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Published: February 2nd 2009
Valentia Lighthouse
and no, its not a painting...thats actually a photo!Time for a confession!
Those of you who have been reading my earlier blogs will know that I recently expressed a preemptive apology for what I had done but that you had not been made aware of. And well now its time for me to clarify that a little better. Actually, it isn't really an apology for what I had done but more so an apology for where I had been and not told you. And if you still have not realised by the title of this blog....yes thats not your eyes decieving you. I have been back to Ireland (for a very very short time though in my defence, it has to be said) and up to now, most of you were still unaware of it!
And unfortunately my apologies can not stop there either......for I need to apologise to all my Austrian friends too for I have decieved them also! I was only a few hours down the train line in Budapest and I hate to say that I never got over to see you too! But I will one of these days! Ok, I am sitting in a sun soaked garden in Queensland, Australia as I
Sunset in Co. Cork!
Who would have thought that Youghal strand could have been so pretty? write this so the chances of getting to you in the near futire are slim to say the least but I will one of these days! After all, my travelling days are not over just yet!
So when did this happen I hear you ask....well I left Borneo and headed to Singapore as I had told you in my last blog. And I was enroute to Darwin as I had said. What I forgot to mention was that the Singapore-Darwin flight somehow managed to have stopovers in Budapest and Dublin! How strange is that?
My initial stop was Budapest, to meet up with the lovely Mojca who had left me in Malyasia. She was now back in Europe continuing her Phd studies. Touching down in Hungary as the grip of winters cold tightened came as a bit of a shock for me. Especially as a week before I had been trekking tropical jungle in the heart of Borneo. There must have been more than 30 degrees of a temperature change from getting into the plane in Asia and getting out of it in Europe. It was so great to catch up with Mojca again. Things hadn't change with
I can fly!!!
Though Cathriona isn't convinced! her, still as mad as ever (in a good way of course), though this time she was deep into her studies so she did not have the free time to act as tour guide. She had already over stayed her time in Asia, missing weeks of her study so now she was actually very busy trying to play catch up. She did however, live in a city center apartment and so I was right in the heart of things to go and explore for myself. The cold wasn't the only noticable difference between Budapest and my earlier destinations in Asia. For one thing....it was so God damn clean...everyplace. Now compared to a lot of cities in Asia this may not be too hard to do, but even compard to Ireland, I found the city to be spotless. Not a thing out of place. And of course everything seemed to be finished to the highest standards. The Austro-Hungarian empire had left some fantastic architecture and there were examples of this all over the place. Now I won't go into a history lesson here, all I will say is that day after day I wandered the cities side streets. Looking for nothing
in particular, just exploring, and street after street there was something new to amaze. And what amazed me most was that these buildings were of no great significance. In cities like Dublin, if you were to come across buildings of such dominance, it would almost certainly be a government building or a major office headquarters of some kind. But not in Budapest, In Budapest even the quite streets were exploding with great architecture.
Thankfully though, Mojca managed to find time to show me a watering hole or two while I was there. And between us we even managed a trip to her local Irish pub where we drank the most over priced Guinness I have ever tasted, coming in at over 6 euro a pint....we only had the one! And it was not that nice to tell you the truth! Stay clear of Longfords Irish pub if you go to Budapest!
Over the course of my stay one of the most interesting things I got to see was the infamous "House of Terror". This was the actual building that the communists used as an interrogation center while they were in power in Hungary. And now it has been
transformed into a state of the art museum and multimedia exhibition. Now to be honest, museums and me are never the best of friends. I often get bored twenty minutes in, but this one really held my attention and come 6pm when the guards came to close up I realised that I had ended up spending most of the afternoon walking around it. You got to experience everything from walking through the prison cells in the basement where prisoners were actually held captive to walking through rooms and listening to interviews with people that managed to survive their time in the house. Some of their stories were extremely saddening and I could not help but think back to Cambodia and S21 prison in Pnom Penh and drawing unfortunate similarities to the stories that I had heard there too.
And from Budapest in was one more quick flight and hello Dublin!! And good old Mojca had stumbled upon the suitcase once more and I was delighted that she found the time to come. We both realised that her university studies would not thank her for it next week but we had both also decided to temporarily ignore that fact. Landing
in Dublin we were met by my good old house mates who put us up for the night. Coming from Asia..and even from Budapest where it is possible to pick up a beer from almost any shop at almost anytime of the day or night, poor Mojca had found real difficulty in coming to terms with the fact that at half past eleven at night there was no where in Dublin to get a beer to bring back to the house. And for the matter no pub to go and drink a beer in unless we were willing to go right into the city center and to a late licence bar. Ireland after all seems to carry such a reputaion for its beer drinkers all across the world? To be fair to Mojca though, it wasn't just her that was a little confused. After being away for those months, I had completely forgot that pubs and off licences closed so early too.
Now, I am sure none of you want to hear the ins and outs of what I did in Ireland when I was back, so I wont bore you with all the detail. Needless to say, all
that you are concerned about is that I did not say hello! And as I said, I do apologise for that too but in my defence it was just a fleeting visit. Though the weather was absolutely horrible when I was home with heavy rains and winds over 100km/h we did still manage to get in a little road trip and between myself and Mojca, we took some lovely photographs around the place. I have put a few of them up just to prove to you that I was actually there and that this isn't just some strange dream that I had. And a word of warning...if the wind dial is registering gusts of 110km/h, take my advice and avoid the Cliffs of Moher! Mojca, myself, mam and Cathriona went to Clare for the day and how one of us didn't end up swimming in Boston harbour I do not know! It was wicked! We actually all had to hold onto each other the way we could keep from being blown back. We decided that it was safer in the end to keep away from the higher parts of the cliff and so we just had a quick look from
the lower part before heading to the new interpretive center. The center is free to visit....its the car park that is 12 euro to get out of!!!!
Unfortunately we didnt get to bring Mojca to any "Trad" music sessions while we were there but instead we managed to give her the next best thing. We were no sooner in the doors of the kitchen at home when (dont ask me what started it?) but there was some rooting about done in the back room, the "didily-i" tapes were found and dusted off and before we knew it there was the makings of the siege of Ennis happening on the Kitchen floor. Now, I personally think that I was the best dancer there, others (aka everyone) may disagree but whatever the case, legs and arms were being flung about the place and Riverdance was taking on a whole new meaning in the Kenny houselhold. Mojca, Mam, Cathriona, Michael and myself were hoping about the place to beat the band....so much so that the blinds on the window had to be pulled down in case anyone drove into the yard and saw us. They would have called for the men in
the white jackets straight away! Before we finished Mojca repaid the complement by teaching us a Slovienian traditional dance. How to descibe it? It is a bit like the stance two wrestlers take. Each with their hands grabbed about the others neck....the back of the neck, not the front! We were not trying to strangle each other! From there you started a circular dance in time with the tune picking up the speed at which you turned in a circle as the song went on. And while you turned in a circle you also moved around the dance (aka kitchen) floor in a broad circular motion also.......dizzying to say the least! I do not even like the Waltzers at a funfair! This was just like the waltzers...only you didn't have to pay!
And from the short stay in Ireland, it was back on a flight to Hungary again where I spent a little more time before getting my connecting return flight to Singapore and straight onto Darwin. Now that was an interesting trip. I left Budapest on a Saturday afternoon and I arrived in Darwin on the Monday morning...and the turbulance was so so bad for the trip that
I did not sleep a wink for the entire duration of the flights. In fact when I landed in Singapore for a stopover, it was straight to the pharmacy to get some anti sickness tablets. My stomach was in bits from the jumping up and down the plane did enroute. Actually I have to stop writing about it because even the thought of it now has my stomach in bits again.
It was that time of year again and the christmas markets had began appearing on the streets of Budapest so on the night before I finally left we paid a visit to one of them and gorged, not sampled....not tasted....not even feasted....but "seven deadly sins 'gulteny' style" devoured our way through copious amounts of protein filled meat! Our eyes were a lot bigger than our stomachs and I was nominated to finish off the plate.....and we were so stuffed to the guills after it. We still however managed room for a few beers with her college mates after.
And then that was it! Time to head to the airport and to the sun once more. It was so so nice to have gotten back, no matter how
brief the visit was. To be honest, it would have been much nicer to be able to have spent the Christmas holidays there too but I knew I had to go back. My gut was telling me that my days of travelling were not over yet. I had set out to conquer the world and my work was not finished yet. Okay, not in your Christopher Columbus sort of way....not even in your "Uncle Travelling Matt" of Fraggile Rock fame sort of way, but none-the-less it was something that I had to do for myself and now was my time to do it.
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james bonsall
non-member comment
You were in Ireland
We've all figured it out Aidan. You wanted to get your P45 sorted and emigrate now that you know the recession has hit. Don't worry about not seeing any of us - we all fecked off to Australia for the weekend!