How the Germans won the War of the Beach Towels

[Political Lurker]

Morning campers!
Its the German Beach towel conspiracy again.
IMO those nice Germans just start work an hour earlier!!
Simple as that. :-)

How the Germans won the War of the Beach Towels
German holidaymakers, famed for getting up early to secure their sunloungers with a towel, can now book them in advance. Good, says Harry de Quetteville - it gives Brits abroad something to moan about

by Harry de Quetteville

Wish you were here? Tough - the loungers have been reserved by Germans
The annual battle of the beachloungers could be over – and the Germans are winning. Thanks to Thomas Cook, tourists from the fatherland will no longer need to lay out their towels at 5am to secure a prime spot by the resort pool. Yesterday, the German-owned travel company announced that it is to give its German tourists the option of paying three euros (£2.60) a day for their loungers when they book their holiday. For holidaying Brits this summer, the war could be over before they even check in.
As if decreed by some holiday-from-hell contract, tradition dictates that the Brit who descends from his bedroom a shade too late, or lingers a little too long at breakfast before beginning the day's bronzing, is beaten to the resort's sunniest, comfiest spots.

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Pity poor Kyle, from Bootle, who told the BBC yesterday: "I remember a holiday in the Canaries a few years ago and you could never get a lounger because the German guests had put their towels all over them, even though they weren't actually using them. So annoying!"
Annoying indeed, Kyle! And all the more so for being such a drawn-out humiliation.
The flexing of well-oiled German muscles at beach resorts has been going on for almost half a century now, ever since mass tourism began in the 1960s and hotel places became scarce. Then, Meine Damen und Herren, it was the Deutschmark, not sterling, that won out, and Germans established their primacy at the pool.
Few Anglo-German conflicts, and certainly not the ones that historians seem to focus on, last this long. When a sentence involves the words "war" and "century", we Brits tend to ensure that the chap on the other side is speaking French.
In Germany, news that the War of the Beach Towels (1961-2009) is tipping in their favour has been greeted with relief rather than out-and-out rejoicing. "No more towels" ran the title to a short report in yesterday's Bild, the mass-circulation newspaper, acknowledging that the time-honoured placeholder will no longer be needed.
It seems all terribly unfair, another case of what The Sun once memorably called "Holidays from Helmut", a headline deployed last year after Briton David Barnish complained that his Greek holiday was ruined by the fact that his hotel was dominated by German guests. He won £750 compensation – but Bild, unlike German holidaymakers, did not take this affront lying down. In reply, it helpfully published a resort-by-resort guide listing the worst excesses of Brits abroad. It suggested three things make a holiday resort attractive for the English – "binge drinking, sex and sand".
But the fact is that when it comes to suing to get their money back after a disappointing holiday, Germans are – once again – champions. In Germany, clawing back euros after shoddy holiday service, food, or sanitary conditions has long been a ritual of returning home, along with unpacking the minute swimming trunks.
"Germans are quite stingy – or at least a 'value-for-money' people," says John F Jungclaussen, London correspondent for Die Zeit. "If they fork out the money, they want service guaranteed. At the end of their holidays Germans write letters to organisers saying: 'Having paid all this money, we still didn't get the loungers by pool'. They feel they have bought a right to comfort in the sun."
For that, however, we can only be thankful. It may come as a revelation to us Britons, but asking for better service, refusing to accept substandard products, can actually lead to improvements.
The same goes for quality of life. Many of my friends in Israel, where forthright speech is a given (Question: "Would you like to come to supper on Friday?" Answer: "No"), are amazed and/or infuriated by British double-talk (Question: "Would you like to come to supper on Friday?" Answer: "Gosh, what a lovely invitation. I'll just see if we're free…").
But what they don't understand is that Britons love this double-talk as much as we love escaping dreary dinner invitations. Which prompts a terrible conflict of interests.
So it is with the sun-loungers. How much easier it would be if we could simply admit that we too love to have the prime places by the pool. Then Thomas Cook could make arrangements for us too! We could lounge in peace! Just like the Germans!
But no. That pleasure, delightful enough, is trumped in our psyche by another: the underdog moaner. Imagine if all we had to harp on about after a week in the sun was the fact that the breakfast buffet ran out of Frosties on the Tuesday.
But how much more interesting if the week's holiday can be drawn out into a epic narrative, in which we take on the role of heroic challenger to a mightier and (inevitably) more organised force. Who cares, then, if the week was spent three miles from the pool, on a three-legged plastic chair in a concrete culvert that smells strongly of urine?
Well, I do for one. We used to be like this with food. Complaining about the fact that our nourishment had the look and consistency of the plastic menus that nominally identified it was the kind of thing that only a continental would do. But then a little light bulb went on. Ding! Wouldn't it be nicer not to feel nauseous before, during and after eating out? And suddenly it was so. Now the French come to eat here.
It's not that we should change from being a nation of moaners into a nation of complainers, it's just that there is an alternative to being miserable. Many of us may be proud that it's misery that makes us happiest. And that's fine. But when it comes to sun-loungers, I'm with the Germans.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/5934002/How-the-Germans-won-the-War-of-the-Beach-Towels.html
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