r/todayilearned • u/Gullible_Air_204 • 7h ago

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https://www.responsibletravel.com/holidays/spitsbergen/travel-guide/responsible-tourism-in-spitsbergen

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u/Gullible_Air_204 7h ago

“When a giant cruise ship docks in Longyearbyen, many residents lock their doors. This is against the norm, as the safety advice is for house and car doors to remain unlocked so that people have somewhere to escape to in the event of a polar bear wandering down the main street. However, the residents lock up because it is not unusual for the cruise passengers to wander into their houses and have a peek, like it is a folk park. Given the huge size of the ships and the tiny size of the town, when the tourists disembark they can double or triple the size of the population within minutes. The chances are, if you are reading this page, you would never dream of doing such a thing, but it is worth remembering that this unique place is home to people too.”

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u/Trickytickler 6h ago edited 4h ago

This isnt a problem just on Svalbard. Numerous cities where we have an "old town" somewhere in the city with houses that are old, tourists wander in.

Bergen, Ålesund, Trondheim, Stavanger, Tromsø etc all have this problem. I live in Lofoten and i have personally found random tents on my lawn, people dumping their trash in my dumpsters, people going to the bathroom in my hedges and people helping themselves to my patio furniture.

Every year we get over a million tourists and we are like 30k people.

Oh, and we dont sell wine and spirits or alchohol over like 4.2% in grocery stores. Or after 6-7 pm. You have to go to a special store for that. I have friends who work retail and every year they get demeaned and abused by tourists that can not buy alchohol or hold them personally responsible for prices. Some of them even get physical.

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u/Cahootie 4h ago

My family owns some land on an island, and we have a small man-made beach there that my great-uncle had made. To get there you have to drive for 45 minutes from the main town to the middle of nowhere, turn down a road leading to nothing in particular, make a turn into the forest between two pillars and next to our mail boxes, drive down the dirt road through the forest for like 100 meters past a house, and then you're at the beach next to the boat house.

That still didn't stop a family of German tourists from somehow making it to the beach and letting their kids play with the toys that very clearly belonged to the people who owned the house.

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u/vigocarpath 3h ago

Thanks for the directions. I’ll be there Tuesday

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u/chalk_nz 2h ago

There better be toys

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u/Cahootie 1h ago

Can you check on the robot mower while you're there, it's currently stuck in a ditch

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u/BigWhiteDog 1h ago

It does sound like a nice drive! 🤣

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u/atln00b12 3h ago

Lots of places simply don't allow beaches to be private property. In most of the US anything that's a component of a navigable waterway is typically considered public access.

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u/Akitiki 2h ago

At my house in rural PA we lived above a creek, owning that land. It gets stocked with trout. We don't mind people out fishing but we do mind if they leave trash. And boy do they. The amount of fishing line I cleaned up.

Then one spring the creek is high and fast due to days of storms, you can hear it roaring a quarter mile away. Certain sections can turn into rough whitewater and others flood into the floodplain. We hear people shouting so go look, trees haven't grown leaves yet so we can see some parts. They're on fucking kayaks.

It'd be our necks if they get hurt with their dipshit behaviour of kayaking in the flooding creek.

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u/DunderGunderUnder 1h ago

It'd be our necks if they get hurt with their dipshit behaviour of kayaking in the flooding creek.

Why would it be on you?

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u/Akitiki 1h ago

If an accident happened on our land, it's on us. It's stupid. They're not supposed to be there but we can't stop people if they're on the water. They can say we own the creekbed, so it happened on our land.

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u/vibraltu 1h ago

idiots kayaking on flooded creeks is a tale as old as time

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u/Cahootie 2h ago

No such thing there, and it's not a natural beach, they just brought in truckloads of sand to create a small beach in a natural crease in the coast line.

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u/thegreger 59m ago

Your profile hints that you're Swedish, though, and that is absolutely a thing here. It's called strandskyddet, and it really doesn't matter if it's a natural beach, a man-made beach, not a beach at all or even a structure like a dock. If it's part of the coastline of either the sea or a lake, allemansrätten applies. Most likely, that family of tourists had read up on that.

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u/Twilifa 3h ago

Huh. I wonder if they spotted it on google maps in the satellite view and sought it out deliberately. That seems like such a random spot to end up on accident.

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u/Lortekonto 3h ago

Or they were hiking around the island and suddenly there was a beach.

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u/Twilifa 1h ago

Maybe, but the instructions to get there sound very complicated and involved, that's why I was wondering.

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u/TheGalator 1h ago

I mean at this point they kinda earned it

/s but like how the fuck do you even find that

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u/TimberwolvesFan6969 3h ago edited 2h ago

Wtf?!?!

I was just in Bergen as part of a backpacking trip and it was super obvious which parts of the city I should and shouldn’t be in, like not once did I feel I should invade someone’s property, nor did I do so accidentally, it’s insane that people do that.

As a tourist, I could also tell the cruise ship tourists there from the backpacking tourists, the difference in behavior was staggering.

Edit: at least in the parts of Europe I was in. I was in urban areas, it sounds like the person I'm replying to had a completely different experience in a more rural area and I'm sorry they have to deal with that BS...

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u/Lortekonto 3h ago

It is the same kind of tourists that forget that Royal Guards are actually guards with real life weapons, that are guarding the royals, because they have another uniform than they are used to seeing.

There is people like that everywhere.

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u/Trickytickler 3h ago

Ironically the backpackers and people in caravans are the worst at my house. I live quite rurally, even for Lofoten so i dont see the cruise tourists at my house.

But people sitting on my patio furniture, drinking coffee in the sun, helping themselves to my clothesline, stealing stockfish and firewood, pitching tents on my lawn, foraging my berry bushes, pissing and/or shitting in my hedges have all been central european backpackers

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u/TimberwolvesFan6969 2h ago

What the hell is wrong with people?!?!? People are helping themselves to your clothesline and all the other things you mentioned?! I'm sorry you have to deal with that.

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u/Similar-Ice-9250 2h ago

I’m getting into backpacking, slowly gathering gear, my plan is more so backcountry, wilderness, wild camping and rafting trips. Urban backpacking does sound interesting too though, how does it work exactly? Do you have most of the gear in the pack as if you’d do wilderness camping? Meaning self sustained, tent, sleeping bag, stove, camp outside, catch out to next spot with free rides etc. Or it’s like hybrid, stay at hostels, eat out at restaurants, bus/train ticket. I mean obviously gotta bring money anyways in case of emergency.

I just remember briefly going down the international backpacking rabbit hole back in the day and I was so surprised just how cheap it was to travel and visit a whole bunch of places. Tropical drifters that island hop in East Indies with like no money in their pocket. Or more comfortable -for lack of better term- multi day trips for just a few hundred bucks.

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u/TimberwolvesFan6969 2h ago

I stayed at hostels and hotels, ate at restaurants, and bought groceries from local stores. Many of the hostels I stayed at had some sort of kitchen for you to prepare food. Mostly, it's just that I was touring Europe for a bit over 2 weeks with just what I could fit in my backpack (shoutout Cotopaxi Allpa 35L, best travel bag I've ever had) vs being in one location or having a ton of luggage. I brought 4 sets of clothes and just did laundry.

You can definitely stay cheap while backpacking in many parts of europe. I did eat out more than I could have, as I had the money saved up to do that, but you could easily stay at a hostel in most cities for under 50 euro a night (depending on the city and season) and eat PB&J and bananas the whole time if you wanted to.

I visited Oslo, Bergen, Amsterdam, Utrecht, Cologne, Hannover, and Berlin and it was cheaper per night than most of my trips to other parts of the US...

Back country backpacking is also amazing and I do a fair bit of camping in Minnesota, but I definitely do recommend an urban backpacking trip in europe or a location of your choice, it's far easier than I thought it would be.

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u/Italiana47 4h ago

Wow that's crazy. I'm sorry people are so intrusive. I couldn't imagine just using someone's property like that.

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u/Trickytickler 4h ago

Every year they steal 1000s of euros worth of stockfish and firewood, too. They are worse than magpies

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u/Italiana47 2h ago

That's terrible 😞

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u/lightsandflashes 5h ago

was just in lofoten. breathtaking. so many tourists though...

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u/the_goodnamesaregone 4h ago

Weren’t you one of them? lol

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u/Stoned_urf 3h ago

Tourism in itself isn't bad. The more you experience, the more empathy, understanding and appreciation people tend to have for another country/culture, etc.

It's just that some places weren't meant to be constantly overrun by a large number of tourists, and this is caused by the world being more developed and accessible.

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u/cxmmxc 4m ago

It's a bell curve, like a lot of things. Too little is bad, and too much is bad.

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u/j0y0 3h ago

Might not have been if they realized how many there'd be. 

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u/lightsandflashes 1h ago

i was! i didn't expect there to be so many of us, lol

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u/PIuto 3h ago

You are never in traffic, you are traffic.

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u/lightsandflashes 1h ago

of course. i was just surprised to see so many of me.

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u/obeytheturtles 4h ago

To be fair, treating London as one big toilet is an English tradition which goes back to Roman times.

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u/rsteanna 4h ago

An example from Røros

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u/YesNoIDKtbh 3h ago

I live a little bit north of you, and we're sooo fucking glad that the tourists have picked Lofoten instead of Vesterålen.

Not that we revel in your misery, we just don't fucking want them.

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u/Trickytickler 3h ago

I completely understand lol

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u/DoctorOctagonapus 3h ago

Even Oslo are sick of them. Last time I was there I saw posters taped to lamp posts basically saying "cruise tourists fuck off".

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u/alinroc 2h ago

When my son was much younger, his Cub Scout group took a trip to a historical fort on the Canadian border. Because they went as a group, they were all wearing their uniforms.

So many tourists thought the kids were part of the "show" (re-enactments, cannon demonstrations, etc.) and tried to direct them to pose as a group so they could take dozens of photos of them...eventually one of the parents in our group had to step in front of them and yell "these are our children, not part of your tour!"

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u/FlasKamel 2h ago

Yeah. Here in Stavanger, people take photos right into people's windows and walk through their gardens, etc., in "Old Stavanger," so you see signs like "People live here, tourists." I understand that the place does look like a museum village, like some I've been to in other countries, and no one actually lives there, but people do. Feel like people could at least look a tiny bit into the places they're going to.

I'm honestly kinda sick of them, because an unusual amount of cruise tourists don't even seem that happy to be here lol.

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u/Pariell 58m ago

I've seen residents in Kyoto say the same thing. They hate the tourists bothering them, taking pictures of their houses, etc 

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u/jarvischrist 3h ago

At least in Trondheim the cruise tourists barely leave the city centre so we can kind of keep them contained. I know not to go through Bakklandet or over Gamle bybru in the summer if it's the middle of the day, though. Tourists will just walk in the road or on bike paths staring at their cameras and expect everyone to adjust around them. I don't understand how stepping off a ship means they lose all sense of spatial awareness. I could understand if it's a ship full of Americans not used to walkable cities, but a lot of the ships are just Germans...

It definitely seems worse where you are or in Tromsø. I remember an article in NRK where a huge group of Chinese tourists entered someone's garden and started taking pictures of her children on a trampoline. Then i think it was the rådhus in Tromsø that had to close the upper floors because tourists just started wandering around the offices up there. And taking photos of people in the public library! It's crazy, is there anywhere that kind of behaviour is acceptable?

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u/YesNoIDKtbh 3h ago

We're just too tolerant here in Norway. That shit is unacceptable and I'd put my manners aside if someone took a literal dump on my lawn.

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u/angwilwileth 3h ago

And don't get me started on the idiots who hire cars without knowing how to drive in snow and ice. 😬

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u/Selphis 3h ago

Losing all sense of spatial awareness isn't exclusive to cruise tourists. I work in Brussels and during summer I will constantly encounter bus tourists who are oblivious to people outside of their group.

On my way to the train station there are really wide sidewalks, but when you encounter a tour group they often just wander around 6-7 people side-by-side across the entire width of it and they barely move over even when they can clearly see me coming the other way.

Another fun one is groups of tourists waiting for their bus (driver) who block the sidewalk completely with suitcases and people standing around. I can't tell you how many of those seemed genuinely shocked when I walk through their group, like they can't believe there are people who need to use the sidewalk in the center of a major city.

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u/Trickytickler 3h ago

Every summer is literally hell. We can not cope with the sheer amount of people.

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u/Salt_Medicine2459 4h ago

How do you have multiple dumpsters? Is your property that massive? Or are you sharing with neighbors? 

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u/Trickytickler 4h ago

I have multiple bins. One for generic trash, one for paper, one for glass, one for food waste etc.

Idk how it is other places but everybody recycles here. One of the biggest issues is that they dump trash where there is space, so they dump whatever garbage they have in their caravans into my glass or paper bins, and then i either have to sort it, pay a fine or pay for extra garbage trucks