Category Archives: Strange? but True…

The Bells are back!

Travelling Frogs are in France at the moment, and today the ‘cloches volutes’, the flying bells, have come back!

In the local tradition, church bells don’t ring between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Instead they fly to the Vatican to be blessed by the Pope, and come back on Saturday night, loaded with presents (yes, you guessed it, mainly chocolate!) ready to peal joyously on Easter Sunday. And when the bells ring, or when someone calls ‘les cloches sort passees’, that’s the signal for the start of the Easter egg hunt…

Want to escape the crowds?

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Perhaps, like the Travelling Frogs, you are native of a densely populated country. In our case England, which vies with the Netherlands for the title of most densely populated country in Europe. Both have around 415 people per square kilometre*, small in comparison with Singapore (7804 per square kilometre) or Hong Kong (6732) but even so…

So maybe when you travel you like to escape the crowds, in which case maybe the best way is to visit Greenland. The world’s biggest island, not only does it have stunning flora and fauna, an ancient culture, glaciers and hot springs, the midnight sun in the summer and hot springs all year round, but it also boasts the lowest population density in the world. In fact, rounded to the nearest whole number, the number of people per square kilometre amounts to zero. Yes, zero!

*The Dutch are taller, though

It’s National Christmas Jumper Day!

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Welcome to the UK’s National Christmas Jumper Day! For those (many) parts of the world where the term is a mystery – Christmas Jumpers are sweaters that suddenly appear in Britain as the nights start to draw in and thoughts turn to Christmas festivities. Christmas Jumpers pop up everywhere – in schools, in City offices, in shops. Typically knitted in Christmassy colours, reds and greens, and adorned with Christmassy symbols such as reindeer, Santa, jingle bells and the like, there are many variations. Here are some examples (with thanks to our models):

I thought that Christmas jumpers were a uniquely British phenomenon. Until that is, that I saw the news that the World’s Largest Christmas Jumper was recently knitted in Albi, in the South of France. It measures 8 metres by 5, and weighs more than 800 kilos, so I think you’ll agree that it merits its XXL label. 300 members of local knitting clubs took 3850 hours to hand knit it. It has been exhibited in the town, and submitted for inclusion in the Guinness Book of Records. What a shame it’s unlikely to be worn to any Christmas parties. The plan is to take it apart in a few months time, and sell the small squares for charity. (I wonder if someone will pay extra to get Rudolf’s nose?)

What do India, Germany and Google have in common?

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India has recently joined Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Germany in recognising, for official purposes, a third gender.

And so, apparently, does Google. A friend recently set up a gmail account and had to specify whether she was ‘male’, ‘female’ or ‘other’.

What do the US, Liberia and Myanmar have in Common?

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Can you guess?

No, I couldn’t either.

These are the only three countries in the world that do not use the metric system.

So now we know.

Who would have thought that?

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No prizes for guessing that the US is the biggest market for McDonalds. But the second biggest……?

France. Yes, the home of haute cuisine. No disrespect to the Golden Arches, but – well, who would have thought it? Mind you, though, the ‘MacDo’ experience has a distinctly French feel – from the ‘Alpine burger’ with 3 sorts of cheese to the McBaguette (yes, really).