<\/p>\n
Last year I reported from Fashon-Mekka Munich<\/a>, by detecting shopaholic Arabs coming obviously from the rich Gulf-states. In the meantime it seems that the caravan moved on \u2013 to nearby Austria. Tom y absolute surprise I spotted them now in swanky Zell am See and Salzburg as well as at the Krimmler Waterfalls.<\/p>\n On the way I noticed the expression “Fremdenzimmer” on some boarding houses. A term that I have not seen for a long time. Interestingly, the English, for example, do not seem to have this expression. \u201cFremdenzimmer\u201d can only be translated with “Guest room”. Lately, I came across the following sentence matching the meaning of \u201cFremdenzimmer\u201d: \u201cThe stranger can be constructed as an enemy or as an exotic secret. This ambiguity reflects the etymological relation of the Latin terms hostis (stranger\/enemy) and hospes (stranger\/guest)”.<\/p>\n Therefore, is it the stranger as an enemy or the stranger as a guest who is being offered a room? Is the stranger, not matter where he comes to, a guest? Later on, the \u201cFremdenzimmer\u201d became a guest room but it is however worth it to think about the kind of word composition which might not be originated by chance. Does it express distrust?<\/p>\n It is worth to look into the origin of the word “Fremdenzimmers” in Wikipedia<\/a>. It is noteworthy that the term seems to exist only in Germany and in Austria. Switzerland, who is also partly German-speaking, does not use the expression. Almost nostalgic the newspaper \u201eZeit\u201c explained in an article that the word Fremdenzimmer “is an endangered species<\/a>“. The times when guest room was still titled as Fremdenzimmer must be ranked among the pre-globals times as Martin Hecht<\/a> knows: “The joyous promise of the global project lies in the freedom of a bondless-independent existence, in the coolness to wrest of an own method of identification, to find roots and a hold in the state of eternal rise. At the same time, however, it also means the experience of a loss not to be able to feel alienated during this search and not to experience strangeness at its best: in it unknowns, unexplored and untamness.”<\/p>\n