Customs: The Dead & the Quick

Have a nice trip and all that, but with an estimated 2,000,000 tourists going abroad this year, statistics indicate that some 6,000 may well qualify for what has been termed "horizontal repatriation." When death occurs abroad, the problems for the family are complex. The cheerful note is that no country serves its dead as quickly and as well as the U.S., whose consuls abroad are the envy of Europe in their ability to get the deceased homeward bound with a minimum of delay.

Deep Freeze. "Where a European will consult the concierge, Americans seem to turn naturally to their consuls,"...

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