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Esoterica By Katie Arnold It’s surely no secret that Europeans, enthusiastic practitioners of such dubious activities as snooker and ferret-legging, possess a flair for peculiar sports. But it is in August, when the crêperies close their doors and the cobblers go on holiday, that the oddest of athletes finally emerge. Herewith, three events whose eccentricity, Belgium: La Meuse River Historians seeking an answer to the burning question of why Belgium never became a mighty naval power can perhaps find a clue in the village of Dinant, which every August 15 plays host to 350 Walloons wallowing down the river on a flotilla of bathtubs. To purists, a floating baignoire may possess all the nautical appeal of a porcelain hippopotamus, but to Belgians, these tubs The Netherlands: National The seasonal sporting craze in Holland is Fierljeppen — a bizarre ritual, held on August 22, in which the intrepid Dutch fling themselves into the middle of their nation’s ubiquitous canals on long aluminum poles, shimmy to the top of the poles with the aid of bicycle inner tubes strapped to their feet, and then vault off-hopefully (but not always) landing on the opposite Wales: World Bog In an activity so unpleasant it could only have been conceived in Britain, each year on the last day of the month some 30 or 40 snorkelers plunge into a smelly ditch near the village of Llanwrtyd Wells and embark on a furious downstream dog-paddle. Their aquatic odyssey presents many daunting challenges: the bog’s sludgelike consistency, the disgusting brown prop-wash that the |
Esoterica
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