One of the
observations we had in Vienna, Salzburg, and Lucerne was that there were a
surprising number of tourists from the Middle East. On the train from Vienna to
Salzburg, for example, we met a young Iranian woman who was traveling through
Europe with her mom and uncle.
Everywhere you would
look you’d see women with their heads covered and often wearing burqas. It was
most striking in Interlaken as we walked to the main part of town for dinner. Roughly
three-quarters of the families out at that time of the evening were Middle
Eastern.
At the B&B in
Interlaken we spoke to a family from Dubai who mentioned that with the end of
Ramadan and the Eid holiday, many people from the UAE, Saudi Arabia, etc. were
now traveling to Europe for a vacation. I can definitely understand the appeal
of the Swiss alps to families that have just endured the summer in the Middle
Eastern deserts.
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