NY Times tells all. No wonder it's so quiet at the Beach hut! It's not just
the rain (otherwise known as British Summertime)....
Some Britons Too Unruly for Resorts in Europe
By SARAH LYALL
here on the northeast coast of Crete, and not just from the telltale pallor
of their sun-deprived northern skin.
They are the ones, the locals say, who are carousing, brawling and getting
violently sick. They are the ones crowding into health clinics seeking
morning-after pills and help for sexually transmitted diseases. They are the
ones who seem to have one vacation plan: drinking themselves into oblivion.
Malia is the latest and currently most notorious in a long list of European
resorts full of young British tourists on packaged tours offering cheap
alcohol and a license to behave badly. In Magaluf and Ibiza, Spain; in Ayia
Napa, Cyprus; and in the Greek resorts of Faliraki, Kavos and Laganas as well
as Malia, the story is the same: They come, they drink, they wreak havoc.
They are also hurting themselves in the process. A recent report published by
12-month period in 2006 and 2007, 602 Britons were hospitalized and 28 raped
in Greece, and that 1,591 died in Spain and 2,032 were arrested there.
The report did not distinguish between medical cases and arrests associated
with drunkenness and those that had nothing to do with it. But it did say
So it would seem. Reports of scandalous incidents rumble on regularly here
of inebriated hooligans in Europe.
Earlier this summer, flying home to Manchester from the Greek island of Kos,
door open at 30,000 feet. The plane diverted hastily to Frankfurt, and the
women were arrested.
In Laganas, on the Greek island of Zakinthos, where a teenager from Sheffield
died after a drinking binge this summer, more than a dozen British women were
charged in July with prostitution after taking part, the authorities said, in
an alfresco oral sex contest.
More alarmingly, a 20-year-old British tourist partied with her sister and a
friend into the early hours in Malia also in July, then returned to her hotel
companions say they returned later to find the baby dead; she has been
charged with infanticide.
And in Dubai, also this summer, a British man and woman who met during a
drinking bout were arrested and charged with having sex on a beach, after
repeatedly shouting abuse at a police officer who ordered them to stop.
All of which leads to a natural question: Why?
David Familton, a Briton who works in a club here, said that it was a
Worried about the increase in crimes and accidents afflicting drunken
tourists, the British consulate in Athens has begun several campaigns, using
posters, beach balls and coasters with snappy slogans, to encourage young
visitors to drink responsibly.
reduce some of these avoidable accidents where they have so much to drink
their behavior. Last year, shopkeepers, residents and hotel owners in Malia
held an angry anti-British demonstration. Now, 20 officers patrol the
notorious 1,000-foot-long strip of bars and clubs catering to tourists in the
center of town, keeping the peace, breaking up fights and making arrests.
Local officials say the blame lies not just with the tourists themselves, but
also with the operators of package tours promising drinking-and-partying
vacations, and clubs offering industrial-strength alcohol at rock-bottom
prices. For about $50 in Malia, tourists can go on unlimited-drinking pub
crawls.
On the strip late one recent night, downtown Malia felt like a nonrainy
version of downtown Birmingham, as young Britons in skimpy clothes moved in
herds from bar to bar, drinking, boasting and shouting as they went.
The tourists confessed to drinking a lot. One 21-year-old man from Essex, for
instance, said that his consumption the night before had been five beers; six
specialty drinks combined with Baileys, tequila, absinthe, ouzo, vodka, gin
and orange juice; five vodka and lime drinks; and then five cans of Stella
Artois, all of which, he said, emboldened him to pick up a woman to spend the
night with. But they said that the lurid stories are media exaggerations.
Chris Robinson, 21, speaking outside the Loft bar, which had a special deal:
four drinks and two shots for $8.
Similarly, Eleanor Seaver, 20, said that she had been in Malia for two
months, working in a club, and that she had never once been in a fight. On
Paul Fisher, a 49-year-old Welshman who runs a bar and a motorbike-rental
shop, said the stories both depressed the tourist trade and, perversely, drew
the sort of visitors for whom drunken anarchy is an attractive prospect.
referring to reporters. He opened a drawer and produced a copy of the
celebrity magazine Closer. An article inside featured a young female British
Just then, several young men who had the pale, queasy look that suggested the
end of hangovers not yet muted by new infusions of alcohol, passed by, and
Mr. Fisher asked them why they drank so much, night after night.
Anthee Carassava contributed reporting from Athens.
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