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Published: June 19th 2005
Stone Arches and Serene Gardens
Christ Church Cathedral in DublinChange of plans...and continents.
As Paolo Coelho writes in The Alchemist, when you are following your dreams and pursuing your own personal legend, the whole universe conspires to help you achieve it. As such, it is hard not to recognize that certain opportunities which fall right into your lap are most likely signs of which road to take next on your journey of life.
It was only a few short weeks ago that I was settling into a life reminiscent of my early high school days - with no car and no real job, I spent my days helping around the house, leaving the refuge of my parents’ home by bicycle to research my newest ideas of travel ventures at the town library or walking over to my sister’s to visit with the niece and nephews. I had lined up a two week job detasseling corn in northern Illinois, which, despite the general consensus from loved ones on the reaction expressed by friend Jason - “What? Jen working in the corn fields? That’s gotta be the most hilarious thing I’ve ever heard!” - I was rather excited about, as it had good short-term money-making potential to fund my return
Top of Cathedral
Testing out the new cam's 10x zoom capabilities... to Central America for some more Spanish and scuba study. And I had also lined up an interview with a Japanese language school at its branch office in Chicago, to hopefully arrange a job teaching English there next January, so that I would be free to travel until my money ran out!
And then in the midst of all my planning, fate seemed to intervene and drop a job offer in my inbox. Initially, despite my excitement at this unexpected twist, this option had a lot of things going against it... not least of all the fact that I would really only be making enough money to live, and would therefore be foregoing any opportunity to save more money for my travel fund. But there was this nagging little whisper inside of me that spoke to my heart with the same impatience of a spoiled five year old directing his benevolently generous grandmother towards the candy store, “Come on! This way!” And despite the rather sketchy details regarding my position or the establishment I would be working for, I took a leap of faith and landed back in Rome.
The 11 day notice between accepting the position and
moving to another continent did, however, present a few challenges; particularly since I was not even in the right State to pack all my belongings up and was at the mercy of my parents and the horribly unsubstantial US public transportation systems to get around. But after a complete blur of a week and a half of laundry, to-do lists, cardboard boxes, legal documents, and stacks of clothes, I made it to Chicago with one last night out in the States to spare.
My friend Jeremy, who keeps graciously putting me up whenever I seem to be transiting through Chi-town, met me at the el station after my Greyhound ride to the city, and we went out with two of his friends to this “block party.” I use quotes only to distinguish this from any “chum up with the neighbors over the BBQ” notion you might have of a block party ... it was an amazingly fun time with well over a thousand people hanging out on the lawns in front of the two stages they had set up, washing down funnel cakes or pad thai with beers as we rocked to Queens of the Stone Age. And despite
the sleepless night of packing frenzy I had suffered the night before, I just couldn’t deny the nightlife lover in me from heading over to Copa afterwards for some cosmos and dancing until bar time.
Of course, the next day an Italian saying kept popping into my mind, “Di notte leone, di giorno coglione…” (Translating not nearly as poetically in English to “Who is a lion by night is a dork by day.”) Battling traffic that was as thick as the storm clouds gathering overhead, I felt my blood pressure rising as the clock moved forward faster than we did. Jer reassured me when the lightning started, “Jen, it’s O’hare…they’re ALWAYS delayed; with this weather you’ll have no problem.” So my wish for a delay came true and I checked in without a hitch, but of course that wish came back to bite me in the ass … I was so tired I thought I was going to die, yearning for the boarding to start so that I could just pass out in my airline seat. Instead, everytime I went back to the gate after wandering around, the flight was delayed some more. In the end the flight was
delayed 3 hours and 5 of us on the plane missed our connection from Boston that night. After discovering that the next flight to Shannon wasn’t until the following evening at 9 pm, I decided this extreme layover would be great fun, as I had never been to Boston before and could spend the whole day running around town. My body wasn’t up for it though apparently, because I slept straight through until 2 pm, thereby also missing both breakfast and lunch. However, I did talk the waitress at the fabulous restaurant downstairs into accepting all 3 of my meal vouchers for dinner so I could partake in a Japanese feast cooked right before me at the table. And when I finally got re-checked in and had a new boarding pass issued, I noticed that American upgraded me to first class. Sweet.
However, that whole Boston ordeal severely inhibited my ability to deal with the jet lag and cost me one of only three and a half days that I had to spend in Ireland en route to Italy (finding a one way flight to Europe in summer on 10 days’ notice is not exactly cheap… so I luckily
got a good deal to Ireland and could fly RyanAir to Italy, and got a good excuse to stop in one of the few western European countries I hadn’t yet hit!), so I decided to head straight to Dublin upon arrival. Despite having met a lot of Brits, Aussies, and English-speaking Africans, I have never spent much time in another English-speaking country (I don’t really count Malta since their general everyday conversation with each other was in Maltese rather than English). So I was already mildly entertained by the choice of expressions I heard on the plane. Because rather than the more obvious differences of altogether different words for the same things like boot, gearbox, trainers, or biscuit instead of trunk, stick shift, tennis shoes, or cookie, I found it curious how, even though all the words make sense to you, an expression can sound so absolutely bizarre. For instance, “Would you like coffee? -Yes- White or black?” or the flight attendant walking the aisle gathering up the remains of our breakfast asking “Any last empties? Any last empties?” No wonder I have this stereotype of the Irish as laughing merrymakers; just these little phrases spouted out in the Irish
accent made me giggle. (OK, I hadn’t slept the whole plane ride; I wasn’t quite of sane mind.)
Perhaps it is the perpetual gray of the clouds that makes the landscape seem so verdant, but when we finally broke through the cloud cover about 60 seconds before landing, my heart did a little Irish jig when my eyes were greeted with the land of 10,000 shades of green. Even greener than I had imagined. Since I had to forego the rural trip I had planned, I felt compelled to try to at least stay awake on the bus ride to see a bit of the countryside that I was going to miss. I succeeded at that until my transfer in Limerick, but once I got on the bus to Dublin, the scenery was really no match for my fatigue. In fact, other than the occasional crumbling stone tower rising up from the fields, the scenery was no more exciting than driving through rural Wisconsin: green rolling hills, farms and small towns, and lots of cows grazing. I guess for some reason I had expected to see sheep instead, because that was the one thing that kind of phased me.
Anyway, between drifting in and out of my naps, I would pause to observe the cute little towns we stopped in. And it struck me that something was severely missing.... it was excitement. I’m sure that there are some other bloggers on this site who share my sentiment when I say that traveling is the ultimate rush, particularly the beginning of journey, where I can scarcely sleep the first few nights because I am so full of anticipation for what I will discover the next day. So this blasè feeling I was having about being in Ireland was not only very uncharacteristic, but the disappointment threw me into a temporary state of panic on whether I had made a horrible mistake in deciding to move back to Europe. Because if I was feeling this mediocre about some new place I’d wanted to see for a long time, how on earth was I going to feel upon returning to city I’d lived in for 8 months already? Perhaps because I actually found the chaos and crowds and noise of Central America endearing, the order and personal space and subdued bus chats that surrounded me now lulled me into boredom. My first
Crosses
Christ Church Cathedral trip out of the States after traveling through developing countries was like listening to one of those bubble gum top 40 songs right after a Janis Joplin hit: not totally unpleasant, but too conventionally sweet and intentionally catchy to inspire you after the earthy, raw, soul-filled tunes you just heard.
However, Dublin has some groovy things going for it. I got there in the early afternoon after a half marathon had just finished, so the streets were a mosaic of the different colored T-shirts of the various groups that had participated. On the pedestrian shopping streets, while I navigated between the islands of t-shirted window shoppers browsing some of the best shoes I’ve seen in Europe (now that I see what’s for offer in Rome, I’m quite disappointed that I didn’t shop in Dublin!) and the rest of the well-dressed Irish public doing their consumeristic duty to promote the Celtic Tiger’s economy, I heard at least 7 different languages being spoken. Although I only was there a couple days, I met so many people living and working in Ireland from all over Europe and Africa, which definitely made this place score points in my book, because I love a
Drunk Irishman
Somehow the blurriness of this photo seems to do more justice to the moment than if it were clear... good cultural melting pot.
I wandered around Christ Church Cathedral and then meandered through the Temple Bar district, which is full of pubs and restaurants and artsy boutiques. Ireland has passed legislation that bans smoking in all the pubs and restaurants and such, so they all have to have their smokes in the streets like proper outcasts now. As I rounded one corner, I actually laughed out loud when I saw the swarms of people still in their marathon shirts surrounding the pubs, sitting on the sidewalks, curbs, and spilling out into the streets with their ciggies in one hand and Guiness in the other. But hey, that’s part of the Irish charm - they’re all out in search of good crack. OK, it’s craic, but that’s what it sounds like, and it means more or less a fun environment where you’re having a great time, from what I gather. The pub scene was lively and funny, full of tall tales, stout, and good old fashioned heckling. I paid tribute to this timeless national tradition with two Irish guys, Patrick and Bryan, who kept me laughing with their insights into life as modern Dubliners, and due to the early
Marathon + Smokes + Beer =
Another day at the pub in Dublin! bar times, was still back home in my bed shortly after midnight.
The next day I walked around near the Dublin Castle before I visited Trinity College and saw the famous Book of Kells and the ancient library, which was beautiful and had this smell that I won’t forget: something between a dusty attic and a cedar jewelery box, which was a welcome change to the rest of the city, which for some odd reason seemed to smell like french fries everywhere. At any rate, Trinity College is a beautiful place, with its ivy-covered classic stone fortresses of higher learning, it just
looks academic, you know? Even before touring around the campus, I had determined that Dublin would be a good place to study: it’s a pretty low key, laidback place, the weather wouldn’t inspire me to want to do much outdoors, which is good for studying, and the pubs all close early, which would help you get up for those early morning classes. Plus, as in many university towns, they seem to have a healthy enlightened population, evidenced by the the number of people wearing the “End Poverty Now” campaign bracelets and by the Oxfam and Amnesty International
cafes where you could buy fair trade chocolate bars or coffees as you perused books and signed petitions for human rights.
On the suggestion of my Irish acquaintances from the prior evening, I took a stroll among the flowers and ponds in St. Stephen’s Green, which Brian had told me was “the largest green space in a European urban center.” It is lovely and spacious, but whoever told him that had either had way too many Guinesses or had never been outside of Ireland, because I can think of no less than three park areas in Berlin, Rome, and Vienna that are surely much larger. (In fact I walked through only a half of Villa Borghese last week and it took me well over an hour, whereas St. Stephen’s Green was fully navigated in the course of 35 minutes.)
As I headed back later that night and found myself wandering aimlessly, I happened to pass a bar with a flyer in the window that there was salsa that night...outstanding! I went back to the hostel to throw on my heels and get gloves to go with that wool coat of mine and headed back for an evening of dancing. True to the cosmopolitan social makeup of the city, I found myself dancing with an instructor from Mongolia, two Nigerians who had moved there from Germany, as well as the green-eyed, red-haired, freckle-faced ‘born and raised’ Irishman. When the Latin tunes stopped around midnight, I headed back to the hostel and had an interesting conversation with this younger but very bright kid from San Diego about the WTO. He had never even heard of the WTO before, so I had to go on to explain why, as a member not only of the world but as a citizen of a country that had so much to do with its founding and support, he really needed to educate himself and those around him about this most heinous violator of democracy which champions profits over all people’s health, safety, and welfare.
Ironically, when I was stuck for a 5 hour delay in the plane on the tarmac in London the next day, it was precisely these evils of the world rule of hypercapitalistic super-corporations that found their way into my conversation with the two English grannies I was seated next to. I marveled at just how many grievances in modern society are attributable to this takeover of power by giant MNCs as I listened to their complaints about the current shopping alternatives in Britain: “All the little shopowners that know just how you want your meat sliced or how many buns you buy on Friday afternoons - they’ve all had to close up because these giant supermarkets have come in. And everything is pre-packaged; it’s not fresh. The food tasted better when you could buy it fresh: your bread from the baker, your produce from the greengrocer, your meat from the butcher, and your staples from the corner general store where the owner knew your name and was there to help you carry your packages to the car. I just can’t get what I want anymore.” So much for the idea that private corporate efficiency best fits the needs of the market.
They lamented that their grandchildren would never know that old way of shopping because they were growing up in a “one size fits all” society where the giant companies dictated what our preferences are. Luckily, we were all on a plane to Rome together, so I could console them with the thought that they could have a one week walk through yester-year; for the championing of small business in Italy and the joy of shopping exactly as they had described is part of the country’s everyday appeal. But that’s another chapter....
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neil kane
non-member comment
its the Phoenix park...............
This is Dublin's playground - the largest urban enclosed park in Europe, with a Circumference of 11km (7m) and a total area of 712 hectares (1,760 acres). Situated 3km (2m) west of the city centre. Ornamental gardens, nature trails, and broad expanses of grassland, separated by avenues of trees, including oak, beech, pine, chestnut, and lime. Livestock graze peacefully on pasturelands, 1000 deer roam the forested areas, and horses romp on polo fields. Regards