Celebrating our decade, decadent style
When I told people that yes, I was going to Magaluf with my best friend to celebrate our ten years in the UK, the looks on their faces didn’t surprise me at all. “It’s only a place for 18-year-olds, you’re going to hate and regret the whole thing in the end”, my boyfriend repeated to me more times than I can count. But what best place to celebrate our British decade is better than a place where you only find wandering Brits, trying to recreate a sunny Blackpool two hours away from home? Sure, the new destinations are in Turkey, and the good old Ibiza-bound flights are fuller than ever, but a place like Magaluf had its appeal to us. We wanted to have a good panorama of young sunburnt Brits going up and down the Strip, just like in the In-Betweeners film; we wanted to be given a bracelet as soon as we land at the airport and directed to our coach, which would drive you exactly in front of your hotel; we wanted to dive into the “all-inclusive” holiday experience, where the hotel restaurant serves beans on toast at 3pm in the afternoon in the 35C heat.
We expected to see all this, but what we found was very, very different. And in a way, we are not mad.
Everything was up to our expectations when we landed. Shouting people, the rush to the airport passport control, the bracelet, the coach, the hotel receptionist deciding against asking us a 100 euro deposit each after looking at our old faces, the weird smell in the bathroom in the room and the view on the balcony over the suspiciously clean pool. We knew this would happen, we expected this and we were excited to feel like Brits abroad on a summer bank holiday weekend. We left our room at about 11pm, eating pizza on a patio at the very end of the Strip, finally so we could people-watch in peace.
Opposite the pizzeria where we were sitting, there was a kebab shop so large it had more vertical rotisseries spinning simultaneously than I had ever seen, ready to satiate hungover or simply hungry revellers. Two guys, one in a Newcastle United top and the other wearing nothing but swim shorts, were arguing in the kebab shop’s waiting area, both clearly in need of aloe vera or just water instead of another round of drinks and a massive kebab. To the left, an excited promoter armed with earpieces stood in front of an Irish pub, loudly inviting people to come in and check out their beer menu, adamant that they offered the best pint “away from home, at a fraction of the price”. The scenes from the Irish pub and the kebab shop kept us going for an hour or so, until the drunken women behind our table decided to grab our hands and sing with us. At that point, we decided it was time to go and face the Strip, ready to fend for ourselves.
The thing is, there was little to fend for. If anything, our clearly-over-25 faces and our looks—a cute and tame non-revealing dress for me and Gymshark shorts and a vest for my friend—were just not that interesting to the promoters in front of pubs, restaurants, and clubs. They didn’t even seem to see us. Oh no, I thought, “Am I doing Magaluf wrong too, now?!”
We received a few weird looks, the same looks we got when we told people we were going to Magaluf in the first place. We could sense the confusion behind the club promoters’ sunglasses as they ignored us completely, waving instead to the young girls behind us. I had never felt older than I did at that moment. Even when a lady approached us and asked us to come sing karaoke at her place, we quickly learned the only songs on offer were British hits from the '80s we had no clue about. This is the hard life of a millennial: no matter where you go, you will feel out of place sooner or later.
Granted, being ignored by everyone didn’t feel amazing, but this didn’t stop us from watching the people around us having a good time: definitely a better time than us. Also, the sights were incredible. Busy kebab shops in between clubs, Chinese food carts serving up yummy-looking fried bits, and cheap souvenir shops selling questionably worded T-shirts and questionably shaped key rings. Family restaurants stood next to strip clubs, creating chaotic scenes that painted the picture of Magaluf we had always imagined in our heads. The vibe, however, wasn’t what we thought it would be. It was much tamer than what we had seen in older pictures or heard our British friends talk about. It didn’t have that trashy feel we were expecting to experience.
Before heading back to our hotel room, we stopped to buy some water and snacks. While talking with the shop owner, we asked him about tourism in the past few years. “Magaluf isn’t what it was before,” he said, shaking his head sadly. Pointing to the 24-hour doctor’s studios, boarded-up shops, and bin bags abandoned on the pavement, he added with veiled annoyance in his eyes, “People are going to Ibiza or Turkey. They aren’t coming here anymore”. We could see for ourselves that a place which could host so many more people was half-empty on a Friday night in August. Many shops were closed down, a sense of nostalgia creeping up. This was the same sentiment the British ice cream shop owner had expressed to us an hour earlier: “It’s not the same place I moved to over 10 years ago,” she said, grabbing a scoop of ice cream from the pots below, “I’m thinking of leaving”.
It was a bittersweet ending to our first night, but maybe it was for the best. Just like people, places have their cycles, their ups and downs, and England itself is definitely not the same place I moved to ten years ago. One could argue it changed for the better or for the worse, but the undeniable truth is that it changed.I am no longer sure of what we were looking for by going there, if I’m honest. We set out adamantly to find something that could validate our preconceptions about British people abroad: the rowdy, table-throwing, corner-retching rough ‘lads lads lads’ from the North of England. Reality, though, teaches us that it’s better not to be convinced about anything without having experienced it for yourself. More importantly, it shows us that nothing remains the same, and places, just like people, are ever-changing.
