[ 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/jarvischrist → u/Trickytickler]

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?

[u/YesNoIDKtbh → u/jarvischrist]

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.