Reply
Sat 6 Mar, 2004 04:02 pm
I never drink.....coke!
Quote:Death rite unnerves Romanian EU bid
Tom Mulligan
BBC Monitoring
Haunted by "strigoi" - the undead - villagers on the slopes of the Carpathian mountains exhume a corpse from the graveyard and drive a stake through its heart to banish the evil spirit.
Will there still be a place for ancient beliefs?
They burn the remains of the heart, mix the ashes with water from the local well and drink it, to complete the macabre ritual.
Scenes from a shlock vampire B-movie? No; all this took place in February 2004 at a village in Dolj County, south-western Romania, according to Romanian Antena 1 TV news.
But the "Strigoi Show", as the TV dubbed it light-heartedly, has prompted such a stir about local customs and culture, the national press is questioning whether the ex-communist Balkan country will truly be ready to enter the European Union in 2007.
Under the headline "Ancestral habits at odds with modern European civilization," the independent national daily Evenimentul Zilei commented that such events were the "law of the land" in rural Romania.
Clash of cultures
The regions of Transylvania and Wallachia were "haunted by ancestral ghosts, evil spirits, and vampires"; medieval beliefs that were "at odds with sophisticated EU rules on measuring fruit and the size of bananas".
I dare you to measure my bannana!
Damn. Dear old dad could've gone to Romania instead of ending up in prison.
It's that last sentence about 'measuring fruit and the size of bananas' that really bothers be. It's not a question of "Is the EU ready for the likes of Romania?" but, rather, "Are any countries east of France ready for the EU strictures?"
Stumble It!
Tweet This
Bookmark on Delicious
Share on Facebook
Share on MySpace