Tacky hedonism sours Riga

LONDON - Spare a thought for the British Council in Riga, ancient capital of the Baltic state of Latvia.

Its job is to showcase to a fledgling democracy Britain's glittering contributions to literature, the theatre, science and philosophy. To burnish the image of a nation that gave the world Shakespeare, T.S. Eliot, Adam Smith, Faraday, Newton, Darwin, Jane Austen, Dickens and a thousand other civilising greats.

Alas, then, that the Briton the average Latvian may meet in real life is unlikely to be so lofty and spiritual.

In fact, there is a fair chance that Homo britannicus, as seen on the cobbled streets of Riga, will be sporting plastic breasts and a tutu or will be dressed as a chicken or coiffed with a fluorescent wig.

His mates may have handcuffed him, attired in a Borat mankini and fake Elvis sideburns, to a lamppost.

He may be slumped motionless on the pavement when he is not urinating against a wall.

He may be yawking up a kebab, cheap beer and a toxic mix of Red Bull, blue Curacao and local vodka.

In such acts, evidence of national greatness is hard to find.

Even though it is mired in a deep recession, Latvia has had a bellyful of all this. Rowdy British holidaymakers are high on the young republic's unwanted list.

Most dreaded of all are the stag and hen parties. For as little as £102 ($250) a head, groups of young Brits are flown to Riga on a budget flight. They are picked up at the airport, given two nights in three-star accommodation with three-course meals and offered a pub crawl and entertainment in the form of lap dancers, go-karting, bobsleigh or a trip to a shooting range to fire a Kalashnikov.

For a few pounds more, specialist stag companies like The Dogs Baltics will provide a "strip limousine" to pick you up at the airport. Inside are a couple of thong-clad blondes writhing around on, er, shag carpeting.

The result, all too predictably, is tacky hedonism on an epic scale. And despite its poverty, the city is fed up with the Brits' booze-fuelled antics, fearing that its image will be soiled for decades to come.

Riga Mayor Nils Usakovs told the monthly magazine Rigas Laiks last week that he desperately wants the city to go up-market as a holiday destination.

"The only problem is that we have a large share of those British tourists," he said.

"If we also had other tourists, then British visitors who piss about all the time would not be as noticeable ... Let's not be politically correct - unfortunately this is their speciality."

The biggest grievance is the drunken tourists who urinate on the 40m-high Freedom Monument in central Riga, erected to honour those who fought for Latvian independence.

After one such incident last year in which a British tourist was given a five-day jail sentence, the country's then Interior Minister, Mareks Seglins, lashed out at "English pigs" for being a "dirty, hoggish people". A spokesman for Usakovs told the Times of London: "We have a stigma about British tourists. They are probably not the ones people want to see."

In the past, Brits going wild abroad were a feature of resorts in Spain, Cyprus or Greece, where the booze and the flights were cheap. But over the past five years, new low-cost destinations have opened up in a range of former Communist countries, from the Czech Republic and Poland to the Baltic states and Ukraine.

"Hen parties are worse than stag dos. They seem to have a checklist for the bride-to-be and that involves doing things you wouldn't do in normal society," says a New Zealander living in Finland who travels extensively around the Baltic.

"If you see them in a bar you leave the place," says a Briton in his 20s who travels frequently to Eastern Europe. "It makes me embarrassed to be identified as English when those people are around. They also are very noisy on the planes going out there."

Cities in the path of projectile vomit are doing what they can do to ensure the partying is fun and incident-free, sometimes enlisting the support of regional police in Britain for tips on dealing with inebriated Welsh, Liverpudlians, Mancunians and Geordies. The old Polish university town of Wroclaw mulled a ban on kilts after a Glaswegian stag group decided it was time to show local residents what a Scotsman wears under his skirt.

Paul Luke, of British stag party organiser Last Night of Freedom, says "only 1 per cent" of groups behave badly. For the vast majority, it's simply harmless fun, he told the Herald.

The recession does not seem to have damaged the raucous stag business too much. According to Hotels.com and Wedding Ideas magazine, four out of 10 stag parties are held outside Britain.

"So far this year, we've sent 150 groups to Riga, normally it would have been 200-220," said Luke. "I've a group of Brits in Poland this weekend and a group of Australians and New Zealanders going to Ukraine next weekend. One group is going to Krakow, the Kiwis and Aussies are going to Kiev."