Las Vegas again! The gambling metropolis is now open to German tourists – foreign policy

“Nothing works anymore!” Shouts the croupier at roulette when no more bets are allowed. In Las Vegas that was true for months – and for the whole city. Nothing worked anymore.

All casinos: closed. 200,000 slot machines: out of order. 150,000 hotel rooms: orphaned. The famous strip: deserted. Millions of colored lights: switched off.

No city in the US has been as badly hit by the coronavirus as Vegas. There were more cases elsewhere – but here the economy collapsed like a house of cards in spring 2020. Showgirls, cooks, croupiers, dancers, cleaning ladies suddenly stood on the street. The highest unemployment in the entire country. Bankruptcies, poverty, suicides. Sin City on the brink.

“It was horror,” says Karoly (39), one of 370,000 unemployed people in the city of 600,000. “We are the world capital of entertainment – if you take that away from us, we have nothing left.” Karoly, who works in housekeeping, lost his job from one day to the next and moved in with his mother, Nancy.

BILD meets him in the newly built “Resorts World” hotel complex (construction costs of 4.3 billion dollars!), Where he has found work again. Next door, in the “Circus Circus”, his parents met. She is an acrobat, he is a trapeze artist, emigrated from Hungary to the USA in 1972. “The hotel is 85 percent full,” Karoly says proudly. “It’s going up!”

This applies to the entire city, which is currently experiencing a resurrection. On the strip it looks like it did before the pandemic: in front of the posh “Bellagio” the water in the fountain show shoots up 140 meters, the “Mirage” is boiling the artificial volcano, at “New York New York” the roller coaster races through fake Manhattan.

Newly weds stroll along the boulevard – and show girls who have their photos taken with tourists at a sunny 26 degrees. They negotiate the price AFTER the admission as tough as a finance shark – and collect up to 50 dollars.

The biggest difference to the pre-Corona period can be seen in the casinos: Almost everyone is wearing a mask. Law in the state of Nevada. The incidence in the county is 124. Not low. The local newspaper “Las Vegas Sun” noted with concern that the value in Germany was higher.

Several large hotel chains gave their employees the tough choice: be vaccinated or fired. In the “MGM Resorts”, 98 percent accepted the “offer”. You can get vaccinated on every street corner in Vegas.

The mask requirement in hotels and casinos is now monitored more closely than it was in the summer – anyone who walks around without them is politely approached by security. Only at the gaming tables do you turn a blind eye more often.

That’s why Lorraine (58) is allowed to pull down her mask with rhinestones at the roulette table in the “Casino Royale”. She is here with her best friend Tonya (48). The two women from Utah and Wisconsin live thousands of kilometers apart – and have agreed to meet in Las Vegas to play.

Lorraine prefers to place her chips on 8 – her lucky number. “Elvis Presley was born on January 8th and my daughter was born on April 8th,” she explains to BILD. During the conversation, the ball actually lands in the 8th

One dollar becomes 35 dollars. Reich doesn’t do that. But the real estate specialist, a Las Vegas fan for decades, is still happy as if she had won the lottery. She loves the atmosphere and was here during the pandemic. “A very, very sad sight – the streets were swept empty like in a zombie movie without zombies.”

Now the streets are full. And a few “zombies” can also be seen. After a forced break, the world’s largest marijuana fair is taking place again in the city.

Marrying, vaccinating, Elvis – more pictures from Vegas