So what has changed? Nothing. But some now use perspective when making judgments rather than simple jealousy or animosity.
Russians take over from British as ugliest tourists
Germans holidaymakers accuse them of being loud, boorish and frequently drunk. But for once the Teutonic battle of the sun loungers is not being fought with British tourists, but against Russians.
By Harry de Quetteville in Berlin
08 Aug 2008
As holiday season reaches its peak with millions of Germans on their travels, many disgruntled 'urlauber' [holidaymakers] are arriving at their favourite resorts to find unwelcome interlopers at the best poolside places.
This year the traditional British holiday foe is not to blame however, having been replaced by a new threat - visiting hordes from Russia.
"They're even worse than the Engländer," mass circulation Bild splashed on its front page.
"The Russians have conquered German holiday paradise."
Bild's outrage comes just weeks after it launched a broadside on "athletically challenged, binge drinking" British tourists, and produced a list of holiday destinations to avoid in order to escape the "vomit-stained" traces of British revelry.
Then, the paper spluttered with disbelief that a British man had won damages after finding his Greek hotel jammed with German tourists.
Now however, the Germans seem to have warmed to British holidaymakers.
For Bild has compiled a similar catalogue of complaint from German tourists returning from their traditional holiday destinations on the Turkish coast, moaning that "their" hotels have been taken over by Russians.
According to its "shock statistics", Russians this year have outnumbered Germans in the resort of Antalya, on Turkey's south-western coast, with almost 1.3 million tourists arriving from St Petersburg to Vladivostok.
"We checked out of our hotel because there were so many Russians," said Holger Gundrum, from Frankfurt. "But the new hotel was also packed with Russians. They're so tiresome." Bild divided the new holiday hate figures into two categories.
Category one, it noted, are "covered in thick body hair, wear tight swimming trunks, and have fat wives".
Its anthropological investigation diagnosed type two as "wiry, bald with heavy jewellery". Their companions, it suggested, are "fake blondes, with fake breasts." Germans are by no means the first to complain about what has often been described as an invasion of nouveau-riche Russians once confined to grim eastern bloc destinations behind the Iron Curtain.
In Austria last year, the chi-chi ski resort of Kitzbuhel introduced a quota so that Russians would number no more than 10 percent of hotel guests.
There, après-ski cocktail menus written in Cyrillic were frowned upon.
In Antalya however, the reverse is true.
Hotel and restaurant chains are desperate to cash in on the Russian influx, making sure that Russian speakers are well catered to. From poolside games to nightclub tunes, activities that used to ring out in German now resound in Russian.
Germans may only have themselves to blame for the transformation. According to Russian statistics, tourists from Russia spend up to eight times as much as their German counterparts.
One hotel in Antalya the Kremlin Palace has even gone so far as to build a replica of St Basil's cathedral from Red Square, complete with famous multi-coloured onion domes.
But landmarks are not all that the Russian tourism influx is importing.
According to irate German wives, thousands of Russian prostitutes have followed the trend, plying their trade in holiday hotel lobbies and bars.
"It's not unusual for a Russian prostitute to proposition your husband when you leave the table for a few moments to use the toilet," noted one.
Anger over Russian behaviour may come as a welcome relief to British tour-operators, long-used to negative headlines about our own holidaymakers.
Earlier this week, police on the Greek island of Crete began pre-emptive arrests of drunken Britons, in an attempt to cut down on alcohol-fuelled violence and sexual assaults.
Russia's consul general in Antalya however, says that no such measures are needed for Russians. Mircalol Husanov described Russian tourists in Turkey as "qualified, educated people who contribute to the city's social and cultural life".
"Antalya is number one for Russian tourists," he said. To the chagrin of German tourists, it is likely to remain so.
"Russians feel safe here," he said, "and more and more of our citizens want to buy land and real estate. Every day more Russians want to settle down here."
Russians
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