The so-called ‘Easyjet-set’ arriving in the city on cheap flights are being told in some areas that the ironically cool party is over, according to Reuters.
There’s a rejection of tourists and development in general in some parts of the city, which rapidly gained a reputation for artistic communities, squats, cheap accomodation and an up-and-coming fashionable status.
“There’s some resentment that tourists party loudly or throw up on the streets. I think many Berliners do too, but they feel entitled to act that way.” said David Schuster, a pro-tourist awareness spokesman – who posts his favourite Berlin must-see spots on Unlike.
“Noisy tourists go home!” reads one sign in the district of Friedrichshain. “Sorry, no entry for hipsters from the U.S.” reads one sign in the window of a city gallery, according to the report.
Alternative lifestyle magazine Vice ran a piece recently called ‘Artists are no longer welcome in Berlin’. Could the party be over?
“Paris and London have had hundreds of years to get used to their many visitors. We’ve only had 20 so far,” the director of VisitBerlin, Burkhardt Kieker, told Reuters, in reference to life in the city following the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Tourism helped to boost Berlin’s economy by €10.3 billion in 2011. It is now the third most-visited city in Europe after Paris and London.
Main images: The Hipster Olympics in July 2012 (Getty images)
