(Reuters) – A Polish man living in Germany  went about his business for about five years without noticing he had been shot in the head because he was drunk when it happened.

Police in the western city of Bochum said on Tuesday doctors found a .22 caliber bullet in the back of his head after the 35-year-old went to have what he thought was a cyst removed.

Presented with the 5.6mm projectile, the man recalled he had received a blow to the head around midnight at a New Year's party "in 2004 or 2005," but had forgotten about it because he had been "very drunk," a police spokesman said.

"He told us he remembered having a sore head, but that he wasn't really one for going to the doctor," the spokesman said.

The wound later healed around the bullet and it was not until the man decided to have the lump examined due to recurring pains that the discovery was made.

Police said they were not treating the incident as suspicious as the bullet might have got lodged in the man's head when a reveler fired a gun in celebration.

"It may have been a shot fired up in the air which entered his head on the way down," the spokesman said.

The resident of Herne, who has lived in Germany for several years, was expected to be released from hospital later this week after the bullet was removed on Friday, police said.

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Woman buries brother, discovers dead son

(Reuters) – A French woman discovered her 42-year-old son had been buried in the same cemetery where she was attending her brother's funeral, after she had tried to invite him to the ceremony, a newspaper said Friday.

The family were leaving the cemetery near Lille, Wednesday when one of them noticed a temporary wooden gravestone bearing the son's name and date of birth in an area reserved for poor people.

"In two or three seconds, everybody started to scream," the man's father Elie Langlet told La Voix du Nord newspaper. "Josiane (the mother) collapsed. She buries her brother and finds her kid in a grave near him. It's unthinkable," he said.

The local council confirmed the father of one, Olivier, had died on July 5 from natural causes.

Josiane Vermeersch said she had tried to contact her son a few days before to invite him to his uncle's funeral, to no avail, and had thought he was ignoring her after a row.

"Someone hasn't done their job," she told news channel I-Tele. "I demand explanations," Vermeersch said, adding it was unbelievable in a time of modern technology that nobody had attempted to contact the family.

Citing the funeral parlor that buried the man, the newspaper said it was not uncommon for families not to be informed if there is no immediate contact address.

French law stipulates that a burial must take place within six days of a death.