Bad news for the Weissensee, all of Austria ‘orange’

Things are getting tense around the Weissensee Alternative Dutch 11-City Tour after all. There is an agreement, but it came while code ‘yellow’ applied. By now the whole of Austria is ‘orange’: essential travel only.

Bad news: tourists temporarily unwelcome

Skating enthusiasts are craning their necks for January 2021. That is when it is time for a sporting skating holiday on the Weissensee again.

Up to 4,000 recreational skaters may take to the ice for the Alternative Dutch 11-City Tour at this edition.

The question is how realistic that prospect still is. Sun tourists or skating tourists, they are tourists all the same. And with a negative advisory they are no longer welcome. Bad news, then.

The opposite direction

The tightening of the advisory comes a day after other advisories were eased. While Austria turns entirely ‘orange’ today, the Canary Islands and the Greek islands went yesterday to ‘yellow’.

So although Austria is heading the other way, there seems to be one last straw to clutch at. The Canary Islands' negative advisory lasted ‘only’ two months.

Now, you cannot compare countries one to one. But who knows, the Weissensee may be ‘yellow territory’ again in January.

But you cannot know that beforehand , and enormous preparations are already involved. Which makes a large-scale skating event like this hard to defend any more. We shall see how the organisation responds.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs gives a short statement for the negative advisory. “The number of coronavirus infections is high across Austria.”

Exceptions

It is striking, incidentally, that according to the ministry three ‘municipalities’ are exceptions. Until now the Austrian advisories were per city, exclave or state.

Unfortunately for the skating enthusiasts, the Weissensee is not one of those ‘municipalities’.

• First there is the ‘municipality’ of Kleinwalsertal/Mittelberg in the state of Vorarlberg.
• The ‘municipalities’ of Hinterriss and Jungholz (state of Tyrol) are exempt from the negative advisory as well.

In fact they are not all municipalities. Hinterriss is a village, which comes under the municipality of Vomp . Mittelberg is a municipality, and that lies in Kleinwalsertal, a valley and region.