Travel
De Haar Castle
h c t u D g n Goi
One of the many vintage trains at the Utrecht Railway Museum
Eileen Casey was impressed with Utrecht, Holland’s fourth largest city My first trip abroad since Covid-19 struck, destination Utrecht, The Netherlands. April 7th scheduled for flying out, back on 13th. A short trip but a satisfying one. On day of departure, I arrived at Dublin airport at 11.30 am, leaving myself plenty of time for a 3.30 pm flight. Documented long queues forced me into this timeframe…ah well, might as well sit in the airport as at home. As it turned out, I was checked in, through security and wandering around duty-free..just as the clock struck 12 noon. There were indeed long queues at other check-ins etc. but as far as Ryanair were concerned, I sailed through. On the converse side when,, I finally clunked shut my seat belt on the plane, there was an hour or so delay on the runway, for refuelling, There’s a motto; a journey is best measured in friends rather than by miles (Tim Cahill). Definitely I can concur. Before boarding, I met up with some of the group who were to accompany me to Utrecht to undergo a five-day
training with International TeacherArtist Partnership (I-TAP-PD) PD (Professional Development). We quickly became friends. International Teacher-Artist Partnership is a project (devised and administered by The Education Centre, Tralee) enabling teachers and artists to enhance and develop ‘their understanding, expertise and creativity in ‘arts in education’ work with children and young people in education, community and arts settings.’ Going to Europe to develop the model there adds Erasmus to the tagline. Countries visited so far with I-TAP training are: Serbia, Greece, The Netherlands. I can honestly say that the training programme works extremely well, mainly due to gathering together people of like mind, intent on creative development. Good to see there were no egos waiting to ambush and overall, though some of the training was challenging, it took me, for one, out of my comfort zone. That is always to be lauded. Especially after
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harsh restrictions. It felt empowering to ‘socialise’ with intelligent creatives, who didn’t hold back when it came to offering support and inspiration in every way possible. Artists from every field were there: dramaturgues, puppeteers, visual artists, writers, composers, in company with teachers representing schools from all over the country. Aside from the training (hosted by Stichting Kopa), there was time to explore Utrecht (indeed, one of our training modules took us on a walking tour which gave us a fair all round view of the city). First observations were of a very clean, very respectful community. People were always polite, standing back on train platforms or wherever patience was required. And everyone spoke English, in varying degrees of excellence but always enough to understand and respond to queries. Those I personally encountered couldn’t have been nicer. For me, hopeless with direction, it was impossible to get lost. Just follow the canal became my mantra. It led away
