An American in Eire

Wow, I'm Back in the USA!

2009-12-27T14:00:00.000-08:00

Well, I've been back in the US for almost 2 weeks. It's weird. I haven't felt the dreaded 'reverse culture shock,' but I'm certainly noticing the differences (as well as the strange similarities). Before coming back, especially on the cusp of Christmas, I can see now that I was building up my memories of Minneapolis - not to say that Minneapolis isn't a great place. For instance, bacon is wonderful. I savor every piece (yes savor, not savour - maybe my ability to change the nationality of my spelling so quickly is a good metaphor for me adapting back and forth between Ireland and the US [as if there was that huge of a difference between the two {are these nested parentheses driving you nuts?}]), but doesn't have the nice meatiness of Irish rashers...

Since I haven't reported on my last few days and adventure home, and this blog is just as much a journal for myself than a blog for anybody else, I'd like to share that.

I spent a lot of time in the last few days in Dublin walking around, taking pictures, and taking my environs in. I ate lunch at little places in the City Centre that I couldn't anywhere else, got coffee at Fallon and Bryne for the last time, and watched mallards in Stephen's Green - among other things. Jenna flew home with me, so she got to Dublin on Thursday night after a snow-induced delay in Paris. We went to a few pubs around Ranelagh and Rathmines, although they had started closing since we got going to so late. Portabello - James Joyce's old digs - was where we settled, even though they played NHL and had multi-colored dance lights roving around the walls.

Friday was consumed by cleaning, taking care of library fines, and saying goodbye to a city I really loved. I had a guest lecturer in my last class, Irish Politics, that I made sure to make it to. The lecturer was Michael Marsh, who I had cited in papers time after time that semester. It was fun to finally see the guy whose work I'd leeched for the last 4 months.

I though a good dinner would be found at O'Neills. They are recognized as having some of the best quality pub food around - a fitting goodbye. For some reason, maybe that it was the last Friday before Christmas and everybody was having a good time with friends before going to see their family, there was not a free inch in the joint. The 6 of us in the group joined a couple at a huge table they snagged for themselves (they soon left) and got our food. I had a delicious beef and Guinness stew with chips and Brussels sprouts on the side. We hung out there for a few hours and then tried a few more pubs. Turns out that EVERY pub was lacking an extra square inch. We eventually gave up and got a few cans of Guinness and retreated to our flat. I finished my packing and cleaning and grabbed a few hours of sleep before the 5:30 alarm.

At the airport, we got to deal with checking bags, answering security questions, and filing for tax refunds. Then, our flight was delayed an hour, putting a big question mark next to our connection in Chicago. After a nice jog through O'Hare a la Home Alone (which I knew I'd have to do sometime), I relaxed on a plane back to Minneapolis. I was home!

Expat Thanksgiving

2009-12-17T19:33:00.000-08:00

Now that it's almost Christmas, I figured I needed to get to posting about Thanksgiving. I had not spent Thanksgiving without my family before, so I was in for a new experience. It was also interesting to have Thanksgiving in a country that doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving (although my Irish Politics professor wished all us Americans a Happy one!). All of the stores were open when we really needed them, so we didn't need to frantically get to the store before it closed at 4:00 PM.

Jenna came over from Paris so we could spend the holiday together! We ended up celebrating on Saturday because of the way our schedules worked out - I had class until 6 on Thursday and we went to a concert Friday.

As a matter of coincidence, one of Jenna's favourite bands, Kasabian, was in Dublin on the Friday she was in town. They are a British band that I like to describe as the post-punk version of the Byrds who grew up listening to techno every once and a while. Kasabian was playing at Dublin's biggest venue, the very new O2 Arena. All 14,000 seats were full for this show, and for good reason. They were very theatrical, incorporating LCD screens, short films, and even a man dressed as Vlad the Impaler (the namesake of their new single) into the show. It was a hell of a lot of fun, especially the 5+ minute Ole, Ole, Ole chant accompanied by 10 foot wide beach ball bouncing around the crowd.

Thanksgiving itself was a lot of fun. Jenna and I took over the kitchen and whipped up some magic. Jenna masterfully crafted some pecan pies, and we both got our hands in the dressing, lemon-garlic-butter-sage-and-thyme roasted bird (because of the oven size it was a chicken), brown sugar and whiskey sweet potatoes, and mashed potatoes. Jenna, 3 of my roommates, and I sipped on wine and cider while enjoying good craic and food.

Christmas in Dublin

2009-12-15T00:42:00.000-08:00

Christmas in Dublin...it's like 'Christmas in Killarney' by Bing Crosby except in Dublin instead. Christmas makes Dubliners happy, as it does all over the Anglophonic world. Here are some pictures I've taken of the decorations:

Some of the things that Irish people love to do are eat and drink. On the beverages list are hot port and hot whiskey (lemon, sugar, cloves, and liquor). The favorite sweets include mince pies (tiny pies filled with sugary fruit), Christmas pudding (fruitcake soaked in liquor and lit on fire upon presentation),and Cadbury chocolates. Really, anything sweet will do here! They also play with crackers a lot. At Christmas parties, two people will hold either side of what looks like a giant paper candy and pull apart. Turns out, it makes a big popping noise and smells a little bit like a burned match afterwards (you can't bring these things on planes). Out pops a dumb little toy and a tissue-paper crown. If the side you're holding onto after the explosion is larger, then you put on the crown and claim the winnings - it's like a wishbone.

Last Day in Copenhagen, Last Big Trip of Europe

2009-12-14T15:31:00.000-08:00

Sunday morning meant another appointment with our favorite bakery. Today, we indulged in Danish Danish. Once again, they were fantastic.

There are a series of large parks that our bus drove by on the way to the city, and we decided to investigate. The one John and I ended up in was a botanical garden. Different sections of the park had different geographic themes from Asia to America. It was a misty and chilly day, but it was a nice enough park that it was bearable (well, more than bearable). In the centre of the park, unknown to us when we went into it, was a huge complex of greenhouses. Most looked to be used by the nearby Copenhagen University and locked to the public on Sundays (including a long room of peculiar cacti), except the main greenhouse. It was a fairly old building, almost Victorian-esque. Inside was a rainforest! It was like Rainforest Cafe without the stuffed animals and thunderstorms. Seriously though, the rooms were overrun by palms and fruit trees. One of the rooms had a plant alluded to in the Bible (or so says Catholic-high-school John), but it's sign was separated from its trunk and we couldn't find the plant. The whole experience was made better by the fact that it was nice and warm in there.

Past the next big road, in the next big park, we went to the National Art Museum. In my previous post, I may have said we went to this but I really meant the National Museum. In keeping with the theme of oil=bad, there were a number of exhibits that highlighted the earth around us and all its natural splendor. There was a huge exhibit made of hanging pouches of air with water plants floating in them that I think was a progression from the earth's birth to death. Strangely enough, there was a Danish Jazz concert (for charity? - maybe against climate change?) catered towards families with young children. Besides viewing some drawings from the Netherlands and some Danish art, I got a coffee at the cafe (I felt a headache coming because of my hour and a half awake without it). The best part of the cafe was the fun mug the coffee came in and the table decor - vases with paintbrushes instead of flowers.

Central Copenhagen isn't really that big, so it may be a logical truth to say this, but we were pretty close to the Amalienborg Palace that we had seen only in the dark the night before, so we went back. We took some pictures, watched the guards march back and forth, and admired the large equestrian statue of King Fredrick V. As I could more clearly see in the light, there were 4 large houses that formed the palaces in an octagon around the roundabout. From there, it was just a hop, skip, and jump up to the Kastellet and the Little Mermaid Statue.

Yes, Hans Christian Anderson was Danish and he created the Little Mermaid. So those crazy Danes put up a statue on the banks of the canal of the Little Mermaid so that thousands of tourists would walk and take pictures by it. Apparently November 22 is not a big tourist day, because there were about a dozen people there. I was handed a camera and asked to "make a picture" of a Dutch couple - isn't it funny when people try to speak English well? Maybe they were in Denmark to learn. The statue was nice, but kind of unimpressive. We knew that going in though. Next door was what we really wanted to see - the Kastellet. It was a fortification built in the 1660s. It it a huge pentagram made of earth surrounded by a moat. The edges of the pentagram are really steep - more than 45 degrees. Nowadays, it is just a park, although there are some military officers who still live there. There are statues of Greek gods and former kings along with war memorials and a windmill from the 1850s (a self-sufficient military installation needed to grind flour, too you know!). This place was massive. Being a late Sunday afternoon, there were not many people there. That made this former barracks kind of spooky, but not too bad.

We made it back to the top-heavy church just before 5 PM. It closed at 5. We had a chance to go in though. It (my research tells me that it's Frederik's Church, or the Marble Church) was lit by candlelight and nearly empty. There were lots of church-like murals on the walls and they were fantastic. They can't match the other world's best churches I saw on my trip, but they were really good.

We went back to the pedestrian street to find the friend we were staying with (who was at school working) and found a relatively cheap dinner. We walked around Chistianhavn, the canal district modeled after Amsterdam, afterwards. This was mostly just seeing a few pretty churches, fancy office buildings, and houses that young professionals live in. We ended up walking past Christiania again and seeing a large wall of murals its inhabitants painted. We hopped on the punctual bus, went back to the apartment, and got ready to leave in the morning. We woke up far to early to be mentioned and went to the airport, where John and I said, "Goodbye Scandinavia!" I made it back just in time for class! How exciting...

A Big Day in Copenhagen

2009-12-12T00:30:00.000-08:00

There were elections in Denmark sometime around the time of my trip, which meant lots of campaign signs. I can't find anything about when they were, but I did find a sign for someone of my clan running for office. Too bad she is a Social Democrat.

If it was any question based upon the name of a popular breakfast pastry, breakfast in Copenhagen was very good. On the way to our bus stop (to get to the city centre) we saw the sign of great things to come: the golden pretzel sign. That's the sign of a bakery. John and I bought half of kringle (which wasn't quite like the kringle my mother makes most Christmas mornings). There was no real filling, but it was supremely moist and creamy while still flaky.

Walking through the city centre on the main pedestrian street, we ran into an exhibition about green energy - biomass, wind, water, solar (yeah, right 55 degrees north latitude...). They were giving away hot chocolate too! I was a bit shocked when they served it in the epitome of unsustainable materials, styrofoam. At this point, I started sensing a theme of sustainable energy in my weekend in Copenhagen.

We made our way to the Tivoli Gardens - one of the oldest amusement parks in the world. With Christmas a month away, it was all decked out with holiday cheer. There were some rides in the park, but they were expensive, so John and I stuck to the seeing of sights. For a reason unknown to me, there was a parade of youth dressed as Danish beefeaters and (maybe?) literary figures, but none of them looked particularly happy. Once those fun-suckers were gone, the shops and decorations exuded a merry attitude. The Christmas decorations were just superimposed on the park that was already there, though. There were several different sections, each with a different theme. I saw the Orient, India, and traditional Scandinavia. There was also something that proved to be undeniably awesome, although supremely confusing: the Trojan Reindeer. It was probably 30 feet tall and made out of wood and just in the middle of the park. I didn't get the story on it, but it was kinda sweet! Also confusing was the floating ice island in the koi pond inhabited by snowmen.

We found it kind of hard to find traditional Danish food in Copenhagen. I'm sure it was somewhere, but there can't be a large amount of it. There is American, Asian, Mid-Eastern, etc, but they seemed to have moved beyond potatoes and Smørrebrød (open-faced sandwiches). It was profoundly disappointing not to see tall, blond people chowing down on smoked herring Smørrebrød. But, John and I found some great traditional Danish food in Tivoli. We started with some Æbleskiver, which are similar to pancakes, except shaped into small balls by a special hemispherical pan. They are served with (at least at Tivoli) powdered sugar and raspberry jam. Man, were they good - just get a cup of good coffee with them and you're set. Next, we NEEDED smørrebrød. It was almost an obsession at this point. We got to a sit-down restaurant in the park and found some. The menu, though, was in all Danish. Using our superior skills of logical deduction and Latin roots, we kind of figured out what some of the smørrebrød were made with. John was boring and got a roast beef one, but I was exciting and ordered a liverwurst, bacon, pickles, and picked beet one. Good choice, Alex! It was almost the perfect meal - but it didn't come with a blank check made out to me (this was also the point at which I realized I was not an Irish politician).

On the way out of Tivoli, we walked by the wonderful city hall building. It was very typical of Copenhagen architecture - red brick and an oxidized copper spire - and very beautiful. Just down the street (as if Tivoli and city hall weren't enough) was the Danish Design Centre. It had to be one of the coolest museums I've been to, even though it was fairly small. The first main gallery was focused on praxis (putting theoretical knowledge into practice) in creating productive urban spaces. I didn't figure out how some parts fit into this mold, but all parts were very cool. The highlights included: a quiz you could take to determine how active you would be for your neighborhood (I was a downright scary revolutionary), swings hanging from the ceiling, free Danish flag tissue paper, some art, white spaces, and above all a series of spinny things that look like they were stolen from a carwash. When you walked by them, they started spinning, encouraging you to run through them like a child through a sprinkler. On the edge of the next gallery were about a dozen scaled sculptures of new concepts for buildings created by the Danes. There were things like building that corkscrewed as they went up to avoid wind sheer and formed canopies over shady central courtyards. Upstairs, there was a large exhibit on the electric car. To see the videos for it, you 'made your own power' by blowing on a small windmill to charge a small card that you connected to the monitors along the way. And, as always, the gift shop at the end was full of really cool things that I didn't quite like enough to buy.

Very near to the Design Centre is the National Museum of Denmark, where we went next. The main exhibition was a walk-through of Danish history. I learned many things about the Danish kingdom and its history. For example - Denmark and Norway were a joint kingdom for several hundred years. I saw a house like the one that my Danish ancestors might have lived in. One of the houses from Christiania that was donated a few years ago was also there. There was also a long struggle with democracy there as well. Just as we got to the last of the galleries, the museum was closing, so we looked at the shop. I bought a Danish cookbook, partly because one of the recipes was called Burning Love (mashed potatoes with fried pork and onions on top).

That night, I looked on my tourist map at the top 20 sight-seeing adventures (original, I know). The first one listed alphabetically was Amalienborg. I wasn't sure what it was, but we went. As it turns out, that's the palace of the royal family. The complex is made up of several ornate buildings around a huge roundabout (that people are allowed to drive through) with the statue of a king on a rearing horse in the centre. Every 100 yards or so was a guard marching quietly, dressed like the guards at the English palaces. Across the street from the complex on one side was an incredibly awkwardly proportioned church. It was about 80% dome, 10% steps, and 10% church. The thing was looked massive, although I'm sure the scale made it look bigger. On the other side was a little courtyard that looked across the river/canal (I'm not really sure what it was) towards one of Denmark's modern architectural wonders, the Opera House. There wasn't much to do there besides look at stuff, so we started to walk back. We spent the rest of the night having a few Christmas beers (that's right - they brew a beer especially for Christmas. The day that they release it for the season, they hand out a tonne of it free too!) and watching silly American TV shows like the Office.

PS - here is some photo proof of the crazy amount of bicycling that goes on in Copenhagen.

PPS - I made some Burning Love last week and it was great.

The Motherland!

2009-12-06T05:00:00.000-08:00

Tied for number one on my list of places to go in Europe were Edinburgh and Copenhagen. As you know, I already went to Edinburgh. On Nov 20th, my friend John (from Wash U who is at University College Dublin) and I went to Copenhagen, where we had another Wash U friend studying (free lodging!). In the run-up to the trip, I realized I was a lot more Danish than I thought I was. The best I can tell, I'm 1/4 Danish, which is probably close to the most of any one of my ancestries. The stewardesses even started speaking to me in Danish when I got on the plane in Dublin. On top of that, I was Denmark once in Model UN. It's also a beautiful, sustainable, and bustling city. I was so excited for the plane to land. But the landing was full of trepidation. The airport is on a very small island next to Copenhagen and the runway nearly begins in the water, making it look like we were going to need to find the flotation device located underneath our seats.

My first impressions of Denmark were fantastic. The Danes are famous for design and architecture, and the airport is thusly beautiful. They are also famous for LEGOS, the best toy ever. They are also famous for sustainable energy, as evidenced by the large wind farm in the bay outside Copenhagen. The legos and windmills combined in the airport to form an awesome 10 foot high model of a wind turbine made from the blocks. I can hope that this is there all the time, but it could just be that the world climate change talks (COP15) are happening in Copenhagen starting December 7th (T-minus 1 day).

I quickly learned that there is no need to ever learn Danish. Everybody speaks better English than your high school English teacher, which helped out when I couldn't figure out how to use the non-English Metro ticketing machine. They don't even judge your when you have no knowledge of their language, they just happily switch over. I've heard rumors from American students that Danish is actually non-existent: Danish people just make noises at each other when they sense Americans around - to throw them off the scent.

Once we made it off the Metro at Nørreport station, we walked through the longest web of pedestrian streets in Europe. The buildings in Copenhagen are marked by red stone, elaborateness, and spires. Having not eaten since the morning I was starving. John and I found the best thing ever: the Fransk hot dog. In the hot dog stands found at nearly every corner, they sell these unique variations on the hot dog. They poke a hole in the end of a long "French" loaf of bread, squirt in remoulade (the Danes' flavoured mayo) and stick in the hot dog. I was beginning to love Copenhagen.

We made it to Baresso Coffee, a Danish Starbucks equivilent, to wait for our friend to get out of class. The Danes drink more coffee per capita than ANYONE, 4 cups a day, and because of that, it is really good. It is also very expensive, but EVERYTHING is expensive there. Don't let the currency fool you (where 7 Danish kroner equal 1 Euro); it's like buying pineapples in Alaska, except in Copenhagen and the pineapples are everything.

With the sun waning fast (since we were at the 55th parallel above the equator and it was nearly 3:45), Nick, John and I went to possibly the most interesting place to see in Denmark - Christiania. This is a 40 hectare area in Copenhagen that was a run down barracks in the 70s, until hippies, artists, and recovering addicts stormed it. Ever since then, they've claimed Christiana as a Free State and run their own community. Besides the occasional raid by Danish police, it's pretty autonomous. Autonomous enough to openly and clearly sell hash on the side of the road. They have flea markets, music venues, and homes there. I have no pictures because there were signs every 5 feet reminding you not to take any. I've heard stories of people's fancy SLR cameras being knocked to the ground 'accidently' when the photographer is framing a shot. Christiania is a weird place, but it seems like it's kind of been a successful commune. Only in Scandanavia.

For a cheap dinner, we went to find some schwarma. That was the best kebab I've had. We found the one store that sells things for cheap (think Aldi) for some fruit and beer and made the bus trip to Nick's place, which is about 4 miles from the city centre. Public transit here is great. There is an extensive bus network and several different categories of trains that form a web through the metropolitan area. Beyond that, there are bike paths next to every road - separated from the car streets by a kind of half-curb - and thousands of bikes everywhere you look. Nick claimed to have 3, all of which disappeared during the time we were there. We went to hang out with some of the American students in his program and had a good time. On the way back though, I learned the 1 bad thing about Copenhagen: racism. We were asked by a young black guy if we knew the bus system. Nick did and helped him out. This kid had been passed up by half a dozen buses he waved down, purportedly because he was black. Even though he was half Danish, he was treated as an outsider and non-person. He had lived the US for a while and was nearly begging to get back. He was articulate and personable, and it seemed to get him nowhere in Copenhagen. He actually might be the Danish Malcolm X in a few years, after his speech about how if we all cut our arms we would bleed the same colour. That was a sobering experience. A place can't be all good after all.

Aside from that incident, the first day in Copenhagen was amazing. I felt like a puppy bounding through a field!

There is a Model of a Cloned Sheep

2009-12-06T04:05:00.000-08:00

Saturday in Edinburgh started deliciously. My host said that we HAD to go to a little cafe called Urban Angel (PS - I just pulled up that website and few seconds later thought there was a bird in my kitchen No, it's just the sound for the site) because of its awesome French toast and hot chocolate. That's enough to convince me, so we went. It also gave me an excuse to walk through New Town, a famously well-planned Georgian area. As it turns out Urban Angel sources as much of their food as they can, using local providers and organic options for their more exotic ingredients. The French toast and its accompanying exotic topping (MAPLE SYRUP!!!! No maple trees in the British Isles, so this was a treat) were not to die for, but at least worth fainting for. It was so good I got my picture outside.

If I hadn't gotten enough sustainable and artisan food already, we went over to Castle Market (a farmers' market in the shadows of the Castle). Since it was Scotland, there were a lot of beef, cheese, lamb, and woolen products. It was a fun little market. Next, I went through an area called Grassmarket in Old Town. It's a more homely and intimate version of a shopping street, and in the main square at the end, they used to hang people. Uplifting! There were free tours (where they would try to rope you into extended, unfree tours) all through the square, so I picked up on the death theme and the significance of the pub The Last Drop. Grassmarket leads you back towards St. Giles' Cathedral. Since my host's friend who was with us is a grad student in Biblical Studies, he had something sweet to show us.

The asphalt underneath a van? That's not sweet! But when you realize that this car park used to the be church gardens, it has the potential to be more interesting. The yellowish square above the numbers is where the headstone of John Knox was before the asphaltation of the gardens. The founder of Presbyterianism is buried there. Nice little find that I wouldn't have seen without knowing a graduate student in theology.

Feeling my roots (however small) as a Scotsman, I wanted to go to the Scottish Museum. I could see the relics of my great (x a few dozen) grandparents! Inside there were a several very interesting pieces, like an ancient harp and charts showing the migration and historical homes of clans. I began to learn that Scotland was very similar to Ireland, except Scotland is more ambivalent towards England (since, essentially, Scotland conquered England instead of the other way around - in my reductionist estimation). There were a lot of exhibits for the entertainment of the children/immature college students. There were small catapults, agility games, and other energy wasters. There was a rotating model of the first cloned sheep, Dolly as well. That hurts my brain to think about - a model of a clone. There was a big section on industrialisation and distilling, mirroring 2 important aspects of Scottish culture - blackened buildings and scotch.

Lunch was the next topic. I got pigeon salad. Pigeon is delicious, by the way. We were very close to where JK Rowling wrote most of the first Harry Potter books, the Elephant House, so we stopped by and looked. The seat where she supposedly sat while writing it looked out on the Castle on a hill, and I suspect that's the idea behind something in HP.

We played some Cranium back at the flat for a few hours after that, realizing that despite the wicked darkness, it was only like 7 PM. I ended up walking around the city for a while, learning that everything closes at about 6 PM on Saturdays. There were a lot of pretty windows decorated for Christmas at the fancy department stores like Harvey Nichols. I found some dinner at the classy dinner chain Pizza Express (Milano in Ireland) and then, more importantly, found a deep fried Mars bar on the way back. Good Idea, Alex.

I ended the night here, and that essentially ended my trip in Edinburgh. On Sunday morning, I found some breakfast and hopped a train to Glasgow. The countryside in Scotland is very pretty, although not as green as Ireland. One little town we stopped at had a dramatic castle upon a hill. Below was a huge Tesco grocery store (think Wal-Mart). I assume that the castle was still armed to defend against the evil that is Tesco.

Once in Glasgow, I walked through the main shopping street, Buchnan St. I was looking for a warmer coat for the rest of the semester, and since everything is cheaper when you're not in Dublin (or so I thought until I went to Copenhagen), I figured I'd use my afternoon to find one. I found none. The main square in Glasgow was blocked off for a private Christmas light lighting ceremony, so unfortunately I couldn't admire it. I ended up at the Glasgow Museum of Modern Art. It was a fairly small gallery, but with some really cool art - especially optical art. The lines and designs messed with my eyes and bounced around the canvas as I stared.

I found the closest chipper, tried getting a king rib again, and failed. I got some fish and chips and went to the train station to get to the airport. I was flying back to Dublin from the discount airport of Glasgow - I think only Ryanair uses it. My flight was at 6:30 AM on Monday, but no buses could get me there early enough, so I decided to spend the night. I was reassured by the website Sleeping in Airports that Glasgow Prestwick Airport had benches without arm rests, providing for good sleep. I ended up getting about 4 hours of sleep, playing on the internet a lot, and pacing the whole 100 yards of the airport. Yes it was that small. I made it home safely on Monday morning, without having been scammed, killed, or raped by Couch Surfing or sleeping in an airport. Oh yea, and I had a wonderful time in a wonderful city - Edinburgh. It was a place I might be able to live someday.

Friday in Scotland

2009-12-01T16:28:00.000-08:00

It was Friday in Edinburgh, and I was very excited to explore the city. It was a beautifully sunny day, which seemed pretty lucky to me, and was in a similarly sunny mood. So far, I really liked the city. I got a very tasty scone and then made my way towards the Edinburgh Castle. Since the city is pretty small (geographically), I walked past a lot of nice sights on the way. The first was the Old College of University of Edinburgh, which was right across the street from where I stayed.

That dome in the back is Old College.

One of those was St Giles' Cathedral, the famousest Edinburgh church. It was here that Presbyterianism was essentially created. Solely based on aesthetics, it is right up there on my list of best churches I've seen. It is stunning! The contrast in the stone walls (from the smog of the past? Scotland has definitely not cleaned up their old buildings' exteriors) really makes it seem intimidating. It was free to go inside, where it was also beautiful - no pictures allowed though for the sake of postcard sales. A few feet outside was a big statue of a man dear to my heart as an economics major - Adam Smith. He is standing with a pick axe next to him, which I assume represent division of labor.

Only a few blocks down from St. Giles' is the entrance to Edinburgh Castle, the pinnacle of the city. The castle is actually a compound of several buildings housed within some ramparts that circle the top of the butte. I was really impressed by the vistas looking out on the city from the edge of the castle complex. On a small outcropping outside the main walls was the Dog Cemetery, where the pooches of royalty were buried. I visited the oldest building on the site, St. Margaret's Chapel, which dates from the 12th c. It was just a very small room with an altar and small stained glass windows. It smelled of fresh paint. On the other side of the complex was Crown Square. One side of the square was a war museum commemorating the Scottish involvement in the myriad British wars. The lions outside the entrance were sweet! On the other side of the square was the building housing the Scottish crown jewels. I knew but didn't fully realize it, but Scotland had been its own kingdom for a longer time than England. In the run up to the jewels, there were exhibits about the lineage of the Scottish crown, an subsequently how their James VI incorporated England into his realm and became James I of England.

At 1 o'clock each day at the castle, a single soldier shoots a (blank from a) cannon at the castle. He does the fancy marching and such, and a crowd gathers. I guess Edinburghers (or Edinburghites?) usually hear the shot, check their watches, and criticize its imprecise timing.

There are a few gift shops on the premises, which is to be expected, but there was one that was particularly interesting: A Whiskey and Book Shop. I didn't know those two made such a good pairing, but I guess it makes sense?

I made my way down from Castle Rock through some winding paths in Princes Gardens to Prince's Street, the main shopping street in Edinburgh. I walked up and down it and looked at the shops. I don't know (or care) if I've mentioned it before, but all of these 'main shopping streets' are the same. Champs Elysees, Oxford/Brompton Streets, Grafton St., Buchanan St, Michigan Ave, Madison Ave - they're essentially the same. There will be similar (if not the same) shops, Starbucks, and tourist stores. Unimpressive.

Next, I made my way for Leith - the dockside city. My favorite TV show - No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain - did a show in Edinburgh. They showcased the large amount of unique fried food and soda in Scotland, and they did so at a chip shop in Leith called The Mermaid. I wanted to go. It must be pretty good to be chosen for the show, and on a purely fanatic note, No Reservations went there. I walked over half an hour out of the city centre to get to this shop. I was going to get fried fish, potatoes, king rib (BBQ or Chinese flavoured pork patty deep fried), and IRN BRU (an orange-coloured soda from Scotland that tastes like both the best and the worst cough syrup you've ever had). When I got to the Mermaid, they were closed! 3 o'clock on a Friday afternoon! What the shit?!? Disappointed, a took a few pictures and walked back, finding a couple bacon rolls (good, but not the same) from the next open shop I saw. The closed shop was almost made up for me the next weekend in Copenhagen, when the friend I was staying with lent me Kitchen Confidential, the book Bourdain wrote.

With the light waning (it was almost 3:30!), I went back towards Princes Gardens/Street and to the National Gallery. Once again, no pictures. They had a few galleries of renaissance and Italian paintings, pretty typical stuff as far as art museums go at this point - lesser known Rembrandt and Titian. Downstairs they had a collection of Scottish art that was fantastic. There were a lot of landscape and nature scenes that were very bright and eye-catching. There is also a semi-famous painting of the Ice Skating Minister from 1795. It's just a guy named Robert Walker giddily skating around, probably whistling, very cool.

Outside is the Scott Monument, to Sir Walter Scott. It is black as hell from smog and intricate as hell. At night it's lit up and very attractive. Apparently you can climb up it, but not the weekend I was there. The Christmas Market, full with ferris wheel, was being set up around it.

I headed back to my place to stay and hung out for a few hours. My host had a big project due, so was cramming in reading about women in diplomacy and west African genocide. I found some tasty chili at a place down the street called BeanScene. It wasn't Bobby Flay, but it was good. Later that evening, the guy I was staying with invited me to see a psychological thriller film that apparently is the talk to the town in the US, Paranormal Activity. It was a in a nice cinema like the Tivoli in STL or Lagoon in MPLS. The movie was good, although thriller/horror films aren't my thing per se.

Getting Serious About A Heritage Tour of Europe

2009-11-29T18:04:00.000-08:00

I have a lot of different kinds of European ancestry, and I realized it would be a lot of fun to try to get to all the countries with which I can claim a connection. I had done Ireland, England, and Northern Ireland, and now Scotland was on the list. Nov 9-13 I didn't have classes (it was "reading week"), and after the 11th I had no commitments - that was when I had an exam in Economics of Less Developed Countries. On the morning of the 12th, I set out to Edinburgh, Scotland. Not only was I going to a new place on my own, but I was trying a new type of lodging arrangement - CouchSurfing. CS is a website where there is a community of people who look for/provide a place to sleep for other members. I joined and found a place to stay with an American student at University of Edinburgh. The system may sound a little sketchy, but is tremendously safe - and it was a great experience for me.

I landed in Edinburgh and immediately felt at home. The bus ride through town from the airport went by some very familiar feeling areas and dropped my off right in the center of the city. I got my bearings and headed for the Royal Mile, which is the main historical street/area in Edinburgh. I window-shopped the pubs to find a place for lunch and settled on the Mitre. Guess what I got. If you can't venture a guess as to what Scottish food I was excited to eat, you should get to know me better. Answer: Haggis. It came with neeps and tatties (mashed sweet potatoes and mashed potatoes) and a Scottish ale, and was delicious!

It was too late in the day - twilight was before 4 - to go to the Edinburgh Castle that day, so I walked down the Royal Mile towards Holyrood Palace and Arthur's Seat. There were loads of shops selling kilts, scarves, and shortbread - all of which I enjoy (except kilts). Once I started getting out of the centre of the purely tourist stretch, I saw a really cool building with relief sculpture covering a side wall. As it turns out, this is Scottish Parliament. Yes, Scotland has their own parliament even though they are a part of the United Kingdom. It gets to decide most domestic 'Scottish' issues, as I soon learned. After putting your bag through an x-ray and walking through a metal detector, anyone and everyone is welcome in the Scottish Parliament complex. There is a cafe, gift store, exhibition on Scottish influence in Canada, and the Parliament chambers. Interesting note: Even though it's only been around for 10 years, Scottish Parliament has its own whiskey blend and tartan, and they are ready to sell it to you! I was able to get my hands on a free admission to the chambers to listen to the live debate. That afternoon was dedicated to Question Time, where members asked things like, "What will we do so that people don't throw their fridges away in bogs?" and "Why do you still allow for the inhumane practice of branding semi-feral animals in Scotland?" Interesting, I know, but I'm a pretty nerdy guy when it comes to government. And semi-feral animals.

Across the street from Scottish Parliament is Holyrood Palace. This is where the British King/Queen resides when in Scotland. I snooped around to several minutes trying to figure out if there were tours or anything, but there apparently aren't. I looked at its strange facade of variously-affected-by-smog stained stones and then went towards my next engagement.

Edinburgh's highest point, Arthur's Seat, is in Holyrood Park, next to Holyrood Palace (coincidence?!?!?). It is very close to the city centre, not more than half an hour's walk, and has a great view of the city. I made my way for the path that went up to it and made friends with a student studying in York originally from Hong Kong and walked up with him. Eventually, it started drizzling and he got scared of melting in it, so he left. While only 250 m. high, Arthur's Seat was a work out to scale. There were nice paths all the way up, but I still had all my luggage (a duffel bag with my computer, blankets, and clothing) because I hadn't been able to meet up with my CS host yet. After a few sit-downs, I made it! It was a really wonderful panoramic view of the Firth of Forth (the bay-type thing near Edinburgh), Leith (the city on the Firth), and Edinburgh. The landscape there in Edinburgh was very spectacular. It wasn't quite as green as Ireland, but the vegetation had a warm feeling to it. There was also quite a bit of jagged, dark rock poking up through the vegetation and moss growing on it. Along with the grey skies, the landscape looked very picturesque - not like a pretty and happy picture, but an interesting and moving picture.

After I trekked down the Seat (harder than you might think with a heavy duffel), I walked back through the Royal Mile towards the University of Edinburgh to meet my host. I got to his apartment and settled down for the evening. My host, Gabriel, was a really great guy. I had a great time seeing Edinburgh and hanging out with him for 3 days. A little later in the night, Gabriel, his friend, and I went to a pretty fancy pub where they had friends working. Because of that we got a great deal on dinner and scotch. I settled down in my place for the night and got ready for the next day.

The Baltimore Without "The Wire"

2009-11-24T05:22:00.000-08:00

At the beginning of the semester, I joined the Environmental Society. It is one of the smaller societies on campus, and as I learned, made up of mostly environmental science students and postgrads who research plant genetics. Every year, the club goes whale watching in Baltimore, Co. Cork. This ain't your regular Baltimore, MD; it's a small, peaceful town with only a few pubs. I went along on the weekend of Nov 7-8. This was my first (and only) trip with non-Americans. There were about 20 people, and included a majority of Irish students, sprinkled with Belgians, Germans, French, South Koreans, and Swiss.

The drive down to Baltimore took the better part of the day. After a 3 or so hour trip to Cork, it took another 3 hours to go about half the distance to Baltimore because of the small, winding roads. Once there and at our hostel (at which we were the only guests), we found out that the owner forgot we were coming and told us to climb in the window to find the spare key. Obviously, this wasn't a place riddled with crime.

A handful of us took a walk down the the cliffs that line the entrance to the Baltimore harbour. Here was a 'famous' white obelisk called the Beacon that tipped ships off to the whereabouts of the harbour entrance, apparently difficult to find otherwise. This was one of the southernmost points of the island of Ireland. The wind was unbelievably strong. So strong that most of my pictures are blurry. The whole area was apparently a cow pasture sometimes, based on the landmines that were strewn about. It was a beautiful place to watch the sunset.

The folks at Casey's Restaurant and Hotel (listed in the Michelin Guidebook!) were kind enough to host 20 rowdy college kids (their daughter is a TCD student, so they may have felt obligated). We had a wonderful dinner (that lasted about 3 and a half hours) and conversation there. I learned that Cork is partial to Murphy's Stout, the southwest's answer to Guinness (a mighty good answer too). I had seafood chowder with seafood from a few miles away and beef and Guinness stew, along with the loads of mash, veg, and leek custard that were piled on the table.

So, this trip to Cork was 2/3 funded by the Students Union (nice!). But as a condition of getting the money, we said that we would do some beach clean-up or something (they didn't think that whale watching and eco-tourism was a good enough reason to front the money). After walking around before dinner, we realized there were no beaches. So we talked to the owner about cleaning up in town or something and she was delighted to get some help! She offered us rubber gloves, trash bags and some dirty areas (which we found to be similar to the poor parts of The Hamptons). She was so excited that she wanted us to stay for a picture for the town newspaper. Once we had our way of not losing funding, we went to the other bar in town and hung out for a few hours.

The next morning was our trip to go whale watching. BAD NEWS. It was too violent at sea to go whale watching. What?!?! The reason we came to Cork is ruined?!? Well, Captain Nick could offer us a discounted trip through the harbour and up the river to look for seals, birds, and otters (officially the cutest animal ever). We took him up on it and saw some great scenery, a whole lot of birds, a few seals, and a log that Captain Nick thought was an otter. Our suspicion was that there were no otters there ever and he was using them as a way to keep our attention. Interesting sights included: a small island that was home to a single male goat (his donkey friends were transported to shore, but he was forgotten about), a seal sunning itself on a rock, and a castle or church covered head to toe in ivy.

After a pleasant boat ride, we went to clean the town like the noble environmentalists we are! But wait, there was no garbage in this town to speak of! Our haul was mostly bags of empty liquor bottles thrown in the woods, most likely by teenagers circumnavigating their parents and the drinking age. We still got our picture taken by Mrs. Casey though, and we were instantly village heroes!

Our quick trip to Cork was over then, and we started back for Dublin.

Wrapping Up London

2009-11-23T16:12:00.000-08:00

Hey, it's only 23 days late, but I'm finally finishing up the blogging for my London trip. Now I only have to write about trips to County Cork, Edinburgh, and Copenhagen! Not to mention finish homework and report on the strike tomorrow. That's right, the union of public sector workers are striking tomorrow. That means all university staff and faculty, bus drivers (maybe?), and such will be off.

Sunday was a sad and rainy day in London. My trip was about over, and I would have to say goodbye to Jenna until late November. We had about half of the day to make use of, though, so we checked out of our hotel, stored our bags, and headed out. Jenna wanted to see Charing Cross because it is home to the Leaky Cauldron in Harry Potter. Once we made a stop on that street, we realized how close we were to the National Portrait Gallery, National Gallery, and Trafalgar Square. We then went to National Portrait Gallery, National Gallery, and Trafalgar Square. The Portrait Gallery was expensive, and we were unsure as to whether or not it was worth paying, so we just looked in the shop, because art museum stores always have fun stuff to play with. Next door was the National Gallery.

They didn't allow pictures, but there were several famous and fantastic works. There was The Ambassadors, which is a painting of 2 ambassadors posing with several objects they had brought back from their travels. When I applied to Northwestern, this painting was the subject of one of their essays, so it was really fun to see it in person. I never realized how deep of a painting it was; there were minute details that ended up being very important, like a broken string on a lute representing fragmentation of society during the Reformation. Also, there is a piece of 'driftwood' or something in the foreground, but when you move to the right of the painting, it shows itself to be a skull. Very interesting to see completely different objects based on what angle you look from.

Right outside of the National Gallery is Trafalgar Square. It was a little monotone because of the rain, and because the fountains had been turned off for the season. Nevertheless, it was an impressive sight. In the middle stands a huge monument to Nelson. There were lions the size of trailer homes at the base and a several-story high pillar with Nelson on the top. There used to be a Nelson monument in Dublin, but someone blew it up...

After we picked up our luggage from the easyHotel and took our last walk around Paddington, Jenna had to catch her bus to the airport. It was very sad to see her go. I moped around to where my bus would pick me up and stopped to have a last cask-conditioned ale in the pub next to the bus stop. I rode for an hour and a half to Stansted Airport and got herded onto my Ryanair flight to Dublin (moo!).

Here are some miscellaneous photos from along the way, of the hotel, the restaurant we ate at Saturday night, and the Tube.

A Big Auld Day!

2009-11-23T00:12:00.000-08:00

With Saturday came Halloween. SPOOOOOOKY!

The day began with a trip to the famous Abbey Road to see where the Beatles actually did the recording and, more importantly, the album cover. We planned on taking the Tube there, but this weekend, they decided to close down most of the important lines of the Tube to 'perform maintenance.' So we took the shuttle buses, which didn't bother us because they were red double-deckers. The area around Abbey Road is not touristy at all. It is a very pleasant and livable area. We followed the directions I found online and found the crosswalk. There were a couple other small groups of people doing their poses like the album cover and writing messages on the gates outside of the studio. Jenna and I worked on getting a good photo of each other walking across several times, and finally managed to get one. I imagine the people who drive in that area are continually frustrated by people like us slowly walking across the road.

After seeing the Road called Abbey, Jenna and I made a trip to see exactly where Harry Potter and Ron Weasley entered into the wizardly world on their way to Hogwarts. That's right - we went to Platform 9 3/4 at Kings Cross Station. The station was under construction, so the 'platform' was set off out of the way, enough that they had a sign telling silly folks like us where to find it.

Jenna and I left Kings Cross knowing that we were only muggles. We made our way to the Tower of London. The Tube stop nearest the tower was closed, so we got to make a walk through the Square Mile - the business district. The coolest building ever is there, called the Gherkin. We thought about going up close, but we could tell (from our experience in trying to walk to the Eiffel Tower - it is right there!) it was a long haul to get to it. We got to the Tower, which is actually a complex of 20 or so buildings, and bought tickets for a Beefeater (Yeoman Warder) led tour and watched the Asian tourists flock to the Fish and Chips stands like kids to candy. The beefeaters are very jolly and have sinister senses of humour. Our guide was no different. He loved to take stabs at the French and Americans, in addition to scaring small children by using his finger to 'slit' his throat while talking in a creepy voice. He also loved mentioning how 3 queens were executed on the grounds (2 of them wives of Henry VIII). There was a fantastic amount of history in that complex. For hundreds of years the sovereigns lived there and kept their most important prisoners there (including those queens, a few princes, and Walter Raleigh). The main building in the central of the complex was the oldest standing building I have ever seen, dating to about 1050. Inside was an extensive exhibit on Henry VII. There were rooms full of his sporting equipment, armour, weapons, and heraldry. The Tower of London is also where the Crown Jewels are kept. They are stunning. The gems are nearly blinding. There is a tale that 6 ravens must be kept at the Tower at all times or the kingdom will collapse. Being there (mere yards from where princes mysteriously 'disappeared' and queens were killed) on Halloween at dusk was creepy enough, then the ravens flying around at the top of the building dating from 1050 made it more creepy.

Nearby was St Paul's Cathedral, which is Christopher Wren's architectural masterpiece. A masterpiece indeed. It was so large that you have to go hundreds of metres away to see the dome on top. It was brilliant. This was the place that is immortalized in the WWII photo of smoke from German bombs wafting over London.

UPDATE:

I forgot to mention the great restaurant we ate at. It was literally next door to the hotel. Frontline Restaurant, as it was called, is put together by a group of journalists who have a mission that puts them somewhere between Amnesty International and Journalists without Borders. They own a farm that provides produce for the restaurant, and they try to get the other food from local and organic sources. I had a wonderful wild hare pie and Jenna had beef with hashbrowns. The dessert was probably the best part (duh), chocolate almond cake and lemon tart (for Jenna).

London was full of great sustainable food. There were several grocery store chains that highlighted free range, British (which means local for such a small island), organic, and fair trade. There was a coffee shop called Pret a Manger on every other corner that boasted no artificial anythings, real food, freshly made, and lots of instances of sustainable ingredients. There are Prets in New York (I hear) and I saw some in Edinburgh and Glasgow too.

The Day That Began With The Changing of the Guard

2009-11-13T23:00:00.000-08:00

I heard from many different people that I HAD to go to see the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace while I was in London. It is a very quintessential thing to do while visiting the city because it encompasses everything England is supposed to be - full of strangely dressed guards, obsessed with monarchy, and full of pomp & circumstance.

Apparently, everybody else visiting London on this Friday morning also was going to see the changing of the guard. It was a very busy place. Jenna and I had been distracted from the palace (we were early) by the fun waiting in Green Park - this time it was lit up by the earth's big light bulb (the sun) instead of that one creepy street lamp. The leaves were colourful and were lining the ground, the weather was great, and there was a cool fountain. It had something to do with Canada - either as a gift to it or from it. Then, we heard clop-clopping coming from the road and we saw a large group of horses coming down the road with redcoated guards riding them. They circled the area and then left inexplicably. Their arrival did signal us to the fact that we should find a spot to stand to watch the real thing start happenin'. Before they did, Jenna and I played a fun game called "Based on what kind of car this person has, how important are they?" where we ranked the people going through the gates into Buckingham

Soon a marching band came into the area, and eventually entered the courtyard of the palace. After marching around a little bit more, a few musicians broke off into an ensemble to play classic songs like "Eleanor Rigby." As for the actual changing of the guards, there was ceremonial marching and one guard left as another came. There wasn't a whole lot more to it. It was simple, yet elegant.

I was advised to eat lunch at Harrod's, and to see the store in general. I had heard the food hall was a maze of glass cases full of the world's finest epicurean delights. How could I not go?!? When we got off the Tube on the very fancy Brompton Street, Jenna and I saw a massive red stone building with Christmas windows that make the weak faint and the pocketbook cringe. Inside, the phenomenon was even more pronounced, between the designer labels and the red marble and gold decoration. Jenna and I headed to the Christmas/Harrod's gift portion of the store and found some cool presents and candies. We then went to the food hall, which was everything I thought it could be. They even had an Iberian Ham bar! That's right, my dream of eating delicious razor thin slices of ham just sliced from the pig leg mounted behind the counter (with the hoof proudly displayed, as to show how good of a pig it actually was) came true. I had a feast on a little bit of the ham, then Jenna and I poked our noses around to find something more substantial. We ended up with pea and bacon soup to share, I got a pastrami ciabatta sandwich, and she got a ham croissant. Deelicious! We, the little children that we are, found the actual Christmas floor and looked at the shiny trees, lights, and ornaments. Shiny!

Our afternoon activity was a ride on the London Eye - a massive ferris wheel on the banks of the Thames. After waiting in line to pick up our reserved tickets, and waiting in line to have our tickets approved, then waiting in line to get into our pod of the ferris wheel, we finally got on the Eye. There were about 12 other people in the same pod as Jenna and I, including a few rabidly wild children who were far too close to opening the door and falling many stories to their death. There were also some inattentive parents on board. The vistas from the Eye were eye-catching. It really gave you an idea of how big London is, and how everything is laid out in relation to other things, much better than the Tube stops can.

That night, Jenna and I went to explore Oxford Road, which is one of the main shopping roads. I ended up buying a shirt on sale, and some shoes. I had wanted similar shoes from the same store in Dublin, but wouldn't buy them because they were so expensive. BUT because the pound is a lot weaker now than it was, it was much cheaper to buy them in London! We also looked for a piece of street art that was supposed to be in the area by the most famous street artist in the world, Banksy. We didn't find it, which was disappointing, but it was an adventure. After that, Jenna and I went back to the easyHotel and watched more British tele, which is SO much better than American TV.

London Part 2

2009-11-13T19:00:00.000-08:00

It seems like when Jenna and I go on trips together, we then blog about the in rather similar manners. She usually puts up a post about each day before I post about the same day, but don't let that fool you! I am not simply rewriting what I read on her blog. I swear.

At easyHotel, they like to charge for wifi. Neither Jenna nor I like to pay for wifi, so we found free wifi at Costa Coffee - one of the 4 coffee shops that line each and every street in London. They also had breakfast for us! We figured out what we needed to figure out and went on our merry way to see really amazing things. Our first stop was the British Museum.

Here's the prologue for the British Museum: At one time, the British (specifically the English, because the Scottish were brutes, the Irish hated them and were brutes, and no body cared about the Welsh and their overuse of y's and l's), did whatever they wanted to whomever they wanted. They said to the world, "Jump!" and before the world could say, "How high?" the British asked their armies to throw them in the air instead. After a while of doing this, the British decided they were going to take whatever they thought was cool and put it all in one building in London where all Britons could admire it. That building is the British Museum.

The British Museum is massive. Housed in a neo-classical building (slash set of buildings?) near University College London, there are galleries devoted to Egypt, Greece, Rome, Iran, Babylon, the Aztec Empire, and Mexico. Oh yea, and Native Americans and Inuit. And probably more. As soon as we walked into the first gallery, there was a massive slab of stone - the Rosetta Stone! It was a very impressive thing to see. Without that, we would have no clue how to decipher hieroglyphics. Most people know that much about it (and that it is the name of a language acquisition program used by the State Department and UN!), but who knows what it actually says? I did not, but it turns out that one of the Ptolemys made a deal with the Egyptian priests, wherein the priests could keep on keepin' on and Ptolemy could start his own cult. "Cult" is the word used on the description tag, not my own biased addition.

We soon saw large sculptures of pharaohs, Egyptian gods, and other Egyptian things.

The next section was Greece. There were rooms of ornate sculptures, including a room devoted to Alexander the Great. Being a namesake, I felt honored. As you can see, I posed for a photo with him. It is called Alexander and Alexandre, Both Great. Also in this section is most of the decoration from the Parthenon! Thomas Bruce, Earl of Elgin (not Illinois), was in the area and noticed how poorly the Greeks treated the Parthenon, so he essentially said, "Children, if you can't play nicely with your ancient runes, I will take them away." And he did. There is an enormous room full of the sculpture that covered the top of the Parthenon, and it's amazing.

There was a whole exhibit on watches and clocks. There were pocket watches spanning the last 500 years and all sorts of mechanical clocks. One of these clocks used a small metal ball rolling back and forth as a second hand (very cool idea), but it wasn't very accurate.

One of the more enjoyable things I saw was a temporary exhibit on the cartoons, posters, and prints of Revolutionary Mexico. The "Revolutionary Mexico" that was being shown was mostly from around 1900-1920, as opposed to all of the other times Mexico had revolutions. These were great! I very much enjoyed the thick black lines of the woodcuts and the witty cartoons.

I ended up getting a couple souvenirs for myself there - a Rosetta Stone metal water bottle (so I can brush up on my Greek while hydrating myself) and a London Street Art book (because how could I not?!?).

Jenna and I hopped on the Tube and went to our next destination - Covent Garden. It used to be a fruit and veg market, but is now a shopping, eating, and entertaining arcade. There were entertaining street performers as well. From there, we went to Piccadilly Circus.

"The Times Square of London!" I had heard it called. Whoever said that had it pretty close. There were millions of people, bright signs the size of the Vatican, and advertisements for musicals everywhere. There's also a large statue of Eros, but I have no good photos to show for it. After walking around the circus and browsing souvenir stores for a while, I was huuuuungry. Jenna and I had picked out an Indian restaurant in the area that got good reviews, and we scurried out to find it. The food was delicious (I had garlic naan and lamb curry, Jenna had chicken tikka masala and naan, and we split veg curry). Once back at the easyHotel, we watched British TV. There was a show about the most famous English chef Heston Blumenthal trying to turn Little Chef back into a reputable roadside restaurant that was a fun watch. Maybe it's made its way onto BBC America and you have seen it already.

London Calling

2009-11-10T15:03:00.000-08:00

The morning of October 28th will live in infamy for a long time to come. Why? I had to wake up at an incredibly ungodly hour. I don't quite remember when it was (since it was almost 2 weeks ago) but I'm guessing 4:30. If anything, I should be coming home at that hour. I was happy to do it though, because I was going to meet Jenna in London for 5 days!

I was flying Ryanair for the first time this trip, and I wasn't quite sure what to expect. I had read article after article on bOINGbOING about what a shitty, miserable airline it was, but I am not the sort of guy to need anything from a flight besides a seat and a safe landing. Once I got on the plane (after jumping in line quickly to make sure I got a good seat - there are no assignments, and I didn't pay extra to go in the fast line), I realized I was on a flying flea market. From the instant the stewardess said, "This is a smoke-free flight," they were trying to sell things to me. Smokeless cigarettes, lottery tickets, pizza and burgers, beer, you name it. But whatever. I slept through it and CEO Michael O'Leary didn't even try to charge me for it. I flew into Luton, which is a "quaint" airport for cheap airlines about 50 km north of London. Jenna and I got on a bus and went to foggy London town. I was actually in London!

The hotel we stayed at was the off-shoot of EasyJet, the British version of Ryanair. Easy[hotel, bus, jet] loves the color orange. Everything was orange there. We had a great location about 2 blocks from Paddington Station, near a hospital, halal markets, restaurants, and chip shops. From Paddington, we could get nearly anywhere on the Tube (subway) very easily. Sometimes - 2 of the lines were closed all weekend, but luckily we didn't need them anyway. It was a hefty one time price, but we got week passes for the Tube. In the end, it saved us a lot of money and our feet a lot of unnecessary walking. By the way, I am fascinated with the Tube. The graphic design is very appealing, from the maps to the logos and the commissioned art in some stations.

First stop was the Westminster stop. This is where Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament that Big Ben is attached to, are Westminster Abbey are. I walked out of the Tube thinking, "Now it says Big Ben is right around he... Oh!" It was right there in front of me. I was standing at the base. It may be just a big clock, but it is a damn cool big clock right next to a damn cool building where many of the most important people in history spent a lot of time. It was a great spectacle. Since this is where the British government operates, this is where people come to express their opinions on policy issues, you know, like how the Freemasons are killing dozens of innocents. Wait, what?!? Yes, there were a few protesters across the streets demanding action in the deaths of several people at the hands of the ever-implicated Freemasons.

Also a great spectacle, although an expensive one, was Westminster Abbey. That's why they can charge a lot for it, thought! Inside, there was so much to see. There were chapels and shrines and tombs practically stacked on each other. There were several Kings buried around the place from far before my lifetime (to say the least). Admission comes with a really good (and for no additional cost) audio guide, which helped make up for my lack of knowledge of English history or anything Anglican. I didn't need any additional help to figure out that seeing the tomb of Elizabeth I was pretty damn sweet, nor that the Poets' Corner encapsulated a lot of the best writing ever (with shrines to Jane Austen, Shakespeare, Dickens, and more).

Jenna and I were in the Abbey at dusk, so there was a spooky, dark hue to the whole place. The spooky ambiance was helped along by the choir at Evensong. We sat down in the service for a few minutes, and soon proceeded to leave. There are no pictures allowed in the Abbey, so here are the pics from outside or snagged from the 'net.

After looking at how mesmerizing things look when they are colorfully lit up at night, Jenna and I went over to Buckingham Palace (coincidentally, another mesmerizing things colorfully lit up). We had to walk through Green Park to get there from the Tube, which strangely, has only 1 dim light in the whole park. It contributed to the now recurring theme of spookiness. As we approached Buckingham, I realized why there were so few lights in the park - the government blew the lighting budget on the 2 huge walls of lights focused on the Palace. They even rotated between blue, white, and red! It was an impressive thing to see, but there's not much to do there at night. Jenna and I would be back on Friday to see silly men in moleskin hats march around.

Back in our neighborhood, we found a reasonably-priced joint to fill our stomaches called Garfunkels. It was tasty stuff - sit-down restaurant type burgers, pizzas, and English food.

Oh Yeah, and Other Stuff

2009-11-06T19:40:00.000-08:00

I was in London for the past 5 days (Wednesday to Sunday). It was exciting. There were impossible to find Banksy pieces and the ravens weren't there just for Halloween. Cliffhanger alert, this post is not about London, just a couple of things that I had forgotten to put in before.

A while (too long) ago I went to the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA). It is a fairly small museum, because who's really heard of Irish modern art? Well, you might not have heard of it, but if you go to Wash U, you know. That's right, there's a surprise discovery in store for me and my fellow WUers at IMMA.

IMMA is in an area called Kilmainham, which is where the Kilmainham Gaol (that's Jail in English) is located, and not that far from the Guinness Storehouse. It's housed in the 300+ year old Royal Hospital, a home for veterans of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the pre-independence era. It was under renovation when I was there, so the main entrance was closed (which almost foiled me finding the coolest thing there) and it seemed like a fair amount of the museum's space was closed too. Nonetheless, there were a few impressive exhibits. One was full of pieces by artists reinterpreting their works that were already in the museum, which was impressive for its use of multimedia (except some of the originals weren't in the open parts of the museum). My favorite piece was in the regular gallery and was called "Above All Else." I had seen the name placard for it, but there was no corresponding artwork. The sly guy in my thought, "Wait. Above all else." I looked up and there it was!

I like textual art, and the clever little taglines that come with it, so this piece was right down my alley. I sat down and read about the artist and piece in IMMA's "curbside" study room and learned that this same artist, Douglas Gordon, directed a documentary about Zidane (the footballer who headbutted his Italian oppenent in the 2006 World Cup). I wasn't supposed to take this picture (that's why it's kind of tilted and abruptly taken) because of a no photography citing some shit about copyright.

That's something I don't understand about museums in Ireland and the UK. "Copyright" prevents visitors from taking photos. At first glance, this might seem like a legitimate concern. The artists of these works put a lot of effort and heart into creating them, why would you let people waltz right in and take pictures that could reproduce the work? Well, there are two things wrong about that argument. Number 1: I'll go out on a limb and say no way an amateur with a point-and-shoot (and probably not a fancy camera either) camera will be able to get a shot good enough to be a legitimate threat to the original piece. That's why there are 1 gazillion DPI resolution scanners and gift shops. Number 2, and this is where the crux of my frustration comes from: Taking a picture of a little art installation or painting falls under Fair Use. It is a non-commercial use (because my camera is sure as hell not going to produce anything worth selling), and for many it's educational use, whether for class or cultural education. Both of those characteristics make it legal to copy the artwork onto your camera. Oh yea, and copyrights usually expire 70 years after the artist is dead, so that doesn't help the museums either.

Now that you've scrolled by my rant, the awesomest part. You know at Wash U there is that ugly-ass bunny in the Thinker pose, and that you love it even though it's kind of hard to look at?

Well, when I walked around to see what was near the front entrance of the IMMA, I saw something that struck my eye as familiar.

I asked around and did some interwebs research, and just as I suspected, these are done by the same artist, Barry Flanagan. There actually used to be a copy of the Thinking Rabbit on O'Connell St in central Dublin. I came 5,000 miles to Dublin, and can't get away from the weird-ass rabbits that are in St Louis, I mean that in a good way though.

Also, I found a really depressing article in the Irish Times about how bad Ireland's economy is right now, especially for recent University graduates. Since it came out Monday, I've gotten 2 emails from my program directors with links and reaction to it and my Irish Politics lecturer has talked about it. But I found it first.

Remove

Alex Christensen Oh, good to know - now that I'm stuck here for a month and a half more.

'Ireland is a disaster . . . leave now and enjoy your life' - The Irish Times - Mon, Nov 02, 2009

Source: www.irishtimes.com

On these pages last week, Shane Fitzgerald, a young graduate of University College Dublin, wrote about the Government’s failure to deliver on its promise of a bright future in Ireland for him and his generation. ...

Tue at 7:18pm · Comment · Like · Share

See? I'm on top of things. But more importantly, Ireland might be slipping back into the cycle of emigration that characterized it for 140 years. There is a horrible worldwide recession, but the Irish government and society are making it worse than it needs to be. In my opinion, and remember that I'm an amateur economist, this is not the time to be be parsimonious in public spending. Already 12%+ of the workforce is unemployed, and if social welfare can't hold them up for the next little bit, there is going to be a horrible loss of confidence and human capital in the country. And that's for the ones who don't leave.

Remember in the US last year when there was a bailout enacted very quickly to counteract the disastrous effects of frozen credit markets? Ireland hasn't done so yet, and their meltdown started before the US's. There is a widespread sentiment that the banks (like AIB) should be left to bleed, and afterwards the country can start clean. That may be true, but if Ireland wants to be able to hold the scalp of AIB in its hands as a warning to banks in the future, they will be doing so instead of working, on a block of deserted buildings. Without the credit that makes capital expansion possible, there will be no recovery in Ireland. All of the critics of the "degradation" of traditional Irish culture during the Celtic Tiger will get to revisit traditional Irish culture, this time without the rose-colored glasses. They will be poor, isolated, and begging the EU for cash because of the Government's unwillingness to step up and establish the National Asset Management Agency.

So I'm Gonna Do This Thing

2009-10-27T15:06:00.000-07:00

Where I take pictures of this little stone owl trinket that I brought along with me. It is one of my many desk toys, and one of the few I brought here (I thought I'd have a desk. WRONG). It can be my thing, you know? I will update the gallery and have a slideshow on the right side, if I can figure out how to do it.

Also, I will do the same with a series entitled "Me in Front of Stuff." It is made up of pictures of yours truly with things in the background.

Once again, all is conditional on me figuring out how the hell to do this.

Welcome to the North

2009-10-26T15:02:00.000-07:00

The title was a reference to The Music, one of the bands that I really liked in the past 5 years or so. Anyway, I went to the North this weekend. I spent one afternoon in Belfast, then stayed in Port Rush on the very north coast of Ireland in Co. Antrim for two nights. FYI - I got new photo software from the do-no-evil company Google (except when it comes to bowing to the will of the Chinese gov't) so all my pictures are in slideshows. The trip from the very beginning:

After waking up at an excruciating time (6:00 AM) and walking an excruciating distance with a duffel bag (40 minutes), I ended up at the Dublin bus station, where I caught my bus to the north. This trip was organized by IES (the group that is coordinating my studies over here), so there were about 20 American students coming along with me, including my 4 housemates.

I knew that the border between the Republic and the North was open now, but I still anticipated a sign that said, "Welcome to the Queen's Territory!" or "You are now entering a country with a stable-ish economy!" Unfortunately, there was no such sign. Gradually there was a larger proportion of UK license plates and Union Jacks showed up at roundabouts. That was it. Seeing a different flag, strangely enough, surprised me quite a bit. I am inundated with the Tri-Band (Republic of Ireland flag) in Dublin, and I'm sure there are no Union Jacks outside the UK Embassy's gates.

When we pulled into city centre Belfast, I made a mad-dash straight for the ATM, because the UK has no interest in the Euro as long as the pound sterling is a stronger currency. There might be more to it, but I'm pretty sure that's what it comes down to. The strange thing about the pound in the North is that they aren't issued by the government, they are private notes of debt. There are Ulster Bank notes, Bank of Ireland notes, Northern Ireland Bank notes, etc. No where on the note does it say Bank of England. I find it really strange, like it's the Banking Panic of 1907 or something.

Cool thing about my trip #1: Europa Hotel.

I didn't stay here at all, but I did eat across the street at the Crown Bar. I had a delicious lamb shank and my first Irish coffee (BTW it was not as good at I thought it would be. It may be because of the shitty coffee on these islands, though). But back to the Europa. It is the most bombed hotel in Europe. The IRA hit it 33 times before the ceasefire in 1994, but the beat went on at the Europa and it still is a superb hotel (apparently).

The Belfast trip centered around the Black Cab Taxi Tour. We all hopped in the back of these cabs, driven by people who lived through the Troubles. I saw some of the violent political murals that make the North infamous. We drove down Shankill Rd (Protestant Loyalist) and Falls Rd (Catholic Republican) and by the "Peace" Wall. Part of the tradition of the "Peace" Wall is to write a message on it. My favorite was, "why not give Atheism a try?" Mine is in the slideshow. There was also a row of murals commissioned by the City of Belfast about oppression around the world, like racism, slavery, and civil war.

Comment: It would be weird as hell to live on those roads. You're part of a working-class family that is probably just trying to get by. At this point, you probably don't have sectarian or sovereignty issues at the top of your mind, but there are dozens of tourists taking pictures of the sides of buildings in your neighborhood all the time while they learn the basics on an incredibly intricate situation. Strange.

I was hoping for a little more from the tour. I mean, it was very good and I saw/heard some poignant sights/stories, but I had very high expectations. I wanted to get a little further into the ideologies of each side and how the peace process unfolded. I'm interested enough in the conflict that I have read quite a bit about it, and wanted to delve deeper into it.

After the tour, I boarded a coach bus and went 2 hours north to Port Rush, a small resort town on what may as well be the edge of the world (in reality, it's just the edge of Ireland). Our hotel was across the street from the ocean and my window looked out on it. I was super lucky because I got a queen-sized bed! Score! Housemates Victor and Ethan and I went and climbed on some rocks outside while we waited for it to be dinner time (that sounds downright childish. Like we're 7 or something, but we aren't. We were admiring the beauty of the place).

Dinner was at Coast Restaurant. I had some delicious prawn pasta and had a chance to talk to some IES Americans that I hadn't spoken with before. The best part was the chocolate sponge cake, "Nemesis," for dessert. It was so rich I almost couldn't handle it, but in a good way. I also saw someone who could be my doppelganger. I thought I might have to battle him for the right to be in this universe, but he left before I needed to. He was probably scared of me.

On Friday night, I thought it would be a good idea to wake up at 6:40 to go and walk along the coast at sunrise. In theory it was good, except the part where I wake up at 6:40 without needing to. I did end up waking and doing it, and I am glad I actually did. Victor and I criss-crossed some dunes along a beach, where there were jovial dogs being walked and horses being ridden. This was all before the all-included breakfast, so I was very hungry when we got back to the hotel. The breakfast was delicious - there was bacon and sausage and scones and cereal and yogurt and more!

Now that the clock had passed 11:00, and touring a whiskey distillery wasn't as frowned upon, we went to Bushmills Distillery. The tour was just like all of the other tours of breweries/distilleries (here we have our extra-pure water and barley, we give our drained barley to the local cows and they are sure happy - this is a required joke to tell on any liquor tour), but Bushmills is a working distillery, unlike where Guinness and Jameson give tours. That means Bushmills wins. We did our tasting at the end, where I chose to sample the 100 quid per bottle whiskey. Bushmills is much better than Jameson; it has a more complex flavor and bite.

The next stop was Dunluce Castle. Now there are only runes, partly because some of the original fell into the sea about 400 years ago. I walked around for a bit and oohed and aahed. Is it wrong that I'm getting a little tired of seeing really old castles? Just a little, but there's only so much that can be unique about each castle. Anyway, it was beautiful and part of a breathtaking landscape. I can't imagine living in such a desolate and apparently dangerous place. As I think about it though, the view was spectacular. While we were driving up and first see Dunluce, one has the tendency to shout "WOAH!"

Giant's Causeway took up most of Saturday afternoon. Even after being on the fairly small stone peninsula for two hours, I wanted to stay there longer. The 60 mph winds and stinging rain helped - really, I couldn't imagine being there in any other weather. The thousands of hexagonal pillars slowly leading to the violent North Sea, next to jagged green and black cliffs, isn't suited for sun. Standing with my feet (and sometimes legs) being swallowed by the sea and being scratched by the claws of the rain was very visceral. I came to Ireland wanting to feel waves hit me at Giant's Causeway, and I did. I didn't give a damn about how wet I was going to be (which was really wet); I just poured the water out of my shoes, wrung out my socks, and walked around barefoot for a while. A few hours on the radiator and they were grand.

I have no idea where in Ireland my distant ancestors come from, and I don't think anyone alive in my family does, but I know there is Scots-Irish there. That means they are probably from the North. Since history is just a a narrative loosely based upon fact, I am going on the record to say that my family is from the north of Co. Antrim, where Giant's Causeway is. I did feel a strange sort of homecoming feeling when I was there. It just made sense. Utterly fantastic.

The plan was to make a trip to the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge on Saturday, but the 60 mph winds forced it to close. The weather was marginally better on Sunday, but that was the only margin that was needed. This bridge used to be used by fishermen to get to the hot spots of salmon fishing. Until they overfished the waters. Now it's a tourist attraction! If you destroy everything but lemons, might as well make lemonade. It is a phenomenal thing to see, however. The turquoise ocean around the bridge crashes into white cliffs. On the island that the bridge leads to is desolate in a colorful way. The brilliant green grasses are cowlicked in every which way all the way to the very edge.

Before we left for several hours of bus rides back to Dublin, we took a strolling hike through Glenariff National Park. The particular path we went on is famous for waterfalls. We aren't talking Niagra or anything here, but there were some very picturesque falls here. It was a good way to wind down, especially since the walk was downhill. At the bottom was a restaurant for lunch, and where our bus met us. We didn't even have to go back uphill!

I did a lot of sleeping on the way home.

A Preview of the Next 2 Weeks

2009-10-19T04:21:00.000-07:00

I have 2 trips planned for the next 2 weeks. Oddly enough, they're both the UK. Here's a little of what I'll be doing.

Oct 23-25: Northern Ireland Highlights:

-Black Cab tour. A tour of the parts of Belfast most affected by The Troubles given by someone who lived through the worst of it.

-Taking a bus to Port Rush, where I'll be staying. In Port Rush, I'll take the tour of the Bushmills Whiskey Distillery (the facility is only 400 years old).

-I'll take a trip on the Carrick-A-Rede bridge (weather permitting). This is a rope bridge that connects the mainland to a small, craigy island. Fishermen used to use a version of the same bridge to get to the island for salmon fishing. They fished the area out, so now only tourists use it.

-GIANTS CAUSEWAY. If you can't tell, I'm excited for this trip. It has to be one of the strangest geological features in the world - hundreds of hexagonal rocks jutting up on the coast. After looking at the actual history and the mythology associated with the causeway, I believe the mythology.

-The last leg of the trip will be the Glenariff Forest Park. A nice walk through a national park.

Oct 28 - Nov 1 London:

I am meeting Jenna in London for a long weekend (and Halloween!). We are in the process of planning the trip, but I'm sure we will do all of the sight-seeing that is necessary for our first trip to London.

What Have I Been Eating?

2009-10-19T01:40:00.000-07:00

Dublin is a tremendous city for eating. In terms of the prominence and availability of gastronomic escapades, I would compare Dublin to Chicago. Being a cosmopolitan capital city, there is a wide array of cuisines around, too. Here are a few of the restaurants at which I have or want to eat:

-Last week, I heard from the Food and Drink Club at TCD about Dine in Dublin, a promotion at a few dozen upscale restaurants around the city and county. They were offering deals on set menus (or as we would say in the US, a prix fixe. But it seems like the closer you get to France, the less they use that term, including France where they stared at me blankly when I mentioned that I had the prix fixe). I took advantage of the dinner at Bijou in Rathgar, which was about a half an hour's walk southwest of my flat. It was delicious! I just got back a few hours ago and still pretty stuffed. My 3 courses for the evening were:

Wright's smoked salmon with potato salad and watercress

Co. Wexford pork belly and Clonakilty black pudding roulade (kissed on the grill) with mash, pancetta, wilted autumn cabbage, and red wine jus

Chocolate fudge cake with vanilla ice cream

I figured that I needed to have a really nice dinner a couple of times in Dublin, and that this was a great opportunity to get one for a little less than normal. I am glad I went, because the pork belly was incredibly flavorful, the fudge was rich, and the salmon was terrific. I have wanted some of the delicious seafood from the seas around this island for some time, and finally got it.

-I want to eat at Mint Restaurant, which is about 5 minutes from my front door in Ranelagh. It has earned and defended a Michelin star, and has an eccentric celebri-chef. Unfortunately, Mint is now contributing to Ireland's growing unemployment. It's been closed for a few months now, and I doubt that it will return.

-A week and a half ago I breakfasted at Cake Cafe. I had seen that it was on the list of best 100 restaurants in Dublin (at what number do Best Of lists just become restaurant directories?), saw its price range was 1-2 Euro signs, and wanted to go. The cafe is in a recently-refurbished eco-friendly building with some amateur art strewn about, with an entrance on a sketchy alley. I had banana and honey porridge. Those oats filled my stomach up and made my tastebuds happy at the same time. I will have to go back, though, since they are known for their chocolate cake (best chocolate cake in Dublin according to the Dubliner magazine).

-On Friday, my friend John's (from Wash U currently studying at an inferior institution UCD) parents came into town. I caught up with them at O'Neill's Pub, which I had heard served very good Irish food. I had some of the best bangers and mash I've ever had, seen, or heard of. There was onion gravy all over the plate and bangers that snapped when you bit them.

-I would like to get lunch at the Cornish Pasty Company soon. I walk by its 6-foot-wide storefront most days going to class and stare in at their flaky, savory pockets of goodness. It's a pretty good deal, too - 5 Euro for a pasty, drink, and (maybe?) some crisps.

I don't eat out all of the time, though (fairly rarely, really). I have been foraging the city for good sources of food to cook with. So far, I have found 2 rockin' places.

1. Ranelagh Market.

This market only opened about 4 or 5 weeks ago, just in time for me to take advantage of it. This isn't like the typical farmers' markets in the US where a few farmers (and maybe a few small-scale producers) bring tents and produce to a parking lot once a week. A large space in a building along Ranelagh Rd. opens up all day Thursday-Sunday with a few dozen artisans (a few farmers, bakers, butchers, and sauce makers) and several prepared food stands set up. In my opinion, this is a big step forward in promoting local and real food. This concept institutionalizes a way of getting quality food with the atmosphere of a farmers market. When you think about it, this is just what the outdoor markets and bazaars all over the world are like. Maybe it's a good model for the other countries of the world (cough, cough USA). I can almost jump from my apartment and land in the market, which makes it even better. I've been picking up scones, organic produce, lunch meat, and bread here regularly. If I cared to, I could even get part of a pig roast or paella here too!

2. Temple Bar Market

Looking down one of the four aisles of vendors at the Saturday morning market.

What?!? Potatoes in Ireland?!? More specifically, cheap and organic potatoes from nice Irish people from County Meath.

Oh, my, this cheese is good. I bought some aged cow's milk cheese with seaweed from Co. Mayo in it.

Bread.

Where I took an oyster shooter to start my Saturday morning. Mmm, briny!

Here was my haul from this trip to the market (I feel like Lee Zukor sharing his weekly CSA):

Those carrots are the size of two good sized meals each. Then we have organic kale, hot peppers, and the seaweed. It was good to have some spice - I hadn't had any in a while. I fried up the peppers with garlic and bacon bits (bits of real bacon, not Bacon Bits) and then steamed the kale with them for a delicious Saturday night dinner.

I've been making an effort to cook and bake some good things as well. Here are a few of my creations:

Bangers and Mash with Guinness gravy. It wasn't really that tough and it tasted great. The 1/3 Irish in me was proud of my accomplishment.

Oven fries. So good, it was worth taking a photo.

A couple weekends ago, a few of us went hiking on the Howth Peninsula (more to come on that soon) where Victor found lots of wild blackberries. Once, I used my instincts and knowledge that most poisonous food is bitter, I realized they were very tasty. I made a fruit tart with them. I wanted a graham cracker crust, but graham crackers are not sold in Ireland. I looked into it, and they are only sold in the US, basically because Graham was a nutjob who thought protein made you sexually animalistic and so invented a cracker for Americans to eat in the morning. I ended up using shortbread, and making a pastry cream for the filling. Very good. Once again, proud of myself. Mother would be proud as well.

Lastly, I have not gone here yet, but I plan to soon. F.X. Buckley, I'm told, is one of the cheapest and best quality butchers in the city, or even country. I will report back when I try out Mr Buckley's stuff.

The Fab Fourth Day in Paris

2009-10-13T08:26:00.000-07:00

I didn't forget to finish up my trip to Paris, I've just been busy learning about why lots of people in the world don't have any money and how Irish people don't like the Catholic Church anymore.

Day 4 started earlier than day 3, but with the same thing happened: Jenna went to class. That was lame, because class is lame. We also were checking out of the hotel and moving to another one for the last night of my trip, so we had heavy duffels with us. Jenna had suggested that I go to the Musée d'Orsay, which is an art museum near her school. We got off the Metro and she headed off to class. I got to the museum and was welcomed by a long line. It moved quickly, though, and I soon got to the ticket window. Since EU students get in free, I flashed my Trinity College Dublin ID and tried to speak in an Irish accent. The accent wasn't that hot, but luckily it's hard to distinguish English accents when you don't speak it very well. So this native Irish student got into the Musée d'Orsay free. I checked my bag and picked up an audio guide (which was really nice to have in a French museum). The Musée d'Orsay was my favorite museum in Paris (sorry Louvre! Not really though). Housed in a former train station, it features almost all French art, with a lot of realism, impressionism, and post-impressionism.

The main hall of the museum.

The clock left over from when the museum was a train station. This would be an amazing watch. A bit heavy though.

If I were the curator at Musée d'Orsay, these works would definitely be there, among others that didn't turn out in the pictures.

Monet - Grosse mer a Etretat

Really sweet glasswork.

Ferdinand Holder

On to the Van Gogh section. This is one of his Starry Night paintings.

Another famous Van Gogh.

THE self-portrait of all self-portraits. The thing that struck me about all Van Gogh's paintings, especially this one, is the variation in paint thickness. It's like looking at mini mountain ranges.

A Monet landscape. Click on it to see the detail, but the paint on the clouds is really piled on there.

I had to take a picture of Whistler's Mother, even though I think it's a horrendous waste of several square feet.

See?!? I wasn't crazy for taking pictures of the Metro signs! It's legitimate art because it's in a museum. I am so good at finding art. I'm going to say that I am the artist of the found-art piece entitled "Sign Outside The Metro."

After Jenna's classes were over, we went to our next hotel. It was in a fairly untouristy part of Montmartre, although not the part with lots of strip clubs. Still, there were a lot of musicians playing in the pedestrian triangle outside and a merry-go-round for the local kiddies. We walked by dozens of parents waiting to pick up their primary school-aged kids. Our new hotel was, like our last one, teeny. I wasn't in Paris to gallivant in the confines of my hotel room, though, so it was fine. Jenna and I found a grocery store to pick up some cheese, wine, and fruit. There was so much wine so cheap there, including 1.38 Euro sparkling white wine (champagne from somewhere besides Champagne). It was hideous, but it was available for that cheap - more than I can say for Dublin or the US. To go with our delicious garlic cheese and brie, we each got a whole baguette from a little boulangerie nearby.

Zut alors, that was good bread!

On the docket for the evening were the Champs Elysees and Arc de Triomphe. First, we had to walk by some fountains near the Tuileries (Toolery) Gardens. Jenna got in the way.

We walked up the Champs Elysees, which I like to call Le Michigan Avenue. There are lots of designer clothing stores, department stores, and food of varying qualities lining wide, tree-lined sidewalks and impossible traffic. At the end of the street, there is a mammoth roundabout with the Arc de Triomphe in the middle.

I could have guessed it if I had thought about it, but I learned that one has to go underground to avoid the traffic and get to the Arc. We had the opportunity to go to the top, and I said, "Let's take it! When else are we going to have the chance?" The walk was tedious, but just as much because it was a long, long spiral staircase (monotony) as because it was high up. The views from the top were tremendous and I would like to share a few:

Jenna and I at the top near sunset.

I was fascinated by the traffic. There was no rhyme nor reason to it. Cars were stopped behind other cars that were at a 90 degree angle from them.

The Champs Elysees from the top of the Arc de Triomphe.

The far-off business district, La Defense.

The Arc de Triomphe is massive. This is all that would fit in the frame of my camera from a good distance away.

Lots of people in Paris go to the Seine with some friends and some wine and have a good time at night. Jenna and I did the same. We got there and saw a big group of people listening to swing music and dancing. That is super cool, since I have been swing dancing for years. Jenna has done a lot of dancing, and had some knowledge of swing, too. We joined in and danced to Louis Armstrong, et al along the Seine for my last night in Paris. We both had a blast!

The weirdest, but also one of the best shows I've ever been to.

2009-10-08T14:54:00.001-07:00

Last night I went to a concert of a band that I have liked for a long time, King Khan and the Shrines. They sound like James Brown and the Famous Flames on psychedelic drugs, if they used to be in a punk band. They were playing at a place called Whelan's, which is a venue/pub/liquor store that hosts a lot of indie, rock, and folk music. It's a fun place - I had gone a couple weeks ago and like the vibe. A friend of mine asked the DJ to play the Black Eyed Peas and he said no, which made me respect the place even more.

Jack of Heart, a French band, started everything out. While these guys performed, my head was spinning. The lead singer/guitarist is one of the looniest human beings I have ever encountered, whether in real life or fiction. If Allen Ginsberg walked in during Jack of Heart's set, he would say - and this is verbatim - "What the fuck is going on? I'm leaving. Shit." I slowly started realizing that Jack of Heart is not really about playing music. They are a spectacle. They are just as much about putting on a show and pushing the envelope as they are about music. The music really wasn't that bad, though. The crazy man's voice was deep and rich; the chord progressions and riffs were unexpected. There were some fresh sounds, but they were peppered with abstract noise and lightly salted with overused motifs. For the most part, the rhythm guitar had a cutting sound to it like that of Bloc Party. The lead wove countermelodies a bit like newer Arctic Monkeys. So, there was some musical talent, and the foundations of something similar to genius, in these guys. They even wrote a song especially for the show in Dublin. It was called "Oscar Wilde" and had two words - Oscar and Wilde. A couple covers were thrown in, one by Joan Jett and one by Question Mark and the Mysterians ("96 Tears"). Both were pretty good, but "96 Tears" was especially good because it was just as crazy as Jack of Heart.

Genius, as they say, is only separated from insanity by a fine line. Jack of Heart definitely bridged the gap - but were mostly on the insane side. I kept thinking that this could be good if there was 15% more genius and 30% less crazy. What made Jack of Heart so crazy? The lead singer. The rest were fairly typical musicians - the goofy bassist, uber-intense lead guitarist, and the chill drummer.

The show starts and Jack of Heart walks on. Wait, I think, is the lead singer wearing cut of jeanshorts? Yes, he is, and they are barely covering his ass. Oh wait, he's also wearing ripped-up fishnet stockings. And is that costume jewelry weighing down his skinny little neck? Whatever, not a big deal. These guys are opening for King Khan. The stockings were just the beginning. After the second song he reaches for his beer bottle, pretty typical for a rock show. Until he chugs the whole thing, throws it into the empty space in front of the stage, and goes on to throw up a little bit. Yes, the lead singer vomited a little bit directly onto the stage. Once again - whatever, I can try to get past it. Next song, he breaks a guitar string and instead of ignoring it, he wraps the string around his neck tightly. I've seen that bit with microphone cords, but not with strings. At this point, the scales are a little still leaning a little bit towards genius.

Note the fishnets on the lead singer on the left. Also, the guy on the far right was far too focused on the music for this band.

Another song, another Stella Artois. Another Stella, another rude excretion. This time he sprays his beer out of his mouth into a shower for the stage. Then, this dude has the cahones to TAKE HIS PANTS OFF. While he sings, he slides down his jeanshorts. Thankfully, he was wearing skin colored tights underneath his fishnets, but for a second I thought my eyes were going to be scarred by his man parts. But still - what in the world is going on? This singer, who happens to have a pretty cool voice until he starts cawing like a crow for a whole song, is tricking us into thinking he is stripping. He was also ridiculing the people in the front row for not being closer to him. I couldn't blame them for not wanting to be near this lunatic. It was like watching a performance art piece of a car crash. I couldn't look away, and it's meaning was beyond me.

This singer got off on attention. That had to be what was going on. It was over, though, and King Khan and the Shrines were soon to be on.

A seven-piece band came on stage - complete with horns and organ - and vamped a dirty R&B groove while the guitarist introduced the main attraction. Out from backstage struts King Khan, done up with a feather crown, tiger-tooth necklace, and leopard print suit jacket. One of 89.3 The Current's favorite songs, "Land of the Freak," started the set out properly - organ wailing, horns blaring, jangling guitar, and King Khan's gritty yet melodic shout. I couldn't help but dance, and I really don't know how anyone couldn't be moving around. I couldn't help it all show long (although the recovering Dublin punks there had listened to too much Joy Division to ever dance, so I was one of the only). He and the Shrines made no attempt to hid the influence of the Blues Brothers and James Brown on the stage show. The King did one-footed spins while guitarist and bassist did a little step-dance. The organist, though, had a different set of influences. He was an equally amazing showman, but he was less like James Brown and more like a contestant on Project Runway.

The horn players look like the guys my dad hung out with in college, but who never changed their hair cuts or fashion.

The crazy and flamboyant organist playing out amongst the crowd

King Khan explained his show pretty well when he said, "This song is supposed to make you shake your ass. Get your body movin' and rub up against someone, even if you don't know who they are." I didn't rub up on anybody, but I shook my ass a little.

They threw in some songs from an upcoming album. Usually this is the part of a show that is okay to miss, but King Khan's new stuff was on par with his great existing material. The standout of this segment was "Yes I Can't," with its adolescent lyrics and political pun. During this part and a couple others, King Khan stepped off the stage into the crowd of the intimate venue to sing with and dance with the crowd. The last of these times, the organist AND his organ joined.

The show was just fantastic. The pinnacle was when King Khan broke into sermon. He was telling a dirty story about rebirth, prostitutes, and Germany in the style of a southern Baptist church preacher. The Shrines transitioned into their last song, and finally ended the night after a 3 minute "last note," drum fill, and saxophone freakout accompanied by the Jack of Heart members playing tambourines. I'm exhausted just writing about it.

End of show freakout. Organist is standing on his organ playing a tambourine. White tunic man is the crazy singer from Jack of Heart.

Paris: Return of the Seine

2009-10-06T10:10:00.000-07:00

Day three in Paris was a little more relaxed for me. I needed to rest a little and let my body fight the good fight against my cold, like Barney Frank fights against town hall dissenters. It was also a Monday, so Jenna had class. She had to do the unthinkable – wake up early and learn! I was left to fend for myself, after a quick lesson in French of course. I was intent on exploring the area near the hotel on Rue La Fayette. I found what looked to be a superior patisserie and bought a sweet brioche and croissant. They tasted like France is supposed to taste!

I am fascinated by big cities, and walking around peaked my eyes’ interest. Lots of plain ol’ city things like brasseries, convenience stores, people walking to and from work, etc. Jenna met me back at the hotel and we went down to where her afternoon classes were to find some lunch. The poor girl had to go and sit through a THREE hour class soon after. That is a long time to pay attention to something, I do not envy her. While Jenna was in class, I explored Rue St. Germain which is lined with shops and famous brasseries. A few of these brasseries thought that because Picasso ate their they could charge 4 Euro for an espresso and 13 Euro for a Croque Monsieur, which is ridiculous. That’s a $6 shot of espresso! I window shopped looking for something fun to buy, but didn’t find anything too good. My stomach started yelling at me so I went here:

And I ate this Croque Monsieur:

Jenna and I had both had tiring days, albeit for different reasons. We decided to get pizza to go from an Italian place near our hotel (where we were given a glass of free wine while we waited and were slagged for not wanting to eat in the restaurant). It was delicious. We dined and watched Paris SG triumph over Lyon in Ligue 1 futbol.

Paris: The Île Strikes Back

2009-10-06T09:29:00.001-07:00

It may sound trivial when talking about visiting the site-seeing Mecca that is Paris, but I was almost entranced by the sign for the Metro. Art Deco and cool script are two parts of design that I really enjoy, so these signs were great. I took these on my second day in Paris, and my strange obsession was later vindicated when I saw the signs in the Musée d’Orsay.

Anyway, Day 2 in Paris (Return of the Seine) started out by trying to find something that was open. Even more so than Dublin, Paris rolls up the sidewalks on Sundays. Jenna and I finally found a little patisserie and had my first Parisian pastry, which was good but not on the top half of my list for the trip. Part of what I was paying for was being open on Sunday. We ate on the steps of this magnificent church that was all but ignored, because in Paris magnificent churches are a Euro dime a baker’s dozen.

Jenna had heard about a bird market that was being held close to Île de la Cité (the home of Notre Dame) so we made our way over. There were hundreds of birds, bird cages, bird food, and small pet mammals. The sound of chirping was inescapable and little birdies were hopping all around their cages. There were also chickens and ducks, which were also pretty cool guys. Among the mammals were bunnies who were begging to be petted and chipmunks who were doing flips through their cage.

Besides being dirty and ruthless, these pigeons are cruel. They flaunt their freedom right in front of their indentured cousins.

The moving white thing on the right is the stomach of the flipping chipmunk.

By now, we were hungry and found a cheap sandwich. While it was probably average quality for France, it was great to me. Chewy baguette, salty and tender chicken, and ripe produce. Yum.

Where did we eat our sandwiches? Nowhere special, only outside the most famous church in the world.

It is too massive to fit in one frame.

I’m just glad that none of the gargoyles came and stole my food.

The line was short, so we went in and walked under the soaring ceiling, by an actual service, and past luminous stained-glass windows.

Next we walked to the Pompidou Centre, a huge series of tubes (no, not those, Senator Ted Stevens) in the middle of a neighbourhood of classic Parisian architecture. How crass of whoever designed it, say the French, but I like it.

It is a contemporary art and design museum and exhibition centre named after a former President of the Republic. Jenna and I were tired of being on our feet at this point, so we didn’t go in to the actually museum. We did, however, walk through the gift shop and the book store. There were a lot of really clever gifts in there, but none quite worth the price. If they were selling a watch like the huge clock on the ceiling, though, it might be a different story.

There was also a series of fountains that looked steampunk or like they had been taken from a whimsical children’s book.

Since it was Sunday, and the French are too le tired to open stores on Sunday, Jenna thought we should go to one of the only areas of town that would be alive: The Jewish Quarter! I was first affronted by this cool wheatpaste (street art affixed to walls using a paste made from wheat flour).

My guess is that the white thing is Boo from the Mario games wearing a trucker hat and ready to eat an unsuspecting duck, who is reading that woman’s text message. I may be wrong, but don’t tell me so. I like my invented scenario.

The Jewish Quarter was bustling with tourists, fun shops, and food. We walked about, window shopping and such. We stumbled upon some strange open house by some group associated with the EU. Countries like Poland had tables set up to promote tourism (imagine a 6^th grader’s geography project on one of those fold out project boards). On our way out of the area, Jenna and I picked up some groceries. I thought I walked into a larger than life cornucopia, but then I realized it was just a produce market.

We dropped our heavy bags off and rested our tired feet, as well as my ravaged immune system. I woke up a few hours before my flight to Paris with a tickly throat which led to a cold the whole time in Paris. Gross, but I pushed on like it wasn’t there. It eventually felt ignored and left. This was our hotel’s street. We were in the one with the blue sign on the left.

On the way to Montmartre and Sacré-Cœur, we stopped to look at Moulin Rouge.

Like my Photoshop skillz to combine 2 pictures into 1?!?

We continued to our destination. Sacré-Cœur is the home to some cool street performers, including an impressive breakdance trio. No good photo. The church was impressive, as you can see. The history is very interesting as well, read up on it at Wikipedia or some similar academic source.

The real reason Jenna wanted me to come to Montmartre is to try what she calls the best French onion soup ever. We sat down to have some (well, she had a crepe, but I had some) and I agree with her.

It was so good that I couldn’t be still enough for a picture. We tried this photo 3 times and this is the most focused.

We walked around Montmartre until it was after dark and we were tired. I really like the area. It is a little bohemian, a little cozy, a little toursisty, and a little artsy.

Other Observations

2009-10-02T09:43:00.000-07:00

Here are a few things that aren't substantial enough for their own posts.

I found a cool coffee shop with good coffee. That's a feat because Dubliners love their mediocre coffee. Some bald Kiwi moved here and mixed up his own blend of beans and opened a few stores. When I say bald, I'm not being purposefully mean or anything. The place is called the Bald Barista. I went the other day and wrote the France Day 1 post over a latte the size of my head. While I was sipping it, a few Eastern European tourists bought espresso and asked for water with it. In the hardcore, we-don't-serve-iced-espresso coffee world, it is considered an insult to sip water after espresso. It shows the barista that his shot of espresso was bitter and can't be savoured. The Bald Barista himself came out and told them that they were undermining the coffee he roasted and brought them americanos because it was evidently something they could handle.

Last Friday I laboriously rolled out of bed at 6:30 to walk to the Immigration Center and register as a foreign student. I may have outlined the completely logical system that Ireland uses with foreign students before, so bear with me. Upon entering the country, if the customs officer feels like it, for instance if his coffee from Cafe Sol was bad or his wife made him sleep on the couch, (s)he can charge you 150 Euro to be here. It's like paying for a visa, except it's at the mercy of whomever you meet when you touch down on the Emerald Isle. It reminds me of businesses paying protection money to the mob, not that I'm implying anything. It would probably just be easier to charge everybody 80% of the 150 Euro instead of shaking down a student when you feel like it. Besides seeming more fair, we are putting money into the Irish economy at a time of soaring unemployment and shrinking consumption. Why would you want to give us a bad taste in the mouth? But I had to go pay it, so I did. I stood in line for about half an hour to get a ticket, and be told to come back in 3 hours. I went to the TCD library and researched for a paper for the Semester Start-Up program. I cam back and played Sudoku for a few hours more while waiting to show my passport, registration forms with TCD, and that I have enough money to leave. Then I got the equivalent of my green card, only 5 and a half hours after I first got in line. That makes me really wonder how horrible it must be to get a visa or apply for citizenship in the US. I imagine that it's easier to get a visa in Ireland as an American than for a foreigner coming to the US. I couldn't even imagine how frustrating it would be to try to get into the States as an academic, let alone a refugee with little or no labor skills.

Before the very moment that I write this, it had not rained more than a few spits of mist since the week of September 7th. It didn't even rain in Galway or the Aran Islands. That's not the Ireland I imagined, and I think it's probably a surprise for other Americans as well.

Last week marked the 250th anniversary of the Guinness brewery's founding (that's older than the United States). For weeks the city was getting ready for a unified toast to Arthur Guinness. At 5:59 PM, or 17:59 (get it? - since the year it was founded was 1759), there was revelry. At the pub that I was at, Doyle's, the Guinness company was putting on a Guitar Hero tournament with prizes for the winners. A couple of friends from Wash U and I tried our darnedest and we WON!!! I got an awkwardly-fitting long-sleeve t-shirt that had the 250th anniversary logo on it and an iPod docking station with the same logo. Score.

There is more to come soon on my amazing trip to Paris!

The Start of Class

2009-10-01T06:51:00.001-07:00

I started classes Monday. These are the real classes with real Irish (and other types of European) students. I was excited for the actual semester to start. The clubs I signed up for would kick into gear and I would see more than old tourists from the States visiting their ancestors' homeland.

My anticipation had started last week during Freshers' Week. It's the week before classes is when the 1^st years show up on campus at Trinity, just like it is at American schools. There are parties, activities fairs, and bank representatives setting up college checking accounts for wide-eyed 18 year olds and their parents. I actually missed most of Freshers’ Week while I was in Paris, but got back in time to take part on Thursday and Friday.

Here is the way it works: In Front Square (the cobbled area you see on all the postcards), every single club sits down at a table and heckles passers-by until they pay a few Euro to join their club. “Hey – do you want to be part of the Indian Student Society?” “Excuse me, do you want to read books to invalid cats on Monday nights?” I was looking forward to joining a few clubs; it should be a good way to meet some like-minded Irish students and get a footing in Ireland.

I skipped the Indian Student Society and the invalid cats club, but found others that I liked better. Most clubs come with discounts to restaurants and cafes around campus and good number of events (usually with liquid confidence). Furthermore, there are two societies that are a big deal - the Phil and the Hist. Both are debating societies that have large spaces in the same building on campus. They boast over 1000 members and depending on when you date their beginnings, are the oldest undergraduate student societies in the world (or at least one of them is). They are rivals in the sense that they compete for the time of their members and bicker over who is older, but a lot of people are members of both. Each week, the groups have a debate on some major topic. Last night was the Lisbon Treaty, week before was whether or not marriage was a dated institution (it was a comedy debate, so while one side said that marriage was gay, the other said that marriage was not gay enough).

I joined both the Hist and the Phil. I have already gone to a debate workshop with the Hist and attended their Lisbon Treaty debate, featuring a former Prime Minister of Ireland, a couple newspaper columnists, and a crazy Danish man who hates the EU. I entered into the Maiden's Debate next week. It's for people who have not done British Parliamentary-style debating before (which includes me, even though I am two years older than most of the competition...shhh!). I will be promoting the legalization of ecstasy in Ireland. What has 2 thumbs and needs some good luck? This guy (points to himself with thumbs)!

I also joined the Environmental Society. This Saturday I will be either working on a community garden or clearing invasive non-native species of plants outside Dublin with them. I am also a member of the Food and Drink club. They put on events related to food each week (although they are falling behind already, because I have not heard anything about this week yet) and finagle sweet deals on restaurant food in the City Centre.

That was a really long digression from talking about classes. Well then.

I will be taking either 3 or 4 classes. Locked in are the Economics of Less Developed Countries and Irish Politics. Economics, etc. is taught by an engaging professor who sounds like he's English, but grew up in one of the exotic places that the English terrorized - I mean colonized. It will be a fun class that has a little more depth than a typical Econ class. Irish Politics is taught by a columnist from the Irish Times who specializes in political corruption. Good thing she is here in a Catholic country, because we all know that Protestant countries don't have as much corruption.

The other classes I am looking at taking, but have not committed to yet are European Economy and Democracy & Development. There hasn't been a lecture for the latter, and the former involved a lot of work, so it is teetering on the edge of falling off of my schedule.

Today I decided I was going to take a few pictures of rather mundane things that I see every day. Actually, I think they're kinda cool, but you probably won't.

This is a walkway above part of the library at TCD. It's like their saying, "Hey, Louvre! We can do it too!"

I walk up this street most days to campus. There is a lot of money to be spent on this street. Expensive cocktail bars and Michelin stars line the avenue.

St Stephen's Green in the fall is beautiful.

A station for a sweet bike sharing program. If I only had a utility bill to prove that I "live here" I could be on campus in like 6 minutes every day.

Where I cross the train tracks for the Luas on the way to campus. My goal for while I am here is to get suction cups on my hands and feet and jump on the Luas train as it went by to avoid paying fare.

This sign is really fucking huge. Like a story and a half. It also calls their opponents crazy.

See how big it is? That is a full sized umbrella that goes over a table.

The Beginning of Paris

2009-09-27T17:02:00.001-07:00

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

2009-09-18T07:30:00.000-07:00

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?

2009-09-14T10:38:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-08T10:19:00.001-07:00

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

2009-09-05T11:01:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-02T16:01:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-01T11:43:00.000-07:00

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.

Jet Lag is barely an excuse anymore

2009-08-30T14:44:00.000-07:00

It also can't shield how little storage space I have in my apartment. Or how close my bed is to Victor's. But we have a large "European" flat. And we're in a gated community. Not like there is in Deephaven or Ladue, but still. Here are some snapshots of the place that I call home:

Today we did orientation stuff most of the day. Logistics, cultural awareness, etc. We had lunch on the IES Abroad dime and stopped in a pub next door to watch the semi-final of the Gaelic Athletic Association Football. Gaelic football is so HXC, or hardcore for you lameos. People are hitting and smashing and creaming each other. We then hopped on up to our Orientation for the Semster Start-Up program for Trinity. It's a 3 week class before the beginning of the real semester (since they can't call anything the same thing Americans call it, it's called Michaelmas) called Understanding Ireland. From what I understood at the orientation, it's that Irish professors hound their students if they don't drink all the wine they bought. Following that, the flatmates and I called it a night and came home, ready to start classes at 9 tomorrow morn.

Evening in Ranelagh

2009-08-30T01:10:00.000-07:00

Ranelagh is pronounced ren-uh-luh. Just to make that clear.

We went to get some dinner at a pub and have our first pint of real Guinness. We saw the lovely pub called Smyth's right down the road. It looked like a good enough place:

We got in, and found out that their kitchen was already closed. We left disappointed, but intent on returning later in the evening, because, dammit we are in the place that every American defines by drinking. We went to the Gourmet Burger Company, which was very good. All the food was locally sourced! I could turn the menu over and see the name and place that the beef or lamb farmer was. It was a very nice thing to stumble upon. I don't think I'll have the money to find that type of food very often though. I had a lamb burger with coriander relish. It was delicious and as big as the Giant's Causeway.

So, filled with delicious lamb, we went back to Smyth's Pub, ready for our first REAL Guinness. Ready for the banter of the Irish people, the smooth head on the dark beer, and the good comraderie I had in Jenna and my roommates Victor and Ethan. Good thing we only had to be 18 to drink in Ireland. WRONG. The sign posted above the bar: Only 21 Plus Served. IDs Needed.

What the hell?!? I thought I came here so that I could drink (legally) before I was 21. That wasn't the reason I came here, but definitely a perk. The first feckin pub I hit won't serve me. Shit.

Luckily, as we left we saw the next storefront over. It was called Humphrey's Grocer. Here's the thing, it wasn't a grocer. It was a pub. Next to a pub. It was like Oshkosh, WI, only not so slimy. So we had our first pint at Humphrey's

I know, I was moving during the pic. Shut up.

I walked Jenna to her hostel and watched the curry and halal shops close up on the way back. There are crazy amounts of them, and shops in general.

First Day Highlights

2009-08-29T15:58:00.000-07:00

So, I got in at about 9 this morning, that's 3 am in Minnesota. Ireland does this thing where they "randomly" make visiting students register and pay 150 Euro to be here. It's pretty much like a shakedown, or like paying protection money to the mob. From my comments, you can probably tell that I have to pay it. Well, can't complain to much about it now except bitch and moan.

We eventually (we being my girlfriend Jenna - who is traveling with me and leaving Sunday for her study abroad in Paris - and me) got to my apartment in Ranelagh, a Dublin neighborhood. The apartment is very spacious for Europe, or so I hear. The beds are single, not extra-longs, with 2 per room that is the size of an actual queen bed. There is little closet space. But, those are the downsides. We have a great terrace and amazing kitchen. The location is good, right near the Luas (the tram), and it is very quiet going by, like an air conditioner starting. Pictures tomorrow.

We went to Grafton St., the big shopping street with fancy places like United Colors of Bennetton and Vodaphone (tongue is in my cheek for the last one). We walked through Trinity College's campus and I thought, "Holy Shit! I'm actually going to this school, not just paying to tour it!" Over and over again.

We went and did some food and pubbing in Ranelagh, but I'm tired so I'll talk about that fun later.

I wrote this yesterday on the plane

2009-08-29T15:06:00.000-07:00

I’m writing this while over Newfoundland. Fun fact: The Vikings came here way back when Vikings did stuff (not the Minnesota Vikings, who did nothing substantial until they signed a quarterback who I used to like. I wonder if I’ll hear anything about the NFL in Ireland). The Danish Vikings also founded Dublin. Funny how things transition so well. Kevin Bacon has to come into play here soon, right?

So far, my flights have been just fine. We sat on the tarmac for about 45 minutes before we took off from both Minneapolis and Chicago. The guy on in front of me on my flight over the “pond” was pretty fun. He was the first Irishman I interacted with. He had a nearly uncompromising accent and was very nice. He switched seats so my girlfriend could sit next to each other. He later had to be cut off by the flight attendant from his beers and his Jack. Good first interaction. More to come for you masses of loyal readers.

Afterword: I didn't get much sleep, and we landed well. Here's what I saw as I came in.

T-Minus 1 Week

2009-08-21T10:43:00.000-07:00

Well, I am leaving for Dublin next Friday. That's one week from now. I'm very excited - I've wanted to spend time in Dublin and Europe for a long time - but at the same time, I am getting nervious.

There is a hell of a lot of work to do between now and next week, and I'm not even sure what most of it is. Either way, it's not like I'll be camping in Yosemite, so I'll be able to buy anything I forget. It's easy to forget that.

What comes next on An American in Eire? Well, I am going to talk a lot about the food and drink I eat and search for. I am a "foodie" and passionate about sustainable food (and I'm serious - I've read more than just Michael Pollan). I'll also share my other adventures and the fun quirks I find about the new country.