the cassandra pages

¡Hola!

"Taqueria Mexico dans la ville" a few blocks from our studio.

To live in Montreal is to swim in a sea of languages. I came here seven or eight years ago feeling my lack of French fluency very keenly. Gradually, it's improved -- through practice and immersion, helped by friendships and our deliberate choice to live in a French neighborhood -- to the point where I can read very well, manage to express myself in most situations, sustain fairly simple conversations, and converse with people who don't speak English. Best of all, I can finally follow the gist, at least, of most of what I hear. At first I thought being shy about speaking was the most isolating aspect, but I quickly realized, no, it was my failure to understand what was being said around me. In a way, it was like being deaf, and reminded me of my father-in-law's last years, when he so often simply tuned out of conversations he couldn't hear or understand, and as a result felt left out -- and he was, in fact, left out unless one of us acted as "translator" for him. I'm grateful to my bilingual friends here who've done that for me during meetings or other events when I was missing big chunks of important information.

But another aspect of Montreal reality is that many people are not merely bilingual, but trilingual, or even more. There are many immigrants and many blended families; people travel a lot too, and they're interested in other cultures, and want to be able to speak at least a little bit when they arrive; it seems like a cultural tendency, even a hobby, among many people in this city. I always laugh when I go to my dentist: in that office alone there are native speakers of French, Spanish, Romanian, and Farsi, which, when combined with my English, generally leads to a lively exchange rather than confusion, because they all find it fun to do that, and so do I.

Two of our best friends here are completely fluent in English, Spanish, and French, and I've been continually impressed and envious of the easy way they switch back and forth. They've been so generous in including us in family gatherings, sometimes with visitors from South America who speak no French or English. I've often wished I could converse a little in Spanish, a language I've never studied. Last year, when our bathroom was being re-done, the expert tile installer often brought his father, an entremely warm, nice man, to help -- but the older man spoke only Spanish. This sort of encounter happens all the time, and always feel like a missed opportunity when there's no language in common.

If I had been born here, I wonder if languages would have become more of a hobby for me, too. I studied French in school, then ancient Greek and German - but the later two were just for reading; speaking a language is different. I have some aptitude for hearing and repeating the nuances of sound -- maybe being musical helps. My problem, as an adult learner, has mainly been time. How I wish I knew the essential phrases and expressions and basic vocabulary in Arabic, Spanish, Italian, German, Farsi, Russian...not to mention Chinese and Japanese! Another potential avocation for a person with too many already!

Trudging...earlier today.

However, with an upcoming trip to points south, I am finally tackling task #1, and learning some basic Spanish. It's been decades since I seriously studied a language besides French, and I'm finding it fascinating and fun. French turns out to be a help, as well as a confusion - my brain rebels at similarities like "elle" and "ella." (I do feel a little bit like I'm trying to cram new puchases into an already-full closet.) To study and practice, I've been using the online beginner's course offered by "Babbel;" the computer environment offers not only drills in reading and writing, but the benefits of an oral language lab with speech recognition. It keeps track of mistakes and presents an individualized review of my least-internalized material.

I just wish -- as always -- that there were more hours in the day!

"Rain, Darkness, Wind, Difficult food" -- Eating in Iceland

This is my contribution to the "Food" edition of the Language/Place Blog Carnival.

We already had an idea, before going to Iceland this fall, that the cuisine might present some challenges. "Rain, darkness, more or less constant wind, difficult food": that's how our friend had described his homeland. We knew, from living next door to these Icelandic neighbors for six years, that the staples of their diet were fish and potatoes, with chocolate and other sweets close behind, and vegetables and fruits bringing up the rear.

Shallow soil, sheep, and sulphurous hot springs behind the hill.

As we became closer, they introduced us to some of their traditional foods, such as "hung lamb:" aged lamb that had been free-ranging on Icelandic mountainsides, and then herded in the fall round-up. Once roasted, it was a dark color, and very delicious, but gamier than the spring lamb we were used to. (The traditional Christmas dish is wild ptarmigan, which we still haven't tasted, but by all accounts it's also delicious.) Icelanders eat all parts of the sheep, including two delicacies we've so far been spared: sheep's face, and pickled sheep testicles.

The Icelandic rite of culinary passage is, of course, Hákarl or fermented shark. It's made from Greenland or Basking shark, which are poisonous when eaten fresh because they contain a great deal of urea and trimethlylamine oxide. In order to render the meat edible, the Icelanders behead and gut the shark, and then bury it in a shallow grave in sand and gravel; stones are placed on top to weight the carcass and gradually remove its water content. In some cases, men urinate on the carcass before burying it. Then it's left to ferment for 6-12 weeks, after which it is dug up, the brown skin removed, and the whitish flesh cut into small cubes.

Our friends served us Hákarl one evening in Vermont, a number of years ago. Elsa was pregnant; she had just been back home to visit her mother and had brought back several jars of the delicacy.  We ate it the traditional way: in small cubes on toothpicks, washed down with generous shots of Icelandic aquavit. Someone has decribed the taste as "a strong chewy cheese smothered in ammonia." Most people gag on their first taste; we managed two pieces each, and were immensely grateful for the gulps of liquor; our friends polished off at least half of the jar and I've always wondered if this ritual was part of making their unborn daughter a true Icelander! As for us, we woke in the middle of that night, and were horrified to smell the same strong ammonia on each other's breath, and even coming from our pores. Even now I can't look at the picture of bagged Hákarl without a shudder.

During this trip, we saw Hákarl in the stores, but didn't consume any. Instead we were treated to more kinds of fish than we knew existed, all excellent and fresh from the cold sea.

A surprise, and new favorite, was salt cod mashed with boiled potatoes, the traditional Monday night dinner for many Icelandic children. At one of Reykjavik's finest fish restaurants, this beloved dish was presented in a fancier preparation. That evening we also ate grilled seabird (guillemot - a type of auk):

cod cheeks:

smoked herring with lemon and a wasabi sauce:

and smoked puffin:

Half of the world's puffins gather and breed in Iceland - a total of 8-10 million birds. I learned later that the Icelandic children on the volcanic island of Heimay have a tradition of saving the baby puffins which are born on the steep cliffs and then leave their burrows at night, to navigate by the moon - but are sometimes confused by the town's streetlights. Wayward young puffins are taken home and then released. The same area, however, also has a tradition of harvesting adult puffins; the flesh is usually smoked before they're consumed. It's a bizarre circle, since adorable plush puffin dolls are a kind of Icelandic mascot, available in all the tourist and airport shops.

Except for potatoes, which are available in many colors and varieties, vegetables are few and far between. Very little can be cultivated on the island, with its extremely short growing season and shallow soils -- in the few places where there is arable soil, rather than just lava. There are geothermally-heated greenhouses which supply tomatoes and strawberries, and one that even produces bananas, but most of the fruits and vegetables are flown in at high cost. While there we ate carrots, peas, apples, local wild berries (which were wonderful), local strawberries and tomatoes; mangoes, and orange juice; salad greens are hard to come by except at the height of summer.

Icelanders consume huge quantities of sugar and coffee. Dessert at the fancy restaurant was an Icelandic twist on creme brulee: this is skyr brulee, made from a type of yogurt cheese called skyr, similar to middle eastern Labneh or Greek yogurt, and often served with fresh arctic berries. It was fabulous.

There is excellent traditional dark flat bread, served for breakfast with skyr or slathered with thick fresh butter, and some bakeries still make a leavened dark bread that was one of my favorite foods while on the island. There are delicious tall muffins, baked in paper, filled with berries or apples, and innumerable cookies and cakes, but perhaps the best treats are extremely thin Scandinavian pancakes cooked in butter, served rolled either with a filling of granulated sugar, or of whipped cream and berries. When we lived next door, and he knew we were working very hard, our neighbor would sometimes arrive unannounced in the middle of the morning and silently, smilingly, hand us a plate piled with these wonderful pancakes, still warm from the pan, and just as quickly depart.

I'm currently reading a book called "Fight the Wild Island" by Ted Edwards, an account of a solo journey on foot across the interior -- glaciers, lava fields, and black sand deserts --  in 1984, the first such recorded journey in modern times. Edwards is extremely deprecating about the Icelandic food and its cost, though he praises the lamb. Haldor Laxness's books about the grim lives of peasants certainly don't encourage a visit for gastronomic reasons, but for fish lovers like me, there is endless variety. When we go back, we'll explore the markets more closely; I'm sure there are frozen vegetables and root crops besides potatoes. Meanwhile, the islanders know the value of cod liver oil, and take it regularly!

"Tiptoe to the Portals of Geothermal Hell"

Watching Strokkur erupt -- photo by J.

That was the apt subject line of a letter from my friend G, after reading my "Fire and Brimstone" account of the hot springs and geysers in Iceland. In his letter, he described a trip to Yellowstone National Park, and how different his experience of similar phenomenon had been. I've revised my previous post to include his comments, and have also added two photographs from J. showing Elsa and me watching Strokkur erupt (above)-- and an eruption itself. And I'm submitting the whole revised post for this month's anniversary issue of the Language/Place Blog Carnival, hosted by the incomparable Dorothee Lang,  whose subject is "Streets, Signs, Directions." Please take a look, and visit the blog carnival when this issue is published at the end of the month -- I think it's one of the most interesting projects of its kind right now.