Have map, will find way

 I love the concept behind the ezine Intravel.

Sections include

Incognito

In good taste

Indulge

In love

and best of all ...

Inept.

The magazine has published a piece of mine in the 'Inept' section called 'Have map, will find way'.

I love looking at maps - I just can't read them.

My husband says it would help if I realised you actually have to follow one to know where you are on the map.

So if Tom was driving and I was 'map reading', we might have a conversation like this:

Tom: Where do we turn off?

Me: Not sure

Tom: Where are we on the map then?

Me: Don't know

Nowadays I drive and he reads the map. It works better.

Of course, when I'm on my own, I've got no choice but to read a map. This piece is about my attempt to get around Basel with a street map.
If you vote for me, I just might get paid for this piece. So, please register on the website (see lefthand tab) and vote if you like my ineptitude at map reading!
Link here:
http://intravelmag.com/intrave…..l-find-way

Silver Award from Wanderlust for Travel Blog of the Year

Way back in 2011 I entered a writing competition in Wanderlust magazine with the theme of train journeys. I was new to writing then and it must have been one of the first travel competitions I'd entered. The piece entitled 'Returning to Belfast' didn't win.

C'est la vie, I thought philosophically, and rewrote the piece to put up on this blog. Almost two years later, I submitted it to Wanderlust's 'Blog of the Week'. Wanderlust selected it, and I was thrilled when they added to my profile:

Mother, wife, teacher, music lover, dreamer, hill walker, travel addict and writer. And Helen still has time to create one of the most beautifully written travel blogs on the web.

http://www.wanderlust.co.uk/magazine/blogs/blog-of-the-week/blog-of-the-week-returning-to-belfast

I thought that would be the end of it, but once again I was delighted to find out that my 'Blog of the Week' had been shortlisted (to one of eight) best of the blogs of the week.
I imagined that would be as far as it would go. But no, not quite, and although I didn't win (again), Wanderlust has given me a special silver award,  calling my blog entry, an inspiring read.
So here's to you at Wanderlust and a very big thank you. Funny how things turn out, and life unexpectedly returns you to the place you started!

Through Germany with the Book Thief and Zusak

First the colours.
Then the humans.
That's how I usually see things.
Or at least, how I try.

Markus Zusak perspective of Nazi Germany is a strange one - observed through the eyes of death. And it is his quirky, original way take on the world that made me fall in love with his novel, The Book Thief. Zusak takes one of Europe's (and the world's) darkest moments and injects it with humour and hope - but doesn't shrink from describing the horrors of that grim period of history.
The book is not perfect but it is original and clever. The characterisation (larger than life; cartoon-like) is a joy to read. The creativity of his language is inspirational, but when Zusak gets caught up with telling his story, he doesn't manage to sustain the level of creativity found in the first pages of the book.
The structure of the book, however, is innovative: The small fact files that break up the text, act as pointers, glossary and sub-titles all rolled into one, allowing the book to breathe.
The grim reaper as protagonist works well too, and the motif of colour throughout allows Zusak to write scenes of sumptious creativity.
Zusak's portrayal of Liesel and her relationship with her foster family and the street kids she befriends could verge on the sentimental, but the tough and humorous characters he creates lets him off the hook.
This book was my companion as I travelled through Germany, camping along the Baltic coast and on down through Swiss Saxony before reaching Bavaria. I started seeing Germany through Zusak's eyes: the absurdity, the generousity, the small-mindedness, the individuality, the humour, the weaknesses and the strengths of my fellow human beings encountered along the way:
There was the wild-eyed German at one campsite who threatened to call the police because we'd kicked a flaming gas canister into the centre of the field (out of the way of our tent, car and children), even though we had put the fire out!
There was the large-bellied cook in dungarees on a Ruegen campsite (who had built a metal cocoon, segments of tapered corrugated tin, called the 'Woodpecker Cave') who fed us on pineapple and shouted so loudly he might as well have been speaking through a megaphone.
 There was the monstrous Hitler 'holiday camp,'  5 miles long (but never saw a single  holidaymaker); a building of such misguided ambition, it stood like a decaying beached whale on the shoreline with its cracked concrete and broken windows.
There was the excited carpark attendant on the Island of Usedom whose eyes nearly popped out of his head when he 'saw' my young son driving - he had never seen a right-hand drive before. So thrilled to meet a Brit, he exclaimed he would have bought me a bunch of flowers if only he had known I was coming.
There was the rattling trabi on the autobahn trundling along at a stately 40 miles per hour; an older couple peering through the window. They'd waited years to get their precious car. The metal wasn't much thicker than a can of baked beans - but all their dreams were contained in that scrap of metal. They weren't about to give it up any day soon.
Sometimes as I travelled, the absurd, the funny, the tragic and the colour of Zusak's created world merged with my own real life journey through Germany. He added flavour to an unusual holiday, and I realised, his larger-than-life portrayal of war-time Germany was not so far removed from real life in the present day Germany.
Zusak just helped me see it ...

This post has been entered into the blogging competition at the works here:
http://www.theworks.co.uk/travelbloggercomp

I nominate 3 bloggers:
http://richlakin.wordpress.com/

http://www.juliahammond.co.uk/Travel/HOME.html

http://chrisgalvinwriter.wordpress.com/

Foreign Encounters: A New Anthology from Writers Abroad

Online writing group Writers Abroad are proud to announce the publication on Wednesday 24^th October of their new anthology, entitled Foreign Encounters.

An encounter can be a chance meeting, a planned get-together or even a confrontation. This collection of stories, non-fiction articles and poems features a variety of foreign encounters: with family, friends, lovers, animals, cultures, or just with one’s own prejudices and preconceptions.

Foreign Encounters is the third anthology published by Writers Abroad, an online group of ex-pat writers.  All the contributors are, or have been, ex-pats living in places around the globe. Author Julia Gregson, a former ex-pat whose bestselling novel East of the Sun won the Prince Maurice Prize for romantic fiction, has written the foreword.

Following a call for submissions, Writers Abroad received 231 contributions of which they selected 95 for the anthology. They include 16 poems, 38 short stories and 41 non-fiction articles. Since Writers Abroad is a virtual writers’ group, all the work to produce Foreign Encounters has been done online.  

All proceeds from the sale of this book will go to Books Abroad, a charity which coordinates the donation of free books for schools throughout the world, believing that education is a crucial aspect of human progress. The charity celebrates its 30^th anniversary this year and has supplied over 1,600 schools with desperately-needed books.

Foreign Encounters is available from Lulu, price €9.99 (approximately £8.00), from Wednesday 24^th October, when this link will become live: http://www.lulu.com/shop/writers-abroad/foreign-encounters/paperback/product-20450826.html.

To find out more and for a complete list of contributions and authors, please go to the Writers Abroad website, http://www.writersabroad.com/.

Notes for editors

·         Writers Abroad was founded in 2009. It provides an online forum for ex-pat writers to exchange ideas, views and news on writing and to offer support and constructive feedback on each other’s work. Membership numbers are limited but ex-pat writers may apply to join if they are able to support the group’s initiatives and aims. http://www.writersabroad.com/.

·         For more about author Julia Gregson, see http://www.juliagregson.net/

·         For more about Books Abroad, see http://booksabroad.org.uk/

·         Contributors live in, and have written about, more than 50 countries in every continent.

My story called 'Seeing the World Differently' will be included in this anthology. Please, buy a copy (or copies - the book would make a fine Christmas present) and will support a great charity at the same time.

Drama on the Stari Most

At the highest point on the bridge a small figure on the skyline climbed over the rail. 20 metres below him the freezing Neretva River swirled beneath sheer-sided rocks.

On the shoreline, a crowd had gathered to watch. High above them, the man stood there frozen on the narrow ledge.  For a moment, it felt as if time has been suspended.

Then someone was shouting. “Go on. Do it!”

As if broken from his trance, he raised one arm to the sky, took a deep breath and propelled himself outwards, his arms stretched out like an eagle. For a moment he seemed to fly, but then he began to drop like a stone to the river below. The wind lifted and his body curved dangerously close to the rocks. He hit the surface and the water exploded. He was gone.

The crowd scanned the river but there was no sign of the man, until moments later he reappeared bobbing like a cork further downstream.  Everyone broke into applause.

All afternoon we’d watched the young boys of Mostar jump from the 10 metre board on the riverside just below the bridge, practising for the day they too would qualify for the Stari Most Annual Diving. In Monsar it’s a rite of passage.

The Stari Most (Old Bridge) was commissioned by the Suleiman the Magnificant in 1557. On completion it was the widest single-arched bridge in the world. No one knows how the scaffolding was erected or how the stone had been transported from one side to the other. It seemed a miracle.

For over 400 years, the locals dived from the bridge. No one imagined it would ever end – that is until the 9^th November 1993, when the bridge was obliterated in the war.  Mostar was in shock. The Stari Most was more than just a bridge – it had been a symbol of unity across a multi-ethnic city. Mostar had to wait until 2004 for the reconstructed bridge to unite the old town again and the diving could recommence.

The local youths gazed up at the divers, their eyes bright with admiration, anticipating their own initiation. Diving from the Stari Most, they knew, wasn’t for the faint-hearted. The water, at 12 degree Celsius, can send the heart into cardiac arrest. Before the jump, the divers submerge themselves in the river to acclimatise and are sprayed again with icy water just before they make the leap.  The jump itself is perilous too - one mistake can mean the difference between life and death.

The initial jump had been completed and the Bosnian anthem rang through the ravine. Flowers thrown from the bridge, floated across the air before drifting down the river: a remembrance to those who died in the war. High above the banks of the river, the remaining burnt out shells of buildings are a sobering reminder of a very recent war. But again the town is reunified in its annual dive on the Old Bridge.

A taste of Croatian waters

My husband had disappeared from our village apartment. He’d only gone to check the washing. Minutes turned into hours and I went in search of him.

I peeped into the courtyard out the back. The square was empty in the fierce afternoon heat. The tiny pekara, the bakery was deserted too, as was the café next to it. I wandered downstairs to the basement corridor where the washing machine was. Not there either. I descended the last steps to the seafront. In front of me, the Mali Ston Bay stretched out to the Pelješac Peninsula, where grey-green olive trees and pines covered the hillside. I scanned the seafront promenade and the shore: He was nowhere to be seen.

Back inside, I returned to the washing machine. Iva the landlord’s daughter appeared.

“Looking for your husband? He is here.”

I frowned, puzzled. The corridor was empty.

She pushed back a door I hadn’t noticed before. “Come in, come in,” a voice sang out from behind the door. It was Mile, our landlord.

I peered through the gloom and there was Tom in the corner of a storeroom grinning sheepishly, a glass of rakija in his hand.

I took in the arched brick wall lined with dusty bottles and a long bench covered in food amongst an array of strange, unidentifiable Croatian objects.

 “Welcome to my place,” Mile said. “My wife, she own the kitchen. Here … all this belong to me. We men must have our place.”

I laughed. “In Britain, men have their garden sheds to escape to.”

“And here,” Mile said, “we men have our basement.”

“Come, come, have a glass of rakija.” He poured a generous glass of his homemade spirit from a large demijohn.

“You must eat some Pršut.” Only then did I notice the pork leg, trotter protruding in the air, jammed in a polished, wooden drying rack.

“I prepare this two years,” Mile told me.

Pršut, (jambon to the Spanish) is cured with Adriatic saltwater; then squeezed on a rack until all the brine is removed. The ham is smoked and left outside to dry in the fierce Bora winds over winter. It is then hung up in dark attics, outbuildings or basements all over Dalmatia to mature.

I took a bite and tasted the winds and seas of the Adriatic Sea, the fustiness of the basement, and the years of loving attention.  Mile handed me some crusty bread and cut a slice of cheese.

“ Paski Sir, the best cheese in the world,” he said. “It is from the island of Pag. Eat some.”

The Pag Bora wind dries the millions of tiny seawater droplets that blow in off the sea and scatters the salt dust across the sage-covered island; a flavoursome diet for the island sheep.

 I tasted the salty aromatic sheep’s cheese and knocked back another slug of belly-burning Rakiya. British men could keep their garden sheds, I wanted a Croatian basement.

Delighted to have won the Just Back Telegraph competition with this piece.

Komarna is a small modern village, mainly catering for the tourist industry. It is a good centre for visiting some of Croatia's beautiful islands: Hvar, Mljet, and Korcula, for example, and the Peljesac Peninsula. Dubrovnik can also be visited on a day trip, as can Mostar in Bosnia. The apartment we stayed in was right by the sea. It was wonderful to sit on the balcany and watch the world go by - or watch the sun set. Check it out here:

http://www.villadorida.com/

The Brljevic family, who own the apartment where we were staying, were incredibly hospitable. Apart from the wonderful basement experience, Jasminka made me a delicious orange and nut cake for my birthday (and gave me a box of chocolate). On arrival the fridge was filled with food: milk, beer, orange juice, rolls and a platter of food (cured ham and cheese) as well as fruit.

This is a family who love good food. Vera, their daughter, and partner Frank live in Istria and write a great blog about Istria and food. The blog includes mouth-watering recipes. Check it out here:

http://www.frankaboutcroatia.com/

Across the Bay of Kotor with Zoran

It wasn’t an auspicious start. Zoran, the skipper arrived at the jetty with a comic-strip finger, immobilised with splint and a thick wadding of bandage.

He noticed my worried stare. “Did it when I was sawing through a chain,” he explained cheerfully.

He hopped down off the pier onto his outboard dinghy and awkwardly unmoored the craft with his good hand. Having reached his fishing boat and anchored the dinghy, he returned to the jetty with the larger vessel. Well, he’d made it this far. Maybe he could make it across the Bay of Kotor?

We clambered aboard, my husband, children and I, the skipper’s children and grandchildren, a sullen husband-of-his wife’s-cousin with an upside-down smile, and a thick-set Croat-Serbian couple looking uncannily like a pair of bulldogs. Was it too late to jump ship?

Things didn’t improve.  Zoran was panicking because his keys were missing. Everyone combed the boat, peering under supplies of bottled water, scattered clothing and seat padding until at last the keys materialised under the skipper’s seat. Triumphantly, Zoran unlocked a cupboard and produced a large bottle of rakia to celebrate.

Zoran poured a generous measure into each plastic cup. Jelena held hers up to the sun and smiled, suddenly looking more human and less bulldog like.

“This is good,” she said contentedly. “Homemade rakia is the best.  Look how pure, maybe 60% or 70% alcohol.”

I gazed nervously at Zoran who grinned and knocked his rakia back in one.

“You know, rakia is so strong,” Jelena continued, “if you drink too much you can forget your name or get lost in your own home”.

I stole a glance at Zoran who was already on his second cup. If people got lost in their own homes, how was our skipper going to navigate the Bay of Kotor?  Zoran was now looking very relaxed. He’d abandoned his skipper’s seat and was stretched out next to me on the passenger’s seat on the portside, manipulating the wheel with his foot.

All around us the Montenegrin Mountains soared heavenwards. Zoran headed straight for a rocky shoreline at speed. It was only at the last minute that I noticed the Blue Cave. He inched the boat through the entrance. Inside, tiny bats circled us in the gloom.

I dived into cool water. Below me, scuba divers’ lights blinked in the murky blue depths. Surrounding me, the white rock of the cave reflected a paler blue.  At the far end, I could see the light from a second entrance. I swam across the cavern into warmer turquoise water. Only then, I saw Zoran was turning the boat and heading towards the distant entrance.

“Quick,” my husband called urgently. “Zoran must leave now.” Furiously, I swam towards the boat. Tom hauled me on board as Zoran headed full-steam out of the cave.

Back on shore, Zoran gave me a rakia-fuelled wink. “Your husband was sure I was going to leave you behind”.  I smiled weakly, relieved to be on dry land again.