Hi  EVS boys and EVS girls,

Happy New Year and hope you are well on your first day after holidays.

Me and Isabel had pretty good vacation but she is flying over the Irish sea from Germany, probably, right now.

I stayed in Belfast for Christmas and New Year, and thanks to our coordinator Debs, who had invited me to the Christmas dinner with her family, I felt as a part of great holidays with many new but kind and friendly people.

Seems, this post is going to be about Christmas food again since I can’t stay apart my first proper Christmas dinner experience (but wait, there are shots of breathtaking Irish nature below).

I think like in any European country, turkey here is a main course and other foods are served in addition to it. But in the UK and Ireland there are some traditional sauces and spices except for cranberry, that you can try to cook someday.

Bread sauce with onion – very simple but surprisingly tasty.

Plum chutney – some kind of vinegar but not liquid.

I’ve known as well that there are a lot of kinds of apples in Ireland that are grown just for cooking and baking. So we had dozens of desserts and an excellent apple pie. Not just an apple pie, you know, but a special one.

After meals we had a little walk before the sunset. 

Before NY we drove to the north-eastern coast that bowled me over completely with its beauty – endless green fields with meek sheep but wild rocks and lumpy sea. I bet that even though Game of Thrones used a lot of green screen and special effects it is not beautiful enough compare to the real landscapes. If locals like travelling to Scotland it is hard to imagine how marvellous it is too.

I hadn’t expected to see Scottish shores through the mist and clouds, I had thought it was so far.

Other knowledge I got visiting Ulster museum, hit me as well. 600 mln years ago there had been two different lands (red spots), which moved towards each other and formed Ireland (look how far they were from each other). Although it had happened quite long ago I could hardly believe in it.

I realised I knew nothing about Ireland and I feel more inspired to travel along the whole coast during my EVS year.

Ira