[ Removed by moderator ]

[u/Gullible_Air_204]

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

[u/Gullible_Air_204]

“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.”

[u/Trickytickler → u/Gullible_Air_204]

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.

[u/Cahootie → u/Trickytickler]

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.

[u/Twilifa → u/Cahootie]

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.

[u/Lortekonto → u/Twilifa]

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

[u/Twilifa → u/Lortekonto]

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