All travelers, please read! Throwback to me in Meteora, Greece, on a windy hike, as a Greek incident set off this post.
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I read a post today about one girl's vacation in Santorini, Greece. I won't go into detail, except to say that she described a weekend of acting exactly like the stereotypical, obnoxious, drunk tourist, and writes quite happily about getting into a drunk accident with a local and skipping out on a fine.
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There is no shortage of obnoxious tourists and terrible tourist incidents. We need to be better than that, otherwise traveling becomes a destructive, rather than a beneficial, force.
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The post especially touched a nerve as it was about my home country, which every summer gets an invasion of almost colonial tourism that wrecks the place. This is not all or most tourists, of course; many come to Greece for the food, history, and great weather, help out the country financially, and go back home having created a better experience for both parties.
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When you are traveling, see it as being a guest in someone's home. We should be respectful, not leave a mess, do our parts to help out, and not act like we own the place, aka like spoiled, entitled brats. We should be grateful and kind to our hosts.
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When you visit a foreign country, no one owes you shit. If I see one more tourist acting like locals should be their personal staff, or making fun of locals who don't understand their language, or generally being a nuisance, I will lose it. Those people give all travelers a bad name.
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Bottom line: you are a guest, not a conquering force. Act like it, and be humble.
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