The Art of the Excursion: Dublin

I've been meaning and meaning to write about all the places we've been, and I've been putting it off. So here it goes: two months worth of excursions.

One of the huge advantages to coming on a Willamette sponsored program with a professor is that our group has been all over the country without having to organize anything ourselves. We've been to Dublin, An Cheathrú Rua, Inis Mór, the Dingle Peninsula, Cork City, and up and down the mountain Croagh Patrick. Next weekend we go to Belfast.

Dublin

This was a busy trip. Above is Dublin Castle, from which the British ruled Ireland for centuries. Irish rebellions always included a symbolic attempt at the capturing the castle, though most didn't really pan out. It was very well guarded.

While we were in Dublin, we visited Croke Park, the Guinness Storehouse, and Kilmainham jail, and had a walking tour of the city. Croke Park is the Gaelic Athletic Association's stadium where Hurling and Gaelic Football are played. Both sports are massively confusing, and you would be much better off googling them than having me attempt an explanation. The Guinness Storehouse is basically a giant beer museum in which tourists learn how Guinness is brewed and are treated to a pint of it at the top. The bar on the 7th story has a beautiful 360 degree view, punctuated with quotations from James Joyce's work about the city printed on the windows. After slamming back your pint, though (as tourists are always in a hurry), the way back to the ground floor is an unsettlingly swift elevator which drops you, stumbling slightly, right next to the gift shop.

Kilmainham Jail was a central place in a central event in Ireland's history. The 1916 Easter Rising led to the Irish war for independence and the establishment of the Republic in 1922, but public opinion was not originally on the side of the nationalists. In the midst of WWI, many Irish families had sons fighting under the British flag and felt that this was not the time for dissent. In an attempt to eradicate the issue, British officials had fourteen leaders of the rebellion executed in the yard at Kilmainham where they had been held after their arrest. This included, mostly stirringly, James Connolly who was brought in an ambulance and tied to a chair because he was injured so that he could not stand up, and Joseph Plunkett, who married his sweetheart Grace Gifford moments before he was killed. These stories of slaughter moved the Irish public despite their reticence and began the political movement which blossomed into a (mostly) free Ireland.

We went on a walking tour which covered the most important historical bits of the city, but this one was my favorite:

This pub, according to its rules a place of conversation and not of music, was a favorite haunt of Dublin's literary greats, including the great JimmyJamesJoyce. Watching twenty minutes of rugby in there and drinking a pint of the red ale which had become my pub standby, I felt pretty cool.

Before we could return to Galway, as our Professor is Ms. Wendy Peterson Boring, we had to make a few pilgrimages. First stop was the Newgrange passage tomb, older than the pyramids and so well constructed that, at 5,000 years of age, the inside of the passage (under the mound) has never leaked rainwater.

Finally, just before sunset, we visited Clonmacnoise monastery, extablished by St. Ciaran, in the 9th century.

Old and pretty as the monastery was, our group was primarily enthralled by the flood plains of the river beyond, reveling in the fresh air and amusing ourselves by climbing the edges of the moat surrounding the ruins of a Norman castle.

Dichotomies

There's a fine line between living in a place and visiting it. The first week I was here I crept through Shop street, fearful that the embroidered logo on my rain jacket would mark me as American. The flash of the camera which captured my first Irish Guinness mortified me in the dark pub. It's become easier to speak out loud in the street, and I've finally allowed myself to wander into the gift shop and browse idley through shamrocked shot glasses, but I'm always keenly aware that I am American. I may not be here for the three hour tour which locals assume when they see me in a pub, but I am not and will never be a local. My flatmate likes to imitate my accent and I still feel the need to emphasize that Seattle is very, very far from the Jersey Shore. Day-to-day, though, I try to blend in. I buy my food at Tesco and pretend I'm not really excited every time I pass the swans on my way to school.

On weekend excursions, all of that goes out the window. I climb into tour coaches and listen to the drivers explain to me the process of cutting peat out of the bog. I go everywhere with a camera around my wrist and I'm very disappointed every time and Irish-speaker answers my mangled "dia duit!" with a deflated "hello." To date, we've been to Dublin, An Cheathrú Rua, and Inishmore (details to follow) and it's difficult not to be impressed, and attempt to soak everything in. The stereotypical tourist, with neon fanny pack and Hawai'an shirt (not to be confused with my friend Minn, when she's feeling quirky) is blinkered by their own expectations, but I think that the "purer" tourist just wants to learn and experience. When I'm on a group tour, my cover is blown and the pressure to be blasé falls away — I can take cheesy pictures and peruse tourist shops. I bought a bag at the Guinness Storehouse and a sweater on the Aran Islands, and am resolute that I shall not be ashamed. It is a very warm sweater.

Back in Galway, I know that every time I open my mouth (and probably before that) I am revealed as an American, but I'm starting not to feel seperate. I've a favorite pub and a favorite draught beer that isn't Guinness. I'm making Irish friends and I'm preparing for the mundanity of paper-writing 5,000 miles from Willamette. I don't say that I'm visiting. I'm studying here. I'm living here. For the next few months, I'm American by way of Galway.

Spring!

I've been a horrible blogger these past few weeks, and I promise that posts will be coming on our trips to Dublin and Connemara. Today, however, it's chilly but sunny and the house is alive. I've just learned why people no longer wash their clothes by hand, though I'm proud to have a collection of socks and tank tops sitting under my bathroom heater, and Zoe and Riona (room/housemates) are downstairs mopping. They went to the store today and bought flowers and candles for the living room! I'm about to go join them and make some scones because we are embracing the family attitude and it feels like spring.

Here it Begins

I'm a student from Willamette University about to begin attending the National University of Ireland in Galway, currently recovering from a throat bug I caught at orientation three days ago. Before retiring to my bed and an endless stream of lozenges and Nyquil, though, I had my first Irish Guinness at Taaffe's bar. Recipient of the James Joyce "Real Irish Pub" award and recommended to me by anyone who had spent any time in Galway, there was a sign hanging behind the bar which read "Irish Spoken Here; English Understood."

Since I've been in Ireland, everything has been similar to America, but just a bit off. People drive on the other side of the road, the toilet flushes in a waterfall, and I have to warn the shower if I want hot water after ten. NUIG is a bilingual school, and everything is written in Irish before English. When people ask me what I'm studying they look at me funny when I reply "English," because "why would you study English in Ireland?" I'm going to take a class in the Irish language, in addition to my classes on Irish literature and history in an attempt, sometime in the coming months, to become more than just someone who is understood but someone who can speak.