2007-12-12

Њезин живот у иноземству

Could this correspondent's heartwarming satisfaction be related to the fact that she has found a home in London's midl-klas?

Update: In a freakier take on immigration today, what is with stories about swan theft? This is a new one.

Update II: Informed sources tell me that the legend about immigrants roasting the delectable swans of London's parks can be traced to another time and place -- Vienna in the 1950s, when it was launched against Roma from Romania. Apparently it makes its way to be used against people from Slovakia and Poland in London in the 1970s and 1980s, but these days it is a stereotype against Kosovo Albanians. As far as anyone knows, there is no evidence that anybody has ever actually nabbed and cooked a swan, regardless of the nationality of the person or birdie.

9 comments:

Alex said...

A Serb from Croatia talking positively about the West?? And all this in Politika?? Wow...

Is this part of Ljiljana Smajlovic's balancing act against the Antonjic types they feature...?

Anonymous said...

About ten years ago myself (doing a wildfowl count) and another regular at the lake in the local park interrupted a Vietnamese-looking character in the process of forcing a Canada goose to enter his black bin bag.

He pretended to be surprised that anyone might be concerned at what he was doing and released the bird (who seemed unharmed but a little irritated). He and his similarly well-dressed wife and daughter moved away rather smartly towards his car as we tried to explain to him that this was not seemly behaviour for park visitors.

We suspected that his innocence was perhaps not as cast-iron as he would have had us believe. Nor did he seem to be one of the local anti-salmonellosis activists either.

Swans are supposed to be rather more table-worthy than CGs, not that I have experience or would encourage anyone.

Anonymous said...

Not in London, but last year a man in Llandudno seems to have got quite carried away, particularly in the light of the vet's ambiguous autopsy findings (I wouldn't normally believe a word I read in the Daily Mail but their report appeared to be backed by a court verdict and a photograph). http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=418000&in_page_id=1770

Mr Miah doesn't seem to have tried the performance art / gastronomy as political statement defence advanced by Mark McGowan in January this year as he tucked into an expression of his hatred of royalty and the upper classes back in London again. And I haven't heard of any Kosovars trying to emulate Alan Davies.

Eric Gordy said...

A swan is tastier than a goose? I may head off to the park myself.

Catherine said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Catherine said...

I was trying to link to the carp story (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=495199&in_page_id=1770), but Blogger didn't want me to. Maybe it has a vested interest in carp.

Eric Gordy said...

Now, everyone knows that fried carp is better than poached.

Anonymous said...

Eric, I think you just passed the entrance exam.

Katja R. said...

Ha! a guy in the Yakima Gulag was seen by a friend of mine trying to stuff two Canada Geese into his car, he was btw a person of some un-determined North-West European ethnicity. She stopped him, told him it was not cool and called the fuzz. I can not stand the taste of geese or turkeys, they just are not as good to eat as chickens or quail. I don't like ostrich either, like a bad combo of turkey, tuna and beef. Simply dreadful stuff.