DCML digest, Vol 1 #820 - 18 msgs

Kriton Kyrimis kyrimis at cti.gr
Thu Jan 31 13:28:51 CET 2002


HARRY:

> This makes things even more complicated than conversion to the euro. I just
> realise that a remembrance day in my city of birth (Groningen), celebrates
> August 28, 1672. Groningen converted to Gregorian calendar in about 1710. So
> what are we celebrating every year on August 28? Hm...

I don't know about Holland, but here's an example from Greek history,
where the Gregorian calendar was adopted on March 9, 1924. Our
independence day is on March 25, celebrating the start of the revolution
against the Turks in 1821. The event that is actually celebrated took
place on annunciation day, which means that it was on March 25, using the
Julian calendar, thus making the current celebration 13 days early. As
if this were not enough, the revolution did not really begin on March
25, but two days earlier, with the liberation of the city of Kalamata,
on March 23, something which is often mentioned as a believe-it-or-not
item in the news on March 25!

> You imply that the Balkan is not part of Europe.

No, I'm saying that it's a different part of Europe than the neighborhood
around Germany and France.  You've been in Greece, and you must have
noticed that the place is significanyly different from said countries
than, say, Holland.

> To me, Europe is still more than the European Union. Last week I read
> somewhere that the geographical centre of Europe is near Vilnius in
> Lithuania...

Geographically, Europe is anything west of the Ural mountains. Politically
(i.e., the EU), it is much less, though one day it may encompass more
countries than those situated, geographically, in Europe, e.g., Turkey
(only a small part of which is situated in Europe). Finally, culturally,
Europe can be anything ranging from the entire western world (any culture
whose origins can be traced back to the ancient Greek civilization), to
whatever (geographically) European countries went through the renaissance,
which includes most countries of the EU (but not Greece) and certain
east European countries. For this last classification, I guess Brussels
is a more appropriate center than Vilnius.


DON: (Re: Sarsaparilla)

Finding the name strange, I finally got around to looking it up, and
found that it is a root, the one used in making "root beer", a much more
aromatic soda than coke or pepsi. Is root beer related in any way to the
drink to which you referred? (I don't know about the rest of Europe, but
one of the things that makes you realize that you are not in a different
part of the world is the total lack of root beer, one of the few things
I miss from my stay in the US.)


KNUT:

> Actually this means that there could be almost 48hours difference in age
> between two people buying alcohol legally at the same place! That's
> something like 0,03%! Wow...

It can be an even bigger difference, if you're talking about *buying*
alcohol, as in countries like Greece, there is no restriction regarding
who can buy alcohol, and no restriction, other than common sense, on who
can drink it.  I remember, back when I was five or six, that my parents
would send me to the store to buy beer. They'd even let me have a small
sip when I sat at the table!

	Kriton	(e-mail: kyrimis at cti.gr)
	      	(WWW:    http://dias.cti.gr/~kyrimis)
-----
"You are arrogant, you 're overbearing, and you think you know everything."
"But, I do know everything."
"That makes it even worse."
-----




More information about the DCML mailing list