Hotelier Michil Costa's thoughts on the current situation
"We believe in people"
30 March 2020
These are difficult days, we all know that. Someone (Ernst Bloch) once said that "the wealth of an epoch in its death throes is enormous". In an emergency situation, reflective action is called for. What Michil Costa asks all his guests to do, and asks all of us to do, is to live this chapter of history lightly and gently. "Slower, deeper, more tender", as the South Tyrolean politician Alexander Langer already wished 20 years ago. Now the moment has come. We cannot freeze in stone, we must act. And we have already shown that we can act. So let us each retreat to our homes, but let us unite in thought and action.
Costa: "WE BELIEVE IN PEOPLE"
Faced with the dramatic emergency caused by the coronavirus throughout Italy and the world, Michil Costa, as a hotelier, has asked himself what contribution he can make within the country to support doctors, nurses and other specialised aid workers who are fighting on the front line of this immense tragedy. As a small contribution and also to give a boost to the tourism industry, which has been hard hit by the crisis, he would like to help with the means at his disposal. And these are hospitality, solidarity, humanity.
He is therefore launching the campaign WIR GLAUBEN IN DIE MENSCHEN (We Believe in People) for and in Italy in order to show more than just understanding and admiration for those who are fighting in the front line. Those who give everything on the front line, who risk, who commit themselves as an individual, as a human being, in their profession to one hundred percent and more, should concretely also be given the opportunity to rest, to relax, to take a deep breath, says the hotelier. Because these people, and this is anything but a phrase, have his whole, unreserved admiration. What he offers them is a day's holiday at his Hotel Albergo Posta Marcucci in Bagno Vignoni, a historic thermal town in the Val d'Orcia in Tuscany. The Val d'Orcia is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but he is well aware that in this case the real world heritage of humanity is all the people who give everything, sometimes even their own lives, so that we can master this crisis.
"At the bottom of our hearts, we are always looking for a home for body and soul. And here it is, home. The house. Here we are one big family, consisting of everyone who fills this house with life every day with their commitment. Here there are values and knowledge. That we want to share, person to person."
Michil Costa
"This is a conspiracy masterminded by the Americans". "The bacterium was created in a laboratory". "We should have just carried on as before". "The French and the Germans were clever and we Italians were far too honest". "The victims were old and weak, now they are with God, but they were doomed to die anyway". "Only the media, Facebook and politics are to blame". "Alarmism and scaremongering are far more dangerous than the virus itself". "This fear of fear, just because of a little fever". "If we had a European Ministry of Health...".
Michil Costa comments:
"Assumptions, accusations, individualism, egoism, protagonism, and more: everyone takes refuge in their wisdom. The point is that in our rich Western world we have not seen such a crisis on our own skin since the end of the Second World War. Not even the 18,000 people who have drowned in the sea in the last five years have set alarm bells ringing around the world. It did in a heart or two, but not on a global scale. No, it took a problem that directly affects us to wake us up from our torpor. We are no longer used to such things. Our interest is always focused on what is happening very close to us, whereas we have never really taken the problems surrounding climate change seriously because they lie in the future, which is why we have never perceived or wanted to perceive them as urgent. Infection, on the other hand, we never expected. But now we want to stick to what - in the absence of a truly united Europe - our Italian president says, who has been very clear: now is not the moment for anarchy."
Costa believes: "Difficult times are ahead of us, but it is only in crisis that human beings can show what they are made of. In this extremely hard situation there can - must - be the chance for a new beginning, in which we can eliminate unjust paradigms, become a little less inhuman and understand anew that we as human beings have a choice. And we will succeed in doing that. We need to see the positive in this story, the great opportunity that is just before us: in the coming months, we need to find a solution not only to the spreading virus, but also to migration and climate change.
Now we have the opportunity to learn that as individuals we can make do with less in order to have more in the general. Covid-19 is neither the black plague nor the political plague that was rampant seventy years ago, which for Albert Camus was Nazism. Covid-19 is neither Chernobyl nor the Third World War. It is a phase that I find - even if this point of view seems inappropriate and also counts for nothing at all - fascinating. It's an emergency situation that won't go away anytime soon, not in a month and not in a few seasons. It will change the way we think, and we'll think - hopefully at least a little bit - a little more with our heads and a little less with our guts in the future."
Michil Costa concludes by addressing his hotel staff and guests:
"A very big thank you to our staff who have continued to look after our guests here in the hotels, who have cooked, made the beds and carried the suitcases, in contact with half the world. They are really something special.
To them goes our great GIULAN.
Thank you, dear guests, for having been with us. And for your understanding. Thank you for believing in a hospitality that is Italian, South Tyrolean, Dolomitic, Ladin, familiar, like us in a small way. Soon we will be even more hospitable than before. As things stand, that is the only promise we can safely make. We'll see you again in the summer - one way or another!"
Michil Costa
Picture credits: Albergo Posta Marcucci; Berghotel Ladinia; La Perla Corvara; hotel La Perla - Gustav Willeit
