From Hungary to Germany: travelling during a pandemic
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Even though mask signs and hand sanitisers are found everywhere in larger cities, the southern German state of Bavaria still experienced a lively summer with a decent number of tourists enjoying themselves in the open-air areas.
With over 245,000 registered cases and rising, Germany is a major hotspot of the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe. According to the Hungarian government’s Consular Service website, the most hard-hit states are North Rhine-Westphalia, Bavaria, and Baden-Württemberg. Based on a trip taken at the end of August to two Bavarian cities, Bamberg and Nuremberg, here are some impressions on how the southern German state seems to be handling the current pandemic.
Travelling there
Similarly to Hungary, Germany has its own classification of countries based on their safety. Besides, each state has its own regulations in force, which visitors are strongly advised to check before travelling to a specific area. Hungary is currently classified as a safe country, and so there were no complications during our inbound travel.
When travelling by bus, train, or car, passengers also need to keep an eye on the regulations in Austria, the country situated between the two. Based on another travel experience from this summer, border crossings could have been affected by passengers who had visited a risk area shortly before their travel, but we had no such case this time.
Travelling back to Hungary went smoothly as well. The only remarkable difference was the increased number of (Hungarian) passengers, but considering the Hungarian government’s latest measure to shut down the borders from 1 September (we were two days away from that), it did not come as a surprise to anyone.
Tourism
Regardless of how hardly the tourism was hit by the current pandemic, it did not come to a complete halt in Germany, either – even though most tourists I saw or heard were German-speaking. Museums and other sights of interest were open with all the necessary measures: limits on the number of visitors, combined with the obligatory mask wearing and hand sanitising.
At certain cafés and restaurants, visitors might be asked to provide some personal information with regards to their stay in Germany.
The hostel I stayed at gave me a more realistic picture about international tourism: in the 8-bed female bedroom I booked, I only had one roommate, and she was a German resident. I saw a few more foreigners in the common room during breakfast (which is normally a buffet but this time was just a weird situation where I had to point at the sealed food next to the receptionist to indicate what I want to eat), but all in all, the otherwise nice and cosy hostel seemed very deserted.
