Thursday, August 10, 2006

Talk about the "Ugly American"!

How embarrassing! For both him and his country.
An American tourist who ran naked through a peaceful Swiss town, vandalised a church and escaped from police clutches by jumping into a lake could have been on hallucinogenic mushrooms, a magistrate has said.

The 34-year-old man from Massachussetts, who has since been allowed to return home, ran amok in the western town of Morges, by Lake Geneva, two weeks ago.

He started babbling incoherently in the hotel lobby, stripped and ran naked along the quayside, broke a stained glass in the nearby Protestant temple with a stool and set a precious 1898 Bible alight, police in Morges said.

After being seized and handcuffed by police, he made a leap for freedom into the lake and bit two people who tried to help him while he was hanging on to a boat.

Having recovered his senses, he later appeared before investigating magistrate Gilles Riva and "coherently" explained that he had eaten 'magic' mushrooms that he had bought in the Netherlands during a trip through Europe.

And we wonder why American tourists aren't greeted with unbridled affection in Europe.

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