A holiday has been ruined by a sunbed. Apparently. We were talking about this yesterday, and I was hearing stories of how people’s visits to Symi have been ruined by a few things. Well, one thing, manly, it seems. By progress.
Yes, I too dislike the idea that those with enough money to buy a couple of houses here and rent them out for holidays should think that the island should become the next Saint-Tropez for the sake of making more money. Yes, I dislike the fact there are motorbikes roaring up and down outside the house at all hours, and young (and older) people are not wearing helmets, and are risking their lives and those of others because they want to feel like they are important. And yes, I’m not too strapped with 1,500 day-trippers turning up to drop their rubbish, drain our drainage and water systems, block the road with ignorance and so on, but what’s the alternative for businesses? Starvation like the good old days of the post-war era?
Now, apparently, the island is not what it was because there are ‘posh’ sunbeds on our shores, invading from within and taking away the Greekness of the island.
Oh dear. If you don’t like progress, then stay in your cave and don’t progress.
Btw, don’t you love English? Progress and progress – look the same, different meaning, noun/verb, accent moves, but there’s nothing to tell you so visually, not like in Greek where we have an accent: τόνος = tuna… and the accent over a letter… Anyway…
The point of this pointless ramble is now lost on me, but it is interesting to overhear people saying ‘It’s not like it was’ because nothing ever is like it was. Then there’s the, ‘I wanted to see the real Greece,’ the answer to which can only be, you are. This is how it is. This may not be how it was, but it’s what we’re dealing with right now. If you want to experience the ‘real’ Symi, come in February, get stuck on Rhodes for three days because of the weather, eat whatever you are lucky enough to find in the shops, bring your duvet, quilt and buckets to catch the internal rain, plenty of reading, a torch for the power cuts, and hope you don’t need a doctor in a hurry.
And if you don’t like the ‘posh’ sunbeds, or object to paying €10.00 for a lie down (and I don’t blame you), then sunbathe on the rocks like we used to do in ‘the good old days’ when everything was in black and wite and people still died of typhus.
