Punks and Pap
In the North Sea, at the tip-top corner of Germany, sits the sickle-shaped island of Sylt, where for the past three years, an “experiment” in alternative travel has been taking place every summer.
If you’ve never heard of it, Sylt is the German equivalent of Martha’s Vineyard, an exclusive islet with 25 km of sand, pricey hotels, and over-the-top mansions. Linked to the mainland via a causeway, its coast resembles the beach in Jaws in summer, crowded with rich sun-seekers.
But since 2022, a group of anarchist punks has come to rain on the parade. They first arrived thanks to the 9 Euro Ticket, a German promotion that allowed any of the country’s citizens to travel anywhere for next to nothing.
Their inaugural year was chaotic and messy, as the punks—one hundred strong—camped in front of town hall, and greatly annoyed the other tourists. Things have settled down since then. In exchange for an agreement to use space near the airport and locally provided chemical toilets, 300 or so come yearly to share the scenery with people paying much larger sums for the privilege.
Predictably, they look on the rich tourists to the island with disdain, seeing them as corrupt, venal capitalists, or worse. For them, this is an alien landscape; one far from their everyday. And oddly, they have become something of a tourist attraction in themselves, with visitors now taking time out to gawk at them.
This is not as unusual as you might think. You can find a mirrored experience enjoyed by the tourists who sign up to tour impoverished neighborhoods in Cape Town, South Africa. For the equivalent of about $50, they can spend a half-day in Langa Township, which includes visits to local houses, informal spaza shops, a shebeen tavern, and the opportunity to interact with a “Xhosa local,” who tells them about the culture and history of the neighborhood.
While these two phenomena seem to be at opposite ends of the travel spectrum, they put the recent trend of “experiential travel” into relief. The idea, strongly promoted by AirBnB and others, is that you should seek out authentic experiences rather than simply visiting popular destinations.
The problem for those selling these experiences is that truly authentic is generally boring: People going about their days in unspectacular ways, without any flair for presentation.
That’s why Langa tours play up the poverty of their subjects (which is real) while insulating the tour goers from the less attractive parts of township life (namely, a lack of electricity and running water). And, of course, visitors usually get a taste of the exotic. People who take township tours often report trying a boiled sheep’s head, whose protruding teeth and curled lips give it the gruesome name of “smiley.”
Smileys are a real thing, a Xhosa festival dish turned street food, but they are far from the go-to choice for township residents. A food more commonly associated with townships is pap, a cornmeal porridge. People who go to a township and see a boiled sheep head feel like they’ve gotten a true experience. A bowl of bland pap and chutney, not so much.
Likewise, the punks of Sylt see what they come to see: a degenerate bourgeoisie that deserves nothing but their scorn. Even so, like the township tourists, they are viewing something not exactly authentic. They see the lesser Sylt, not the masters of the German universe, but the ordinary middle-class families out for a beach holiday. And the shit-colored glasses they wear to gaze upon them don’t help.
Photo by Alex Heimken
Though the punks and township tourists hardly seem themselves occupying the same moral space, both are engaging in an act of experiential self-deception, seeing what they want to see, rather than a slice of reality.
Local, everyday experience is pap, not smileys. On Sylt, it’s the accountants and real estate agents eating bag lunches and getting sunburned, not hedge fund managers bathing in caviar and corruption.
Of course, there is no way out of this conundrum: as tourists we are always punks. We may not be sneering at Bugaboo strollers, but we are aliens nonetheless, and what we see is always mediated by what we want and what our hosts deliver. Experiences can be inspiring, but they can also be icky. You can never be sure if you’re having a real one or somehow meeting your tour guides in the awkward middle between your world and theirs.
In this, the punks are probably a step ahead of the township tourists, because they’re at least going somewhere people generally want to be. It’s possible they may enjoy the sun and surf just like anyone else. Meanwhile, the township tourists are likely retreating to much more comfortable dwellings than the punks’ encampment, grateful to have visited—and escaped.
Whatever the case, authentic experiences are tough; especially if you want to be sure you’ve had one, which is never certain. Even though we may feel superior to the punks or the township tourists; we’re always intruders, just the same.
