The Merry Cemetery! It rhymes!.

January 27, 2007 10:12 PM

In the county of Maramures in Romania is Sapanta or The Merry Cemetery. From 1935 Ioan Patras, carved oak crosses with a scene from a life or death like the death of a young girl or this questionable bit.
posted by arse_hat (12 comments total)

You fuck one sheep ...
posted by Astro Zombie at 10:42 PM on January 27, 2007

Well, he's sitting down on a reversed bucket. IANASB but that does not spell exactly sheep buggery to me.

I think these tombstones are much better than what is customary here. Although not as durable.
Think about it; what scene will be depicted on your tombstone?
posted by jouke at 10:58 PM on January 27, 2007

Think about it; what scene will be depicted on your tombstone?

My body slumped awkwardly over a cluttered desk, faintly lit by the field of blue and yellow on a computer monitor, the word "meh" hovering over my sightless eyes.
posted by maryh at 11:57 PM on January 27, 2007 [1 favorite]

heh
posted by jouke at 11:58 PM on January 27, 2007

Best use of the TurdaToader tag evar.
posted by isopraxis at 12:01 AM on January 28, 2007

Think about it; what scene will be depicted on your tombstone?

Pepperoni?
posted by maxwelton at 12:09 AM on January 28, 2007

I've been there. Like the picture of the young girl run over by a car above, many of the painted graves feature a Dacia 1300, the ubiquitous Romanian version of the Renault 12, which was in still produced there until a few years ago. Another recurring theme was of a man drinking himself to death...
posted by gdav at 2:36 AM on January 28, 2007

Another recurring theme was of a man drinking himself to death...
That's sad. But not as sad as dying in front of the blue&yellow.
posted by jouke at 3:16 AM on January 28, 2007

I've been there too, it struck me as a much nicer way of doing cemetries than the usual sad, stony grayness. Incidentally Maramures is an awesome place, people should go there.
posted by greytape at 4:48 AM on January 28, 2007

mmmm.... pepperoni.

BTW, that sheep is clearly being sheared....and buggered.
posted by BrotherCaine at 4:49 AM on January 28, 2007

The grave that shows the little girl being hit by a taxi was repainted some years ago - the taxi used to have a lisence plate that read "Sibiu" until some tourists visiting from Sibiu complained... Sapanta is nice, but they have become too much of a tourist trap. East of Sighet the villages are a heck of a lot more compelling.
posted by zaelic at 6:40 AM on January 28, 2007

Here's a 2 part interview from November 2004. Part 1 contains a short interview with Dumitru Pop, the folk artist who continues the Merry Cemetery tradition. & part 2 is here.
posted by memexikon at 4:42 PM on January 28, 2007