Belfast Christmas Market

Long time, no write.  Let's get on with it?

So the Christmas market always lands a few days before my birthday each year and alas my birthday is in 3 days and the market and been here since 15th December so here we are!

Each year up to this point I hear whispers of excitment when the market is about to land.  It's exciting because it makes so many feel very festive.  It's not hard to see why, with the lights lining all the small-house-like shops, and the congregation of winter hats and scarves.  The smell and the look is unique and draws peope from all around.  Before I really get in to this post - I DO like this Christmas market, but I can't help but be a little critical while we are pouring out our wallets on the whole novelty of it.

Firstly, I don't know about you but when I hear 'Christmas Market' I think beer tent. Isn't that the point?  Is there anything else actually in the place? Now, hear me out.  I don't drink too often (once every 2 weeks is average for me) and I have a pretty unshakable dislike for beer.  This german beer tent (there is an altnerative one for Laverys - but what's the point) offers beer, wierd beer and sweet beer.  Think fruit cider - but less sweet or gassy.  The peach one year was my favourite, the strawberry and mango are also delicious and I can't help but stop by every year at least once and have a pint or two with a friend.

Now the bad stuff.  Have you ever actually been in the tent? I work office hours during the week so I basically am restricted to drinking at socially acceptable hours of after 6pm on weekdays or weekends.  Which obviously is fine, but when it comes to the beer tent if I were to go these times I would either have to que outside it (yes this actually happens) or squeeze through the already-at-capacity to get a sweet, sweet beer.  I, admittedly can be a little lazy and the thought of waiting outside an actual tent in my free time doesn't set my heart alight.

After the waiting, the squeezing and being ID'd (You betcha I am 24, still look 16) you get up to the bar, choose your flavour and get your glorious sparkling pint.  You go to pay and they tell you the pint, in the plastic cup will be £5.  My heart sunk the first time I heard that, five pounds is a lot and if you want somewhere to drink it? I'm sorry that's 90% of the time not an option.  You stand there amongst the drunken customers not able to get a seat holding your pint which is 20p a sip.  Thank god they are sweet to counteract my bitterness.

Bonus point if you do find somewhere to sit.  Odds are you will become BFF with the group and have a really rememberable time.  We did this on my 22nd Birthday, pictured below is me and Lisa, holding our steins (I think these are £10).  If you are wondering who took this photo it was a man we met that day, became BFF's with, along with 3 others.  Who we never saw again.

Overall verdict of beer tent; Go for the novelty; stay if you find a seat and be friendly.  If you can avoid weekend evenings; you'll definitely have to queue! Avoid if you are claustrophobic, or become faint at the thought of paying £5 for a pint.

The rest of the market falls into three main categories; kids stuff (Santa's grotto and Mary-Go-Round), food and drink and craft stalls.  There could be more kid's stuff, I distinctly remember a massive snow-globe with Santa in it last year - could have only been for last year.

Food and Drink.  Disclaimer; everything is VERY expensive, and those dutch pancakes you're eating was served by a Belfast girl with an accent as strong as your morning coffee.  I don't know why about that ruined some of the authenticity of the market - not so continental anymore!

Personal highlights within Food and Drink have got to be the German hot dogs with crispy onions.  They also have giant hanging sauce bottles with a contraption not unlike an udder which you squeeze for the condiments.  Sounds rotten but seem more hygienic that having a plastic box full of ketchup with a spoon to serve yourself, which evidently the stall around the corner had.  I am not a fan of eating and walking but I can wind my neck in during the festive period and eat a hog dog with a red nose and a hat on.  There is also; hog roast, kangaroo burgers, paella, noodles, garlic bread and a whole lot more!

Not to be missed on the sweet side of the food is definitely the waffles, crepes and churros.  Then again, throw nutella over any warm pastry and I am yours.  They are delicious and ordering mine in french always makes me feel like I am the smartest person in the world. Spoiler alert; I'm not.

To take home though, it's gotta be the cheese. OH MY GOD THE CHEESE.  From ginger to garlic, cranberry to carmelised onion they have them all -  and they let you taste them all. Me and Gerald always do this, and the vendor doesn't tire of offering you more.  My favourites were; Two Smoking Barrels and Hot and Garlic.  I think these were £10 for 4.  Last year I bough 4 and left them on the bus home; please don't do this.  It will cause you endless pain.

The rest of the stuff, for me is forgettable.  Most of it is random stuff which is very nice but useless and overpriced.  Worth a look though, the stuff can be very interesting.

Last note; Avoid the pick 'n' mix.  Yes it look delicious and it's all colours of the rainbow but you'll get 2 chunks of fudge and a gummy bear for 7 pounds and wonder why you didn't go to poundland.

I hope if your in Belfast you go to the market, experience it's joys and don't empty your wallet too much.  I hope that I will be writing again soon.

Happy Christmas.
Lovelove. x

Love, life and long distance relationships. (Boring life update)

Long time no write, yadda yadda yadda.

Since I wrote in this blog I have had two different jobs! The second one I am in now - and it's very relaxing and actually giving me time to relax and catch up on writing.

So what's new since I last wrote? New car, new job and the rest is prettyyy much the same.  I have been playing Ni No Kuni, I have been reading deathnote and I have been watching Girls (again), The Legend of Korra and American Horror Story Freak Show.

It's a few days to my birthday where I plan to go out with family and friends over the weekend.  In December I am attending Sandra's wedding with Gerald where we will get to see Catherine be bridesmaid.  I am very excited about this - haven't been to a wedding in ages! Need to get a new dress!  This is on the 18th December (a week exactly before Christmas) and then I get to spend Christmas with my family at home for some cosy time off enjoying being lazy and eating a lot of chocolate.

Shortly after Christmas, on the 28th December I am going to Japan for just over a month.  I'll be going to Karatsu, Saga prefecture and we will spend a week in Tokyo at some point.  I will be ringing in the New Year eating noodles with my ba so it's making me happy when I am feeling unmotivated.  Also getting an international drivers permit so I can drive in Japan - so adventures!

When I return at start of Febuary it is then 2 months until my big sisters wedding which is in April.   am really looking forward to it, but we do have a lot to plan until that date comes.  Also her hen do needs to happen and we will probably travel for that - so that's exciting!

Lovelove.
x

I just wanna sleep.

I have started full-time employment and during the day, nights and weekends all I wanna do is sleep and curl into a warm bed and close my eyes for long period of time.

I feel very much on auto-pilot.  I hope this gets easier!

I'm old enough now to pretend.

Activities in life.

Recently I have bought Kingdom Hearts 3D Dream Drop distance for the 3DS.  AT first I absolutely loved it (major nostalgia goggles on) and felt very 13 and full of emotion.  The more the game continues  the less I am emotionally attached to it.  This may mean I am finally coming to terms that some things are still great even if you don't wanna cry over them because they are so beautiful.  A thought which had never previously occurred to me.

I have been offered what some people refer to as a 'proper' job in BT.  With a decent wage packet, I can now get a little closer to owning my own car, and living with my friends.  This thought does bring me a lot closer to my end of year goals... but it's really scary.  I am still getting paperwork done such as police checks etc.  References seem to be my main problem at the minute but I hope this will get sorted.

I was at the Ellie Goulding gig and the Great Gatsby ballet, both of which were lovely but honestly, a little disappointing.  I think maybe sometimes I just put my hopes a little too high.  The thing I have came to realise about ballets is that no two are ever the same!  My favourite so far remains to be A Streetcar named Desire even though I was never a big fan of the play.  The ballet left me completely speechless.  I love how dance can illustrate life, rape, sex and depression.  After having a few things lined up events wise I now find myself a lot broke and a little sad that I have no tickets waiting to be used so I will have to find something!

Brian and I FINALLY booked our Japan trip which is especially exciting.  This is probably my biggest thing to look forward to.  We leave on 6th June for London, then on 7th we leave for Narita Airport in Japan, stopping over in Amsterdam on the way.  We return on the 22nd of June.  I am so excited, I will have to post our Itinerary once we get it sorted.  SO far we are visiting the Pokemon centre, going to an onsen theme park and heading to a monkey place where you can feed the monkeys.  We also plan to get JR passes to travel around Japan for a week solid which means we are spending the first 4 and last 3 days in Tokyo.

In preparation for this I am coming down pretty hard on the Japanese revision so I can navigate around as well as speak the native language while we are there.  Step 2 of Japanese is actually proving a lot more interesting than Step One which was mostly just talking.  Learning Hiragana and Katana gives me a bit more of a grasp of the entire culture.  I love it, but it's so hard for me to learn the vocab as it's usually something very long with 8 syllables in it...'Oyasuminasai'

I am very much trying to be more positive, which is hard when you are also trying to lose weight!  I try to reward myself with things I cannot eat! Such as watch a programme I love, or have a big bubble bath but sometimes all I wanna do is eat nutella and icecream together in my boyfriend's boxers.

Speaking of best boys.  My bestfriend is staying with me this weekend.  He has never seen HBO's GIRLS, so we plan to watch the two series back to back.  Probably drinking wine and attaching one of our friends next to each of the characters.

Being sad, and being honest.

Recently I have been feeling very restricted.  I feel like I cannot burst out of the metaphorical cage I am in; even though I see everybody else out of theirs.  I feel like I trying to run with a rubber cable strapped around my shoulders and I just..., well I just can't.

I guess what I am trying to say is that I am sad.  I do not mean that in a sad poetry way or even a sad song way.  I feel that what I do feel is something that can only be cured my moving on much further than I feel I can; physically or otherwise.

Probably the least liberating fact amongst all of this is that I have absolutely nothing that should make me feel justifiably unhappy.  It is something which plants, and swells and sometimes shows on the outside.  It makes you weak and it makes you forget the wonder and beauty around you.

Sometimes I get the feeling that letting the sadness grow is somewhat inevitable.  Starting to neglect what always stood top in your priorities becomes completely normal and almost acceptable.  For example; ignoring all text messages, not even *thinking* to answer a phone call and dreading hearing footsteps outside your room door just in case the door handle moves.

And the more I thought about all of this, the more I felt like crying.  You read back on what you have wrote - or what you have said to others and you want to run back and help yourself - stop yourself.  But of course of you couldn't do it in the first place, how on earth would you be able to advise yourself against it.

My thoughts are jumbled and practically everything hits me where it shouldn't.

Then you wake up some day, you laugh and you love and you feel loved in return.  You don't think about the sadness because you don't feel it, not even traces of it.

Which makes it particularly difficult when you once again run head-first into the wall of sadness.  In self-deprecating defeat you watch as the invisible world laughs at you for ever thinking you were okay.  Which makes the fall all the more worse.

And the cycle continues, as does life going out without you.

New Year, no new starts.

New Year often bring resolutions dictating that we will join gyms and eat grilled chicken salads for dinner.  About 97% of the public do not make it past the first week of the year without breaking this.  I don't agree with the 'New Year, new start' rubbish but I do believe in one thing - life goals.  When it comes to a perfect time I can think of no better than at the start of the year, gives you time to both plan and accomplish these goals.

I like to write mine down, and hopefully I will revisit these next year and be proud of the number of which I did achieve.

1. Travel out of NI at least twice - Once to Japan.
   
   This is something the last few years I have wanted to do and I really think this is the perfect time to do it.  I have started planning our Japan trip in 13th June, for just over 2 weeks and I am very excited (and nervous) about taking such a huge trip.  The other place I would like to visit this year possibly is France because I have never been and I want to see it so much.
2. Get a car.
3. Get a full time job I don't hate.
4. Finish Japanese Step 1 and Step 2.
5. Be more honest about my feelings.
6. Be more positive (even when things are hard)
7. Figure out where my career is going; masters/course/work experience etc, and put that plan into action.
8. Finish a novel. (Doesn't have to be edited)
9. Grow out my nail (properly including thumbnails!)

I would really like to revisit this in 2014 hopefully having achieved some of these thing or at least made steps towards most of them.

Thanks for reading.