Ireland

I spent the past weekend in Ireland, seemed like a cool place to go and ryanair.com offered cheap tickets. I went with some friends from the program. Kellie from UW La Crosse, one of the girls she lives with, Kendra, and another girl named Meagan. We left on Thursday the 6^th at 11:30 and the rest of the group, my roommate Jack and some other guys flew in on Friday. We ended up not spending any time with them but that worked out just fine. We landed in Dublin around 1 PM but didn’t get out of the airport until 2 PM because the people ahead of us in the passport line must have been using fake passports. We all got through really quickly but some people took forever, oh well. We got into the city on an airport shuttle and it was filled with Welsh people in town for the 6 Nations rugby game between Ireland and Wales. They were so stereotypically Welsh, mustaches and everything. They were all in their 40s or 50s but they talked to us and answered some questions for us. We were talking about driving on the wrong side of the road because looking out the bus window I kept wondering why no one was driving the cars. We couldn’t decide if the clutch on British cars was on the left side like in America, turns out that it is. We got into the city center and got off the bus. We walked to our hostel and got settled in. The hostel was pretty solid, decent beds, clean bathrooms, and a really good continental breakfast. We decided to go to the Guinness factory first and that was a good choice, it was awesome. We got there at 5 and they close at 6 so we didn’t have a lot of time to spend in the museum which was a shame. It is huge, 6 floors, and has a ton of cool displays. They had a whole floor with videos that explained the brewing process and I didn’t have time to watch them. I could have spent at least 2 or 3 hours there but alas. We then went up to the gravity bar on the 7^th floor to get our free Guinness. The gravity bar is a brilliant idea; it’s a 360° panoramic view of Dublin and the rest of the Guinness factory. The factory complex is massive, I’m pretty sure that I read that it’s 62,000 acres and I think that they brew 1,000,000,000 pints a day. In the gravity bar the bartender explained to me the proper way to pour Guinness and why it’s done the way it is. You’re supposed to pour ¾ of a glass and let it sit for two and a half minutes while the nitrogen sinks and the creamy head rises. After the beer settles the bartender tops off the beer by pushing the tap in the opposite direction so that beer but no nitrogen pours and behold, Guinness. We went back to the hostel and made some spaghetti with red sauce. Unfortunately with the dollar weak and the Euro strong and the high prices in Ireland food—and everything else—was pretty expensive so we cooked our own food. We also brought a bottle of PirateShip—the amazing Czech rum we are all in love with—and did shots during dinner. It was so fucking ghetto, we ate shitty spaghetti and did shots while all the other hostel guests were cooking real food around us. We ate our dinner and then went to meet some Americans who are studying abroad in Dublin who the girls had met in Prague. They took us to Dublin’s oldest pub and one other place for a beer. We made it an early night because Kellie was passing out at the table, we over pre-gamed it seems. If any of you ever end up in Ireland, the bus is not the method of transport you want to take. It’s cheap, but that’s because it is excruciatingly slow and not very comfortable. We had to stop in every small town, traverse every round-about, and drive slowly the whole 5 hours. I was a bit disenchanted with the course the trip was taking at that time but it ended working out. My flight out left on Sunday morning at 6:50 my trip really ended on Saturday afternoon. I wasn’t too happy about spending 10 hours of my trip on busses. We didn’t get into Cork until evening and then walked around the city until we found a place to eat. The reason we went to Cork was Meagan met an Irish guy, Eddie, in New York this summer where she live and he was working. Eddie agreed to pick us up and take us to his friend’s house so we could crash there. Eddie plays pro rugby for a local team and the guys we stayed with are on the team with him. There was Tamale (not sure on the spelling but sounds like the candy) who is from New Zeeland and a German guy who’s name I never quite figured out. They offered us couches and an extra mattress they have. Not luxury accommodations but free, so better than a hostel. They took us too a couple local pubs, the coolest one was called The Castle Inn. It was a total mom and pop place; the bartenders were actually an old couple in their 50s or 60s. The bar was mostly a hallway, with a bar in it and the whole place was jam-packed. It was really awesome to go to a local pub in Cork with the natives. It was also fun to try the local beers. I had Murphy’s Stout and Beamish and Bulmer’s, an amazing cider. We went to a few bars and at the second one the rugby guys gave me snuff. Apparently snuff is a very Irish thing, it was awesome for about 10 minutes then it blew me apart. I ended up projectile vomiting in the bathroom, which was outside. I had a rough rest of the night; I even got kicked out of the next bar we went to for throwing up in the bathroom. Fortunately I was able to convince the guy to let me stay be explaining to him that I had no idea where I was or where I was going and he took pity on me. Thank god the Irish are so nice. The next morning Eddie took us to the Blarney Castle. It’s a really cool castle a lot more medieval than the other ones I’ve seen, I enjoyed it. I did kiss the Blarney stone, I’ve been told that people pee on it and that it’s not the real Blarney stone and all those things but I wasn’t going to go there and not kiss it. After the castle Eddie took us back to Cork to go watch the Ireland vs. Wales 6 Nations rugby game. This game was a huge deal; if Wales won they would win the whole tournament—the Triple Crown—and would have a chance to win the Grand Slam which is going undefeated for the whole tournament. I guess that the Grand Slam doesn’t happen very often. And if Ireland won then they would still have a chance to win the whole thing because then each of the 6 teams would have at least one win. I’m not totally sure about all that, the guy that was telling me about this had a thick Irish brogue, was talking fast, and may have made some assumptions about my prior knowledge of the tournament. But I think that I get the gist of what’s going on. Anyway, we went to a local rugby pub to watch the game. Apparently they don’t have maximum occupancy laws in Ireland because the place was so packed it was a battle to get into the pub and getting a beer was even harder. The whole place was overrun with Welshmen (and women), and when Wales ended up winning 13-12 in a really good game they all went nuts. They were changing and singing the whole time and it was cool to see them all rowdy when they got the away win to clinch the tournament. We had some lunch and then I had to get on a bus to head back to Dublin so that I could catch my flight out early Sunday morning. It was another long, unpleasant bus ride with a one exception. I talked to an interesting Irish girl for part of the ride. Her name was Niamh, which for some reason is pronounced Neev. When she introduced herself there was much confusion, at first I thought her name was Leaf, then she spelled it and I was more confused, then she explained that it’s a traditional and very common Irish name. She was interesting and was telling me about college in Ireland—she’s half way done with her freshman year—and was traveling to Dublin to visit some other colleges because she was going to transfer to switch tracks. She explained to me that when you start college you pick a track based on what job you want to have and train specifically for that job. It was cool to hear some things about Ireland and living in a small Irish town from someone who lived it. She, like all Irish people was very friendly and open. They are so willing to talk to anyone and are the friendliest people you can imagine. It was a great break from the downcast, non-engaging, cold demeanor of people in the Czech Republic. But it does get a bit over the top at times at times. The Irish not only don’t follow the urinal of separation rule, they talk to each other, and to total strangers, at the urinal. This is friendly taken to an extreme and violates American Man Law. As I was throwing up snuff into the urinal at the Castle Inn everyone who walked by to piss patted me on the shoulder and asked if I was ok and if I needed anything. Random Irish strangers took better care of me than the people I was traveling with. I guess they do things differently over there. I had a great time in Ireland and would love to go back for an extended period of time but it’s nice to be back home.