The Beginning of Paris

Hello loyal readers!

I have fallen down on my job of keeping this blog up to date, but if it is any excuse, I was in Paris for 5 days and have had a bit of a cold.

It was very exciting to find out that there was a week between the end of my Semester Start-Up Program and the beginning of classes. Knowing this, I could jet over to Europe to see Jenna in Paris - where she is studying abroad. I must really like her, since I woke up at 6:30 am on a Saturday to catch the plane to see her. I lugged a duffel bag to St Stephen's Green to catch the AirCoach bus to the Dublin Airport. I did all the typical airport things and ended up at Charles De Gaulle airport. Jenna and I found each other and took a long train ride through the Parisian suburbs. There is really good graffiti there. Much better, creative, and elaborate than in Dublin.

Since I am hopeless at French (Jenna says I “butcher the language”), I wanted to keep Jenna close at hand. We got a decently-priced hotel room to call homebase in the 9^th Arrondissement (district). Once we had settled in, we thought it would fun to stroll around the Latin Quarter and find some dinner. We went over the famous Pont Neuf bridge and saw Notre Dame in the middle distance.

It was a beautiful Saturday night in Paris. The weather (for the whole weekend, but especially this night) was gorgeous, and there were throngs of people walking in the Latin Quarter, stepping into a brasserie for dinner or admiring the fishmongers’ oyster shucking skills. Jenna and I combined these two popular activities by sitting down at L’Atlas brasserie right next to said fishmonger. There was a menu chock-full of delicious French food looking me in the face. Before Jenna and I could coordinate my tongue to not sound dumb (meaning most likely staying still whilst Jenna ordered for me), the waiter apparated next to us to exact our orders. We ordered the prix fixe, which amazingly is NOT called a prix fixe in France. That confused the hell out of me. I ordered hot chevre on toast, a sausage (tube and cured meats are my weakness), and chocolate mousse(!).

Jenna's French onion soup

When my sausage came, I cut it open and started chewing. It was tasty, but to my surprise, it was filled with various offal (I suspect cow stomach and tripe were in there). Now, let me tell you, I like my variety meats a lot, I just wasn’t expecting it to be in the sausage. I can’t read French, and I was rushed into ordering. No complaints here, though. There were no complaints all the way through the mousse, which was rich and smooth. Jenna enjoyed a very respectable order of steak frites and yummy apple tart.

It was dark by the time I made the inaugural use of my Laser Card from Bank of Ireland, so we thought the romantic thing to do was walk hand in hand along the Seine to the Eiffel Tower. So we did, even though it was a lot farther than we thought it was. It like climbing to the top of an MC Esher staircase. We made it soon enough and saw the orange-ish glow radiate from the monstrous proto-steampunk monument. THEN we saw it start twinkling with white lights. On the hour, just like church bells, the Eiffel Tower lights up like a Christmas tree. I remember hearing that the Tower was not really that spectacular, but they must have been lying. It was huge, metal, and sweet. It is right up near the top of my favourite monument list. Right next to the Rabbit Thinker at Wash U (note the tongue in my cheek).

My camera battery was being bratty, so I don’t have any pictures, so I am stealing them from Jenna’s blog for the rest of this episode.

View from the bottom

View from the top

There was an iceball’s chance in hell of us walking up the tower at this point, so we bought a ticket for the elevator. That elevator was a strange contraption. It was almost like a hybrid of Disney World ride and enclosed ski-lift. We got up as far as we could (the top was closed on that particular day) and looked at a nearly-endless sprawl of city. All the sights worth sighting were there – Arc de Triumph, Notre Dame, Saqrue Coeur, La Defense, the Imperial City, and many more. After coming back down from the mammoth metal monument, Jenna and I laid on the lawns next to the Tower and relaxed before embarking on a trip to the find the nearest Metro station. We got to the hotel and I was a pooped puppy. End the scene entitled “Alex’s Awesome First Day in Paris.”

Turning 21 in Galway

I turned 21 last Sunday! To celebrate, and just because we had a free weekend, the guys I'm living with and about 10 friends in our program spent the weekend in Galway and the Aran Islands. It was one hell of a birthday. The Aran Islands had some of the most fantastic sights and sites I have witnessed, and Galway is a city I'd like to get the chance to spend some more time in.

After a long day of visiting the Hill of Tara and Trim Castle (look at my previous posts about them), I hopped on a bus due for Galway. It was a lot like the MegaBus in the States - the bus just pulls up to a sign on the side of the road and the passengers scuttle on with printed-out tickets in hand. As I learned, these busses stop at what seems like every town with a population of more than 8 on the way. The ride was fine, though. I put in 5 Euro and 3 hours and I was at the very west of Ireland (my stream of consciousness really is tempting me to start talking about the west Ireland idyll that a lot of Irish modern artists that I've been learning about use as their suject matter, but I will resist that temptation until later).

We pulled into the bus station at about 10:15. Our hostel was across the street, how convenient! What was the name, you say?

You would've thought I just made that up if I didn't provide a picture.

Snoozles was great. It was really new and clean. It was cheap, and for the first night, I knew everybody in my sleeping room. Second night was a different story, where it was 1 I knew and 2 Germans. They weren't mean Germans though, so all was well.

The big agenda item for Saturday was taking a ferry to the Aran Islands, specifically Inishmoor. Flatmate Greg and I caught the first bus from Galway city to the port to catch the ferry (the others caught the next). From there, we took at 40 minutes ferry ride westward (Go West, my son!). I was expecting some memorable sights on the ferry, but did not find the best of the day. Here's one looking back at the main (is)land of Ireland.

The first thing to know about the Aran Islands is that life there is tough. They've been sustenance fishing and farming communities forever. Irish is still the main language spoken. The weather makes Dublin look like Dubai, EXCEPT the day I was there. It was 75 and sunny, which is warm when you plan ahead and have several layers on your body. Nowadays, thanks to the pastoral idyll that (especially) Irish-Americans long for in their former homeland (that coincidently, their ancestors left because it was the opposite of idyllic), it is a pretty popular tourist destination.

Tourist or not, Inishmoor is gorgeous. Within a very small space, there are beaches, cliffs, moonlike landscapes, and dazzling green pastures.

The big draw for me was the fort, Dún Aengus. That meant renting bikes for 10 Euro and riding to the other side of the island. As the crow flies that's about 3 km, but as the sheep walks, it's a lot more (read: it's pretty hilly). It was an exhausting ride for not riding my bike in over a month and having a mediocre bike.

Some views on the way from the port to the fort.

Okay. At this point I'm going to start throwing around a lot of adjectives, but they probably will not be able to describe the fort. I'll throw all the spaghetti at the wall, and see if any sticks.

The Fort (or what's left of it) is a semi-circle at the very edge of the island. From the edge, there is a 295 ft cliff down to the Atlantic Ocean. There is nothing beyond the cliff until the horizon. The next parish is Boston. After I got over my fear of being near the edge of the cliff, I just laid looking out on what may as well be the end of the world. Some of the words that come to mind are: beautiful, spectacular, gorgeous, humbling, breath-taking, huge, vast, sheer, blue, crashing, anxiety.

Words don't do this view justice, and neither do pictures, but I tried words so I might as well try pictures too.

Nearly the whole island from the west

Straight down from the cliff. I had my camera strap wrapped around my wrist because I was scared it would disappear and land in Cuba.

My entry to the Minnesota Irish Fair Photo competition.

After quasi-meditating up there for a few hours, I headed back to the port to find some foods to nom and take the ferry back to Galway. That's where I had the delicious seafood chowder that was featured in my post about food. I also purchased a handmade Aran wool sweater.

After a much-needed shower, we started to celebrate my 21st. I wanted to go to a noted restaurant called Mustard that looked just like my kinda place. The sample dish I was teased with was crispy duck pizza with plum sauce. But because the bottom (and most of the middle) fell out of the Irish economy 18 months ago, it had to close. We went to a place called Milano nearby. It was very good and served some classy pizzas and salads. Flatmate Ethan and I split a goat cheese chicken salad and a four seasons pizza (high-quality pepperoni, sardines and capers, cheese, and mushrooms quadranted off).

It was really good, but I was disappointed to learn that there is also one in Dublin.

After dinner, I celebrated the anniversary of my birth at Taeffe's, the Quay (which is a very famous pub), and the King's Head pubs. I sampled some traditional music, cheesy cover bands (Freebird? Really?!?!?), and several kinds of beers.

I made it back to Dublin safely on Sunday afternoon and had another great birthday dinner at an uber-hip restaurant called Gruel. It was also uber-great. I'm going to be going back.

What Has Alex Been Up To?

Short answer: A lot of everything.

I have now taken 2 weeks of my class Understanding Ireland. With the class, I've been tied up for about 3 hours a day in lectures, and have taken some field trips to historical places around Dublin.

Place 1: Croke Park and the Gaelic Athletic Association Museum. The Irish like their soccer and rugby just fine, but they really love their Gaelic sports. The big ones are Gaelic football (a strange combination of American football, team handball, and soccer) and hurling (a super fast and rough sport where the players use a hockey stick-type thing). These sports have all of the bone-crushing action of hockey and ultimate fighting (maybe that one is a stretch), but without the pads. There is a really interesting history that ties together the GAA and nationalism through the last 150 years or so, culminating when British soldiers rode tanks into the park and massacred some spectators and a player.

(More light-hearted) Croke Park is HUGE!! They made an effort to prove to us that it is. Biggest stadium in Europe, biggest amateur stadium anywhere, etc. We were there right up next to the pitch 2 days before the All Ireland final in Gaelic football. Sweet!

A few fellow Americans from TCD and I next to the pitch at Croke Park

A spectacular chandelier at Croke Park made of Waterford glass in the shapes of the balls of Gaelic Football and Hurling (called a sliotar, pronounced almost like a vulgar word for crapper)

I've also been working on school work a fair amount, which can be described as anti-fun. I spent a few afternoons in the Berkeley Library (named after the TCD alumnus for which the CA city is named), which is a horrible environ. It is Neo-Brutalist architecture and is like spending all my time in the basement of Mallinckrodt at Wash U. I got to research about Patrick Pearse (Irish revolutionary) and reflect on my visit to Kilmainham Gaol.

Good transition to the Kilmainham field trip, if I do say so myself, which I am. We walked there (a trek) last week. It was where a couple hundred years of Irish dissidents were held, from the days of the 1798 Rebellion (that scared the shit out of the British, so much so as to dissolve the Irish Parliament. I sat through an amazing lecture on this episode on 12 Sept, wherein the lecturer wanted to make it into a movie trilogy) to dissidents in the Irish Civil War after the independence from the UK. We saw the gallows and unmarked graves of the Phoenix Park Assassins, the Invincibles. This was a vicious jail, where kids were put behind bars for stealing bread for their starving children, and other poetic injustices occurred. It was very moving to be in the yard where the founders of the Irish Republic were shot in the middle of the night.

In front of the plaque commemorating the death of the signers of the Proclaimation of the Irish Republic. Not an occassion to smile.

Inside the Gaol, which was an innovative Victorian jail. It used heady metaphors about God and looking into light to reform the prisoners. It was a panopticon prison, where you were always being watched, or at least could always be watched.

Ufta, that is a depressing bit. Now for more less depressing.

I've been hanging out, cooking, and getting settled more. I made some awesome pork chops with mustard cream sauce the other day. Tonight I'll do some chicken and pasta with fresh tomatoes.

I have visited a couple more amazing places: The Trim Castle and Hill of Tara.

The imposing stone structure standing tall over County Meath. As scary looking as the Anglo-Normans who lived in it.

4 of the 5 men in my flat. Greg, Victor, Alex, and Ethan. Not pictured: David. He was off doing something somewhere.

So Trim Castle was very nice. It was a beautiful day in Ireland (weird? yes) and I could see for far and wide over the River Boyne and east-central Ireland. It wasn't as impressive as Hill of Tara, though, even though the Hill is actually just a bunch of grass in the the Irish equivalent of Bumblefuck, Iowa. At this site, there have been religious and political gatherings for the last 5,000 years or so. There were passage tombs and neolithic relics to the Pagan gods, the gates and monument which the divine King of Ireland had to scale, an early site of Irish Christianity, and Daniel O'Connell's most famous monster meeting (where he spoke in a booming voice to between 300,000-1,000,000 Irishmen about being free). It was also a working sheep pasture, where my instincts from a former life kicked in (I suspect I was a herding dog at some point in the past, maybe a border collie, maybe a Shetland sheepdog, maybe an Australian shepard). A friend from Amherst and I were close to cornering a sheep before I slipped and almost landed in sheep shit. As my TA said:

Where there be sheep, there be sheep shit.

The Irish cuss a lot, and so I do. Sorry?

It was a very relaxing and peaceful place to be.

I wasn't posing here, but I was plotting.

I really love this country. Now that I have been out of Dublin for a bit (both on my trips to Trim and Tara, and to Galway and the Aran Islands - story to come soon), I am really in tune with the mood here. As I explore the city and find the places in which I feel comfortable and settle in to my routine, I am feeling a very-hard-to-describe energetic mellowness.

Food

I know I said I'd talk about the food I'm eating over here a lot, and that I haven't yet. So this is dedicated to gastronomy.

Local food is a lot more prevalent over here. There are a lot of reasons why, including the fact that almost EVERY meter of this island qualifies as being local for most definitions of local food. It's also because my favorite foods are butter, cream, pork, and beef, all of which are plentiful here. There's also a lot of Ireland pride here, so the general public might not leave the farmers that make up a large part of the country and the island's history out to dry.

Even shit discount stores sell local products that proudly proclaim, "PRODUCED IN IRELAND."

The sauce I just made for pasta (it was going to be a cream sauce, but turned into mac and cheddar) travelled an average of 120 miles from producer to Dublin.

Here are a couple examples:

My first night here I ate at the Gourmet Burger Company. They source all of the food they can, and put it right on the menu. It was delicious and super filling. I had a lamb burger with Indian flavors.

I found a cheesemonger off of Grafton Street. Lots of great Irish cheese. I picked up a tiny slice of St Gall cheese.

I found a place that I really like called Carluccio's. There's a cafe and a deli counter with some baked goods, pastries, and meats. I found a nice loaf of bread there, some Napoli salami, and a chocolate peach tart.

I was in the Aran Islands this weekend (more to come on that soon) and had 1 meal on the actual island (I was there for an afternoon, Galway in the weekend). I wanted some seafood over there, and I found some. I had a filling bowl of seafood chowder, from the seas near the Aran Islands. It was creamy and filled with tender fish.

Some more on my travels soon.

The EU and Ireland

I have absolutely no experience with the EU, that's my disclaimer for this post. But I do think I'm rather astute when it comes to politics. I'd better be as a political science major who has taken some comparative politics.

The EU is a completely different beast than it was in the 70s. The number member states has gone from 6 to 27. That's one of the big reasons for the Lisbon Treaty, the newest update to EU laws. While what it really does is different based on who you talk to, it seems like a treaty that changes many administrative procedures of the EU that has a minor impact on its substantive powers.

Every country in the EU has ratified or signed the Treaty, except IRELAND!!!! Because the Irish are super protective of everything Irish and Gaelic, there is a catch-all in the Irish Constitution that makes things like the Lisbon Treaty have to pass a referendum. So, like the stubborn people the Irish are, they failed it. The whole EU, and world for that matter, went WTF Ireland?!?!? You've been the favorite son of the EU and know you're rebelling or something?

It probably would have passed, or so it seems to me, except the ruling party Finna Fail didn't campaign for the YES! vote, so you only heard the Sinn Fein type of nationalists shouting NO!! Since it didn't pass the first time, they're trying again (since when you do you get second chances like that?). In October Lisbon 2 goes down. It's like Rumble in the Jungle 2. This time, both sides are at each others' throats. The top 4 parties in Parliament have endorsed a YES!! vote, but there are some really devout Catholics who are complaining and fringe right-wing elements up in arms. Everybody I've talked to thinks it ridiculous that it is even an option to vote no, that it's necessary and desirable to vote yes. They are all very well-educated, though, so I suspect that there may be divide in support between lifestyles - educated in the service industry and blue collared in more labour-oriented jobs. It doesn't help that the EU makes everything as complicated as they can.

There is propoganda everywhere. Every lamp post in town has a couple signs on it. Here are some pictures of my favorites:

The favorite. Eirigi is a socialist and nationalist party that hates the Brits and aligns closely with Marxists. They've got bollocks to put up that poster.

This one is pretty typical - yes and no posters on the same pole. The THEY WON YOUR FREEDOM one is my 2nd favorite. The faces are some of the leaders of the Easter Rebellion in 1916 that were martyred for the establishment of a free state of Ireland. The Irish guard their identity and land very closely, since they've been continually invaded and conquered for about 1000 years. All accounts I've heard say that Lisbon, surprisingly enough, will not take away your freedom.

Oh, Ireland, you are so brave doing what 95% of Europeans want to do if they had a chance. Funny that I haven't heard about riots or revolutions anywhere. Chalie McCreevy (the source for the stat) is pro-Lisbon Treaty, by the way.

A typical pro-Lisbon poster.

Another pro.

The vote-no group is so dramatic here. Even though I would probably vote yes if I were a citizen of a country in the EU, I thought I'd make my own vote-no poster.

My Mother Requested This Image

Here is my kitchen. It is messy right now, but that's because we made dinner quickly before running off to the Abbey Theatre to see The Rivals by RB Sheridan.

The cabinets on the very left at the firdge and freezer. It's filled with veg, beer, meat, and dairy. we have a stove and oven. Over by the sink is a dishwasher and washing machine/dryer. There you go, mom!

Start of Some Classes and Stuff

I am taking the Semester Start-Up program, which is a 3 week class taught by a bunch of TCD lecturers and profs (they're not professors for a while, that is reserved for the biggest and the best) about the cultural history, art, architecture, and literature of Ireland. It's all about Understanding Ireland. I'm pretty sure I won't "understand" Ireland in 3 weeks. First day of really class was today. We learned about the weird-ass geography of the island, the architecture of TCD, Jonathan Swift, and Maria Edgewood. My initial review of the class is mostly positive. We have some papers to write, so that's a downside. We are at campus all day, and that's a mixed blessing. I'm tired when I get home, but I'm getting to know the City Centre more. So, it's grand. Grand is what the Irish say when they don't want to put in the effort to say how they feel. As our professor Micheál told us, you are grand when you get a promotion AND when your mum dies.

My flatmate Ethan and I have noticed that we are starting to add a little Irish accent to some of our sentences, usually questions. I'm convinced I won't come back with and "accent," but maybe I'll be able to do the accent on command.

Ethan, Victor, and I went to the grocery store for the first time yesterday. Groceries are different here, that's for sure. First of all, we couldn't figure out how the hell to get a cart. They're all chained up and we needed to put a coin in to use it. I thought, if we have to pay just for using a cart, I'll haul everything in my hands. Well, a 13 year-old Irish kid was smarter than us and took one of Ethan's 2 Euro coins (we thought he just disappeared with the money) and came back with a cart. It's a deposit that you get back when you chain it up again. We were at Aldi, the discount grocery place we have back in MN. The quality of food there is better than the US, but there are some things you most definitely need to stay away from there.

I am on a search to find some good coffee beans over here. It will be much cheaper just to make it in my room. Problem is, I have no idea which places are good. I heard Cafe Sol sells plastic-y food, so that is probably a no go, and I wouldn't buy beans from Starbucks in the states, so HELL no here. Also, no real coffee place I've been in yet sells brewed coffee. You can get an americano, which is just fine with me, but it's strange to me. Meshuggah on The Loop does that.

Appliances in Ireland are from another planet. The toilets flush strangely, almost like driving a stick-shift compared to the automatic transmission of American toilets. Ours broke yesterday. I took my keys (as a screwdriver) and scotch tape (for everything else) to MacGyver my way through it, but not even that would help. IES got a guy over here today and it works great now. One of our showers essentially drips water on you. No pressure at all. As long as I avoid it, I will be fine.

Not that I'm unhappy here. I love it, these little things are just very noticeable to me. It's lively. Dublin is new and exciting. I am at a fantastic university that is so interesting for so many reasons. There are the politics (it was a sin for Catholics to go to TCD without permission from when UCD was founded til 1971), the archaic way everything happens there (but it works, just different), and the great academics. It's right in the thick of things in the city. Today I left campus after class and explored mostly north of the Liffey. Flatmate Greg and I went over O'Connell bridge, went by the Stiffey on the Liffey (it's a contraversial spire tower that some people really hate/don't understand. I'm fine with it, in fact, it's pretty sweet up close), the General Post Office where the Irish declaration of independence was first posted (there are still bullet holes on the front), Henry Street. We went by Temple Bar, but it was so damn weird that we kept walking on past. I did see some sweet street art on the north side:

I like the monkey. This was on an abandoned building facing the Liffey on the northside east of the Ha'Penny Bridge.

New low? I like that, because I HATE the new Green Day stuff.

Here are a few touristy shots:

The Ha'Penny bridge. Not that fantastic, but historical. Crosses the Liffey.

Sphere Within Spheres. One in a series of these sculptures in the world (TCD, UC Berkley, Vatican, UN, DC), it is sweet. It also spins, although they say not to tell all the tourists (what am I right now then?!?) because that would be a lot of spinning and probably breaking.