So, my experiment in blogging from the corners of the Earth ended with a whimper rather than a bang. For that, I apologize.
But now that I've got a new home, a new career and a camera full of great photographs, I'm ready to catch up. Check out reporterbarnes.com/blog for my latest posts on travel, the trip and life as a freelance writer. Now that I spend most of my time on my butt in front of the computer, I promise to post to the new blog a lot more often.
Thanks for reading Pete's Free Time!
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Friday, September 26, 2008
My apoplogies on the late posts
Hello,
I'm in Berlin with my buddy James. It's been a great trip so far. Sorry I haven't been keeping up with my blog as promised. Time has been more scare and Internet access more expensive than I'd planned.
Although they're not spell checked, I've added posts about my trip through my night in Belfast. From there I took a ferry to Scotland and spent the night in Edinburgh. Three nights in London, an adventure in Brugges, some weird times in Amsterdam and an overnight train to Germany later and I'm headed to Dresden for a couple of days before making my way to Zurich. More posts are coming. At some point I'll finish my slide show of the Irish coast, too.
Hope all is well in the US. Take care.
Peter
I'm in Berlin with my buddy James. It's been a great trip so far. Sorry I haven't been keeping up with my blog as promised. Time has been more scare and Internet access more expensive than I'd planned.
Although they're not spell checked, I've added posts about my trip through my night in Belfast. From there I took a ferry to Scotland and spent the night in Edinburgh. Three nights in London, an adventure in Brugges, some weird times in Amsterdam and an overnight train to Germany later and I'm headed to Dresden for a couple of days before making my way to Zurich. More posts are coming. At some point I'll finish my slide show of the Irish coast, too.
Hope all is well in the US. Take care.
Peter
september 14
Belfast
The three retired men sitting with me on the train from Dublin to Belfast had come from their yearly trip south to bet on horses and drink. They were great. One of them forgot to lock the door to the bathroom on the train. He started doing his business only to find buddy had opened the door behind him. As he chuckled with the third old man next to me, the guy explained it was revenge for a similar prank the gentleman in the bathroom had played on him years ago.
They teased whatever young woman had the misfortune to walk past and they talked to me for a couple hours. I can't remember exactly what we discussed, but I know it was filled with that joking, prodding, friendly spirit that fills the room whenever two or more Irish are gathered. I told them about my trip, and they wished me luck.
Belfast actually reminded me a lof of Spokane. There are about the same number of people in the city as there are in Spokane County. It's cloudy most of the time. Its past is industrial. It seems to suffer the same self esteem issues when comparing itself to the larger, predominant city on the island.
I took the Titanic harbor tour for shits and giggles and spent the next morning cruising around the harbor. "Titanic: built by an Irishman, sunk by and Englishman," read the t-shirts. It was interesting. I saw where, as the Onion would put it, the worlds biggest metaphore was contructed, along with two other ships of the same size. I learned that it cost a first class passsenger about $60,000 of today's dollars to cross the atlantic, with butlers and servants in tow. I saw one of the ship's tenders, built from the same hand-drawn plans as Titanic but 1/200th the size. A battleship from World War I was moored at one end of the harbor and a rusty crane unloaded sand one bucket at a time from a ship on the other.
Most of the waterfront is now densely developed, with offices and swank flats lining water the color of Guiness. The city spent millions on a weir to control the tide upriver. Before, low tide would expose smelly mud flats that detered people from living there. Now that area is covered in new development, and there are plans to turn the otherwise unused area where Titanic was built into high rises.
Nearby, Belfast's more recent past is evidenced by the blast wall along one side of the courthouse. CCTV cameras are perched every 30 feet, and a high fence keeps people away from the sides not easily accessible by car.
Ireland's Troubles started shortly after the country revolted from Brittian in the 1920s. Ethnic Scottish and English Protestants from loyalist settlements in the east of the country feared persecution from an independent and overwhelmingly Catholic republic. Supported heavily by Brittain they fought to keep a handful of counties in the north part of the commonwealth. Meanwhile, Republicans still sing songs about one, united Irish republic.
There's a parking garage outside downtown Belfast where commuters, school kids and anyone else who needs a ride home pile into shared taxis. Their Catholic, blue-collar neighborhood was the scene of heavy street fighing. The taxis system started after pramilitaries startetd hijacking city busses to block off roads. Although the violence stopped some ten years ago and bus service is back, the taxis are still a cheap way to get up Mill Street from downtown.
I stopped at Milltown Cemetery overlooking the city. Walking around in the drizzle, I eventually found the section with the Irish flag waving damply overhead devoted to fallen IRA members and hunger strikers who died in a Brittish prison nearby. As I walked back downtown, I passed murals personifying the same people. One, immortalized in my guidebook, reads "our revenge will be the laugher of our children."
I snapped a picture of the spike-topped "peace wall" a block off Mill Street and of Sinn Fein headquarters closer to downtown.
About a half mile away an image of a man in a ski mask with a rifle welcomes passersby to Sandy Row, warning them that the Protestant neighborhood is protected by the Ulster Freedom Fighters.
It's been a long time since the ceasefire. In reality, a few murals are all that is left to distinguish Belfast from any other large Irish city in the eyes of the casual traveller. At one point during the train ride into Northern Ireland, one of the older Irish guys pointed out a place where the tracks are always being bombed. He then explained that a bomb on the tracks is how the locals have come to describe anything that causes the trains to be delayed.
While both sides have disarmed, the peace is by no means guarunteed. While I was there, the Irish papers reported that Protestant and Catholic political leaders in North Ireland were at an impasse that was quickly becoming tense. During my stay in Belfast someone found a beer keg stuffed with explosives hidden in a city park. The partisan paper I was reading accused the IRA of knowing about it but not telling police.
Newspapers aside, the only chaos happening during my night in Belfast took place outside my hostel window. I'd found a place near the train station and across from the local college. As my cabbie explained the next morning, students were just getting to campus, many with more money in their bank accounts than they had ever had at their disposal.
I had a 7 a.m. ferry to catch. Worried I'd sleep through the alarms on my watch and Palm Pilot I decided not to wear ear plugs. They wouldn't have helped anyway. Until 3 or 4 a.m. roving groups of young people would pass below my window yelling at the top of their lungs. Not talking, or laughing or even being drunkenly loud. I'm talking about ballpark, take-a-deep-breath, make-you-hoarse afterward screaming. Some were singing. Some were just yelling at each other. One screamed "I'm done" in his adaptation of Hey Hey Hey Good Bye. Between groups of teenagers, the rambunctions Somolians in the kitchen below me picked up the slack. Chatty by nature, the older Irish gentleman a few beds over who I'd met over dinner asked me if I was ok when I went down stairs to tell them to knock it off.
Then, with the crisp timing of a well performed play, entered two gentlemen who in concert were the loudest snorers I've ever heard. I'm not exaggerating. One of them had sleep apnea so bad I though he was going to die. After a couple of hours, the nasty part of me kind of wished he would.
I got up before my alarm went off at 5 a.m. After a fast cup of tea and a few minutes of panic when I couldn't figure out how to unlock the ancient front door to get to my cab I made my way to the ferry port and out of Ireland.
The three retired men sitting with me on the train from Dublin to Belfast had come from their yearly trip south to bet on horses and drink. They were great. One of them forgot to lock the door to the bathroom on the train. He started doing his business only to find buddy had opened the door behind him. As he chuckled with the third old man next to me, the guy explained it was revenge for a similar prank the gentleman in the bathroom had played on him years ago.
They teased whatever young woman had the misfortune to walk past and they talked to me for a couple hours. I can't remember exactly what we discussed, but I know it was filled with that joking, prodding, friendly spirit that fills the room whenever two or more Irish are gathered. I told them about my trip, and they wished me luck.
Belfast actually reminded me a lof of Spokane. There are about the same number of people in the city as there are in Spokane County. It's cloudy most of the time. Its past is industrial. It seems to suffer the same self esteem issues when comparing itself to the larger, predominant city on the island.
I took the Titanic harbor tour for shits and giggles and spent the next morning cruising around the harbor. "Titanic: built by an Irishman, sunk by and Englishman," read the t-shirts. It was interesting. I saw where, as the Onion would put it, the worlds biggest metaphore was contructed, along with two other ships of the same size. I learned that it cost a first class passsenger about $60,000 of today's dollars to cross the atlantic, with butlers and servants in tow. I saw one of the ship's tenders, built from the same hand-drawn plans as Titanic but 1/200th the size. A battleship from World War I was moored at one end of the harbor and a rusty crane unloaded sand one bucket at a time from a ship on the other.
Most of the waterfront is now densely developed, with offices and swank flats lining water the color of Guiness. The city spent millions on a weir to control the tide upriver. Before, low tide would expose smelly mud flats that detered people from living there. Now that area is covered in new development, and there are plans to turn the otherwise unused area where Titanic was built into high rises.
Nearby, Belfast's more recent past is evidenced by the blast wall along one side of the courthouse. CCTV cameras are perched every 30 feet, and a high fence keeps people away from the sides not easily accessible by car.
Ireland's Troubles started shortly after the country revolted from Brittian in the 1920s. Ethnic Scottish and English Protestants from loyalist settlements in the east of the country feared persecution from an independent and overwhelmingly Catholic republic. Supported heavily by Brittain they fought to keep a handful of counties in the north part of the commonwealth. Meanwhile, Republicans still sing songs about one, united Irish republic.
There's a parking garage outside downtown Belfast where commuters, school kids and anyone else who needs a ride home pile into shared taxis. Their Catholic, blue-collar neighborhood was the scene of heavy street fighing. The taxis system started after pramilitaries startetd hijacking city busses to block off roads. Although the violence stopped some ten years ago and bus service is back, the taxis are still a cheap way to get up Mill Street from downtown.
I stopped at Milltown Cemetery overlooking the city. Walking around in the drizzle, I eventually found the section with the Irish flag waving damply overhead devoted to fallen IRA members and hunger strikers who died in a Brittish prison nearby. As I walked back downtown, I passed murals personifying the same people. One, immortalized in my guidebook, reads "our revenge will be the laugher of our children."
I snapped a picture of the spike-topped "peace wall" a block off Mill Street and of Sinn Fein headquarters closer to downtown.
About a half mile away an image of a man in a ski mask with a rifle welcomes passersby to Sandy Row, warning them that the Protestant neighborhood is protected by the Ulster Freedom Fighters.
It's been a long time since the ceasefire. In reality, a few murals are all that is left to distinguish Belfast from any other large Irish city in the eyes of the casual traveller. At one point during the train ride into Northern Ireland, one of the older Irish guys pointed out a place where the tracks are always being bombed. He then explained that a bomb on the tracks is how the locals have come to describe anything that causes the trains to be delayed.
While both sides have disarmed, the peace is by no means guarunteed. While I was there, the Irish papers reported that Protestant and Catholic political leaders in North Ireland were at an impasse that was quickly becoming tense. During my stay in Belfast someone found a beer keg stuffed with explosives hidden in a city park. The partisan paper I was reading accused the IRA of knowing about it but not telling police.
Newspapers aside, the only chaos happening during my night in Belfast took place outside my hostel window. I'd found a place near the train station and across from the local college. As my cabbie explained the next morning, students were just getting to campus, many with more money in their bank accounts than they had ever had at their disposal.
I had a 7 a.m. ferry to catch. Worried I'd sleep through the alarms on my watch and Palm Pilot I decided not to wear ear plugs. They wouldn't have helped anyway. Until 3 or 4 a.m. roving groups of young people would pass below my window yelling at the top of their lungs. Not talking, or laughing or even being drunkenly loud. I'm talking about ballpark, take-a-deep-breath, make-you-hoarse afterward screaming. Some were singing. Some were just yelling at each other. One screamed "I'm done" in his adaptation of Hey Hey Hey Good Bye. Between groups of teenagers, the rambunctions Somolians in the kitchen below me picked up the slack. Chatty by nature, the older Irish gentleman a few beds over who I'd met over dinner asked me if I was ok when I went down stairs to tell them to knock it off.
Then, with the crisp timing of a well performed play, entered two gentlemen who in concert were the loudest snorers I've ever heard. I'm not exaggerating. One of them had sleep apnea so bad I though he was going to die. After a couple of hours, the nasty part of me kind of wished he would.
I got up before my alarm went off at 5 a.m. After a fast cup of tea and a few minutes of panic when I couldn't figure out how to unlock the ancient front door to get to my cab I made my way to the ferry port and out of Ireland.
September 13
Tralee
I'd planned to fly from Shannon airport in western Ireland to London on a cheap Ryanair flight. Ryanair is like America's budget airlines, except the fares are 1/3 the price and it's more like taking a bus between Kansas city and St. Louis than flying.
All the same, it appeared that I could get to London for about e35.
It was the luggage that screwed me. I'd need to check my backpack. That would be an extra e10 or so. But checking a bag meant checking in at the airport, which invoked another e5 charge. Then there was the e10 charge to pay by credit card online. Of course, there were another e15 or e20 in taxes and airport fees. But the detail that finally pushed the ticket beyond the realm of cheap was the luggage weight restriction. You're only allowed to bring 15 kg on the plane with you. If you pay for a checked bag, that's only allowed to weigh 15 kg, with each additional kg costing something like e10 each. I carry between 30 and 40 pounds of stuff and, reading the fine print, I'm not sure they'd even let me on the plane.
Apparently, other travelers have told me, just about every western European under 35 has a story about being being nickle and dimed by Ryanair these days. On one of the trains I even saw a book about the airline wherein the author endured flights all over Europe on the airline, taking 6 a..m. flights, dealing with the luggage restrictions, fending off stewardesses selling trinkets onboard and fighting though "boarding scrums" at the airport.
While I'd be avoiding all of that, I still had to figure out a way off the island . The weather was wearing on me, and I'd spent as much time and money in Ireland as I'd planned. I messed around in Dingle for awhile, read the bus schedule wrong and spent the night in Tralee to take some time and figure out my next move.
Originally, I'd wanted to travel north to Belfast, take the ferry to Scotland, have a glass of Scotch in it's natural habitat and move south to London. I'd planned to skip this part my trek through the British Isles for time reasons but it turns out that's exactly the route I took.
I'd planned to fly from Shannon airport in western Ireland to London on a cheap Ryanair flight. Ryanair is like America's budget airlines, except the fares are 1/3 the price and it's more like taking a bus between Kansas city and St. Louis than flying.
All the same, it appeared that I could get to London for about e35.
It was the luggage that screwed me. I'd need to check my backpack. That would be an extra e10 or so. But checking a bag meant checking in at the airport, which invoked another e5 charge. Then there was the e10 charge to pay by credit card online. Of course, there were another e15 or e20 in taxes and airport fees. But the detail that finally pushed the ticket beyond the realm of cheap was the luggage weight restriction. You're only allowed to bring 15 kg on the plane with you. If you pay for a checked bag, that's only allowed to weigh 15 kg, with each additional kg costing something like e10 each. I carry between 30 and 40 pounds of stuff and, reading the fine print, I'm not sure they'd even let me on the plane.
Apparently, other travelers have told me, just about every western European under 35 has a story about being being nickle and dimed by Ryanair these days. On one of the trains I even saw a book about the airline wherein the author endured flights all over Europe on the airline, taking 6 a..m. flights, dealing with the luggage restrictions, fending off stewardesses selling trinkets onboard and fighting though "boarding scrums" at the airport.
While I'd be avoiding all of that, I still had to figure out a way off the island . The weather was wearing on me, and I'd spent as much time and money in Ireland as I'd planned. I messed around in Dingle for awhile, read the bus schedule wrong and spent the night in Tralee to take some time and figure out my next move.
Originally, I'd wanted to travel north to Belfast, take the ferry to Scotland, have a glass of Scotch in it's natural habitat and move south to London. I'd planned to skip this part my trek through the British Isles for time reasons but it turns out that's exactly the route I took.
september 11-12
Dingle
After my night in Cork I took a train and bus to Dingle on west coast of Ireland. After several days of bad weather, the clouds started to clear as I rode onto the fabled Dingle peninsula. Uniformed school kids goofed off behind me as I snapped pictures of the spectacular, sun-lit countryside out the window. There is a cliche made by most travel and guidebook writers that Ireland may be mostly grass, but it sports 40 shades of green. That's bullshit. There are at leasts 1,000.
The ancient fields shone like sunlight through spring leaves. Clouds cast a oblong shadows on the hills that only intensified the places where light gave the grass an almost ethereal glow.
After an hour glued to the window, we decended along a beautiful bay into Dingle town where I hopped off a 10 euro bus that had given me the most scenic views of the trip so far.
The next day was my best in Ireland. I rented a bicycle and rode the 45 km peninsula loop past ancient forts and medieval churches built along the dramatic Irish coast. Midway through, I passed the westernmost point in Europe, where the Dublin pub singer said he once drove just to be the last man in Europe to watch the sun set. There's always the chance that guy was full of shit. But if he is, I don't care.
I'd spent the previous evening in a pub with a drunk, French fisherman named Andre Jean whose English was worse than my French. He was from Brittany, and I saw his boat, L'Orient, as I rode out of Dingle.
I saw building after ancient building with seven-foot thick walls made from nothing but rock without any mortar. I rode pass the steep tracts where farmers first hauled sand an seaweed to make the rock studded clay arable. I had lunch on the beach.
The weather was great and I took a lot of pictures. I'll post a slide show of them as soon as I get a chance.
I'd spent the previous evening in a pub with a drunk, French fisherman named Andre Jean whose English was worse than my French. He was from Brittany, and I saw his well worn trawler, L'Orient, as I rode out of Dingle.
After my night in Cork I took a train and bus to Dingle on west coast of Ireland. After several days of bad weather, the clouds started to clear as I rode onto the fabled Dingle peninsula. Uniformed school kids goofed off behind me as I snapped pictures of the spectacular, sun-lit countryside out the window. There is a cliche made by most travel and guidebook writers that Ireland may be mostly grass, but it sports 40 shades of green. That's bullshit. There are at leasts 1,000.
The ancient fields shone like sunlight through spring leaves. Clouds cast a oblong shadows on the hills that only intensified the places where light gave the grass an almost ethereal glow.
After an hour glued to the window, we decended along a beautiful bay into Dingle town where I hopped off a 10 euro bus that had given me the most scenic views of the trip so far.
The next day was my best in Ireland. I rented a bicycle and rode the 45 km peninsula loop past ancient forts and medieval churches built along the dramatic Irish coast. Midway through, I passed the westernmost point in Europe, where the Dublin pub singer said he once drove just to be the last man in Europe to watch the sun set. There's always the chance that guy was full of shit. But if he is, I don't care.
I'd spent the previous evening in a pub with a drunk, French fisherman named Andre Jean whose English was worse than my French. He was from Brittany, and I saw his boat, L'Orient, as I rode out of Dingle.
I saw building after ancient building with seven-foot thick walls made from nothing but rock without any mortar. I rode pass the steep tracts where farmers first hauled sand an seaweed to make the rock studded clay arable. I had lunch on the beach.
The weather was great and I took a lot of pictures. I'll post a slide show of them as soon as I get a chance.
I'd spent the previous evening in a pub with a drunk, French fisherman named Andre Jean whose English was worse than my French. He was from Brittany, and I saw his well worn trawler, L'Orient, as I rode out of Dingle.
september 10 - day 4
Cork
I took the trains from Dublin to Cobh/Cove on the southern coast. I was searching for the seaside charm and cuisine I'd heard so much about from the likes of Rick Steves and night-time reruns of Anthony Bordain I'd watch after mom was in bed.
The staff at the tourist center/chamber of commerce were nice enough to watch my pack for me, and I walked out into the drizzle to see the town. Five minutes into my stroll along the waterfront I saw two locals reel in a feisty, black eel that must have been 3 and a half feet long. It started raining harder as I hiked around the charming old town admiring the bay, and before long the remnants of hurricane Hannah kindly pointed out which parts of my new gear are not waterproof. While a few drops of water will bead up nicely on my daypack, adventure pants and Spokesman-Review Valley Team wind breaker, they are useless in heavy rain. I took refuge in a huge, gothic church on the hillside and prayed for a few minutes while warming up and figuring out what I was going to do with the rest of the day.
If I'd had an umbrella, it would have been useless. The wind picked up and it felt like I'd be blown backwards, up the steep hilll I was decending on my way back to the train station. After a futile search for a seafood restaurant reccomended by the singer in Dublin (it's on the second floor of a building across from the old post office) I ducked in to a hotel restaurant. I felt the well dressed guests looking at me in my soaking clothes as I ate Irish stew and cursed gently for forgetting once again to look up how much I'm supposed to tip in my Ireland guidebook.
I took a commuter train back to Cork and found a hostel called Bru above a bar. I met a nice Australian in the room. He was in town looking for a job as a prosthetics specialist in Ireland, where it is apparently easy to find work right now. We shared a pint at the bar where I met another traveller. He and his teacher girlfriend were visiting from France and I got to try out my French for the first time in years.
Cork is as a big, down-to-business place that's a lot more blue collar than central Dublin.
The downtown is as archetecturally grand as other large Irish cities and just a bustling with shops, tourists and glitzy storefronts. I was staying across the river. It was still a busy, decent place but I had a close call walking back to my room that night. I was snacking on my last pouch of US trail mix as I walked when a man who looked to be about 40 walked up to me.
"Hey, give me some peanuts."
He reached out his hand, and taking him for nothing more than a drunk guy with the munchies I poured some trail mix into his hand.
"Look at this," he said, showing me a jagged line of stiches closing a cut on his knuckle.
"Fuckers," he said, shaking his head.
As he walked away I saw him glance at the woman he had been walking with earlier and I knew that something had happened.
I felt for my wallet and found it but looked down to find a tuft of my left pocket turned out.
Fortunately my consistent worrying about this sort of thing had paid off. My wallet was deep in my other front pocket and my passport, cash and all but one credit card were securely in my money belt.
All of the guidebooks say violent crime is rare in most of Europe while pickpockets are prolific. My dad used to say that if you're with a bunch of people and being chased by a bear, you don't have to be the fastest runner in the group. You just can't be the slowest.
It pays to be one the smarter tourists in town.
I took the trains from Dublin to Cobh/Cove on the southern coast. I was searching for the seaside charm and cuisine I'd heard so much about from the likes of Rick Steves and night-time reruns of Anthony Bordain I'd watch after mom was in bed.
The staff at the tourist center/chamber of commerce were nice enough to watch my pack for me, and I walked out into the drizzle to see the town. Five minutes into my stroll along the waterfront I saw two locals reel in a feisty, black eel that must have been 3 and a half feet long. It started raining harder as I hiked around the charming old town admiring the bay, and before long the remnants of hurricane Hannah kindly pointed out which parts of my new gear are not waterproof. While a few drops of water will bead up nicely on my daypack, adventure pants and Spokesman-Review Valley Team wind breaker, they are useless in heavy rain. I took refuge in a huge, gothic church on the hillside and prayed for a few minutes while warming up and figuring out what I was going to do with the rest of the day.
If I'd had an umbrella, it would have been useless. The wind picked up and it felt like I'd be blown backwards, up the steep hilll I was decending on my way back to the train station. After a futile search for a seafood restaurant reccomended by the singer in Dublin (it's on the second floor of a building across from the old post office) I ducked in to a hotel restaurant. I felt the well dressed guests looking at me in my soaking clothes as I ate Irish stew and cursed gently for forgetting once again to look up how much I'm supposed to tip in my Ireland guidebook.
I took a commuter train back to Cork and found a hostel called Bru above a bar. I met a nice Australian in the room. He was in town looking for a job as a prosthetics specialist in Ireland, where it is apparently easy to find work right now. We shared a pint at the bar where I met another traveller. He and his teacher girlfriend were visiting from France and I got to try out my French for the first time in years.
Cork is as a big, down-to-business place that's a lot more blue collar than central Dublin.
The downtown is as archetecturally grand as other large Irish cities and just a bustling with shops, tourists and glitzy storefronts. I was staying across the river. It was still a busy, decent place but I had a close call walking back to my room that night. I was snacking on my last pouch of US trail mix as I walked when a man who looked to be about 40 walked up to me.
"Hey, give me some peanuts."
He reached out his hand, and taking him for nothing more than a drunk guy with the munchies I poured some trail mix into his hand.
"Look at this," he said, showing me a jagged line of stiches closing a cut on his knuckle.
"Fuckers," he said, shaking his head.
As he walked away I saw him glance at the woman he had been walking with earlier and I knew that something had happened.
I felt for my wallet and found it but looked down to find a tuft of my left pocket turned out.
Fortunately my consistent worrying about this sort of thing had paid off. My wallet was deep in my other front pocket and my passport, cash and all but one credit card were securely in my money belt.
All of the guidebooks say violent crime is rare in most of Europe while pickpockets are prolific. My dad used to say that if you're with a bunch of people and being chased by a bear, you don't have to be the fastest runner in the group. You just can't be the slowest.
It pays to be one the smarter tourists in town.
September 9 - day 3
Dublin
I started the day with a hearty Irish breakfast. One egg, two sausages, one black pudding, half a tomato, a glass of orange juice, coffee, two slices of toast, two slices of bacon and about 1,200 calories later I headed for the Trim castle. It's the largest castle in Ireland, and the local businesses still display photos from when scenes from Braveheart were shot there.
As I mentioned, it's easy to get lost. I missed my bus back into Dublin because I couldn't find my way back to the B and B from the castle. They are less than 1/2 a mile apart. While the delay was entirely my fault, I think I should point out to anyone planning on going to Ireland that you should never ask directions from a local. I asked several times, and during my entire stay in Ireland I can't recall an instance when it led me to the right place. Most of that is the fact that it takes at least two rights and a left to go anywhere, but the rest of it is just the way they talk. It would have been kind of funny if I hadn't been trying to catch a bus.
Eventually I made it back to Dublin and stayed at a hostel that claimed to occupy the former studiios where U2, the Cranberries, Van Morrison and others recorded.
The highlight of my time in Dublin came that night at the Brazen Head Pub. While its claim to be the oldest pub in Dublin is touristy, the mid-week crowd was very Irish.
This is probably a good time to point out that the Guiness in Ireland really does taste different. There's a slight, bitter aftertast toward the bottom of a pint of Guiness in the United States. In Ireland, the whole glass tastes just as good as the first sip when the glass is still ripe with foam. It's creamy and smooth and fresh in ways I didn't think beer could be.
I ended up sitting next to a guy my age from Chicago and his Eastern European girlfriend who was studying urban planning in Scotland. We didn't have long to talk, though, before the music started. There wasn't a stage, but several musicians crowded in a circle around microphones in the corner of the pub.
The songs I can only compare to the best of the folk music I've heard in the US, except here the whole bar clapped and sang along when they started playing.
I told an older Irishman who chatted me up at the bar that I'd never seen anyone fiddle as well as the violinist. Every band has a fiddler, he said, and there are many better than him.
Every now and again they'd ring a cow bell to quiet down the crowd and a man would sing a ballad. During the other songs he would play the spoons, occasionally thwacking the drummer or his neighbor and alternately mimicing the sounds of castinettes and a rock drummer's snare drums in ways I didn't think possible.
He talked to us between sets and after the show with the chatty, mischevious friendliness I found all over the island.
When he isn't singing he works for a bank and flies all over Europe on business. At night, though, he's just another young Dubliner who'll tell a traveller it will take three days for him to get home. He only lives across the river, he says, but then again there are a lot of pubs between here and there.
We got to talking about the subtle differences in the English language. Until fairly recently, he said, most Irish outside the more British-influenced east of the country still spoke Gaelic/Irish most of the time. He said years ago a lot of people didn't understand the larger English words, so new meanings for them evolved over the decades in Ireland. A vicious crowd outside a wedding, for example, is not violent but large.
As opposed to English, he said, the Irish is a language rich in adjectives and flowery descriptions rather than straight forward nouns and verbs. For example, if I remember correctly, the Irish word for dawn means something close to the bridal ring of the morning. When he was a kid, this guy said his Irish speaking mom was just as likely to sing in response to a question from her children as she was to answer directly.
Then there's American English. When he visited the U.S. the singer recounted how surprised he was when one of his realtives told him if he did something again she'd spank his fanny.
"Fanny means c-nt," he said, proceeding to tell us how hillarious it was to hear her talk about her fanny pack.
A jovial half hour later the pub was shutting down and we went our separate ways. It was probably the cultural highlight of my time in Ireland.
I started the day with a hearty Irish breakfast. One egg, two sausages, one black pudding, half a tomato, a glass of orange juice, coffee, two slices of toast, two slices of bacon and about 1,200 calories later I headed for the Trim castle. It's the largest castle in Ireland, and the local businesses still display photos from when scenes from Braveheart were shot there.
As I mentioned, it's easy to get lost. I missed my bus back into Dublin because I couldn't find my way back to the B and B from the castle. They are less than 1/2 a mile apart. While the delay was entirely my fault, I think I should point out to anyone planning on going to Ireland that you should never ask directions from a local. I asked several times, and during my entire stay in Ireland I can't recall an instance when it led me to the right place. Most of that is the fact that it takes at least two rights and a left to go anywhere, but the rest of it is just the way they talk. It would have been kind of funny if I hadn't been trying to catch a bus.
Eventually I made it back to Dublin and stayed at a hostel that claimed to occupy the former studiios where U2, the Cranberries, Van Morrison and others recorded.
The highlight of my time in Dublin came that night at the Brazen Head Pub. While its claim to be the oldest pub in Dublin is touristy, the mid-week crowd was very Irish.
This is probably a good time to point out that the Guiness in Ireland really does taste different. There's a slight, bitter aftertast toward the bottom of a pint of Guiness in the United States. In Ireland, the whole glass tastes just as good as the first sip when the glass is still ripe with foam. It's creamy and smooth and fresh in ways I didn't think beer could be.
I ended up sitting next to a guy my age from Chicago and his Eastern European girlfriend who was studying urban planning in Scotland. We didn't have long to talk, though, before the music started. There wasn't a stage, but several musicians crowded in a circle around microphones in the corner of the pub.
The songs I can only compare to the best of the folk music I've heard in the US, except here the whole bar clapped and sang along when they started playing.
I told an older Irishman who chatted me up at the bar that I'd never seen anyone fiddle as well as the violinist. Every band has a fiddler, he said, and there are many better than him.
Every now and again they'd ring a cow bell to quiet down the crowd and a man would sing a ballad. During the other songs he would play the spoons, occasionally thwacking the drummer or his neighbor and alternately mimicing the sounds of castinettes and a rock drummer's snare drums in ways I didn't think possible.
He talked to us between sets and after the show with the chatty, mischevious friendliness I found all over the island.
When he isn't singing he works for a bank and flies all over Europe on business. At night, though, he's just another young Dubliner who'll tell a traveller it will take three days for him to get home. He only lives across the river, he says, but then again there are a lot of pubs between here and there.
We got to talking about the subtle differences in the English language. Until fairly recently, he said, most Irish outside the more British-influenced east of the country still spoke Gaelic/Irish most of the time. He said years ago a lot of people didn't understand the larger English words, so new meanings for them evolved over the decades in Ireland. A vicious crowd outside a wedding, for example, is not violent but large.
As opposed to English, he said, the Irish is a language rich in adjectives and flowery descriptions rather than straight forward nouns and verbs. For example, if I remember correctly, the Irish word for dawn means something close to the bridal ring of the morning. When he was a kid, this guy said his Irish speaking mom was just as likely to sing in response to a question from her children as she was to answer directly.
Then there's American English. When he visited the U.S. the singer recounted how surprised he was when one of his realtives told him if he did something again she'd spank his fanny.
"Fanny means c-nt," he said, proceeding to tell us how hillarious it was to hear her talk about her fanny pack.
A jovial half hour later the pub was shutting down and we went our separate ways. It was probably the cultural highlight of my time in Ireland.
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