It may be too late to change your summer holiday plans, but if you still have some wiggle room on your Airbnb may I recommend Greece?
This seems to be the perfect time to travel to the Balkan peninsula to vacation not only in a specific place, but also in a specific time. Any one of your friends who says, “I’ve summered in Greece” will now be trumped by your, “I traveled in Greece during the 2015 bank collapse.”
I’ve lucked into two such historical tourism events:
One was over Christmas 2013 when I accidentally brought my family to Bangkok during rioting which had not yet ousted prime minister Shinawatra but did instigate a cab driver to reroute at least one family to show them the crowds of protesters and curse at them in a rather muscular Thai.
More dramatic, a rash decision to travel to Cuba in 2000 landed me right in the center of the Elian Gonzales crisis. Sure I got to ride a bicycle in Havana and see cigars being rolled, but I also set out to acquire a “Free Elian” shirt, strictly forbidden to tourists -- especially Americans. We were confronted by police as we traded our own shirts for this contraband garment, then had to figure how to smuggle it out. It was the Cuban getaway Graham Greene or John LeCarre might have planned.
Travel websites all but guarantee you will find exactly what you wish when you travel, but going to the heart of a crisis is one way of making sure your trip is still an adventure.
I’m Dan Libman, and that’s my perspective.
