Norther Ireland Weekend: Belfast ‘08!

So it’s true my Northern Ireland adventure may have been many moons ago (Feb 21- 24) but I still feel the need to blog the damn thing, mostly because I am losing big time at keeping a good travel journal and also because I have blog OCD.

Thursday: On Thursday I had class [have class] from about 9 AM to 4 PM. The official Butler Brady Family Bus was leaving at 1. This was especially frustrating (but not surprising, I’ve come to expect this level of champness from them) since they had made it a point during orientation to say, “now kiddies, remember, school is your first priority here!” Which is cute since they made us all miss several classes by planning such a dumb departure time. Anyways. I had decided at around 12 that I wasn’t going. I needed to go all my seminars because they are pretty much all grade=attendance based and I still felt sick. At 4 I went to the Doc and as you know, he told me that although he’d be glad to scrape my tonsils out, I was in fact fine and could even throw back a few beers on my anti-b’s (I blame him for the events you’ll encounter in Saturday…). There was also a free Norther Ireland Weekend, Belfast 08′ shirt at stake, so I kind of had to go. So I jumped on my own damn bus with Catherine & Caitlin (who also had classes they couldn’t miss) and got to Belfast at 10 p.m. where I settled into yet another high quality suite at le Jury’s Inn with Erin to watch quality Irish television. Our favorite program was a semi-pornographic teen drama called Skins where a crazy chick poisons her friend and nocks over her crippled mother to star in the school play( a musical about Sept. 11… called Osama!) so she can kiss and therefore win the love of her gay man crush obsession. Great stuff. Comfy beds. Ect.

Friday: We awoke at the disgusting hour of 7:30 and filled out plates with the Jury’s Inn breakfast buffet’s offerings- streaky, thick bacon, rubbery sunny side-up eggs, roasted tomatoes, something involving potatoes, mystery fruit bowls and all the cereal you could devour. We then departed in buses at 8 A.M. Sadly we were paired in the bus with some of the most obnoxious kids of all time from the Galway program (Serena not included!). See: Loud. Half of them were also high, they lit up in front of a Cathedral on our first bathroom break. So we traveled Antrium to the Northern Coast. Our first stop was the walled city of Londonderry (not just Derry, mk? that’s wrong). Now I assume Londonderry is really neat. But the wind was bitchilly blowing the icy rain into our faces as we walked the wall while this tiny fair-haired portly tour guide woman screamed lost points of interest into the cold air current. I literally heard nothing she said even when I made it a point to stand awkwardly close to her, holding my obligatory sick girl snot rag with my scarf wrapped stupidly over my head to keep my ears from freezing off. We got back on the bus grumpy and damp and headed farther up the coast to see Dunluce Castle. Famed for its position overlooking the roaring Atlantic, Dunluce castle was eroded by the sea during it’s prime and the entire kitchen, pots, pans and cook all fell in. The wind was so strong and the edge had apparently claimed the life of a tourist so recently that they didn’t let us go into the castle, but they did let us step out for about five minutes to take pictures. I could only hold my camera straight for about three, so I apologize my lame pics.

Up next was Giant’s Causeway where I learned what a complete and utter princess I am. My roommates and I made the 20 minute trek down the hill to see the famously formed stones and cut cliffs. And it was indeed beautiful, but because the rain and wind decided it was beat down time, we didn’t last long before we were all shrieking, huddled up against one of the scenic stone walls reenacting a scene from the Perfect Storm. After we all recovered they took us for a luxurious lunch at the Radisson Inn in the little village of Portrush. There I was just about to eat some oddly green chicken and a daunting pile of mashed potatoes when the woman serving said delectibles was seen, by me, popping out the first row of her teeth in determined concentration as she reached for another hot tray of odd looking mass prepared food. I spent the rest of my lunch stabbing my fork into my potatoes and troughing for stray teeth. So I was starving when we finally reached Jury’s Inn again and picked up some amazing pizza from a random Italian take-out place. I bought some ginger ale and magazines at the corner store and PJ’d up while my girlies boozed. I sent them out to party in Belfast and enjoyed a night in with my sicky self.

Saturday: Erin and I are bums. On Saturday we got up for brunch at 11:30 ate some of the plastic eggs and went back to sleep until about 2. Now in our defense, she was hung-over and I was heavily medicated, but it was still pretty lame. After deciding niether of us had any interest in seeing any more cathedrals or castles we finally got out of our hotel beds, took magnificent hotel showers, had some hotel tea and set out onto the streets of Belfast. We first went to St. George’s Market. There they sold fish with eyes in on ice, fresh fruit and veggies, cakes, crepes, baloon animals and a whole assortment of goodies. We split a peice of heavenly chocolate cake and took up our map. Naturally we then selected Aunt Sandra’s a world famous candy shoppe and factory as our next destination. 40 minutes walk into some scary neighborhoods later we made it and took the tour of a small two room shop and kitchen with a squirmy bunch of 8 year olds and their parents. We watched them pour big vats of bright yellow sugary goo out onto a silver table and were going to continue on to see the honey comb made but just after we’d put on our regulation blue shower cap status factory caps we realized we had a black cab tour scheduled to start in 14 minutes, 40 minutes away. So despite being laden with sweets and the fact that I could not breathe, we turbo power walked and got there one minute till. Due to some reservation glitch, they then arrived thirty miniutes later, which actually worked out because by then I had stopped wheezing and could listen.

The Black Cab tour takes you through the Catholic and Protestant neighborhouds where much of the violence during the troubles was concentrated. It’s also where the murals depicting the conflict or parts of Irish history can be found. (pics to the right to the right) Our driver was a young, cute but awkward college student who refused to admit whether he was Catholic or Protestant. Often he would tell us some small fact then pause, as if awaiting a response, then sort of rushedly continue. The tour made me realize how prevalent the conflict still is; murders in that area are still first and foremost considered with the possibility that it may have been due to the religious divide, a giant peace wall still cuts across the two groups’ homes and some of the murals depicted very recent dates and deaths. It was kind of scary. They closed the gates in one direction which our cabby nonchalantly said they often do when they expect trouble and we all sort of forcedly smiled and looked skittishly around when he insisted in taking our picture next to the peace wall. He dropped us off at the restaurant  where the Butler dinner was and left. There we ate delicious Italian food and planned our night.   

At this point, high on pasta, I decided it would be a great idea to go out. So I took my last antiB of the day (I had to do 4 a day). On the way back to my hotel room I found a lovely surprise waiting outside my door, one miss Serena Larkin. She came in and we chatted for a while on my bed. It was so nice to see and talk to a fellow Scrippsie and it made me realize just how much I miss it. Later, acting on the influence of too much wine and anti-b’s, I went out with Catherine and Caitlin to a very classy over-40’s crowd pub before getting a wee bit woozy and marching back out onto the street. There, by some great stroke of fate, I found Serena and walked back with her to our hotel while my roomies continued onto a club (where they broke it down to TWO songs from the dirty dancing soundtrack, which would happen when I’m too drunk to function) Serena went upstairs to sleep because she didn’t feel great and I was too drunk for sleeping or elevators to I spent the rest of the evening chatting up kids from my program and some very burly, but friendly, chicks from an Irish rugby team. I also asked the bar tender a number of delightful questions, including, but not limited to if he could make me a Shirley Temple, noooot virgin.

Sunday: I woke up in my hotel bed, took in my last Jury’s breakfast and claimed my shirt. I then jumped back on le bus, my bag two boxes of hotel kleenex heavier and returned to UCD. It was really nice to get back…

Scotland Ho.

I hope everyone has a lovely Valentine’s Day (aka has a drinking buddy), I’ll write when I get back! 

 Also: If you don’t check any bags when you fly ryanair, you only get a 10 kilo carry-on, 22 lbs. So basically I’ll just be bringing my tooth brush and Ulysses. Joy. 

“fifty percent elation, fifty percent devastation” (in which I gush a little bit)

That’s what J.K. Rowling said tonight about how she felt when she finished the final book in the Harry Potter series. She said although Harry’s story is essentially done, she’d never say never to an eighth book but that she’d need at least 10 years before she could revisit the story again. She’d spent 17 years of her life writing it, 17 years essentially living in that world and that she needs time from it, like an ex-boyfriend you can’t be friends with now, but might meet up for a  coffee with in a long while. 

It was an incredible, intimate and very short hour she spoke for. I’ll try to describe it as best as I can remember:

 

 

She spoke in lecture theater L, where I go everyday, Monday through Thursday, to hear about the literature of Ireland or the sociology of the church, asylums and pop culture. Tonight the big room, usually full of calm air and sleepy morning- class yawns, buzzed with anticipation. She came in, smiled up at all of the students beaming at her, clapping for her, and finally laughed, saying she was suddenly nervous- the big auditorium was just how she imagined the ministry of magic would be.

I was sitting close enough to see what exact shade of blonde she is (sandy platinum, you know, for those of you interested in such things…) and she was sitting in a large blue leather bound high back chair. She looked petite, pretty and right in that chair, reading aloud. She read a chapter from the seventh book in which Ron comes back to Hermoine and Harry and destroys the locket. Her renditions of the characters, especially the cranky Hermione were perfect…obviously. She talked about how she initially was going to describe Ron “gingerly” entering the tent, but changed it- all over the auditorium red heads’ hair was ruffled (I was seated next to a fellow ginger friend, but we refrained).

She told us about how her American publisher always wanted Harry & Ron to hug at the end of every book (“Um, shouldn’t they hug here?”) but that she knew it could only be the one time, in the life or death aftermath, and besides, British Boys don’t hug.

She talked about how she made one media statement and the next day found on the news ticker, “DUMBLEDORE IS GAY.” About how she knew he was all along (“he always has the best robes, doesn’t he?”) but that his role as a figure with all the answers and a mentor to Harry, didn’t really include opening up his own personal life. It was only through his death, and the natural human want and wish that we’d asked more during bereavement that it would come out. I’d never thought of it that way, but it’s definitely true.

She told us about crazy fans. One who gave her an outlandish prediction that Dumbledore was actually Harry…from the future.  And one woman who stood up at a reading, when only the second book was out and said “I think Snape loves Lily.”

She knew what the entire plot would be from the very beginning, and even often felt herself trapped by her own constructions. Apparently getting people in and out of Hogwarts was a bitch with the no apparation rule.

My personal favorite moments included when she fielded a question about the Pope and Cardinal’s reaction to the books and public statement that they were “dangerous” and when she explained the end of the last book. She stated that she didn’t actually know the Pope’s official position on the books, she’d been asked to come to the Vatican to discuss it, but the invitation reached her too late. She said she was against censorship in all forms as well as fundamentalism in religion, even in her own. The story is steeped in folk-lore and she hoped contained a moral code. She said she could see how some would be bothered by it and frankly, didn’t mind all that much. 

She also explained the epilogue, which I did find kind of fluffy and disappointing when I reached it in the final book. She said she could have, and did seriously consider killing Harry. It would have been neater and she was glad fans actually thought it was a possibility because it meant there was a real sense of mortality to the story. She said she wrote it in the frame of reference of those who go to war, especially men, who find the hardest thing after experiencing the trauma of killing and watching others be killed, is to return to everyday living and loving, rather than just disappearing. Harry is/was her hero and she wanted him to fight this fight. 

The audience loved her and she seemed happy to read to us, calling us “my people, but not like I’m trying to lead you all in some revolution or something.” She explained that our generation was who she’d written for, we’d been the one’s to grow up with Harry.  

She was witty, sincere and intelligent and amazing to me, just sitting there, reading the book she’d written, talking about what it was to her to write it. After she received the James Joyce Award (the reason she was there- it’s basically an award given to people who’ve achieved excellence in their particular field…aka UCD’s excuse to book cool people), she forgot her copy of the 7th book and ran back to get it (this made me happy, remembering the long line I had waited in to see her up close, only to realize I’d forgotten my ticket and had to run back to get it from my room).  This one woman’s imagination revitalized the act of reading, all over the world. Once again, it was a litgasm of an experience. 

END GUSH.

 

PS. I’m so lucky & glad I’m here. 

it’s a small world afterall

I was just brushing my teeth and out the window what do I hear?

Russian junior year abroad students.

Singing Dick in a Box.

God bless the u s of a.

ametuer bob dylan night: 0-2-1-?

Usually when I can roll over Sunday morning, mascara trailing spectacularly down my face, and go what the hell happened this weekend? that’s a sign I’ve done a good job and deserve a big cookie, or Irish bacon, depending. This weekend definitely left me wondering, I even got the obligatory hangover bacon but I’m not sure I deserve any prizes.

I don’t want this to be a dater’s log, although that might be more interesting (that’s right, they keep stats on these people, more of you read the Nigel thing than any of my other posts. you know, the ones I carefully, lovingly, dedicatedly, SOBERLY wrote.), but here is an update on operation find man with moped 2008:

Friday was a lovely day. We began by going to a crepe place called Lemon, which we’ve decided to make a weekly (or everyday!?) tradition because not only was it cheap, trendy, purty and close by, it also presented us with light fluffy crepes filled with goodness and a whole menu of straight up amazing (I had a strawberries and cream crepe, so good!). Afterwards we went to the National Library and saw their Yeats exhibit. It was incredible and out of all the weekend’s events it was, pathetically, the one that turned me on the most : ) They had tarot cards from his various philosophical dips with magical cults, manuscripts edited by his barely legible scrawl in pen and pencil, with ringed stains from tea cups in the corners, his notebooks with his prose, frayed at the edges from age and being crammed into his desk or carrier bags, the top hat he wore to receive a nobel prize, his glasses and a ring from his wife. There was “Long Legged Fly,” “Crazy Jane talks with the Bishop,” “Easter 1916″ and “Adam’s Curse,” all in his own hand. I smushed my face up against the glass cases and read them to myself. I am a nerd. He died in 1939 and I knew that from my time spent with The Norton, yet suddenly seeing all those things of his, reading about his life up until his death, he seemed like a real live person who was alive making art and scandal not too long ago. It was especially cool since I have to read a collection of his poems for my upcoming Irish Lit class and it made me excited again to be here in Ireland.

After that Erin and I went on what can only be described as a hardcore shopping mission. We found a number of great things, including the most incredible jeans you’ve ever had to paint on (for her) and a happy dress and top for my “date.” Which brings me to the Nigel.

He called, pleasantly surprising all of us, at 1, while we were at the library and asked if I still wanted to go out later (he also said a number of other things that were completely, but cutely unintelligible), I said yes and he said he’d call after 6. Come 7 we were all sitting around, drinking vodka Mi Wadi (the juice miracle mixer elixir), me in my dress, Erin in her jeans, and I was bitching about how he wasn’t going to call and then, at that exact minute, he called. He wasn’t sure what we should do, so I said I would just call him when we were in the city and knew where we were headed. We got to the bus stop with fares in hand but still had no idea where we were going when three guys in bright orange t-shirts approached us. They were engineering students going out to Dublin in their matching program shirts, they had no idea where either. I started talking to one of them at the stop and on the bus when I sat down next to him, the mi wadi and vodka making me stream constant brilliance of course. His name was Ian and he didn’t know what he was doing on that bus, in engineering, in general, he told me he didn’t really drink either. So I, in my wisdom told him not to worry about it, that where I came from [hippie liberal arts land] we all just got degrees and indefinitely postponed worrying about our futures living in cardboard boxes spouting keats and quotes from celestial season boxes. I actually really enjoyed talking to him, he was a funny guy with many opinions about UCD and the Irish, and he said it was nice to actually talk to a girl on a Friday night who could form several multisyllabic words together in a row, however slurred the row.

We ended up following one of the engineers down several streets I now have no memory of to a pub/club called Palace. While walking I talked to Ian and texted Nigel to meet us there. Which he did, showing up while we were in line only to be escorted to the back of the line by the bouncer. He resurfaced inside where I was talking to Ian. I apologized to the engineer and went and sat down in a booth with Nigel. I had fun talking to him again and we took turns writing things to each other in one of my notebooks I bring everywhere when it was too loud to understand each other. At one point he wanted another drink and I was way ok in that department so I asked if it would be ok if I went and danced with my roommates for a few songs. He shrugged and I took that for a jolly “well jaysus woman a course ya can!” So I went. And then he did too.

Now, I realize it is rude to leave a guy alone in a crowded pub, after he got dressed and took a bus into town just to spend time with me, but I honestly had no intention of ditching him. Before I left I asked him his top ten bands and he wrote them in my notebook (Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Chili Peppers… to name a few, if you were wondering) and I was going to do the same when I got back so I left my notebook at the table with him. I stayed too long in the other room, which was two stories downstairs in the very oddly arranged club. When I came back he was gone and so was my notebook. I texted him, I called him, I wandered around until he finally replied to my text saying he’d gone. I asked if I could go where ever he was going and he said, ” Not tonit im in clontarf now and then gota make it in 4 work 4 9. If ur doin nothin wed give me a shout, early like midday early.” He didn’t respond after I texted/called after that and I guess I’m going to call on Wednesday, but I feel weird. Because I ditched him, but also because he has a small bound booklet of my personal crazy in his possession and that’s a little unnerving. After that Ian found me pouting and I ended up talking to him for the rest of the night.

The next night we all wandered around Dublin trying to find a place called Rio. On the way we met some drunk Irish crazies singing Bob Dylan who offered to give us an official “tour”, we ran off into the rain and I sang Girl From The North Country obnoxiously until Erin was ready to beat me and we found the club. It was empty there (apparently the good ones don’t fill up until midnight?) and within about 5 minutes I almost got kicked out by this beast of a security guard after I went to talk to the dj and then [carefully!] hopped a rail. He had me collecting my coat when Erin talked him out of it. I get that he was just doing his job and keeping the place safe but he was kind of a real jerk about it, citing my age (he thought I was 17??), my being American and my being a stupid girl as the cause of my insanely reckless behavior of stepping over a 4 foot rail in an empty club. Oh well.

Ian met us there and I spent the whole night talking and dancing with him. Ian is a terrible dancer (he does some incredible finger pointage and head bobbing á la night at the roxbury) but he made me laugh so hard I thought I was going to choke and he was kind of ridiculously sweet, saying he loved bus stops because otherwise we never would have met (he’s big on fate) and how the straw landed just the right way (he demonstrated by dropping his straw on the dirty table. what a champ) which I made fun of him for but secretly thought was cute. I guess we’re going to see a movie sometime this week and I’m excited to see him again, but I feel bad about the Nigel thing and suddenly am wondering if I really want an Irish boyfriend or if it was just one of things I always say I want because I know I’ll never actually get it, like trapeze lessons, a pool of strawberry jello or a pet okapi.