Blog: What does a Greek urn?
Tuesday 21st June 2011, 11:11AM BST.
Blog: Hello everyone from a very hot Kefalonia, writes Colin Dodd.. Over 30 again today, the holidaymakers love it.
I picked a very unusual piece of information yesterday, and I just had to share it. Only in Greece, my friends.
Apparently, when you die here, you have to be interred within 48 hours if you are being buried in a Greek cemetery.
However, the UK residents, have their own cemetery in Argostoli, the capital, and get up to seven days for burial. And if someone is buried in a Greek cemetery, they have to buy the plot. Ours are free.
BUT – after anytime between three to 10 years, they dig you up, return the bones to any remaining family and re-sell the plot. Should there be any flesh left on the bones they clean them first.
I found it all quite incredible. Thank goodness this only happens if you are in the Greek cemetery.
I really don’t know what to make of it. It may seem totally alien to us, but this is the way it has been for ever in Greece.
On that very strange note I bid you farewell. I need a beer or two.
Happy holidays, best wishes,
Bewildered Colin
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Hi Colin,
Interesting observation.But like much in Greece “It depends”. My paternal great grandparents are buried in a family plot in the church cemetery of the village of Faraklata (just north of Argostoli). They’ve been there since before the 1953 earthquake and were joined in the 80′s by my gran. Because we bought the plot, no chance of them being moved ever — thankfully. Sadly, as in life, in death you get what you pay for. My mom’s Gran is buried just outside Argostoli near the Drepano bridge (just past the British cemetery) Her plot is leased, so at some point we’ll have to pay up or she will be be dug up.
Until very recently, cremation was illegal in Greece – against the teachings of the dominant Greek Orthodox Church — so you had to go to Bulgaria to be turned into ashes.
Regards from London.
Dennis (Dionysi) Marinakis
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