STRANGE CONTINENT
ULRICH MAGIN rounds up the weirdness from Europe: including a homing terrier and a botched exorcism
DOGGY DOINGS
Covid-sniffing dogs are hardly news these days, but Pokaa, a Golden Retriever from Kunheim, Alsace, France, has a 100 per cent hit rate. The dog is a great success in local pensioner’s homes where he can track the infected and has all the positive aspects of a therapy pet, too. Kölner StadtAnzeiger, 20 Aug 2021.
Another French dog, twoyear-old hunting terrier Pablo, went AWOL when his owners were staying in Savoy on their way back from a holiday in Italy. The couple reported the pet missing to the mayor of the village. A few days later (my source gives no dates) they received a photo of a dog that had been seen near their home in Nîmes in the south of France. They immediately recognised Pablo and decided to cut short their holiday and return home. The wandering dog was thin but still very much alive after having navigated a distance of some 380km (236 miles) . The first thing his owners did on their return was to buy him a GPS dog collar. web.de, 28 Aug 2021.
COMO’S NESSIE
Lake Como in Italy has its own monster, the lariosauro – part hoax, part folklore, part real observations – sightings of which go back several centuries, but which gained most momentum due to a series of fake reports in 1946. Early in September 2021, a frightened German tourist may have thought he’d seen the lariosauro when he spotted a large motionless snake lying on the banks of the River Mera where it flows into the northern end of the lake near Sorico. A provincial police patrol went to the site and recovered a 4m (13ft) dead python on the gravel. It measured 20cm (8in) in diameter. As pythons are not part of the local fauna, it was assumed to be a pet. “There are special snake farms, but not in the province of Como,” said Marco Testa, commander of the provincial police. “Bred pythons tend to be less dangerous, but even they can cling to any type of animal, even large ones, and crush and eat them; and this might even happen to a person. The python possibly escaped its owner and died near the river, unable to find food.” He said the snake had been about 15 years old when it died. La Provincia di Como, 3 Sept 2021.
STRANGE ART
Art may be in the eyes of the beholder, sometimes it ends up in the wallet of the artist. Danish artist Jens Haaning received bank notes to the value of 70,000 Euro which he was supposed to paste onto canvas and exhibit at the Kunsten-Museum in Aalborg. However, what he sent to the gallery were two empty frames – and a brief note: “Take the money and run.”
Haaning explained that the empty surfaces were art too, and that the bank notes were his payment. His initial fee had been agreed at 10,000 krones (1,300 Euro). The paintings, one small and one large, were initially intended to show the respective size of an annual income in Denmark and Austria. Museum curator Lasse Andersson said he planned to display the empty frames but expected the artist to return the money before 16 January when the exhibition ends. Perhaps it was all a stunt, after all. n-tv.de, 29 Sept 2021.
There was a surprise for walkers strolling along the promenade in Bilbao, Spain. In the sea had appeared a giant female head that drowns and surfaces as the tides rise and fall. Mexican artist Ruben Orozco created the sculpture, titled Bihar (“tomorrow” in Basque), to express that the things we do can lead us to our own destruction – or perhaps keep us afloat. The head was installed at midnight and shocked morning visitors. “I was completely stressed when I saw her drown,” said Triana Gil. “Now I see only sadness. She does not even look worried, she looks as if she must let herself drown without resistance.” Stern, 30 Sept 2021.
INFANT MIX-UP
A 19-year-old woman from Logroño in Spain is suing the regional government because she was switched in error with another girl born on the same day in 2002, both as premature babies. The woman had an unhappy childhood and was given to her grandmother to raise when she was just one year old. Tests when she was 15 revealed that her parents were not, in fact, her biological mother and father. By the time the hospital had found the names of her real parents, the woman’s biological mother had already died. Now María, as she calls herself, is fighting for 3 million Euros compensation
from la Rioja Regional Government; they have offered 215,000 Euros. Kölner StadtAnzeiger, 10 Sept 2021.
MEDJUGORJE NEWS
June 2021 marked the 40th anniversary of the apparitions in Medjugorje, Bosnia, one of the most fascinating series of visions of Our Lady in modern times (see FT38:20-22). Sadly, on 10 August 2021, the Polish Archbishop Henryk Hoser died in Warsaw. Since 2017 he had been theVatican’s special envoy to Medjugorje and a strong supporter of the visions, calling the village the “spiritual lung of Europe”. Vatican News, 18 June; Tagespost, 21 Aug 2021.
KILL OR CURE
After a woman identified only as Nesma M died as a result of an attempted exorcism ritual her 34-year-old husband, his parents, and a hodja stood trial in Berlin in August 2021. The 22-year-old woman was thought to be possessed when she did not become pregnant. Her mother-in-law, 57, and her father-in-law, 59, called a 50-year-old hodja or Muslim “miracle healer” who forced the woman to drink salt water for a week to expel the demons: she died from the “cure” in a Berlin hospital, the cause of death given as pulmonary embolisms and excess fluid on the brain. The three family members received sentences of more than two years in prison and two years on probation for manslaughter. The healer was sentenced for a year and six months on probation for negligent homicide. The family, originally from the Lebanon, had decided to “cure” the woman in November 2015 with religious rites. At the bidding of the cleric, the woman was given one and a half litres of salt water to drink each day for a whole week. The woman initially agreed but already felt very weak after just one day. Her husband and parents-inlaw realised she was getting worse from day to day, but felt it their duty to continue even when the young woman withdrew her consent to the treatment on the second day. The trial lasted eight months and the accused all made full confessions. Stuttgarter Zeitung, 30 Aug 2021.
CUMBRE VIEJA ERUPTS
After falling silent since 1971, the volcano CumbreVieja, on the island of La Palma in the Canaries, erupted on 19 September 2021. The eruption was announced by over 4,200 micro quakes in mid-September until several craters opened on 19 September. Half of the island had to be evacuated and many people lost all they owned. There were few fortean aspects to the catastrophe, but for several days a “miracle house” made headlines because it had not been destroyed by lava, as the streams had forked, leaving it intact on an ‘island’. This changed later, and the volcano swallowed it and buried it, like the rest of the villages, under tons of lava. Cumbre Vieja is often named as the volcano most likely to cause a pan-European catastrophe – if a large part of the unstable mountain slides into the Atlantic Ocean it will cause a tsunami wave that could well erase Lisbon, coastal towns in Spain and France, and even parts of the British coast. I checked the local newspaper El Diario de Canarias for reports of ghosts, UFOs, and monsters preceding the eruption and quakes, but found that it had carried no news of any such phenomena in the last four years. Kölner StadtAnzeiger, 17+24 Sept 2021.
WEIRD WEATHER
Several tornados hit Germany over the summer of 2021; this itself is nothing unusual, but two were particularly furious. The twister that hit East Frisia in August caused massive damage in the village of Großheide when it completely destroyed more than 50 homes, a museum and a school. At 6pm on 29 September, another tornado hit the city of Kiel on the Baltic coast. The mighty whirlwind destroyed roofs, but also dragged many people off the promenade and into the water. Boaters were levitated from their vessels and fell into the sea. Luckily, no one died, but three people were seriously injured. Morgenpost, 18 Aug; ndr.de, 30 Sept 2021.
Not to be outdone, Russia reported that birds were dropping from the sky in Ust-Tarka in Siberia (geographically well into Asia). Hundreds of dead ravens were found all over a city park. Vet Sergei Kuzlyakin said nothing like it had ever happened before. Tobias Möser from the German Network for Cryptozoology doubted the news – the animals were certainly not ravens, but rooks, which plunder local rubbish dumps and could have been poisoned there. Ornithologist Alexei Yanovsky confirmed that poison is put down at the park to get rid of rats. https:// netzwerk-kryptozoologie.de/kryptozoologischepresseschau-21-2021/
WEIRD NEW YEAR
Europe means diversity – and things are done different in each country, including seasonal celebrations. In Germany, we ring in the New Year with fireworks and alcohol. However, in Italy, women and men traditionally put on red underwear – a custom that Italian shops cater for after Christmas – or throw old crockery out of the window, while in Bulgaria, people will hit you in the back with a club, the Survatchka, to ensure your health and wealth in the coming year. In Greece, families play cards: whoever wins will be lucky all the next year. The Greeks also eat a special cake dedicated to StVassilios (St Basil) that contains a gold coin; whoever gets the piece containing the coin will be especially lucky over the coming 12 months. In the Czech Republic, you cut an apple in two and use the seeds as an oracle, while the Danes stand on chairs and jump into the New Year when the clock strikes 12. In Russia, people note down their wishes on pieces of paper that are burned, and the ashes are consumed with a glass of champagne. In Spain, for each strike of the clock at midnight one grape is eaten, each one accompanied by a secret wish for the New Year. In Turkey, people will throw pomegranates from their balconies. When the fruit explodes and spreads the seeds far and wide, good luck is ensured. Clearly, there are many things you can do to guarantee good fortune for 2022! www.unicum.de/ de/entertainment/studibuzz/silvesterbraeuche; www. berlitz.com/de-de/blog/kurioseneujahrsbraeuche.