Saturday 18 May 2019

If You Like Rocket Wars,

this is the place to be,


the village of Vrontados is on the Greek island of Chios, up to 80,000 rockets are lunched from two villages, aimed at each villages church, still it could have been worse, real cannons were used until 1889! to mitigate the damage the churches and surrounding homes reinforce their buildings with metal plates and mesh, also hoses are manned until the war dies down, opps, should I have said womaned? in these PC times I am always making a bit of mess of modern phrases and being un PC, note to self, must not upset the snowflakes, back to the war, every Easter, the town lights up with a war between two churches called Rouketopolemos (rocket war), the congregations of Agios Markos (St. Marks) and Panagia Erithiani assemble their homemade rockets on the night before Orthodox Easter and fire away until after midnight, with the aim of hitting the bell tower of the rival church, the tradition dates back to the occupation of the Ottoman Empire, but no one really knows the origins of the war, and the good news is that there is never a "winner" declared, so the battles can be continued the next year, despite the danger, Rouketopolemos is a tourist draw for Vrontados, the footage above is from the 2019 rocket war, thank goodness the UK health and safety jobsworths are not there!


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