Istanbul

After I finished up writing about Bulgaria, we went looking for one more restaurant from our Lonely Planet (though let me tell you, don’t buy the Lonely Planet Bulgaria because it sucks and I was sorely misinformed multiple times). Afterwards, we sat in one last pleasant communist-era park and ate delicious baklava. I will just say that they seem to do desserts better in Eastern Europe. The shop was full of nuts and snacks and then these amazing cakes, also sparkly candles and birthday decorations. I was tempted to buy some sparkly things and then restrained myself.

We were the only two people on the overnight bus to Istanbul, though I was given to understand that the bus the other direction was usually full. I remembered hearing something about needing money to cross the Turkish border so I asked about that before we left, but the man at the station didn’t speak much English and then finally understood and said no, we didn’t need any money. The first few hours were great; we found some blankets and took four seats each to stretch out and sleep soundly until the border. However, turns out you do need to buy an entry visa at the Turkish border. Also turns out there are no ATMs for miles around. Turns out Turkish/Bulgarian bus guys are very weird. Anyway, they wanted us to pay in euros but as we obviously had no money at all, we finally got the bus man to pay for us and we paid him back when we got to Istanbul. Since he spoke little English more than ‘Obama’ and also claimed to have not much German even though he ended every sentence in German, there was nothing we could do to communicate other than listen to him wildly repeat himself to us for some unknown reason. After maybe having a bus problem, it was a relief to get back on the bus and go back to sleep, and an even bigger relief to get to Istanbul.

We trekked to our hostel in Istanbul at 6 am and ended up sleeping in some spare beds until ours were free and we could check in at 11, thank goodness. Also thank goodness that we had a few days ahead of us, because we were so confused and hot and tired our first day in Istanbul that we got almost nothing done. We did make it through the Grand Bazaar, where we had our first really intense experience of Turkish men: “Lady! Lady! Hello? English? German?” “Lady, Lady, just one question. First, Hello. How are you?” “Hello, where are you from? (America) No, I was thinking you are from paradise.” “You dropped something… it is in my shop.” “What you are looking for is in my shop, how will you know unless you go inside?” ETC ETC ETC. By the time we left Turkey I was ready to kill the next guy who approached me.

The thing is, men there are really friendly. A student walked us to the bus, our hostel owner got Kameko and me a birthday cake and some raki, and this one guy just walked up, asked where we were from, and then said Ok, I’m going to practice my English, and talked about himself until our bus came. These are nice things, and I like them. However, I probably saw one woman working the entire time we were there outside of main clothing stores, and certainly no women talked to me. Dudes were just swarming, and I am not used to random men talking to me without some kind of motivation. Maybe I am overly suspicious; certainly most of these guys had no motives. At the same time, I doubt they would approach a Turkish woman the way they approached us, and that makes me feel a little used.

Anyway, the bazaar was beautiful! They have all these glass lamps that are so colorful, I wanted to buy one but was sure it would never make it home alive. Once you make it out of the main, touristy section of the bazaar, you get into all these household and regular consumer goods, as well as clothing. There are these elaborate circumcision day costumes with big capes for little boys, and pink poofy princess dressed for little girls. Even a bunch of formal gowns, but who goes to that many formal events?

The next day, we went to the Hagia Sofia and the Topkapi Palace. For the record, in Turkish they are pronounced ayasofya and topkap-uh in case that isn’t obvious. The Hagia Sofia was pretty cool. I know it’s really big and really old and has been both a church and a mosque and has cool Byzantine mosaics, but it just felt kind of run-down to me and I would say that my description of it is worth as much as the visit. Hmph. I was a little grumpy about Istanbul, I’m not going to lie, because I don’t like cities and it was hot and crowded and the chatty men annoyed me. Still, I personally found the Hagia Sofia less impressive than others. Here is a photo.

no scaffolding here! worth a photo.

The palace was totally sweet. Totally sweet. It makes sense; centuries of rich guys with massive emeralds and tons of tiles at their disposal thought to themselves, hmm, perhaps I shall decorate myself and my throne with these emeralds. Perhaps I shall decorate my bedroom and throne room and my mother’s bedroom and my favorite four wives’ bedrooms with these tiles. Perhaps I shall also decorate the outsides of these rooms with these tiles. The result is a lot of emerald jewelry and tiled surfaces that are very beautiful. Also, the palace is huge. We didn’t get through all of it, and we were there for a good four hours. We did see Muhammad’s preserved footprint and a fragment of his beard, for what it’s worth, as well as some Irish-style figurines of a Queen Mother and ladies in waiting in her apartments. I’m going to put some photos in so you get an idea of what I’m talking about.

i don't know what this room is for

you have to live in the harem or pay 15 lira to see this

They won’t let you take pictures of the big emeralds, too bad. There was also a gigantic diamond. Sultans get the good stuff!!!

The next day, we went to a no-frills hamam down the hill from the district we stayed in. In case you don’t know, Turkish hamams are basically big steam rooms, since Islam consider(ed/s) still water unclean. There are little low stone sinks full of water to cool off and to cool off the main table, but mostly you sit on this big stone tablet table and sweat your brains out. Then, ladies show up and scrub you down and massage you. When they sit you up and scrub your hair, they give you a second to recuperate and then dump about five buckets of cold water over your head. There were two other Turkish ladies in the room getting the same treatment, and it was nothing fancy, but it was definitely an experience. Also, I felt clean when I was done. It wasn’t a particularly fancy room, but then, I also suspect that men’s sides of the hamams are much nicer than women’s, unless you are in a very fancy hotel.

We also went on a ‘cruise of the Bosphorus’ which entailed going in a big circle on a ferry. I think it would have been easier to find a good cruise if we spoke Turkish but as we did not, we couldn’t find the place in the travel book, and ended up going in a big circle on a big boat for not much money. Oh well. We got to see some of the houses on the Asian side of Istanbul, and it was nice to be out of the city a little bit. Kameko said that apparently there is a freshwater current on the bottom of the strait, and so they will find preserved boats with the sails still on them from a thousand years ago, which creeped me out a lot.

One more thing, as I’m out of energy. We went out that night to a bar where they had some Turkish music. The performers were great, and we whiled away our time with a few small beers (aka not pints). Then people started doing folk dancing and Kameko really wanted to join in, so she did, and some guy sent us drinks and a note on a napkin saying Welcome to Turkey. Very nice. Also, the bar kept sending us fruit and nuts on the house. Tasty stuff!

That was most of the stuff from Turkey. Ask me about the rest of it, or I’ll muster more energy to write about it later.

BULGARIA

Right now I am in an internet/gaming zone in Plovdiv because the bus to Istanbul doesn’t leave until 10 or 10:30 pm, and I am so tired and sick that it seems like the best thing to do is just sit here and look at facebook. Don’t worry about me being sick, though; luckily, it is the same illness I get pretty much all the time, and I know that a doctor would take one look at me and say, whether or not you have strep, I don’t want to give you antibiotics, gargle with some saltwater and you’ll be better in a week anyway. We will get to Turkey tomorrow and I will find a couch and watch TV all day, which is unproductive but pretty much all I want. Before that, though, I need to tell y’all about Bulgaria because it has been crazy crazy crazy!!!

Kameko (a friend of mine from Oberlin) and I left London for the Gatwick Airport at 3 am on Sunday, adventure number 1. We barely made it to our gate, and then the plane was pretty late leaving anyway, so we didn’t get to dash on after all. I was perusing the travel guide, half-heartedly trying to teach myself the Cyrillic alphabet, when we got off the plane in Sofia, hot and disoriented, and I realized that I should have been studying a lot harder. There are a fair number of signs in the Latin alphabet, but they’re randomly distributed, so as we walked to the hostel, I insisted that we stop at every corner so I could decipher the street signs. The hostel in Sofia was pretty cute. Bulgarian cities are full of stray cats and are mostly composed of dilapidated communist era buildings, and our hostel was behind this concrete high rise, though it was wooden and atmospheric. The cats fought at night.

Apparently nobody else does, but I liked Sofia. There wasn’t a ton to see, but the houses in the older part of town were kind of colorful, and there was this massive, overgrown park with hundreds of people skating, driving bicycle go carts, or sitting in the grass drinking with their friends. There was also a gigantic communist obelisk with some metal people in front of it. There are lots of parks in Sofia like this, if much smaller. There are also a lot of (orthodox) churches, discolored from years of incense and candles, and stands selling pictures of saints and lace placemats. We went into one church and saw a little boy being baptized, it was pretty cool. All the churches you go to here are functional, and you’d better believe there is a lot of adoration of the icons, including kissing them. I am too germy to do this, and I’m pretty sure it would be sacreligious for me to do it anyway. We also managed to go into a mosque, though we had to take off our shoes and put on some green hooded robes. The churches are cool, but the mosque was almost friendlier because it was so bright and all tiled, except for the carpeted floor.

Also in Sofia we went to an archeological museum. There were English labels on most things, which provided slightly more information than at anywhere else we’ve been. People have been living in Bulgaria for thousands of years, so the collection of stuff there was amazing, including a piece of mammoth jaw and a sabertooth cat tooth. (Did you know they used to have lions and rhinos here?) There was old Thracian armor (think ancient Greek) and statues of Greek gods (as well as tiny ones, like action figures, from around the 3rd century!), a lot of pottery, tools, and church frescoes, and jewelry. My favorite was the jewelry because even BCE it was all chains and inset jewels, so complex and delicate. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything that old and that intricately made. The other cool thing I saw was some Celtic jewelry which was obviously very simplistic because the Celts were passin’ on through a way long time ago, on their way to Ireland.

On our second day, we took a bus to Veliko Tarnovo, which is perched on the sides of some mountains a few hours east of Sofia. They played The Talented Mr Ripley on the bus, which was a little bizarre in my opinion. Highlights of that trip included some girl’s phone ringing, and then her ringtone was “Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” in Bulgarian. I’m pretty sure they also played “Do Wah Diddy” on the bus. And they love their Enrique Iglesias here.

Veliko Tarnovo was great! There’s not really any security on the tourist sites, so we went up to the ruins of this massive castle on an island/mountain/cliff, and climbed all over the rocks. We even went up a wooden ladder like we were invading the castle, and sat for a while on Execution Rock, where they used to execute (haha) the death penalty by pushing people off. It was a nice view, though! The whole place, called the Tsarevets, was a little overgrown, but amazing nonetheless. Apparently, 22 consecutive kings ruled Bulgaria from that hill, which doesn’t surprise me because I would want to live there too. It was warm in the sun and pleasant in the shade, the views around are all impressive and strategically excellent, and you can hear all the frogs and birds by the river. Don’t imagine that those kings were all Bulgarian, though; Bulgaria has been ruled by pretty much every other country around it at some point in time. Even our hostel there was great; there were only four of us staying, and after  Kameko and I sat up late talking with the young guy who works there, he drove us to the train station in the morning and helped us buy tickets to Plovdiv.

The train sucked. I mean, it was all right, but the views weren’t enough to be worth sitting on a vintage train for five hours when we could have done it much faster by bus. Plus, at this point I was feeling sicker, so I wasn’t exactly wearing rose-colored glasses. In theory, Plovdiv is very cool, and it is an attractive city (more of this overgrown Soviet stuff but no matter, it’s not ugly because there are trees everywhere). The old part is really really old, the cobblestones are massive, and there are tons of medieval style houses everywhere. There are also a lot of Roman ruins (everywhere in Bulgaria) that are largely unlabeled and so unimpressive that probably no one cares if you walk all over them. We went into the Ethnographic Museum and saw a bunch of Bulgarian folklore-style outfits that were very colorful and pretty. The thought of putting them on made me a little sick, though, because how could you wear that many layers when it is so hot here?!! I will say that we are among the only people wearing tank-tops here, though. A lot of people are even wearing jackets, those nutters. Later in the day it rained, but even then it didn’t cool down much.

Today we took it pretty slow, and went out to the Bachkovo monastery. There are two major monasteries in Bulgaria, this one and the Rila Monastery, which I hear is more impressive. Surely, this one was pretty small. However, there were frescoes everywhere of Bulgarian saints being saintly and, weirdly enough, women with prominent breasts. It started to pour almost immediately upon our arrival, and as we waited it out in a dry spot in front of the chapel, a mass of people almost ran us over because they were bringing the Icon inside and everyone still had to kiss it. Some people stayed outside to get holy water from a monk, but even after he was gone the barrels of holy water stayed there and you could help yourself. Most of the monks went inside because they were wearing fancy robes with gold and bright colors and they probably didn’t want to get those wet. There were some guys in black and a few in red, as well.

The monastery was very pretty and appropriately holy, as well as overrun by little old ladies with a surprising amount of energy. We left it relatively quickly and went for a little hike to see a nice waterfall. Then I fell asleep on a bench. Trying to come back to Plovdiv, we didn’t feel like we could fit on the bus even though there were a ton of (old) people squeezed in standing even against the door. Some of them didn’t think they could fit, either, because when a car came by to offer people a ride into the next town, Asenovgrad, fifteen tiny little old ladies, babushka style, started sprinting towards it. I couldn’t help laughing, and I think I made the woman next to me laugh as well. We ended up sharing a taxi to Asenovgrad and catching the bus from there. The guy selling tickets was sitting in the driver’s seat and he looked like he was about 18. Later, I looked in the mirror and saw he wasn’t the driver, which was kind of a relief.

And that’s how I got to where I am! For the record, my Cyrillic reading is getting pretty good, though I still can say only one or two words in Bulgarian, which is problematic for about five more hours.

galway, inis mor

Last week, Sasha (with whom we stayed in Marseille) and her friend Katie came out to Ireland from France, so my roommate Meaghan and I met them in Galway for a few days. I guess I thought it was funny that they would come to Ireland for anything other than to see me, since so far none of my visitors have really done much but that, but I found myself wishing they could stay longer and go to a few more of the awesome places I’ve been this semester. Incidentally, I realized the other day that I have 10 days left in Ireland, so I tried to think of a few last things I want to do… and was flooded by the million last things I have to do…

But Galway! Enda’s aunt’s house was great, of course, especially for Meaghan and I coming from our very regulation-sized student apartment. I have less sympathy for girls who have been living with host families. We didn’t spend all that much time wandering around the city because I have learned by now that you shouldn’t go looking for a lot of spectacular things in Irish cities, but we did manage to go look for NUIG, which is the college in Galway. We played them in rugby and they kind of suck, but their school is way prettier than ours. They had a very nice open field surrounded by trees where some guys were playing rugby in the warm afternoon, and if many of the buildings were as ugly as UCC’s, so be it, at least they were only two or three stories tall and were kind of camouflaged by trees. I think it helps that it was a completely flat campus, so once you leave one section you forget entirely about it. We didn’t talk to anyone here (what would we have said?), so it was otherwise an unremarkable experience.

On our first day there, waiting for Sasha and Katie, Meaghan and I took a tour bus out to the Burren and the Cliffs of Moher. I remember going to both of these places before with my family, but I thought it might be nice to go again just to check it out, and also it would have been a shame for Meaghan to be so close and not go. We did get to see some sweet stuff in the Burren that I hadn’t really paid attention to before, though that was surely my own fault.

rocks and greenery in the burren

this is a dolmen, there were human remains found here too

The Cliffs of Moher were, however, disappointing. When we went there as a family almost ten years ago (okay, seven, whatever), we took advantage of the government or park service’s negligence and lay down on the edge of the cliffs to look down at the water. They are 216 meters tall, I believe; the tallest in the world are in Norway, some 800 meters tall, and apparently in Donegal there are cliffs on an island that are 700 meters tall, but these are fairly accessible and impressive nonetheless. However, I suppose enough people died walking off the cliff in some way or another, and there is now a wall to keep you back from the edge. It was weird, looking at  the platform where people used to stand, thinking, ‘this totally used to be better.’

lame view

On the bright side of that day, I had a nice little chat with our well traveled bus driver/tour guide who assured me that it gets colder than Ireland in LA, and after he boasted having traveled the west coast and being familiar with Palo Alto in particular, a girl wearing a Santa Clara University sweatshirt asked him knowingly if he’d been to Santa Clara (to which he replied only that he’d been from Seattle to San Diego and she nodded a lot). I was sufficiently entertained.

The next day, we got up bright and early and took a bus out to Rossaveal, where we got a ferry to Inishmor, the largest of the Aran Islands, with 750 inhabitants. In the summer, though, there are about 1000 tourist visitors daily! After reading Martin McDonagh’s The Cripple of Inishmaan last semester, I was pretty curious to see what the Aran Islands are like today (lonely? deserted? full of tourists?). The best part is that because Inishmor is 10 km long, you can rent a bike for the day and see the whole thing at your own pace, if you like. The worst part is that it will invariably rain buckets. This was pretty annoying, as I brought a decent rainjacket (best impulse purchase ever?) and would have liked to see more, but as it was we managed to see seals, a ton of rocks, a deserted lighthouse, and a 3000 year old fort. Sweet! Also, we saw Amy Adams who was in Enchanted, as they were filming a new movie about ten yards away from the 3000 year old for that surely had nothing to do with the fort.

since we were drenched, we ate lunch in the lighthouse fireplace

outside the 3000 year old fort there were finally unprotected cliffs!

and just so you see what the island looks like...

The water was very clear though, and I imagine that if it had been sunny and warm, the bike ride would have been fantastic. I enjoyed it anyway, though. Saved buying a sweater until I have more money, which just means I’ll have to come back sometime.

ireland and the continent: overdue

Lisa and I were traveling from April 7th to 17th on our whirlwind tour of Europe. Well, it was only a little tour. And compared to what everyone else was doing, it wasn’t even particularly whirlwind! That said, I wish we had time to do so much more, and without stressing out about money. I can only conclude that a) I must become filthy rich before I am too old to go hiking around beautiful places, and b) I must learn about hiking/backpacking/taking care of myself in the wild from Katie.

I’m getting way ahead of myself here. Before we went traveling, Lisa and I went back to her parents’ house in Kerry (they live just outside of Tralee, right by the water, it’s superb). Before we went back to her house, we played the intervarsities, which is a big college rugby tournament (women’s, this time). Before that, there was the end of college classes (thank god!). And who knows what happened before that. Our teams played each other in Waterford, so we drove through Dungarvan on the way back, which is where our Fitzgeralds are from, way back when. It was nice, very small and on the beach, and Lisa said her family went there on holiday once. And before that! I finally got to go back to Ballycotton and go for a nice long hike. Mmm.

All I really have to say about the above events is that during the weekend at Lisa’s family’s house, I accidentally won 250 euros betting on the Grand National horserace. Woohoo!! I wasn’t going to bet, for obvious reasons, but her father insisted, and I used the pin-sticker’s guide to literally point blindly at a horse. I put down 2 euros each way (2 that my horse, Mon Mome, would win, 2 that it would place), and at 100 to 1 odds, I won! Yeah, it was pretty nutty. Anyway, wish I could have kept the money longer, but Europe was calling, and anyway, money you make like that isn’t meant to be kept unless you really get a lot. 250 euros goes awfully quickly over here.

Oh, and we went down to the beach by her house, which is beautiful every time I see it, and she tried to teach me how to drive her left-handed stick-shift car. That was exciting. I don’t even think my dad was as nervous when he taught me to drive when I was 15, and then I had never been behind the wheel! In any case, I guess that’s what they do here, learn to drive on the beach. If we go back maybe I can have another lesson! We had to leave because some guys were doing donuts, and apparently people will call the garda if they see that.

We managed to plan a trip to Europe that involved staying only with friends (minus one night in a hostel in Barcelona): a few nights in Florence with Kayla, a few in Marseille with Sasha, and a few in Sitges with Patrice’s friends Ellen and Arthur (and their two super cute sons and their niece, Emma), just outside Barcelona on the beach. This was my first time really planning a trip on my own, so I was generally pleased with how everything worked out. I imagine that months ago I would have freaked out a lot more about getting to bus stations early, etc, which is horrifying given that I was already very grumpy, tired, and once, massively hungover while searching for our booked transportation.

This was my third time in Florence, so I had no real agenda beyond seeing the David (Lisa’s agenda) and hanging out with Kayla. We managed to go to the Boboli gardens and San Miniato as well, and we have some great photos, but I broke Lisa’s camera in France and I don’t know how to get the photos off yet. Well, I haven’t tried. Check back next week and maybe I’ll have worked it out? We ate dinner at this restaurant called Mamma Gina’s, which is funny because there’s an exco at Oberlin based off this book, Mama Gena’s School of Womanly Arts. Kayla managed to seduce the waiter with her Italian skills, and as we left he pressed a cork lovingly into her hand and asked her not to forget him. Hmm. We proceeded on to this fantastic chocolate drink shop, Hemingway’s, and had these slightly overwhelming but really great chocolatey after-dinner drinks and 75% dark chocolate nutella with fresh fruit. Delicious, but I should have known that too much chocolate will only upset my stomach; we went home after that. The next night, though, we went up to Kayla’s friend Jade’s magnificent apartment (Kayla definitely got a bad deal on her apartment, even though it is vastly nicer than mine) and sat on the roof while the sun set. For dinner, we had apertivos at a bar nearby, which according to Wikipedia is supposed to include finger food and a drink. However, since it was about 7 euro for a drink and said finger food, we had these massive plates of really delicious Italian food along with our one drinks. It was a good idea. As much as Kayla wanted to take us out to a club and prove to us that Italian men were sleazy enough to stick their hands down our pants, we didn’t end up staying out quite late enough to hit up the clubs, instead checking out a few more bars and then heading to bed so we could get on a train in the morning.

I slept for the first part of the trip, but the train ride to Marseille was gorgeous. Getting off the train for an hour in  Genoa there were these massive trees with very dark green massive leaves that looked kind of tropical, and there were palm trees everywhere. The houses were colorful with wooden shutters and kind of elaborate white trim all over the place, if I remember correctly, and if I had known anyone there I think it would have been nice to get off and at least stare at the houses for a while. I couldn’t help thinking, though, that the whole Mediterranean coast we saw looked an awful lot like Southern California, and it might be worth just going there for a cheap vacation… We had a stop in Nice, as well. I hear it’s very lovely, and I would like to agree, but again the stop wasn’t long enough for me to do much but eat some dinner and break Lisa’s camera.

We had kind of gross and cloudy weather in Marseille, but it wasn’t too cold, so I didn’t mind. Sasha’s host family there has a beautiful house and we got to sleep in their sweet poolhouse, so I was pleased on the whole. It was fortunate that we had Sasha and Fiona, another girl from Oberlin, around, since I speak no French and knew pretty much nothing about Marseille. We managed to go up to Notre Dame de la Garde, an impressive church on a gigantic hill with a big golden statue of Mary and Jesus on top. Apparently the baby Jesus’ wrist is like 1.1 meters in diameter or something like that. Cool.

We also went to the Palais Longchamps, which is an entirely useless 19th c. palace that was apparently built for no reason and now houses a museum in one wing. We sat in the park and watched some people juggling and doing poi (reminded us of Oberlin) and then a little kid hazardously using the park as the racetrack for his tiny tiny bicycle. It was pretty cute. The bull below is from the front of the palace; there was this funny statue of these bulls and some super super buff women. Okay.

oh sweetie i just can't meet you at 3, i'm at the spa until 4:30!

The next day, we went out to the Chateau D’If, which is where Dantes is imprisoned in The Count of Monte Cristo. Every cell had names of people who had “lived” there, and there was so much stuff about the book that I basically expected to see where he escaped and his chains, or something. It wasn’t the weirdest of prison museums I’ve been to (see: Cork Gaol, or any Irish musem, filled with very lifelike wax figures… still deters me from indoor tourism here), but there was this one room with a symbolic piece of art without any real explanation, only a list of the things in the artwork. On the island there was also an exhibit about the way people used to holiday on islands around Marseille and the local flora and fauna, which was kind of cool. Two fun things that happened: I accidentally handed the ticket-seller my UCC id and was too lazy to explain that I wasn’t Irish so I got in for free for being an EU citizen (cool!), and Sasha almost got attacked by a seagull. We also saw a seagull nest.

this is the courtyard

you can see the corner of the island and notre dame de la garde behind

trapped!!! lisa wasn't as worried as i was about that.

After some delicious Moroccan food and a visit to a pub that was definitely not Irish, we got on a bus and spend the day driving to Barcelona. More California-type landscapes, more obnoxious language insufficiencies. Man, I wish I spoke Spanish. No matter– it was a lovely drive, and Barcelona is a lovely city. Unfortunately, we saw virtually none of it except for the part we walked from the train station to our hostel and then where we went for dinner, but I think I will have to do Spain properly at some point, and as always, I’ll want more money so I can do it right. For the amount I was willing to spend, we had a mediocre hostel and some totally delicious vegetable paella, though. Food only improved from this point on.

In the morning, we took the train to Sitges, which is a big gay (man) destination in Spain. Also a big English holiday spot. Hmm… the beaches were beautiful, Arthur and Ellen and their family were great, and we did basically nothing for three days on the beach. The water almost qualified as frigid, but I insisted on swimming and I am very glad that I did. I have definitely been low on my vitamin D for a long time! Again, no photos– I only have the France ones because Sasha sent them to me from her camera! But that’s real vacation for you. My phone is in the shop right now, and I kind of like that. Kind of. Just imagine two story slightly French houses, and then a long (narrow) sandy beach with clear water and a promenade… an old, sandstone brick church at one end… That’s pretty much all there was to see in Sitges, and I didn’t mind. I like beach holidays.

And that was it! We flew home on a pretty miserable but very cheap RyanAir flight, and Lisa’s mom picked us up at the airport and brought us back to Cork. The weather here sucks, but that’s nothing new.

sorry sorry sorry!

You know how it is, time passes and you think, okay, I’ll have to write this all down later. Then you don’t write it down, later comes, and there’s far, far too much to write…

There’s been rugby, about as much as usual, and classes, which are mysteriously coming to an end this month (my last sean-nos class is next monday!!), and all the other stuff on the side. Kayla and a friend of hers from her program in Florence were just here for a few days, which was lovely. I’ve almost entirely given up on showing people (visitors like Kayla) around Cork, which either speaks to my general disenchantment with the city or my newly developed sense of Irish culture which says that the best way to get to know an Irish city, anyway, is to go out for a drink at night.

That said, Lisa (I called her Brick in that last post), Meaghan and I went to Belfast last weekend for a little tourism. I had my Lonely Planet out the whole way, even after it got dark, since we had to drive across the whole country and I figured we could at least learn about what we were passing. It was a pretty great trip, though we didn’t sample the local nightlife after all– we were couchsurfing for the first time, and anyway we’ve all been tired lately. Couchsurfing was also so great! In case you don’t know what it is, check out couchsurfing.com; you join the community, and people you know vouch for your existence and coolness, etc, and then when you’re traveling you can email people and stay with them if they say it’s okay (you would pass the favor forward when you had a house or apartment that could accommodate visitors, too). This time we stayed with a girl from England who’s living in Belfast, and while she was sick and also working a lot while we were there, it turns out that her roommate (Australian and also a couchsurfer) plays rugby for a university team and a club team, just like I do, in Northern Ireland! On our second night, we stayed in with her to watch the France-Wales match on tv, and it was great fun. It just goes to show that you never know where you will meet rugby women, or maybe it goes to show that rugby women tend to have similar interests. Who knows.

Belfast! There’s a giant salmon covered in ceramic tiles that show the history of Belfast down by the river, which is, uhm, impressive. There was a bomb scare the day we arrived, but they found it and removed it. The girls we stayed with said that things like that happen fairly regularly, but they would never worry about it unless it got international press. As it is, the conflict remains relatively contained. I think many of the younger folks want it to be done, but there are still plenty of older people who were very involved at one point or who lost immediate family members, so I personally think it’s still going to be a while before it ‘ends.’

We did take a taxi tour of the Shankill/Falls Road(s) areas, while I’m on the topic. It seemed like the best way to learn a little bit and see the murals, etc. I don’t think any of us had expectations for the tour, though we did spend a while guessing to ourselves whether our guide was Catholic or Protestant. Lisa determined he was Protestant because of the way he presented the facts (Catholic attack, Protestant retaliation), but we never asked him. Sure he would have told us if we had, but I don’t mind not knowing for sure. Anyway, we got to see the murals (I’ll try to put some photos up one day when the internet is working better), which memorialize scenes from the conflict or from Ulster’s past in pretty political ways (eg Catholic children throwing stones at burning Protestant houses, and there were some graphic ones in support of Palestine as well, actually). The peace line in Belfast is maybe a little like the Berlin Wall, only it has two gates that are open 24/7. The others all close after business hours, and in some places there’s a fence on top of the wall that must take it up to 40 ft in the air. On the Catholic side, we saw houses with fencing in the back garden to cover their windows in case rocks or fireworks (okay I can’t remember the right word for what it was but it’s not fireworks) or something were thrown over the fence. We stopped at one place on the Protestant side where tourists had written messages in crayon or marker hoping for peace, etc, so our driver gave us crayons and we added to the wall. Then again, of course, there are places where the wall has been moved for schools, and there were a bunch of kids playing in the streets on both sides of the line, so it’s not quite the war zone it used to be. Oh, and we also passed the Sinn Fein building, and the driver insisted we take pictures.

As for the rest of Belfast, it takes no more than 20 minutes to walk from one end of the main city to the other. I will never get used to how small cities and towns are here! I just continually expect them to be bigger!

Oh dear– I’m going to Kerry and my ride just got here. I’ll try to finish this later!!!

a long time, like

It’s not the anniversary of my travels, but it’s worth considering that I’ve been here for six weeks now– and my classes are over in six weeks. How is it even possible?! Either it’s ridiculous to say that I’m halfway finished because I don’t plan to go home until at least the beginning of June, or it’s ridiculous that I’m halfway finished with classes because I just started them. Hmm.

This week was very busy, and though that means I missed doing a lot of things I thought I wanted to do, the way it turned out was great (and very characteristic of me, or of Ireland, or something).

My mom was here Tuesday-Thursday, it was RAG week (like I said), I had a presentation and an exam in the same course so the class had two meetings instead of one (and this would be the first graded works I’ve completed, if my Fiddle Styles teacher weren’t an American who thus makes us do reading responses!), and I had rugby training every day that I was really obliged not to skip this week. Oh, and I have a cold, finally (seems like I’ve had it coming since everyone else has it but me, which should demonstrate to you that the weather here isn’t as harsh on the body as in Ohio. Oh! And yesterday one of my friends told me that the worst of winter was over and it would be warmer from now on, so let me say that I’m looking forward to more days over 45).

Righto, I was trying to say that I kind of locked myself inside Sunday and Monday to work, which meant that I missed the first few RAG week activities, like watching Hot Fuzz, I think, and there was some ‘pre-party’ on Sunday. Monday there would have been a DJ Battle (Avery was in it on a different day so I didn’t bother going), and some stands were selling food on campus; after my 4 o’clock class we stopped in the New Bar on campus for a pint, and it was so crazy that a) we had to queue and b) it took 20 minutes to get a drink. At 5:00! It might have just been that I was getting sick, but that wasn’t really a worthwhile experience. Maybe I like the idea of TGIF more because you can be outside and not crowded so much? No, these are not comparable events.

In any case, that was the only time I really ‘celebrated’ RAG week, so I didn’t buy any of the paraphernalia or even donate other than the one pint. Oops. I had planned to go see Avery rock it on Tuesday, but as it turns out, a drunk student died on Monday night, and RAG activities were cancelled Tuesday. We thought it might be for the whole week, but it was just the day (a sobering event, if you’ll excuse the awful joke). After this, my mom was here, so I had a good excuse  not to drink all day, and since kids go home on Friday, by the time she left everything was over, which is good by me.

No use writing on the bad tour of Cork I gave her, because it was just pretty bad. I need to work on my skills. As a traveler, I generally prefer to follow my gut and keep myself happy, since there is often no point in seeing the sights when I’m sad or sick or hungry, but my confused tour is still somewhere between frantic tourism and a good walk. Ah well, it was nice to see her, is the best part of the whole thing. And we went to this expensive vegetarian restaurant that I would never pay for otherwise, and I was kind of delighted (?) to find out that it wasn’t actually so good after all, so I’m not missing out.

Tuesday night I want to tell you about because it really is so representative of life here. After rugby training (UCC), my coach Theresa gave me and some girls (my friend Aoife whose birthday was in Clon, her friend Orlagh) rides home, but then invited us along to see another of our friends play a football (Gaelic!) game. So I had about 10 minutes to change my clothes and not shower, we rushed over to the pitch, and the game was already over. Thwarted again from seeing football! Instead, we went out to the neighborhood bar that my other (club coach) frequents (as do Aoife and Orlagh) and had a few drinks. It was really the chillest pub I’ve been to in a while, which either means I’m going to the wrong places or is indicative of the fact that I don’t frequent pubs much. Hmm.

The girls informed me that it is unsafe to walk home during RAG week, so I was all set to take a cab home instead, but actually, Theresa went home and the three of us went to get some seriously amazing cheesy garlic chips and then Orlagh insisted that I stay at her house. She offered me a bottle of water, a spare toothbrush, and her bed, and then proceeded to lay out her sleeping bag on the floor and play the accordian for me before we went to sleep. !!! I’m pretty sure that Tuesday was the first time we ever had a conversation. I’m so incredibly grateful for her generosity, and anyway, I think it’s hilarious that days and nights here are best when they go like this. I can’t even bring myself to plan in advance anymore…

Thursday, too, was crazy and surprising and maybe a turning point? We had an extra training session because some of us are playing a friendly match against a visiting French team next week, but actually only six of us showed up to train. (It wasn’t even cold!) As it turns out, I knew all but one girl, since Theresa and another girl from the club team were there, and two of the other girls I had already met in Clon for Aoife’s 21. They all decided to go out afterwards, so we went home to shower and then someone picked me up on the way into Cork, where I smugly watched some crazy college kids finishing up RAG week in style from the car window. One of the girls, then, offered to drive Meaghan and I sightseeing the next day, and so instead of taking the bus like we had planned, we suddenly had this sweet lift! (Don’t even get me started on how I’m starting to change my slang so people stop giving me a hard time; apparently ’spandex’ means ‘control-top tights’ instead of ‘warm sport long underwear.’)

Friday we went to Cobh, on an island in the Cork harbor, and Kinsale, which is a tourist town about forty minutes away. Cobh was picturesque, with a few little boats and this totally gigantic cathedral that is without a doubt the nicest I’ve seen in Ireland so far, but we didn’t stay long because the travel book seemed to think Kinsale was cooler. Weirdly, Kinsale was just under a lot of construction and not that cute and mostly closed because it’s off-season, so we skipped town after lunch and went up to Charles Fort, this 17thc. fort/ruins above the town. Best choice ever! Meaghan and I were totally in our element, running around some abandoned stone and grass (okay, not abandoned), and then lying down in the marm grass and listening to the waves below… the weather was great, I wasn’t hungry and/or tired, and the whole thing was just gorgeous. Brick (the girl who drove) didn’t want to admit it but even she thought it was pretty superb. She said she’d had rugby photographs taken in front of the fort for Kinsale 7s, but had no idea how huge and amazing it was inside, so I almost feel like I did her a favor by being a tourist. Plus, she said she’d take me to the beach next weekend, so I’d consider Friday doubly successful.

What a week! Today’s match in Kinsale was cancelled, to my great dismay, so I am left with no choice but to sleep late and do nothing. Oh well!

about time

This week each of my teams had games, so life was a little busier than usual. I only got to play in the match today, for the club team, and at the moment I’m wondering if it’s possible to fracture your septum. I took a fist and a knee to the face and there was definitely a crack on the second one, but then, that time my fingers weren’t broken during lap tag there was also a crack. Maybe my body just makes cracks? (ha ha) On the plus side, today’s match was the first time I’ve played rugby here in the sun, and it was even a little warm!

Although I have a bunch of work for this week, for the first time, it is also RAG week, and my mom is coming to visit. RAG week stands for Raise and Give week, so all the money from the college bars and events goes to charity. As far as I hear, it’s actually an excuse for everyone in UCC to be drunk for an entire week. I would usually say this is logistically and physically impossible, but Irish kids can seriously drink. I’ll have to get back to you on what actually goes down, but right now I am most enticed by Human Fussball and the DJ Battle (which Avery entered, so I’ll be there to cheer him on!).

It was a pretty quiet (ish) week otherwise, though, this past week. On Friday night I went down to Clonakilty with some really cool girls from my rugby team for another girl’s 21st birthday. Clon is around an hour away, so we stayed the night there, and when I woke up in the morning I looked out the window to see the farm, and there were four cats sunning themselves on this platform in front of an old horse and some cows. It was the sweetest thing, really! The night was good, too; we went out to dinner at a nice little Italian restaurant, and then to meet up with the birthday girl. She had this small-town bar totally full of people (mostly from Clon), and somewhere in there they convinced me to try black pudding because apparently it’s extra good in Clon. We ended up moving down to a “club,” which I think was part of the party plan, which was actually a dance floor and bar on the first floor of a little hotel. Never have I ever been hit on by so many obviously married men!!! Anyway, it was a very entertaining evening, and on the drive home I got to see a lot of the countryside. Two of the girls I was with are from Kerry, and they invited me down at some point to drive around and see the sights, so I hope I can take them up on that!

One last thing– I went to see Revolutionary Road the other day, with Kate Winslet and Leo Di Caprio, ya know. Don’t see it! It’s giving me some serious anxiety about my future and my career choices.

tradfest

The other really awesome thing happening in Cork this week, or at UCC, really, is TradFest, a traditional music festival hosted by the Trad Society. (Here, obviously, trad is short for traditional, and when people say what instruments or music they play, that’s a specification. An dtuigeann tu?) I haven’t really been going to many sessions just to listen because as long as I’m not playing, it’s a long way to walk, probably in the rain, just to have to pay through the nose for a pint while I listen. If that sounds prissy, it is; my bad justifications really just mean I hadn’t gotten around to it yet. Beside the point!

Friday at lunch we went to a free concert in the art gallery on campus. That concert series is ongoing, and every week I plan to go– except every week since we’ve arrived that it’s been something other than weird contemporary music, the concert has been cancelled. It was my first time in the gallery then, as well, and that was pretty cool. I think it’s a nice space, and I’d like to go back when it’s less crowded. It was so crowded! Probably because it was lunchtime on campus, and free. Anyway, we saw Matt Molloy, John Carty, and Arty McGlynn, playing guitar, fiddle, and flute. It was pretty bomb.

Last night was way better, though. We got there at 9 because there were three bands, and the posters said 9 o’clock. Luckily, we realized our folly and went elsewhere to have a pint and waste some time (there’s this little little pub around the corner from where we were where they play all this American alternative rock, so it’s always relaxing to sit there for a little bit). Went back, waited some more, and then finally heard the Tap Room Trio play some really sweet stuff. Because the instrumentation was the same as the lunchtime group and they weren’t too experimental outside the whole trad genre (after all, it was TradFest), they sounded relatively similar to the lunch group. There were a few duets, a few solos, and then mostly the trio.

It was at least midnight when the second group, Frankie Gavin and Hibernian Rhapsody, began to play, and I think it was the greatest thing I’ve heard… in a long time. I don’t even know how to write it! I admit that my fiddle knowledge is restricted to bluegrass and old-time, though at least there I would recognize big names and a few lesser known ones. Frankie Gavin? Pretty famous? Internet says so, and he really should be. But setting aside the crazy things he could play at superhuman speeds, every member of that band was really talented, and the breaks were fantastic. At first I was recognizing some American fiddle tunes, which makes sense because many are the same but have different embellishments in different places. Then, there was a little Mozart. And then some jazz. I almost lost my socks over the Mozart! How cool is it to take a Mozart tune and then turn it into Irish music? Ach. Good stuff.

We left around 1:30 because we were tired; that band was done, and we’d just seen a bunch of drunk college students do a set dance to one of the tunes (oh, I wish I could!). I think there was to be another band, but at that point I didn’t need to see it because the rest had been so great and I was that tired. Another day.

Oh! I also made it to the Crawford Gallery in town yesterday, which was very nice, but I’ll have to go back and get a second look at the top floor. Stopped at this chocolate shop and had a mocha, and it was definitely the best (and rightly the most chocolatey) since I’ve been here. Good stuff.

exultation!

At the risk of jinxing myself (knock on wood), I would like to take this moment to exult in the arrival my brand new mattress. Weirdly enough, this is a reprise of freshman year, almost exact in detail. My back was starting to hurt from sleeping in my bed here, and while I didn’t want to be a nuisance, I complained to the reception when I realized the board underneath my mattress was bent and broken. This was last week. Yesterday, a guy showed up to fix it, looked at the board, and said, “My god, you’ve actually been sleeping on this?!” Today, he returned with some stuff to reinforce it until he can order a new one, and a brand new fluffy fluffy mattress. Let us note that my mattress before was probably about ten years old and had no padding, but I really wasn’t expecting a new one, just a new board. He even vacuumed before he left because he got sawdust on my floor. I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited to go to sleep here (nap number 3 today? hmm…).

In more practical news. This week is Rainbow Week both at UCC and at Trinity College in Dublin, as I found out when we visited, so I’ve been going to some lectures and stuff that would probably be ten times better attended at Oberlin, but no matter. Homosexuality wasn’t decriminalized in Ireland until 1993, and I think that has a lot to do with the way people here approach sexual identity. I don’t know if I mentioned that the readings for my English seminar have been largely about homosexuality and/or the construction of sexual identities in Renaissance England or ancient Greece/Rome– but then, my teacher is himself English, and the readings reflect his liberalism rather than that of my Irish classmates.

Last night I heard Katherine Zappone and Ann Louise Gilligan, a lesbian couple who married in Canada and lead the fight for gay marriage in Ireland as they are in the midst of the legal struggle to have their marriage recognized here. It was pretty cool to see that similar things are going on in the US and in Ireland, or at least, in California and Ireland. Unfortunately, things haven’t gone that well for them either over here, but at least they’re getting publicity, which is important. I will say that I was surprised that Dr Zappone said it was nice to be among ‘people like us’ or ‘family’ (and sympathetic supporters, or something like that), you know, things that people say to refer to the gay community as a whole, because that’s not something I assume about the audience. I guess I should have? Outside of Oberlin, I am often unpleasantly reminded that people do feel the need to seek shelter and tolerance, whereas we have the privilege of finding a community that loves its members instead of tolerating them. I don’t mean to say that Oberlin itself is perfect and that Ireland sucks, but rather that it is beginning to seem like you can find unconditional communities at Oberlin without looking as hard as you need to pretty much everywhere else in the world. Then again, maybe that’s just part of being in school?

Just to end, I want you to see what we’re learning in Irish class, aka, how much I laugh when I see how things are spelled. If I want to say, ‘Is the weather great today?’ I would have to write, ‘An bhfuil an aimsir ar fheabhas inniu?’ and if you can pronounce that you are a god. In fact, there is no standard pronunciation for all of Ireland, though the spelling is standard. In Munster, which is where Cork is, you would pronounce that sentence (I’m writing it as close to English words as I can), ‘On will on I’m-sure air ‘ouse enough?’ That’s a kind of rough pronunciation guide, but please appreciate that ‘ar fheabhas’ is ‘er aus’! I laughed out loud when I saw it written.

dublin!

This weekend Meaghan and I went up to Dublin to meet up with the Oberlin rugby girls who were just finishing up their Winter Term projects and heading home. We took a family vacation to Ireland after middle school, and went to Dublin then, but obviously I knew this trip would be a little different. I guess I was torn between thinking that I could take it easy, since traveling is no fun if you feel pressured to do things you’re too tired to do, and feeling that if I didn’t see everything I wanted to see, I would be disappointed with myself. Weirdly enough, everything worked out pretty perfectly. No complaints here, but, uh, what are the chances? (Incidentally, we heard this American girl talking on the bus and resolved to try to stop misusing the word ‘like’ in conversation. It’s become a placeholder, an alternative to ‘um’ or ‘uh,’ but it’s also taken so much abuse that it’s a meaningful placeholder– which isn’t the point of saying ‘uh.’ Basically, it makes you sound dumb if you use it too many times in one sentence, whether or not the original idea was a good one.)

We arrived Friday midday (after a four and a half hour bus ride– thought it was going to be shorter, but it was really quite cheap and we did cross the country), found our hostel, met up with my friends, and searched out a delicious delicious cheap vegetarian Indian restaurant. This was my first time staying in a hostel, and we thought it couldn’t be much worse than the worst co-op in Oberlin (of course it could, but that’s hard to imagine sometimes). As it turns out, it was quite nice, and not far from the things we wanted to see. My mattress was, if a little springy, about 20x better than my bed in Cork, so I was very appreciative on the whole.

We ended up going out to the Guinness Storehouse, which was an appropriately afternoon-consuming venture. I’ve never learned so much about beer in my life, and from the bar at the top of the museum you could see the whole of Dublin. Let me just say, Dublin is much larger than Cork. Dublin is San Francisco to Cork’s Nashville. Well, maybe not quite SF (is it? I didn’t explore that far, and there are no hills), and Cork isn’t quite Nashville, but enlarge each city a little bit and you’ve got the comparison. I’m glad we made it to the top (for our free pints) because I don’t think I would have realized how far Dublin extends. In other European cities, you can go up to the top of a church or a tower and see the roofs of the other important buildings sticking up, but there aren’t many tall buildings here from which to look around. Theories abound as to whether or not this building in Cork is the tallest building in Ireland or in Cork, and I’m beginning to suspect that they weren’t lying when they told us it was Ireland. [Oh man, I just looked it up: while Northern Ireland leads the race, in the Republic of Ireland Cork's County Hall is 67m, while Dublin's Liberty Hall follows at 59.4m. County Hall is 17 whopping stories high!]

I would have liked an extra day in between Friday and Saturday so that we could make it further from city centre to see Kilmainham Gaol and St Patrick’s Cathedral, but the next day we did manage to see Trinity College, Merrion Square, St Stephen’s Green, Christ Church Cathedral, the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin Castle, and the National Museum of Archeology and History. Phew! Trinity was so much more beautiful than I remembered, and it was a little hard not to wish we had gone there instead of Cork, but I do appreciate that Cork is fairly peaceful, now that I’m back. For the most part, the architecture is fancy Georgian or something else (should have taken an architecture class!), but there’s a rugby pitch in the middle of everything, and also one or two funny modern sculptures.

It was such a beautiful sunny morning, as you can see, much to our surprise and delight! That might be why the park in Merrion Square (Archbishop Ryan Park, I think– it was purchased for a cathedral that was never built, and is right across from Oscar Wilde’s old house) was so fantastic, but then, it was also just a great park. I was walking across the grass to look at a statue, and I found this stone (below). I can’t believe I’ve never seen any others, now that I think about it.

Dublin Castle was the other place where I learned more about Irish history than I have the entire time I’ve been here. The Castle used to be for the English government, of course, but now it’s an administrative building for the Irish government. The president is sworn in there, they hold press conferences and events, and the rooms are restored (ish) for tours. I think the best and funniest part is how because it’s a building in use, the whole business is very low key, and even as some things like Queen Victoria’s throne are roped off and very historic, the floors all have modern carpeting so that people can actually walk on them. There’s one original tower from the castle back in days of yore, but the rest of the architecture is a little bit of a hodgepodge from the front. When I got to the back, though, I cracked up. At least the front is all stone! I couldn’t get the red building on the left into the photo, but trust me, it’s there. On the far right is that original tower.

What else? We went out to some pubs and clubs on Friday night, discovering that travel guides will pretty much send you to classy older folks bars, even if there is such a thing as a classy and young pub. Saturday night, we hung out with the cousin of one of the rugby girls who was there, who goes to Trinity. He had, in my opinion, a pretty sweet house.

One last thing– I could chart this trip through my food. Why not, anyway? Bad food is so disappointing. There was one time we had bad Chinese food, but we were looking for cheap so we deserved it. Other than that, there was the first Indian place, Govinda’s, which was cheap and delicious AND they heaped the food on there. That evening we went into a kebab place that looked really cheap and skeazy (manky, they say here) but was actually delicious as well. Our hostel provided toast and nutella for breakfast, and then we hit up another vegetarian restauran for lunch, Juice, where I had a ‘quesadilla’ with brie and mangos. Oh man. That was great. Bad Chinese food for dinner, and then in the morning we went to Queen of Tarts, where we had the best apple crumbles for breakfast. I don’t need to tell you that good food is the way to go! Someday when I’m making bank I’ll be back to try the more expensive places.

We got home yesterday around 5:30, but it felt like we’d been gone for a week rather than just a few days! Writing it down can’t possibly explain how and why it felt so long. In any case, it was fantastic, and we got incredibly lucky with our accomodations and our friends and our food and everything. I’ve been walking so many miles a day in Cork that my feet weren’t even tired walking around Dublin all day!

That’s all I got for you today. It was quite a weekend.