Flying into Sydney, you can’t miss the iconic Sydney Opera House.  As I walked up to it, the sight of it on television, movies, and pictures don’t do it justice.  It is a wonder.  Like sea shells rising up out of the strip of land near the old heart of downtown Sydney, it is an architectural masterpiece.I originally had no intention of going into the building (beyond the cursory walk in the doors and walk out again) - but thanks to the encouragement of some good friends back in the states (who missed their chance at seeing the inside), I followed through and went from being impressed with the building to being in awe of it.

When the city of Sydney decided to build a new complex for the symphony and ballet company, they put out an international call for the best designers and architects to send their submissions.  One was so outlandish that it was cast out almost immediately…until an American judge that came in late insisted on seeing the rejects.

He was in awe and said, “This is your building.”

Jorn Utzon’s now famous design was thus selected.  With a budget of $7 million and three years, they set to work on the opera house.

There was only one slight problem…no structural engineer could figure out how it could be built.

The shell shape design could not support itself with the current engineering knowledge.  The computers of the day (glorified calculators) all said that it couldn’t be done.

But construction went on.

Utzon and his engineering team figured out a way to get the job done and the building was completed on 1973.

Twelve years and almost fifteen times (15 x) over budget….Total time to completion: Fifteen years.  Total spend: $102 million.  Result: Priceless.

Though it is called the Sydney Opera House, it actually houses a whole host of entertainment venues, from the smallest one hundred seat theaters to the largest hall that holds thousands.  But Sydney Opera House sounds much better than “Sydney Multiuse Entertainment and Dining Complex.”

View of the Opera House walking along the Harbor From the City.

View of Opera House Lobby.  Yes purple carpet.  It was the 70’s.

View of a reception area.  Designed to look like the wheel house of a ship…sailing over the budget aparrently…

View of one of the resturants…the smallest shell to be built (likely cheapest - acoustic is suppose to be great.  The food….

View from inside one hall at the other

Inside one of the main concert halls.  Seats about three thousands.  Note the pipe organ in the back.  Extremely large.

Some of the concret “ribs” that hold the shells up.

 When people talk about a wharf, it conjures up images of dock workers, big crates, and containers of goods, cranes, warehouses, and seedy people.

“Come and join us at the wharf for dinner!” came the phone call from some friends and co-workers passing through Sydney.

“Sure sounds good!”  was my reply…while in the back of my mind I was thinking about some scene from Dick Tracey as he walked the fog enshrouded wharfs stalking the bad guys…

The wharf was actually one of four large, brick buildings that jutted out into Jackson Harbor, on the tip of the original town site of Sydney - in Welsh Cove - just one cover over from the now famous Sydney Cove.

Thirty years ago, this wharf might have fit in some crime novel, but today, it is a cultural center, home of the Sydney Theater and Sydney Dance Company…along with a might good restaurant perched on the very end, with a balcony that overlooked the harbor.

Over wine, good food, and great conversation, we ate our pate and swordfish and watched dusk descend on the city.  As the, sailboats, harbor ferries, and pleasure boats continued to pass by the wharf, it created a picturesque scene like something out of a seaside painting.

Suddenly, the blast of an air horn made us jump in our seats.  One of the great ocean liners that had been docked in the harbor was heading out to sea.  It was massive.  It parted the sea of boats that were in its path and headed for the mouth of the harbor.

From the top balcony at the wharf, we could even see the football game that was playing on the two story big screen television on the top deck.

It was truly amazing…the Steelers were losing to the Browns.

Tells you that I just don’t get to see enough American football.

 Lord Nelson’s Hotel and Pub claims to be the oldest pub in Sydney…in truth, others stake that claim as well.  In fairness to the Lord Nelson, it is the old continuously operated pub in Sydney…others may be older, but none of the consistency and the longevity of the Lord Nelson.

Which is why I figured I just had to have a look inside…I’m a history buff after all…

From the outside, the Lord Nelson looks, well to use an Australian term, a little dodgy.  Walking up to it, I saw a girl slowly fall down to her knees, dropping her pint of beer and sit there for a minute in a drunken stupor until some friends helped her to her feet and got her to her chair at one of the tables outside.

This was at eight o’clock at night.

Walking in, the place had the look and smell of an bar that was one hundred and seventy years old….and I don’t mean that in a bad way.  The mix of stale beer mixed with the smell of the humanity packed inside of the bar and the smells of the food coming from the back kitchen.

And when I say humanity, I mean humanity.

The guys in surf shorts and t-shirts in one corner.  The backpackers in the other.  One group bikers by the front door, the other group of bikers sitting across from them (one motorcycle bikers, one pedal bikers).  There was the man sitting at the bar, unshaven and unkept, next to the man with the tweed jacket reading the Economist.  In between was a mix of men and women from twenty to eighty.

It was a fun crowd.  Grabbing a stool at the bar, I ordered up a beer.

“Give me a Nelson’s Blood!”  I asked the young waitress.

“That’s a great beer mate!  But we don’t have any right now.”

“OK, what do you recommend.” I asked.

“They’re all good.”  She said.

“Ok, give me the Victory Bitter.”  I say.

“OK mate, they are all good but that one, wouldn’t recommend that one.” She replied.

“How about the Old Admiral ale?” I ask.

“Good choice.”  She replies.

With half a pint down, I order up some fish and chips - the bar is amazing.  It does show its age and has a bit of a smell - but the atmosphere is more of a neighborhood bar mixed with a trendy club in a museum.  On the walls are paintings of navel battles and old seafarers.  The namesake, Admiral Nelson, the hero of Trafalgar, sitting above the fireplace…right next to the liquor liscense data May 1^st, 1841.

The fish and chips are the best I’ve had.  As I take the final bits, the manager walks up and hands me another Old Admiral’s Ale.

“My favorite beer” he remarks.

“It is a very good beer.”  I say - and truly mean it - it is a truly good beer.

“Alcohol content is through the roof.” He replies.

“Now you tell me!” I reply as I take a drink of #3.  We both get a good laugh and chat a bit.  Talking about the bar, the weather, and two of the remarkable waitresses that he has working for him.

As he moves on,  I take another sip out of my Old Admiral ale, a very nice blond walks up and orders a round of drinks for her friends. “Hi, I’m Christina!” she says in an accent that is not Australian.

“I’m Mark.”  I reply.

“You aren’t Australian?” She says.

“Neither are you!” I reply.

Turns out, she moved to Sydney for a temporary job ten years ago and has never moved back.  Originally from Zurich, Switzerland, she was a marketing director for a hotel chains.

As one of her friends finally comes to pull her away, she called out, “We’re here every Saturday!”

Ahoy Lord Nelson…I think I’ll stop by for another pint the next time I’m in port.

 Australia has held a fair number of surprises for me.  From sights, sounds, weather, driving, food, people - but perhaps the most surprising experience came in Sydney.  Friends of mine from the US were in Sydney and they called me when they found out I was in town.

“Come and join us for a beer and supper they said.”

Not one to pass on either of those, I asked where they were at.

“At the Rocks, corner of Argyle and Playfair, at the Lowenbrau.” 

Argyle and Playfair are good, common, English, or at least British names…Lowenbrau is decidedly not an English, British, Irish, Welsh, or any other type of empire type name…to my untrained ears, it sounded, decidedly, well…German.

On the corner of Argyle and Playfair, sure enough, sat the Lowenbrau Keller Beer Hall.  Tables scattered out into the pedestrian street.  The sounds of a live polka band drifted outside.  Big steins of dark beer were everywhere.  And the smells…well, they were like something out of one of my many favorite German restaurants in the United States (Gastofs, Kettlers Inn)…this was the real deal.

With stein in hands, my friends greeted me and we talked for hours.  Occasionally, the polka band would venture forth outside to play in the street, their lederhosen and suspenders sticking out among the surfer shorts and flip flops.  The waiters and waitresses were dressed to the part too - like something out of a scene of summertime in Bavaria.

Steaming plates of sauerbraten, bratwurst, red cabbage, hocks, coleslaw, sauerkraut, and pork chops came forth from the door out to the tables on the street…along with plenty of good German brew.

I didn’t eat that first night, but the next day, I found myself back down in the section of the city that they call the Rocks.  Walking into the beer hall out of the bright, warm, Sydney noon day, it was striking to see this actual Bavarian beer hall here in Sydney - long tables, dark wood, bricks, fire places on three walls, the image that one has when you think of a German beer hall was all right here on Argyle and Playfair.

They seated me at a table with several other travelers and single folk eating and visiting.  The man across from me was a short, plump little man.  As I sipped my beer, he finished up his lunch.  “You Australian?” he asked in a thick, eastern European accent.

“No American.”  I replied.

“I’ve never been to America, but I’ve heard it is a great land.”  He replied.  Concluding with one word that he believed made us great, “Freedom.”

Turns out, he knew what he was talking about.  He was born and raised in Latvia, but when they were invaded by the Russians on their way to Finland, his parents sent him off to Germany.  When Hitler made things difficult, he set out for England.  After the war, he and his wife moved down to work in the steel industry in Australia and had a daughter.

They had died.  And most of his family back in Latvia were gone.  At 86, he came here every Saturday to eat food like he would have gotten in the old country.

As he finished paying the bill, the talk turned to Christmas and family.  “Don’t be sad for me,” He said, “I’ve got friends.  Plenty of friends.  Friends and Freedom.”

With that he stood up, and walked out the door.  Leaving me in awed and humbled silence.

 The theatrical highlight of the year at St. Michael’s Catholic School in our little home town at the edge of the prairie was the annual Christmas play.  The entire school, about sixty or seventy of us in total, from kindergarten all the way up to sixth grade would participate.

Sometimes the play was a large production that encompassed the entire school.  This had its difficulties as trying to assemble one or two classes together for any period of time longer then fifteen minutes was difficult, trying to get all classes organized was darn near impossible.

I think that after an all school play the exhausted teachers looked at each other and said, “Never again!” and after a year of trying to organize their classes in pairs of two would look at each other and say, “Wouldn’t it be easier if we just did this all together?”

Sometimes, it seemed almost every other year, the story would be a variation of the birth of our Savior.  Some plot that involved lost shepards, or startled kings, or the littlest angel, or some other person, animal, or angelic host that didn’t know what to get for the birth of the Savior that had come to earth.

Other years, it was a little more abstract - tales of toy stores where the toys came to life at Christmas to celebrate the birth of Christ.  Stories of grinches that found the true spirit of Christmas, variations on the old favorites or stories that always proclaimed the old message of peace on earth, good will to man.

Inevitably, it would usually mean that Dad’s bathrobe would have to be used.  Sometimes it was use with a crown and either gold, frankincense or myrrh - but being brown, it feel much better into the line of shepard or inn keeper.

The year that we did the “toy shop come to life”  Mom and Dad repeatedly asked….are you sure you don’t need that bathrobe?

Truth be told, I don’t know if I ever saw Dad wear the bathrobe, I think he had it just to contribute to the St. Mike’s wardrobe crew every year.

Throughout my years on the stage, my role changed - more than once I was the narrator.  One year I helped represent dear Santa Claus on stage, one year I played a peacock, and one year, I donned the family bathrobe and took my turn as a shepard.

Regardless how many lines were flubbed or songs sang out of tune, the parents would be as proud of us as always.

After the show, the entire school, parents, grandparents, and other family members would move to the church basement as the sets were disassembled and the students changed back into their everyday cloths.

Downstairs, small sandwiches, cookies, bars, and other goodies were served with a healthy dose of coffee and cool-aide.  A suitable amount of visiting would take place as well.

When the night was over, the aspiring thespians bundled up into the cool night air, and the show was over for yet another holiday season…I’m sure the teachers looked at each other and said…”We are not going to do it like this again next year!”

Author’s Older Brother: as a king, one of three.

Author as St. Nick.  Jolly.

1991 St. Mike’s Christmas Play.  Dad’s bathrobe, far left.

1991, Author’s sister as shepard in Dad’s bathrobe.

Author’s sister, ironically, as angel.

 Australia as a whole is a city that likes its alcohol, and Sydney is no exception to this.  But when I talk about a city on the rocks, this is not what I had in mind.

When the first ship pulled into Jackson Harbor and made their way to Sydney Cove, it makes one wonder what they were thinking.

Here was one of the greatest natural harbors in the world.  Deep, easy to defend, good winds, easy to navigate, for a sailor or a soldier, it had to be pure bliss.  For a potential farmer, the hills made out of nothing put solid rock had to be downer.

But luckily, those first settlers were convicts - in our modern stereotype, who better to cut and break up rocks?

The oldest of roads are still cobblestones cut out of the very rock that the city is built on.  There are supposedly still places where you can see where those first settlers tried to drill holes into the rock to put up their tent poles to protect themselves from the glare of the hot Australian sun.

The roads are in some places seemingly carved into sheer rock.  Some clearly done with modern machinery, some clearly done with more primitive, but no less effective methods for cutting, slicing, and all together busting your way through solid rock.  Stairs and roadways meander through the rocks.

Many of the cities’ oldest buildings are still standing as a result of the early city fathers using the building material that they had on hand - the rocks.  Not just the streets are stone.  The oldest houses, warehouses, docks, and bridges are all built out the stuff.  Some, like the garrison church, are almost works of art.  Others, like some of the original cottages of the first convict settlers are humbler, but no less impressive.

One whole section of the city - the oldest part, where the convicts were ordered to stay and fend for themselves, is still called simply, “The Rocks.”

It is a testament to the men and women that were sent here for crimes, often times minor, that were forced to hue their lives out of the stone and rock and built a foundation for one of the major cities of Australia, and one of the most remarkable cities on earth.

It is a city that can truly say that its foundation was build on solid stone.

For that, I’ll raise a glass to those first settlers of Sydney - a glass of whatever you have, as long as it’s on the rocks….

 I bought the album on a whim - I think it was in the bargain bin at Wal-mart.  At that point in my life, during the lean years of grad school, I couldn’t be splurging on crazy things like CD’s.  But it made it into the cart and I took it home.

The CD was the “Country Superstars of Christmas” and it had many of the country music legends playing well established carols.

There is one song on there that I had never heard before, “Christmas in the Valley,” at that point, even though I was going home for Christmas that year, it almost brought a tear to my eye.  It is the story of a man climbing a hill and looking down at his family’s home as they prepared it for Christmas.  The tag line is “well there’s nothing quite as pretty, in the cities or the towns, as my cabin in the valley, when the snow is on the ground.”

While you could argue that the only valley our little farm house sits in is the outskirts of the Red River Valley - and there isn’t a hill to climb for probably fifty miles, but the song immediately brought me back to the Christmas of my youth.

The meal being cooked, the chores being done, the carols playing, the greenery, the loved ones gathered.

Part of life is moving forward - beyond the smallness of our lives.  Our Christmas’s and our family has changed over time.  Our family have lost a few people from my youth, people who made it home with our Lord, but we have gained a few too - people that have made the in roads into our hearts and our memories as well.

We continue to make memories together as a family.  Now they are at my brother’s homes scattered across the state in the cities where they live.  It is with nieces and nephews and brothers and sisters and Dad.  It is with some different foods - beef tenderloin, pork tenderloin, chicken or ham.  But the love remains.

I must admit, I think regardless where I spend my Christmas’s, there will be a part of me that will be looking down on that little farm house on the edges of the Red River Valley, watching Dad finishing up the chores, watching my brother’s help him.  Watching Mom and Grandma in the kitchen, mixing up Turkey, dressing, koblahah, kolaches, and bitawicka.  Watching my little sister dancing in the living room with expectation for the haul to come.  Watching the lights twinkle on our Christmas tree.  Watching the snow quietly fall on our little home on the prairie.

Those days are gone, but the image, and the memory will burn as long as there is a Christmas, and as long as that love remains.

(Tom Jirik wrote columns in several newspapers in Iowa from the late 1980’s to the mid 1990’s.  This column originally appeared in the The Boone Today) 

We tried to bake some nostalgia last week.

If you are like me, your Christmas memories are closely linked to your taste buds.  As the 25^th draws closer, I dream of fudge, sugar cookies, date pinwheels and other Christmas culinary delights.  My favorites, of coarse, are the ones mom used to bake.  They were always perfect and always delectable.  At least that’s the way I remember it.

With those warm thoughts stimulating our memories and our appetites, Mary and I spent a weekend baking Christmas goodies.  We were intent on baking some of the some treats that our moms used to make.  Why is it that reality seldom lives up to nostalgia?

We mixed up a big batch of spritz cookies.  I could hardly wait to taste those crunchy Christmas morsels.  We followed an old family recipe and baked them with real butter.  We chilled the dough appropriately and then squirted them out onto the cookie sheet.  Even unbaked, the spritz trees and ornaments looked delicious.

We popped them into the oven where they melted into shapeless red and green blobs.  “Are they supposed to look like that?” I asked.

“Hmmmm.” Mary replied.  We tasted them and promptly tossed them into the garbage can.

Next we tried my mother’s recipe for walnut honey cookies.  “Isn’t this dough kind of runny,” my wife asked.

“It’s O.K.,” I assured her. “They are very soft cookies.”

We plopped them by spoonfuls onto the cookie sheet and slid them into the oven.  The dough immediately dissolved into big pink puddles that bubbled and hissed.  They looked like big Christmas pancakes.  “Did your mom say to use three-fourths cup of flour or three and one-fourth cups?”  Mary asked.

“Hmmmm.”  I said.

We fed the pancakes to the garbage.

Next, it was back to the spritz cookies.  We tried a new recipe.  This time the dough was so stiff that Mary’s “superdupper cookie shooter” could barely squirt them out onto the cookie sheet.  We were confident that the trees and ornaments would hold up in the oven’s heat.

Our confidence was misplaced.  The garbage can received another treat of shapeless, tasteless blobs.

Unshaken, we attempted fudge, sugar cookies, almond bark cookies and chocolate drops.  We met with success on every count.  Each and every goody looked and tasted terrific.

We mixed a little more flour into the dough for walnut honey cookies and even they turned out O.K.

Bolstered by our success, we agreed to try the spritz cookies again.  They looked good going into the oven which is much more than you can say about the way they came out.  The garbage can was in for another treat.

I hope mom baked a few extra spritz cookies this year.  Nostalgia can only take you so far when it comes to baking cookies

 Flying into Sydney, the small twenty-one passenger plane that I was on skimmed low over the city - the twin prop plane flying lower than the normal jet plane, you could clearly make out the homes and towns that hang on the coastline.

The plane itself was a surprise to this American traveler.  I had flown these kind of planes before, years ago into such exotic locations such as Champaign, Illinois and Twin Falls, Idaho.  But in the wake of ever stricter airport security, those planes have been retired…or perhaps sold to the small airlines that now seem to dot Australia.

These planes, while comfortable and safe, lack the steel door that is now necessary to fly in the US, all that separates you from the pilot and co-pilot is a curtain - or a doorway where a curtain is suppose to go.

Sydney, the first settlement, was actually built on a small quay, or bay in the one of the best deep water ports in the world - Jackson Bay, a curvy bay that reaches far inlaid and is capable of talking some of the largest of the deep water ships.  As we winged our way into the airport, you could clearly make out the two sites that now most clearly define Sydney, the Harbuor Bridge and the Opera House, both gleaming under the early summer sun.

Landing at the airport and finding a discount shuttle into the city, I made my way towards the hotel.

Sydney is no Melbourne.

Melbourne feels like home to me for several reasons, one of which its detractors (primarily Sydnians) say is it’s “flatness.”  For Melbourne was built on the flood plains of the Yarra River.

Sydney on the other hand was built on the rocks - quite literally as I would come to find out, of Jackson Bay.  Being a penal colony, the early English settlers were placed on one of the most defensible points in the bay, which was made almost entirely rock.

So where Melbourne has the gentle slopes to the distant hills, Sydney has rolling hills and blasted, and chiseled out roads.  Where Melbourne has quaint timber, plaster, and rock structures, Sydney is a town that is seemingly carved from the very stones that those early settlers carved out their meager existence on.

The van made its way into Sydney through crawling traffic and, getting to the center of city, throngs of people.  The city, more so then any other, seemed alive with cars and people.  Melbourne too is crowded, but the existence of trolleys, buses, and rail systems seems to keep the traffic to a minimum - not so in Sydney.  The place seemed to teem.

Piling out of the van at my hotel, the smell of people, cars and the sea seemed to mix on that busy street corner.  For a country boy, it was dirty yet refreshing, oppressive yet liberating.

Hello Sydney, I’m glad to be here.

 There was a little piece of Americana that still lives and breathes in the small towns of Northern Minnesota.  One old bit of tradition that, despite its common status still lives and breathes and clings to life in this era of video games, high speed internet, and twenty-four seven communication.

In the heart of December, when the days get to be their shortest, Santa Claus still comes to town.

Even as a child, I remember those days - usually a Saturday afternoon - when the town would come alive.  Early on, it was almost an all day affair.  The auditorium of the high school would be converted into a quasi-movie theater - Santa’s toy shop with the big screen pulled down, mats thrown on the floor, and red and green decorations scattered about.  Hot chocolate, cider, and cookies would be served as we watched old black and white cartoon and Three Stogies movies.

After the movie (one of my first taste of moving pictures), with great fanfare would stride the great man himself, Santa Claus.  Taking his seat next to the generically decorated Christmas Tree, he would carefully ask what we would like to Christmas as the camera snapped a picture and we moved on in awe.

As I grew older, and with the advent of VCR’s moving the picture show to obsolescence, Santa Claus Day moved out of the confines of the school auditorium and took on the entire town.

The fire hall was converted into a makeshift Santa’s workshop, a contingent of fire trucks were moved to the street out front and were an attraction unto themselves.  The drinks and goodies remained.  The local stores opened their doors for shopping (and the friends and neighbors that ran them and worked at the stores were very helpful - “oh, your mother will love that!)”

Santa Claus would still make his grand entrance, but because people could come and go without the thought of missing the movies, the crowd was usually smaller.  He would still happily greet each child and have them whisper their desires to him, the camera would whir and snap, and with a hearty Ho-Ho-Ho Santa would send you off with a kindly pat on the head and candy cane in hand.

In addition to the shopping and the visit with Santa, there was also the pleasure of the sleigh rides.  One of the local farmers would bring in his team of Belgian horses, big, beautiful brutes - the literal work horses of the equine race ranking right up there with the Clydesdales, and wagon that was in lieu of a sleigh. 

Bundled up against the cold of December and with hot cider in hand, we would ride the wagon through the streets of town, listening to the hoof beats of the horses, the jangle of their harnesses and bells, and the creaky wagon underneath.

The town seemed different.  Decked out for the holidays, the hustle and the bustle of the season seemed to melt away and we were taken to the serenity of our little town.

I said earlier that this tradition still exists - and I believe that it does in some form, but even if it doesn’t.  Even if the horses are gone, the generic Christmas Tree no longer shines under the florescent lights of the fire hall, the magic of those Santa Claus days and the beauty of my hometown at Christmas still lives in those that have the lived it.