Tourism in Greece, The Pros and Cons

Two very different perceptions of the impact and importance of tourism by a Swedish Greek and a Greek-Australian, Nicholas Kokkalis and Dimitris Tsaloumas:

First, Nikolas Kokkalis, from "The Tourist":

A hotel in a foreign country

Which is not yours.

Soft, fine sand on a beach

Whose soul is alien to you.

A sea which you do not approach with awe,

Trees whose names you have never heard.

Games you have never played,

Houses which do not speak to you,

Scents of foods which provoke no memories.

Words which you do not understand.

Thoughts which you might not even comprehend,

Poverty which you merely pass by...

From Modern Scandinavian Poetry, ed and trans. Martin Allwood, Sweden, 1982

Dimitris Tsaloumas, first in Greek:

 and in English translation by Philip Grundy:

This poem appears in the brilliant "The Book of Epigrams", a masterpiece of modern Greek poetry, University of Queensland Press, 1985. The English version also appears in "Stoneland Harvest, New and Selected Poems , Dimitris Tsaloumas", Shoestring Press, Nottingham, 1999

And on tourism in the UK?

From "The Brothers", by William Wordsworth (1800):

"THESE Tourists, heaven preserve us! 

needs must live 

A profitable life: some glance along, 

Rapid and gay, as if the earth were air, 

And they were butterflies to wheel about 

Long as the summer lasted: some, as wise, 

Perched on the forehead of a jutting crag,

Pencil in hand and book upon the knee, 

Will look and scribble, scribble on and look,

Until a man might travel twelve stout miles, 

Or reap an acre of his neighbour's corn. 

But, for that moping Son of Idleness, 

Why can he tarry yonder?"