The island of Sylt is one of the most exclusive and expensive holiday resorts in Germany. It is in the North Sea, on the border with Denmark, and can be reached by shuttle train from Hamburg, which normally costs 30 euros: 60 euros in total if you include the return trip. From June 1st, however, the trip to Sylt will be significantly cheaper: the federal government has even decided that anyone who wants to can buy a 9-euro ticket for all city and regional transport, which is valid until the end of the current month, including the shuttle to Sylt.
The measure was introduced to offset rising energy costs and offer an economical alternative to Germans planning to travel to Germany this summer.
However, the Sylt administration fears that this reduction in the price of access to the island could have uncontrollable effects. Many online users have mocked this concern with memes and jokes that have gone viral, and some groups of anti-capitalist activists are inviting as many people as possible to reach the island this summer to disrupt the peace of millionaires who have settled over the course have changed over the years at exorbitant prices that are inaccessible to a large part of the population.
With a view to the first weekend in June, the island administration has already announced that it will intensify the security services.
The most popular initiative is linked to an event on Facebook called Chaostage Sylt 2022, which reached over 10,000 people between “interested” and “participants”.
The Chaostage was a 1980s punk gathering place held annually in Hanover, on many occasions featuring violent drifts and clashes by demonstrators with the police. Sylt was already the target of these initiatives back then. Now some fear something similar could happen to what happened when Deutsche Bahn offered a discounted weekend ticket in the 1990s: the island was packed with protesters occupying the beaches and they went camping freely, creating some confusion.
It’s not clear how many will actually join the initiatives born online these days. However, organizers of the event on Facebook told the Guardian that their aim was purely satirical and that they only wanted to draw media attention to the enormous distance between those who cannot afford the full ticket to the island and the €9 Ticket, and those who go there on their own private yacht.
Over the years, prices on the island have become so high that even residents can barely live there and employees of hotels, restaurants and other tourist facilities are often forced to commute. Isabella Wolbart, representative of the left-wing youth group Solid, called the online initiative “a campaign of civil disobedience” and “a political tool to draw attention to injustice and to oppose an existing system”.
Sylt Marketing Manager Moritz Luft: “I don’t think the island is sufficiently equipped for the 9-euro ticket and the expected rush of visitors.” Mayor Nikolas Häckel said instead that he believed that the entire online movement would subside and not everyone who was interested in the online initiative would really go to Sylt, but the island still had to adjust to more visitors.