Wedding Delights and Disasters In London and an Orthodox Jewish Wedding in Israel - my faux pas

UK flag

I remember my wedding in London, UK, when I was in a long white dress and my father galloped so fast along the aisle to the ceremony that I nearly tripped over the front of my dress.

In theory, when you are merely a guest, everything should run smoothly, just lots of eating and drinking and admiring the bride and watching quaint customs. The romantic canopy for the couple.It is called a huppah. I know all about the couple standing under the canopy and the groom breaking a glass underfoot.

Huppah, Vienna, Austria, 2007. Photo by Gryffindor, from article in Wikipedia on Jewish weddings.

For the fourth time in my life I am invited to an Orthdox Jewish wedding.It brings up memories of all the hiccups and surprises.

Flag of Israel

ISRAELI WEDDING
Wedding of bride, A..., in Tel Aviv, Israel.

I assumed that a wedding after 6 pm it would be religious and like London, formal clothes, long skirts and hats. However, most Israelis are modern, like most American Jews. The wedding was outdoors with the couple under a canopy, yes. Hot weather, growing cooler. Adults and children in shorts and men in short-sleeved shirts. An evening garden party. I looked a bit over-dressed. Clothes were the least of my worries.

I was just happy to be there in time. Luckily it started late.

I had been stopped at the airport on entering Israel by security who wanted to know, 'Why are you here?'
'To attend a wedding.'
'What is the name of the bride?'
'I haven't a clue. I know the family of the groom. The invitation was all in Hebrew.'

Eventually, after some delay, security matched me up with other family members who could supply the name of the bride and the address of the event.

UK wedding
You would think a wedding in London would be easier. The wedding of a bride, R......., in London, England. Known her for years. She was at nursery with my child. Her mother was my travel agent. What could go wrong?

I went to the synagogue. I went inside. I went to speak to the bride's mother. She told me to go and see the bride in the waiting room before the wedding ceremony.

She was seated on a low sofa surrounded by the voluminous skirts of her long white dress. She did not stand up.

I congratulated the bride. She did not reply but muttered in Hebrew. She waved her Hebrew prayer book at me.

Eventually she stopped reading. She explained she could not reply to me because she was reading her obligatory or customary per-wedding prayers in Hebrew from a prayer book.

I need to brush up on my Hebrew. I can say Mazel tov, good luck (literally luck good, adjective comes second).

Duolingo
To learn Hebrew you could try Duolingo or Tinycards.

Recently I received information about another forthcoming wedding.

I made a list of my thoughts on the next wedding but did not want to overwhelm the bride, so I have made notes and have recorded them so I can have something to say to her when we meet before the wedding which is not until a year or so away.

GUEST LIST

I would like a guest list including names of rabbi, best man, relationsiip, also photos so we can recognize people, especailly VIP granny or aunty, brothers, from overseas we have never seen before. 

INTRODUCTIONS

WHAT TO SAY

Add a word or two about each guest, eg professions or hobbies or home city, especailly of anybody with whom we have something in common so we can speak eg about journalism, teaching, living overseas. 

WHAT NOT TO SAY

Also I need to know who is sick/terminall ill/bereaved/ widowed/ so I don't ask a widow, 'Where is your husband?'

On the guest list is a friend whose son, a journalist, died a year ago. The young man was our son's schoolfriend.

It is a serious situation. A friend of mine, Y, was unexpectedly widowed when her husband died of a heart attack the month before her brother's second wedding. My friend opted to attend the ceremony, where she would just be standing silently watching, but not the reception so she did not have to speak to anybody and did not cast a dampner on their jolly evening.

WEDDING FAUX PAS

On a lighter note, at my wedding I introduced two young men who lived in the same city. They seemed very surprised to be introduced.

I asked, 'Do you know each other?' 

The older one revealed, 'Yes, very well. We live in the same house. We are brothers!'

Author

Angela Lansbury

Author of: Wedding Speeches & Toasts; How to be the Best Man.

Chocolate festivals, museums, shops, cake and online kits

Chocolate Brands You Can Buy and Try Worldwide
I have been researching chocolae for days. The famous names in chocolate have spread worldwide. I recently gave a speech about chocolate to two toastmasters clubs in Singapore. The first time I visited Eminent at Dell business, an inhouse club, whose members travel a lot.

I had looked around Valu$, the cheapest shop for chocolate in Singapore, just near Changi airport, and near Dell's office. In Valu$ I saw several of my favourite brands. I wanted to pass around some chocolate. I was worried that I would not have enough chocolate and had a secodn bar ready. However, when I passed around a bar which could be broken into small pieces, it was sufficient for under 20 people. I think one or two people did not eat sweet items. Dieting, diabetics, whatever.

Next I gave a similar talk at Braddell Heights Advanced speakers' club, whose members knew a lot about chocolate.  When I asked, "Does anybody have a favourite brand?", one woman immediately called, "Godiva!" Two of the men shouted agreement.

Singapore is a hot country. But chocolate is still popular and the European and American brands are known..

 I checked the various brands countries of origina and made a list:

BELGIUM

•Godiva, Brussels, Belgium.

•ENGLAND

•Cadbury World, Birmingham, England, UK.

•https://www.hotelchocolat.com/uk

•FRANCE

•Contact details:

•Le Salon du Chocolat
70 Rue de la Tour, 75116 Paris, France
Phone: +33 1 45032126
Fax: +33 1 45034004

•Contact Email:

•contact@salonduchocolat.fr

•Le Salon du Chocolat website

•

ITALY

•18-27 October 2019 Eurochocolate Festival in Perugia, Umbria, Italy. The opening weekend starts with a giant sculpture of chocolate. Entry is free for the public. Expect lots of temptations! The local chocolate is Baci, containing a nut.

SINGAPORE
I enjoyed a great chocolate brownie containing nuts with creamy chocolate topping in the Sheraton Towers hotel. It was served at the Toastmasters International club TMCS, which meets the first three Mondays of every month, except sometimes dates very due to public holidays. Arrive at 6 pm for the pre-meeting buffet, 20 SGD (Singapore dollars) a rotating menu and one of the three meetings will have cake.

If you must eat chocolate, now. Try one of the chocolate shops for a variety of cakes containing chocolate.

Singapore Chocolate Shops
Awfully Chocolate - several branches including.
At Tampines, near Changi Airport

Awfaully Chocolate. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

In Europe I immediately think of Alprose. We went there from lake-side Lugarno on a train which has a face on the front.

•SWITZERLAND

•Alprose, Switzerland.

Alprose Chocolate museum in Switzerland

They have a giant shop. Even if you visit at the weekend when the factory is not working, the static machines with long conveyor belts are impressive.

RUSSIA
Chocomuseum

Statue of the chocolate fairy outside the museum in Russia.

USA
I stopped at a chocolate shop in New York. It was not a museum, but so many types of chocolate, it was like a museum.

•Photo from Wikipedia of the Hershey Museum, Pennsylvania.

•The Hershey Story. The Museum on Chocolate Avenue.

•63 West Chocolate Avenue.

•http://www.fieldmuseum.org/

•https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_chocolate_museums

CHOCOLATE TREATS
What if you can't wait for your next trip and want to order chocolate now? You can order a chocolate kit online, or organize an evening to try chocolates at a shop in London (several do this - just check the notice boards in chocolate shops or ask the staff.)
Or organize a chocolate  making party. 

China Mug Resembling Chocolate

•https://www.amazon.co.uk/Chocolate-Chunk-Cadburys-Styled-Coffee/

•UK chocolate egg by choc on Choc and lollipop kits from 12 pounds from yuumbles.com free delivery

•Chocolate layer cake. Chocolate cakes in a mug.

•https://www.yumbles.com/artisan/chocolate%20makin

•USA DIY ChocolateHouse

•https://www.amazon.com/Hersheys-Chocolate-Cookie-House-Kit/dp/B01MFC75ZI?th=1

•https://www.ebay.com/itm/3D-DIY-Christmas-Cake-House-Fondant-Chocolate-Mould-Xmas-Cake-Cutter-Mold-Decor/

•

•Silicone Mini Chocolate Spoons Mould £3.99 from Lakeland.co.uk

•Alphabet letters Silicone Chocolate Mould from Lakeland  £2.99

•USA

•Edible Bra

•https://www.ebay.com/itm/Edible-Bra-Chocolate-1-Adjustable-Bra-Playful-Romantic-Lingerie-Gift/323774

Kits
Hobbycraft UK posts worldwide.

Also consider

Chocolate parties.

Useful Websites
singaporeair.com
Useful Websites
umbriatourism.it
http://www.italia.it/en/home.html

About the Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. See my other posts including Chocolate cake at Sheraton Towers Hotel Toastmasters International buffet. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Jewish Travel Tales

Poetic Comedy with Angela Lansbury pt 1

Good Manners And Social Etiquette With Angela Lansbury

Monuments to Cyril Who Created Cyrillic Used in Russia and other countries

Where is Cyrillic used?






Who was Cyril?
Cyril and Methodius were Orthodox Christian priests.
They devised the alphabet based on Greek. Peter the Great of Russia introduced the Reversed r, familar to us from the logo of Toys r us.


Earlier Logo





Later Logo




Was Cyril the older or younger brother?

Monuments to Cyril and Methodius and Cyrillic

1 Bulgaria
Statue of Cyril and Methodius outside the library named after them in Sofia, capital of Bulgaria.

CaptionsEdit

English

The Monument to the Cyrillic Script erected under a joint Bulgarian-Mongolian project at the Bulgarian base in Antarctica on 3 March 2018

Summary[edit]

Description	Български: The Monument to the Cyrillic Script erected under a joint Bulgarian-Mongolian project at the Bulgarian base in Antarctica on 3 March 2018
Date	20 March 2019, 16:28:10
Source	Own work
Author	Inoceramid bivalves

Now, where would you expect to find monuments to Cyril and Methodius?
Russia
Bulgaria
Greece


Where can I learn Cyrillic?

Russia

Bulgaria

Useful Websides
Duolingo

Post being written. See also previous posts on Cyrillic, Bulgarian, Bulgaria.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, blogger, author, speaker, teacher of English and other languages.

Cyrillic made Easy the first six letters, ABVGDE.

Map from Wikipedia article on where languages are spoken and written. Cyrillic speaking and alphabet areas in red. Greek in green. The Roman alphabet in blue. 

Why bother learning Cyrillic? Why not Greek? Why Greek? You can get around England, Britain, most of Wesern Europe with the Roman alphabet.

Flag of Greece

Greek
Most British travellers would travel to the warm Medietteranean for a summer holiday, before the cooler cities of Russia. Yes, the Greek alphabet is useful in Greece, the area Green on the map. Also Greek speaking Cypruc, the island. G for Greece, g for green.

However, the Cyrillic alphabet, shown in red, covers a much larger area, many more countries. Bulgaria as well as Russia. R for red, R for Russia. As a traveller, learn Russian, and you can see a lot more cities where you can read the signs, road signs and station signs, newspaper names and headlines and restaurant names and menus. Add reading Russian to your skills.

Brothers Cyril and Mehodius and the alphabet they devised. Picture in public domain from Wikipdia article on the brothers.

Now, even better news. The Greek and Cyrillic alphabets overlap, because Cyril and his brother devised their alphabet using some letters from the Roman alphabet, some from the earlier Greek alphabet and some from the even earlier Hebrew alphabet.

Those annoying extra dots and mini lines and wavy lines above and below which look like extra things you have to learn are there to help you. Unlike English, which perplexes learners because a word spelled the same way can be pronounced differently, the little squiggles, called diacritcs, tell you how to pronounce the letter.

Here's the alphabet in Cyrillic.


I was struggling to learn the letters until I devised some English words which helped identify the differences between similar symbols.

For example, I muddled up the D and the P and the R.

Now, I imagine I am a traveller, alert for suspicous characters and unusual buildings.

The word alphabet is composed of the Hebrew letter aleph, a, and bet, b.

AB - the first two letters of the Bulgarian or Cyrillic. Sound the same, but look different. It's really easy.

A
First, the alphabet is similar to English. It starts with A. Same letter. Hurray, we know one letter. Next comes b.  We start our journey full of hope.

B
How do you distinguish the b from the British or English or Roman b? Then the confusion with the similar looking letter which is pronounced V?

Those bloody Bulgarian letters and really nuisance Russian letters are just contrary. We have to learn the contrary letters, and like foiling a pickpocet, you have to look at those cheating letters and tell yourself, you can't fool me.

The b with the cap, a suspicious letter, unlike a real b, has come to burgle you. He has a forard facing cap. But you can't fool me with your added line at the top, facing forward. That\s a letter b.

V
Now we come to the Cyrillic letter B. A big bully pretending to be a B but is actually a quiet shy V. Yes, it's actually a V. You can't fool us. When we see a Cyrillic B we know it's a shifty character, really a V. That big bastard b is a Very shifty character, a V. Stand up to that written B and tell it, you can't fool me, you 'B', you are really a very little v. You B - you are a V!

G
Next comes a character which looks like a small r but its actually a great G. Written in such a hurry that the lower half of the angular G is missing. Great. Gr-eat. Before we try to say r we must remember the word Great. That letter resemlbing a small r is really a G. A bit like a C. ABC. But Cyrillic instead has ABvG. The Cyrillic alphabet, devised by devious Cyril, smuggles in a confusing v, very secret. But we know. Let's be positive.

Maybe Cyril was shy. Maybe he knew he was great, devising a whole new alphabet. Instead of C, the initial letter of his name, he used G for Great and Good.  Good, we are learning the Cyrillic alphabet.

Cyril - who?  Never heard of him. Forget the c.

Ah - Bulgarian is great, very Great! AB(V)G.

D
The letter with the line at the bottom like a doorstep is D. As soon as you see the horizontal line at the bottom you think doorstep, D.

E
The e is e. That's easy. Same as english, English. The E is the same as English E.

Think of the word video. We should take a video of the first six letters. VgDE.

That's enough for one lesson.


Let's look at the alphabet again.

Where we have five English letters ABCDE, Bulgarian or Cyrillic as an extra letter.
Remember ABv G
DE


Now we can recognize A B V G D E. It is slow going. But we have got over our fear.  We are nearly a wuarter of the way through the alphabet. Or we will be after the next two. But we are lazy. We stop at E and take things easy. We go back and revise.

Look out for the next post on Cyrillic. I also have previous posts on Cyrillic.

You can learn Russian through Duolingo. The alphabet is almost the same as Bulgarian. duolingo also adds the spoken sounds, spoken. Duolingo is free.

Useful Websites for travellers learning languages
Duolingo.com

Memrise uses mnemonics (memory aids) to learn vocabulary.

Memrise.com

About the Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, blogger, teacher of English and other languages. I can teach anything. I have written for enecyclopaedias for adults and children. I also give workshops for businesses. Less time and more money.

See next post on Cyril and Methodius.