About two thirds of the way up the Bosporus on Istanbul’s European shore sits Tarabya, a little hamlet of glassed-in fish restaurants. In front, the coast road doglegs around a mini-inlet, snarling traffic while black SUVs drop off designer-shod belles. Behind, steep slopes host an improvised McSuburbia with a fabled Bosporus view—increasingly of other McSuburbias. Not the stuff of myth, perhaps, but a boon to any broker’s slick brochure. Tarabya was not always thus. Legend has it that, in antiquity, the witch Medea, heartsick after fleeing her homeland with Jason on the Argo, recovered her serenity upon glimpsing Tarabya’s bucolic magic and threw away her potions—hence the town’s name “Therapia” in the original Greek.
One wonders what the villagers thought the money would bring to compensate for the loss of their blessed landscape. The same applies to the developers—on what undisturbed view will they rest their affluent eyes to enjoy their wealth? It’s not a matter merely of concrete sprawl or unchecked suburbanization but of what the writer J. G. Ballard called “the suburbanization of the soul.” There’s still plenty enough of enchantment on offer. One still understands what the ancients felt, why they sensed Apollo on the beach in Side and Aphrodite in Knidos. But from the way things are going, Medea would do well to keep her prescriptions updated.
For more: Travel: Turkey in a Time of Change - Newsweek
Showing posts with label Drug Tourism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Drug Tourism. Show all posts
8/18/10
The Netherlands: A Dutch City Seeks to End Drug Tourism - by Suzanne Daley
On a recent summer night, Marc Josemans’s Easy Going Coffee Shop was packed. The lines to buy marijuana and hashish stretched to the reception area where customers waited behind glass barriers.
Most were young. Few were Dutch. Thousands of “drug tourists” sweep into this small, picturesque city in the southeastern part of the Netherlands every day — as many as two million a year, city officials say
.
It is an attraction Maastricht and other Dutch border cities would now gladly do without. Struggling to reduce traffic jams and a high crime rate, the city is pushing to make its legalized use of recreational drugs a Dutch-only policy, banning sales to foreigners who cross the border to indulge. But whether the European Union’s free trade laws will allow that is another matter.
The case, now wending its way through the courts, is being closely watched by legal scholars as a test of whether the European Court of Justice will carve out an exception to trade rules — allowing one country’s security concerns to override the European Union’s guarantee of a unified and unfettered market for goods and services.
For more: A Dutch City Seeks to End Drug Tourism - NYTimes.com
Most were young. Few were Dutch. Thousands of “drug tourists” sweep into this small, picturesque city in the southeastern part of the Netherlands every day — as many as two million a year, city officials say
.
It is an attraction Maastricht and other Dutch border cities would now gladly do without. Struggling to reduce traffic jams and a high crime rate, the city is pushing to make its legalized use of recreational drugs a Dutch-only policy, banning sales to foreigners who cross the border to indulge. But whether the European Union’s free trade laws will allow that is another matter.
The case, now wending its way through the courts, is being closely watched by legal scholars as a test of whether the European Court of Justice will carve out an exception to trade rules — allowing one country’s security concerns to override the European Union’s guarantee of a unified and unfettered market for goods and services.
For more: A Dutch City Seeks to End Drug Tourism - NYTimes.com
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