German tourists "make plenty of noise" on Italian beach
Sometimes, the best revenge really IS living well....
RIMINI, Italy (AFP) - Some 160 Germans stepped off a jet chartered by the tabloid newspaper Bild for a day of fun on the beaches of once trendy Rimini, less than two weeks after an Italian minister made remarks seen as rude about German tourists.
In a kind of publicity stunt, Bild organized the one-day trip to Rimini, a popular German tourist destination since the 1950s when Adriatic beaches became known as the "Teutonic Grill", as a show of good humour to reconcile Rome and Berlin after a two-week chill.
Junior tourism minister Stefano Stefani, from Italy's xenophobic Northern League, had called Germans "uniform, supernationalistic blonds who loudly invade Italy's beaches" each summer.
Germany itself was also "drunk with inflated self-importance", Stefani had said in a letter which appeared in La Padania, the Northern League mouthpiece, led by firebrand Umberto Bossi, the Italian reform minister.
He resigned a week after making the remarks, and Bild published his apology on Saturday.
At least Bild managed to find a way to have some from instead of waxing into paroxysms of self-righteous indignation. Europeans know what the Northern League is about, so what good is it going to do to give the jackasses their 15 minutes? The best way to deal with this sort of xenophobic superciliousness is to poke fun at it. Sometimes, a sense of humor goes a long ways in keeping the jackasses in check.
