Crambe repetita (18)
… according to a tale from Bulgaria, when God was handing out the different religions the Gypsies wrote theirs down on cabbage leaves, and before long the holy book was a donkey’s dinner. Another weird tale of alimentary blasphemy comes from Romania: The Gypsies built a church of stone and the Romanians built one of bacon and ham. The Gypsies haggled until the Romanians agreed to exchange buildings – and promptly ate their church. The Serbian version has the church made of cheese …
—Isabel Fonseca
(Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey, p. 88f.)
