Reader’s Letter: Tourists, Tourists, Tourists

Hey,

I am Greek. I love Icelandic nature and I have a lot of friends in Iceland. My boyfriend is Icelandic. My message is in relation to your recent post on Facebook, regarding a tourist defecating seamlessly by a busy motorway. In view of the lack of evidence whether it is a native or a tourist, I am personally offended by this post. It constitutes an undue assumption that a tourist is the culprit. Your posts have recently been also very offensive focusing on all the bad things that tourists bring to your country.

I am requesting you to rephrase your post, before I feel compelled to take further action.

Yo Athanasios,

Fair point. You sound like a reasonable gentleman so I’m going to level with you—in the name of science! Icelanders have been living on this rock for thousands of years. They were here before the modern toilet, so there’ve been shittier times. I have a butt. We all have butts and when you gotta go, you gotta go. You’re right, there’s no concrete evidence in this example that the pooper is a tourist. However, there is evidence that more people are visiting the country than ever before, and that crap-related crime has increased exponentially in recent times. Correlation does not imply causation (#science), but until this hypothesis is disproved, we’re going to follow through.

We’re sorry you’re offended and would like to point out that we do love tourists*.

Lavatorily,

The Reykjavík Grapevine

(*that use toilets)