Coastal Paradises

The stunning coastal beauty of this part of Sicily drew us here from when we first saw it on the internet. The sea has lived up to the images we had seen and we have spent happy hours swimming, walking and chilling out at the beach. It is one of the earth’s  very special places.

After marvelling at the scenery, pivot 180 degrees and this beauty is marred by a very thoughtless approach to rubbish disposal. We have met people who are very carefully recycling all their rubbish, but the extent of the problem here indicates that there are a significant number of people using the beach and the sea as a dump. And not just for household rubbish - building debris, tyres and engines all seem to end their life here.

Sadly they are not alone in experiencing this problem. We have seen it in Papua New Guinea in idyllic Milne Bay, we have seen it Vietnam on Phú Quốc, an island paradise in the Gulf of Thailand. And our own Pt England coastline tempts thoughtless people to take the easy option with their household rubbish.

In all of the places I have mentioned we notice that at beaches where local livelihood depends on visitors there is often a team who are up early in the morning ensuring the beaches present a pristine appearance when the visitors arrive. But it needs to be done daily because clearly there are more people messing up than cleaning up.

We need to do much better right across the planet.

Letter to the Churches

We are currently near one of the many places Paul stopped on his missionary journeys and see a lot of references to him around us. It has got us thinking about how churches communicate.

This Sunday we decided not to attend a church and instead had our own reflection, in English, at home. During our travels we have had some wonderful experiences which I have documented here and been very blessed by the services we have attended. But as we have travelled deeper into Europe and have become increasingly challenged by the languages the services we attended have been held in, the more we have understood the barriers churches unwittingly erect for people who do not speak the language.

In all churches the bonus we have is knowing the back story in our own language, so hopefully can provide a little bit of context from prior knowledge. In Catholic churches where Mass follows a similar format there is a sense of familiarity which in some ways is a blessing, but can also increase the frustration by not being able to fill in the gaps in between - achingly close to understanding, but not!

It has made us think about what we should be providing in our own multi cultural church, where one thing we have in common - other than our faith - is that we all have different languages as our mother tongue.

The first and most important gift to us in our travels has been someone welcoming us with a smile. That has not always been our experience, particularly in a couple of cases where we were a few minutes late due to the time our boat docked. What a difference it makes to be made welcome and shown a vacant seat.

Every cathedral or church we attended had super modern sound systems so that the pastor or priest was wearing a microphone and discreet speaker systems meant they could be clearly heard. Well and good, but no good if you can’t connect in anyway with the language spoken.

We have come to appreciate print material. Even in languages using a different alphabet, if we were given some kind of programme of print material we could either look it up on our phone or decode where in the Bible we should be looking and work it out. We were grateful that some ancient cathedrals (ie more than a thousand years old) had electronic signage on the walls with the Hymn number and Bible reading displayed.

However, as I have commented before - a cathedral comes alive when it is being used for the intended purpose and attending a service is the ONLY way to fully experience a visit to a cathedral or church. On every occasion we have been uplifted and blessed by the powerful music led by organs and choirs. And it is still amazing that no matter how wide the language differences, if you know the story being told the cadence and passion of the speaker has the power to bring the message to life.

We have some takeaways for our return home - to a place where we have wifi, data projectors, screens, sound systems and multimedia:

A warm welcome from fellow human beings on arrival is super important.

The spoken word is usually too rapid to translate on the fly and make sense of, unless you could afford United Nations style translation kits for everyone!

Written text is essential. Having the important points in text makes a world of difference. In most cases in NZ this would at the least mean ensuring important text is displayed on screens. This gives people time to try to decode and even to look up in their first language.

It would be nice to be able to provide the most important points in multiple languages, but this is not always possible.

Visual images are very important. They (should) make the message accessible.

We could be using QR codes, apps and all kinds of digital tools to make the services more accessible.

Having ‘No Phones’ signs up around the church is a barrier. We presume they probably mean, ‘silence your phone’ or ‘don’t talk on the phone’. But our phones with translation apps and tools became our communication line and enabled us to participate in the service, not check our FaceBook!

We look forward next Sunday in Toronto to translating a Canadian-Kiwi accent and hopefully a much fuller participation in the service.

Sicily: Four Rs

What have you been up to? Where have you been? What are you doing there?

These are the questions we have been getting from friends, family and followers. Even mine host here is a tad anxious about whether we are having a good time!

Answers: Nothing. No Where. The Four Rs - Resting, Reading, (w)Riting, Reflecting

And it’s good!

View from the rooftop of our apartment this morning

After entertaining folk with tales from our first five action packed weeks, and endless reports of the ABCs

ABCs in the education sense = lots of school visits

ABCs in the tourist sense = Another Blimmin Church/Castle/Cathedral/Crypt!

we are sensing concern that we may be bored! 

Our travel plan always was to pack experiences and learning into every available moment for the first five weeks and then to come to a complete stop and reflect on what we have seen and done. We have a backlog of ‘stuff’ that we have not found time to write about over the last few months/years and we planned to create space to do this. This of course includes our current travels.

We asked a number of people for recommendations about a place in Europe that would be good for this.  Our requirements were: internet, sun, sea, peace and quiet, access to food somewhere reasonably handy - and cheap!

We had a number of suggestions but the standout was from Brian and Jean Annan who advocated for Sicily. I went online and entered our dates and stipulations into Trip Advisor and we ended up in Piana Grande, Riberia.

Corner of our apartment looking across the bay

There are no ABCs of any sort nearby, we are in an apartment on a 3 hectare section by the Mediterranean - 5km beach walk at the bottom of the cliff. Our landlord lives below us and presses tourist itineraries upon us. There is an agriculture service town 6km away, which is nothing like any town people from NZ imagine when thinking about Italy - more like an agriculture service town in the Far North of NZ.

On the roof top

We drive into town to buy fresh produce, olives, bread and meat etc and bring it home to cook. The internet comes and goes, but we have great 4G cell reception to tether our phones when needed. We do the things we came here to do. And we are very content, for these two weeks. It really does remind us of a holiday our family had in Henderson Bay in the Far North - minus the boat!

At the far end of the beach below our place

Pretty much a kiwi camping holiday - just under a roof and with internet.

If you ask us if we have done this, that or the other that people come to Sicily to see and do, the chances are quite high that the answer will be 'No'. I think you've got the picture here (literally) of what we're doing!

And the super observant will notice that the number of blog posts are multiplying every day, just not appearing at the top of the list as I am back dating them to match the timeline of when they occurred.

Pizza and Cozze

We discovered a delightful pizza place five minutes walk up the road from our home that reminded us of Luke’s Kitchen in Kuaotunu. 

Quelli di Piana Grande Pizzeria is a family run business tucked away off the road and difficult for foreigners to find. It opens about 8.30pm in the evening and sells great pizza and cozze (mussels) and seafood antipasto.

Each time we went we were the only non-Italians there and the owner’s sister came out to take our orders as the designated English speaker.

We realised here that the greatest compliment we could pay an eatery was to forgot to take a photo because we were so enjoying the food! Hence the photos here of empty plates.

Wedding in Agrigento

During lunch today at Trattoria Il Vicolo in Agrigento we were intrigued to have a bride and groom walk up the steep stairs past us - bride in a gorgeous Italian gown and groom in glamourous military uniform - followed by a crowd of paparazzi. We had no idea if this was normal for an Italian wedding, or if we were in the midst of celebrities, and had no way of finding out with our limited Italian.

They waved and smiled at us and the owners responded affirmatively to my gestures that I would like to go and join the paparazzi, so I took some pics, including the one here that deliberately includes some of the photographers.

Nice memory and we went on our way after a great lunch.

When we returned to the carpark - deserving another story and salute to Russell safely negotiating crazy building - I noticed the church next door was now covered in flowers and had a huge florist van outside. It looked like preparation for a wedding, so, after checking with the custodian, we headed on in.

The flowers were stunning and reminded us of the work done by our friend Nat, of Flora May floral design in Auckland. We could not believe how many flowers were festooned around the church. So lots of photos were taken. 

We scuttled off as soon as we heard the first guests approaching.

Add caption

Note the little containers for rice/confetti

Selfie Sticks

“Lethal Weapons” 

or 

“Weapons of Mass Destruction”

(Yup - we’ve even seen them pulled out during Mass!)

It’s been five days since we’ve seen a selfie stick! Gotta love Sicily.

On arrival in Hawaii we realised that the selfie stick was a much bigger deal in the USA than in NZ.

And we commented then that some people only seem to see the sights through the screen of their phone, But with their own face obscuring a proportion of the view!

Then landing in Europe we realised that we hadn’t seen nothin' yet! From Paris to Rome and 8 countries in between we learnt to watch out for crazy people brandishing their sticks. Something about a S-S seems to make the owners oblivious to oncoming cars, bicycles, people, hazards, animals and small children. The worst place on earth to encounter them has to be around the Trevi Fountain in Rome.

And almost without fail, people using them look like they’re having fun, or present an appearance of fun.

One of our tour guides a couple of weeks ago did a quick survey of our group and pronounced, “Good, no selfie stick users here. I can make this an interesting tour!” Then went on to make some un-PC comments about <insert>Ethnicity<insert/> people whose focal point is the end of a stick.

Negative attitudes are probably enhanced by the number of Hawkers who approach you every minute if they notice you don’t have a S-S, trying to sell you one in neon pink, green or yellow.  It leads to some pithy responses after a while.

In searching for a photo to link to above I discovered this article in the Daily Mail discussing the EU considering banning selfies at major European landmarks. So, have the oldies become a bunch of killjoys or are they really a menace?

Dining in a cafe in Paris, the waiter offered to take our photo!

I will admit that I do like the selfie sticks that telescope into a small tube AND can be turned into a sturdy tripod. That would be a useful gadget.

And to really show my status as a technophobe or late adopter, we have enjoyed moments on this trip meeting new people when either they have asked us, “Would you like us to take a nice photo of you two together?” or we have offered to do this for others.

Loving the selfie-stick free Agrigento region of Sicily.

The face of Europe

Travelling companion or stalker?

Everywhere we have gone since arriving in Europe this woman has been there before us, occupying enormous billboards in prominent places.

I have noted the billboards and never could figure quite what she was marketing. She became a game on our tour buses - a bit like counting sheep or horses - spotting how many times we saw her.

Until today, in Agrigento. The woman on the billboard was nowhere to be seen in this town, but her name was on a clothing store.

NB: the image above of the billboard is cropped!