Dignitaries hotel offers
hotter attractions
Just four days before setting off for Ukraine, John Paul II
blasted travel that caters to baser instincts. Speaking on the occasion of
World Tourism Day, the pope denounced an unscrupulous sex trade which is
an intolerable scandal.
Was anybody on the Vatican advance team for Kiev listening?
The question is prompted by one of the prime attractions of
Kievs Dnipro Hotel, where journalists and ecclesiastical dignitaries
accompanying the pope were lodged. There one finds the citys very first
strip bar, the Millennium, featuring Slavic girls, enigmatic and
sexy ready to excite your most secret desires.
Walking outside the hotel after dark, one could espy the
silhouettes of dancers bumping and grinding in the bars windows. It
formed an odd contrast, to say the least, with the immense photo of the pope in
front of the press center across the street.
Hotel advertising gave top billing to a Marilyn Monroe look-alike,
pictured topless in flyers placed in rooms. The flyer assures potential clients
that even hotter options are available sadomasochistic
Matrix, for instance, as well as vigorous
Cowboy, and gorgeous Firebird.
The Millennium actually offers something for all tastes, including
male striptease and a comic and erotic duet, as well as an
intriguing catchall category of wonders and surprises.
Vatican planners declined (sheepishly) to comment on the record
about the apparent disconnect between the popes recent jeremiad against
sexual tourism and their booking decision.
Privately, they insisted the Dnipros location across the
street from the press center, and not its nocturnal extracurricular options,
had been the decisive factor.
-- John L. Allen Jr.
National Catholic Reporter, July 13,
2001
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