By
noeleenm on August 10th, 2007
Last night we had a midnight feast…
We didn’t set out to have it, unlike Kasia’s birthday which we celebrated a week after Jan’s, and unlike the dinner we’ve planned for Sunday week for no other reason than it seems like a good idea - and Gail and Jan have been nagging about it.
Since Kasia’s birthday, she’s been to Belgium to visit her parents (her Dad works there and her Mum had gone for a holiday), Jan went home with Leti to receive his Degree, and Gint went home for nine days to Latvia. It was this latter event which serependitiously triggered our midnight feast last night.
Gint arrived home late last Monday night and had to go straight to work on Tuesday morning. By last night he was so tired that he went straight to bed and only woke up at midnight to get something to eat. I had gone to my bedroom around 10pm to work on e-mails for the flood campaign, and came out to check that everything was locked up for the night when I discovered Gint in the kitchen. I had hardly seen him since his holiday so sat down to hear about his travels and, of course, he insisted that we try a bottle of something that was balsamic and herbal and 45% alcohol. I had enough sense – or cowardice – to say ‘no’ to this but instead started grazing my way through the chocolate sweets filled with liqueurs that he had also brought back from his trip.
Then Jan arrived in and joined Gint at the drink – just to be sociable – with the occasional foray into the chocolates – just to be sociable. He was swiftly followed by Kasia, finishing her late shift at the hotel, who spat out the balsamic drink saying it reminded her of medicine her mother used give them when they were small, but was easily tempted by the chocolates.
By then it seemed like an awful pity that Alba had come in and gone to bed before Gint’s emergence from his slumbers so Jan and Gint went up and woke her to come down and join us. She was on antibiotics, she announced, and couldn’t drink, but the chocolates…
At two o’clock in the morning we finally all went back to bed, having decided it was just a little too early for breakfast. I’ve still only the vaguest notion of what Gint did on his holidays, but the bit I heard was interesting enough to make me want to hear more. He visited someplace that was sacred to the Druids, if I got it correctly, and I think it was in the middle of a forest where the birds didn’t sing, and there was something in there about hollows lined with stones, and as soon as I get to sit down with him over a mug of tea I might get it right yet…
It will have to be soon. Kasia’s going home to Poland on Sunday for a few days – where she’ll again see her parents – and Alba is finally getting to go home to Spain for her holiday at the end of September. And on Sunday I spent the evening in my niece’s home in Ashford at a family get-together. They had just returned from a holiday in the Appennines in Italy, and we saw slides of the most fabulous scenery imaginable.
All their stories of their travels are being woven in my head against the background to a wonderful book I read last week, which was set in Nova Scotia and is called ‘The Birth House’, and through the descriptions of Jenni Diski travels in Antartica (and in her head), which I’m totally absorbed in at the moment. These two books – and G. K. Chesterton’s ‘Fr. Brown’ stories, which I was re-reading in the middle – formed another kind of midnight feast for me, this time for my imagination.
Sometimes, though, I think it needs to go on a diet just as much as my body. Does anyone know how you can tell when your imagination has become obese?.
Posted in Books/films/theatre, Czech Republic, House Family, Ireland, Latvia, Poland, Spain, Wine and Some Spirits | Comments Off
By
noeleenm on July 10th, 2007
On Saturday night we celebrated Jan’s 28th birthday with a strange mixture of familiarity and newness. The familiarity comes from the tradition, now quite well established, of celebrating birthdays together in the house – a properly laid table, varied food (from ‘Let’s Eat In’, which delivers excellent Indian, Chinese, Thai or Italian food in our area) and drink, all spiced with talk and laughter… But on Saturday it came also from a feeling of ‘deja vu’, as four of the seven people present had celebrated before together around the same table with the same feeling of contentment.
When Jan brought his Leti to meet us at the beginning of last year, Gint was also living in the house, as well as me. Elke and Michele are now back home in Italy, but Gail, from County Monaghan, almost made it, which would have made us five of that original party together again.
Instead we had Kasia from Poland, and Alba from Spain, with Alba’s Irish boyfriend, Derek, to add in a new flavour to the mix. Spanish vied with English at the table because of the two girls - and Jan who has learned to speak Spanish quite well. At one point, though, it almost caused war as Alba and Leti got deep into nostalgia about the things they miss about Spain.
Staying out late, fiestas, and hot sunshine were all being yearned for causing Alba to give a great sigh and say that she would have to go back soon. Derek innocently said that he would enjoy it, and almost fell off his chair when Alba rounded on him to say: ‘No-o-o! You’re not coming!’ Seeing all of our faces she went on to try to explain, backed up by Leti, that she didn’t mean she didn’t want him in Spain – just that she needed badly to go back and just talk Spanish all day long (Derek doesn’t speak Spanish) with family and friends. The spicy food was needed for quite a while to heat up the atmosphere again at that end of the table, but Derek – a good-tempered lad – got over it quickly, to his credit.
It underlined, though, the difficulties a couple from different cultures, and especially with different languages, can experience. Something – even a tone of voice – that is quite normal in one culture can be seen as very offensive in another. Add to that the likelihood of misunderstandings when one, at least, is speaking in a foreign language, and it’s a minefield. What surprises me most, I think, is that so many couples survive it so well!
The birthday boy and his girlfriend were doing very well, at least, despite both speaking English most of the time, although Jan is studying Spanish as well and Leti is intending to learn Czech. The expressions on their faces, though, when Leti presented Jan with his birthday gift – a red tie to go with the red dress Leti will wear at Jan’s graduation ceremony in the Czech Republic later this month – didn’t need translation.
Earlier that day, Jan and myself had talked of birthdays. He was born at around 11am, he said, and looking at his serious, thoughtful face, I realised how important this day is to him. He feels about birthdays as I do: it’s your own very special day, a celebration of the person that is uniquely you. Oddly enough, I had been reading a novel that centred on an astrologist being murdered (and, no, she hadn’t given someone a bad reading…), and obviously the whole thing of star signs provided a background to the story.
Apparently, it’s not only important to astrologists which star sign you were born under, but also which star was in the ascendant (if I remember correctly). To work this out, they need to know the time of your birth, as well as the date.
Strangely enough, the information this provides seems to be used by the astrologer to predict what kind of person you will turn out to be, more so than what your future will be. Perhaps those two things are so intertwined that you can tell a lot about someone’s future once you know what kind of person they will be? You may not know what fate life will deal them, but you know how they will be likely to react to – or even change – that fate.
Now someone who knows about astrology (and I don’t, as must be blatantly obvious) might tear their hair out at my interpretation of what I picked up from this novel. Maybe I just picked up this bit about the date and time of your birth influencing the kind of person you are – and not the rest, if it was there – because it’s what makes us the kind of people we are that really fascinates me.
Are we really influenced by the date and time of our birth – and the stars above us then? And how much of who we are comes from our genes, from the people who went before us, and how much from the people and the ways among whom we grow up? How much influence do traumatic events have on our lives – even those we block out of our conscious minds?
I was fascinated by the Enneagram when I first came across it. For those who aren’t familiar with it, it’s a system whereby people are divided into nine broad personality types, depicted in the form of a nine-pointed star, with each point representing a number. Each of these personality types is heavily influenced by one or other of the points next to it, known as their ‘wings’. I’ve never been quite sure whether I’m a number Four, with a strong Five influence, or a number Seven.
Four is the dreamer, and Five is the academic that likes to live in an ivory tower and observe life. Sometimes the numbers are depicted as countries and Seven, the other number in which I see much of myself, is sometimes depicted as Ireland – with our tendency to overindulge in drink, food, talk – and to avoid confrontation with unpleasantness.
I have found the Enneagram to be extraordinarily accurate in character description. It is believed it was first used by Sufi priests and later by the Jesuits, to identify personality types and thus encourage them to fight their dark side, and encourage them towards developing towards the light.
But it talks about the kind of people we are – not what made us that way, which is what fascinated me about theories of being influenced by the stars at the time of our birth.
Beliefs are such strange things. At Jan’s birthday dinner, Kasia (who is a devout Polish Catholic) announced that she and I were both going to the Irish Mass the following day, and invited anyone who liked to come along. Nobody accepted the invitation but it sparked a discussion about belief – or lack of it – in God, and belief – or lack of it – in organised religion.
The strange thing is that so many young people seem to find it incredible that anyone can believe in a God of Goodness (Derek seemed to have particular problems with this because of the state of the world) and, worse again, in a church – or churches – founded on the teachings of a Man who proclaimed himself to be the Son of that God. Yet they can believe in Matrix-like scenarios or horoscopes or a thousand other things that seem to me twice as unlikely as a Being who is the essence of Good.
I also believe in a Being who is the essence of Evil. I just don’t believe he capers around with horns and cloven foot… And I believe that one has to choose between those two extremes. I also believe that the saying: ‘The easiest way for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing’ is a challenge. We have to choose. And we have to do make that choice count for something.
I looked around the dinner table that night and thought about the different personalities in these increasingly dear people who come to our house. And what had made them that way…
…And I prayed that my God of Goodness will walk with them all through their lives, whatever name they may choose to give Him.
Posted in Czech Republic, House Family, Ireland, Latvia, Poland, Spain | No Comments »
By
noeleenm on June 15th, 2007
The Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults training course is over, the General Elections are over, the appointment of a new Government is over – even the good weather is over, at least temporarily.
It’s a soft grey day today, and it feels like the beginning of a weekend in November, rather than the middle of June.
Since my last April post right up to General Election day in Ireland (which also happened to be the final night of our CELTA course), I was so busy that stories of a changing Ireland just got squeezed out of my schedule. Then, in the immediate aftermath of the Elections/course, I went on an ‘after-school’ binge of being out of doors in the sunshine and air I’d missed so much in the previous weeks.
I’ve climbed Bray Head in the evening, absorbing air, beauty, and bird-song in a heart-gladdening mixture, and gardened at the weekends, with dollops of talk and laughter and catching-up with house-family and family of origin and friends in between. That the end of all this busy-ness coincided with the return to our house of a beloved ’son’ – Jan from the Czech Republic – added to the contentment.
Our ‘family’ seems to be going through one of those patches where it gathers other people up as well – Alba’s parents from Spain, briefly, and her Irish boyfriend, more long-term; Kasia’s friends from Poland, also briefly; now Jan’s girlfriend, Letti, who has come to stay in Ireland (not in our house, but hopefully nearby) for a few months; while Gint, our longest resident, has been increasingly busy in his new career laying timber floors.
For me these past few weeks have been a quiet ‘honeymoon’ period in a very busy life, but already things are moving again. I was lucky enough to do well in the CELTA course, and luckier again to be offered two nights a week teaching English in International House, where I did the course. It started last Monday, and it’s nervewracking, stimulating, and fun!
With the election of a new Government, and the appointment of new Ministers, it’s time again to pick up the battle to keep our floodplain free of high density building. With the Green Party going into coalition with Fianna Fail, and a Green Minister for the Environment, we need to make the most of these few weeks before the Government goes into its summer recess.
…Especially as the otherwise excellent flood defence proposals being put forward seem to suggest that, with these in place, there is no need for the floodplain to be preserved… With the news of drought and flood from Australia over this past week, and the extreme flooding much nearer to home in Donegal in the past few days, it’s hard to believe that anyone can seriously moot this argument any longer – but they do.
So, on with the warpaint again and out with the English language text books, but in between there will be some time for working in the garden, walking in the hills, and coming home to Gint, Kasia, Alba, and Jan in this changing Ireland of ours…
Posted in Czech Republic, Flooding, Friends, House Family, Ireland, Latvia, McManus Family, Poland, Spain | No Comments »
By
noeleenm on March 30th, 2007
The days are falling in so fast around me this month, albeit longer, brighter days since the hour changed, that I hardly know where to begin…
Most of my waking hours are taken up with the CELTA (Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults) course, with occasional prolonged bursts of anxiety and activity about the flood campaign, which is recorded on http://www.braywatch.com/. Even more occasional bursts of activity – I’ve no anxiety to spare regarding this – centre on the more mundane business of living, such as shopping, cooking (as in throwing together sandwiches, much of the time), getting Fred through his NCT, organising house and garden maintenance, paying bills, and working to pay those bills. And sometimes I even get to talk with my family and friends by phone or text, and sometimes, blessedly, I get to sit down with the people with whom I share my home…
It tends to happen quite late at night, when I don’t have to rush anywhere else, and I’m too tired to even go to bed, or on Sundays when I’ve the whole day off both work and course. So, sporadically, I’ve gotten to know the new members of our house family.
Kasia is very slim, with a narrow bone structure, and the complexion of an Irish cailin, which is particularly noticable as she colours her hair red. A guest who came to reception in the hotel where she works the other day announced happily: ‘Well, you’re Irish anyway!’, and was quite surprised when Kasia explained placidly that in fact she’s Polish. She comes from a traditional Catholic Polish background, and talks with quiet pride of the influence the late Pope John Paul II had on the emergence of freedom in their mutually beloved country.
Not so surprisingly then, she went to Mass the first Sunday she spent in our house, but got confused, as she recounted later, when the lay Ministers of the Eucharist were invited up to the altar just after the Consecration, the most sacred part of the Mass. It was the family Mass, where the small children listen to the Bible readings in the side chapel in simple story form, while the adults listen to the traditional words of Epistles and Gospel. The children are then invited out onto the altar, with their ‘minders’, for the Offertory and Consecration, and the Ministers for the Eucharist join them in time to recite the Our Father altogether.
From Kasia’s point of view, what she saw was children going out onto the altar, and, later, the adults joining them. She was up there, too, when she realised that a lot of adults still seemed to be sitting in the congregation… Murmuring apologies, she sidled down off the altar and back to her seat, with a face to match her Irish hair.
She told me all of this, as I cried with laughter, when she asked if I thought it would be okay if she went to one of the other Christian churches the following Sunday? I thought at first that she was too embarrassed to go back to the Catholic church, but she explained that it was simply that in her town they only have Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches and she was fascinated by the churches, mainly of the Protestant faith, that she has seen in Bray. I assured her they would make her very welcome, and tried to give her a potted version of the differences in ritual between the Church of Ireland, Presbyterian, Methodist, and Catholic churches (with Quakers, who don’t have a public place of worship in Bray) thrown in for good measure.
No mishaps occurred on her next visit to church, but she seemed to miss the familiarity of our form of worship, so I think it’s possible that she’ll return to Mass – with a strong grip on her seat.
Kasia has a quiet, dead-pan sense of humour that is very funny, but Alba - the other new member of our house family – comes into the house like a gale of fresh air, hugging and kissing and regaling us all with her tales of the day, good and bad.
From Valencia, Alba has the dark skin and hair, and the tempestuous temperament, we associate with southern Spain. Everyone who crosses her is the villian in the melodrama of her life (as is everyone who makes war or causes the innocent or powerless to suffer, which I like very much about her), and everyone who treats her with the enthusiasm she showers out on the world is just short of being her very best friend. She even out-dramatises Gint, who watches her with laughter, and happily alternates between playing her leading man and the moustachioed villian of the piece!
In the past week though, Alba has put a cunning plot in place in our house. She announced on several occasions that she has put on too much weight since she has come to Ireland because of the amount of bread we eat here, particularly. As Alba is tall, this weight is negligible, if it exists at all, but her beating of her bare, navel-pierced midriff as she announced it had Gint’s eyes out on stalks. So she has gone on a strict diet, and has joined a gym, where her personal trainer is dark, good-looking and worth perspiring over anyway, she informs us.
But – because Alba has a thing about wasting food in a world where many people starve – she insists on bringing home bread and cake that would otherwise go in the bin of the shop where she works. And, as she’s on a diet, we all eat it.
Now, I can hardly get off the chair after a meal, especially since I’m not getting time to walk these days. Gint at least is exercising, and nothing seems to make Kasia fat.
I was amused to notice, too, that Alba has stuck her diet sheet to the fridge using fridge magnets already there. One, broken, announces the House Rules and originally said:-
‘If it’s dirty, clean it,
If it’s dropped, pick it up,
If it’s broken, fix it,
If it’s hungry, feed it,
If it’s sad, love it.’
Having come into close contact with the kitchen floor tiles at some stage, this magnet broke across the middle, and Alba separated the two pieces to catch each corner of her diet sheet. It’s broken right across the middle of the second last line.
Somehow I have to find a way of resisting Alba’s combination of idealism and single-mindedness regarding diets. If I didn’t have a strong feeling that he’d remind me of one of my grand-nephews, I’d even think of having a look at her personal trainer…
Posted in Flooding, House Family, Ireland, Latvia, Poland, Spain | 1 Comment »
By
noeleenm on March 14th, 2007
Last night we had our first teaching practice at our CELTA (Certificate in English Language Teaching), and all six of us in our group were pretty nervous beforehand – albeit the ‘teaching’ this first time was only to conduct some introductory activities. We were also working in pairs, and our ‘teaching’ was unassessed. From tomorrow on, we will be teaching individually, and Devon, our tutor, will be taking notes at the back of the class, as well as our fellow trainee teachers observing.
First times are always a bit nerve-wracking, though, even with Devon taking the same students for an hour beforehand, while we sat in a row at the back and observed a Mistress at work. She used the subject of ‘Favourite Teachers’ for a lesson on gist listening, as well as enabling the students to use new vocabulary to talk about the topic themselves.
She also used the names of the eight students a lot, who came from Spain, Italy, Hungary, Brazil, and China - so we got to match backs-of-heads to names, and prayed we’d be able to still name them when we were facing each other!
We were, as it turned out, as the activities were all based around getting to know each other. The students had obviously all been primed to be nice to us poor trainees, and co-operated with great good humour as we all tried very hard to look as if we knew exactly what we were doing!
In the long run, the biggest surprise of the night probably went to Devon herself. About half-way through her class, I idly turned over the Observation page we were each asked to fill in. It was also printed on the reverse. I nudged Clare, beside me, frantically and hissed: “Are we supposed to be filling in this side as well?!” She turned a pale shade of green, and the nudging and hissing moved all along our row as we realised that there were several other pages behind, and we weren’t sure how many we were supposed to fill in.
Devon turned to glance over her students a few moments later, and stopped, startled, as she realised that all the students were heads down, busily working, but the entire row of trainee teachers were sitting with their hands up begging permission to ask a question!
We didn’t need to fill in anything except the front of the top page, it turned out, but I did think Devon glanced beyond her students again when she was pre-teaching vocabulary for the listening lesson. One of the words on her list was ‘imbecile’…
Posted in Brazil, China, House Family, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Spain | No Comments »
By
noeleenm on March 12th, 2007
Okay, I got one post up already today, and the discipline of getting it up quickly is probably very good for my habit of writing long, long posts…
Now, though, I’m going to try to put up a hotch-potch of news because so many things are happening at the moment in my life that I’m dizzy.
Our house is full again, with the warmth and noise and life that brings. Kasia from Poland (whose surname I can’t remember but she says the English translation of her first and family names are Kate Fox) and Alba from Valencia in Spain both moved in yesterday. Despite the fact that we’ve had a couple of weeks with those two rooms empty, I still found myself dragging my friend, Thomas, across to bleed the radiators before they came, and frantically putting back together the freshly defrosted fridges. When will I ever learn to be organised…?
Gint has decided to stay on, despite van parking problems, having kept me entertained with stories of his search for a new house. There’s the ‘cat man’, the ‘don’t open that wardrobe!’ house, the ‘bed-is-high-above-the-window-and-it-makes-me-feel-like-a-prisoner’ (which I don’t follow at all) house, and he has developed several routines around them. I hope he will be as good at laying timber floors as he is at acting…
The flood campaign has suddenly become active again, despite the fact that we’re still waiting for a decision from the Oral Hearing by the Planning Board into our objections to building massive high rise apartments and shops and restaurants and even an hotel on the floodplain downriver from our homes.
Flood defence proposals, which we have been promised for twenty years now, are back on the agenda for the meeting of Bray Town Council which takes place tomorrow night. We desperately need this protection (the Dargle River was very, very high several times over the past few weeks, causing a lot of anxiety in our community), but the problem with the present proposals is that they’re being tied in with the granting of permission to build on the floodplain.
We’ve asked to see the proposals, and have a chance to discuss them with our community, before Bray Town Council votes on whether or not to approve them. Let’s see what happens to our request…
In the middle of all of this, my new car, Freddie, went for his NCT (National Car Test). I’d had him serviced, got his emissions and lights checked out, and even had his engine hosed down so that he’d be clean and ready for the Big Day. The garage, at the last moment, pointed out that his registration plates were a little faded, and so I ended up, on the morning of his test, bringing him to the garage again to have new plates fitted. Then I checked he had a clean hanky, had washed properly behind his ears, and set off for the Test Centre.
I was in the middle of studying my notes for the TEFL class while Freddie was being tested when I heard a couple of women who were watching the cars being tested from the viewing area remarking on ‘that car that seems to have water coming out of it’. I looked up to see them pointing at Freddie, who now had two mechanics under him, pointing torches up at his innards. Then one of the mechanics, seeing me looking out the window, came over to the viewing area, invited me to come out and supplied me with a hard hat, and showed me oil haemorraging out of Freddie’s innards…
They wouldn’t even let me drive him home until he had First Aid to stop him ‘bleeding’ all over the road. Apparently, the hosing down was a little too thorough and knocked a piece of rust off Freddie’s sump. He’s now repaired, getting ready to do his re-test – but this time he can go with no hanky and I’m damned if I’m checking behind his ears.
The funny thing is our tutors at the TEFL course keep telling us that we mustn’t have any other projects going on in our lives at the same time as this course, as it’s too intense… I arrive at classes glassy eyed with all that’s gone before, but the good thing is the course is so interesting that it takes my mind off the horrors waiting outside.
And it’s nice to have the house full again.
Posted in Ireland, Poland, Spain | No Comments »
By
noeleenm on March 1st, 2007
The above message was written – in English – on the rooftop of a house in which people were apparently squatting in Barcelona, just beneath the summit of Parc Guell. If you’re going to protest, do it in the most public place you can find, and do it with wit and humour!
Despite being one of those tourists, I found myself sympathising with the message because Barcelona is full to capacity with tourists, especially along La Rambla in the old part of the city – even in winter, and even mid-week, and right through the day and night.
It’s little wonder because it’s an amazing city. Architecturally, it’s stunning, and compact enough to emphasise its diverse styles, from the elegant simplicity of La Iglesia de Santa Maria del Mar (Catalan Gothic) to Gaudi and his contemporaries exhuberant designs: they make Disney and Spielberg look as if they’re suffering from a severe lack of imagination.
Barcelona is strongly Catalan, the language being spoken constantly in the streets, yet it’s a very multi-cultural city, reminding me of Galway in Ireland, on a much larger scale. Partly that’s because of the ubiquituous tourists, but it’s also the fact that so many of those tourists simply never leave again. That says a lot about a city, and about the innate hospitality and courtesy of the people who have always lived there.
I found the fact that everything was written in Catalan first – street names, shop notices, menus, etc. – often repeated in Spanish, but not always, quite confusing at the beginning. Some of the words were close enough to Spanish to guess their meaning, but if your Spanish is rusty that can make you think you’ve just got the word wrong! Once I settled into a Spanish speaking rhythm, though, I was charmed to find that not only were people quite prepared to switch instantly to Spanish to accommodate me, but they used the familiar form instantly. Having learned Spanish in a family setting, with six children around me, I ‘tutear’ everybody and keep having to correct myself when I’m talking to an adult stranger. Having people address me instantly as ‘tu’ made me feel very much at home.
Another thing that I loved about Barcelona was the omnipresence of street entertainment, particularly of music. In the five days I spent there I listened to the trumpet being played (very well) in the street; accordeons; guitar playing of both the rock variety (a Rastiferian guy who had the crowd singing and chanting along with him as he sang and played songs like ‘Sorry’) and, naturally, classic Spanish guitar; an opera singer (who hammed it up to the crowd, but used the acoustics of a narrow street to excellent effect with a magnificent voice); keyboards and xylophone; and a guy who played what he called a ‘Hang’, which looked for all the world like a Wok with a lid but without any handle, and which he played like a drum.
There were dancers – again, classical, but also Catalan folk dancing in front of the Cathedral on Sunday, accompanied by the local brass band who played on the steps. The Catalan dancing was one of the few local happenings that failed utterly to move me, I’m afraid, mostly because they seemed to move so very little themselves. Huge circles of dancers formed, most of the women wearing white ballet type shoes, but the dancers seemed to simply cross their feet in time to the music, occasionally raising their joined hands. Probably an expert Catalan dancer would have a heart attack at this description of their dancing, but, used as I am to the excitement of Irish dancing – no matter how inexpertly carried out – I was disappointed with it.
It was about the only thing I was disappointed about in this lovely Catalan city, though. I hate shopping, but even I was impressed by the streets full of shops of really beautiful and imaginative products, and the variety of markets and market stalls around the older part of the city. The Rambla itself, a long promenade stretching from the Placa Catalunya right down to the port, is lined by mainly flower shops – and street entertainers. It’s a colourful, bustling, warm city.
…And, in a radius of about ten minutes walk from where I was staying, just off the Rambla, the Lonely Planet guide to Barcelona listed no less than seven vegetarian restaurants… Heaven!
Mind you, two of the first three I tried had disappeared (printed publications go out of date so quickly!), I was directed to another not listed in that guide – the Unicorn, which has entertainment on Friday and Saturday nights (I found it on Sunday!) - and the three other listed restaurants that I managed to visit were excellent also. Of all of them, the BioCenter was definitely my favourite. The food was varied, and simply mouth watering, and the service was friendly and excellent.
If they shot tourists in season in Barcelona, at least I’d die happy…
Posted in Ireland, Spain | No Comments »
By
noeleenm on February 22nd, 2007
I’m going to Barcelona for five days… I’m saying this quickly, in case my blog suddenly disappears again, as it has been ‘down’ more often than it has been ‘up’ during this past week. I’m ready to slay my hosts – siteground.com.
My excuse for the trip to Barcelona, so soon after a holiday in France, is that I’m going to meet Peter Vahle, a teacher, and a teacher of teachers, of English as a foreign language. He was a colleague of Frederic, who now works in marketing and is a colleague of mine, and he’s going to share some of his wisdom about the world of teaching English abroad.
I want to go to either France or Spain this autumn to teach English for the academic year, because I have very itchy feet again. The first step in achieving that goal has been put in place because I’ve enrolled in International House Dublin for their CELTA course, which starts 6th March. ‘Second step is meeting with Peter Vahle, and, having discovered from the http://www.oxfordtefl.com/tefl_cert/cert_tutors.htm web site that he likes “playing music with his band in the clubs of Barcelona”, I’m looking forward to meeting him even more!
As it’s my first trip to this reputedly very beautiful city, I bought the Lonely Planet guide to Barcelona, and I’ve just been drooling over – no, not its architecture, but its vegetarian restaurants.
Veggie restaurants, wine, an exciting city to be seen – and, maybe, music. Aaah, life is good!
…Other than a collapsing web site…
Now, before the site disappears again, I’m going to post this before I post myself off to Barcelona. ‘Back in five days… Let’s hope this site is, too.
Posted in Ireland, Spain | 9 Comments »
By
noeleenm on January 4th, 2007
Christmas was fun – but busy!
The first chance I got to write anything was a ‘thank you’ letter to a friend, which I wrote at what seemed to me like dawn, but was in reality near nine o’clock, on the day before New Year’s Eve. I was up early to say goodbye to Renata and Pavel who were returning to the Czech Republic. It’s always hard to say goodbye, but I consoled myself with the fact that, for Pavel, this is his second time to stay in my house. The world is getting smaller…
It still seemed strange, though, when the house had been so packed for so long, to sit in quietness.
We (Renata, Pavel, Maria, and myself) cooked for seven on the 23rd December, with Gint laying the table, opening bottles of wine, and muttering over the washing up afterwards. Wojtek was excused from duty as he had to go to work immediately after the meal and was allowed to sleep till then – until we discovered we were unaccountably short of dishes and he went scuttling up to his den (politely referred to as his bedroom), to emerge carrying a precarious load of dirty dishes! He has earned the nickname ‘Bear’ because of his ability to hibernate, a useful skill if you work nights and study during the day, but sometimes the area around his bed is only just short of gnawed bones and a pot of honey…
Renata and Pavel had hunted fish (thank God they don’t have Wojtek’s hoarding habits) in our local Saturday street market, but couldn’t locate carp, the traditional fish dish for much of Eastern Europe. Instead, they were advised to use salmon and brown trout. Apparently, it was delicious – once they had finally given up on the white wine sauce which was supposed to accompany it. The sauce had been chosen from one of my cookery books and the recipe in English, with its very different vocabulary, proved a little too much in the long run. But Gint ate it anyway…
The traditional accompaniment of potato salad, which Renata and Pavel had worked on all day, had ‘eating and drinking’ in it, as we say in Ireland, and more than made up for the disappointing sauce for our Czechs, Polish and Latvian fish eaters. Maria is allergic to potatoes, so she had plain basmati rice with her fish, while I turned my rice dish into a mushroom risotto. We all shared a big green salad, with a very nice vinaigrette sauce (prepared by Maria) - and we all shared white wine!
This decidedly unIrish main course was followed by a very Irish Christmas pudding, made in County Wexford, and custard. I find a lot of visitors to our country have never met custard before (it’s rather like caramel, but usually served hot), and it met with mixed reactions. Renata, for instance, is convinced that every sweet food is sweeter in Ireland, sometimes too much so, but everyone liked the pudding – except Maria, whom I had completely forgotten is allergic to nuts also. Luckily, she tasted them at her first tentative (she has learned to be tentative about food) mouthful, and stopped before any damage was done.
We exchanged our Chriskindel gifts, ranging from scratch cards (which, if you scratch off three matching numbers, wins you the amount named) through calendars and DVD racks to a beer glass that twinkles with different coloured lights everytime it is raised! Now, far be it from me to name a Chriskindel, but the person who was responsible for choosing these twinkling coloured lights on the beer glass is the same person who was shocked to discover we use coloured lights - as opposed to simply white – on our Christmas tree! And she was relieved to find that, at least, our Christmas tree lights don’t twinkle…
Poor Wojtek had to go to work then, but the rest of us finished the night lounging about the fireplace, talking, drinking wine, and building dreams in the embers. We were joined at some point by Gail, who had been Christmas shopping in Dublin till all hours!
Maria set off early the next morning for Germany and her family and friends there, but the simple meal planned for that night for the rest of us meant we could rest a little before I set off for an afternoon tea party in my nephew, Stephen’s house, with 22 of my sister’s children and their families! Mary’s husband, Noel, celebrated his 73rd birthday on Christmas Eve, while his grandson, also Noel, celebrated his 14th birthday. Stephen and Marie, his wife, have established a tradition each year of celebrating both events early enough to leave time for all the little ones to be back home safely in bed in time for Santa’s visit later that night. It’s always a warm, talkative occasion for all of us, apart from the delicious meal.
From Stephen’s, I went to the 8pm vigil Mass for Christmas Day, which was very beautiful. Tall Christmas trees (with white lights!) form a background to the altar, the choir sang sweetly, and our old traditional Crib, that I have known since I was a child, gathers crowds around after Mass. I missed Elke and Michele, though, who accompanied me last year.
At 10pm we finally sat down at home and eat a very untraditional meal – for either Ireland or Eastern Europe – of pasta in a blue cheese and brocolli and walnut sauce. But it was delicious, and we could all eat it. We followed it happily with mince pies and ice-cream, and Renata placed the Baby Jesus in the crib, before we all crept over to the fire to dream some more…
Wojtek had a wonderful Christmas Eve also, he reported later, with four Polish couples sharing a traditional meal – and gifts – far from home. He was better off far from home the next morning, as many (between 20 and 30) of my extended family call then for our traditional Christmas drinks and exchange of gifts, causing quite a din when we’re all together.
A quick escape down then to my sister’s house in Wicklow town for an Irish Christmas dinner, with vegetarian fillets substituting for meat on my plate, Brussels sprouts and carrots and potatoes and delicious sauces, followed by homemade Christmas pudding with cream and brandy sauce. We opened our gifts, poking happily into each others presents as well as our own, before setting off for my niece, Sally-Ann’s, house in Ashford, and yet another Christmas tea, with Christmas cake and every other sweet thing featuring on the table.
Around the table, and in the living room, young Martin and his little foster sister, Saoirse, featured. Martin is ten now, while Saoirse celebrated her first birthday earlier in December, and they are crazy about each other – with good reason. Saoirse played to the gallery all night, and we were happy to be her audience, while Martin offered learned discourses on the space ship he was building, in between giving and returning hugs and kisses to his little sister.
I stayed overnight in Mary and Noel’s house, returning to our own house to spend time with the resurrected Gint (Renata and Pavel had gone to Belfast and were staying over there) before going to Bernadette’s (another of my sister, Mary’s, daughters) for yet another ginormous family reunion. On Stephen’s night, all 22 of that family have a very festive Christmas tea in Bernadette’s and the Chriskindels brings big gifts for the little ones. Mary does Mother Clause and it’s a great night for the small children – and for the adults.
The rest of Christmas passed in a blur of eating and drinking and talking and lounging about – with friends, with family, and with my diminishing house family.
Gint set off for Italy, to visit Michele, on the 28th, Wojtek made occasional guest appearances in the house in between parties, and Renata and Pavel and myself kept up our tradition of eating anything but traditional Irish food by visiting an Italian restaurant – Il Palazzo – in Bray for their last night here, on the 29th.
On the 30th, I went to lunch in another of my nieces’ homes – this time the daughter of my other sister, Sally, who died fifteen years ago, and whom I still miss. Luckily, many of her qualities, and mannerisms, are still to be found in her two daughters – Edel, in whose home we were eating, and Trish, who came to lunch also with her two children, Shauna and Darragh. Edel’s little girl, Hannah, was six on New Year’s Day, so we were starting her celebrations as well as catching up on each other’s news.
I thought on New Year’s Eve I was going to spend the evening alone as one of the very bad storms we’d experienced over the Christmas built up throughout the day. Normally, my generation of our family come to our house on that night to share a meal and talk of family news and memories right through midnight. This year my brother, Pat, and his wife, Judy, weren’t coming because Pat still doesn’t feel up to going out late since he had a mild stroke last Christmas. My sister, Mary, and Noel, came from Wicklow though, picking up our sister-in-law, Angela, on the way. Our other sister-in-law, Marie, came on foot as she lives nearby, and Mary and Noel left her home afterwards. As both Mary and Marie had the remains of bad colds, the laughter that seemed to go on all night caused bouts of coughing that made the house sound like a hospital ward!Â
Pat phoned his good wishes through though during the evening, as did many of the family, with members of my ‘house family’ texting in their good wishes, like Grant from South Africa and Daniel from Spain, who is now living in London. Earlier in the Christmas I’d had e-mails and texts from other young people who have lived here. Nayra, who transformed a photo of me on the back of her Dad’s motorbike last year in their home in Fuerteventura by adding a Santa hat to each of us (I’ll post the photo next time I get to write a post, but more of that anon…), Lucia whose poetry has won prizes and who is now about to publish her first book of poetry, Roberto who became a Dad to Itxasa last September, and Jan, who has just discovered he is about to become a father also…
The coming of babies is appropriate, and joyful, news for Christmas – but the quietness of Bethleham was something I just didn’t get time to experience this year. That’s why tomorrow morning I’m setting off for France for an initially companionable and probably hilarious weekend with five friends as we celebrate my 60th birthday in Carcassonne, but followed by a further week in the little Mediterannean village of Collioure by myself, where I’ll explore, rest, listen to music, be quiet, and build up my energy again for another year.
When I get back I intend to post photos of our Christmas in Ireland, and of France. Meanwhile, I wish for all of us – all of the people who have lived in this house and all of their families, including new babies, as well as all of the people who read about this house – a blessed and peaceful New Year.
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By
noeleenm on February 1st, 2006
Now it’s not just the younger members of my family of origin with whom I try to share - and create new - traditions at Christmas. When I first started sharing the house with my young foreign ‘family’, I worried that Christmas would create problems. I didn’t want to break the traditions built up in our own family, but I wanted any of these young people who stayed here during that time to feel part of a home at Christmas, too - not just an ‘add-on’. It has resolved itself in a very simple, practical way.
In continental Europe, as distinct from the European Union of which Ireland is a part, Christmas dinner is celebrated on Christmas Eve, the 24th December, whereas in Ireland it is celebrated on Christmas Day, the 25th December. So now I eat Christmas dinner with my ‘house family’ on Christmas Eve night, usually after Mass, with full pomp and ceremony and as many traditions from each of our cultures as we can manage to fit in, including the typical dishes. Then any of the family who wish to keep up the Christmas morning visit tradition, drop in on Christmas morning, and any or all of the ‘house family’ are welcome to join us. (They are usually sleeping off our Christmas dinner, though!) Then I eat Christmas dinner again with my eldest sister’s family on the afternoon of Christmas Day, leaving my house family to eat what they want themselves after the night before. Two very full Christmas dinners don’t do much for my waistline, but they sure are enjoyable!
The rest of the Christmas holiday â- officially till 2nd January, but in our case till at least 7th January - is spent between family visits outside the house, and long leisurely meals here at home with the house family.
This year was particularly good, starting with a week’s visit to Fuerteventura in mid-December, where Nayra and Lucia, who lived here for almost a year in 2003, both live now. Nayra is from Fuerteventura, and herself and her family have continuously pressed invitations to visit since her return there. Lucia is from mainland Spain (or ‘the Peninsula’ as it is known in the Canaries), but went to the Canary Islands with her Irish boyfriend when she left Ireland. Now that relationship has broken up, but Lucia stays on in the place she has grown to love. So I got to see two of my beloved young people for a whole week of talk and laughter and music, as well as sun and wine! And I got to meet Nayra’s family, with whom I’d only talked on the phone until then, and her boyfriend, Stefan, with whom I’d never even spoken before.
On my birthday, which is 6th January (and the reason why Christmas lasts its full 12 days in this house!), Nayra’s family phoned and sang ‘Cumpleanos Feliz’ onto my answering machine, and then each one left a message, including Nayra’s sister, who lives in Sweden with her Swedish partner, Guntar, and their baby girl. Guntar also spoke - the only one to speak in English, with the broadest Scots accent I have heard since Jim O’Hara’s visits!
The Christmas almost closed with another visit from another ex, and equally beloved, young foreigner. Jan is from the Czech Republic, and spent much of last year here. Just before his departure in August (he had come the previous November), he met and fell in love with a Spanish girl, Leti, who lived in Dublin but worked with Jan. The relationship grew, even over the distance, with them visiting each other, and now Jan was back to visit Leti for New Year. He brought her out to the house to meet us (at last!), and Gail, an Irish girl from Co. Cavan, who lived here at the same time as Jan, also came to dinner, along with our present ‘family’. It was a night of nostalgia, much, much laughter, teasing, and instant friendship between Leti and all of us. It was almost as hard to say ‘goodbye’ to Jan again as it was when he left the house to go home to the Czech Republic, but it was worth it - even the damage he did to my lower ribs with a bearhug goodbye!
In the middle of those two events, and before the first, Christmas cards and letters were written and received, text messages went back and forth, and e-mails brought instant closeness again. Grant from South Africa, who owes me a long letter for a long time, texted on Christmas Day, again for New Year, and again for my birthday, so even though I still await news of him, I know he remembers us with affection. Pavel, also from the Czech Republic, e-mailed to know if his girl friend who wants to come to Ireland at the end of this year, beginning of next, might come to this house. Daniel from Spain, who went to London, sent a Christmas card to wish us all well.
I have been lucky in the people who have come to this house. And it seems they mostly feel they have been lucky, too, with the people they shared with here, and the protection given by a home that has cared for a family here since it was first built in 1932.
This family is different, but it is still family - especially at Christmas.
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