Breaking News

Well I guess things have been breaking all year long, but somehow the breakages seem to be increasing in this final quarter of the trip. We are pretty much just falling apart.

Things that have broken

1. Nearly all our socks and some pants and many t-shirts. Luckily there’s no need to dress to impress out here in the country, otherwise we might be in trouble, since so many of our clothes have holes.

2. My watch. I thought it was the battery, but the watchmaker I took it to said it needed “an overhaul”. Well, we are on austerity measures, so no overall happened. And all of a sudden I became a person who doesn’t wear a watch.

3. Sebastian’s earbuds which are, for all intents and purposes, my earbuds, since I’m the only one who uses them. For jogging. If I can’t have music when I’m jogging then it makes jogging a lot harder. And jogging is already hard enough these days since I’ve been training for a half-marathon and had all sorts of issues with the training and hurt my knee and so to lose the earbuds was a real bummer. Tobias lends me his now, so phew.

4. My running shoes. This is probably the worst one. I’m running the half-marathon in the same shoes that I trained for and ran the marathon in. They are so worn out, I’m just hoping the tops stay attached to the bottoms until the end of the race. As soon as I cross the finish line, they go in the bin. I should have replaced them a couple months ago, but the austerity measures didn’t allow it at the time. Then, by the time I got the money together to replace them, it was close to race time and I didn’t want to break new shoes in and probably get blisters. So I decided to go with the devil I know. The race is on Monday night in Reykjavik.

5. My dress shoes. An Irish Setter named Scooby was roaming far from home and ended up spending the night with us. Sophia had been wearing my red patent leather flats while playing with him and left them outside. He chewed them to bits. RIP Red Shoes.

6. Sophia’s shoes. Sophia bought some cute boots in the bazaar in Turkey but they didn’t last too long. In Spain she mostly wore flip flops anyway, and in Ireland she has been borrowing my shoes and we have shared a pair of wellies. As of now she has no shoes of her own, aside from flip-flops.

6. My computer. I would have never thought I could live without my darling Henry, my 2009 HP laptop, but aside from photo-downloading and photo-editing, the iPad has proved a fairly good replacement. I was worried about the kids’ ability to do their schoolwork, but shortly after the computer broke, the teachers went on strike, so that solved that probem.

7. Glass French press carafe, wineglasses, drinking glasses. When we first moved into the stone cottage and I saw that there was a Bodum French press, I said “Well, that’s not going to last the three months.” With a stone floor and a hard ceramic sink and marble countertops, I’m actually surprised we didn’t have more breakages in the kitchen. The glass carafe is the first thing on this list of broken things that we’ve actually replaced.

8. Tinky Winky, my gigantic plastic purple Samsonite bag. He is down to two working wheels. Pushing him through Madrid three months ago was hilarious. We are setting out for a week of travel tomorrow and I’m not looking forward to hauling him around.

9. Sebastian’s iPad. It fell off a coffee table in our apartment in Seville but it still continued to function. We actually have Apple Care insurance on it, but reading the fine print, we discovered that a replacement would still cost us 50 bucks. Sebastian was unwilling to pay the 50 bucks, so life went on. But now the broken screen is actually causing functional issues, and the whole device goes crazy periodicially. We are far from an Apple store now, but maybe once we get home, Sebastian will shell out the fifty for a replacement.

10. My heart. Tomorrow we leave the stone cottage, which I’ve become rather attached to. On Sunday we leave Ireland. The following Saturday we leave Europe and this way of life. It’s very hard to let go.

Membership has its privileges

One of the reasons that I wasn’t very keen on leaving home for a year – the main reason, actually – was that I put a big premium on belonging. I have mostly felt in my life like I don’t belong and yet since Sophia was about 4, I have felt increasingly like I finally did belong somewhere. I’d been working with the same people for five years, been taking my kids to the same school for ten years, lived in the house for ten years, gone to the same church for 27 years and belonged to the same martial arts club for 9 years when we left Canada last July.

I was not happy to be giving that all up.

My outlook has changed a lot since then, and I’m not sure I even care about belonging anymore at all. Nevertheless, when I look back at this year, I find it’s the moments when I’ve felt a glimmer of belonging, or at least a diminshed sense of being an outsider, that have been the most fun and interesting for me.

I see some evidence of these moments when I look in my wallet these days. Lots of memories in those plastic cards. I’m reminded a bit of the scene in Up in the Air where  George Clooney and Vera Farmiga sit in a hotel bar showing off their various airline elite club membership cards. I’m just as proud of mine as they are, and just as silly.

In Amsterdam, I struck a huge victory when I applied for and was accepted into the library. It cost about 30 euro, if I recall correctly, but it was well worth it since we went once or twice a week, enjoyed the facilities a lot (Tobias even worked there) and had access to a much-needed source of English-language books for me and the kids.

Becoming a member of the Amsterdam library was an early unexpected victory. I just didn’t think I’d be able to do it, but I did! I had to show the lease for our apartment. The lease had an error on it. It showed that we were staying six months rather than three. I wonder if the lease had shown the correct duration if I would have still gotten my library card.

The beautiful seven-storey main branch, with the rooftop restaurant. There were branches of the library closer to our apartment in the Nine Streets but we never bothered with them. This one was just so beautiful it was worth the bike ride.

Here is Sophia coming down the escalator next to a massive wooden sculpture.

The Amsterdam library employs cutting-edge book-returning technology. You have to slide the items one at a time into this chute. It takes forever. I suppose it saves money in staffing because no human has to be involved, but it’s sure makes returning books a time-consuming process.

Here the kids are visiting Toby in his work pod.

The library has an amazing art gallery, which was showing sculpture made from unusual materials.

Hard to decide whether the children’s floor or the rooftop restaurant is the best part of the library.

Here is Sophia perusing the graphica section. Most of the books were in Dutch, but since she knows all the words in the Elfquest books by heart anyway, this didn’t pose a problem.

A sample snack from the rooftop restaurant. You could also get a nice grilled steak and a bottle of red wine, if that’s what you felt like.

I was glad that the small selection of kids’ books in English included the Wimpy Kid books. Sebby was really into those.

Sometimes a change of scenery was just the thing to help Sebastian focus on his school tasks.

Membership in the Amsterdam library was the most exciting, but not the only club we joined this year. In Izmir, we were members of the exclusive Money Club. And I think you know what that means: money.

Tansaş (pronounced tahn-sahsh) was the grocery that had the biggest selection and even had one cashier that spoke English, which is how I was inducted into the Money Club. Every time I went to our local Gurmar grocery store, the cashier would try to explain some deal or sale they were having to see if I wanted to take advantage of it. A few times I managed to understand enough of what they were saying to actually go for it, and buy 5 lira more groceries in order to get a free bottle of chocolate sauce or something.

But when I had the energy to drag the kids to the Tansaş, which was a 20-minute walk, I would be rewarded with huge selection and this lovely English-speaking cashier. It was so relaxing.

Okay so obviously being a member of the library and having a transit card and a grocery store membership is not real community integration. But since real community integration has not been possible this year, and since “belonging” is such a big thing for me, I am only half joking about being happy to be a member of the Money Club.

In Seville, I managed a more meaningful integration by joining a flamenco school on the third day. Since there was only one other student who consistently attended, it was very lucky for me that she spoke very good English. Still, the classes were in Spanish and, along with the flamenco intensive I took at the Festival de Jerez, these classes were a huge aid in improving my Spanish comprehension during our time in Spain.

There were other added benefits to attending flamenco too. On our third week there my classmate invited our family to join her family at a bar in Triana, the gitano (Roma/gypsy) neighbourhood of Seville that is considered by many to be the true home of flamenco, to see our instructor perform. That was our first ever flamenco night and I think it will always be the most important one for me, unless I someday end up performing myself.

I also really enjoyed just being at the school for a few minutes before and after my class every Wednesday. It gave me a chance to see some behind-the-scenes practising like this:  Sometimes after watching and listening to the practises happening around me for five minutes, I felt I’d already gotten enough value for my 10 euro per class fee. Then the 90 minute class was just gravy.

The thing that I found so inspiring was how committed all the students were. Aside from this one amateur class they ran each week, the school was dedicated to development professional flamenco performers. So everyone there was doing this for their career, not just for fun. This made it an exciting environment to be in. It’s something more than just a dance school, because flamenco is so tied up in the heritage of Andalucia. When the young people there decide to commit themselves to being professional flamenco people, there’s a historical and cultural significance to it. They’re making a decision to continue the culture of Andalucia. I found it inspiring and beautiful, especially since I am from a young country that has a still-shallow culture.

 
In Ireland, we were able to get library memberships once again and Sophia says that she likes the teeny tiny Portumna branch of the Galway County Library more than the Amsterdam library. She’s wrong about this, but I do see her point. I love roaming the few stacks there and coming across books I’d never hear of otherwise, like Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl.

Aside from the library, the lack of a language barrier here means that we feel much more a part of things than in any other place. Our neighbours may be few and not very close to us, but we know them. On one side is Mary and Padraig. Mary is the caretaker for our house and has taken us under her wing also. She took Natalie, Sophia and I to our life drawing lessons and me to a local writing group. She brought us lilacs from her tree and when she learned that Tobias had bought himself a handknit Aran sweater, she gave me on that she made a long time ago that didn’t fit her daughters. She is the best friend we’ve made this year.

But we kind of know everyone around here, at least to chat to or wave to. It’s just the way it is. We are a curiosity, as the “Canadians who are here for three months”, and when I meet someone, they already know about me. It’s lovely to be a part of things in this way.

So now, at the bottom of this entry and nearing the end of this trip, it sounds like I’m back to valuing “belonging” a lot. I guess I can’t deny that it’s nice to belong, but at the same time, I can live without it. I won’t contort myself to make it happen, and my need for it will trump other values less often.

September in Amsterdam

In Amsterdam, the first weekend of September marks a mass exodus from the city. Over three days, the number of bikes locked to the bridge outside our apartment reduced by 75%. Crowded and frantic all summer, the Nine Streets now felt deserted. In a good way. Mornings on the canals were quiet. It became rarer to hear English spoken. Children were visible again, having returned from their summer holidays away from the city to go back to school.

During that first week of peace and quiet, I decided that I would never return to Amsterdam in the high season, but only in September or perhaps May. It’s always a beautiful city, but so much easier to appreciate the beauty when the hordes have departed.

Unfortunately, September also brings the rain, and it was a dark and wet city that we returned to after our road trip to the marathon in France. “Ah, now I get why people put up with high season crowds,” I told Tobias, “Because it’s actually awful to be here when it’s cold and wet.” So there’s no winning, really, there’s just deciding what you can live with. Like life.

Country Mouse in the Big City

As the grand finale to Natalie’s visit, we went to Dublin for two nights last weekend. We lucked out in getting an amazing AirBNB right downtown with great Liffey views. We had a fun pub night with our AirBNB host, who was a very interesting fellow. Tobias and I enjoyed a Sunday morning stroll through the grounds of Trinity College and a coffee date close to my old neighbourhood of Ringsend, where I marvelled at how much the area has changed in the 17 years since I spent four months there.

But the main purpose of the trip was the One Direction concert. Natalie is a huge fan and managed to secure floor tickets even after they were sold out. It would have been just the two girls going, but the rules said that, since they are under 16, they would need someone over 18 to accompany them. So I went too.

The concert was on Saturday night at Croke Park, a football stadium that holds 82,300 people. We were there for six hours and it rained almost continuously. I mildly enjoyed the people-watching and the show, but overall the event falls into the “grueling” category for things we’ve done this year.

Still, I was happy to do it for Natalie’s sake. She is a longtime friend of Sophia’s and has been a fixture around our house since she was four years old. Her family is very good to Sophia and she has been on many overnight trips with them. It was nice to be able to do something for Natalie that meant so much to her.

After three days of big-city excitement, when I got home and downloaded photos from my regular camera and my little hand-held video cam, what do I find? A couple shaky videos of a boy band and 20 photos of a baby magpie.

When you go to a capital city for a weekend and come home with magpie photos, it must be a sign that you’ve gone rural.

But seriously, look at this baby magpie!

It seemed to be abandoned by its parents, and I begged a small box from a nearby bookstore and was ready to transport it to a nearby park, to give it a better chance of survival, when the parents showed up and started diving at the people who were looking at it. Phew, I thought. They’re going to do their job after all. Still, its future was uncertain, since it didn’t show any signs of knowing how to fly yet, and the nest was very high up.

I was tagging along on a shopping trip with the girls and I just kept going back and checking on the magpie every now and then. Each time I visited him, I got into a conversation with other people who were observing him. It was quite a nice way to meet people and chat.

I liked being in Dublin but it was a little overstimulating at times. I was happy to return to the peace and quiet of the country on Monday afternoon.

Life Drawing

Sophia and I have been taking a life drawing class in the little town near us. Our neighbour Mary told us about the class and gave us a lift on Wednesday nights. There were three sessions of three hours each. Here are my best drawings from the three nights. The class is over now so that’s as good as I’m going to get for the time being.

First class

Second class

Third and final class

A Tale of Dulces

This is another wayback story. The events described took place in Seville on February 4, 2014. 

When the blog Scribbler in Seville published an image of a map of the convents in Seville where you can buy convent sweets, I was intrigued. I love maps and I love food so a food map is a wonderful thing . Convent sweets were a new concept to me, but I guess if monks can make beer and wine, nuns can make dulces (cookies and candyish things).  Then, when I read about the ritual attached to the purchase of these artisan product, I knew I had to try it out. The important thing to know is that the nuns are cloistered, so they’re supposed to have minimal contact with outsiders. Which makes running a storefront a little tricky. Read on to find out how they manage it.

When I studied the map, I was surprised to see that a few of the convents marked on it were on streets that I had walked many times. So I was passing these convents and not realizing it. Well, I may have noticed there was a convent but I never noticed that there was an opportunity to buy cookies there.

I dragged my kids and my dad out on his last afternoon in Seville, and we headed to the convent closest to our apartment: the sisters of Carmelitas (Santa Ana on the map).

Here is the sign that indicates that you can buy dulces there.

No wonder I had never noticed before! It doesn’t exactly demand your attention. This makes it all the more fun once you know what it’s all about.

I gathered my courage and pressed the button on the intercom – against Sophia’s protestations that this couldn’t possibly be the right thing to do -and said “Me gustaria comprar unos dulces”. I think this might mean “I would like to buy some dulces”, but I didn’t really plan it out so I’m not sure how correct it is.

The response was a friendly-sounding string of Spanish from which I gathered that there were no dulces to be had. Don’t ask me whether the nun said that they don’t sell dulces anymore, that they’d run out earlier that day, or that they only sell them on every third Thursday, because I have no clue. This was only three weeks into our time in Spain and my Spanish comprehension was pretty poor. But I was sure that there were no dulces and my dad agreed with my translation. His Spanish comprehension was better than mine at that point.

So we gave up on the Carmelitas but not on dulces. Sophia was all “Well, guess we better go back home” – she did not find this adventure as thrilling as I did – but I was all “Not so fast missy! There’s another convent just a few blocks away.”

It was very difficult to find the entrance to the San Clemente convent, and we nearly gave up but decided we would try to walk all the way around it and make sure that we’d really tried our best to find the door. If we struck out here it was a longish walk to the next convent. In fact, I was pretty sure that if we struck out again, I would lose what little goodwill the group had for this project and that I would go to the next convent alone.

Around the edge of big apartment block and down a sketchy alley, we finally found a big iron gate and the sought-after intercom.

I hit the button and nothing happened for a good 45 seconds. Long enough to make us think there was no one home. But then a feminine “Si?” crackled through and I tried out my phrase again. Immediately there was the sound of a lock unlocking accompanied by a string of Spanish that sounded like instructions. I opened the gate and walked through, hoping my dad had understood what was said.

He hadn’t.

We both heard “patio” and “puerta” and figured we would have to cross a patio and open a door. But which door?

The patio was gorgeous. Quiet and cool and so clean compared to the street outside. It was evidently a perro-free zone.

I stood contemplating several doors and gates leading into the surrounding building, hoping divine inspiration would strike, but while I was contemplating, my dad was knocking.

“Are you sure that’s the right one?” I whispered.

“Nope,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.

I shook my head, wondering whether I should have waited until after this crazy person had returned to Canada to visit convents. You can’t just walk into a convent full of cloistered nuns and start knocking on random doors!

Soon a very short nun answered the door and pointed us in the right direction. She began her directions with an annoyed-sounding “Mira.” At least I think it was annoyance, but then, I’m wondering whether starting a sentence with “Look” in Spanish is not quite the same as doing it in English. You don’t usually say “Look” at the begining of a statement in English unless you’re kind of laying down the law, right? Anyway, she seems annoyed to me but I could be wrong, is what I’m saying.

This was the gate that she pointed us to. But this didn’t look right. Here is the moment when my dad tried the gate as I stood back wimpily.

But it was the right place! Which we quickly discovered when we saw the little counter with the wooden grate over it and the lazy susan that allows the nuns to make transaction with the public but still stay mostly hidden. This was what we had come for!

The smiling nun behind the counter showed me each tray of dulces and told me the prices of all of them. I understood about half of what she said. We picked two trays and put a ten euro bill on the counter. I wanted to put it on the lazy susan like I’d read about, but it seemed silly to do so in this particular arrangement since there were holes that you could easily reach your arm through to put the money down.

Our change and our dulces were passed via the lazy susan though, so it all felt very cool and mysterious and authentic. And the nun was very nice and wished us a happy visit to Seville. Whaaaa??? How ever did she know that we were foreigners??? Perhaps she spied my dad’s fleece vest and Gore-tex coat through the grating. It couldn’t have been my Spanish that gave us away. Simply impossible.

Sebastian did the honours of reaching into the lazy susan to get the treats and change.

In the end, one of the trays of dulces was a delicious treat and the other was wildly unpopular with every member of the family. I thought we would go back again and try some different kinds but as with so many things on this trip, it was hard to find the time to do it again. I guess it was, as Sebastian would say “a lifetime experience”.

Why There?

Many people have asked us “Why X?” where X is one of the places that we have stayed this year. So I thought I would try to thoroughly answer the question, partly just to clarify for myself so I can have the answer ready and don’t have to think so hard all the time. Thinking’s the worst.

 

Amsterdam (capital of the Netherlands, but really its own country culturally speaking, population around a million)

Our home at 304 Keizersgracht…in the thick of it

This one was easy, and is explained pretty fully on my About page. It was the genesis of the whole plan and so it was obvious that we would go there first. So, I think no explanation is necessary here.

 

İzmir (third city of Turkey, very liberal and secular, relatively speaking, population around 8 million)

Since this was taken from the veranda of our 7th floor apartment in Izmir, obviously our building isn’t in it. But trust me when I say it is indistinguishable from all the buildings in this photo.

This one is much more complicated. First of all, it’s important to say that our decisions were very restricted by the Schengen visa situation. After spending ninety days in the Schengen area, we had to leave the area for ninety days before we were allowed back in. This one rule formed the entire structure of our trip.

The list of countries that we could go to in Europe (we briefly considered places in Africa, South America, North America, Asia, and Australia but decided that this would be our Europe year) was not very long. England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Croatia, Bulgaria, and Turkey were places we considered. Some places didn’t appeal to us, like Georgia. The UK and Bulgaria were not very attractive to anyone in the family. So that left Ireland, Croatia and Turkey. Since our second three-month period would be during the months of October, November and December, we chose Turkey because it is the furthest south. Obviously no sane human would go to Ireland during those months and several Croatians we spoke to said it was pretty rainy in Croatia during that time too. So what initially seemed like a hard decision became easy.

Within Turkey, we quickly discarded the idea of living in İstanbul, which would be the obvious choice. We did this because we had heard that life in the world’s second biggest city is very intense. Now that I’ve fallen in love with Istanbul and experienced the good and the bad there, I think I would actually live there. I would even live there for three months with kids, but probably not longer than that.

But at the time we made the decision İstanbul was too intimidating to us. Even Amsterdam felt too urban for our family. One aspect of living in the Nine Streets that I found really challenging was not having any “outside” to let the kids be in. We could walk for a few minutes to a little playground, but the luxury of a big open space close to our house was not available. It was a big adaptation. I would probably not live in central Amsterdam again, especially with kids. If I were going to live there, I would live close to the Amsterdamse Bos, the huge park in Amstelveen, a suburb where many families choose to settle. North Amsterdam also makes sense for families. But the Nine Streets is not ideal for kids. But this is a digression. Back to Turkey now.

So, with İstanbul struck off the list, the next biggest cities were İzmir, Ankara, and Antalya. Ankara is not on the sea, so forget it. Since living in Turkey was already such a big change (language, culture, religion, etc) we didn’t really think about living in a small town, though now I would definitely consider it. So it was down to İzmir and Antalya and we compared climate and available accommodation and collected advice from friends. My friend Elana had lived in İzmir (actually in the same neighbourhood that we ended up in) and gave it a thumbs up. So İzmir won the day. For Westerners, I think İzmir is a nice easy adjustment compared to many other places in Turkey. It’s known as laid back and liberal, which reminds of the reputation of Vancouver and Victoria compared to the rest of Canada, so it sounded right for us.

I love İzmir and I think it was a good introduction to Turkey for us (perfect, actually), but if I were going to live in Turkey again, I would be in Istanbul or somewhere small.

 

Seville (capital of Andalusia, hottest city in Europe, population around a million)

I don’t have any photos of the exterior of apartment building in Seville, but it’s just as well. It’s boring to look at, despite it’s plum location right on the river. Here is a shot taken in our living room, with all the Christmas gifts spread out that Grandpa Bumpa brought with him from Canada.

 

In January we were allowed back in the Schengen again and it was a sort of “the world’s our oyster” moment. But it was January. So really there were only a few places where the winter climate sounded like something we wanted to be a part of. Seville is the hottest city in Europe in the summer. I would probably never go there between the months of June and September. In fact, it was just starting to feel too hot to handle when we left on March 23^rd. But for the winter, Seville sounded like it would be heaven. My friend Tom told me, when I asked, that “Andalucia is the best place to be in Europe in the wintertime.” So that sounded pretty positive. Tom lived in Spain for three years and has similar tastes and values to me, so I knew I could trust him. I told him that I was very anxious to avoid landing in one of those parts of Spain that has essentially been converted to an English village. I have heard that there are places in Spain where they (the Brits) have re-created East London or some such thing. That would be very disappointing for us to end up in such a place. Tom said not to worry, that the Brits were concentrated in seaside places and that if you went into the middle of the country, you would be in “the real Spain”.

Actually I was unconvinced that Seville would be the right choice for us and initially advocated for Granada or Cordoba. Much as I love those two cities, boy am I glad we chose Seville. Because it’s the largest of the three (about a million people) it’s just got so much more to offer for a long-term visit. I would very happily spend another winter in Seville some day.

 

Gortnacooheen (merely a postal designation, not an actual village or town, in East Galway near the town of Portumna, population 2100) 

Our house in Ireland is far and away the nicest of the four. But we’re paying dearly for it, so whereas in the other places we lived in more modest digs but lived the high life (going to restaurants, etc), here in Ireland we have a fancy home but are living much more simply (making our own bread, using electricity sparingly, etc). It’s funny.

 

Question: What is the population of Gortnacooheen and where is it?

Answer: less than twenty people, about a hundred sheep and fifty cows, and it’s near the northern tip of Lough Derg in County Galway, close to the border with county Tipperary. The owners of our house consider it to be in North Tipperary, though I find this a questionable claim, since it’s clearly in Galway.

Anyway, Gortnacooheen is nothing but a cluster of houses and farmland and probably only has a name because Ireland does not use postal codes. We do our shopping and visit the library and get pizza in Portumna, a town of 2000, which is about 8 minutes by car.

The choice for our fourth three-month period came down to Croatia and Ireland. See above for rationale. We could also have returned to Turkey, of course, and I think that would have been a cool and fun option that would have allowed us to see more of the country and learn more Turkish. But Sophia wouldn’t stand for it. The truth is, she did not enjoy Turkey much. There were some exceptions, of course. Certain aspects of it she loved, including some parts of the food culture and Cihangir and Cukurcuma, two adjacent neighbourhoods in Istanbul that are very hip and fun. But overall she felt isolated in Turkey and wanted to leave from the moment we arrived. So that idea did not gain traction.

There was a little bit of conflict in the family over the Ireland/Croatia decision. Tobias was feeling more Croatiaish and Sophia was feeling more Irelandish. Sebastian didn’t care and I was on the fence, but leaning toward Ireland, mostly for Sophia’s sake. Tobias wanted the beautiful climate and scenery and Mediterranean lifestyle of Croatia, as well as an exotic new culture to explore. I wanted this too. Tobias and I both felt like it would be “good for us” to learn another new culture and language but the lazier side of our natures both found the idea of an English-speaking locale very soothing and relaxing. I know that once we finally decided on Ireland, I had an amazing sense of relief, feeling like I’d reached the hardest point on our journey and the rest was going to be downhill. Associated with that feeling is the guilt of feeling like you’re not really stretching your wings enough if you’re not scared, but I was able to tell that little voice to shut it by arguing that what I really wanted was time to process and write, and Ireland was the only place I was going to get that.

Have I mentioned that I’ve lived in Ireland before? Yeah, I did. In the summer of 1996, for four months, in a working class neighbourhood in Dublin 4. East of the centre and south of the Liffey. It was a formative experience for me when I was 19 and I have always hoped to return. I think my tales of that time have informed Sophia’s inclination to see Ireland ever since she was small. But also she really wanted to be in an English-speaking country. That was a huge draw.

Once we finally decided on Ireland, it was time to find a place to live. This turned out to be much more difficult than it had been in any of the other three places we went to. Like, MUCH.

Our first choice was Galway, second choice Cork, third choice Dublin. You can see that in general we prefer “second cities”. A big reason for this is that we want to be more integrated into the normal life of the place, and in the biggest cities in any country is where you can most easily slip into a life where you find other ex-pats and just spend all your time hanging out with Canadians. Dumb and pointless. You might as well go back to Canada. Anyway, choosing second cities doesn’t eliminate this problem, but it does lessen it. So no Dublin for us. Or so we thought.

It turned out to be impossible to find accommodation for the months of April, May and June in Galway or Cork. There was nothing available that looked the least bit appealing. We were surprised and a little stymied, since all three other cities we’d lived in had been so obliging with providing accommodation. So we looked at Dublin and nothing was available there either! At this point Sophia and I started to consider rural living while Tobias started to make inquiries in Dubrovnik and Split.

Despite Tobias not being fully on board with living rurally, I did mange to find and secure a place in a village of 300 in West Cork, about an hour from Cork City. This done, it remained to convince Tobias that we could try something so vastly different from what we were used to. I was surprised when he eventually took the leap, and a little apprehensive about how his city-loving nature would survive in a quiet environment. After all, he feels that Victoria, at about 400,000 people, is far too small to be liveable, and here we were considering living amongst only 300 people for 3 months.

So everything was settled.

Until the day we came home from Jerez de la Frontera. This was February 28th, three weeks from the day we had to leave our Seville apartment and also the Schengen area. We had traveled to Jerez by train for the day so that the family could watch a few minutes of the last day of an intensive flamenco workshop I had been taking at the Festival de Jerez. It was such a nice day, with the highlight being the moment my teacher noticed the three strangers in the back of the room and made me dance solo for them. A moment I’ll never forget.

I’d like to forget the moment that came when we returned home and I checked my email, though. I learned that our chosen rental in Schull, West Cork, had experienced a devastating flood and would not be available after all. After all that, we had to go back to the drawing board for our Ireland accommodations.

So we started again and the question of Croatia was opened again and I had to email the mother of Natalie, Sophia’s friend who wanted to come visit in Ireland, and tell her to hold off on booking her ticket until things were settled again.

After another week of nail-biting, we had reached another decision, with the stone cottage. It’s funny now when I study a map of Ireland and look at the other two places we seriously considered that week. Both are so remote, out on peninsulas in the Atlantic, surrounded by wind and cliffs and sheep, one assumes. And the choice we made is nearly right in the middle of the country. It feels like we hedged our bets a bit, to be honest. But I guess that is what compromise is about.

And that’s how we ended up in Gortnacooheen.

Iceland

There is one last mini-leg to this trip, a kind of epilogue. And the answer for why we’re going to spend our last week in Iceland is simple: my friend Ali planned a trip there including doing the Suzuki Midnight Marathon and the whole idea was so appealing we decided to join her. Now that I’m in the throes of long-distance training, I certainly regret the choice, but I know I won’t regret it in the long run (ha!), and Iceland does feel like the perfect way to end. Something totally different. Something that will made us hungry for next time. Not that I really need any help with that.

A sunny afternoon in a castle garden

Sophia’s friend Natalie joined us here on Wednesday, and since then, the sun has been shining incessantly, making us look like liars because we had told her to make sure to pack rubber boots because of all the rain.

But I’m not complaining. I took all three kids to see the local Portumna Castle yesterday, and we ended up spending 90 minutes just lounging around the beautiful walled garden afterward, watching insects and birds and sketching some scenes to be filled out in watercolour later.

What the girls would really like to see is Highclere Castle, the house where Downton Abbey is shot, but time and money do not allow for a quick jaunt over to England at the moment, so Portumna Castle will have to do.

Sebastian manages to find wooden guns everywhere, though I’m not sure how many oncoming invaders he would have been able to stop with this teeny birch pistol.

This is the entrance to the garden. The painted wooden sign says “Kitchen Garden”. The garden is meant to be a reproduction of the kitchen garden that would have been in use at the time that aristocrats last lived in Portumna Castle (poor them, as the castle is incredibly cold).

The countryside is full of these fat, furry bees. They are fun and easy to watch and don’t even seem to know one is there. This fellow is having his way with a cherry blossom.

The best view of the castle is from the garden, which feels very much like the Frances Hodgson Burnett’s Secret Garden. I mentioned this to Sophia after we had walked around for ten minutes or so, and she said “I was just about to say the same thing.”

I was very jealous of the fullness and quantity of the California poppies, since mine back home are always few in number and feeble in look. Natalie said her mum would have loved them too,, and as our gardens are just a block away from each other, it must be the area, and not the gardeners, which is at fault.

And now for several shots of the world’s most obliging dragonfly. It was so still we thought it must be dead, and when I went to fetch a container to put him in to take him home, he opened his wings, proving that he still clung to life. So perhaps he was, if not dead, merely dying. Otherwise I cannot explain his stillness. Perhaps he is just a vain and gregarious dragonfly. He was certainly beautiful.

The girls found a scene they wanted to sketch, and this prolonged our garden time by a while. I didn’t mind. It gave me more chances to watch a goldcrest at working gathering nesting materials, and a chance to photograph the interesting construction of this little gazebo. 

It’s nice to be in a country where we not only understand the language, but get the jokes.

The word “wormery” is new to me though. Which just goes to show that I haven’t even mastered English yet.

 

Once we were done with the castle and gardens, we didn’t have enough time left to see the abbey or the forest park, the other things that were on our list for the outing. This is because Tobias was picking us up at 3 sharp and he needed to return home to take a conference call. It was funny the way it worked out because I had just been reading this article about to-do lists. A couple choice quotes from the article really rang true to me.

This one summed up one woman’s productivity system, and perfectly described what happened to us that afternoon, where we had five things on our list:

First I make a list of priorities: one, two, three, and so on. Then I cross out everything from three down.

We planned to go to the castle and the gardens, the abbey, the forest park, and finish at the grocery store. We only managed the castle and gardens and the grocery store. And we only fit in the grocery store because we called Tobias to change the pick-up point. Otherwise we wouldn’t have had enough time for that even.

Another choice quote, which is sad, but true, is this:

prioritize until it hurts

Tobias and I have been doing just that during our times in Spain and Ireland and boy does it hurt! So much left undone. It’s a practise, though, and it does get easier. Reading through Tobias’ blog, which is far the more thorough and upbeat, helps to show me that despite not having done a fifth of what I had originally thought would be possible this year, we have done a lot. And that is good enough. Since it has to be.

Luckily, in this case, we can return to see the abbey and the forest park before Natalie leaves in a week. It is great having her with us.

 

 

Boxing Day on Heybeliada

This blog post is one of many in my drafts folder that is long overdue. The events it describes took place on December 26, 2013.

After a very busy Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, you’d think that I would want to take a day to relax on Boxing Day before flying to Paris on the 27th, wouldn’t you? Well, sorry, but if I’m in İstanbul, I’m not going to just lie around. There was one last thing on my must-do list and I managed to get the family motivated enough to do it: a day trip to Heybeliada, one of the Princes Islands of İstanbul.

These little islands are about an hour by ferry from Beyoglu and are officially still a part of the city. During the ferry ride, the city did not stop. It just kept going and going and going. I knew intellectually that Istanbul is the second biggest city in the world, but to see it like that, all stretched out, from the vantage point of a fast ferry, really hammers home the point: it’s a massive place. (As as aside, I love the list of signs you’re going native in İstanbul here. Number 7 talks about how obsessed İstanbullus are with how beautiful and historical their city is. I agree with them! Also, I get 7/10 on the list after three months in Turkey.)

As we left the port, we got to see Dolmabahce Palace again (we had seen it previously when we took a tourist ferry during our November trip to Istanbul). Here it is adorned by a puff of smoke from the ferry we were on.

Arriving at Heybeliada was like going to a different world. The contrast between the quiet of the island and the chaos of the city can’t be overstated. We went for our last Turkish lunch (I had shrimp casserole, one of my favourite Turkish dishes) in a restaurant in the town where we were the only guests, and then we walked up into the forest.

I’ve been wanting to understand more about the halis, wooden mansions from the Ottoman era that have mostly burnt down in Istanbul. I think this is an example of one.

Kids made a beeline for the swings, as per usual.

I have never seen chickens roaming free in a public park before. Here was a flock of thirtyish that belonged to a neighbouring house. This was a beautiful serene moment, just sitting in this empty, treed park at the top of Heybeliada, communing with the chickens and cats.

After about an hour of walking through woods, and seeing only one other person, we found ourselves back in the town. Heybeliada does not allow cars, so some of the residents ride large trikes like this one. Most of the houses are holiday homes, and stand empty all winter, giving the whole place the feel of a ghost town.

 

Collecting sticks and fighting with them never gets old, apparently.

Just a quick boatride away, hyperurban İstanbul rages on.

 

Eventually our walk took us to a park that charged an admission. It wasn’t much, maybe 4 lira per person, but we paused to decide whether we should pay it or not. We had no idea what the park had to offer and the island had already provided a lot of bang for our buck. We decided to go for it, in case there were some pretty things there that we hadn’t seen elsewhere. And it was quite nice. There was a çay bahcesi (tea garden) where we waited for five minutes and no one came. It was the first time I have ever found a çay bahcesi where you could not actually get çay. Tobias slammed his fist on the table and said “That’s it, we’re leaving Turkey!” Which we were, of course, the next day. (For a slightly different version of this hilarious joke, see here.)

So this little park was the last official site we saw in Turkey. It was a good way to end.

Since I am in Ireland while writing this, it’s hard not to feel that these next scenes look way more typically Irish than Turkish. But the red flag on the top of the hill in this one (just above and to the right of Tobias’ head) gives it away.

In this pic, the dirty-looking cityline in the background is the hint.

The only way I can tell that this isn’t Ireland is that I haven’t seen any Irish villages that are terraced, like the one in the background of these shots. If it was Ireland, there’d be one row of white cottages, not two. 

 

After the park we made our slow way back through the town to the ferry dock.

Here is a Heybeliada fayton (Turkish for chariot or phaeton).  

Here is a bread store. Bread is important in Turkish culture (as in so many others) and that lips-shaped loaf is the classic shape. Just like a Frenchman eats his baguette per day, Turks buy ekmek every day. We used to send Sebastian downstairs to the tekel (corner store) for our ekmek in the mornings. It cost about 60 kuruş, or 20 euro cents. Months after this day, the ekmek loaf became one of the symbols of the resistance movement against the reigning AKP party when a young man who got shot with a rubber police bullet while on a bread run for his family died from his injuries. So when I look at this photo I think of Berkin Elvan.

We had some extra time before our ferry would leave, and we took the opportunity to have one more Turkish treat. For me, it was a balık ekmek (literally, fish bread), a popular street food which is mackerel on a bun with cabbage. For the others, it was Turkish pastries, custards and cay in a muhabellisi (pudding shop). Then we took the ferry back to Beyoglu and walked back to our Çukurcuma  apartment for the last time.

 

Planning out the day

One of the recurring conversations that Sebastian likes to have with me is talking about how his daily routine will be when he’s grown up. This started when he was quite small, maybe five, when he learned that his preferred job, being the guy who goes up in the cherry picker, isn’t the best paid job in the world. Starting from then, he wanted to explore ways that he could do more than one job, while also being an involved father. His solutions over the years have been very interesting and creative, including being a full-time professional soccer player Monday – Friday, and running a veterinary clinic on the weekends. The rationale for that is that people will have to pay a premium for veterinary services on Saturday and Sunday, when most vets are not working, so he’ll make loads of money that way.

 

He’s also devised plans that involve him, his best friend, their wives and their children all living with my mum in her basement suite, plans that have him and his best friend owning a grocery store together, and lots of variations on the theme of starving comic book artist/FC Barcelona player.

 

I’m sad that I haven’t written down these conversations verbatim since they started happening, but no time like the present, so here is a snippet of the one from last night. This one is surprisingly vague on the details of the actual work, but centred around the idea of having a home-cooked meal ready for him once the rigours of the day have ceased. It sounds familiar…

 

“When I grow up, I’m going to get up in the morning, brush my teeth, get ready for work, and go to work. Then I’m going to come home from work around 6 or 7 o’clock. My….(forgetting the word) wife will be cooking dinner and we’ll eat the dinner.”

 

“But what about if she has a job too?”

 

“Well she’ll come home from her job around 5pm.”

 

“But what if she has to work later than that? What if she doesn’t come home until the same time you come home?”

 

(thinks)

 

“Then… (shrugs shoulders) …we’re screwed.”

 

“Well, couldn’t you cook the dinner?”

 

(rubs his temples, shakes his head)

 

“I don’t know how to. It’ll be like ‘Hey kids, want to have, um, tomatoes for dinner? Sliced tomatoes? Tomato triangles? Yummmmm!’ “

 

I started laughing at this point. Tomatoes triangles indeed! We’ve got to get back on the kookles program around here.