Christians. I hate them. Okay, maybe that’s a bit strong, but the guy that rings the bell at church on a Sunday morning? Well, I’d like to have a word with him. I mean, it’s not as if I’m unaware of your opening times - Sunday morning, too early.
There are 3 churches within about 400 yards of my bedroom (’cause that’s where I am first thing on a Sunday morning - with my head under the pillow trying to muffle the sound of the tolling) and they seem to have a bit of a competition going on as to who can start the earliest and carry on the longest.
Whilst shopping yesterday I was approached by a tiny, old, typically Swabian lady. She was complaining / campaigning that the local Islamic centre was going to be extended into a full-blown mosque and would I sign a petition against it? Now normally I enjoy baiting such people - talking politely, nodding understandingly and waiting to see just how long it takes before I can get them to use a phrase along the lines of “and they all have brown skin”. I managed it for about 30 seconds before the thought suddenly struck me: Call to prayers, 5 times a day! And it’s nearer than any of the churches. Heavens!
If they start a campaign to get the mosque and the church bells stopped - they’ve got my signature.
German Phrase For Today: “Kirchenglocken” - Church bells
Song playing as this was published: Luscious Jackson “Alien Lover”
Ha Ha Ha! That is so true! Fortunately my sleep is the kind of sleep that will not be disturbed by church bells early sunday morning! But maybe it’s because I grew up with them and adjusted to it from an early age on.
:)
This time I disagree with you, Inact, I do love bells. When I used to live in Milan, I was never able to sleep longer on Saturdays (and Saturday was the critical day!) because of the intolerable noise caused by some kind of restoration work going on in the neighbour building _one year long_! I wished I had bells instead of that!!!
Misery guts.
Said he who manages to sleep through them. But at least this lot are quite good at staying in time and in tune - when somewhere in Exeter practised on the Tuesday night it invariably sounded as if the ringers had just dislodged a hornets’ nest.
[And now I’m engaged in the traditional Sunday activity of worrying about apostrophe use. Nest of multiple, so it must be right, it just doesn’t look it].
The thing that actually bothers me about the bell-ringing here is that it’s just one note, repeated dolefully over and over again for about 30 minutes. And it’s deep but sharp. Are bells meant to be sharp? Maybe I should ask my local campanologist…..
Yup, I have a local cathedral too, it’s sooo annoying. I can just about deal with it ringing the time every 15 minutes, using some bizarre 6 hour/4 quarters code. But Sundays, just when you need a lie-in, it has 2 other bells, one manic and one depressive which just sort of jangle.
It gets worse. If you visit the Vatican to see the Sistine Chapel, and walk what seems like 2 miles from St Peters, and it happens to be a Sunday, guess what? It’s closed.
Bastards.
It really gets worse if one goes to _any_ museum without getting informed about the opening hours…just google “Sistine Chapel” (or “Cappella Sistina”, my God) and look at the opening hours
(bastardly easy!!!)
30 minutes? Bah. Muslims are faster. We (I include myself only nominally, thanks to the vagaries of birth and geography) only take a few minutes. In all fairness though, I’ve never heard of calls to prayer (the aazaan) being called out in a non-Muslim country.
Or maybe I’m too busy hiding under a pillow or engaging in sodomy. That would explain it.
Sin: Personally, it’s only when engaging in sodomy that I ever managed to get someone to make any noises resembling the aazaan - or arrested by the Italian police for gross public indecency, for that matter…..