"The tourist is the other fellow." -Evelyn Waugh

The grandeur styler

Andrew Lesti

Editor in the feuilleton of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper in Berlin.

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Just as the Matterhorn differs from Prenzlberg, mountain hikers also appear in very different forms.

First there is a type who comes from big cities and takes the train to Bad Gastein.

There he walks up the mountain in jeans, a Moncler jacket and sneakers (after taking the chairlift almost to the summit), goes to the hut and is fascinated by the sustainability of the elderberry juice spritzer and the "totally intense taste" of the spinach dumplings.

He or she meets like-minded people with full beards and retro glasses in selected mountain hotels to listen to electronic music together and to discuss Michel Houellebecq or Anne Imhof.

But for grandeur stylers, the mountains are a fake thing, stylized as they are in the lifestyle simulation magazines they carry in their trolley cases.

In doing so, they reactivate a term from the 19th century: sublimity.

Even then, sensitive, hypochondriac-romantic Alpine tourists came from the cities,

to look into the yawning depths on a viewing terrace, put the back of your hand to your forehead, and then, aahhh, almost faint.

It's similar today with the grandeur stylers, whose tours are about as dangerous as looking at a landscape painting.

Actually climbing mountains, no, it could involve danger, cold, exertion and other unimaginable inconveniences.

The outdoor purist

The outdoor purist successfully ignores the new millennium by wearing wire-rimmed glasses, a Che Guevara T-shirt and orange Thinkpink pants, completely free of retro affectations.

He means that just as unironically as the binoculars, the compass and the topographical hiking map - and that speaks for him.

Although his Meindl mountaineering boots have hardly been worn (because he prefers Teva sandals), they are still 20 years old, which means that the material has become so porous that at least one of the two soles is partially separating from the shoe - and soon will fall off completely.

But buying a new shoe would be expensive and not sustainable.

Mountain and hiking guides know the phenomenon and therefore always have cable ties with them.

But the outdoor purist gets involved with the mountain and – in contrast to the grandeur styler and Instagram hiker – can handle gas stoves, carabiners, crampons and weather falls.

He also manages to undermine value creation in places like St.Anton, St.Moritz and Chamonix by pretending

The Instagram Wanderer

A new type that you can recognize from smartphones, smartphones and smartphones – and maybe also from the Hörschel backpack, the Fjällräven jacket, Doc Martens and the woolen hat rolled over the ears.

He or very often rejects the usual outdoor clothes for reasons of gaining distinction.

Instagram hikers don't book (because booking is totally uncool), spontaneously look for a place to stay via Airbnb and then hike to the summit without a guide.

Or to some not so comprehensible places in the mountains.

Her journey through the Alps is a like hunt for undiscovered most-hidden Instagrammer places, during which only “postability” counts.

The mountain air?

The view?

The experience?

The reality?

Bah!

And after posting photos of the waterfall, they complain about how crowded it is in the mountains.

Only: Should a thunderstorm come up or it get uncomfortable in any other way,


The original

He still exists and wears knee breeches, the shirt that Fredl Fesl calls a “red and white checkered uniform”, hiking sticks with a badge and only takes a mountain railway when the appointment for the knee surgery has already been made.