Motivated by "The Way"

[Deleted member 3000]

http://www.ledgertranscript.com/home/30 ... ey-zavgren

 

[dougfitz]

Nice article. Pretty big achievement.

 

[lizlane]

Glad I'm not the only one!

 

[Deleted member 3000]

I was a bit put off by the gypsy plot line in "The Way." I find this research very interesting in illuminating the outsider nature of gypsy life in Europe.

Linguistic history as well as a few limited genetic studies had already suggested the Romani originally hailed from India. To confirm this idea and uncover more details on the migration, Comas and his colleagues used a technique that compares DNA segments from across the whole genome with that of other populations. They used DNA samples from 13 groups of Romani spread across Europe.

"In our study, we do not focus on specific regions of the genome, but on the genome as a whole, which provides us the complete genetic information of the populations under study," he told LiveScience.

The results revealed the modern Romani's ancestors migrated out of northwest India all at one time 1,500 years ago, Comas and his colleagues reported Thursday in the journal Current Biology. Once they arrived in Europe, they spread across the continent from the Balkan region about 900 years ago, Comas said.

Over hundreds of years of history, intermarriage between Romani people and local populations has waxed and waned, Comas said. They have often been discriminated against; during the Holocaust, somewhere between 200,000 and 1.5 million Romani were killed by Hitler's Nazis. After World War II, Romani in communist nations were often targeted for "assimilation," which sometimes meant forced sterilization to lower their birth rate.

 

[David]

I thought it rather honest, if not a little romantic. In Europe, and also the UK (I don't think of us as European) Gypsies are not liked, seriously not liked. In the UK using the term Gypsy is considered to be insulting so they prefer to be named Travellers. There are different types of traveller communities in the UK, the lowest class are called Pykies and are itinerant Irish stock.
The police prefer to have absolutely nothing to do with them and I have yet to hear of any town in Europe that has welcomed a traveller camp on their doorstep - in the UK their camps are associated with vast amounts of rubbish as well as a sudden increase in crime, mainly burglaries.

My own personal experience of the Romany people has been quite wonderful. Some decades ago I was invited by a recorder of old folk songs to visit various families, sites, and pubs in Kent (in southeast England). Once it was made clear, by introduction, that we were guests we were treated with serious politeness. The communities I met consisted of a proud and hard working people, who felt continuously harassed by just about everyone else, but these were not Pikies.
Those insulated and isolated Romany communities carried with them that non-European sense of hospitality, that a guest must be honoured - mind you, I was young then and specifically warned by my friend not to look any woman in the eye!!

 

[Susan hopes]

I don't know if I was motivated ... but the way is definitely a reaffirmation of my dream.
And I would love to meet some Travelers.

 

[Deleted member 3000]

Tulsa, Oklahoma hears about "The Way."

http://www.tulsaworld.com/scene/article ... esou970894

 

[ramonvanderburgt]

The Way is exactly what got me so excited about the Camino. I always love movies that are about people that travel (my alltime favorite is Into The Wild, a must-see!!), and after this one I took some time to research more about the pilgrimage, and over the past 2 years I only got more and more excited! Planning to go real soon!