Speed tourism: The German Autobahn as a tourist destination and location of “unruly rules”

IF 3.3 4区管理学 Q2 HOSPITALITY, LEISURE, SPORT & TOURISM

Tourist Studies Pub Date : 2020-02-19 DOI:10.1177/1468797620905786

M. Gross

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引用次数: 6

Abstract

The German Autobahn has inspired many people’s imagination with its lack of a general speed limit, the quality of its road surface as well as its allegedly well-behaved drivers. One of the consequences of this positive reputation has been the emergence of a phenomenon I would like to call “speed tourism.” In this article, I treat speed tourism as a special form of tourism that involves viewing the driving experience as an opportunity for either testing the capacity of one’s own car or driving it at high speed as a way of experiencing the native culture at firsthand. I explore speed tourism as an alternative way of getting to know the real Germany as a tourist. Based on an analysis of several of its peculiarities, I argue that the Autobahn can be understood as a location where tourists can mix with “locals” while keeping a distance from them, since the interaction is restricted to learning and obeying the country’s rules of the road. The Autobahn then becomes a time-bound “dream location” created by the ideal of limitless driving freedom on the one hand and the paradoxical requirement of unruliness in relation to strict rules on the other; together, these are believed to offer an “authentic” driving experience according to local cultural customs.

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速度旅游：德国高速公路作为旅游目的地和“不守规矩”的所在地

德国高速公路因其缺乏一般限速、路面质量以及据称表现良好的司机而激发了许多人的想象力。这种正面声誉的后果之一是出现了一种我想称之为“速度旅游”的现象，我将速度旅游视为一种特殊的旅游形式，将驾驶体验视为测试自己汽车能力的机会，或将其高速驾驶视为亲身体验本土文化的一种方式。作为一名游客，我探索速度旅游作为了解真实德国的另一种方式。基于对高速公路几个特点的分析，我认为高速公路可以被理解为游客可以在与“当地人”保持距离的同时与他们交往的地方，因为互动仅限于学习和遵守国家的道路规则。高速公路于是成为一个有时间限制的“梦想之地”，一方面是无限驾驶自由的理想，另一方面是与严格规则相关的不规则性的矛盾要求；这些都被认为是根据当地文化习俗提供的“真实”驾驶体验。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Tourist Studies HOSPITALITY, LEISURE, SPORT & TOURISM-

CiteScore

6.90

自引率

4.20%

发文量

期刊介绍： Tourist Studies is a multi-disciplinary journal providing a platform for the development of critical perspectives on the nature of tourism as a social phenomenon through a qualitative lens. Theoretical and multi-disciplinary. Tourist Studies provides a critical social science approach to the study of the tourist and the structures which influence tourist behaviour and the production and reproduction of tourism. The journal examines the relationship between tourism and related fields of social inquiry. Tourism and tourist styles consumption are not only emblematic of many features of contemporary social change, such as mobility, restlessness, the search for authenticity and escape, but they are increasingly central to economic restructuring, globalization, the sociology of consumption and the aestheticization of everyday life. Tourist Studies analyzes these features of tourism from a multi-disciplinary perspective and seeks to evaluate, compare and integrate approaches to tourism from sociology, socio-psychology, leisure studies, cultural studies, geography and anthropology. Global Perspective. Tourist Studies takes a global perspective of tourism, widening and challenging the established views of tourism presented in current periodical literature. Tourist Studies includes: Theoretical analysis with a firm grounding in contemporary problems and issues in tourism studies, qualitative analyses of tourism and the tourist experience, reviews linking theory and policy, interviews with scholars at the forefront of their fields, review essays on particular fields or issues in the study of tourism, review of key texts, publications and visual media relating to tourism studies, and notes on conferences and other events of topical interest to the field of tourism studies.