Said Bella Fisher, a British 21-year-old, vacationing in Spain, quoted in "A Summer Rite in Spain: Coping With the British Tourist Invasion/On the front lines of a low-cost resort, Spanish residents complain that U.K. visitors drink too much and don’t spend enough" (NYT).
Some club and bar owners in Magaluf detect an anti-British bias in laws designed to curtail the tourism of excess. Gerard Pietro, owner of Capitol Bar — which features a large pink neon sign that reads “Please don’t do coke in the bathroom” — says Magaluf should embrace its image and the people drawn to it.“If I could get 50 customers a night who only bought Dom Pérignon, I’d be the happiest owner in the world, but that is not what happens here,” he said. “We have young people, and they have the right to party.”
The "right to party."
From the top-rated comment over there:
American in London here
I cannot overstate the difference between America and the UK’s drinking culture.
In the UK it is socially acceptable for anyone - including barristers and doctors and professors - to get face down throw up drunk. Invites to events at your child’s school will tell you when the bar opens and if you tell anyone over here that you do not drink alcohol they will react as if you’d just said you do not breathe
It’s therefore no surprise that Brits go overseas and get smashed and misbehave.
The culture needs to change
ADDED: I like the idea of a "silent disco," where everyone is dancing to music they hear through headphones.
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27 comments:
I maybe, on a couple of occasions in college, drank as much as I drank doing business in England. Australia is a close second.
I have some UK friends, and this portrait of them doesn't match. I suggest Londoners -- city folk -- behave differently than the majority. Rural workers don't have the money for vacay. They enjoy their garden plot for summer relaxation.
The Brits that travel on package tours to Spain represent a segment of the British population and not all brits. Sort of like saying that the young Americans going on spring break to Mexico represent all Americans.
There are plenty of quiet bourgeois brits vacationing in the south of France, Tuscany and Corfu who nurse their glasses of fine wine and never get shitfaced drunk.
Drink too much and dont spend enough?? Are thr drinks free?
If it bugs you that much, shut down the resorts and stop spending money trying to convince the British to vacation there.
One of may favorite (favourite) Channel 4 shows is Tattoo Fixers. So many of the Brit 'guests' on the show go to Magaluf, get absolutely badgered, then go for a crap tat what needs fixing, so the show did a season or two of a Tattoo Fixers: Magaluf pop-up Shop Edition.
Warning: There were winkies...
I've been reading articles like this for 30 years in the UK and USA press. The UK is in the middle of the pack in per Capita consumption of booze.
Great Britain is no longer Britain.
Great Britain is no longer Great.
You’ve got to fight for your right to party.
Immigration reform published as a disparate tale in the annals of NYT.
The "right to party."
"You gotta fight for your right to party"
- The Beastie Boys, 1986.
Yobs gonna yob, I guess.
UK women might be spending less time enjoying Spain for the next 4 years.
“There are plenty of quiet bourgeois brits vacationing in the south of France, Tuscany and Corfu who nurse their glasses of fine wine and never get shitfaced drunk.”
That has not been my experience. It really is a nation of absolute lushes. It’s just that the quiet bourgeois Brits stay in to get shitfaced drunk, and throw up more expensive alcohol when the time comes.
- Rafe
The British need a massive intervention to cure their drinking problem.
I'm Canadian and I like British folks but wow.
The same applies to Germans visiting Venice. They sleep on buses and never buy anything,. The Venetians hate it.
"In the UK it is socially acceptable for anyone - including barristers and doctors and professors - to get face down throw up drunk."
I never got to DJ a gig in London, but, in France, they do the same. I hated walking over vomit-covered floors, idiots trying to pick a fight, and seeing the absolutely horrific aftermath of accidents on isolated fog-covered highways, that looked like those blood-covered 1950s and 60s films the DMV used to scare teens with back in the day.
Seatbelts aren't exactly a thing in France,...
Years ago, there was a ferry capsize in Holland. One of those accidents where dozens of people die. I remember an interview afterwards with one of the survivors, a young British guy, who described how he escaped the ship as it flipped. Fortunately, he said, he and his friends had only been drinking for about 10 hours, so they weren’t that drunk yet.
Lower middle class Brits (and some middle class Brits for that matter) on package tours to Southern Europe have a well deserved reputation as "lager louts'.
But the worst problems occur when you have traveling supporters of a British professional football team. They like a little bit of brawling with their boozing.
"The British need a massive intervention to cure their drinking problem."
Um. Yeah. Preach. It used to be dry January was barely sufficient. Now it’s completely insufficient. Especially take away their scrumpy. Jeebus it gets out of control when they drink that stuff.
Yeah, when we lived in Edinburgh, it was not unusual to see very drunk people, including young teens, on Princes Street at 5 pm on a Saturday. We learned to avoid downtown after hours.
When I lived in a small European country a bunch of British soccer fans came to town for a game and proceeded to trash the town. The next night a lot of restaurants and bars didn't even bother to open. Those that did open didn't allow in anyone who spoke English. Many bouncers carried baseball bats.
Yay!
Let's hear it for the drunk, rebellious Brits!
We've always been famous for being willing to be seriously drunk!
Oh, sorry, is that article supposed to be a criticism?
You’d get shit-faced drunk if you realized that within your lifetime your nation has gone from being a first world country down to more or less third world, your country’s per capita income has slipped you behind Mississippi (the last US state they had still been ahead of), that your teenaged girls can be raped and trafficked by Muslims with impunity, indeed, practically with the implicit assistance of the police and the justice system, and if you are being mugged by a pack of yobs you practically need a Copperplate note from Charles III to permit you to fight back. Man, I’d never want to get sober in their shoes.
Apparently, several cruise lines use silent disco on ships travelling in the Mediterranean especially around Spain and Italy. It is interesting because they have 3 or so different color headsets each matching to a DJ and dance style, so you have multiple people dancing together to different music on the same dance floor.
A friend at work went on a cruise, and bought some plastic bags to smuggle some vodka onboard as cruise ships don't let you bring your own booze.
The problem was that her package only provided 16 drinks per day... which was apparently not enough!
Canadian Bumblepuppy said...
The British need a massive intervention to cure their drinking problem.
I'm Canadian and I like British folks but wow.
I was on a business trip to Vancouver BC and the return to Boston was via Las Vegas. About 30 minutes before we got to Vegas, the pilot came on the PA and announced that the bar was closed: He noted that the passengers hadn't misbehaved, they partied but never got belligerent. They had drunk the plane dry: There was literally no alcohol left on the plane. I've flown hundreds of times and that was the only time this has happened.
Try Paloma during the Running of the Bulls. Every nationality present was s**t faced. It looked like the worst scenes of San Francisco but everyone was wearing white.
I don't drink so, after a point, it was just annoying.
I'll admit the run was exilerating, but I was substantially younger then (65).
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