The Club Méditerranée was established in 1950. "Germans sing very quickly," says Tony Hatot, a friend of Blitz's who helped found the club. Very few Germans belong to the Club Méditerranée. There are, besides, 22,000 Belgian, 13,000 British, 7,000 Swiss, 7,000 Italian and 1,500 Scandinavian members. On this little island of 130 inlets there isn't anything but the tomb of Garibaldi and us." The club has, at present, 150,000 members, of whom nearly 100,000 are French. "My favorite village," says Blitz, "is our isle of Caprera off the northeast coast of Sardinia. The winter villages are situated in the French and Swiss Alps. Most of the summer villages are located on the Mediterranean Sea and its various arms-in Spain, France, Italy, Yugoslavia, Greece, Israel, Tunisia, Morocco and directly on the water: one "village" is a sailboat that cruises the Ionian Sea. In addition to the village on Moorea, the Club Méditerranée has 17 other summer villages and nine winter villages. It is, rather, a low-cost, group vacation scheme incorporating elements of children's camps, youth hostels, certain Catskill resorts and country clubs. The Club Méditerranée is a unique and highly successful venture which its founder and president, Gérard Blitz, calls "the biggest athletic club in Europe." It is not, however, precisely an athletic club. They are reflected in the metal collars on the palms that prevent the rats, which I have never seen, from reaching the coconuts. The generator has started up, and the lights go on in the thatched huts, or farés, of the Club Méditerranée village at my back. There is a sudden, powerful humming, intrusively recalling the world elsewhere. All along the top of the beach, people are, like myself, sitting quietly, embracing their knees. Then the water becomes violet and, lastly, gold, the gold of goldfish. The wet sand along the irregular margin of the sea shines luminously, and the palms on the offshore islets are silhouetted they seem to have been laboriously cut out of cardboard for the benefit of tourists. Later, when the sun sets, the water is, at first, as green and iridescent as fishes, the surf black, ominous, as though there were incomprehensible warfare on the rim.
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