Hi guys! 🙂
Today I’m just sharing a bit of a random song with you that I came across some months ago when looking for more music featuring harp that I could add to my Bibiel’s Playlist For Sleep on Spotify, and this was one of the songs that ended up catching my attention. It has a bit of a modern Celtic feel, while I generally prefer the more traditional and folklore-infused things, but it’s still really pleasant to listen to and I think many of you may enjoy it.
Hey people! 🙂
Today I’d like to share with you a song from Y Bandana – one of the bands which Gwilym Bowen Rhys (one of my faza subjects) used to be a member of. – I said it already before on here but I really like how it shows Gwilym’s musical versatility and diversity – when you’ll listen to what he does with Y Bandana, with Plu and then solo, it all feels quite a lot different yet he’s thriving in all those music realms. Y Bandana was a rock band that he and his cousins and his friend founded as teens, and they were really successful in Wales, and recognisable for their humorous, kind of cheeky, mischievous and sometimes a bit silly lyrics. The song that I want to share with you however is different, because it really has quite a different style than all of their other songs. It comes from their final album Fel Ton Gron, which to me has a bit more musically adventurous and mature feel to it but at the same time is still very much their style and I think it’s my favourite album of theirs. But, like I said, this one song has a different feel to it than their music in general or the rest of the album, more folky in a modern way than rocky definitely, yet at the same time it complements the album as a whole very well and it doesn’t feel out of place at all. And I like the differentness of it, so that’s mostly why I want to share it with you.
Hey people! 🙂
Thought that I’d share another song by Cornelis Vreeswijk with you today, one from his debut album from 1964. It is called, as you can figure out from the title, “Balladen Om Fredrik Ã…kare” and it should not be confused with one I shared before and that is very popular in Sweden – “Balladen Om Herr Fredrik Ã…kare Och Den Söta Fröken Cecilia Lind”, that one was later.
From what I’ve read, this Fredrik Ã…kare guy (whose name could also be translated to English as Fredrik Rider), is based on a real life person, that is Cornelis’ brother-in-law, husband of his younger sister Ida. Somewhere else though I’ve read that he was something like Vreeswijk’s alter ego, so I am a bit confused, but I guess it could simply be so that Fredrik Ã…kare played slightly different roles in different songs, depending what he was needed for, and he could as well have been some sort of a blend of these two people, anyway he is one of those characters (like Ann-Kat(a)rin Rosenblad, that I wrote about a little beforeÂ
who appear quite regularly in his various lyrics and poems.
This song has always had such a depressive and resigned feel to me. I don’t feel like writing a translation and I don’t want to botch it, so I thought I’ll just tell you what it is about, which is strongly from my point of view, the way I understand and feel this piece.
The lyrical subject – I think we cann assume that here it’s the author – meets Fredrik Ã…kare somewhere out in Stockholm – as Cornelis once said at one of his later concerts, this was in January, on a cold, early morning. – They meet, presumably after not seeing each other after quite a long time, and just have a friendly catchup, although it is mostly Fredrik talking and pouring his brains out, because it turns out that a lot has changed in his life since they’d last seen each other. He’s been wandering aimlessly, not really sure of anything in his life as it seems. When the lyrical subject asks him about his wife, he says that, indeed, he had a wife, but he has divorced her. He also says that she has taken everything they/he had, so he’s pretty much left with nothing, but he doesn’t give a fuck, as he says. So he’s just kind of living without any purpose or anything, walking around Stockholm like that, seemingly unsure about anything in his life, whether future or past, kind of oblivious to whatever is going to happen and letting things go however they will in a bit of an apathetic manner I’d say, or as he says himself – “like in a trance”. – But what is most important to him is that now – after a lot of emotional upheaval and sorrow – he is free.
I must say I don’t really get this understanding of freedom – being left with nothing, even without a family you used to have, and it especially doesn’t speak to me because he doesn’t really seem all that happy with this arrangement, and life still sucks for him, but I suppose it was just the next best thing, in his opinion. This frantic looking for freedom is quite characteristic of a lot of Cornelis’ lyrics or poems and it always makes me sad when I think of it because it doesn’t seem like he ever found it during his life. But then, does anyone? It’s probably just that some people lack it even more and so feel it a lot more keenly, dealing with all sorts of addictions and other things like that. Cornelis himself was married to three women over the course of his life and divorced all of them, but this bit about Fredrik Ã…kare’s divorce can’t be inspired by his personal experiences because if I remember correctly he married his first wife, Ingalill Rehnberg, the same year that his debut album came out, and he was with Ingalill for four years. Not that it wasn’t a difficult relationship from the start, from what I know.
So yeah, a depressing piece really, or so it is to me.
Hi guys! 🙂
This beautiful solo harp piece with an oh so depressing title that I feel like sharing with you today comes from the Irish harpist whose music I’ve shared with you quite often before – that is Celia Briar. – I think it’s one of her more beautiful pieces so I hope you enjoy it too. 🙂
Hey people! 🙂
A song that I’d like to share with you today comes from Irish singer and harpist, perhaps most known for being a former member of Celtic Woman, but who has also released several solo albums – Órla Fallon. – I love her angelic vocals and her harp play. She is also Christian, or clearly seems to be, considering that she has recorded quite a lot of Christian songs and Christmas carols. This song also reflects it very well.
While, to be honest, it doesn’t resonate all that much with me musically as a lot of Órla’s other music does, there’s too much country feel in it for me on this whole album, the way she sings it is so heartfelt, and the lyrics are lovely and of course very relatable for all Christians, if also a little childish, which in my opinion only gives them more charm. So all that makes me really like this little tune and I think a lot of Christians may feel the same. It was written by a British teacher – Charles Alexander Landsborough.
If any of you have been reading my blogfrom it’s early months, you might recall a post I wrote about all the
reasons why I’m learning Welsh
that I could come up with. It was a translated post from my previous, Polish blog, and I wrote it because pretty much every single person whom I mentioned it to would ask me this question as either the first, or the second one, right after “Isn’t it an English dialect?” 😀 and because, well, as you can see in that post, there are very many reasons.
I enjoyed writing that post and it got a lot more attention than I thought it would, so the next year I also wrote about
reasons why I’m learning Swedish
and last year
reasons why I’m learning English.
I haven’t started learning any new language since then (even though some people seem to believe that I start learning a new one every month, haha), and I think it’ll be a while yet until I do, but although my language bucket list is long, I’m not rushing anywhere. And, there’s still one language that I know that I think also deserves its own post, even though I’m not learning it. Well, I am technically, but since I’m a native, it’s a different kind of learning, of course. And obviously as you can figure out of the title, or even if you know about me, this language is Polish. I was a little hesitant about writing this post however, even though I was thinking from the beginning of this yearly language series that I should do it. Of course I love Polish, and in a way it’s a more special relationship than with any other of my languages, but, because it’s always been a part of my life and not really as a result of my own, conscious choice as is the case with the others, I thought it would be harder to come up with as many reasons. As someone who hates anything to do with math, I always tend to appreciate quality over quantity, but I wouldn’t like this post to stand out as the shortest of the whole series, that would be sad and unfair, even if just in my opinion.
I shared the dilemma with my Mum, who rightly noticed that it would be much more sad and unfair if I didn’t write it at all. And that perhaps the reasons as such will speak louder here than their amount would. That was a very fair point to me, so that’s why I am writing this post today, after all.
Here are all the reasons why I love Polish:
It is, like I said earlier, my mother tongue, so, in a way, I have even more of a connection with it than any other of my languages. It was the first language that sparked the love for language in my brain, I mean language in general, as a phenomenon, linguistics. It made me fall in love with words, my synaesthetic associations with them, it showed me how fun it is to play with words and expand your vocabulary. I love it because it’s the language in which I communicate with people I love – my family. – And because learning it made me more able and open to learn other languages later on.
Like all my languages. It is plain beautiful. While other Slavic languages aren’t among my most most most favourites (I do like them a lot, they are super cool and very charming but they aren’t in that MOST group), I strongly believe that even if it wasn’t my mother tongue, I’d still end up loving Polish, I don’t know how I could not.
While I’m not inclined to brag like some of us like to do that our language is the most difficult in the world (it depends on what you’re starting with, and there are much, much more complex languages out there), Polish does have a rather complex grammatical structure when compared to English, and – if you can ever be objective about such things – I’d say it’s also more complex phonetically than all the languages I’ve learnt so far. That makes me lucky, because the more difficult language you’re starting with, the easier you’ll likely find learning other languages, because you may be familiar with their trickier bits already from your mother tongue. I don’t have to be scared of languages with genuses or cases, for example, and arduously try to conceptualise them, because I already know what they are all about, now I just have to figure out how they apply to the language I’m learning and what differences there are compared to what I’m used to. And while picking up phonetics of foreign languages seems to be more of an individual trait, I think it does help me with it that, in my mother tongue, there are sounds which can hardly be differentiated from each other by a non-native even though they are different (see Å› and sz, ć and cz etc.).
There is a lot of great Polish literature. I don’t know much about how much of it gets translated to other languages and which ones most often, but given that most countries are largely focused either on writing their own literature, or translating things from English, and the Anglophone world doesn’t seem to translate a lot, if I lived anywhere else and didn’t speak Polish, I probably wouldn’t get to know books by people who are now my favourite Polish authors.
Some of the swearwords and expletives are priceless. See my post
for example, if you want to learn more.
It has loads of amusing idioms. And lots of such that are very straightforward and to the point, and lots of such that I just love the sound of.
The archaic Polish language. While I think it’s very true that a language is alive as long as it’s changing, because we are always changing and the times are always changing so it would be weird if the language wouldn’t, hence I don’t understand people who are all against slang, loanwords and other such things, I think it would be fun if we talked more like we used to, used more of that vocabulary we no longer do. Or, why the heck did we stop using initial stress in words to replace it with a paroxytone stress? I guess only highlanders speak with an initial syllable stress now, and I like that because it makes them sound like Finns. 😀 Or I hate that we stopped using long and short vowels because that makes the prosody of a language feel more interesting. I love love love reading older Polish books where there are words that we no longer use, some that I don’t even really get and I love learning what they mean and feeling them. People used to have such a delicious way of writing, even at the beginning of the 20th century, not to mention earlier. I feel like it often gets lost now. I say delicious because one of the synaesthesias I have is lexical-gustatory and while words almost always have some sort of a taste and it’s not like the modern Polish language doesn’t and like there aren’t any delicious words in it (far from it), it’s just that more archaic Polish language tends to have something very specific about its taste as a whole, that I really like. My Mum has also always loved reading books written in an archaic or obsolete language, so I guess it must be genetic. She especially has a lot of prayer books from like even before WWI I guess, when even the spelling was different and we used y instead of j, or my grandma has a cook book from the end of 19th century. I just love things like these!
Dialects. You may perhaps remember from my post about English, that I wrote about Polish being a fairly unified language in terms of accent, especially when compared to English. However, there still are some slight variations to how people speak in different regions and it’s interesting to observe. There are also some dialects. I don’t necessarily have to love all of them as such in terms of whether they appeal to me aesthetically, but I love that the ones that exist still do, that we have some linguistic diversity (although I wish there was more or at least that it would be more pronounced), and although I myself don’t speak any dialect or don’t have a particularly distinguishable accent (despite being half-Kashub, and Kashubian is classified as a minority language but I can hardly understand it let alone speak it), I am very easily driven up the wall by people saying things like that it is not “elegant” to speak in a dialect, for example. I do think it’s a good skill to have to be able to speak your language in some universal, standard way that is often considered more formal, but being disapproving of someone speaking in a different way is not only discriminatory but also kind of smothering a person’s identity, and I guess that’s one of the reasons why it bothers me so much whenever I come across such an attitude.
Words that are untranslatable to other languages that I know. I am always interested in the concept of untranslatable words, in any language, and the ideas behind them, how you can express sometimes some incredibly complex ideas using one word in one language, but in another, one sentence may sometimes be too little. A very good example of a Polish word that is untranslatable to English is kombinować, which also happens to be a word that I really like and which, as many Poles think, reflects our resourcefulness as a nation. 😀 Yes, there is combine, and kombinować absolutely can mean combine, but it also has another definition. It is something you do when you have a problem that you need to resolve, but there’s no straight way out of it and it needs first a lot of thinking and then coming up with some unconventional work-around strategy, which sometimes may not be the most honest one. Both the thinking process and then carrying your idea out is what kombinować means. When it is dishonest, you could of course say it’s plain cheating but cheating feels a LOT more weighty and negative, and also kombinować is more colloquial, plus kombinować may, but doesn’t have to include, any cheating. It could be coming up with any creative, out-of-the-box solution or idea and then doing what you came up with. It is often translated as being up to something but it’s not the same.
Poglish, Ponglish, Pinglish or whatchamacallit. I’ve always said Ponglish, but a lot of people say Poglish and recently I came across Pinglish and I think Pinglish is best. Anyway, obviously you know what I’m talking about, the blend of Polish and English. It is often used by Polish diaspore in the US and the UK (like in Chicago I guess it’s quite a big thing) or by Polish young people in a slangy sort of way, or (voluntarily or not) by Polish speakers learning English/English speakers learning Polish when they’re dealing with language interference and/or nearly discharged/fried brains. It can be so freakishly amusing sometimes.
I often gravitate towards languages that are less popular and less heard off, if not obscure. Polish may not be as much as obscure, but, apart from Poland or places in other countries where there are a lot of Polish immigrants, you won’t hear it a lot, and there aren’t super many non-natives who would speak it. This small language factor is very appealing to me.
Because, whether it is the most difficult language in the world or not, it is viewed by many learners and natives as difficult, and I was lucky enough to not have to make a conscious effort of learning it. 😀 And the difficult factor is also appealing in itself. I like difficult languages, they are fascinating, kind of similarly to how complex human beings are.
What do you love your native language for, if you do, and if you don’t, why? 🙂
Hey people! 🙂
When I get a new faza,
I listen to their music almost all the time, and it is no exception with Jacob Elwy. I also like sharing my fazas’ music with other people, but as you may have noticed I haven’t been so generous with sharing Jacob’s music on here. I indeed try to be a bit more sparing, because it’s not like he’s released a lot of music so far, it’s only singles, and I don’t want to run out of it too quickly. On the other hand I also don’t want to be too monothematical and if this series was to thoroughly reflect my listening activity, this blog would be heavily Jacob-dominated right now. 😀 I think I’ll be featuring something with him once a month or so.
Today, it’s another song that he sang with Y Trwbz – a Welsh-language rock band founded by him and his brother, also including their cousin Tomo Lloyd, friend Gruff Roberts and Mared Williams who is also an accomplished solo artist. – This particular song has never so far been actually officially released by them,but they often seem to play it live. It differs a bit from their usual style, since they are a rock band and this song has a very strong reggae feel, but it’s not incongruent in any way since both Morgan (who wrote the song) and Jacob, seem to be very much into reggae music. I’ve heard Jacob saying that if he could get to choose anyone that he’d like to work with, it would be Bob Marley, so, that says a lot, I guess. I think it’s cool because, while I’m no longer as crazy about it as I used to, before I discovered my love for folk, I was very much into reggae myself so even if it’s not a genre that I’d be listening to very consistently these days, I really have to be in the mood, I definitely like a lot and have a lot of very positive feelings and associations with it.
The recording I’m sharing with you is from 2019, when they were playing at Gwobrau’r Selar event. Gwobrau’r Selar, or Y Selar Awards, are music awards are annual awards for Welsh-language music, awarded by a Welsh music magazine called Y Selar. Y Trwbz themselves were awarded in the Best EP or Single category for their EP “Croesa’r Afon” (Cross The River) just a year before this performance.
Very sadly, I’m afraid my understanding of the lyrics is a tad bit too patchy to be able to translate them for you in any sensible way. It’s like, I guess I get them quite well but I don’t know a fair few words and I don’t really know how to go about translating this somehow. But it’s still really good musically and I hope you can enjoy it in this aspect, and when I’ll feel more confident about my translator skills in this case I’ll update the post.
Hey people! 🙂
So as you may remember I shared with you yesterday a song from Swedish pop singer Pernilla Andersson, and I said that I might share one more soon, that is her cover of a song originally written and sung by Cornelis Vreeswijk. And so that’s what I decided to do today.
This song is what made me fall in love with the name Saskia so much that if I ever considered having kids, Saskia would be a very serious candidate for a girl. I’d never really come across that name a lot before hearing this.
The song comes from one of Cornelis Vreeswijk’s earlier albums – “Tio Vackra Visor Och Personliga Persson” (Ten Beautiful Songs And Personal Persson). There is a recording of his live performance at an Örebro jazz club called Powerhouse, which was released as an album after his death, where he says that this song was inspired by a real life Saskia he once met in his “green youth”, on the way back home to his wife with whom he was at the time (Ingalill Rehnberg I think based on the timing), he would often stop at some sort of other beer place I don’t really know, to have a few beers with his “good friends and other condemned individuals”. And one time when he was there, there was a girl called Saskia who was working there, and she apparently asked him what was Rembrandt’s wife’s name, so he said that she was called Saskia van Rijn, and then he had free beer for the rest of his stay there. How magnanimously of her… I don’t know though if what they were doing after her work according to the song is also based on facts or not really. His second wife, Bim Linnea Warne, said once that, while he was awfully jealous which is quite well-known, he was very faithful himself, although, as much as I like Cornelis, I can’t help but feel a little doubtful about that. 😀
I love Cornelis’ original version, but Pernilla Andersson also does a really great job. Her song doesn’t have the last couple of verses though.
According to the lyrics, Saskia is cross-eyed, and that’s why she is a subject of ridicule for everyone, which I’ve always found a little surprising because, perhaps I’m totally wrong at all that but I guess strabismus (I suppose that’s how it’s called in English?) isn’t an uncommon thing, it’s also not like a very disabling condition or making one somehow grossly unattractive even if it’s commonly seen as not very beautiful, so while I get that someone could be bullied due to something like this, would that really raise so much attention? In the 60’s? As I said though, I may have no clue, since I’m blind myself and don’t know how much things like that can affect one’s view of a person, it’s just something that I’ve found kind of interesting and strange.
Below is the translation of the song, I wrote it myself but I used
to help myself.
  Saskia has a name with a ring to it
She works at a pub
Pours beer for the guys
The guys think she is good
The guys think
She is good
Then there is nothing more to it
Saskia, she is crosseyed, you see
Although her gaze is clear and bright
It raises ridicule in everyone
It raises ridicule
In everyone
She is quiet and unnoticeable
Her uniform is starched
But she was beautiful, and when she smiled
In a way that made you gasp
In a way that
Made you gasp
I let my eyes explore her
And it was actually worth the effort
The more they saw, the more they found
She was purely incredibly brilliant
She was purel
Incredibly brilliant
After I had strengthened myself with a beer
I said “Miss, have you noticed?
Has it not struck you yet
That I have been observing you?
That I have been
Observing you”
She said “Sir, it is true
The reason is unknown to me”
Then I mustered up the courage and said
“When are you free, Saskia?
When are you free, Saskia?”
We watched a romantic movie
Then we drank coffee at a café
I followed her to her house
A light was burning in our hearts
A light was burning
In our hearts
Saskia had a sleeping alcove
And she was beautiful when she slept
And we were awake more than enough
Then her alarm clock went off
Then her alarm
Clock went off
Saskia is a name that has a ring to it
She works at a pub
Her eyes are crossed, wherever she looks
But she is beautiful when she smiles
Yes, she is beautiful
When she smiles
Hey people! 🙂
Today I’m sharing with you a song by Pernilla Andersson from Sweden. She’s quite a well-known pop artist in her native country. I guess her most known song is Johnny Cash & Nina P. or perhaps it’s just me who has heard it on Swedish radio incredibly often. She also, like many Swedish singers, has covered Cornelis Vreeswijk’s music, and it’s possible that I will share her interpretation of his song soon. For now though, let’s listen to her own piece. Haväng in the title is a nature reserve in the south of Sweden, which is a popular tourist destination.
Hiya people! 🙂
Thought I’d share another piece from Declan Galbraith’s second album – Thank You – released in 2006, when he was 14. Currently (or at least in 2018, that was the last time I heard anything substantial about him) he makes his music under the stage name of Child of Mind, and writes his own songs, however back then, he mostly did covers of classic pop or rock songs, and this one is I believe one of his more well-known covers.
Originally, An Angel was a song of The Kelly Family (an European-American band which enjoyed quite a lot of popularity in the 90’s) and was written by Paddy Kelly for his late mother, Barbara, who passed away early from cancer if I remember correctly, and I think it’s not the only song he wrote for her. I don’t know a whole lot about The Kelly Family but since Declan is one of my faza subjects, and since he has covered more than one of The Kelly Family’s song and liked their music, I used to listen to them a bit because I like to know what my fazas like to listen to. Anyway, while The Kellys have some quite cool songs, I think Declan’s covers are a lot better, and so is the case with this one.
Hey guys! 🙂
I’ve heard about Penny Police quite some time ago, but only recently have really started listening to her more. She’s compared to people like Agnes Obel or Emiliana Torrini who are both artists that I like a lot, so I guess it was inevitable that I’d have to start listening to her at some point. 😀
Penny Police’s actual name is Marie Fjeldsted, and, just like the aforementioned Agnes Obel, she is Danish (but you, well, at least I, and I guess I’m pretty decent at accents, wouldn’t guess with 100% certainty that she’s Danish. Danes usually have such a distinctive, quite cool-sounding accent in English, but the only thing that to me clearly says she’s Scandinavian is that she doesn’t do z’s). And this is one of my favourite songs by her.
Hey people! 🙂
I’d like to share another beautiful song from Georgia Ruth with you guys today. I think it is one of my favourites from her. The lyrics are interesting, I love the harp in it obviously, and it just flows so well as a whole. It is the title track of one of her albums, and the album as a whole is all about homecoming, joyfulness and forgiveness of previously made mistakes, and it’s so full of nature.
Hey people! 🙂
Today, I’d like to share with you another piece from this amazing Welsh triple harpist – Llio Rhydderch. – I just love how evocative and picturesque her music is! The piece I want to share with you today comes from her album Enlli and is called Clychau Clynnog or Clynnog Bells in English, where I assume Clynnog must refer to the village on the Llyn Peninsula called Clynnog Fawr.
Hi guys! 🙂
Continuing with English-language music from Sweden, today I have for you a song that, in my mind, is very strongly associated with my Swedish holidays. I went to Stockholm in 2017 and this song was released a year before. It’s not only because this song talks about Stockholm, but also because, while there, I heard it several times in Sveriges Radio, and it was a real earworm for me at the time. I don’t love it, but it’s quite cool. For Peg Parnevik, Stockholm is the city where she was born, however she has spent a large part of her childhood in Jupiter in Florida. To Swedes, apparently she’s known from a TV series called Parneviks where various celebrities would come to live with her family. She has quite a badass feel to her music, and from what I heard has also struggled with an eating disorder, thus I’m the more willing to share her music with you, since my blog is very much mental health-focused, even though this song has nothing to do with it.
How are you people doing? Thought I’d do a bit of a gratitude list, linking up with
Ten Things of Thankful – #TToT –
just because it’s Sunday. Not that Sundays are my favourite day of the week or anything – they never have – but just because I feel like it and because any time is good to be grateful.
Now you, what are you grateful for? 🙂
Hey people! 🙂
Let’s listen to something from Sweden today! Paula Jivén was 13 years old whenn she took part in Swedish Talang (which is like the Swedish version of the whole Got Talent thing) in 2018, and apparently she made quite an impression on the jury. In the final, she sang Sign of the Times originally by Harry Styles, and that’s the song I chose for today.
Hey people! 🙂
Today I’d like to share with you another song from this duo, playing harp and nyckelharpa, a few of whose songs I shared with you in the last months. I think this piece is one of the more evocative of all of their music, and I like how it always makes me imagine a lot.
Have you ever been to another country? Which?
My answer:
I’m not very well-travelled, but I have been to some countries a few times, although with most of them these were just day trips, so as you can guess most of these were our neighbouring countries (Lithuania, Slovakia and Czech Republic). My Mum’s family – namely my grandad – has some Lithuanian heritage, but we also have some distant family – from his side – in eastern Poland, mainly in Masuria. That is also where my Mum was born. Masuria is an amazing place to go for holidays to, because there are a lot of lakes and beautiful views and a lot of yummy food, and a lot of rural areas and tourism is quite a big thing there. So we would often go there to see our family and would often stay at their place and travel in the area or something, during summer holidays. One such year we decided to go a bit further, to Lithuania. Partly because of that family connection, although this is not something we know a lot about or have a strong emotional bond with because it’s just too distant, and partly because I’ve had a devotion to Our Lady of the Gate of Dawn, whose chapel is there, and I wanted to visit it, so my Dad had always promised me that we’d go on a pilgrimage there or something, and that’s what we eventually did. Zofijka was only a toddler then. She was also quite little on our next trip – to Slovakia – and often when we were driving somewhere that felt very far to her, she would keep asking: “Are we still in Poland?” which always made us laugh because it sounded as if she was such a globetrotter or a cosmopolitan that she can’t keep track of which country she’s in anymore. 😀
As for Slovakia, one year my Mum persuaded me to go on a summer camp that was organised by my school, and as a way of coaxing me into it she said that they – my family – would go there as well on their own. The whole trip was to the Tatra mountains, here in Poland, because my school had like its quarters there – that is, sort of a closely affiliate school in a village close to the mountains which was for primary school-aged children with some additional learning difficulties other than just blindness, so we were using that school as our base. – I would sometimes do stuff with my school, and sometimes with my family. Sometimes my family would join the school in doing what they had planned to do, and at other times they’d do something different. And my Dad was really keen on the idea of us going to Slovakia, because back when he was going to school, he once went to a school camp in Czechoslovakia and then later even was briefly penpalling with one of the girls from there, which is interesting because while Polish and Czech/Slovak are obviously in the same family of languages and are relatively well mutually intelligible, it’s not like you’ll understand each other all the time if you don’t have some background in the other language, at least that’s my experience, there are a LOT of “false friends” and their spelling also differs a fair bit, so I would never have thought that my Dad would be up for such a challenge and at school age, I’d think that would require some language consciousness that people, let alone school children, don’t always have. Then later on our trip to Czech Republic, to both my and Mum’s great surprise, it was my Dad who was the most communicative and understood people the best, my English was of less use than his Polish and plain ability to understand what people were saying. 😀 We’d never suspected him of a hidden linguistic talent like this. Anyway, because of having such memories with Czechoslovakia, and because of us being close to the Slovak borders and all being into the idea, we felt like it would be fun to go there. And because my Mum always wanted to visit some thermal aquapark or something like this, we were happy to find out that there is one quite close to the border, in Oravice. And, for me personally, that was the most fun day of the whole trip, which overall was, I believe, more exciting to my parents than my siblings and me. 😀 But we had a lot of fun in that thermal aquapark and have been thinking about going there again ever since, but never have so far.
Then, quite a lot later, as an adult already, I went to the Czech Republic only with my parents, because Sofi was on a swimming camp and Olek was working. Again, we were on longer holidays, this time in Silesia, and my Dad really wanted to cross the border. We went to Prague but weren’t really doing anything specific there, just walking around, taking everything in, people watching, listening to the language, trying random foods that we’d never seen before in our own country etc. That was a lot of fun. Then the next day we travelled to Czechia yet again but this time round to some villages and again weren’t doing anything specific. My Dad was chatting to people, me and Mum too but like I said before he was actually the most effective at that and could both be quite well understood and understand the most of us all, I remember we also went to some cemetery there.
And last, but not least, my most adventurous trip abroad so far was to Sweden, but I think most of you know a fair bit about it already. I went to Stockholm and nearby areas, again just with my parents because Sofi was on another swimming camp. This was quite spontaneous, even though my Dad was promising me every year that we’d go. I never believed it because we never ended up going. But that year he also kept saying we’d go to Sweden and then, quite unexpectedly for everyone, we actually ended up doing it. I felt really ambivalent about this trip. It was absolutely awesome, and I loved being immersed in the language and how it improved so incredibly muchh for me in this single week, how I got some real experience of talking to natives, which I had almost none of in Swedish before, or at least certainly not in person. And I heard so much positive feedback about my Swedish, although at the same time whenever I let it show in any way that it’s not my first language people would instantly switch to English so I was often wondering whether my Swedish is really that bad, haha, but I guess people just do it like this in Sweden regardless of your fluency level. It is frustrating from a learner’s perspective, but in fact I’m only starting to understand this phenomenon now that I’ve been helping some people who are learning my language, and I’ve realised that it’s really tempting to just switch to English, which we both know well, because this way we could communicate more quickly and also a bit more clearly, and I wouldn’t have to be mindful all the time of what and how I’m saying so that they could understand me more easily if they’re a beginner, which in turn feels less free and natural. Plus for me it’s probably also that I write much more in English these days than I do in Polish. 😀 But there were even people in Sweden who were surprised when they eventually realised that I’m only learning Swedish, which felt really flattering because I didn’t, and still don’t, feel all that confident in it at all, not as much as in English, my Swedish still feels a little clunky to me and not as comfy to use. But I guess what may be making this initial impressioon on people is that I pick up the phonetics and language prosody easily and perhaps I do a really good job at this one thing in Swedish, that’s what I heard from my Swedish teacher but he wasn’t objective, 😀 which maybe is what to people makes me sound more like a Swede even if I make grammatical/syntax mistakes and use sometimes not the right vocabulary than if it was the other way around – if I were speaking perfectly grammatically but with a weird accent. – If it really works like this, it’s funny that an accent can create such illusions. I loved just listening to people on the streets and observing them. One of the highlights of that trip for me was when we went to the cemetery where there is Cornelis Vreeswijk’s (one of my fazas) grave. I had always dreamt of visiting him there and bringing him some flowers. We had the yummiest Swedish chocolate and ice-cream, there were so many beautiful views that my Mum was in love with, I got lots of children’s books to scan, and, on the last day of our trip, we found a minerals shop, where I got some lovely new gem stones to my collection. I loved the shop owner, who seemed to like me too or perhaps was impressed with my interest with stones or something because he was incredibly nice and talked to me a lot about his stones and how he got them, and showed me lots of them even though initially he wasn’t too happy to let me touch them. The whole trip was extremely exhausting for me though in a lot of ways, and on that last day, I was feeling totally knackered, and when I’m very tired or sleepy or have drank alcohol or something like that, I have a strong tendency for mixing languages, especially if I happened to switch them a lot or was learning one of them intensely earlier that day. My thoughts are a jumble of different languages and sometimes I won’t be able to filter things out and will say something in a different language than I wanted. That can be quite funny, if a bit embarrassing for me or confusing for the other side, although my family are used to it and just ask me what language that was, and my family are who I mostly interact with in person. 😀 Anyways, that was the state of my brain on that day, and at some point, in the middle of my conversation in Swedish with that guy (which was rather challenging in itself because he was speaking super fast and with a rather strong Scanian accent, and Scanian accent is not something I can understand very well, it’s almost like Danish 😀 ), my Mum told me – in Polish of course – that there’s also a huge sapphire there and that it’s soooo very expensive. Instead of replying her in Polish, I did it in English, and was all like oh my I love sapphires I wish I could have it!!! or something along these lines. My Mum, who can’t speak English, didn’t get it, but the shop owner did, and was quite amused. He said he can’t sell that sapphire to me at any significantly lower price, but instead could give me a smaller one for free. And that’s how I got a lovely mini sapphire ball. That’s always something to start with, and I was quite euphoric over getting a sapphire – even if very small – to my collection. But I also bought a lot of other beautiful stones there.
The worse part of the trip was that it was really quite challenging overall, it was absolutely exhausting! First we had to do all the travelling, and my vestibular system went crazy on the ferry, I was freakishly dizzy and it was scary. Most of the trip I was going on a lot higher doses of my anti-anxiety medication than what I normally take, which is probably why a lot of my memories of that time are rather foggy and feel more like a dream or something. My parents don’t speak either English or Swedish, which means I had to do the talking for three people, when I normally struggle doing it just for myself. While my linguistic curiosity was higher than my anxiety, it didn’t make it any less difficult and all the interactioons with people, even though mostly very positive, were really wearing me out. So I was just as super happy leaving as I was going there, and I have the same very ambivalent feelings when thinking about going there again. I’d love it, but when I start to think practically about going through all that socialising and travelling shit again, it makes me feel sick. 😀
How about you. 🙂
Hey people! 🙂
Today I thought I’d share with you a song from a Welsh psychedelic pop band that I really like. I like the spacey, dreamy feel of their music, and this piece shows it especiallyy well. The band is comprised of George Amor (who is a former member of another Welsh band with psychedelic inclinations called Sen Segur which I really like), Llyr Pari and Leusa Rhys. I’m not sure if I’m translating the title correctly, because the Welsh word aros can mean two things – wait and stay – and from what I understand from the lyrics both would make sense. Perhaps it just doesn’t matter because it’s supposed to mean a bit of both.
Are you more likely to bite your nails or chew on your hair when you get nervous, or neither?
My answer:
I definitely am a nail-biter. And not only when I’m nervous, but also when I’m bored or thinking about something intensively, focusing on something a lot or experiencing some strong emotions whether positive or negative, or things like these. Not even getting paronychia was enough to stop me, even though I thought it would because getting any kind of finger-related condition can affect your daily life a fair bit when you are blind, and when I had it I was massively frustrated and then managed not to bite my nails for an impressive time of two weeks. My Mum used to put that bitter stuff on my and Olek’s nails because he also used to bite them, but it didn’t really work for either of us at all, we’d bite them anyway. Eventually Olek grew out of it naturally. Then later on I had braces so couldn’t bite my nails but started picking them, and after I had braces removed I didn’t even realise when I got back to biting and picking also stayed. Then I tried using nail polish as a sort of motivation not to bite my nails but at some point, usually sooner rather than later, I’d end up biting them anyway and realising what I was doing when some visible damage was already done, and obviously with nail polish bitten nails look absolutely gross and dreadful, way more than normal, so I no longer polish them. When I was self-harming particularly intensely as a teenager, I would often also do things like I would bite my nails so that they would be bleeding a lot and then put them in something like chilli or alcohol or other skin irritating things to make it hurt more. But that’s not something I do anymore. I also bite and pick my cuticles and lips as well. But I’ve never had a habit of chewing on my hair.
How about you? 🙂
My Inner MishMash 