As others see us. Well, you can't expect plamas all the time, even in travel writing, which tends to encourage. "Looking for peace and quiet in Ireland. Connemara's mountains are inspiring, but the coastal regions are ruined by holiday bungalows." That's the headline news over an article in a German newspaper. It rather hammers home the message of a lovely quiet unspoiled place - if only the Irish would leave it alone and think more of the environment.
He thinks, oddly, that the Alcock and Brown memorial near Clifden, representing the tail fin of an aeroplane, is not up to much. It is not on the exact spot they landed. "That's symptomatic," he writes. The particular attraction of the West of Ireland is the overpowering landscape, literally inestimable, and although, almost everywhere, ruins from early Christian times are present in profusion, they are thoughtlessly left overgrown with bushes and creepers. Meanwhile he thinks, the tourist interests are busily creating spectacles of rather doubtful worth. (He can't mean interpretative centres, can he?)
He seems to imply that Alcock and Brown's arrival started off, or helped in, the development of American influence. Many of the monstrous (to him) bungalows, he says, are directly out of American TV serials. Burger chains have the youth of towns in their grip. The music in the souvenir shops mixes in "country and bluegrass" strains. And the influence of film! He claims that in Leenane every pub and restaurant is either The Field Bar or the Field Restaurant. (Why not?) He may have been sold on the more poetic tourist literature.
He wonders why the car is so important that people drive on to the strand, even to the water's edge. Bad ecologically. But he is enthusiastic about the mountains. If you come to Connemara, try the Maamturks and the Twelve Bens. A real paradise for mountain walkers. Best enjoy these in spring or autumn when there aren't so many people about. And another part that elicits his unstinted praise is the Connemara National Park: no sheep to denude the mountains, no turf cutting, no intrusive conifer monoculture.
There is a dominating picture with the article - Bertraghboy Bay with, in the foreground, an artist painting, and about three people in the distance. The picture alone would sell Ireland to many prospective tourists. This article is fighting stuff, which won't please the Tourist Board overly, but may raise interest among Germans more than placid praise. The writer is Friedhelm Rathgen, in the Hamburg Die Zeil.