Good Stuff Bad Stuff

I am compiling a list of the positive and negative from the last three days, and in the spirit of channeling my inner Pollyanna (what I will have to name my girl-child now that the name Lyra has been stolen by a buddy of mine already) I am going to gloss over the negative and try to make the most of the positive. Through gritted teeth. It's been a really bad day.

Bad Stuff:

• I left my mobile on my Aer Lingus flight and haven't gotten it back. I'm presuming it's lost in a between the seat dealie or someone stole it and I don't expect to get it back.
• I spent 1.5 hours on a bus from Terenure to Dublin Airport yesterday in order to be told by a snarky airline rep that it wasn't their problem. Eh, yeah, duh, I know that, but you should exercise good customer service anyway and apologise cos it's a shit thing to lose your phone.
•  I'm meant to be in Poland right now but decided to fore-go the trip in place of lots of driving lessons.
• I had the worst driving lesson of my career today. I almost went through a red light on a busy road. In the words of The Pixies, where was my mind?

Good Stuff:

• An attempt to plan the art activities programme at the charity I work at turned into an impromptu card making session with some residents. It was amazing, they were a joy. 
• I had to wait an hour for bus from the airport to take me home so I got McDonalds, and it was actually the most comforting thing imaginable. I never ever do that, but some days just call for fat, sugar and carbohydrate laden junk.
• I now get to purchase a shiny new mobile, with a better operating system and hopefully a better camera. 
• There are more driving lessons, and 9 days until my test. The night is always darkest before the morn. We shall prevail.
• Ryanair flights to Poland are incredibly cheap, and one day soon I'll be able to go to Krakow and visit Justyna and do all the fun things we were meant to do this time. 

 

 Now, people of the internet, you'll have to excuse me as I am drinking coffee and researching mobile telephone devices. Ciao!

Jerzens, Tirol

I spent the past week in the Tirolean Alps with the family. It was my first time being in Austria and Tirol, and, although I'd been the Swiss Alps a few years ago, this time was completely unique because the entire village and basically that whole area of the Alps were deserted save for a few of the locals. Everyone is taking a much needed break after the summer tourism season is over, and the winter one won't begin for another few weeks.

We flew to Memmingen airport, which Ryanair dubs 'West Munich'. This is a lie, it is over 100km from Munich, but was the best way for us to access Tirol coming from Ireland. My parents and I rented a car and before we knew it we were sailing down the autobahn, with the beautiful farmland and countryside of Bavaria whizzing on either side. Bavaria is one of my favourite places; I spent some time in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Würzburg and of course München the year before last, and I have beautiful memories of that part of Germany.

Ruefully, we drove on, and although I would have loved to just stay in Bavaria our destination was somewhere equally idyllic; Austrian Tirol. And I soon realised it was just as great as Bavaria. Gently sloping farmland with sparsely dotted trees gave way to inclines, slight and then steeper, pines, Alpine lodges and eventually dramatic views and extreme winding roads.

We stayed in a family-run hotel called Landhaus Raich which is run by the bubbly and caring Birgit and her husband, who is incidentally the mayor of Jerzens. Small world. On our first evening she invited us for cakes and coffee, and some schnapps she made herself from the berry of a pine tree that grows locally.

She told us that, because of the huge amount of snow they'd had the week before, her friend over in Italian Tirol needed help harvesting her apples right away, so she would be going the next day to harvest, and two days after we could have some of her freshly made apfelsaft. The woman knows how to host, I'm telling you!

On the grounds of the hotel (I use the term 'hotel' lightly, it was more like a series of self contained apartments, each decked out in typical Tirolean style, within her huge house) there were stables for about 7 horses, a chicken coop, a play area for kids, a tiny swimming pool and a goat. It was heaven, and my 5 year old nephew, Adrian, certainly agreed with me.

In the chicken coop were boxes, one for each room, with a special lock belonging to the occupant of the room. In your very own box you could find eggs, freshly laid, for breakfast every day. It was a really lovely touch.

We enjoyed horse riding, swimming, hikes and adventure activities, Adrian and I spent a good bit of time in the playroom playing games and it was good to spend time together as a family. My brother and his family have lived abroad for a few years now, first in Germany and now in Switzerland, so I've come to take for granted that I'll see them once, maybe twice a year.

In the self-created busyness we tire ourselves out with, it was so grounding (is that a pun, considering the altitude?) to make time, to be in the fresh air, drinking Alpine water, feel consistent but mild vertigo, and appreciating life at a different pace, in a different style, with my very own family. Experiences like this make all the difference, rare moments of true beauty and calm. We all need to take more time to realise how lucky we are.

A Stupenduous Weekend

This weekend I am in Copenhagen (well, it's Monday and I'm still here, but think of it as an extended weekend). The 20th marked three years to the day since Leo and I met, and since we never officially started 'going out' I decided we may as well celebrate this date, as there is no more meaningful alternative.

Three years is an awfully long time to know someone, and not only that, but to be consistently overjoyed by that persons' presence in your life.

Enough of my babble. This weekend, was filled with deliciousness of all kinds, a trip to IKEA and to Sweden itself, cycling, saunas in the sea, cakes, a lot of coffee, and a lot of contentment. Hygge abounded. Det var meget hyggeligt, one might say!

I shall let a picture say 1000 words instead of meandering on. P.s. there are no pictures of the delish cakes we had in IKEA because they are on Leo's phone, and he is in work:

NO BALLOONS?!

This guy's house fell over because he had a party and had too many people on it. Absolutely mental! The guy in the kiosk beside it said they had to rush in and rescue a lady trapped in the toilets because she couldn't move and had only a little bit of airspace left. Omgeh!

'Lol'

This Sauna in the Sea is the greatest experience, it's my second time being there and it's so relaxing. You just feel reinvigorated afterwards. There are gender segregated changing and bathing areas and communal and segregated saunas. The only problem with the communal sauna is that the aged men that frequent it stare far more than is necessary. If I wasn't with my boyfriend, I wouldn't go in there. I think the gender separation is ridiculous. Grown ups are more than able to handle the nakedness of the opposite sex, it won't cause strokes or heart attacks.

We had both a dinner and breakfast buffet included in the price in our hotel, and let me tell you, they put on quite a spread. In typical thrifty fashion I brought enough breakfast foods with me from the buffet for lunch. Oh how I over-ate.

Leo forced me to watch the gaelic football final in a dingy Irish pub in Malmo, and I did not enjoy it. Dublin won, Mayo lost, but as far as I'm concerned in the petty sport of football, there are no winners.

Now I'm back in Copenhagen, having done some gift shopping in Tiger etc. and now it's off to the airport to head back to my beloved (or not) Eire.

Until next time, Danmark.

Learning to Drive

My mission during my time in Ireland is simple: I Must Learn To Drive.

Even if, for whatever reason, passing my test is impossible, I want to leave Ireland with the intention of passing it in the near future, and at the very least having the skills to competently drive.

Learning to drive at the age of 24, when your mind is already perfectly settled into its ways, I thought, would be tricky. But I've been really impressed at how my brain is retaining all the tricky information and sequences in which you're supposed to do everything.

I have a really great instructor who is also hilarious and I'm really enjoying driving around with him intermittently shouting 'handbraaaake' at me. I've asked him to be extra harsh on me and in the first few lessons I really think that helped me progress.

Tomorrow will be hour six of my lessons, and from then on it will be test preparation. I still forget my mirror/signal order sometimes, don't use my mirrors enough, and need a lot of prompting for my handbrake, but gear changes are going swimmingly and I actually have good control over the clutch/gas.

It's a shame there's no car for me to practice in at home, I think getting comfortable on the road is the main thing I need help with, rather than technique, but so it goes.

I don't have a test date yet, I cancelled my October 2^nd date after a depressingly poor 4^th lesson, so I have to wait to hear back, but I hope it'll be by November and I have some work to do to tide me over during the longer wait in Ireland.

I never thought I'd actually enjoy driving, in my late teens I shunned getting a provisional license and when I finally got one never took learning any further. I can't wait to get my license, rent a car and drive around Scandinavia. I want to go on a roadtrip to Lithuania to visit a friend too.

I cannot wait :)

(Toot toot)

 The need to drive a tractor somewhere in my future is what forced me to get myself together and just do it already.

I absolutely want one of these bad boys eventually, in whatever delicious pastel shade is most readily available to me.

Coffee Infographic, Anyone?

This infographic tells you all the very fancy ways to brew coffee and the type of end result you might get.

For me, however, filter paper, boiling water and patience is all I've ever needed.

Here's a short anecdote I have about coffee. When I was approximately four, at least before I had started primary school, so I must have been four, every second Wednesday my mom would take me to the Country Store where we would pick up whatever she needed, and the Animals of Farthing Wood magazine for me.

I would then have Waffles crisps for lunch with a cup of instant coffee, plenty of milk, and read my magazine. This was my earliest experience of drinking coffee, and if you're shaking your head in disbelief at the recklessness of my mother for giving caffeine to basically a toddler, look around you and I defy you to not spot at least three small children guzzling either soft drinks or sugary sweets.

A little spoon of freeze dried coffee never did anyone any harm. In fact, it probably aided me in becoming the excellent human being I am today.

Abroad Thoughts from Home

This image is from a series on the Maptia website, based on a book about langauge called Through the Language Glass. As far as I'm aware, these are original drawings done by some on the Maptia website,although whom the credit is due to I cannot be sure.

This little explanation on the website was quite nice, though.

The idea that words cannot always say everything has been written about extensively - as Friedrich Nietzsche said, 'Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon the absolute truth.' No doubt the best book we've read that covers the subject is 'Through The Language Glass' by Guy Deutscher, which goes a long way to explaining and understanding these loopholes, the gaps which mean there are leftover words without translations, concepts that cannot be properly explained across cultures.

I'm in Ireland now for a few weeks, I have a serious task at hand; learn how to drive. I intend to also pass my driving test, but I accept this might not happen the first time round, so I'm willing to make a compromise; if I can simply know how to drive competently, for now that's enough.

I have a wonderful almost-Autumn cold; groggy, sore head, tight throat, insatiable appetite. Bring it on, body, I'm ready.

First Breakfast

Well this is it, we are students no more; we have moved out of our dorm room and into an aparment in Frederiskburg (great location, great apartment). Grown ups now, I guess. Leo started a new job at a fancy-pants bank today, and I'm hanging around, unpacking and feeling a bit listless because tomorrow I go back to Ireland to learn to drive.

I'm 24, and haven't had more than 4 lessons. I've set myself a project for this year to get my license, and hopefully the less amount of time it takes, the better. Then it'll be back here for a while, work, try to make some money, and then I have some really sweet travel and study plans.

But for now, I'm sitting here amidst boxes and suitcases, eating on proper crockery and feeling both content and sad.

For those interested, I am having banana (fruit is better sliced up), pain au chocolat, and the most amazing type of breakfast food that exists, apple pureé heated up with cinammon, and (organic is better) natural yoghurt poured on. When I have kids I will feed them nothing but this. It's magical stuff, and beyond healthy too.

I also whipped out the big Bodum pot and am attempting to caffeinate myself into being excited. Pity it's blustery and grey outside.

Some of Lately

Trips to Christianshavn, jam making, the beginnings of Autumn, and the magnificent (now defunct) cat bag.

Making jam with fruits from the road outside

I can't believe Denmark sometimes...shouldn't this be illegal?

I made that box!!!

Topping Skills

A metalworker's workshop we saw

Poopin'

Commissioned graffiti in Vestebro