Word: tropez
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...heiress to a vast German auto fortune. Last week von Opel found herself behind walls and bars facing a ten-year prison term after a French court in Draguignan found her guilty of financing a 1977 scheme to import Middle East hashish into West Germany, and Italy via Saint-Tropez. Why should an heiress worth $70 million involve herself in a drug ring? Neither von Opel nor any of her seven co-defendants ever said, but the longer her three-week trial went on, the more it became apparent that she was less a pawn than a principal...
...over a table that rarely has fewer than 14 or 16 guests around it. Over plates of polenta (cornmeal porridge), sausage and pork in a thick gravy, washed down with Lambrusco, the talk moves from local politics to musical gossip: the burglary of Herbert von Karajan's Saint-Tropez villa, or the scheduling problems caused by the love affair of two internationally known singers...
Britain's Prince Charles practiced it in the chilly waters off the Isle of Wight. Marlon Brando mastered it between takes of a film. A few plucky vacationers have even used it to island-hop among the Bahamas. From St. Louis to Saint-Tropez, people who used to ride sailboats or surfboards-or would not be caught on either -are trying something that combines the best of both: windsurfing, a fast-growing sport that makes the practitioner a part of his boat as he holds the sail, and the wind, in his hands...
...main focus of the vacation onslaught has been that 160-mile strip of overbuilt beach front in the south of France, the Côte d'Azur. Local rail terminals are overflowing as additional sun worshipers pour into Saint-Tropez, Sainte-Maxime, Cannes, Nice and Menton. When they arrive, along with myriad motorists who are clogging France's autoroute du soleil, a rude shock is waiting: no accommodations are available. As many as 1,000 people a day are redirected by the local tourist office to the Maritime Alps, inland and anywhere from 50 to 100 miles...
...many wild campers have sprouted around Saint-Tropez that authorities have opened up campsites that formerly were closed because of lack of toilets and running water. Even that has not been enough. "You can't believe what a day is like here," says a young gendarme at nearby Ramatuelle. "People just dump their garbage wherever they feel like it. Each day we have piles of paper to process. We also have to give fines for unlicensed vendors, even fines for open homosexuality on the beaches. On top of that, my eyes are infected from swimming in the water here...