Greece: The Social Psychology of Tourism

Some food for thought:

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 a translation of the poem by Nikolas Kokkalis in Modern Scandinavian Poetry, ed and trans. Martin Allwood, Sweden, 1982

Two Cartoons:

Tourism, The Pros and Cons

The Changing Image of Corfu

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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?"