Sunday, January 12, 2014

In which we delight in Dublin (Part II).



Partial-Sun-day was Excursion Day to Howth, a (village on a) peninsula on the north-east loop of Dublin Bay, accessed by a lovely stretch of road along the coast. An unexpected something crossed my eye while riding the bus along this route, observing all the swanky houses and their palm trees in the… wait – palm trees? Why does this look like California? Where are the green cliffs dotted with sheepies? That’s not really the green I was expecting to see on this balmy island, but there they were. All over. Hoorah for temperate climates.


As it turns out, the green cliffs were located on the other side of the road, across the bay. The bus took us through the village and up up up to the peak of the unusually elevated peninsula, which allowed us a splendid view of the bay and dramatic cloud show. We braced ourselves to brave the blowing breezes and wandered the cliff paths. After all the fun and silly surprises of the last couple days, I was content to be exploring an Irish scene that matched the Ireland that I’d always had in mind. The greens, browns, reds of the grasses were richly darkened against the deepening clouds overhead and contrasted brilliantly with the gray-blue water. The winds added an element of uncanniness as we neared the Baily Lighthouse, their whooshing through the powerlines overhead inspiring them to sing with a confidence not usually exhibited by inanimate objects. It reminded me of a dark night in a tiny Dutch fishing village a couple years ago, where the wind played the web of sailboats in the harbor, singing like the would-be lovechild of a harp and bagpipes. Then I checked the clouds for cicadas.








We managed to scoot our way around the cliffs without getting blown into the ocean and arrived at the edge of the willage just in time to see divers jumping the plank off of a mini-island, their doggies yipping and scampering about as their papis kept appearing and disappearing with a kersploosh. The venture continued out onto the harbor pier, where the wind flexed its muscles more and more heartily. There we picnicked under the cover of a wind-breaker wall while a couple young lads did tricks on their jet skis (or as Wikipedia has enlightened me, “personal water crafts (PWC)”), leaving the little brother to his own defences on his own too-big leisure machine. Wandering around the willage afterward, I made a point to pick up some luscious, sour-smelling, fresh-out-of-the-oven brown bread at a bakery to import back to the Deutschland / make sure my backpack wasn’t too light on the airplane. Afterward we found ourselves in a church to enjoy a moment of sitting out of the wind. The small church choir was rehearsing, one wobbly soprano soaring over the rest and a couple swiftly boreding children sitting/standing/hopping about on the steps nearby. 







Rewarmed, we headed back down the hill to the other side of the harbor to smell the fishes and eventually ended up in a small French café, gussied up more than usual for the holidays. There was quiet sinking into a couch amidst all our outer layers, warm and sugary beverages, and buttery pastries to fuel us back to the bus and home again home again in the wafting darkness, jiggidy jig. A large family dinner that night was the cherry to top the delicious sundae of hospitality that I had so appreciated over the last couple of days – thanks to all involved for that.





One more point that I forgot to mention earlier – Ireland is small. Not small like “Whoville”-small or “Monaco”-small, of course, but small enough that if you’re from there, “it’s likely that your degree of separation from most other people will be pretty minimal”-small. ‘Course this doesn’t mean that the whole place is festooned with incest, only that I was continually hearing stories such as, “Oh, yeah, that prominent politician went to my school” or “That father belongs to one of my cubs” or “The lady two from the left with the red antlers used to sing in the…”, etc. Not quite to the same extreme as in Iceland, though, where a genealogy website + smartphone app was created to help people avoid dating relatives.

Anyway. I was back at the airport early early the next morning and watched the sun rise as I made the long trek to the ryanair terminal, stealing all glory from the tacky Christmas trees dotting the corridor. There was also this hilarious thing in the bathroom:




The planerise took the eye candy to a much higher level – long tree shadows stretching over green fields, clouds like whoa, and oh! That’s Howth! Wading in the golden waves. A send-off that was not for me, though I enjoyed it like it was.





Thursday, January 9, 2014

In which we delight in Dublin (Part I).



Dublin, December 2013: The mini-trip that almost didn’t happen thanks to a little storm named Xaver. Big winds, rains, hales, snows and such were forecasted for the afternoon & night preceding travel day, cancelling flights far in advance and causing my boss to send the whole department home early. The predicted celestial mess did in fact arrive as anticipated and its hurricane-esque winds plus high tide managed to up the Elbe, which was quite content to make itself comfortable all over the harbor and HafenCity. My warm, soup-flooded apartment provided a cozy contrast to the trees whipping at the windows, to the rain, to the hale, and the couple excursions onto the balcony were short-lived to say the least. The winds were still blowing when I arose in the December darkness the next morning and debated whether or not to attempt the risky travel shenanigans that lay ahead, namely S-Bahn to Hauptbahnhof, then train-Bahn to Bremen, then to airport. As my telephone is not of the particularly intelligent variety, I wouldn’t be able to check to see if my flight had been cancelled before taking the hour+ train ride to the airport -- that is, if the trains were running. The internet reported that the flight was still on-time by the time I needed to leave and I did very much want to visit my Darling Dubliner, so off I went. S-Bahn was late but running, trains were totally out of whack at the Hauptbahnhof but I was able to catch an extremely delayed one to my desired destination and got there with more than enough time to spare.

Trains leaving Hamburg going south always get a spectacular view of the harbor and steepled skyline, and in this case, of flooding galore. The train had been barely crawling down the track for about 15 minutes when the conductor announced that all the power had gone out at the Hauptbahnhof, meaning that they were driving in an unsafe state of non-communicado. Power and safety were soon reunited and we were on our way through a healthy mix of sun, sleet, rain, and snow. Got to the airport far too early and kicked back in the ryanair warehouse upper level, enjoying the sun that visited now and again along with the other passengers in front of me, though without the Rotkäppchen sparkling wine.






The view leaving Bremen was worth the trek in itself, showing off an excellent cloud display, storm-snowy fields, and more flooding – all of which look pretty cheery through a lens of bright sunshine. I then went into half-sleep-mode as the airline tried without success to make me buy buy buy things, then half-awaking as the Emerald Isle came into view below.



/snooze//snooze//snooze/



Taking the typical double-decker bus into the city proved to be a very entertaining experience, thanks to the red-haired English girl sprawling herself all over the seats and window space in the front row while singing “The Farmer in the Dell” in a teeny-tiny-but-loud-and-pitch-perfect voice and the Californian guy across the aisle chatting with a young couple from Berlin about his several-month-long European tour. He mentioned having visited a friend in Hamburg and having really liked it there, so much so that he was considering looking at grad programs, though Berlin would probably better for non-German speakers like himself. I felt very sneaky eavesdropping on their conversation, and even sneakier as I eavesdropped on the German’s conversation after the Ami had departed and they had switched back to their native language. Natürlich ist es beeindruckend, dass er so viele Länder besucht hatte, klar, klar, aber MANN, so viele Sofas… So viel Alkohol…? Das wär ja nix für mich.

The Darling Dubliner (a theatre friend who had studied abroad in Hamburg the year we survived 1984 together) was there to meet me as I hopped off the bus and whisked me across the street to show off his alma mater, including Trinity’s exquisite Book of Kells exhibit in the Old Library, home to the jaw-dropping, heart-warming long room, surely high on the list of the world’s most beautiful libraries (I did just find it on the third “best of” list I explored while agoogling, but in the meantime did a lot of spontaneous, uncontrollable drooling over the other libraries on the list – Warning! Procrastination hazard!). The evening set in with good food, good friends, ridiculous jay-walking, and – naturally a highlight – having the privilege of attending Darling Dubliner’s cubs meeting. So many wee (and hyper) Irish children with Irish names and accents and bandanas (and macarena obsessions – whyohwhy did I not think to take a video of that? – Oh, probably because I was doing the macarena, too).




After a morning of delicious sleep & porridge (hee hee, porridge!), we put ourselves back on the bus and coasted our way back into the city for a round or two of exploration/show-Margaret-the-cool-stuff. Never having been to Ireland before, I had only heard about its political, etc. hardships and histories from afar. Being there brought its history, particularly the violent side, into much clearer view. One stop we made was at the Garden of Remembrance, created for all who died for Irish freedom. I liked how it kindof sank below traffic level, giving it an air of quiet escape. The poem on the wall was very well-selected (though I’m a sucker for first or last lines that use “O” as an invocation); the Darling Dubliner just said the Irish version was a lot better. I’ve no doubt of this, though my squat comprehension of that most silly-looking language renders any other interpretation useless.    






A propos Irish, listening to it being spoken by Irish people somehow still didn’t make it seem legit for me. It sounded like people were speaking a different foreign language with a strong Irish accent (which makes sense. Of course, because they were, except that it’s not an accent… it just… is). I think this was because I was used to hearing German being spoken with an Irish accent. Anyway, totally intriguing, but not tackle-able enough to even think about tackling over a three day period. I thought about learning a few basics and asked what “yes” and “no” were, and when it was explained that, actually, there was no “yes” or “no”, but rather…, I decided to think about other things instead.




Probably my favorite moment of that day was when we wandered over to the castle just in time to catch a choir decked out in Santa hats and reindeer antlers (sometimes both on the same noggin) sing Christmas carols. It was early December and I hadn’t really gotten any xmasy feelings yet up to then. Darling Dubliner and I sang along to the traditionals from the sidelines and a charming little girl (in a fabulous pea coat) experimented in what happens when you spin around and around and around and around, only stopping when she crashed into her father’s legs after much flailing and wobbling. It made me want to throw up on her behalf, though thankfully that didn’t happen on either of our parts.





Later on we wandered into the Christ Church Cathedral, where a Christmas craft market was taking place in the crypt. The sparkly jewellery and little felt creatures somehow seemed out of place in the deep, dark, low-ceilinged and cool-aired chamber, but that didn’t seem to affect the many visitors of all ages and sizes. Back upstairs, it was a beautiful church, though unfortunately I don’t think I admired it as extensively as I should have because I was far too busy looking at the floor. This floor! What a floor! What a glorious, glorious floor! 







We wandered around town as the evening joined us for fish&chips and other goodies. A couple observations:

Okay, one thing that I was expecting of Dublin was that it would somewhat remind me of Edinburgh, which it did. One thing that I was totally unprepared for in Dublin was its elaborate and, well, confident array of tacky holiday sweaters/jumpers. I’m not just talking Santas and snowflakes here – I mean the whole works: stripes, spots, sparkles, reindeer, rhinestones, light-up & strobing Christmas trees and Rudolph noses that guide the wearer down dark, cobblestone streets in a kind of Olde Dublin Xmas Rave, and colours that seemed to stand proudly atop the North Pole, stretch out their colourful arms, and let out a primal holiday scream, daring you to avert your eyes or even blink. … Okay, so I’m hyperbolizing, whatever, but entertaining they were. I told Darling Dubliner about how such garments were usually only purchased for “ugly sweater parties” (or in which to dress your children for the traditional holiday photo that may or may not mortify them years later) in the States, to which he replied that, ähm, no, people just wore them. Just because. I’m still on the fence about whether I really, really like this and wish we could import it or if the Christmas jumper thing should be contained to its quirky island home. … Come to think of it, I haven’t actually experienced Christmas in the States for a few years – is this a thing now? Kann das sein?

Na ja, end of rant. The night ended with amazing chai, squishy sofas, steamy bus windows (hee hee, that implies all sorts of things), and another round of sweet, sweet sleep.