“The remotest place on Earth can sometimes be
the most attractive place on Earth, especially in times when our belief in
humanity is lost.”
Turkish writer, Mehmet Murat Ildan
I saw an article recently about a village
in the Netherlands which is suffering from too much tourism. It is a quaint, picturesque village with
old-fashioned windmills and dykes. But
according to local residents, it is being overrun by bus-loads of foreign
tourists. They tramp through the locals’
gardens, take photographs of the locals as they work, drop litter and then
leave. They rarely even spend any money.
For a village that would rather be left
alone, what options are there? How about
this? The villagers get together and
pray to God to save them from the unwanted contact from the outside world. God will then cover the village in mist and
make it disappear. It will be
unreachable from the outside, except for one day in every 100 years. You see, God thinks of everything. In his plan, there will be very occasional
chances to bring in some fresh air and have the rubbish collected by the
bin-men.
Villages or islands which vanish and
reappear are quite common in folk tales.
But perhaps the most famous vanishing village was invented for a 1940s
musical – Brigadoon. In that story, the
villagers of Brigadoon in the Scottish Highlands are worried that the outside
world is encroaching too much into their home and changing their traditional
way of life. So the only way they can
save their culture is to make their village vanish. In the story, an American tourist finds the
village and falls in love with the bagpipes, whiskey, Highland dancing, and a
local girl, and so decides to stay.
But is the idea of cutting yourself off
from the rest of the world to preserve your culture realistic? I would say that it probably isn’t. A few hundred people is too small a number to
retain a high level of culture. People
would also very quickly have to start marrying their cousins and close
relatives, due to the lack of other options.
But perhaps there is a balance to be found between being too remote, and
being too easily accessed. If there was
no motorway to the picturesque Dutch village then buses of lazy tourists
wouldn’t go there to take a few pictures before being driven on to a buffet
lunch down the road. If you had to catch
a train, or drive a rented car up narrow roads, then more committed tourists
would arrive, and probably stay for lunch.
Perhaps its important not just to think of what roads must be built to
make access easier, but what roads shouldn’t be built, in order to keep access
sufficiently difficult.
Vocabulary:
quaint – attractively unusual or
old-fashioned
picturesque – of a place or building,
beautiful to look at, especially in an old-fashioned or unusual way
a dyke – a long wall built to prevent
flooding from the sea
to be overrun – to be occupied and
dominated by large numbers
to tramp – to walk heavily or noisily
litter – rubbish or unwanted items left on
the ground
bin-men – men whose job is to collect and
remove household rubbish from bins or plastic bags
to vanish – to disappear suddenly and
completely
to encroach – to enter where you have no
right to; to intrude on someone’s territory, personal life etc.
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