Travel Warning to All-Don’t Die In This French Town!

TravelDad — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 14:09:21 +0000

Once I get a rhythm for this blog posts of this nature will be on “Wacky Wedneday.” Just for today, let’s change Family Trip Friday into “Freaky Friday.” I just couldn’t resist.

The DW found this and fell off the chair laughing. DW didn’t get to the end of the story, of course. She’s French and after reading this story I now know where she gets her crazy ideas from. It runs in the blood. As I read the news release, I couldn’t help but wonder, what kind of severe punishment do you give a dead dude?

French village bans death

Thu Mar 6, 3:24 PM ET

The mayor of a French village has issued a decree banning residents from dying in his territory unless they own a spot in the overcrowded cemetery.

“It is forbidden for any person not having a plot in the cemetery … to die on the territory of the village,” the mayor of the southwestern village of Sarpourenx wrote in a decree that warned of “severe punishment” for offenders.

Mayor Gerard Lalanne told AFP he had taken the radical measure to protest against a legal ruling preventing him from enlarging the burial ground in the village of 260 people.

“The first dead person to come along, I’ll send him to the state’s representative,” he said.

Lalane said he had been inspired by the mayor of another French village, Cugnaux, who had also outlawed death as a protest last year and who thus won the right to enlarge the village’s cemetery.

» france

Travel Warning to All-Don’t Die In This French Town!