New operator

High waves at the campsite in the Danube bay

At the Kasten campsite in the municipality of Vichtenstein, many campers will have to vacate their accommodation by 2023.

(Bild: Wenzel Markus)

After 40 years, many permanent campers in Vichtenstein will have to pull up stakes at the end of the year. They feel betrayed by the mayor when new lease agreements are drawn up.

At the Kasten campsite in the municipality of Vichtenstein, the waters have been rising for weeks. Many permanent campers will have to vacate their accommodation in the Danube bay at the end of the year and some of them will have to tear it down completely. From 2023, the municipality will no longer lease the plots individually, but the entire site to "Kasten XO GmbH". The company is making big plans and must first clear the site for the conversion.

I've been coming to Kasten for 40 years and I can't accept that we're being forcibly evicted from here.

Leopold Schediwy, Camper

"But nobody will be driven away, anyone who wants to can stay at the campsite. I just can't guarantee that everyone will get their pitch back. What is certain is that the conditions will not remain the same. We were one of the cheapest campsites in Austria for many years," explains Mayor Andreas Moser (ÖVP).

We signed the contract in January because we were told that everything would remain the same and otherwise we would have to leave within 14 days.

Irene Brehmer, Camperin

However, many campers no longer trust the head of the village. "We don't believe him anymore," they rumbled at the "Krone" site inspection. For many years, a verbal agreement was enough to stay in Kasten. This came to an end with the change of mayor in July 2020: "Moser presented us with written one-year contracts and promised that nothing would change. He publicly denied rumors about a new tenant," the campers fume.

Questionable approach
"At the time, I had no idea that there was a private operator," Moser asserts. Green Party Member of Parliament Rudi Hemetsberger, himself mayor of Attersee, has sympathy for Moser: "There was a need for action with the contracts, but the approach seems dubious."