A GROUP OF Irish Travellers has been accused of bringing chaos to a German town, leaving rubbish, faeces, overturned chemical toilets and widespread bemusement in their wake.
Last week around 5-600 people in over 100 caravans descended on the town of Ginsheim-Gustavsburg, camping on a meadow across the Rhine from Mainz, and around 40km from Frankfurt.
The small town was soon beset by fighting, loud music, theft, public urination, illegal dumping, shoplifting and car races, according to local media.
The Irish arrivals said they were undertaking a pilgrimage to celebrate the Feast of the Assumption on 15 August.
Police officers arrested a 43-year-old Irishman for the Hitler salute, a crime in Germany.
In a video on evening news site Hessenschau, one young Irish man in a BMW announces to the news camera:
We’re here to have sex with German women and drink a lot of beer.
The rest of the German-language tv report shows cars skidding across fields, loud music and shopkeepers chasing away groups of young people.
The local pubs enjoyed a bounce in takings from their Irish customers, however.
Residents initially complained about loud music from some campers in surrounding pubs, local news outlets reported.
Local demands for more police intervention caused their departure from their impromptu camping spot, between the area between the Rhine and the Ochsenwiese.
After days of chaos, police moved in last Sunday evening and the Irish visitors moved on the next day, leaving behind a “battlefield” filled with rubbish bags, glass bottles and human excrement.
The resulting mess led to arguments between the visitors and locals, some videoed by local media.
“We are glad that they’re gone,” local mayor Thies Puttnins-von Trotha told the Frankfurter Neue Press.
He said his administration would contact other municipalities and put an “early warning system in place”.
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