Coronavirus: German islands have to kick tourists out: "Please don't send me away"
It is a difficult announcement that hoteliers and apartment rental companies on the islands have to tell their guests. The holiday must be canceled in times of the corona virus. Despite understanding the situation, tears sometimes flow.
It was not easy for Till Jaich to transmit this message: "You have to go home". Jaich is the managing director of “Im-Jaich Wasserwelten” in Lauterbach on Rügen. Since Monday he has had a few moments that got under his skin. He had to tell around 120 guests that they had to cancel their vacation.
This is the consequence of the decision of the three state governments in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony to shut off the German islands for a slower spread of the corona viruses and to send the vacationers home. A situation that Jaich describes as "brutal for everyone".
"We had guests in the office who cried"
"Many did not understand that," says Jaich, who, especially in the pre-season, accommodates many long-term guests in his partly floating holiday homes. He quotes one of the reactions: “I've been here for 14 days. I am not infected. You are now sending me back to North Rhine-Westphalia in the crisis area. Please don't send me away. ”Something like this goes to the hotel manager:“ We had scenes with guests in the office who cried. ”
Like the guests of Jaich, there have been thousands of holidaymakers on the North and Baltic Sea islands since Monday. You have to cancel your long-term or spontaneously booked vacation. Sometimes even before he really started.
"Last night I met crying guests who had arrived the previous day to celebrate their 70th birthday the next weekend," writes Ingbert Liebing on his Facebook page. “Today they are leaving again. But they understood the decision. ”Liebing had been living in Morsum on Sylt for many years and was a representative of the state of Schleswig-Holstein to the federal government before he was elected general manager of the Association of Municipal Enterprises on March 10.
"It doesn't make sense anymore"
The ferries from the North and East Frisian Islands were full on Monday and Tuesday. Sometimes there were special trips. The car trains from Sylt to Niebüll were also well filled. Sylt or Föhr only showed occasional strollers on the beach on gray Tuesday afternoon. A webcam captures the Kurplatz on Norderney, you don't see anyone there while strolling or drinking coffee.
“Ria's Beach Café” on Borkum was still full the day before, as bartender Patrick Vogten explains. On Tuesday afternoon, out of 150 seats, only a maximum of 20 were filled. "The beach is also deserted, I only see two or three people there," said Vogten. "At some point that doesn't make any sense."
At a staff meeting on Monday there was bad news in the café: “First of all, no contracts. For some, this means continued short-time work, for others unemployment. March 15 is usually the start of the season, ”explains the bartender. "The mood is depressed. You don't know what tomorrow is. "
The North Sea Clinic is not designed for Corona
Jens Lund also reports of only a few guests. The Lund family has been running a bakery and pastry shop and a café-restaurant in Hörnum on Sylt for decades. It was different a few days ago. “We had a small mini-season at the weekend,” says Lund.
Despite the economic consequences, the restaurateur believes the announcement to close the islands for vacationers is correct. He finds it rather ignorant how some people would have made their way to Sylt without considering the possible consequences for the island. "The North Sea Clinic is a good clinic," says Lund – but not designed for it.
"Only now is it getting a little sadder"
The need to secure medical care for the islanders in the current critical situation was the reason for the decision to seal off the islands. The capacities of intensive care medicine on the islands are not designed for a large number of tourists, says Schleswig-Holstein's Minister of Health Heiner Garg (FDP).
Despite the disappointment, most of the holidaymakers also understood the situation. Thousands of holidaymakers left the islands on Monday immediately after the holiday block was announced. Around 3,500 people took ferries from Norderney and Juist to the mainland alone, according to the shipping company Norden-Frisia.
New guests are no longer allowed on the islands in the North and Baltic Seas. The police partly checked whether everyone adhered to the measure. In the spring, the islands will now be as empty as in the winter months. "Only now is it getting a bit sad," says Langeoogs Mayor Heike Horn (independent).
flr / dpa