wine in the park

‘Life's been pampering me these past few weeks, but reality will soon catch up and it'll be awfully depressing. I'm doing an 8-week Welsh course in Cardiff at the moment, and it ends on the 19th. After that, it's a week somewhere else, then back to Brazil. To a life of unpaid leave for six months and who knows what else.’

Well, so far this ‘what else’ hasn’t been much. Luckily, this is a blog about life in Cardiff, not after Cardiff, so I should have enough to tell. Still, because I’d forgotten just how hard it can be to force oneself to sit down and write, please allow me to quote a couple of other bits from my correspondence:

‘There's a lot to take in here. Wales? Welsh? I'm not sure I understand. Cardiff?’

‘Cardiff and Welsh beat Lyon and French, Vienna and German and Copenhagen and Danish.’

It took me months, mainly nights, of web and soul-searching, besides several lengthy face-to-face chats, audios and emails to friends, to decide to do what I knew all along was what I wanted to do (as one of such friends very insightfully pointed out - merci beaucoup, Françoise !), what I’d been wanting to do ever since my first visit to the city and was finally able to do because, well, I could finally afford it. I could have gone to France and come back with my DALF, or have gone to Austria and come back with the intermediate-level German I once nearly had, or have gone to Denmark and come back with some precious little knowledge that would allow me to understand a few words and phrases when watching Mads Mikkelsen working (his magic, lol) in his first language. Not to mention one or two other things I could have done with the precious little sum I had. Instead, I’ve got, well, what I’ve got now (debts? lol But haven’t I just said I could afford to do what I decided to do? Well, long story)  and intend to share (will anyone help me pay them off, please?), within hopefully reasonable bounds, on this space.

You might even learn a bit of Cymraeg here, who knows?

BTW, how do you say ‘homesickness’ again? :D

Speaking of reasonable bounds, and since I’m not inspired enough to write much more than that today, here’s a note to self: don’t get little bohemian ideas and go drink wine in a park with friends in the evening (‘Yes, you can drink in the street here,’ we were kindly informed by an employee at Waitrose who happened to be overhearing - a British habit, it’d seem, confirmed by a British classmate, which an Australian classmate and I noticed while on an outing with him and found very curious - our discussion on whether to buy a couple of bottles of wine and head for Bute Park or not. BTW, in such cases, don’t go to Bute Park, stay in Sophia Gardens, which is right next to it and, perhaps due to the temporary, I believe, coach station on its grounds, won’t close at dusk - and force you, as it did the two of us who left through Bute Park, to climb over a few fences, including a high one, to get out. You can do so through some bushes if necessary, though, as a more experienced member of our little group assured us and had once done) when you’ve had a tough week and too little to eat during the day. Or rather, go, but stop drinking after the second glass or so. Or make sure there’s a Burger King open until late hours nearby, where you can get a bean burger if you’re a vegetarian (and thus incite an angry comment - which you’ll fortunately be too drunkenly focused on your order to hear and will only be told about later - from a non-vegetarian customer, whom one of your loyal friends will, to use the word he did and another loyal friend quoted when reporting the situation to you, deflect) and not eat, for you’ll be too busy queuing up as a lady, your third loyal friend said, in order to get into the toilet and puke. Three times, according to them, I reckon. But you’ll only remember two of them. And the fact that Loyal Friend number one, being the giant-hearted gentleman he is (and not, like Loyal Friend number two in this story is, desperately repelled by the mere idea of being sick herself - it’s something one actually has to learn to get their body to do sometimes, she and I got to the conclusion one other day, and I certainly did learn, thanks to the many opportunities I had in my sickly childhood), accompanied you again and again and made sure you got into the toilet in time and wouldn’t vomit outside and embarrass yourself and your friends even more by stupidly insisting on politely not jumping the queue.

No, I don’t have a drinking problem (não se preocupe, mãe! rs) - I have a weak stomach and a strong liking for wine, that’s all. And I wasn’t expecting the three years since I’d last consumed a full bottle at one of the ‘girls’ wine nights’ a friend and I used to occasionally have to cause such damage to my already low alcohol tolerance. Yes, I’m getting old, and this is getting more and more boring, so I’d better stop here - and tell you all about the two other lovely times (yes, it was lovely, this one as well, in spite of my dreary account of how it ended) when I had wine with friends in the park in Cardiff, motivated by this first experience, later. There was great food and awful wine and frolicking dogs and shooting stars, among other things, including, trust me, happier, more dignified endings.