Nice people thread part 3- Nice as pie

lostinrates

Generali wrote: »

Short answer: yes.

Spago = string
Spaghetto = small string
Spaghetti = small strings

Farfalle = butterflies
Ligua di Suocera is the best named pasta which means mother in law's tongue (google it to see where it gets the name)

Yep, agree, its a spaghetto. Or a pasta. The one that drives dh mad is ''panini'' and ''paninis''. Sometimes just for fun I like to suggest we get ''a sandwiches''. :whistle:

SingleSue

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

I apparently went to Germany when I was a baby, and have one memory of going to Switzerland when I was 3. I remember going to Greece when I was 5, then family holidays in Italy for 3 years from the age of 10, and then 3 years in France, and 4 in Spain & Portugal. Also a New Year's holiday in Cyprus.

I went on a 2 week school trip to Moscow when i was 14, that was fantastic. When I was 18, I went to live & work in Poland for a year, and went all over the place - Poland, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovakia, Hungary and Austria.

After my first year at uni, my best mate and I spent 3 months in Romania, Bulgaria, Istanbul, then north to Russia and the Ukraine.

After my second year at uni, we went to India for a couple of months.

After my third year at uni, OH and I spent the summer camping and travelling in Mongolia.

I also got paid-for trips for debating when i was at uni, to Athens, Manilla, and Japan.

Since starting work, OH and I have been on holiday to Portugal, Madeira, Malta twice, Italy a couple of times, ski-ing twice in France, and Israel 7 times.

Oh, I had completely forgotten the Holland school trip at age 12/13!

Re travelling alone, my Danish GP trip was supposed to be with a Danish friend but alas, she had to go somewhere else, so it was down to me to travel from Aarhus down to Copenhagen on my own and only knowing how to say "Congratulations, Happy Birthday" in Danish.

I got there ok (she put me on the train), got to the GP fine but afterwards, could not find a taxi for love nor money and had no idea how to walk back to the hotel. I remember walking back up the long road from the stadium, close to tears and feeling so alone until I met a lovely group of Danes who also were completely lost...so we were lost together.

I finally got back to the hotel, amazingly my sense of direction had taken over and we had been walking the right way back before finding an empty taxi who only had to take us round one corner and there it was!

There was still the return trip back up the country to Aarhus which I had to organise myself....which I did by sitting and working things out, even advising some Danes which platform to go to as they were confused.

By the time my plane left the airport, I could read a Danish newspaper and despite wearing a T shirt with Team GB splashed all over it, passed as a Dane and not as a British woman....some young Danes on the train refused to believe I was British!

vivatifosi

I was surprised that Denmark wasn't on your list SS so thanks for that story, very amusing. Haven't the Danes always been very good at Speedway? I seem to remember quite a few Scandinavians at the meets I went to as a kid.

silvercar

Masomnia wrote: »

Aye, ah w' born in Oldham. Grew up there but moved to Sheffield for university and have stayed here in the year since graduating.

I also went to Sheffield uni, but moved south immediately afterwards.

I have fond memories, the idea of leaving in a big city but having the amazing peak district on your doorstep. If memory serves me right there are some very nice suburbs to live in like Totley, Dore, Eccleshall?

Maybe no longer? I wish I had stayed longer but I'm prob looking back through rose coloured glasses.

neverdespairgirl

SingleSue wrote: »

By the time my plane left the airport, I could read a Danish newspaper and despite wearing a T shirt with Team GB splashed all over it, passed as a Dane and not as a British woman....some young Danes on the train refused to believe I was British!

In India I was constantly told I was Swedish - that's what Indians seem to associate with fair hair, blue eyes, and very fair skin. it was nice to get back to London and not be stared at by every single person on the street / train!

Generali

Masomnia wrote: »

Aye, ah w' born in Oldham. Grew up there but moved to Sheffield for university and have stayed here in the year since graduating.

Sorry if my last post was a bit negative, I've just let things get a bit stale life-wise. Going to sort things out this summer.

I've been re-reading The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell (link). Here is Mr O's description of Sheffield:

But even Wigan is beautiful compared with Sheffield. Sheffield, I suppose, could justly claim to be called the ugliest town in the Old World: its inhabitants, who want it to be pre-eminent in everything, very likely do make that claim for it.

It has a population of half a million and it contains fewer decent buildings than the average East Anglian village of five hundred. And the stench! If at rare moments you stop smelling sulphur it is because you have begun smelling gas.

Even the shallow river that runs through the town is-usually bright yellow with some chemical or other. Once I halted in the street and counted the factory chimneys I could see; there were thirty-three of them, but there would have been far more if the air had not been obscured by smoke. One scene especially lingers in my mind. A frightful patch of waste ground (somehow, up there, a patch of waste ground attains a squalor that would be impossible even in London) trampled bare of grass and littered with newspapers and old saucepans.

To the right an isolated row of gaunt four-roomed houses, dark red, blackened by smoke. To the left an interminable vista of factory chimneys, chimney beyond chimney, fading away into a dim blackish haze. Behind me a railway embankment made of the slag from furnaces. In front, across the patch of waste ground, a cubical building of red and yellow brick, with the sign 'Thomas Grocock, Haulage Contractor'.

At night, when you cannot see the hideous shapes of the houses and the blackness of everything, a town like Sheffield assumes a kind of sinister magnificence.

Sometimes the drifts of smoke are rosy with sulphur, and serrated flames, like circular saws, squeeze themselves out from beneath the cowls of the foundry chimneys. Through the open doors of foundries you see fiery serpents of iron being hauled to and fro by redlit boys, and you hear the whizz and thump of steam hammers and the scream of the iron under the blow.

PasturesNew

I went to Sheffield 2-3x in the late 1970s, to stay with a bf's grandparents in their 1-bed council flat - these trips were considered annual holidays. It was a 3 hour drive and there were no motorways. I remember we'd walk to the pub at the end of the road in the evenings, then go to get some chips on the way home. I had to sleep with his grandma and he slept with his grandad.... couldn't be naughty back in those days!

We'd go into town on the local bus, which struggled to get up the hills and was very noisy. In the town there were vast indoor markets - and people would stand around eating pies and mushy peas in white bowls.

I don't remember anything else, except, it was very very dark/dirty and grimy - and they all spoke funny

lostinrates

This wind won't stop howling. There is dust flying about from the parched soil, and instead of tumble weed I keep getting shreds of haylage wrapper rolling up. Its a modern take on rural forlorn.

michaels

Less windy here today but very noisy - the asbestos roof of the garage is gone and the walls almost - last night we put the car in the garage for the first and only time, it was the first time it has been empty of stuff since we moved in.

GDB2222

PasturesNew wrote: »

I went to Sheffield 2-3x in the late 1970s, to stay with a bf's grandparents in their 1-bed council flat - these trips were considered annual holidays. It was a 3 hour drive and there were no motorways. I remember we'd walk to the pub at the end of the road in the evenings, then go to get some chips on the way home. I had to sleep with his grandma and he slept with his grandad.... couldn't be naughty back in those days!

We'd go into town on the local bus, which struggled to get up the hills and was very noisy. In the town there were vast indoor markets - and people would stand around eating pies and mushy peas in white bowls.

I don't remember anything else, except, it was very very dark/dirty and grimy - and they all spoke funny

My uncle and aunt lived in Sheffield, and I remember it as rather a nice town. I visited it first 50 years ago, and I was simply amazed that they could get from the town onto the Dales in just a few minutes of driving. I remember being taken to see 'The Stirrings in Sheffield on a Saturday Night', which I couldn't follow properly because of the accents.