Romance > Articles > Holiday Romance

Sun, sea and ... museums? Probably not. If you’re single (and maybe if you’re not) and you’re heading off on your summer holidays in the next few weeks, chances are at the back of your mind is the possibility of a Cretan cuddle, a Sardinian snog, a Benidorm love-bite, or a Florida, umm ... fling. In short, you’re hoping for a Holiday Romance.

Amidst the sun-cream, Jackie Collins and new swim-wear, you’ll slip a small packet of condoms, whilst a voice in the back of your head says;

‘ I’m not looking for anything, but ...’

Okay, I admit it. I’ve had a few holiday romances. Who hasn’t? In this age of cheap, easy travel, comes the cheap, easy fling. After all, the whole point of a summer holiday is to check out from reality, and what could be better escapism than ten days consorting with a an exotic lover whom you’re never going to see again?

Anyone who’s watched Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy wander through the nocturnal streets of Vienna in the movie ‘Before Sunrise’ must have dreamed of meeting a stranger on a train and spending an entire holiday in an intense, meaningless relationship which ends with the ticket home. In a recent survey of 1,000 adults, Home & Overseas Insurers discovered that one in ten British travellers claimed to have had a holiday romance in the past three years. Among single people, the level rose to one in four. The survey concluded with the statistic that 30% of holidaymakers believe that while on holiday they would be more likely to make the first move than at home. From the moment we step off the plane, it seems, we’re gagging for it.

My first attempt at holiday romance came when I was sixteen and for some reason (insanity? a desire to never see me again?) my parents let me go inter-railing around Europe with my friend Dimitri. We had barely got to Calais before we tried it on with a couple of girls from Newcastle who were undoubtedly five years older than us and who rebutted our delicate, suave advances (‘Are you going to Nice too?’) with a delicate, suave;

‘Do yer mammies know yer’ve run away from home?’

Over the next five weeks we attempted to seduce females from Saint Tropez to Split. We didn’t shave once in a vain hope that sparse stubble might convince the women of southern Europe that we were in fact older than our years with sexual technique to match. Needless to say, none of them fell for it. I think Dimitri might have got a kiss in a tent in Florence from an Australian girl who looked like Crocodile Dundee, but to this day he pleads the fifth amendment, especially now he’s married with a son.

All of which brings me to Rule Number One of Holiday romances.

Don’t go looking for it.

If you go away with the express desire of having a fling, it will end sadly. Either you will spend your hard-earned holiday time slavishly chatting up anything with two legs and a head, and ending up with someone you wouldn’t even share a bus with back home, or you’ll end up being rejected every step of the way. Don’t force it. The great thing about great holiday romances is that like great holidays they just happen.

Rule number Two.

Don’t go unprepared.

Just because you’re not looking for it, doesn’t mean you can’t be ready when an opportunity arises. So pack a couple of pairs of attractive underwear, buy double the amount of deodorant you usually use and in this day and AIDS age, don’t forget condoms. These can be slipped into your luggage quite innocently on the pretext that they’re darned useful for keeping camera film dry on canoeing expeditions.

But a word of warning: be careful where you store your prophylactics. A friend, Sue, was coming back on the plane from Turkey (where she had a great time, but no romance). She stood up to take her Walkman from her carry-on at the same time as the plane was buffeted by air-turbulence, catapulting a string of Strawberry-flavours onto the head of the elderly man sitting next to her. She was embarrassed enough without the old man’s comment:

‘Not getting much then eh love?’

So if you’re not looking for it, and are not unprepared, the chances are you will have a holiday romance. The best countries for this (in an exhaustive and unflinching poll of six) are as follows: (Efforts have been made to list countries where it’s equally easy for men as well as women to find romance, thereby discounting any Mediterranean destination, Arab countries, and most of Central and South America.)

1. America. Both women and men from the British Isles seem to find no problem finding romance in the New World. It might have something to with the fact that Americans love our accents.

2. Ireland. Probably because everyone there is drunk, all the time. A friend Dr Duncan Shaw tells the story of taking a train from Dublin to Galway which screeched to a halt having just severed the leg of a drunk who’d lain down to have a nap on the tracks. He kept the man alive until the ambulance arrived, thereby saving his life. On arrival in Galway news of his heroics had spread and he found himself at a party hosted in his honour by Galway County Hospital, where, inevitably, he drank too much and ended up with a nurse, whom he stayed with for the next two weeks.

3. Israel. Especially on a Kibbutz. There is something about the socialist ideals of Kibbutz life that seems to lend itself to free-love. My own experience of this came on a kibbutz in the Negev desert where I was visiting my sister. She departed for Egypt soon after I arrived, leaving me to spend a dustily romantic two weeks with an Israeli girl called Danielle who had just finished her army service and could, she never tired of informing me, kill me in six different ways.

4. Sweden. Everything you ever hoped about the Swedes is true. Especially around Midsummer when they all drink till they fall over.

5. Greenland. They don’t get many visitors.

Okay, so you’ve hooked up. Now comes Rule number Three. Don’t discuss life back home. It has no bearing on the present. The idea is to create a perfect holiday romance bubble - unaffected by the outside world. If you have to talk about where you’re from and what you do, make it up. I, over the years, have been a Scottish Librarian, a Geordie restaurateur and Southampton Football Club’s Youth Team Coach.

Rule number Four: Keep photographs to a minimum. In the full blaze of romance, shots of you gripping Guido’s naked chest on the back of his Ducati 500, or of you presenting Helga with a cellophane-wrapped rose at Corfu Town’s top nightclub might seem tender and emotional. In the chill of a northern autumn they will only make you sick with embarrassment.

Finally, Rule number Five: don’t continue it after the holiday is over. In this brave-new-world of e-mails and cheap telephone calls, holiday romances are much easier to prolong. The Home and Overseas survey reported that almost a third (31%) of romances struck up abroad continued after the holiday, which surely defeats the fleeting, no-strings purpose of the Holiday Fling.

I learned this the hard way, following a short romance with Marina, a Serbian girl, before the Balkans became far from romantic. I spent a week with her in Belgrade, and returned home without a photo or desire to ever see her again, only to get a call the following month from UK immigration asking me whether I knew a certain Marina Mihalovic and was it true she was coming to stay with me for a two week holiday? It was then that I recalled I’d given her my address with a vague fling-ending platitude about ‘coming to see me sometime’. And so she arrived on my doorstep, stayed for ten days during which time we hardly spoke, and then disappeared.

So as you board your flight to the sun, or Greenland, remember the five rules. And beware: Jeremy, an Irish friend of mine, met a Spanish girl on holiday in Salamanca four years ago. He ended up marrying her and they now live in wedded bliss in North London.

Now you wouldn’t want that, would you?

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