their billions,
to Spain, Italy, Greece and Portugal. Germans account for roughly
one in every four euros dished out by European tourists. More than
anyone else, it is their absence that the deserted hotels, bars and
restaurants of Europe’s south have felt most acutely this summer.
Such were the thoughts that came idly to Charlemagne as he
bobbed gently in the Baltic Sea this week. (Not quite as cold as you
might imagine, although he didn’t linger.) A brief stay in Rügen, a
resort island off Germany’s north-east coast, was enough to wit-
ness the other side of the devastation that the coronavirus has vis-
ited upon the tourist industries of southern Europe. For Germany’s
holiday hotspots—the coasts, Bavaria’s mountain hideaways, the
Black Forest—are booming, happily lapping up much of the dis-
placed German tourist spend. The influx has been “extreme”, says
Mario Jacobs, who runs a fish restaurant in Stralsund, a handsome
town near Rügen, and can’t quite seem to decide whether the extra
business is worth the extra work. Hordes of day-trippers to the
North Sea coast have forced officials to impose temporary mask-
wearing orders and beach closures.
In fact a good summer and, with luck, a strong autumn will
hardly make up for a spring in which, like almost every other part
of the economy, Germany’s resorts shuttered and furloughed their
workers. Even now second-tier sites, like the Eifel region or the
Harz mountains in central Germany, are struggling to attract
enough locals to replace the lost foreign trade. One-third of the
country plans to take no holiday at all. This is no small disruption
for a place that takes its pleasure as seriously as Germany.
For many Italians, Spaniards, French folk and Greeks, holiday-
ing anywhere other than in their home country seems perverse. By
contrast, young Germans who choose to do so “might come across
as a little bit backward,” says Sina Fabian, a historian at Humboldt
University. “We can also do GERMANY!” is the slightly desperate
motto adopted by one travel agency. If Germans took to foreign tra-
vel a little later than the British, they eventually did so with the zeal
of the convert, aided by the mighty Deutschmark and some of Eu-rope’smostgenerous holiday allowances: by 1968 half the West
German population went abroad at least once a year. The ritual of
the sun-soaked southern-Europe sojourn, traceable to Goethe’s ro-
mantic journeying in Italy, was later immortalised in Schlager
songs like Udo Jürgens’s “Urlaub im Süden” (“Holiday in the
South”). In 1993, when a politician said that Germany might as well
buy Majorca for 50m marks, not everyone was sure he was joking.
Yet in truth Germans were starting to warm to the wonders of
their own land even before covid-19, notes Hasso Spode at Berlin’s
Technical University. They may travel abroad more than other folk,
but trips in Germany far outnumber those to anywhere else: a
quarter of Germans’ holidays last year were spent at home. The se-
cret of Rügen, at least among Germans (foreigners, bar the odd
Scandinavian, are as rare as hens’ teeth), is long out. Mile-long traf-
fic jams and overcrowded beaches are features of every high sea-
son. Despite patchy infrastructure, and its distance from most of
Germany’s big population centres, Mecklenburg-West Pomerania,
the state through which most of Germany’s Baltic littoral runs, has
been the country’s most popular holiday destination for years.
And why not? The virtues of the domestic holiday are much
underrated, in Germany and other northern European destina-
tions. True, Germany may not carry the languid allure of the Medi-
terranean, and even the geniuses that staff its tourist agencies can
do nothing about its climate (mild sunburn testifies to Charle-
magne’s luck in Rügen). Stepping off the train in Stralsund, this
columnist admits his heart sank to see the same döner stands and
strawberry kiosks he had left behind three hours earlier in Berlin.
But such trifles are surely outweighed by the advantages. More
often than not the hunt for authenticity abroad results in differ-
ence-splitting compromise or, worse, surrender to tourist traps. At
home the scams are easier to spot. For people-watchers the daily
human comedy is enriched when conducted in a language one un-
derstands. Sightseeing becomes an investigation of one’s own na-
tional story. Just north of the beach that hosted Charlemagne’s in-
quiries sits a vast strength-through-joy holiday complex left
unfinished by the Nazis, a jarring contrast to the innocent plea-
sures of the seaside resorts. And even changeable weather con-
ceals a thrill: how much more enticing the warmth of the sun when
one knows it might disappear at any moment.From one transfer union to another
Creatures of habit at the best of times, Germans have struggled to
adapt to the disruption. Tourist officials in Rügen describe first-
time visitors used to all-in-one package trips unfamiliar with the
idea of following a map or booking a restaurant. But the island is
practised at diversifying its offerings, retaining a nostalgic appeal
to older east Germans who recall the communist beach holidays of
their youth while reaching out to richer greenhorns. Local offi-
cials, of course, welcome the custom. “Normally you spend a lot on
marketing, and this year it came for free!” exclaims one.
Yet the shift is unlikely to be permanent, reckons Ms Fabian.
Previous catastrophes have not bucked long-term trends in travel
habits. A good thing for southern Europeans, for whom corona-
virus has delivered a vicious one-two: domestic lockdown fol-
lowed by evaporating tourism. Indeed, it was hair-raising fore-
casts of economic collapse in Italy and Spain that recently
convinced Rügen’s mp, one Angela Merkel, to consent to large-
scale common euborrowing and redistribution for the first time.
Precisely because Germany’s tourists are not spending in Europe’s
south this summer, its taxpayers are preparing to do just that. 7Charlemagne Strandkörbe in place of sangria
Thanks to covid-19, the traditional German holiday looks very different this summer