The Pastry Queue and the Mountain

The Friedrich August refuge in the Dolomites was built for climbers, not for queues. Yet this week, according to the Guardian, hundreds of people have been making the ascent not for the panoramic views but for a single cream-filled pastry, a krapfen, whose fame was manufactured by influencer videos. The Alpine communities that host the refuge are reported to be exasperated, and one can see why. A place of silence has been converted into a destination of appetite.

There is a particular irony in the fact that the pastry is Austrian in origin, a krapfen, sitting on Italian soil. The Dolomites have always been a borderland, a place where languages and loyalties shift with the altitude. Now the border that matters is not between nations but between the mountain as it is lived and the mountain as it is performed. The visitors come to consume a moment that has been staged for them, and the mountain itself becomes a backdrop.

We do not wish to scold the tourists. The desire to see a beautiful place is not a crime, and the krapfen, we are told, is excellent. But the episode should give us pause. When a landscape becomes famous for a single object, the object begins to obscure the landscape. The queue is the new view. The photograph is the new memory. And the communities that must live with the crowds are left to sweep up the crumbs.

The question is whether the Italian mountains, and indeed the whole country, can find a way to welcome visitors without being consumed by them. The answer will not come from a single refuge or a single pastry. It will come from a broader reckoning with what we want from the places we visit, and what we are willing to give back to them.

For now, the Friedrich August refuge stands as a small parable of our age. A mountain, a pastry, a queue. And behind it all, the silence that once was the real attraction.