Posted on 04/23/2003 11:19:58 AM PDT by Shermy
COPENHAGEN, Denmark - The owner of a Danish pizzeria who refused to serve German and French tourists was charged with discrimination Wednesday.
Aage Bjerre, who owns a pizzeria on Denmark's Fanoe island, was investigated by police after he began refusing to serve tourists from Germany and France in February because of their countries' lack of support for the U.S.-led war in Iraq. He called them "anti-American."
No date for his trial was set, but if found guilty, he could be fined $735, said Esbjerg Deputy Chief Constable Steen Boejlund.
Bjerre was unavailable for comment Wednesday, but in an interview with The Associated Press in February, he chided France and Germany for not supporting the United States.
He displayed two homemade pictograms on the shop door, much like the ones that show the outline of a dog or a cigarette with a bar across it.
One featured the silhouette of a man colored red, yellow and black — the colors of the German flag. The second was painted blue, white and red — the French Tricolor. Both silhouettes had a bar across each man.
The island, 200 miles southwest of the capital, Copenhagen, is a popular spot for visitors from neighboring Germany. Of the approximately 100,000 tourists who come, some 60 percent are German. The others are mostly Scandinavians and Dutch.
There are few French visitors to the island, which has a year-round population of 3,300.
Come on lets pay this guys fine....
Howlin ping your list........lets help the guy out.
He has/had a website, but it's "down." It's cached at Yahoo, and this is his e-mail from the cached site. I don't know if it still works also.
aagespizza@hyggestedet.dk
Count me in for 10.00
The site can also get some publicity out of this deal. there should be a way of getting in touch with this guy. Any freepers in Denmark?
see above
Please change the "p" to an "h"
French and German tourists visiting the remote island of Fanø this springtime could be in for a nasty surprise. Especially if they fancy a pizza. Composed primarily of sand dunes and located just off the Atlantic coast of Southern Jutland, Fanø is a popular destination for nude volley-ballers and other self-catering holiday-makers, many of whom travel up from France or Germany. But restaurant owner Aage Bjerre, who operates the island's leading Italian fast-food emporium, announced on Friday that he has imposed a trade embargo against both these two nations in protest at what he describes as their anti-US stance on Iraq. 'I have to tell you I'm pretty cheesed off,' the normally jovial restaurateur told the single journalist who attended his press conference on the steps of Fanø's Tourist Information Office. 'I've banned the Frogs for life. They're yellow-bellied wankers, and as far as I'm concerned they can starve to death.' Until last week, Bjerre imported the canned pineapple chunks he uses on his no.16 Shrimp Hawaii, in five-gallon canisters duty-free from across the nearby German border. 'From now on I'm going to buy my pineapple at Netto,' the defiant pizzeria owner exclaimed. 'It's going to cost me, but this is about principle, not about money. If the Krauts want my business they are going to have to whistle.''I have to tell you I'm pretty cheesed off,'Initially these sturdy sentiments seemed to pay off. Fanø is a bleak and desolate place in February, and normally there are no German and French tourists around for Bjerre to kick out. On Thursday, his turnover almost doubled when two additional journalists and a photographer from mainland Esbjerg showed up to interview him and take pictures. They stayed for lunch. On Friday, however, the owner of a rival fast-food joint launched a counter-attack, advertising free pizzas - when he opens at Easter - to any hungry French and German tourist ejected by Bjerre. On Sunday hostilities escalated. Local residents who make their living from renting seaside cottages and who apparently feared that news of the embargo may ruin this summer's holiday trade, staged an angry demonstration. During the night a potted plant was lobbed through the plate-glass window of Bjerre's restaurant. Finally, on Monday, after Bjerre defiantly extended his boycott to include Belgians, weirdly named radical politician Simon Emil Ammitzbøll reported him to the police. 'This kind of embargo is illegal,' the youthful Ammitzbøll told reporters. 'Providing customers with a different level of service because of their national origin contravenes discrimination legislation, and simply isn't allowed.'
Last word for the time being from Bjerre: 'Sure I've made enemies. Maybe I will go to jail. But listen, I'm not nobody anymore. Now that I'm world-famous in Denmark, anyone who doesn't agree with me can get stuffed.'
Freeper?
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