We can assume that we meet reality not only when we see things, but when dissonant experiences occur. So we do not have to focus on the question of the essential being of the real. Instead, we have to concentrate on the problem, which relationships can be established with the experience of the world as conveyed in tourism.
Within the context of a case study on visitors of the Berlin Wall four kinds of relationships with reality can be demonstrated. The concept of reality as an immediate evidence is geared to the genuine act of seeing. It includes immediate cognition and recognition of ultimate realities in terms of an existential authenticity. If the knowledge of reality results from mediating authorities, then a guaranteed reality is given. That is, the tourist who visits this cultural heritage is provided with an objective authenticity in terms of absolute facts. This however contradicts the knowledge of authenticity as a social construct. The third kind of relationship with reality can be understood as the realisation of a coherent context. Relicts of the Berlin Wall are brought into a new context of meaning and create an individual authenticity. This kind of authenticity does not ask for assurance, but comes to a coherent update each time. But when this way of contextualisation proves to be dissonant, the context itself becomes a problem. Such a relationship with reality is based on the experience of resistance. Reality has lost its connection to individual experience. Reality interrupts the visitor as something unexpected. The consequent reaction is not reflection, but a reflex that is accompanied with the suspicion of all this being an illusion: Are the images, conveyed to the tourist, real or just a simulation?
For this reason, the promotion of cultural heritage faces a problem: The more the cultural heritage becomes decontextualised, the more it becomes an object of disneyfication; moreover, the visitor doubts the experienced reality. The postmodern game with authenticity and the discursiveness of contexts cause the abandonment of authenticity. Past becomes arbitrary and cultural heritage is not conveyed, but rather a promoted setting.