If an armed uprising breaks out here or an epidemic with possibly serious consequences rages there, a report to that effect is circulated. Needless to say, countries dependent on tourism can be quite touchy about these things.
Luckily for those who live in that happy place called the Free World, these often overly timid warnings are ignored and people go where they please. For all this freedom, though, many people are craven. Most often, tourists, and especially tourists on package tours (alas, since this is where the easy bucks pour in from) are sheep-like and do what Big Shepherd tells them to do, or not do.
Of course, in a country of such bold and independent minds as Greece, no government would ever dare issue a travel advisory, as people would at once pack up and start off to the place they were warned not to go.
The recent adventures of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr Antonis Samaras and of the Mayor of Athens, Mr Antonis Tritsis, expose the perils of travel advisories (or the lack of them) in a most glaring way.
Without even so much as a vaccination, Mr Samaras carelessly flew off to Washington DC, which, as everybody should know, lies in the fetid swamps of the Potomac River and has one of the highest urban crime rates in all Christendom. Little wonder he came back with an upset military aid ratio with Turkey (a virulent, local form of AIDS), a report that half his country was populated by sub-subsistent Slavs standing in breadlines in towns like Florina and Serres yearning for liberty, and a not-so-friendly piece of advice whose gist was “Go discover oil in Cyprus and then we’ll discuss your proposal.” This was certainly no way to treat a nice young man recently blessed with the arrival of a daughter, but then no appropriate travel advisory had been issued.
On the other hand, the travels of Mr Tritsis seemed so much riskier (they even took him to Baghdad, surely the hottest place in all Islam), yet by his own admission, they were a tremendous success.
Mr Tritsis was one of those romantically mustachioed young men who adorned the first PASOK cabinet (and others, too) and he has certainly aged more gracefully than the rest of them. He studied city planning and architecture in Indiana once, but the reputation he has built up in politics is his best-known construction. In last year’s election for mayor, he trounced the seemingly irrepressible Melina Mercouri – a wonderful come-back after he formed a political party which did not win a single seat in parliament a few months earlier.
The mayor, however, had a problem. Since the overlying urban issue of Athens – the nefos has been spirited away by Mr Stefanos Manos, Minister of the Environment and City Planning (though with a stronger background in biscuit-making than building to Mr Tritsis’ poorly concealed disdain) and the great Athens Metro project, inching towards its 2096 Olympiad deadline, was tightly in the fist of the Ministry of Public Works, the mayor did have much to do in the way of headline-grabbing.
So, like his predecessor Solon, he decided to quit Athens for a bit and take a look at the world. He struck on the bright idea of calling an International Forum of Mayors of Historic Cities of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East (IFO-MOHCOTEMATME for short; Greeks have a passion for acronyms). So he wrote letters to 11 of them including the mayor of Kuwait (Poste Restante?) and then set off to visit four of them.
In the highly literate local press, Mr Tritsis has often been compared to Don Quixote, but in this case, at least geographically speaking, Richard the Lion-Hearted seems more appropriate, except that his Princess Berengaria, that is, his frequent companion, Miss Mimi Denisi, was too busy making lightning-fast costume changes at the Vretania Theatre here to join the safari.
First, the mayor went to Amman and then by car to Baghdad, dodging Scuds and Patriots all the way. Because it happened he was carrying vital medical supplies to war-born Iraqi children, it was suggested that the Knight of the Mournful Countenance’s limo be painted with a red or white cross on the top. In the centre of Islam? The mayor brushed the idea aside the way heroes of old refused blindfolds at executions.
The big moment came in Baghdad when he appeared on CNN. All Athens cheered their chivalric mayor, trusting in his courage for they well knew that rowing across the Tigris during an air-raid today is mere child’s play compared to getting to the other side of Leoforos Vassilissis Sofias. After Damascus and Nicosia, the mayor returned to his constituency loaded with honors, souvenirs and not a scratch on him.
For all the perils of issuing travel advisories, we shall now recklessly publish one of our own. Although the recent one coming out of Washington suggests travellers shunning Greece and Turkey, it says nothing about avoiding the land of Slavo-Macedonia, which then must be as safe as Main Street, US (which, indeed, may be where it is). We recommend it.
The prices are ridiculously low, the natives unbelievably hospitable, and the weather delightful at all seasons, day and night. But above all, don’t miss Verginagrad with its tomb of Tsar Philipov, father of Alexandrev the Great.
But if pausing in Athens in transit and crossing Constitution Square, travellers who happen to see an ill-parked, curtained van with its tail-end pointed towards Parliament House, are advised to move on briskly and confidently to the next museum on their list.
