Mother's Day

When is Mother's Day in your country?

In Poland it is always on the 26th of May, which is not accidentally today.
Two weeks ago I've been to Istanbul, where one afternoon, my friend's aunt served a piece of cake after lunch and mentioned that it was left after Mother's Day. I asked immediately when do they celebrate it in Turkey and she told me that it's always the 2nd Sunday of May.

It reminded me, that in previous year, while I was in Portugal, it was even different - the 1st Sunday of May.
Because of my curiosity, I've made a small research (about the countries that are tagged on my blog) and it turned out that most of them celebrates Mother's Day on the same day as Turkey, for example Japan, Czech Republic, Ukraine or Belgium. Also, Spain celebrates it on the same day as Portugal but France is a bit odd and delays until the last Sunday of May.

The conclusion should be that, if someone travels too often and pays attention to local holidays, then that person's Mum, may start thinking that her child became crazy, if she was given wishes and presents over few times in May!

International Day of the Book

The 23rd of April was chosen by UNESCO for the

World Book and Copyright Day.

The holiday originated in Catalonia-Spain, where each customer who bought a book on St George's Day, received a rose as an additional gift.
The other sources inform, that it was a medieval kind of Valentine's day. On that day men were giving roses to their women, and since the beginnings of the XXth century women started giving them books instead.

A great coincidence is the fact, that the 23rd of April is also a date of such anniversaries as birthday of Shakespeare and Nabokov, or death of Cervantes and... Shakespeare as well.

Different countries celebrate it in many different ways. The most common one is probably making discounts like the one in Polish Empik (the most famous commercial chain selling books, press and media in Poland) - buy 3 books for the price of 2. Fnac, that originated in France and spreaded around the Western Europe, offers 10% discounts in its Spanish stores too. What is more, Portuguese Fnac announced its one month long, annual holiday "Festa do livro" that includes discounts up to 40% or books of the week.

My Easter Holidays in Japan

My Easter Holidays 2010 were the 3rd that I've spent outside Poland.
Each of those 3 times I was missing the part of my family that was not with me but on the other hand it was also great experience to try and discover new things.

This year, I've spent Easter Sunday with Daniel at hanami, which is a Japanese kind of spring picnic and it's main aim is to admire the Sakura - Cherry Blossom. At the time of Sakura, Japanese people gather in the parks, bring loads of food and drinks, blankets, music instruments, cameras and enjoy their hanamis.

Probably, the most spectacular and enjoyable parts of Easter Holidays in Poland are egg painting and Easter bunny's presents. And that's a part of things that appeared on that day.
Accidentally, just before going to the Meijo Kohen park in Nagoya, we got toys from gashapon machines - vending machines distributing toys in plastic balls, capsules. As soon as we got them we thought that it's a funny Easter coincidence that they resemble eggs.

We waited with opening them until getting to the park. It turned out that Daniel's capsule was hiding stickers with different kinds of beetles (not the Beatles!), while my toy was a kind of keyring, which after pushing the button sounds more less like "Ai shiteruyo baby" (jap. "I love you baby").
In the park, we did egg painting. Actually Daniel did most of the job but my cherry blossom egg pattern also wasn't bad. I should mention here, that originally the eggs that I bought were called Onsen Eggs and we didn't realize what does it mean. After making a small research I discovered that there is a special recipe for Onsen Tamago - Hot Spring Egg.

During our Easter Hanami we've tried some new food.
The most interesting looking one, was a roll with some green tea dough on the top of it. It was rather sweet and tasted great with chocolate bunny.

Another thing was Strawberry Pocky. To describe it I should use a comparison with something that exists in Poland and usually goes with a beer as a snack - słone paluszki (pol. salt fingers/sticks). Both of them, Polish salty and Japanese sweet version, are sticks made of crunchy dough. Japanese ones, are covered with different flavours such as: chocolate, banana, strawberry and many more. Yummmyyy!!!
By the way, did you notice unbelievable Japanese packaging??? The box contains 12 sticks and each 3 of them are wrapped separately!

Last but not least, Takoyaki - the dish which was worth waiting in a queue for a while. As you may see, or not, it is baked and round shaped, served few pieces in a little wooden boat. Each of those round pieces contains butter, dough, vegetables, mayonnaise and a piece of octopus. The most funny part of it are the flakes called aonori, which cover the dish from the top. You may believe or not but, as long as the dish is warm, the flakes are moving. It gives an impression as if your dish was alive!

If you'd like to find out how do the Easter celebrations in Japan look like, check out Daniel San's last year post about his visit in Japanese and Korean churches.

Sakura Matsuri at Koshoji Temple

As spring in Japan is the time of cherry blossom, most of the temples organise Sakura Matsuri - spring festival, which lasts for a few days.


One morning, at the end of March I went to the Koshoji temple nearby Daniel's flat. The Koshoji buddhist temple isn't widely known so it is really calm during working days. The temple is located on the hills of Yagoto district of Nagoya, surrounded by a forest. It was founded in XVIIth century and one of its most impressive building is 5-storey pagoda.

At the end of March it helds the Sakura Matsuri. It was a very nice cultural event to attend, especially for a foreign person like me.

Not only most of the people present there was dressed in traditional Japanese wears, but also they were performing many different celebrations such as the tea ceremony.

It was also great to watch the Japanese ladies dancing, singing and playing shamisen. What I liked the most, was music spreading all around the temple's surroundings.

At the night time, the temple and trees in its surrounding have very nice illumination. There are even special pink lights for the Sakura trees.

Sakura in the rain

Cherry blossom, in Japanese called Sakura, is a symbol of spring somehow and a perfect reason for celebrating all around Japan.

This year in Nagoya, the first cherry trees` flowers, showed up 1 day before my arrival to Japan, on the 18th of March. For comparison, first flowers in Tokyo appeared 4 days later, on the 22nd.
Special sakura forecasts infom about each regions best time for admiring those flowers. It didn`t start in Nagoya yet... but it already looks beautiful. Even in the rain!

Nascente do Este - where the river is born

On Sunday morning, Sara, her friend Filipe and I went hiking. As soon as Filipe saw me standing next to Sara, he asked if I'm Mexican too. The whole trip was organised by an organisation connected with environmental issues and planned for approx. 5 hours.

The aim of our trip was the spring of the river Este that crosses Braga. At first we took a route of the ancient road from the roman times. Afterwards we've passed the forest, few hills and a village.

After getting to the place where the spring is we had lunch and short siesta. Then continued hiking up and then dramatically down. The views around were lovely as well as the weather.

What I've learned during this trip is the fact that the trees of Eucalyptus grow not only in Australia from where it comes from. The European boom took place around 20 years ago when people started growing eucalyptus in Portugal and Spain. I was told that this kind of tree grows very fast and in 3-4 years reaches significant height.

My personal conclusion of that day is not to hike in my Spiderman's shoes. It seems they are rather made for climbing not hiking.

Easter Holidays in Portugal

This year's Easter Holidays were different from all the previous ones....
For the first time in my life I didn't spend them with any member of my family. I missed them a lot and it was hard not to imagine what are the doing, what is the weather like where they are and most of all how my cousins painted the eggs and how does the cheese-cake taste this year!
During this year's Easter, one of my AEGEE friends - Sylwia - invited me to join her and her friends. I've arrived to Porto on Saturday noon and met Sylwia at the Bolhão Market. She kept on looking for chives, necessary vegetable for easter dishes, and I took some pictures of the place. The whole market was full of energetic and very convincing ladies trying to sell all kinds of food - fruit, vegetables, meat (including birds in cages) - the air smelled like a mix of fish and... strawberries!

After doing the shopping we still had a lot of time for further exploration of Porto and other side of the Douro river called Vila Nova de Gaia. It is there, where the cellars of famous Port wine are located. The wine is stored there after shipping it on special boats from the vineyards of the Douro Valley. Most of the tourists stop by the first cellars (caves) near the river bank and pay around 4 euros to try Sandeman's wine, while at Croft's they may get a guided tour around the cellar for free.

As soon as Sylwia and I went up the hill to Croft it turned out that we can visit its caves with spanish speaking guide or wait 40 minutes for english one. We've picked the first option, drank some white Port and the tour started. The guide was a lady from Panama and she lead us through the corridors of gigant barrels filled with wine and told about the procedures of making good Port. At the end the guide said that she has never seen such a quiet Spanish group. Well, none of us, neither Scandinavian guys, German girls, Itallian couple, told her the truth. We were just enjoying the second glass of Port...

The activity of wine tasting was very tiring so we went back to Sylwia's flat were her Indian flatmate - Qadir - was preparing Pav Bhaji, a typical dish from his country. It turned out that there is a shop with real Indian spices in Porto, so thanks to that he doesn't miss his mum's cuisine too bad. I've also found out that curry is a european invention. Qadir told me that he discovered what curry is when he left India. Curry is simply a mix of all possible Indian spicies but nobody uses them all together there. We ate Pav Bhaji with bread by the use of our hands. This dish convinced me that vegetarian food can be really tasty. Meanwhile, Qadir was looking forward to his first Easter Holidays!


As soon as the Sunday morning came we started preparing jajka faszerowane (eggs with top-secret filling) for the Easter lunch. Sylwia and I didn't boil eggs for a long time so it was hard to predict when should we take them out of the water. Other parts went without any problems and after approximately one hour the eggs were ready. Sylwia, Qadir and I took a bus and went to join the rest of our compagnions. Each person prepared a different dish, so the Easter table cosisted of: EGGS, chicken soup, 2 kinds of salad, chocolate cake... and a rabbit! At first we thought that rabbit is a typical Easter dish of Portugal but at the end it turned out that it's French. Still, everybody found it exquisite!

After the lunch we took a walk to the nearby ocean side. It was pretty windy but sunny. The Easter food and sun rays made us a bit lazy so we've headed up for a coffee...

Thanks to (from the right) Sylwia, Dorota, Qadir, Aga, Ada, Sara and Piotr, it was unforgetable Easter!