Sunday, January 20, 2013

Ireland vs. Disney World

We learned five things while visiting Ireland this summer:
1) In August, you can get a sunburn after 4pm (see picture below of people getting sunburned on a beach in Cork [you'll have to trust me on this one]) so don't laugh at your friends when they suggest you put on sun block late into the afternoon.

2) Professional photographers don't really earn their pay in Ireland since it's not that hard to find a lovely cow in a lush green pasture with a humble white cottage in the distance...
.....or a misty sailboat-filled harbor....



....or a lonely boat inside that harbor.
  
3) There's no reason for signs like the below, because everyone knows that death is always just a few feet away....


....which the kids proved in Baltimore, County Cork....
.....but my husband didn't (see risky picture he took below):


4) Ireland was a net exporter of food during the Famine (rich land owners apparently didn't feel a desire to share their crop with the starving people outside their gates).  So, living in the halls of Kilmainham Prison (below) was a viable alternative for the famished....until prison administrators decided that the problem was the hungry and the solution was a reduction in rations.  So, it is no wonder that the first half of the 19th Century saw over two million Irish leave their country--1.2 million of which landed in the US. 




5) EU austerity measures have both strangled the Irish economy and created a general nation-wide malaise.

So, given the large number of Americans of Irish ancestry and the historical and current examples of Europe not actually helping Ireland, I believe now might be the time for the United States to woo Ireland away from the EU.  Designating them as the 51st state would be nice, but that's probably too possessive. "Commonwealth" seems cold and isn't much better.  Establishing a "North Atlantic Union" might be nice--although the acronym would be "NAU", making the vote on its adoption confusing.  However, if we do vote "NAU" instead of "NAY", we should probably invite the Canadians to come aboard so they can stop paying an extra dollar for the same book, and we can stop jamming US vending machines with their coins.  I'd also say Mexico deserves an invitation except they provide us with too many drugs and we provide them with too many weapons to be a healthy union.....it's more like a Hollywood marriage, in fact...kind of like Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston. 

You might be wondering how NAU can help the Irish and this is what I have so far:
  1. Free Vanity Plates
  2. Cheap name brand clothing
  3. Great St. Patty's Day parades (no offense, but theirs aren't so great).
  4. A strip of land in Florida to thaw out during the winter.
  5. They don't have to run back to Ireland when their visa runs out.
What's in it for us:
  1. Everyone can wear "Kiss Me I'm Irish" shirts on St. Patrick's Day without lying.
  2. Access to a highly educated, highly mobile populace.
  3. Someone always has your back in a bar fight.
  4. Zero percent tax if you win the lottery, or buy a book (we're more likely to do one than the other).
  5. You can honestly call W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, Bram Stoker, Oscar Wilde, Jonathan Swift and Bono your countrymen.
  6. We don't have to run back to the US when our visas run out.
If you're thinking that I have Irish blood and this is the reason behind my enthusiasm, you may be right, I don't know.  The only way to know for sure is to take that blood test I've been avoiding.   See, my great grandmother's first husband was a Native American and her second was an Irishman. Two of her children looked Native, and one looked Irish (my grandfather) and although everyone claimed my grandpa was the youngest child and the product of the second marriage, I learned in high school that he was actually a middle child.  So, clearly something scandalous was going on in Duck County, Tennessee in 1914 or maybe it was 1915. Truth was, Grandpa didn't know what year he was born which either points to his lying to join the Army or to a grandmother who was a tart.

Back to Ireland:  My husband says his next wife will be Italian, and if we're allowed to make requests, I'd like to put in for a husband from Killarney.  We didn't visit Killarney this time, but we visit Ireland pretty often and Killarney accents haven't left my head since 2001.  Now, I know throwing out previous trips to Ireland sounds pretty snobby, but visiting Ireland is really no more expensive than taking your family to Disney World--no matter what the commercials say--because at the end of the day, the only thing magical about the Magic Kingdom is that someone coerced you to spend far too much money to wait in far too many long lines for rides that are far too short to justify either the airfare, hotel, $75 tickets, $15 parking fee, or the fighting when no one can agree in which long line to stand.

Also, let's be honest and admit that half the reason anyone goes anywhere is for bragging rights (people who blog about their travels are especially tiresome) and there are 87% more bragging rights for an American who visits Ireland than an American who visits Disney World.  It's a scientific fact.  So, the next time that perfectly-put-together mom of the school's most annoying kid sings, "Well, hello there!  How nice you let your son dress so casually.  My son hates that I make him wear his nice clothes to school events," you can say, "Yeah, I haven't been able to wrestle those jeans from him since we returned from Ireland."  Then, for the first time, you can look at her with feigned sympathy as you push past with an, "Excuse me."  This has actually never happened to me, but I imagine it could if I took an interest in my children's education. 

In any event, here's the off-the-top-of-my-head breakdown of what you can expect to spend for a week in Ireland:
You can frequently buy a ticket from the East Coast to Dublin for $650, and you can stay in a B&B for between 35 and 120 Euro a day, depending on the location. 

Camping Aside:
Although we camped a lot in Europe, camping in Ireland is a bad idea unless you want to see your tent fly like ours did in the Alps (http://www.wirthsummer2012.blogspot.com/2012/06/insomnia-and-flying-tents.html), and/or you don't mind feeling damp and cold before you go to sleep; dreaming about being damp and cold; then, waking up to a cloud of visible breath and no desire to shower or brush your teeth because you're too damp and cold.

It costs $120/week to rent a car (brush up on your manual transmission skills or you'll pay about double for an automatic) and $175/week to rent a minivan.

The only thing that really costs money in Ireland is eating/drinking out, but when you compare it to the cost of the bottled water and hamburger you bought the last time you were at Universal Studios, Ireland is cheaper.  Now, my Dublin friends say nothing is free in Ireland, but you're not going to spend $75/ticket for anything you see (even the Guiness factory costs about $60 for a family ticket), and the best parts of the country are the walks along cliffs and the seaside which are absolutely free....as long as you don't slip.  If you're worried your kids will be bored, I promise they won't.  After all, who needs a roller coaster when you can back down a narrow cliffside road looking into the grill of a tour bus while your kids yell, "watch out for the sheep!"....Well, that was a previous trip when we saw the Ring of Kerry and I was the one yelling about the sheep because we didn't have kids yet. I did, however, have a husband hanging outside the passenger-side window taking pictures of the sheep with child-like enthusiasm while we left the dangerous driving to our Irish friends.


So, in summary, Ireland beats Disney World hands down and I say this with full expectation of either being sued or killed by DW thugs.  Additionally, Ireland holds just as many "wows" as any other country we visited this summer and adds a dash of  "holy cow!" (see pictures below of Mizen Head Signal Station in County Cork).  In fact, the boy declared Ireland to be his favorite part of the summer, and just for the record, after two trips to Orlando, he has never said anything positive about Disney World.  Ever.



View from Mizen Head Signal Station, County Cork


© 2013 Nicole Wirth
Author of:  Letters to Salthill 

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Passenger Swapping in Ireland

Although our little silver Renault was among the first cars driven onto the ferry and--predictably--the last off, our close proximity to the ramp teased us into believing we'd move as soon as the ramp lowered onto the third deck.  However, 15 minutes after the ramp descended with two cars and four nervous people, we still sat breathing car exhaust, watching everyone and their motorcycle-riding, leather-wearing, Austrian brother drive down the ramp and off the boat before us.  I've heard sailors describe "harbor fever" before--the impatience one feels when the ship enters the harbor, and awaits the harbor pilot to steer the ship to port--but I never really felt it before that day. See, worse than wanting to step onto Irish soil was the desire to hug our friends who waited at the first roundabout outside Rosslare Port.

Irish Friend Aside:
Rachelle and I have been friends since the fall of 1989, when her first letter coincidentally arrived at my home in Wisconsin some time during my first trip to Ireland.  I was 17 then and I had worked two jobs to save my money to see my other pen pal.. the one whose mother kicked me out of his Galway home three days after my arrival.. But that's a story for another blog.  

Rachelle is from Dublin and her family would never throw me out of their house. So, aside from adoring her and her family, we root for Dublin's Gaelic Football team over every other... especially Galway.  Now, I'm not saying I don't deserve to get kicked out of a house on occasion and I'm not saying my first pen pal's mother didn't have cause to kick me out in 1989, but if she wants to woo you to her side of the argument, she can write her own blog.  On this blog, I'm the wronged party and she was completely unreasonable!

Gaelic Football Aside:
If your friend gives you a lovely navy blue O'Neills GAA Dublin rain jacket, you should know that wearing it in Wexford, Wicklow, Cork, Tipperary or really anywhere outside of Dublin is equivalent to wearing a Packers jersey in Chicago, or a Red Socks hat in New York. If you think the markings on your jacket are discreet and people can't see the small light blue stripes on the shoulder or the subtle "Átha Cliath" embroidery on the upper left breast, you're wrong.  They won't treat you as badly as Philadelphia fans do when the Eagles are losing--they're not animals, after all--but you may get a few looks you wouldn't expect from an Irishwoman... outside of Galway that is.

So, after every other vehicle left the ship, the only Irish person employed by Irish Ferries motioned us to drive completely around the deck before descending the ramp onto the third deck. We determined that he was just messing with us because we had French plates, but we obeyed him since we were 47% sure he would eventually let us leave... which he did... and after a pleasantly brief encounter with the Garda Síochána (Irish Police), we were on our way to the roundabout.

Driving Aside:
If you're an American driving a French car in Ireland and you have access to an Irish friend, I suggest you take her in your car even if you have to trade your husband to another car to do it.  (For good measure, you should trade your son too.)  This way, you have someone who knows the roads (or at least the language); her husband has a greater incentive in you following his car (one assumes); and--although your husband can see you in the Irish car's side mirrors--he can't hear you complain about him. (Note:  It takes a while to coordinate complaining while wearing a smile on your face.)

Another benefit to swapping passengers is that your friend will yell at you immediately if you forget to stay in the left lane (a husband may avoid your wrath), and her hands and legs will tell you what she's too stunned to say when a truck comes barreling around a well-hedged corner and you're crowding the center line. I admit that this last example makes traveling with an Irish person especially rewarding.  Since two-way rural roads often look like the first picture below, and may look like the second if your GPS has a sense of humor, I was reduced to hysterics at the sight of my friend grabbing for a nonexistent passenger-side steering wheel and slamming down the nonexistent clutch. Laughs were also had when the Irish car scraped a hedge or hit a pot hole full of water with your son's head hanging out the rear window.  To say that Ireland is a more perfect version of home is an understatement!



One last point about driving in Ireland is that after a few days, driving on the left begins to feel strangely normal which makes it feel wrong.  So, the only way to keep things straight in your head is to say "left, left, left" every time you turn a corner which makes singing in the car impossible, and parking lots pretty dangerous since the lack of any real order forces you to jump to the left, then the right when that feels wrong.  In short, expect to annoy a few people on and off the highway, and in and outside of your car.

A few minutes after leaving the Rosslare roundabout, we found a lovely, warm, dark-paneled restaurant... or maybe it was a pub.  In any event, they served food, and everyone spoke English, and it was only a few minutes later that I spied the kids talking enthusiastically across the table with their Irish "cousins" while the boy appeared completely at ease, and really and truly happy.

Here are a couple of landscape pictures in case you're feeling impatient:




I'll talk more about the beauty of Ireland in my next post, but be forewarned that the landscape competes with the people for your time and attention, and the people generally win.  

English Language Aside:
Although the British are unsurpassed at using English as a weapon (it doesn't take long to assess their effectiveness while watching Question Time with Members of Parliament), and most Americans use English as a purely utilitarian device (switching common organizations and phrases into acronyms as often as possible and not bothering to correct each others grammar because if you understood what they said it doesn't matter how they said it), the Irish use English as a play thing, like an intriguing toy that washed up on the beach.  So, bring a notebook with you to write down some of their funnier phrases and insults.  Here are some I jotted down:
"She's got brains to burn." (Apparently she's too smart for her own good.) 
"Paper never rejects ink." (An explanation for inaccurate news.) 
"She's so ugly, the tide wouldn't take her out." (The meaning seems pretty clear.)
Question:  "Did you miss me?"
Answer:  "I wasn't aiming for you."
Now, although the Irish are well known for their ability to spin a yarn, their ability to make shocking words completely acceptable is a testament to their charm. Two sentences of a story that stand out for me are, "So, he said if the lad went near him again, he'd beat the PISS outta him!" He swallowed. "So, that was grand…"

When we finally pushed back from the table and put our notebook away, we found some signs that made us laugh nearly as much as the conversation.  The first picture is from Skibbereen in County Cork.

An unfortunate name for a business situated next to a funeral home.

Alarming, but helpful.
Good advice for any occasion.
Ending aside:
So, I know I promised I would finish this blog before Thanksgiving and I'm clearly not a person of my word because I still need to finish Ireland, the rest of France, and a few spots in Switzerland.  I'm not sure why I'm so slow, but somehow it took a lot less time to write while we were traveling.  In any event, I will definitely be done by Easter!

© 2013 Nicole Wirth
Author of:  Letters to Salthill