At least 6,000 other people say they have stuck a coronavirus in Ischgl, nicknamed “Ibiza on ice”, and their action of elegance is growing.Those who were there a terrifying week
During the first week of March, Charlie Jackson had an argument with his wife.The 53-year-old recruiting agent from Pangbourne, Berkshire, must take a flight to Innsbruck to spend three days of “children’s vacation” skiing in Jackson’s Wife Carol, felt that Ischgl, the resort booked through the group, was a little too close to the regions of northern Italy that had recently been closed to involve the spread of a mysterious flu-like illness.Caution in the wind: more than 1000 euros had already been spent on the trip.
Ischgl, one of Europe’s most popular ski resorts, is what Jackson calls “a kind of children’s position.”He and his friends had been visiting the city of Paznaun Valley, Austria, for nine years.The snow is probably dusty from November to Mayo.La compact nature of the position means you don’t want a car to move.The facilities are well managed: Ischgl has forty-five elevators, 3 of which take you directly from the outskirts of the city to the mountains.
Then there are the many aprs-ski bars, where Jackson and other tourists after a hard day on the slopes.”It’s a bit like nightclubs for young people, but full of men in their fifth,” he says.
On March 4, after his first day of skiing, his organization of 8 friends headed to a wooden hut in the east of the city called Niki’s Stadl, after its previous owner, Niki Ganahl, a former skier of the Austrian national team.-convert-musician, who died of an attack on the center in 2015 at the age of 58.J-germeister’s beer and shots charge a portion of the value they charge when crossing the Swiss border, and at Niki’s Stadl, they run freely from 3pm to early in the morning (the bar stays open until the last bettor leaves). From a stall in the middle of the bar, a DJ touches the local flavor of schlager pop, a ruthless stream of four-way rhythms on the ground interspersed with 3-syllables choruses as intentionally stupid as simple to sing: “Oh Le Le”, “Blah Blah Blah” or “Saufi Saufi” (“Boozy Boozy”).Sometimes the total bureaucracy of the dance field makes a conga and heads to the bar across the road.
When we talk four months later, Jackson can’t get rid of a vague memory of that night.”They have a big red button next to the DJ booth, just like anything in a TV contest.When you press it, the music gets a little lower for 20 seconds and a siren sounds.My partner Declan was obsessed with pushing that button.It was a little bit and it became this game where we all had to.We’ll have to squeeze it 50 times that night. You had to push it with the palm of your hand and until the end of the night the button was slippery by sweat.
Three days after returning home on March 7, Jackson progressed with back and joint pain and lost his sense of taste. For the next 4 weeks, he felt absolutely drained and unable to work, going to bed in the afternoon. Months later, an antibody check showed he had Covid-19. “The virus didn’t kill me, but it made me feel bad for a long time,” he says.
Jackson one of the lucky ones. At least 28 other people who visited Ischgl in February and early March died of Covid-19.Four of the eight men in Jackson’s organization got sick with the virus on their return.Thousands more are believed to have left him at the station.By mid-March, it was clear that tourists entering and leaving the Paznaun Valley had been the main accelerators of the first wave of the virus on the European continent.
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Covid-19, the “viral pneumonia of unknown cause” first reported by the Chinese government in Wuhan on January 3, has reshaped our way of life, disrupted geopolitics, and caused an economic crisis of ancestral proportions.He also revealed a tension of puritanism in other people who think they are tolerant of liberals: because the virus develops in social situations, nothing has infuriated us more by locking up than seeing other people laughing in large numbers.
In Europe, nowhere has it attracted as much anger as in Ischgl, nicknamed “Ibiza on ice”.Epidemics in northern Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Iceland have been attributed to skiers returning home from the Paznaun Valley, and to the devastating extent of The Ischgl group is likely to be significantly wider: an Austrian lawyer who collects an action of elegance opposite the Tyrol region, claiming that he failed to meet his public aptitude obligations Array collected the signatures of more than 6,000 tourists from 47 countries to which the virus has been hit in Ischgl, adding citizens of Canada, Cambodia and Zimbabwe.Approximately 180 of them are British citizens, who have brought the virus to London, Manchester, Birmingham, Norwich and Brighton.
In Germany, which materializes Ischgl with the maximum of its guests, the epidemic has been the subject of a diplomatic war of words between Austrian and German politicians, who accuse each other of negligence, as well as on the front pages.”the next Ischgl” has helped impose blockades in Central Europe, such is the stigma associated with the station’s call.
Meanwhile, commercial homeowners in Ischgl say they have been scapegoats and that reports of orgiastic scenes are huge exaggerations (in the Daily Mail, columnist Jan Moir condemned skiers who allegedly played a beer pong variant, in which you spit a ball into a beer glass, with several players the same ball. But none of the other people I interviewed this article for can remember such a drinking game.) To some extent, the other people who paint in Ischgl they are right. It helped divert attention from more vital, or undated, decisions behind the scenes, missed warnings, and a key question: Has the government prioritized economic issues over the fitness of citizens and visitors?
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By March 4, Jackson and his friends had already left Niki’s Stadl and went to bed when an email arrived at the hotel near Nevada, delivered at 11:45 p.m., came here from an Icelandic tourist who informed the checkpoint that she and two members of the family circle who had stayed at the hotel last week had tested positive for Covid-19 on their return to Reykjavik.The woguy added that she did not know if it had ever been contagious in Ischgl and that she was imagining that the virus had been stuck on the way home.His airline had told him that his organization was flying on the same plane as an inflamed guy who had skied in Italy.
The woman with 3 teams of Icelandic tourists, 25 people in total, who knew each other and stayed in two hotels and a set of apartments, from 22 to 29 February, many were doctors, so the organization had followed the news of the new coronavirus more strongly than other tourists.
After one of icelandic tourists showed symptoms on February 26 and another began to feel unwell on the return flight, the organization was on high alert.Haraldur Eyvinds Thrastarson, an IT manager who feared infecting more than six hundred colleagues, underwent a check.after returning to Reykjavik.” In Iceland, we allowed doctors to succeed politicians for a few weeks,” he says.”It made a difference.” Iceland began providing Covid-19 controls at the end of January, according to those they had and no symptoms in the following months, which gave it the topest consistent with the rate of control at the beginning of the pandemic epidemic.
On the night of March 3, Thrastarson was shown as one of 16 imaginable positive instances in the group.Shortly before midnight on 4 March, Iceland’s main fitness authority sent a message to its counterpart in Vienna through the Early Warning and Intervention System (EWRS), a web platform linking the EU public fitness government.On the morning of March 5, Iceland declared Ischgl a high-risk destination, in the same category as Wuhan and Iran.On the same day, an emergency assembly of Corona Crisis Working The group met in Ischgl at 1pm, and Icelandic authorities will be discussed at a fitness government assembly in the Tyrol region.
However, when Tyrol’s public fitness officer sent a press release later that day, it was not to put the region on high alert, but to end the panic.In the statement, which is still online, state medical director Franz Katzgraber said Icelandic tourists most likely hit the virus on the plane from Munich to Reykjavik: “From a medical point of view, infections are likely to have occurred in Tyrol.The reaction of an entire region was now precariously based on a final half sentence in the Icelandic tourist’s email: the suggestion that he might have glued the Covid-19 to an Italian skier.
On Saturday, March 7, Jackson and his friends left the hotel, cleaned their rooms, replaced bedding and searched visitors for another week.
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Ischgl is not just a party destination; It’s a party destination for other people with money. There are designer boutiques and five- and four-star hotels, restaurants promoting wagyu beef burgers and bottles of champagne for six hundred euros. On the streets, posters announce Top Of The Mountain concerts featuring stars such as Rihanna and Elton John.Every third euro earned in Tyrol comes directly or from tourism, basically from German and Italian visitors, who spend about 8.4 billion euros each year.
Fluid transit links are a great component of attractiveness, and this effective visitor turnover contributes to Ischgl’s profitability compared to other stations: an airport-style traveler transports tourists through a tunnel from one aspect of the city to another.The economic engine is elevators, which are used through 17 million people a year.
Alexander von der Thannen, 49 and director of the Ischgl Paznaun Tourism Association, says: “We are the cable car company with a check-in so far in Austria.”Our cable car generates more than 80 million euros; next up is Kitzbahel with 60 million euros.”(During the shortened 2019/20 season, the mobile phone company still invoiced 58.5 million euros.) Von der Thannen, typically local entrepreneurs, has several jobs: he is also a spokesman for the Tyrol Chamber of Commerce for Tourism, general manager of the five-star Trofana Royal hotel and has a bar aprs-ski, Trofana Alm.
People who come to Ischgl, says von der Thannen, “not only ski, they also eat.”He believes that Europe has pointed out Ischgl in part out of resentment over the success of his advertisements.”Maybe what we see is too”.the culture of envy: we are too big, we have grown too fast We have a polarized opinion, we deliberately brought megastars to Ischgl, like Robbie Williams, Katy Perry, Tina Turner, Rod Stewart, who gave concerts at the most sensitive moments of the mountain Maybe everyone liked to see it.
But at the beginning of March week, fears that mismanagement of a virus outbreak could permanently damage the city’s reputation were at the center of Ischgl’s senior officials and businessmen.On the beach, a 36-year-old Norwegian became the first user to test positive for Covid-19 in the city itself, after experiencing mild symptoms and headaches.He worked as a bartender in Kitzloch, opposite Niki’s Stadl, where the Icelanders had also spent two nights.”There is a hypothesis that he had just returned from a holiday in Italy,” says Bernhard Zangerl, manager of Kitzloch.”That’s not true. He was there everywhere.
The inside of the bar was disinfected without delay and 22 of the waiter’s close touches were asked to self-insulate.However, on Sunday, the Tyrolean fitness government insisted that it was “medically unlikely” that the virus had simply been transferred from staff to tourists.On Monday, March 9 at 3:53 p.m., an Austrian news firm reported that another 15 people who had been in contact with Kitzloch’s bartender had also tested positive.
Seven minutes later, Zangerl’s father, Peter, owner of Kitzloch, won a text message: “Dear Peter,” he said.”Please remind me or close your Kitz bar, or you’ll be to blame for the end of the season in Ischgl.”and Tyrol.
The text, which was later leaked in an Austrian blog, came here from Franz Url, deputy director of the Tyrolean Chamber of Commerce, spokesman for the organization of cable car operators and a member of the conservative Austrian People’s Party (OVP).He sent a momentary message: “The whole country is looking at its bar,” he said, warning that Tyrol could be added to the list of high-risk areas of Germany’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”Please be reasonable,” Hurl pleaded with Zangerl, ending with a promise: “After a week [or] 10 days, the fury will have diminished and you can take the next steps anyway.”
By 6 p.m., the Kitzloch Bar had closed.Lawyers who now take an action of elegance opposed to Ischgl argue that the whole station has done the same without delay.One of them, Dr. Peter Kolba, who is also president of the Austrian Consumer Protection Association, tells me: “If Ischgl had been quarantined a week earlier, thousands of tourists would not have been infected,” he says.And the virus would not have spread across Europe.”
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When Nigel Mallender arrived in Ischgl on the afternoon of Tuesday, March 10, she headed straight to the Schatzi Bar, a room where young women in tight costumes dance at the tables, so crowded that she remembers having to walk back and then to get around.”He was crowded,” says retired banker from Farnborough, Hampshire, 56, who joins his friends during a few days of skiing and partying.
Hours earlier, the regional government had ordered the closure of all Ischgl bars “with immediate effect”; However, until Tuesday night, the resolution had not yet been controlled.Some bars, in addition to Schatzi and Trofana Alm, owned by Von der Thannen, kept their doors open and were busier due to other closures.”It’s like business is as usual,” says Mallender, who spent about five hours in Schatzi.
Police began enforcing the ban the next day, however, the hotel’s restaurants and bars remained open on Wednesday and Thursday.meant that up to 75 skiers at a time moved six minutes into a closed cabin.”We didn’t think we’d have to panic,” Mallender says.The Austrians gave the impression of being calm and sensible.”
The ghost that the blank air of the Alps would inoculate those affected by a global pandemic would not burn until Friday at 2:15 p.m., when Mallender won a call from his hotel: “This is where the bad movie of the crisis began.”At a press conference 15 minutes earlier, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz announced that the entire Paznaun Valley would be quarantined “with immediate effect.”Tourists were asked to leave the valley “quickly” and return home.
Mallender, who was staying in the nearby town of Galter, ran up the mountain, put his belongings in a suitcase, and tried to book an electronic taxi, but to no avail. to Landeck, where he was able to exercise in Innsbruck, the capital of Tyrol. “When the bus arrived in Ischgl, there was only room for status and the bus was moving in traffic from nose to tail. The mass evacuation required the bus, packed with about 25 people, seven and a half hours to get to Landeck, a 40 minute trip.
On Friday night, at a hotel in Innsbruck, Mallender woke up drenched in sweat and back pain, did his best to distance himself from the other passengers on the plane and controlled himself as soon as he arrived in the UK on Sunday.. Eleven days later, he was taken to the hospital; At that point, you may simply not combine 3 words without suffering to breathe.Speaking on the phone from Hampshire, his voice trembles when he remembers leaving behind his circle of relatives, not knowing if he would see them again.
Mallfinisher enrolled in the action of elegance because he believes that the way the government has treated the outbreak has exported the virus abroad.”By forcing everyone to leave at the same time, they disturbed the problem.inflamed state would have been flooded with the virus at the end of the journey.
“I’m not in the culture of guilt,” Mallender adds, “however, there was more than a breath from the mayor of Amity Island in Jaws about what happened in the Paznaun Valley.If other people die because the benefit has been put before well-being, it will have to be questioned.I’m not looking for monetary gains, however, an investigation will have to be opened.”
Other visitors report similar disorders at the exit of the valley.Lisa Busby, 54, of Brighton, and 4 friends stayed in a hotel in St Anton, near the Ischgl Valley.After his hotel announced the evacuation imminent on Friday.On March 13, they were unable to take a taxi or sneak into the crowded buses.”Everyone was running because they were terrified of having to stay here quarantined,” he says.”We were absolutely trapped.”
The women couldn’t get lucky when a German tourist presented them with an elevator to Munich.At the end of the trip, they exchanged numbers. Two days later, Busby and his friends began to feel bad.On 22 March, his German driving force sent a text message to say that he had tested positive for Covid-19.When I talk to Busby in early August, she has not yet regained her sense of taste or smell and is sure to have had the virus, even though neither she nor her friends were tested at the time.
Johann Friedrich, 68, an Austrian sportsman living near Vienna, arrived in Ischgl with 4 friends for a week of skiing on 7 March.His roommate at the hotel, Hannes Schopf, 72, a journalist, won a call from his wife to after finishing their vacation, told them to leave as soon as possible.They sneaked into a crowded bus, too.Friedrich later experienced only mild symptoms, but his frifinish less fortunate.On April 10, Schopf died in the hospital after not being able Friedrich believes there is a good chance his organization put the virus on the bus.
Neither he nor Schopf had visited a bar during the holidays.
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In early July, the snow cover in the mountains that flank Ischgl melted into some thin patches.The sky is blue and the sun hits over the green meadows.Most bars, cafes and restaurants are closed; only a few cyclists and hikers cross the city.The posters promote the afternoons of aprs-ski and lapdance, but the public handles the systems in silence.For the off-season, calm is nothing extraordinary.However, the feeling of discomfort accidentally transmitted through the tourist slogan of Ischgl inscribed on the banks, posters and elevators of the park: “Relax.If you can …”, it seems more suitable than ever. Other local people are reluctant to have interaction in the conversation, let alone be interviewed.
Behind the scenes, the paintings continue to prepare for a new tourist season from November: the terraces and cable car staff are washed.The Trofana Alm bar was demolished and rebuilt in the same place until November.”Everything will be new, more modern, with a new ventilation system,” says Von der Thannen, as he has a coffee in the morning.”There will be more room for a larger kitchen, but other than that, everything will remain the same.”The plan-making request, he says, was made last December, long before anyone had heard of Covid-19.Lockdown has charged Ischgl about 25-30% of his annual business, but Von der Thannen is sure the station’s reputation won’t.permanently tarnished by its relationship with the virus.
Kolba sees things differently. Their criminal complaint, filed with Austria’s Federal Bureau of Economy and Anti-Corruption in June, urges the prosecutor to read about why institutions such as Von der Thannen’s bar have closed so far behind and the role they have played in enabling the spread of the virus.The 36-page legal document names 21 homeowners and local officials as potential suspects, Kolba says that, in the end, the complaint is aimed at opposing the Austrian government and its “calcupast dued export” of the virus.As the Innsbruck prosecutor continues to gather Kolba plans to launch a civil trial in early September.If successful, the Austrian government could be responsible for heaps of millions of euros in agreements, for signatories such as Charlie Jackson, Johann Friedrich, Nigel Mallender and Lisa Busby.
Regardless of the legal challenge, Ischgl will most likely change.In the future, says Von der Thannen, the city will have to be more careful with the other people it allows to visit: “There are certain types of visitors that I no longer need to see here.”Too many tourists head directly to the bars, never going to the slopes: Von der Thannen suggests that visitors are only entitled to a parking price ticket if they also buy a ski pass, which costs 58 euros a day in the middle of the season…« Guests who come skiing, who have booked a room, are welcome,” he says.
And skiing, says von der Thannen, helps keep you healthy.At the end of April, a virologist organization arrived in the valley for mass testing of the population and discovered that while more than 40% had evolved anti-Covid- 19 antibodies, only 15% had symptoms.”A tough and very resilient people,” recalls von der Thannen, according to a scientist.”Almost all locals ski regularly. We are active and outdoors.Our parents and grandparents worked in the field and maybe we inherited their genes.
“Many things have been written about Ischgl that are not true.Could a small village have inflamed the whole world?Ten million people? I’m sure you don’t.”