http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/24/wo...4crete.html?em

MALIA, Greece €” Even in a sea of tourists, it is easy to spot the
Britons 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.

€œThey scream, they sing, they fall down, they take their clothes
off, they cross-dress, they vomit,€� Malias mayor, Konstantinos
Lagoudakis, said in an interview. €œIt is only the British people €”
not the Germans or the French.€�

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.

€œThe government of Britain has to do something,€� Mr. Lagoudakis
said. €œThese people are giving a bad name to their country.€�

They are also hurting themselves in the process. A recent report
published by the British Foreign Office, €œBritish Behavior
Abroad,€� noted that in a 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 that €œmany arrests are due to behavior caused by
excessive drinking.€�

So it would seem. Reports of scandalous incidents rumble on regularly
here and elsewhere, helping to cement Britains reputation as the
largest exporter of inebriated hooligans in Europe.

Earlier this summer, flying home to Manchester from the Greek island
of Kos, a pair of drunken women yelling €œI need some fresh air€�
attacked the flight attendants with a vodka bottle and tried to
wrestle the airplanes emergency 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 room and €” although she had denied being pregnant €”
gave birth. Her 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?

€œI think that in their country, they are like prisoners and they
want to feel free,€� said Niki Pirovolaki, who works in a bakery on
Malias main street and often encounters addled Britons heading back
to their hotels €” €œif they can remember where they are staying,€�
she said.

David Familton, a Briton who works in a club here, said that it was a
question of emotional comfort. €œIts because of British culture
€” no one can relax, so they become inebriated to be the people they
want to be,€� he said.

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.

€œWhen things do go wrong, they go wrong in quite a big way,€� said
Alison Beckett, the director of consular services. €œWhat were
trying to do here is reduce some of these avoidable accidents where
they have so much to drink that they fall off balconies and are either
killed or need huge operations.€�

As much as they depend on the tourists money, the resorts are
balking at 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.

€œBritish tour operators present them with these packages that
promise a wild holiday in Malia,€� said Brig. Fotis Georgopoulos, the
police chief of Iraklion, which takes in Malia. €œThis predisposes
them. They are automatically put into a wild and lawless mind-set that
is beyond them.€�

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.

€œIve never seen anyone get stabbed the whole time Ive been
here,€� said 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 the contrary, she said, people are comradely and
helpful. €œIf theres a girl being sick in the streets, you see
people helping her out,€� she said. €œWe watch out for each other
here.€�

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.

€œWe dont like you lot coming in and ruining the place,€�
Mr. Fisher said, referring to reporters. He opened a drawer and
produced a copy of the celebrity magazine Closer. An article inside
featured a young female British tourists €œbooze-fueled orgy with
four men€� in Malia.

Things like that give Malia a bad name, Mr. Fisher said. €œThis is
wrong and its overexaggerated,€� he said.

On the other hand, he conceded, €œfor 10 weeks, this place is
littered with kids being sick and unconscious in the streets.€�

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.

€œIts what everyone wants to do,€� one young man said.

His friend said: €œWe have stressful jobs, and we dont get much
time off, and we like to enjoy ourselves and have a good laugh. And we
love a bargain.€�

Anthee Carassava contributed reporting from Athens.
--
Due to extreme spam originating from Google Groups, and their inattention
to spammers, I and many others block all articles originating
from Google Groups. If you want your postings to be seen by
more readers you will need to find a different means of
posting on Usenet.
http://improve-usenet.org/

This is news? They behave badly at home - except it seems to be accepted as
norm. And the booze is more expensive. This bit about having to behave in a
restrained fashion at home is pure BS.
And it is hardly recent. You may not remember the heyday of soccer
hooliganism. The only country ever expelled from international competition?

"Ignoramus29035" wrote in message
...
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/24/wo...4crete.html?em

MALIA, Greece ?" Even in a sea of tourists, it is easy to spot the
Britons 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.

long snip