Twin 2020 Capitals of Culture will be making hay in the rain!

It rains quite a bit in Galway. It rains so much in Galway, in fact, that the wet weather has provided the inspiration behind one of the flagship events for Galway 2020’s cultural programme.

Rather than complaining about the water that falls from the sky, Hope It Rains, through a series of collaborative cultural events, aims to make Galway the place to be in 2020 because it rains so much.

BY DARA BRADLEY IN RIJEKA

This is something the people of Rijeka, including the Rijeka 2020 project team, understood immediately. Because it rains a bit in the Croatian city, too.

Indeed, one Sunday in 2013, Rijeka set a world record for being the rainiest city in the world – close to 250 litres per square metre of rain fell in one day.

The 128,624 inhabitants of the seaport along the Adriatic Sea can relate to the West of Ireland’s winds as well – the famed bora winds produce gusts of up to 160 kilometres per hour.

The Galway delegation that visited Rijeka last weekend were lucky to have avoided any downpours, although they did experience first-hand the bora gusts.

They would have noticed many other similarities between Galway and Rijeka, which jointly hold the European Capital of Culture designation in 2020.

Both are port cities, although Rijeka’s working seaport is far bigger and busier than Galway Harbour. It used to be a big industrial city but it has been replaced by pharmaceuticals; while ship-building is also an economic driver.

Both are university cities. Both have rivers running through them, and pedestrian streets. Both are surrounded by rural hinterlands – Galway 2020 and Rijeka 2020 were joint bids by their respective urban and rural local authorities.

Seafood – shrimp, monkfish, mussels, octopus – is big in Rijeka; so too potatoes and a stewed cabbage-like vegetable. The two dozen or so food festivals in Galway, many of which focus on seafood, offer opportunities for further cultural connections between the two cities.

Both cities are diverse. Rijeka celebrates and is proud that it is a city of 23 nationalities. Its buildings even reflect the various influences: Austro-Hungarian, Italian, and Venetian.

It is a multi-lingual city. Croatian is the first language but almost everyone speaks English, many fluently, and Italian is also dominant.

Rijeka’s core concept in its cultural programme of events in 2020 is ‘Ports of Diversity’, which focuses in on a rich culture of migrants.

This multiculturalism is evident in Galway, too, where almost one quarter of the city’s population was born outside of Ireland; there are Brazilians in Gort, and East Europeans and Africans in every corner of the county.

Bilingualism, and the Irish language, is an important part of the Galway 2020 bid book and programme.

Another commonality between Galway and Rijeka is inhabitants of both have difficulties with the pronunciation of the other. Rijeka (Wry-A-Ca or Rye-A-Ka) is a bit of a tongue-twister but some of the locals there – including their equivalent of Cathaoirleach of Galway County Council – struggled to pronounce ‘Galway’.

Some things are different. Rijeka, for example, is bypassed – and its infrastructure in general, including tunnels through mountains that are feats of engineering, is more advanced.

Graffiti is everywhere in Rijeka. Some of it commissioned street art, a lot of it non-commissioned colourful political stuff that the authorities turn a blind eye to. The ‘Beanstalk’ mural that the City Council got a court order to remove on Shop Street would have been welcomed in Rijeka.

Its cultural infrastructure is far superior than Galway’s. Rijeka has five museums, 20 galleries and exhibition spaces and two theatres. The Galway delegation were given a tour of one of the theatres in the city centre, a 670-seater venue that was refurbished with citizens’ donations. It was decadent and classy, not unlike something you’d find in London’s Westend. Imagine the mortification of the Galway 2020 team when they bring their Rijeka 2020 on a return visit to the Black Box. Yikes!

While in Rijeka, Marilyn Gaughan Reddan, Programme Development and Legacy with Galway 2020, and Catherine McConnell, Acting Director of Services for Planning, Community, Enterprise and Economic Development at Galway County Council, whose brief includes the Galway West of Ireland Region of Gastronomy designation in 2018, focused on making connections.

Already this has borne fruit. Brendan ‘Speedy’ Smith in Galway City, for example, has been in contact with Rijeka’s equivalent, who runs a technology museum. There may also be opportunities for the likes of Blue Teapot, an award-winning theatre company for people with intellectual disabilities, to team up with a similar specialist theatre company in Rijeka.

Some ties are less obvious but could be developed. The Irish Ambassador to Croatia, Olive Hempenstall, pointed out a James Joyce connection: the author stopped off in Rijeka on the way to Pula, another Croatian city, with Nora Barnacle. There is a possibility of some sort of plaque unveiling in Rijeka and perhaps at Nora Barnacle’s old house at Bowling Green in the city.

Living standards are poles apart though. Dorian Celcer, a member of the Rijeka 2020 project team, explained it best when he said in Rijeka they have East European wages but West European prices.

Mr Celcer expressed surprise at the €130,000 salary, which comes with the Galway 2020 CEO position that is due to be filled in the coming months. It is about five times the salary of Rijeka 2020’s equivalent, he said.

But wages don’t tell the full story – it is a socialist city and so healthcare and dental care are free, and rents are cheaper, although eating out and clothes are similar in price to here.

And Rijeka 2020 has a staff of 12 – compared to Galway 2020’s six – and the Croatians are recruiting 19 more this year.

Irena Kregar Segota, of the Rijeka 2020 team, said unemployment remains stubborn at 20%.

No wonder then that Mr Celcer said that the biggest problem Rijeka 2020 faces is managing expectations – locals expect that the yearlong designation will solve all its social ills, and transform it economically.

Marilyn Gaughan Reddan, Programme Development and Legacy with Galway 2020, could relate to that too – managing expectations in Galway is just as difficult a balancing act. They’re reluctant to ‘big it up’ too much but at the same time want to give the year the prominence it deserves.