There was a great article last week in the UK’s Guardian travel section, Brits abroad: good fun or good riddance?
The upshot of Harry Ritchie’s piece is that the easy availability of cheap flights to the Continent makes hitherto less accessible places like Rome and Barcelona more attractive to “young Brits in replica football tops or T-shirts advertising the stag weekend. The ones who have begun to arrive in Rome by the thousand, since the growth of cheap flights to the Italian capital – now arriving at Ciampino airport at the rate of up to 14-a-day from Britain.”
The article’s a good read, but the best part is the comments, such as:
“Brits may never win any football trophies wherever we go in Europe or indeed the world, but we sure show ’em how to guzzle ten pints of lager and pester the local females while wearing plastic boobs and day-glo pink wigs.”
Apparently it’s a pack mentality that distinguishes the Brit yob from the stereotypical loud, insensitive American:
“Americans can be really annoying and loud but they for the most part do not travel in packs of 20 singing football songs and then yelling at bar staff when they don’t have Tennants on tap (always in English of course.)”
Another guy defends the crass American:
“Don’t blame the Yanks this time. The Brit yobs are, by far, the most obnoxious tourists in Europe. Their American equivalent go to Mexico to vomit and brawl.”
Nice.
Then another commenter really tosses a bomb:
“You can next write about the polite tourist of a slightly-further-up-class who go on pedophile-sex-holidays in the Far East.”
Ick.
One person did have a theory for why certain nationalities end up in certain cities, using American students in Florence as an example:
“Florence (and I would imagine Rome) tend to attrack more middle-aged British cultural tourists than stag dos. However, they attract gaggles of American 19 year-olds on study and travel abroad programs who are so thrilled that they are able to drink legally the way they can´t at home that they simply are unable to control themselves. (Not that it´s an excuse, in my opinion.)”
That’s what I like about online journalism; you read a good article and then wander into the comments, and if the right people are there it’s like stumbling into a raucous but entertaining cocktail party.
Technorati tags: travel, British tourists, American tourists
