local perspectives in a global society
"I look at you with
sparks for eyes, why should we not
lead fantastic lives?"
Click on any image for a better view.
sparks for eyes, why should we not
lead fantastic lives?"
Click on any image for a better view.
Wales, UK
West Wales Region
© Noelle E. C. Evans 2014-2017
Vaporised breath, crisp landscapes, and roars of unhinged cheer from the train to the pubs mark Christmastime in Wales.
Wassailing is a Christmas eve tradition spent in pubs like the Druid Inn in Goginan, West Wales. The inn is situated in a rural outpost about seven miles east of Aberystwyth. It's surrounded by large stretches of farmland, country houses, and cabins. If you look up at any given time during the day, you'll likely see swooping Red Kites, a bird of prey. Getting to the pub from the farmhouse where I was staying involved walking across a field and up a hill. Those were the directions I was given.
After dinner at the pub, which was washed down with a black currant cider (commonly called a "cider and black" in Wales), booklets of carols in Welsh and English were passed around near the bar. I can hear someone testing of keys on a piano that's obscured by the crowd. Everyone calmed down just enough to settle on a carol to start the set. I stood between a woman in her seventies and a man in his forties. Both sang confidently in Welsh. I sang quietly, trying to follow along with the words phonetically while matching the melodies, but my tentativeness as an outsider went largely unnoticed. Jolly, red-faced men were stealing the show: teetering and leaning heavily on pillars, countertops, and friends. They belted out the lyrics. Kids weaved between the crowd carrying puzzles and toys. As unstable as it was, it felt close to cosy, almost wholesome.
The whole thing dissolved halfway through the third carol as about half the crowd, those who’d been there the longest I’d venture to guess, grew restless and distracted. It became immediately clear that there was little hope of a final song. It was time to shuffle down the hill, cross the field, and turn in.
Nadolig Llawen! (Merry Christmas!)
Wassailing is a Christmas eve tradition spent in pubs like the Druid Inn in Goginan, West Wales. The inn is situated in a rural outpost about seven miles east of Aberystwyth. It's surrounded by large stretches of farmland, country houses, and cabins. If you look up at any given time during the day, you'll likely see swooping Red Kites, a bird of prey. Getting to the pub from the farmhouse where I was staying involved walking across a field and up a hill. Those were the directions I was given.
After dinner at the pub, which was washed down with a black currant cider (commonly called a "cider and black" in Wales), booklets of carols in Welsh and English were passed around near the bar. I can hear someone testing of keys on a piano that's obscured by the crowd. Everyone calmed down just enough to settle on a carol to start the set. I stood between a woman in her seventies and a man in his forties. Both sang confidently in Welsh. I sang quietly, trying to follow along with the words phonetically while matching the melodies, but my tentativeness as an outsider went largely unnoticed. Jolly, red-faced men were stealing the show: teetering and leaning heavily on pillars, countertops, and friends. They belted out the lyrics. Kids weaved between the crowd carrying puzzles and toys. As unstable as it was, it felt close to cosy, almost wholesome.
The whole thing dissolved halfway through the third carol as about half the crowd, those who’d been there the longest I’d venture to guess, grew restless and distracted. It became immediately clear that there was little hope of a final song. It was time to shuffle down the hill, cross the field, and turn in.
Nadolig Llawen! (Merry Christmas!)
Iceland
South East Region
Iceland is a strange planet, I mean island. It's a place that draws the curiosity of geologists and travellers from all over the world. It is a brutal and stunning slice of extra-terrestrial Earth. The beauty is perhaps magnified by the starkness in between. The sky will dance with the northern lights on a clear night, or between clouds, if the solar magnetism strikes the atmosphere right. In the daytime while it can be dreary, rainbows are not uncommon.
The vista evolves from volcanic lava fields, which are without biodiversity but excellent for a wander along a moonscape, to glacial lagoons, farmland plains, hot springs, waterfalls, cliffs, crashing waves along the coastline, and volcanoes if you head more inland. If you've glimpsed a travel booklet, I'm not telling you anything you don't already know.
I have a love/hate relationship with Iceland. It is a punishing place, but that also draws out a stoicism and resilience in the people who live here. The population is so small and scattered between a handful of cities, towns, and rural hamlets that politics are more of a town hall -- especially in Reykjavik. National issues are local issues by fact of sheer population size and geography. Icelandic politicians don't have the luxury that others have in larger nations; they can't completely remove themselves from the populace.
This is why, in part, Icelandic political progress seems to be utopian to Americans and others, particularly following the jailing of bank CEOs and others after the global economic collapse of 2008. It looks good on paper, but it's not perfect. Just before I arrived in Iceland in late September, the government had collapsed. This didn’t look like mayhem on the streets, but it did involve peaceful rallies and protests in the lead-up to a snap election.
The upheaval came after a pedophilia scandal in which the Prime Minister’s father, Benedikt Sveinsson wrote a letter of recommendation for a friend and convicted pedophile, Hjalti Sigurjon Hauksson. Hauksson was sentenced to five years in prison for raping his step-daughter over twelve years. The letter was meant to restore Hauksson’s rights and expunge his criminal record. The Prime Minister was then accused of attempting to withhold the letter from the public.
That political process is not shown here. Instead, these are photographs of a weekend road trip along the South East coast with an Icelandic family.
The vista evolves from volcanic lava fields, which are without biodiversity but excellent for a wander along a moonscape, to glacial lagoons, farmland plains, hot springs, waterfalls, cliffs, crashing waves along the coastline, and volcanoes if you head more inland. If you've glimpsed a travel booklet, I'm not telling you anything you don't already know.
I have a love/hate relationship with Iceland. It is a punishing place, but that also draws out a stoicism and resilience in the people who live here. The population is so small and scattered between a handful of cities, towns, and rural hamlets that politics are more of a town hall -- especially in Reykjavik. National issues are local issues by fact of sheer population size and geography. Icelandic politicians don't have the luxury that others have in larger nations; they can't completely remove themselves from the populace.
This is why, in part, Icelandic political progress seems to be utopian to Americans and others, particularly following the jailing of bank CEOs and others after the global economic collapse of 2008. It looks good on paper, but it's not perfect. Just before I arrived in Iceland in late September, the government had collapsed. This didn’t look like mayhem on the streets, but it did involve peaceful rallies and protests in the lead-up to a snap election.
The upheaval came after a pedophilia scandal in which the Prime Minister’s father, Benedikt Sveinsson wrote a letter of recommendation for a friend and convicted pedophile, Hjalti Sigurjon Hauksson. Hauksson was sentenced to five years in prison for raping his step-daughter over twelve years. The letter was meant to restore Hauksson’s rights and expunge his criminal record. The Prime Minister was then accused of attempting to withhold the letter from the public.
That political process is not shown here. Instead, these are photographs of a weekend road trip along the South East coast with an Icelandic family.
Portugal
A Tour of the Coast
Portuguese diplomat António Guterres became the UN Secretary-General on New Years Day, 2017. I know this because it was in the newspapers that week when I arrived in Portugal. It didn't make much of a difference in people's lives, but it did make international news.
For a week, I traveled from a deserted and depressed Faro in the south to a more lively Porto in the north. In the summer months, Faro attracts crowds of tourists and partiers but in the winter you're often met with, "That's not available until the summer." This incensed my travel companion, so we mapped out a route up north instead of sticking around as we'd first intended. This is how I was introduced to the train system, the coastline, and towns as romantic and picturesque as Èvora, Lisbon, Sintra, and Porto.
Without a formal education in Portugal's history, I'm still confident that the heritage is embedded with integrity in the architecture and the music. Buildings in Lisbon are decorated with tile mosaics called azulejos that come from moorish influence. In 1755, Lisbon was hit with an earthquake that all but levelled the city. In the rebuilding process, building fronts were made with azulejos decorating the exterior walls. In most cities you'll see the tiles.
The only thing I knew for certain about Lisbon before arriving was that it was the final European stop for the heroes in the movie, Casablanca, before reaching the U.S. I'm not proud of this, but it did inspire a vintage purchase of a smoker's jacket in the little town of Èvora that seemed in character. Reaching Lisbon, I was struck by an immediate free fall into love with the local music. The Club de Hot Jazz is as authentic an old-fashioned jazz club as I'll ever step foot in. The seating was low to the ground and made of cork. most people were drinking red wine, and everyone listened with full attention when the musicians began to play.
Blocks away, in a neighbourhood plaza, another concert was taking place. In the open air, kids sat at a table playing games while their aunts and parents looked on. Photographers moved through the crowd to capture video of the musicians. I was so entranced that I dedicated a day in Porto to sit in a music school's shop of instruments a few days later. I tried out the fado, a small 'guitar' with a big belly that's perhaps the most iconic lute of Portugal, and then I tried out the rajão, an instrument like a ukulele with a longer neck and five steel strings on a spruce body.
The rajão is tuned the same as a ukulele with an extra D string above the G. It's actually the precursor to the ukulele, which was created in Hawaii. It was traditionally performed in folkloric dances on the island of Madeira. Of all the possible souvenirs to come from a last-minute trip to Portugal, this was not one I could have predicted I'd take with me.
Perhaps that's the point of travel though, that you encounter the unexpected and leave with a deeper respect for the world around you: the cultural histories and the ways of being different to your own.
For a week, I traveled from a deserted and depressed Faro in the south to a more lively Porto in the north. In the summer months, Faro attracts crowds of tourists and partiers but in the winter you're often met with, "That's not available until the summer." This incensed my travel companion, so we mapped out a route up north instead of sticking around as we'd first intended. This is how I was introduced to the train system, the coastline, and towns as romantic and picturesque as Èvora, Lisbon, Sintra, and Porto.
Without a formal education in Portugal's history, I'm still confident that the heritage is embedded with integrity in the architecture and the music. Buildings in Lisbon are decorated with tile mosaics called azulejos that come from moorish influence. In 1755, Lisbon was hit with an earthquake that all but levelled the city. In the rebuilding process, building fronts were made with azulejos decorating the exterior walls. In most cities you'll see the tiles.
The only thing I knew for certain about Lisbon before arriving was that it was the final European stop for the heroes in the movie, Casablanca, before reaching the U.S. I'm not proud of this, but it did inspire a vintage purchase of a smoker's jacket in the little town of Èvora that seemed in character. Reaching Lisbon, I was struck by an immediate free fall into love with the local music. The Club de Hot Jazz is as authentic an old-fashioned jazz club as I'll ever step foot in. The seating was low to the ground and made of cork. most people were drinking red wine, and everyone listened with full attention when the musicians began to play.
Blocks away, in a neighbourhood plaza, another concert was taking place. In the open air, kids sat at a table playing games while their aunts and parents looked on. Photographers moved through the crowd to capture video of the musicians. I was so entranced that I dedicated a day in Porto to sit in a music school's shop of instruments a few days later. I tried out the fado, a small 'guitar' with a big belly that's perhaps the most iconic lute of Portugal, and then I tried out the rajão, an instrument like a ukulele with a longer neck and five steel strings on a spruce body.
The rajão is tuned the same as a ukulele with an extra D string above the G. It's actually the precursor to the ukulele, which was created in Hawaii. It was traditionally performed in folkloric dances on the island of Madeira. Of all the possible souvenirs to come from a last-minute trip to Portugal, this was not one I could have predicted I'd take with me.
Perhaps that's the point of travel though, that you encounter the unexpected and leave with a deeper respect for the world around you: the cultural histories and the ways of being different to your own.