Our First "Walking" Experience

My walk to the warehouse in Blackpool has me trudging three miles each way, every day. It’s a nice way to start and end the work day (when it’s not raining), and the exercise is an added bonus. My journey leads me past Cork’s Heineken-owned brewery, the birthplace of Murphy’s and Beamish stouts (among other beers, I think). They understand how tempting all of the kegs can be to passers-by––the brewery is protected like the Fort Knox of stout:

Those are some nasty barbs above that entrance.

While we’re on the topic of walks: our weekend expedition with the Cork Backpackers Club was a success, thanks in part to miraculously clear weather. We hiked in the Boughils near the town of Kenmare, and I’m glad to report that the stories about County Kerry’s natural beauty are well-founded. Check out the visuals we were treated to:

We had lunch overlooking the Black Valley.

Kenmare Bay, feeding into the Atlantic at the far right.

They’re not the most difficult peaks one can summit, but the views are really unmatched thanks to the almost completely treeless terrain. I’ve never seen anything like it. The barren landscape is shocking if you’re used to hiking in the eastern United States: along the Appalachian Trail, for instance, a thick tree canopy is almost always over your head. Wide-open views that let you see for miles are the exception, and sometimes you can hike for hours (or days) between them. It was quite a treat to experience the opposite for a change.

Oh, and walking on peat (or "turf") is an interesting sensation. It's pretty much like walking on a giant soggy sponge: it gives a little with each step, and squirts water in every direction. It will take some getting used to.

This weekend Katherine and I are heading to the Burren, a rocky region in County Clare (for reasons too many to recount right now, our Galway trip is postponed. But I did hear a song called “Galway Girl,” it’s very good and I suggest looking it up). There’s snow in the forecast, but hopefully it won’t be a hindrance.

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The Irish accept our immigration in stride. Joyfully, even. But when I tell other immigrants in Ireland where I'm from, shock is usually the response. During one of my first days at the warehouse I was paired up with a Polish co-worker––attempting some introductory small talk, he asked me in a thick accent, "Where are you from?" When I said "Maryland, in the States," he reacted with shrill laughter. I smiled politely and asked what was so funny. He never told me.

And earlier this week I was working in the loading bay, taking three pallets of goods off of a big-rig. The driver of the truck was an immigrant (when we asked him where he came from, he only said, "I come from the heart of Europe," where ever that is). Hearing my accent, he asked me if I was from the U.K. I said no, the States. With this he actually stopped working and turned to face me with his hands on his hips. He said what was perhaps on my Polish co-worker's mind: "America? Why are you here? Everyone wants to be in America. There is more work, more money, better weather, better scenery, better women, everything is more modern...." He finished ticking these things off on his fingers, trailed off and looked at me in amazement.

I didn't know what to say. His opinions being so strong it felt silly to try to defend living in Ireland on its merits, so all I could respond with was, "Well, we're not here permanently." It would have been futile to try to explain during this brief encounter that many Americans see Ireland as a mystical ancestral homeland, and that the "Emerald Isle" enchants many an imagination back in the USA. Nevermind the fact that Ireland is indeed a beautiful place, and offers things you can't find back home (see above photos). I guess they don't feel the same way in the "Heart of Europe."

SkyTV for the Masses

Hustling boxes at the warehouse has me off of the job market for the next few months, but the gig has put a dent in my store of Ireland anecdotes. Luckily there have been a few developments outside of jobs and the job-hunt theme: we have found a way to do some volunteer work and some hill walking (i.e., hiking).

As you may remember from earlier entries, our pre-Christmas efforts to volunteer in Cork were unsuccessful for the ironic reason that charities were so busy they didn't have time to train any new volunteers. Now that things have settled down for the winter doldrums, one outfit we were interested in––Society of St. Vincent de Paul (SVP)––is taking on new people. SVP works exclusively with the poor, and volunteers do home visits to try to figure out ways that the organization can help. Training is going well so far, it's a very good group of people. More on this to come.

Regarding hill walking, I stumbled upon the Cork Backpackers Club a few weeks ago. They do mountain excursions every two weeks, and the best part is the club organizes a car pool to get to the trail. This little detail has been the biggest hurdle for us, since Bus Éireann doesn't exactly have routes to the trail heads. I had a short to-do list for Ireland when this whole adventure started: (1) Find work; (2) Travel to the Continent a few times; (3) Hike the Irish countryside. With the help of the Backpackers Club maybe I can check off all of these.

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The Irish––and this might be hard to understand for Americans––are addicted to television (spoiler: that comment about Americans was sarcastic). The reaction we get from people when they find out that we don't have a television has almost become a source of entertainment for Katherine and me. "What?! No telly? How do ye get on?" is a common response. And it's not just TV that we're missing: anybody who's anybody has something called SkyTV, which is, I guess, an analog of DirecTV or Dish Network. It gives you a few hundred channels and also cooks rashers and chips for you while you watch Celebrity Big Brother. We are intensely lame for not having SkyTV. Even in some of the poorer sections of the city you see this:


In fact, one of our trainers at St. Vincent de Paul warned the group about the ubiquity of SkyTV––she told us to not be surprised when you do home visits to the impoverished and find that they have a nice telly with a satellite connection (again, a regrettable phenomenon that you also see in the U.S.).

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And to conclude, a couple of photos that Katherine has been bugging me to post:


Here you can see several examples of the Elderly Irish Man. Notice the obligatory uniform of tweed, khaki, and derby cap. Rarely are they seen in such a large group.

And here's a pic I forgot to post a couple of weeks back, in my entry about music (among other things). I took a covert shot of some of the trad musicians––trying too hard and too obviously to get a good photo would, of course, immediately have me labeled as a dumb tourist.

Car Trips and Cardboard

The view from my morning walk to work. Sunrise over Blackpool's industrial park.

Car trips and cardboard sum up my past two weeks, which have seen an inexcusable lack of activity on my blo––online magazine. Cardboard because that's what I handle all day at the warehouse––leading me to the little known fact (at least outside of the warehouse world) that corrugated can, in a very short time, make your skin chronically dry. I mean skin splitting open. Strange, eh? Anyway, I'm working full-time and editing a PhD thesis, leaving me few chances to stay up to date. But as Katherine has pointed out, the whole premise of Éire Apparent was to record the trials and tribulations of looking for work in Ireland during the Great Recession. Now that I have regular work for the time being I need to figure out another route for ÉA. But in a short two months I will be back on the job market, so the original function is not obsolete. Regardless of where that leads me, I hope to have entertaining stories along the way.

As a matter of fact, I do. Last Thursday Katherine's co-worker lent us her car for a day trip out to west Cork. Our destination was Lough Hyne, a beautiful area near the town of Skibbereen. She told us that she was confident I would be fine driving her car, but any damage that happened would have to be paid for. This warning made me nervous. Justifiably nervous, as I found out on the day of the trip.

You see, it's odd and disorienting driving on the right side of a vehicle and compensating for the width of the vehicle to your left. I managed to get out of Cork City in one piece, but the real difficulty turned out to be the extremely narrow roads of the countryside and its small towns. Going through one such place at around noon, I needed to squeeze in between a large van to my right, and a row of parked cars to my left. One of the parked cars (a BMW) jumped out and clipped my side-view mirror, shattering the glass. The Beamer was unhurt, so we fled the scene.

Instead of devoting the whole day to exploring, we had to find an Opel dealer to repair the damage. Luckily the housing for the mirror was intact and undamaged, they just needed to slap on a new glass surface (took them two minutes and cost me €62––dealers....they're all the same, regardless of what continent you're on). There wasn't much exploring to do anyway; it was rainy and miserable all day. Despite these hurdles, we did make it to Loch Hyne. Along the way we got some nice views in the small town of Glendore:

We couldn't do much more than hop out of the car for a quick photo here and there because of the rain.

In a couple of weeks we're going to try out Galway, in northwestern Ireland. (This time we'll travel by bus so I'm not doing the driving). Hopefully the weather cooperates.

When It Rains It Pours

Not only do I have full-time warehouse work, I also have a PhD thesis to edit for a UCC graduate student. This past week has been consumed by (mostly) those two things, but the craziness will pass. Next week I will be back on with some entertaining anecdotes and insights, including the disaster-riddled road trip we took to Skibbereen, in western Country Cork. Stay tuned, faithful readers...