German tourist launches “Das Valemount”

By Laura Keil

A German tourist turned Valemount aficionado is angling to bring more German tourists to the Robson Valley.

Lisa Feldmann turned her campervan off the highway into Valemount this fall and stayed for over a month.

Now she’s hatched a German blog called “Das Valemount” to interest Germans in visiting the area.
“Well I love your little town. It’s just charming and has this rough charm. I like the people,” she said.

Feldmann was blown away by the vistas in all directions, but also by the friendliness of the people. While she grew up in a small village, she now lives in Cologne where she’s Editor in Chief of an online luxury magazine.

She believes German people will love what Valemount has to offer – not just for the vistas but also the experience of connecting with local, rural life in Canada.

“It’s that do-it-yourself attitude. And the people are just so friendly. It’s so easy to get into that. The next day you can meet people on the street you’ve already talked to and they introduce you to somebody else.”

There are also the surprises in learning about a new culture.

“There are so many things that I, as a German, find a little bit weird,” she says. “Like for example, people sweeping their own chimneys. That’s not even allowed in Germany. You’d get in trouble. Or someone looking at my shoes and finding them not ok to go for a hike. I’d never thought about things like that.”

She says her target audience is Germans who already like to travel to this area, or who are researching a vacation in the Rocky Mountains.

Though she is now back in Germany, she plans to continue updating the site with Valemount stories and trivia and she plans to return one day.

There’s no English translation on the site yet, but you can find “Das Valemount” at http://das-valemount.de

It also has a facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/dasvalemount/