Budapest, Magyarország
Budapest, Hungary (on film)
May 31st 2024
Between 1944-1945, as many as 20,000 people, a large proportion being of Jewish descent, were taken from the nearby ghetto in central Budapest and shot along the Danube. Their bodies fell in the river and were washed away, their stories forgotten. The only traces they left behind were their shoes, with their final act being to remove them so that they could be re-sold by their murderers.
Today there are shoe sculptures along the bank of the Danube beside parliament, memorialising this horror. There are highheels, leather shoes left open, even children's shoes. There is also now something new that can be seen at the memorial: selfie takers.
Shoes on the Danube, tied with yellow bows
I truly wonder how many people actually know what the shoes represent, and how many people do know but decide that a selfie is appropriate. At a time where streets and views are being restricted in Japan, where Venice is charging an entrance fee, and where local communities in Spanish islands are holding protests as they are being outpriced by tourists, this behaviour is representative of something greater. Humanity's obssession with tickbox tourism seems to know no bounds.
The disneyfication of Budapest started a long time ago, surely before I first arrived in 2020, but recently there has been a noticeable change. An unsustainable post-COVID acceleration, which has made locals a stranger in their own city centre. Apartments are becoming unavailable to long-term renters as they are transformed into Airbnbs (many of which, it should be said, are owned and operated by foreign companies), streets are littered with rental scooters that endanger traffic and clutter walkways, and bicycle paths are strewn with sightseeing crowds.
Recently, Budapest has even been labelled as among the top 5 most over-touristed cities in Europe, and I believe it. As a previous long-term resident of Budapest, I have been personally victim to overtourism. I moved away from Budapest and Hungary in general, in large part due to this feeling of disneyfication and the unavailability of reasonable long-term rental accomodation.
Instagram and other social media fuels FOMO culture that encourages shallow photo-taking and a disrespect for community areas, tiktok funnels huge numbers of people to seemingly arbitrary attractions that cannot handle them, and new middle classes are emerging in the world that see tourism as the 'thing' to do with money. Tourism is certainly nothing brand new, but damaging the charm of the people and places that attracted tourists in the first place, might very well be.
If Budapest, Venice, or Amsterdam loses all of its local residents and became the exclusive domain of tourists, what would happen? Would people still visit these cities as the streets crumble around them, learn about the history which has stopped being written in them, and eat the food of a culture that no longer cooks there? This is obviously an extreme situation, but not so implausible as you may think. For example, Hallstatt, a picturesque town in central Austria, has 800 residents but an enormous 10,000 daily visitors. The local administration tried to limit numbers by blocking the most popular view in the town, but this reversed as residents couldn't enjoy it either.
Disneyland Budapest
It's not just an issue of feeling at home in your own community either. In Hawaii, Antarctica, Aruba, Nepal, Thailand, and many other places, overtourism has also been shown to directly harm the environment. Animal cruelty (a la elephant rides, tiger selfies) is also funded almost entirely by uninformed tourist dollars. Not to mention absurd situations including selfie-takers forcing ponies off cliffs in Wales, and dolphins and sharks being dragged out of the water for selfies in Florida, Australia, and Spain.
In Hungary there is little regulation around animal cruelty, in fact it is one of the last countries in Europe that allow animals to perform in circuses. And for tourists in Budapest, bird selfies are an offered service. Offered by who? I really don't know. This group moves around the highest density tourist spots in Budapest to offer their birds to curious tourists. I have seen them both by the shoes and around the castle district. In the past they used to have owls and hawks, but probably some people complained so they switched to more palatable pigeons.
So where is all this going and what is the cure? There is no question that overtourism will become a common phenomenon in the future as, like most things that are hurting the planet, it is facilitated by greed and moneymaking. I can also see it only being cured by the same thing that caused it, social pressure. Instead of there being an emphasis on display and showing off, maybe there will be a new surge of ethical tourism, motivated by moral choices and thoughtfulness. Perhaps a new wave of influencers can make this approach more fashionable, and the crowds will follow their lead.
But, I really don't know. All I can think about is how the owners of those shoes would react if they could see what is happening around their memorial now.
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