(an educational holiday)

What we didn't get was a timetable and so we learned our first lesson the hard way, i.e. what discoordination means. If the word doesn't exist, it must be invented. It happened more than once that we wanted to go from A to C via B which was possible according to the map, but got stuck in B, because the one coach which went from B to C hadn't bothered to wait for us, but left an hour or so before our arrival.

When we actually saw it, we liked it even more. Cardigan is small and cosy, has around 4. 500 inhabitants, and is situated between rolling hills and the Irish Sea. It looks back on 900 years of history, and the ancient ruins of the medieval castle, the narrow streets in the old quarter, the stretches of the old town wall - all that conveys an antiquated atmosphere and an old world charm.

We arrived in the afternoon, got off the bus and went to the tourist information. On the way there we passed a group of people shouting and stomping around in front of a shop, holding up placards telling the world that they had found a shop assistant who wasn't bilingual and demanding the shop owner to sack her at once.

Our B&B landlord was very pleased that we had come from so far away, from Europe in fact (Where's Wales then?), but he wasn't astonished. He was sure that we had come to see the Eisteddfod. The what? He was a great storyteller, was he, and so lesson No. 3 followed.

After so much information we went to experience Welsh culture first hand. As a philologist I was fascinated to hear a European language of which I couldn't understand a word, and the music was of a kind we'd never heard before. We had chanced upon that Eisteddfod and were really happy about that. We don't go away to meet our countrymen and -women, we're always eager to see locals and local traditions.

All over the town I had seen posters announcing boat races on the river Teifi, and I wanted to go there at all costs. Not only because I love boats and water very much, but also because there was a picture of a boat I had never seen before. As I found out, the name of the boat is coracle, it looks like a big, oblong basket. It's about 1.5 m long, about 1 m wide, with a wooden board between the sides to sit on, has a flat bottom and weighs 40-50 kg. Around the body of the boat runs a handle made of willow or beech, and a man can carry a coracle on his back quite easily. It's moved forward with a paddle. The design is probably thousands of years old, it certainly has a Flintstone-like aspect. But the race didn't take place! The people I asked couldn't tell me why, but they pointed out that there were many others.

Don't we all suffer occasionally from the misconception that our subjective view of the world is objective and the only possible one? Up to that day I had thought that when races are to start the participants are firstly known and secondly ready. But no! In Cardigan I learnt that it is possible to organize a race completely differently. The ladies' rowing race was about to start, but there was only one participant, a young lady who couldn't very well compete against herself. The man at the loudspeaker invited all ladies present to come and take part, he cooed and flattered, but I didn't see anyone stirring.

To tell you the truth, I didn't know much about rowing, the last time I had rowed was ten years before. I had a folding canoe in those days and used to paddle. But the rowing boats I had already seen on the Teifi were of the tub type, very broad and with hardly a keel line. That was reassuring in so far as it is nearly impossible to fall out of such a boat, but then they are difficult to steer, to make them go in one direction when you have no practice.

I somehow got in and it took only some metres (yards for you) to make clear who rowed how and who would win. The young local woman was the champion, I was second best and the English lady third. She took it lightly, and when we were nearing the buoy which we had to round, she said to me: "After you!", fair play at its finest!

Before we left Cardigan the next morning, we bought a newspaper. There it was, the article about me! Poor champion, nothing about her, but nearly half a page under the headline 'Fraulein steps in to help' (We weren't married yet then). While we were reading it at the bus stop, a group of men appeared in the early morning mist, clad in long white gowns with laurel wreaths on their heads, they crossed the street and disappeared in a park. After the time spent in Cardigan nothing could surprise us any more! We knew at once that we had seen Druids on their way to whatever Druids do in a park at an unchristianly early hour. There was nobody around who we could ask if that apparition was part of the Eisteddfod or the normal everyday life in Cardigan.