The lost world

The Little Prince lives on a tiny asteroid, known to Earthlings as Asteroid B-612, which is barely bigger than a house and features three small volcanoes (two active, one dormant) and his beloved rose, requiring constant care, especially from baobab sprouts, before his journey of exploration¹.

During our travel to Amsterdam in the late summer of 1976, one evening we were invited to a dinner in a 17th century canal house. 

It was a cloudy evening with a drizzle, the rooftop unit was warm when our host greeted us. I remember a corridor filled with books from floor to ceiling. The dinner was lovely, followed by chatting on a sofa, while a white moon and light grey clouds were moving against a pitch dark sky behind the thin frames of a skylight window. 

We said goodbye around midnight, while it was still drizzling outside. Alongside the canal we saw a few windows with lights. Like lanterns, warm light was pouring out, illuminating the road, trees and the canal. 

Amsterdam then was a city with immense charm. I fondly remember the museums, Van Gogh and Modern Art. You could still sit on a bench and savour paintings without being obstructed by crowds. 

Those days you could spot tourists, but locals were in majority. What you experience as a tourist was more authentic. 

There were no personal computers, no Internet, no portable phones. Film cameras took 36 exposures max. The cars were manual and much smaller. The maps were printed on paper and cinemas were still alive. 

The world still had mystery.

Fast forward five decades to 2025.

Thomas A P van Leeuwen has a riveting view from his Amsterdam flat. His street, Keizersgracht, is lined with imposing 17th-Century canal houses – but what the academic and author sees each day is distinctly modern. Day after day, tourists form long queues on the bridge, holding up €5.50 (£4.80) cones of fries against the gabled backdrop for TikTok or Instagram posts.

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It is this never-ending onslaught of tourists that has driven Van Leeuwen to fight the chip craze. Along with other neighbours in De Negen Straatjes, he is demanding that the city review the shop's licence. There is a larger conversation happening in the city about overtourism – activist group Amsterdam heeft een keuze ("Amsterdam has a choice") has filed a lawsuit against the city for failing on their promise to limit tourist numbers to 20 million annually².

Over five decades (ignoring the covid downturn), worldwide tourism has grown from 222 million arrivals in 1975 to a projected 1.5 billion in 2025, near seven-fold increase, driving economic development and global connectivity. Export revenues soared eleven-fold, and tourism now stands as a pillar for many economies, fostering jobs and cultural exchange.³ 

However the mysterious world has long gone. Growth killed wonder. Everything is known and has been discovered. Our world has become a planetary theme park where people queue up at various attractions. Tourism has turned into a frantic performance act. There are now queues even in Mt Everest. 

Prague, Old Town Square, September 2025

Today people live inside a bright screen they hold in their hands as if they are transported to a different world. Tourism turned from having authentic experiences to a mere performance act. 

Social media overlords designed a revenue system that exploits brain's reward chemical dopamine, driving motivation and pleasure through participating performance games. Simplistically you would post a photograph or a video that may raise others to "like" them or better persuade them to follow you. Likes are baits for you to stay in the game. Where ever you take media recordings, does matter only for your followers. You don't necessarily choose the venue just because you are curious. Your followers choose destinations so that the likelihood for them to throw the Like bait increases. You become their slaves in anticipation of collecting more likes. Another way to imagine this is, the world now resembles a giant arena. Tourists compete on the sand field for spectators sitting and watching you in a game of performance from the Amphitheatre. They would either like or unlike you. Like is your pill. 

In contrast in the olden days there was no game. Tourism was more of a voluntary participation for individuals based on whatever tickled their curiosity. 

You may argue, postcards were used pretty much like social media shares, sometimes as a means of self-gratification. However sending postcards was a more genuine and intimate expression as the receiver was always an individual. People who received a postcard could not respond to you either, as your address changed during the travel and it took long time for mails to arrive. Speaking of which we must now touch the notion of speed.

Fifty years ago, travelling usually required a visit to a Travel Agent. These were professionals who sit in an office and for a slice of your budget would organise your travel arrangements with you including purchasing tickets, arranging transfers and hotel accommodations. You could also follow "do it yourself" method based on your acquaintances recommendations. (But you could not book hotels or transfers in advance; you should then be comfortable with confronting large number of unknowns when you arrive your destination.) Flying was way more much expensive than today end the world was ten times poorer.

• Film cameras took 24 to 35 films at a time. You could have spare film canisters but they were subject to spoiling in humidity and high temperatures so you could not keep them for long. Nevertheless a typical travel album to Rome typically included :
• Factors Influencing Album Capacity
• Film Roll Limits: Consumer film most commonly came in rolls of 24 or 36 exposures. A traveler might use two to four rolls on a significant vacation, resulting in roughly 50–150 photos to organize.
• Standard Album Sizes: Many popular 1970s albums were designed with specific capacities:
• Pocket Albums: Often held 60 photos (e.g., 10 pages with 6 photos per page).
• Magnetic/Adhesive Albums: These featured "sticky" pages with clear plastic overlays, typically containing about 20 pages. Depending on how tightly photos were arranged, these could hold between 80 and 120 pictures.
• Small Keepsake Albums: Compact versions sometimes held as few as 20 to 24 photos for shorter trips or specific events. 
• There were photography albums that let generations to view and commemorate past visits collectively. Later on cheaper video recording options for masses arrived.
• Travel was more like a leisurely activity for individuals, families and friends.      

  

Footnotes:

¹: The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince) is a beloved novella by French aviator and author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

²: Excerpt from BBC article Why travellers keep queueing for viral food.

³: 50 Years of Tourism

Rhodes Stories

As our vessel approached Rhodes port on a hot day, I wondered where Collossus of Rhodes stood. I tried to imagine we were passing between the legs of Helios while shades of folded sails and swinging ropes were sweeping the floorboards, and cries of ancient deckhands are heard for a safe passage. 

We saw the walls of Rhodes Old Town and minarets of two mosques afar, Süleymaniye Mosque and Ibrahim Pasha Mosque decorating the ancient skyline. 

We rented a renovated house close to St John’s Gate at the end of Pithagora Lane. Rhodes Old Town is UNESCO listed. Decscendants of Greek and Turkish ancestors who made this place home for many centuries still live in Old Town. As you walk by on narrow cobblestone alleys you may notice some house-doors are left open, from where murmurs of old stories escape along with mist. Sometimes a motorcyclist pass by, but otherwise in this part of the town you will be breathing the past.  

Upstairs, I sit on a small sofa in a small hall and fixed my gaze outside. The balcony door has windows from ground to ceiling. Outside there was a tiny Juliette balcony, on it a tiny table with a green plant in a terracotta pot and tiny chairs on each side. Beyond I see ancient walls of a desolate house waiting to be renovated. Behind that there are city walls close to St. John’s gate. I hear constant buzzing of cicadas singing through intense heat, taking me to what this place looked like five hundred years ago. 

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As you walk down Pithagora Lane towards Hippocrates Square at noon you will see more and more tourists. When you reach the square suddenly the magic is lost; you will be surrounded by hundreds of sweaty tourists with bad sunburns. Phones are in hand or mounted on selfie sticks, harsh daylight is casting ugly shades everywhere, everybody is in Instagram or TikTok, or Facebook, or WhatsApp or GodKnowsWhat recording mode, desperate to show off they are having good time, while makeups, fake eyelash glues and ice creams are melting fast in thirty four degrees Celsius. 

Tourists are drinking coloured drinks, taking selfies for most bizarre looking photos, standing next to store entrances where the cold AC air blows. 

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When the sun sets and magic hour begins, crowds get most intense, barkers appear in restaurant fronts. Tourists appear strolling in better outfits, summery and light coloured, suitable for dinner; all had showers, young women and young men suntanned, glance at each other briefly, no doubt they are now feeling good with a prospect of romance sparkles their eyes, everybody is in their better selves, insecurities were shelved, sicknesses and world’s troubles were forgotten just for tonight. 

We dined in New Town then came back to Old Town late at night. It was busier than daytime. While waiting for the girls shopping in a gift shop on Socratous Street, I threw myself to a shop front across the street to avoid crowds. I noticed it was a jewellery shop with bright lights. Realising I was blocking the shop window, I moved aside. The owner acknowledged my gesture and we started to talk. 

- Waiting for the girls, my wife and my sister, they are shopping there. Sorry. I didn’t want to obstruct your shop window. 

- Yes, you’d better. 

- My name is Ergun. Yours?

- Nikos. 

- We love Rhodians’ hospitality. We had troubles in the past. But things are better now. With relaxed visa rules, trade between Marmaris and Rhodes flourished. 

- We fought for nothing. You and I are normal, politicians are not. The shop owner there and there (indicating shops) are Turks. We are friends. We eat and drink together. 

- Yes. You are right. Politicians are not normal. 

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We went to Museum of Modern Greek Art to see a photography exhibition, Ara Güler’s Anatolia in Colour. 

After visiting the exhibition we chatted with a young guy whom we bought the tickets from. Yannis wants to be a chef. He recommended a few authentic Greek tavernas in the southern part of the city, outside St. George’s gate. 

In the evening we went home, freshened up, then walked up the St John’s gate and passed to the south. We walked fair bit at dusk with a feeble white light pouring from my cell phone’s Google Maps. 

We were in a working class suburb. We can tell from clothing lines, worn off supermarket store signs and black garbage bags overflowing large bins on the pavement. Not that this was off putting; I like experiencing real lives of real people. When we reached Alex. Ipsilantou lane. There it was Μια Πιρουνιά (A Fork). The entrance was modest, it could have been a garage, or a warehouse, nothing suggested there was a charming, old school taverna inside. 

Alekos, the host of “A Fork” taverna greeted us. He was a sympathetic man in his seventies. He showed us a group of black and white photographs of his ancestors hung on the wall behind him. There was a beautiful girl image with sad eyes. Alekos told us she was starved to death during Nazi occupation.

Inside, it was simply a medium size hall with walls painted in pink, featuring a clock going in reverse, anecdotes written on mirrors, little pots with colourful little flowers, more anecdotes written on blackboards, some in Greek, some in English, like “The problem with the world is everyone is a few drinks behind - Humphrey Bogart”. 

Inside the hall, there was a stage near the entrance. The rest of the hall had pale green wooden tables, around them there were pink and yellow wooden chairs. 

The pale green roof was covering half of the hall length from the stage end. The other half was  just a skeleton of beams supporting the walls. You could see the sky, dark blue, deep and sad, and stars are sprinkled on it. 

It was a balmy evening with aniseed breeze and unsung songs. 

We had delicious food, octopus, calamari, salad, cheese balls, fried cheese with honey and sesame seed and uzo. 

Two musicians took stage. One was playing a guitar and the other one, a slim guy with glasses, a bouzouki. Ballads of Dodecanese Islands filled the air. The slim musician played Zülfü Livaneli’s “kardeşin duymaz el oğlu duyar” in Greek. I greeted him. I tapped my right hand on my chest; he did the same. 

At the door we thanked Aleko; he had the waitress took our photograph with him in memory of the night. 

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I saw him sitting on a stone wall under the shade of a tree. He was a dapper man, in his eighties perhaps, holding a rosary in his hands, with blue trousers, a light blue shirt and a blue fedora hat. He greeted me (his name was Şahap) and we started to talk in Turkish. 

- I am ninety years old. 

- You don’t look like ninety. 

- My ancestors came with Yavuz Sultan Selim from Karaman. I’ve seen so many things. Now everybody is gone. 

There was a silence. 

- Do you think Azrael discriminate when your time comes?

- Err.. I don’t know.

- No it won’t. It won’t give you a minute if you ask for a minute. It will take you right away. Who do you think then is the most welcoming?

- God?

- No. It is the Mother Earth. It will take you to its bosom whether you are a Jew, a Christian or a Muslim. 

Şahap was looking for something in his shirt’s pocket. He pulled two passport size black and white photographs. One a young handsome man in his thirties (it was him), and another one a beautiful woman. 

- It has been many years since I lost her. I have been living here all by myself. I don’t know where I want to be buried. 

- But don’t you have children, grandchildren?

- I do but I live alone and I’m alone. 

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When we left Rhodes, once again Mediterranean Sea embraced us. Harsh winds were whistling through the upper deck while white foams were kissing dark blue waves. In them hundreds of stories were being retold, like sirens’ whispers they sounded unintelligible as they mixed with each-other and as we left beautiful Rhodes behind.  

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