Drunken British Tourists Are Ruining Greek Vacation Spots

FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Travel

Drunken British Tourists Are Ruining Greek Vacation Spots

Laganas, a sun-kissed village on the Greek island of Zante, is the kind of vacation destination where it takes ten minutes to get drunk, another ten to reach orgasm, and an eternity to get over all the horrible things you've done. Naturally, it's a...

Laganas is a sun-kissed village on the Greek island of Zante. It's the kind of vacation destination where it takes ten minutes to get drunk, another ten to reach orgasm, and an eternity to get over all the horrible things you've done to both your body and your soul in the space of just a few days. Which I guess is why it's become a Mecca for sexually depraved English tourists.

It's 4 AM and I'm wide awake in Laganas, lying sober on a shoddy bed in a shoddier hotel room. My bed is the kind that comes covered in hairs, courtesy of the previous tenant and their guests. If you're lucky, the hairs are long; if not, they're the short, curly debris of clumsy oral sex.

Advertisement

The night I've had is one of those where you find yourself wishing your vacation was already done. Of course, if you were Greek you would never dare express this; the sea and the sun hold a nearly religious significance to modern Greeks, and to even suggest that you're not enjoying yourself while on holiday is tantamount to sin.

In truth, however, all I want to do is go back to my clean house, slather Greek yogurt on my charred back, and throw up all the luminous alcohol I've been served over the last few days.

On my first day here, I optimistically perceived public sex on the streets and sidewalks as a sign of sexual liberation. Maybe us Greeks did still need Westerners to show us what modernity is, I thought to myself.

By the second day, those thoughts had pretty much vanished. That night, I saw a girl sitting legs akimbo on top of a bar while others jostled to get within groping distance. It was like they were playing slapsies to win their fingers a place inside her vagina. By my third night in Laganas, I felt like I was in a village full of sperm that were too drunk and too sunstroked to figure out which egg they should head for.

Tonight, thank God, someone vomited on my shoes so I'm here, much too early in the morning, being kept awake by the sex moans of the young lady next door for the fourth night in a row.

I understand that if I were still a teenager all of this libido and chaos would probably turn me on. Maybe I've just grown up and turned into a stuck-up asshole. Or maybe, just maybe, I've chosen to take a holiday in a really annoying place with people who don't yet and may never understand the concept of limits.

Advertisement

Every summer, young people from Britain, Germany, Australia, and Italy board EasyJet and Ryanair flights to some Greek island with a mission to spend a few days crawling around half-naked on its streets. Because we've been told our economy needs the tourism, for years locals have turned a blind eye to the foreign debauchery by largely staying away from places like Laganas, Faliraki in Rhodes, or Malia in Crete. But in the age of social media, that has become impossible.

Above is a collection of the best/worst things I've seen posted by tourists holidaying in Greece. For what is not done in public is not done at all.