Posted on 08/19/2019 5:48:38 AM PDT by C19fan
The dutch have suffered some brutal occupations, from the Roman empire and Viking raids to Spanish and Nazi rule. But now they face an even larger army of invaders: tourists.
In the era of cheap flights and Airbnb, their numbers are staggering. Some 19 million tourists visited the Netherlands last year, more people than live there. For a country half the size of South Carolina, with one of the world’s highest population densities, that’s a lot. And according to the Netherlands Board of Tourism & Conventions, the number of annual visitors is projected to increase by 50 percent over the next decade, to 29 million. Urban planners and city officials have a word for what the Netherlands and quite a few other European countries are experiencing: overtourism. With such an influx of humanity comes a decline in quality of life. Residents’ complaints range from inconvenience (crowds spilling from sidewalks to streets) to vandalism to alcohol-induced defilement (vomiting in flower boxes, urinating in mailboxes).
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
The Dutch refer to people from the Netherlands (of which Holland is a part). This is part of the Low Countries - the stepping stones that Hitler used to get to France.
Someday I'm going to go to that part of the world to visit. Scandanavia AND the Low Countries - so I guess I will just add to the tourist problem.
I won’t, at least not to their face. 8>)
I learned right along with you. 8>)
lol
Never really heard complaining about tourists before.
That’s a lot of $$.
Yeah, now I’m confused about who speaks what and belongs where :)
Part of Scandinavia is like what, the New England states?
Smart man! LOL
In Sardinia they arrest them for taking sand as a Souvenir
There were more Americans over there than Europeans. Did everyone leave America for Europe this past July?
Generally, the tourists were very well behaved, though the natives complained about trash on the streets and getting banged around in the crowds. They also acknowledged the huge amount of revenue that the tourists bring and that they are reluctant to interfere with that.
The biggest problem is the sheer number of people. Santorini was a nightmare.
In the past, one walked in and out of St. Mark's in Venice at will. Today there's a long line.
We used to stroll through Pompeii and Delphi at leisure. Today everything's regimented and roped off. You can't do this. You can't do that. It's all reasonable. Everyone agrees that at some point the number of tourists visiting must be restricted, but, so far, nobody knows exactly how to do this.
Despite all the problems that huge numbers of tourists bring, the Europeans were friendly, kind, helpful, and wonderful in every way. I felt no serious anti-American sentiment at all--only a few complaints about how the Americans dump everything they can think of on pizza (I'm the worst about that), that sort of thing.
When I asked for an excellent restaurant with authentic cuisine, I was directed to a splendid, if expensive, taverna, which was exactly what I wanted.
Europe is more like the USA than ever before. It's expensive. And sometimes I wished they had not gone quite so high-tech (e.g. I had difficulty figuring out the high-tech shower, but my children helped).
The biggest problem I encountered was the huge number of tourists. It was a mob scene!
But you know which bathroom to use so you’re way ahead of the dems.
Of all the countries of mainland Europe the Netherlands probably speaks the most English. When I was there it was said something like 90% of the population could speak it as a second language. So unlike other countries one could go up to a stranger and communicate fairly easily.
Scandinavia is Sweden Norway Finland maybe Denmark and maybe Iceland in a stretch. The Netherlands isn’t usually considered part of Scandinavia. Like it was said above it is part of the Low Countries. Belgium and Luxembourg are the other Low Countries.
Thanks for the lesson.
I don’t lie about what I don’t know.
And I didn’t know Scandinavia was a bunch of of countries.
I thought it was a country!! :)
lol
You were right on with it being a region name like New England. :)
On weekends we were the only living beings in the hotel. They would put our breakfast on a shelf outside our room and we had a key to the front door. We could come and go a we pleased.
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