German tourists
roam everywhere
High incomes, long vacations make roaming travel possible
EIN GEDI, Israel - The Dead Sea simmers in the midday
haze, its glassy surface barely stirring. The place is
deserted. War has chased everyone away. Everyone except
two sisters from Hanover, Germany, who are here for their
eczema. This year 700 million tourists will hit the
world's wonders, beaches and resort buffets. Why do they
all seem to be Germans.
You see them in their
summery vests, marching five abreast on the sidewalks,
scouting the best tables and deck chairs, going where
others fear to go. Internet travel diaries and Web logs
brim with complaints about beautiful views spoiled by
Germans. ''There is one French idea that seems to have a
great deal of merit: nude beaches,'' Wesleyan University
graduate Bill East wrote on his home page. ``Alas, when
you finally encounter reality, it leaves much to be
desired: The sands are covered with fat and sunburned
German tourists leering at whatever walks by."Or from
Sandra Tsing Loh's ''My Ethiopian Vacation'': ``There
stood my mother with four German tourists, large and
blond and gleaming in their sweat-streaked khakis,
expensive cameras and voluptuous leather travel bags
draped around them like fresh kill. Apparently there was
no place in Africa so miserable some German tourist did
not want to take a photo of it.'' And from
German-American Evan McElravy's cyber- memories of a
boyhood trip to Florida's Sanibel Island: ``I swear we
were the only people speaking English in the whole place.
It was fantastically expensive and generally ruined. . .
. I generally like Germans in most other respects but I
do wish they would be a bit less obnoxious when on
holiday.'' There are good reasons so many Germans turn up
abroad. To begin with, there are many of them, about 82
million, and 75 percent leave the country each year for
pleasure. That would mean about one out of every 11
tourists are German. TIME AND MONEY
TIME AND MONEY Plus,
they have time and money to burn. The average vacation
for a German worker is 30 days, according to the federal
labor ministry. Not only do they get paid for that time,
German employers typically fork over urlaubsgeld, or
vacation money, as part of their benefits -- almost a
month's extra salary. Until two years ago, Germans were
the world's champs in per capita vacation spending. The
United States now leads. For former East Berliner Otto
Emersleben, as for many Germans, travel and freedom are
intertwined. Before the Berlin Wall's fall enabled him to
travel more freely, Emersleben wrote biographies of
explorers. Now he lives in Brunswick, Maine, and
describes travel as ``an obsession.'' ''Travel is not
just a change of locality or position,'' said Emersleben,
62. ``It is the best approach to changing yourself.'' The
poet Goethe may have planted the travel bug in Germans
with his diary of an 18th century journey to Italy that
evoked the warmth and light that Deutschland has been
yearning for ever since. After their defeat in World War
II, Germans stayed at home, unwelcome
elsewhere.
POST WAR TRAVEL Five
years later, with German cities still in ruins, the first
tourist trains headed south again, to the Bavarian Alps.
Italy became the first to lift travel restrictions on the
Germans, allowing pilgrims to the Vatican. Fleets of
giant tour buses filled with Germans followed.
Everywhere. In the early '60s,
German travel packagers
discovered the Spanish island of Majorca, which has
become known as ''the southernmost German state.'' The
British have discovered it as well, resulting the last
few years in what London tabloids refer to as The Towel
Wars, the idea being that Germans or Britons will wake up
before anyone else and plant their beach towels like
national flags on prime poolside chairs. A KIND OF
CONQUEST ''Maybe it's because they know they can no
longer conquer the world,'' mused a Quebec schoolteacher
in the remote Crete village of Paleohora, clotted last
spring with vacationing Germans. Fact: In Berlin, there
are more travel agencies than bakeries. ''They take it
very seriously,'' said Sandy Monroe of The Sheratons of
Fort Lauderdale Beach at the world's biggest travel fair,
held in Berlin. ``It's their right to take a vacation.
They work very hard. They vacation very
hard.''
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