The coronavirus pandemic has thrown a spanner in the works of the global tourism industry and it is continuing to cause rifts between countries who are leaning more and more into the belief that certain decisions are being made with a political nature to them as opposed to an epidemiological one. One such case is that of Austria. Austrian tourists are being pushed from pillar to post as the decisions of their government cause enormous issues.
As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 23rd of August, 2020, the Austrian Government's decision to start placing measures on those wanting to travel to and indeed returning from Croatia has cause an enormous chaos among Austrian tourists. There was a wait yesterday in a queue in at the border crossing in the summer heat in which more than ten hours passed with almost no movement.
''We've been here for 10 hours with three small children. We're slowly running out of food and my children have fallen asleep hungry. Nobody cares, no one has even addressed us so far,'' one of the passengers who got stuck at the Slovenian-Austrian border crossing told 24sata.
Desperate passengers who got stuck at the Jesenice-Karavanke border crossing said that the situation had escalated and that people has started urinating along the highway because there was nowhere else for them to go, they were left without food and water, and children were crying.
''Our biggest problem is that we aren't allowed to stop anywhere in Austria, we've been on the road for more than twelve hours now, and who knows when we will cross the border… Even when we do manage to cross it, we have at least seven hours to drive home. Well, it's impossible to endure this and not be able to stop somewhere and get some sleep,'' said Marko R, who travelled yesterday with his wife and their three small children.
''We also asked the Slovenian police what was going on and why they were not letting us go, and they told us that the Austrians were simply carrying on with their stubbornness because of the whole situation with the coronavirus. We're outraged. This is no longer normal, we just want to get home,'' added Marko.
For more on travel to, from and within Croatia during the coronavirus pandemic, follow our travel page.
For the latest travel info, bookmark our main travel info article, which is updated daily.
Read the Croatian Travel Update in your language - now available in 24 languages
