Wednesday 25 July 2012

Tourist tales

I've been a tourist in Sweden for the past couple of days. Travelling around with a guidebook in one hand and a map in the other. This is novelty as I'm usually the "tour guide", imparting the local knowledge. Over the years I've had the pleasure of meeting thousands of interesting and entertaining visitors to the Bodrum peninsula but it's the  annoying ones that stick in the memory.
I was called to one villa to sort out a complaint about a "drunk neighbour" who started singing tunelessly early in the morning. On asking if he could be heard a further 4 times a day and pointing to the mosque I was told that if they'd wanted to hear that rubbish, they'd  have booked a holiday in Bradford. Another client complained that the mosquito tablets we provided were useless. She'd chewed one every night and was still getting bitten.When I showed her how to insert one into the machine she looked at me as if I'd reinvented the wheel. I had clients who booked apartments on the beach and complained in one case that there was too much sand and in another that there was too much sea and one client wanted to move accommodation because her white stiletto heeled shoes didn't work on the beach. My favourite request is from the the customer who wanted me to book her a "round the island" boat trip. I couldn't oblige because the island she had in mind was Turkey.


8 comments:

  1. Haha. I love them! The mosque story reminds me of some customers in a hotel in Side who insisted to the manager that the call to prayer was switched off early in the morning. Poor guy was left speechless!

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  2. B to B, To you, those experiences were annoying. To us, now, they're a scream! I particularly liked the gal to ate her mosquito tablet. Glad she didn't get really sick!

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  3. You couldn't make it up, could you!! Love your blog, keep at it!

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  4. . . you have to chuckle at the degree of stupidity displayed. There's a guy we know who has apartments for holidays in a small village, a delightful spot - in the end he had to produce a leaflet saying that this was a place where cocks crow; cows moo; goats bleat and donkeys bray and that he would accept no complaints about them.

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  5. God love the British (I assume they were from Blighty). Some people just shouldn't travel or, perhaps, should be made to take a test before they do!

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  6. Love the Mosque story...I can relate to that a long long long time when I first got married and went with my husband to Turkey to visit his family. .....I heard that Mosque call, well I thought it was someone with the radio or something or a drunk soooo early in the morning. Well I know I sound silly but I never heard that in North America anywhere....and my hsband assumed that I knew that.
    Love your Blog...hope you are having fun in Sweden.

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  7. Hello, I hope you are enjoying Sweden. I've never been there, but I'd so like to visit the Scandinavian countries. As to tourists--I'm always hearing stories about "the ugly Americans." Are tourists from other countries also rude? Peace.

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