Word: townes
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...Irish still refer to the holiday as St. Stephen's Day, and they have their own tradition called hunting the wren, in which boys fasten a fake wren to a pole and parade it through town. Also known as Wren Day, the tradition supposedly dates to 1601, to the Battle of Kinsale, in which the Irish tried to sneak up on the English invaders but were betrayed by the song of an overly vocal wren - although this legend's veracity is also highly debated. Years ago, a live wren was hunted and killed for the parade, but modern sentiments deemed...
That's not to say Acenese have truly healed, or that they ever will. Syamsiah, 47, runs a food stall in Calang, a tsunami-annihilated town about 90 miles from Banda Aceh that was rebuilt by the Red Cross. She seemed unfazed by the prospect of another tsunami ("That's God's business. Why should I be afraid?") but is tormented by the loss of many of her relatives, including her parents, when the wave swept over their coastal village. Syamsiah had found only their bones. "It broke my heart," she sobbed. (See pictures of what was lost...
Taxila should be a showcase of that civilization. Today a town about 20 miles northwest of Islamabad, it was a center of Buddhist learning, a must-visit for travelers like Xuanzang seeking Buddhist scripture and wisdom. Formerly part of the Persian Empire, Taxila was one of Alexander's conquests and is today a World Heritage Site. The museum there, started in 1918, is one of Pakistan's finest, with more than 4,000 artifacts from the Gandhara civilization. But no one comes to visit much anymore. Nasir Khan says there have been warnings of a possible attack on the museum...
...placed a slew of nationalistic holidays around Christmas, though their timing is probably a coincidence. On December 24, many North Koreans observe the birthday of Kim Jong Suk - the deceased mother of dictator Kim Jong Il and a revolutionary hero - by making pilgrimages to her birthplace of Hoeryong, a town in the northeast. Three days later, they are given a day off work for Constitution Day. Even New Years' Day is more about revolutionary zeal than ushering in 2010, when thousands of North Koreans will walk in a yearly procession to the Kumsusan Memorial Palace at the northeast outskirts...
...1990s and go through the painful but essential process of breaking from the stranglehold of the nationalist ideologies that led to the wars," says Alvaro de Vasconcelos, director of the Paris-based E.U. Institute for Security Studies (EUISS) think tank. (See pictures of Mitrovica, a northern Kosovar town on the dividing line of Serbian-Albanian tension...