Ireland!

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I almost feel like saying I’m back in Ireland, but then I’ve never actually been here. The trip from Barcelona went off without a hitch, despite having to take an hour and a half long bus ride up to Girona airport at eight, catching the flight and taking two busses to Newcastle west where Laura and Nate picked us up. Maybe it’s the absence of a language barrier, but the Irish really have seemed much friendlier than the continentals. Anyway, Mike arrived two days after Mat and I did and we drove south into Cork for the day. We walked around for a bit but really did not end up seeing too much since the guys were very focused on pubs and getting their fill of stout. I think we are planning on going to Cork again tomorrow to visit some breweries and distilleries (hopefully), because there is apparently an excellent traditional music store there. I have a vision of finding the holy grail of Celtic music stores, so hopefully that will work out. Today we drove west for about an hour to Killarney, where we walked about for a bit, saw a castle, and ate. Then we came back to the castle, got dressed, and had a wonderful meal in Adare, which is about thirty five minutes north of the castle.
The castle is really very cool, in my opinion even more so than the Chateau. It is a large structure, big enough to house all nine of us very comfortably while probably more than half the castle remains in ruins. It has a history running back to the 1400’s and little bits of its history are strewn about the castle; from the portraits that adorn the wall to Lord Muskerry’s various awards to the fine silver adorned with the Muskerry motto “Forit et Fidele Nihil Difficille” or “Nothing is difficult for the faithful and strong”. The experience of arriving at the place is also rather magnificent: you pull into a entrance framed by dark stone inscribed with the motto and some Gaelic words and then continue for almost an entire kilometer along a dirt path lined all the way with trees that overhang enough to make the driveway seem like a tunnel. After the sinister entrance, the green tunnel is oddly both foreboding and comfortable as your eyes strain to the end of the road that remains obscured by greenery, like train tracks in the jungle. At last, you reach the end of the road to find a field filled with deer on your right (they’re farmed for meat) and a sizeable castle whose bright cascades of summer foliage belie the clearly bellicose intentions of the architect. The flowers almost seem to poke fun at the arrow slits, as if to say that their vigilance is an unnecessary relic of a bygone era. Yet they continue to eye the road suspiciously. They look for Cromwell and his English invaders and find themselves overrun by suitcase wielding tourists mounted on Nissan rental cars (formidable enemies despite being unaccustomed to a manual driver’s side right operation). They look ridiculous now in the almost constant sunlight (we are further north than Vancouver), but I’ll bet during the winter they don’t look half so silly. During those long, dark, and rainy winter nights you might still see Cromwell’s armies advancing if you squint. (Cromwell’s armies did come here, but the lord preferred to burn the castle rather than leave it for the English) I think this castle is emblematic of the way the Irish relate to their history: passionately, but with a grain of salt and a good measure of humor.
As for the future, I’m less certain. We are leaving on Saturday and maybe Mat, Mike, and I will head to Dublin: I have yet to experience a session. Beyond that, I don’t know. I think Mat and Mike are pretty much finished traveling, so I have quite a bit of time to kill before my TESOL certification program begins on the tenth of July. I have come to a bit of a realization about traveling, a little bit simpler than the one I described in Barcelona. Really, one is either vacationing and doing all of the kind of tourist/resort kind of stuff a tourist does, working, or taking classes. I just did not anticipate being in a Chateau in France or a Castle in Ireland and not having anything to do. Aside from our heart stopping football (soccer) matches on the lawn (who needs the world cup?) and our occasional excursions, we really don’t do very much from day to day at these places. I don’t even read that much since I do not have access to a library or a bookstore and we can not exactly go out and absorb ourselves in the culture. Really these places are more about retreating than anything else. The same thing kind of happened to Mat and I in Spain. Imagine flying into California without knowing anyone living there, spending two days in San Diego, then maybe three in LA, and then spending a week in a nice house in Santa Barbara: it’s not that it isn’t fun or nice, but you’re not really connecting with people and yet that’s the main reason I want to travel. Also, being young and unable to really do the tourist thing, since we can’t rent a car or do anything like that, there are limits to what we can do. In Barcelona Mat and I would get up in the morning and just kind of wander around since we didn’t know what to do besides see the sights and eat. After a while one just starts to get antsy. I think that is why Mike and Mat want to head back to Denver and why I am maybe going to travel around Ireland a bit more and try to get started in Barcelona early. Hopefully they will have something for me to do, especially since they say that they get us started teaching the third day of the program. I visited the place before I left Barcelona and the place looks very well run. I think I’ll enjoy it. Well, that’s the word from the Emerald Isle, and I hope everyone is doing well.

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Comments

[Kate Hetland]

Wow, I do hope you found the Holy Grail of Celtic music. Can't wait to hear what you found in the fall.