Paper short abstract:

Using ethnographic observations from different spheres of tourism in Masuria, Northeast Poland, this paper shows, how post-Cold-War transformations are interrelated with tourism dynamics and can be identified in/as cultural landscapes, leisure practices, tourist-local encounters, and tourism places.

Paper long abstract:

This paper discusses selected aspects of post-Cold-War transformation in the Masurian Lake District, which are all strongly interrelated with tourism, mainly from Poland and Germany. I wish to argue that especially in peripheral, touristic areas of Central and Eastern Europe we cannot view processes of transformation without taking into account tourism geographies, cultures, encounters, and places.

In the course of my presentation I will introduce my audience to four ethnographic snippets from different socio-cultural spheres of tourism in Masuria, which I have studies throughout my fieldwork and which lead to my argument: The field of German tourism to Masuria, historically rooted in the affiliation of Masuria with East Prussia until 1945, illuminates the transformation and diversification of cultural landscapes. The realm of sailing tourism, a leisure practice cultivated also during Socialism, draws attention to the bodily, sensory and performative nature of negotiating changing economic, political, and material post-socialist life realities. A look at the local perception and encounter of sailors and German visitors elucidates the impact of tourism for local world views, ideas of the transformed post-socialist world, and expectations for the future. Lastly, the attempts of place-making and un-making in a small village/ tourism resort give insights into a complex biotope of power and agency, in which tourism has been and is the common, but ambivalent driving force for transformations.

Concluding I suggest that post-socialist transformation is a plurality of different dynamics of negotiation, which are often ruled by dualist thinking patterns, and happen transnationally, bodily, in encounter and in place.