Buying a carton of milk in Venice? Forget it. Writer Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer on his new novel and the future of Europe

'Caffè e acqua frizzante, per favore.' Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer orders a coffee and water from the waitress of bar 28 Erbe. It's late morning and the terrace in Piazza dell' Erbe, a stone's throw from the palazzo where the writer lives, is slowly starting to get a bit busier.

Pfeijffer has now been living in Genoa for ten years, the city that he has been celebrating with his award-winning novel La Superba - recently also appeared in Italy - magisterially declared his love. Every year, he sees it getting a little busier there. 'But it fortunately still has absolutely nothing like the proportions of tourism in Venice or Florence,' he says while rolling a cigarette. 'This city can have it, the centre is big enough. Most tourists linger a bit in Via Garibaldi and near San Lorenzo Cathedral. They don't dare enter those scary, narrow, dirty alleys. That's how the city protects itself, so to speak.'

Mass tourism

Mass tourism is one of the themes in his new, major novel Grand Hotel Europa. A writer (listening to the same name as his creator) looks back on his stranded relationship with his girlfriend Clio in an old hotel. The novel is set in Venice. In hilarious scenes - for example, one in which the writer makes an attempt to buy her a bunch of flowers - Pfeijffer makes fun of the mass tourism under which the city succumbs.

'Venice is the prototypical example of how things can go wrong. It is always very busy, at the same time the city is totally depopulated. Censuses from 1400 show that Venice had 140,000 inhabitants at the time. Currently, there are less than 50,000. So the population has been decimated compared to the Middle Ages! And every day it is declining further. Somewhere in Venice, a pharmacy has a counter in the shop window showing the population of Venice, and you can see the number of inhabitants decreasing daily there. If it continues at this rate, Venice will have no inhabitants by 2030. Then it will have become Disneyland, an open-air museum for tourists. Fence around it and done.'

Pfeijffer takes a sip of his coffee. Mass tourism is disastrous, he says, shaking his head, it kills a city. 'Last year I went to Florence a couple of times with my friend Stella, because she had to be there for work. The centre of Florence is beautiful, of course, but it's not really a real city anymore either. So in Venice it is much worse; the entire city centre is rented out to tourists. Investors are buying up the place. All the city's facilities are geared to tourism.'

'For the few residents who are left, it is becoming increasingly difficult to meet their daily needs. You can't buy a carton of milk anymore. If, on the other hand, you are looking for a plastic gondola boat with flashing lights or an authentic Venetian carnival mask, made in China, then you can go anywhere. Of course, if you then see that house prices are skyrocketing, the decision is quickly made to sell your house and move elsewhere. That is exactly what happens.'

Earnings model

It is too late for Venice, he thinks, but perhaps cities like Amsterdam can still be saved just in time. 'The centre of Amsterdam is rapidly going after Venice. I don't think many people really realise it yet, but in the coming years we will start to realise that mass tourism really is a threat and destroys a lot. Now it is still seen as a revenue model, as good for the economy, but I think that is a fiction. It earns the city some 65 million euros, but there are also costs in return: ten ambulances have to drive out every day for tourists, extra city cleaning is needed, et cetera. If you add up all those kinds of costs, you come up with a figure much higher than 65 million.'

Stylish lady

'Tourism is growing in Genoa too,' Pfeijffer continues, 'but people still live here. Besides, money is still being made here from other things - prostitution, drug trafficking - so I don't think they will just hand the centre over to tourism. The mentality here is that of a seafaring people, of traders: they never show the back of their tongues. The same goes for the city itself. When you come to Genoa as a tourist, you have to do your best to discover the city. To conquer it.'

'Genoa is like a stylish old lady who has many secrets she will never tell. Her clothes may be a bit sallow and worn, but she still rings with all her jewellery. She does not give in immediately, like Rome. Genoa is more exciting, authentic and weird. There is a lot to see here, but there is not one sight with three stars in the guidebooks, like the Rialto Bridge, the Colosseum. People who chase a few days through Italy go to Rome, Florence, Venice and maybe the Cinque Terre, but leave Genoa out.'

Allegory of Europe

Grand Hotel Europa besides being a tragicomic love story and a book about our endless wanderlust - 'Love in times of mass tourism,' grins Pfeijffer - is above all an allegory on Europe. 'The novel's characters are each attached to the past in their own way. Clio, for instance, comes from a noble family, she has studied art history and has an old palazzo to look after - in many ways, the European past weighs on her shoulders, partly unwittingly, partly sought after. The other characters also suffer from or are stuck with the past. This is a metaphor for Europe as a whole, because what we really have a lot of in Europe is the past. Especially in a country like Italy.'

Genoa's historic heart was not long ago declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site - but is that really such a good thing? Because won't that actually attract even more tourists to such a place? 'Well,' Pfeijffer ponders, 'at the same time it does guarantee that property developers can't just demolish old buildings to put up a big concrete hotel, so this World Heritage Site might not be such a bad thing. In the case of Amsterdam, there might still be salvation because the city has a real economy, it is not totally dependent on tourism. Not so for a city like Venice; nothing is produced there anymore, there are no offices. The only thing Venice has left as a revenue model is its past. They can only sell their past. They can monetise that old heritage.'

Europe as a recreation area

What is true for that city is actually true for the continent of Europe as a whole, the writer believes. 'Compared to the nineteenth century or the early twentieth century, Europe has lost enormous influence. On a global scale, Europe hardly has anything to say anymore, and also economically. Europe produces less and less itself, more and more is outsourced to low-wage countries, China for instance. At the same time, Europe is very popular with tourists, including those from the new booming countries, such as China and India.' He laughs. 'Europe is more or less becoming the recreation area for the rest of the world.'

Pfeijffer points around - fewer and fewer people live behind the front doors of the palazzos here, too. 'My friend's mother lives by the cathedral, just around the corner here. There are only two of them left in that palazzo; of the ten flats, eight are rented out as B&Bs. That causes all sorts of nuisances; people lose the keys to the front door so that lock has to be changed every so often, there's a lot of junk in the stairwell, you name it. But what is mostly lost is a community. That's hard to measure, you can't quantify its impact. But it is very palpable.'

Monterosso

With his novel, he wants to outline that development and raise the question of whether it is bad. Asked for his own opinion on it, Pfeijffer falls silent for the first time, pondering his answer. 'It is very ambiguous. My book is somewhat intended as a warning, but I mainly want to make the reader think about these kinds of problems. I look for the ambiguity.'

'For example, the novel passes by the example of Monterosso, one of the five villages of the Cinque Terre, a top tourist destination. Monterosso is a small, picturesque fishing village among the mountains, a kind of miraculous balance between man and nature. But the two fishermen who remained a decade ago could no longer compete with the big fishing boats. Because of the village's location, the small port could not be expanded either. So in effect, Monterosso was doomed, as its only source of income was fishing. Now it is one hundred per cent touristy, but fortunately with good restaurants and bars, no cheap shit. All the original inhabitants who still live there now earn their money with a bed and breakfast. So actually tourism has killed a dead village here.'

Modern migration

A solution to the questions raised by the novel is not available to him either. 'My book is a novel, not an essay saying how things should be done. Mass tourism is a very recent phenomenon, so it is not surprising that we have not yet come up with a solution to it. Tourism has become mass tourism thanks to EasyJet, RyanAir and other budget flights. It's only been 15 years that anyone can afford to go anywhere. So it's actually a whole new problem. I contrast that with today's migration. People go to further and further countries to avoid the tourists. So with all your money they go to Africa or Afghanistan, to see how bad it is in the country where all these refugees come from who are not allowed to come to the West. That's very weird.'

Lega Nord

Like more writers, such as Philippe Claudel, for instance, Pfeijffer worries about the future of Europe. In a strongly far-right Italy, where even black Italians were shot at last year, he feels cohesion crumbling almost daily. 'The future of Europe depends heavily on whether the continent is able to formulate a united response to the refugee situation. And all indications are that it cannot. Here we have a coalition of two populist, xenophobic, anti-migration parties. Deputy prime minister and Lega Nord leader Salvini, actually a kind of shadow prime minister, is very good at making the front page of the newspapers every day. A fierce opponent of migration, he sets the agenda and legitimises anti-foreigner sentiment. The country is deeply divided by it, because although Lega Nord is the largest party, there are also a lot of people who did not vote for it. Those are very worried.'

Fortunately, Genoa is more friendly towards people who have had a bad time and are trying to seek refuge elsewhere. 'Historically, it has always been a city of arrivals and departures. At the time of the mass emigration of Italians, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, those millions of people left Genoa for America. So now that many Africans are coming to Italy, many residents realise: a hundred years ago, we were those immigrants. That makes Genoa quite tolerant. The city faces the sea, towards Africa. Historically, it has more ties to that than to Milan, yonder behind the mountains.'

 

Grand Hotel Europa was published by De Arbeiderspers.