Éire Apparent

Venturing to the "North"

2010-08-27T09:04:00.000-07:00

Finally, at the ebb of our time in Ireland, Katherine and I made it to the fabled land of Northern Ireland. If talked about at all in Cork, Ulster is usually mentioned along with a raised-eyebrows; an unspoken understanding that something's not quite right up there. Turns out that belief is not at all unfounded.

Katherine's sister Elizabeth was with us for ten days and for the first four days of that stretch we explored the capital of Protestant Ireland: Belfast. I learned much about the history of the Troubles and Catholic/Protestant violence in general, and I won't bore you with all of nuances. I'll just say that the Troubles were worse than you thought they were and, no, they're not exactly over. Well the shooting is (mostly) over, although even in 2010 an occasional British soldier is murdered and your odd car bomb goes off. But what remains is a startlingly segregated society.

From the American point-of-view one can't help but think of the Jim Crow South. Indeed, replace the word "black" with "Catholic," and you're on your way to understanding how Belfast and Ulster operate. Catholics are now allowed to serve in the police force (they now constitute nearly 30% of the officers) and they've even had Catholic Sinn Féin Lord Mayors. But it was unbelievable to hear, on a tour of West Belfast, that in all of Northern Ireland "there are now sixty integrated schools. It's not much, but it's a good start."

In the middle ground, the main "Peace Wall" in West Belfast between Catholic Falls and Protestant Shankill.

Going a bit farther than the American South are the so-called "Peace Walls" erected in Belfast and throughout the North. These are thirty and forty-foot tall barriers separating Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods, and the oldest ones have been up for nearly forty years. The homes next to the walls have protective barriers to deflect petrol bombs and other explosives that could be hurled over from the other side. And far from being just a holdover from the Troubles, they are actually still building Peace Walls in volatile neighborhoods throughout the North.

As you can tell, for me the main attraction of the city was its politics, past and present. We hit up the famous political murals, an obligatory exercise for any first-time Belfast experience. But there was more than the Troubles. There was the Crown Liquor Saloon, the most visually stimulating bar I've ever set foot in. It's like drinking in a work of art: from the Italian-made painted tin ceiling, to the hand-carved and luxuriously decorated drinking booths, to the beautiful painted ceramic tiles covering almost every surface, you actually enjoy looking around more than the very good Guinness they sell. And it's right across the street from the Europa, "the most bombed hotel in the world."

Probably the most famous mural, this painting on the Sinn Féin HQ depicts Bobby Sands, the first of ten IRA men to die on a hunger strike in British prison in the early 1980s.

This charming number greets you while you're walking down toward Queens University. The Loyalist murals are almost always more militaristic and, well, terrifying.

Other worthy sights are Queens University and the magnificent Botanic Gardens. The Ulster Museum––located conveniently in the Gardens––is world-class.

A flower in one of the Botanic Gardens glass houses.

The sisters in the opulent city hall of Belfast. This rebuilt room actually suffered a direct hit from a Luftwaffe bomb during the Battle of Britain.

Elizabeth left for the States today, leaving Katherine and I about a week to prepare for our final foray into the Continent. We're visiting Switzerland after many suggestions to do so from Katherine's grandparents––just as important, though, is meeting up with Swiss friends we made during our honeymoon last year. Within days of our return to Ireland we'll be packing up and leaving Cork for good.

The Final Weeks

2010-08-16T02:39:00.000-07:00

In a few short weeks we'll be waving goodbye to Cork from the back window of a Dublin-bound bus. It will be at least a little somber: Cork is the first place we've lived where Katherine and I feel "at home". Williamsburg, Va., always felt like the temporary trial it was; we never integrated into the community. Maybe that's because half of the community honestly thought they were living in the late-eighteenth century. Anyway, we feel welcome and plugged-in here in southern Ireland––naturally, it's always with a tinge of regret that one leaves such a welcoming environment.

On the other hand, our exit seems to be blessed with good timing. I am still out of work and there's really no hope for finding any at this point. I've been a drain on our finances for weeks now, eating and using electricity but not bringing home any dough. I try to do the laundry and go grocery-shopping to make up for this.

Furthermore, our section of town––Oliver Plunkett Street––seems to be turning against us. Ever since late-June there has been almost incessant road work, masonry work on the building next to us, painting, grinding, and jackhammering. It's a rare, very rare, day when there's any quiet. And the nights....well the nights have been loud too. I have the uncharacteristically good summer weather to thank: warm, clear evenings mean droves of revelers walk around the city at all hours creating all sorts of noise. Sometimes they like to camp out right in front of our building and sing loudly. At 3:00 a.m. Lovely. Last night seemed to be one of those uncommon respites. That is, until 12:30 a.m., when a neighbor's small dog started barking hysterically for several hours.

It's like the city is trying to tell us "'Tis time to go".

***

As for our European travels? Honestly I thought we were done after the Germany trip. Not so: we are, inexplicably, going to go to Switzerland for five days in early September. Katherine's late grandfather highly recommended la Suisse to us (Basel in particular), and we figured that actually going is a good way to honor him. It seems crazy but the tickets are booked and there's no backing out now. We'll get back to Cork with four days left on our lease.

A Long, Dismal Absence

2010-08-04T06:39:00.000-07:00

I know, I know. I've neglected my responsibilities. But in a way I have been saving you all from exceedingly dull reading––nothing much has happened! As with the past few entries, employment prospects are, well, nonexistent. Also working against me is my ever-shortening timetable: we're in Cork for only another six weeks. So I would either have to lie to a potential employer about the permanence of my residency, or tell the truth and not be hired.

So as you call can imagine, I'm planning on no more work in Ireland. I gave it my best shot! And grumble though I did, the warehouse gig saved us. Without that there would have been a much earlier departure for the USA.

Another factor working against my blogging proclivity is, simply, cultural acclimation. After nearly a year in Ireland the glossy novelty has worn off. Our way of life, the sights, the food, the accents, driving on the left side of the road, all of this seems more or less normal. I don't even give it a second thought anymore.

That's not to say that we're not trying to explore anymore. Here's some photographic proof of what I've been up to recently:

The around-the-world Clipper race made it's annual stop in Cork harbour in early July. The clippers are sponsored by cities, countries, and other types of localities from all over the world.

California's clipper was the lone USA representative that I saw in Cork. The crew was, charmingly, singing "Born in the USA."

July 15: My birthday. The big 2-5. Katherine got me a cappuccino cake from the Natural Foods Bakery. Best cake money can buy.

Also in mid-July: my little sister Caitlin came to visit us. After my birthday we went to Cape Clear Island for a couple of days. Clear Island is the most southerly point in the Republic of Ireland (and thus has the southernmost authentic Irish pub in the world). As seen here, the scenery on the ferry ride to the island was pleasing.

We were joined by our friend Meredith, on the left. The views on Clear Island were generally beautiful, like this shot of the South Harbour. Even though it rained for the entirety of our stay we still managed to hike around and enjoy the sights.

It's hard to believe that in six weeks we'll be bidding adieu to Cork. For the latter half of September we are cruising around the island with Katherine's mother and grandmother, and then we depart for the States on September 30. I will keep up with Éire Apparent while I'm still in residence, so be sure to keep popping in!

Missin' June

2010-07-09T06:13:00.000-07:00

The word on the street is that May and June were the best months we'll see in Cork this year. And fine they were, lots of sunshine and hardly any rain to speak of. July is unfolding a little differently: the past three days have seen constant rain, heavy at times. But most of the time it's what some here call "swirling rain," precipitation that's almost lighter than air. The droplets don't really fall according the laws of gravity. Instead they swirl around on invisible air currents, enabling them to find you no matter where you're hiding. Under an umbrella, in a doorway, under an awning...you get wet.

The precipitation only adds to the fun when I'm pacing around the city streets looking for help-wanted signs. No luck thus far (by now it's a familiar story on this page). Nowadays there are even less opportunities than the winter and spring, mostly because college is out for the summer and the part-time market is clogged with university students.

So I remain on the hunt in Cork, but part of my attention is now on the American scene once again. Sadly, in a couple of short months we'll be leaving Munster. Recently I have been spending more time scanning the classifieds in the States––do me a favor and don't ask me what I'm going to be doing. Let's just say that I'm keeping my options open.

A Corkonian friend of ours recently referred to his joblessness as being "funemployed". It seems I have uncritically adopted this philosophy: we have wave after wave of visitors staying with us throughout the summer, and a lack of an income isn't stopping me from pubbing with them and taking trips out west. It might be the epitome of financial irresponsibility, but what about this whole experience hasn't been?

When my cousin Nick was with us last week, we took a road trip to the Beara Peninsula in West Cork for a couple of days. The scenery might well be incomparable as far as Ireland goes:

Katherine and I near the old mining village of Allihies

On Dursey Island, accessible only by cable car, we found dramatic scenery––here Dursey Head extends out toward a small island called "The Calf".

There was also a castle ruin called Martello Tower.

Sea cliffs on Dursey provide stiff competition for the Cliffs of Moher.

Naturally, sheep were ubiquitous on the trip.

My sister is our next guest, arriving next week. We liked what we saw in West Cork so much we are planning a second excursion. Hopefully the weather cooperates.

***

Since I'm in Europe, it seems appropriate for a couple of words on the World Cup. I have been following the tournament as closely as one can without a telly. While we were in Allihies we caught the Uruguay-Ghana quaterfinals match; incredible! The most exciting match I've seen. Anyway, we're down to two teams. Spain and Holland. Interesting historical rivalry, Spain being the former oppressor of the Low Countries. As much as my heart wants the Dutch to pull off an upset, my brain tells me that Spain should win. Therefore I'll go with the Iberians, 3-1.

Long Days in Cork

2010-06-26T04:45:00.000-07:00

The return from Germany melted into working full-time at, yes, the warehouse. My current phase of manual labor in Blackpool ends with the month of June, but, as my boss has confirmed, there could always be a July or August "guest appearance." By July or August the money will seem quite attractive, I'm sure.

Offering our place to friends and family who want to visit Ireland has resulted in a flood of visitors––a cousin of mine comes in tomorrow, and a friend of Katherine's is showing up (with a friend) in the first week of July. The more the merrier, really, because visitors give us convenient excuses to visit some pubs and chippers, and to take road trips to the west of the country.

As for Irish current events––a topic I've neglected for some time––instead of focusing on the extremely repetitive glum economic news the country is in a highly positive mood thanks to some wonderful early summer weather. June has been just about perfect: clear sunny skies, highs in the 80s (or about 90 at the hottest), and long, long days. Seriously long days...I've never seen anything like it. But then again, I've never been this far north around the summer solstice. Consider last Saturday, when I was out until 4:30 a.m. Sunday morning. At 11:15 p.m. I glanced at my watch and noticed that it was still twilight some lingering sunlight still visible in the west. When I turned in for the "evening" at 4:30, the first rays of sunshine were visible in the east. Only about four hours of full darkness!

It is quite agreeable all around. Even if you work full-time, when you get home you still have four or five hours of time to soak up some rays. The only (slight) problem with the situation is you don't get as much sleep as usual. But that's where the Irish winter comes in handy, when you only have six or seven hours of daylight.

Anyway, the country is loving the weather. We've been told that June 2010 has had more sunshine than the entire summer of 2009. Just add this to the list of extreme weather we've encountered during our stay.

S is for Schnitzel

2010-06-19T11:01:00.000-07:00

We returned safely from Germany on Wednesday, no ash cloud interference in sight. Our week away was very enjoyable––we spent most of it in southern Bavaria at the beginning of the Alps, which rise suddenly and impossibly out of gently rolling wheat fields and cow pastures. Those mountains are truly awesome, we had never seen anything like them.

If you’re Alp-bound, check out the Bavarian town of Füssen. It is a favorite vacation spot of Germans, and it’s easy to understand why. The outdoor activities are top-notch. But for foreigners it’s probably best known as the home of Schloss Neuschwanstein, King Ludwig II’s “fairy tale” castle that supposedly inspired the Disney World castle. But something tells me that Ludwig’s is a little more impressive, if anything because it is perched up on an Alpine hill with stunning views of the countryside. That and it’s not made out of fiberglass. As long as you don’t mind being crammed into small rooms with eighty other sweaty tourists, Neuschwanstein’s worth a stop.

From the front steps of Neuschwanstein

We biked around the reservoir Forgenßee

From Füssen we went to Rothenburg ob der Tauber, a great example of a German medieval walled town. It’s extremely touristy. Worth it, though, for the photos of traditional German architecture, giant snails, and a local pastry called a Schneeball.

Tilman Reimenschnieder altarpieces alone were worth the trip to Rothenburg

Germany has large snails

Love the architecture

Lastly we wound up in Frankfurt am Main, Germany’s financial capital. Frankfurt has a nice big-city buzz about it, and some great food too. German friends of ours took us out for some Frankfurt apfelwein (apple wine) and food––I got something called the Schlachtplatte. Literally translated as the “slaughter plate,” it was a mound of blood sausages, ham, and sauerkraut. It was magnificent, the best German food we had for the whole trip.

Frankfurt am Main

Two stereotypes were confirmed. Firstly, Germany is all about pork. You find every type of pork preparation imaginable. It’s actually tough to find beef or chicken on a menu. (If you’re a vegetarian, maybe go to Spain on a holiday instead.) Second, the beer was second-to-none. Sorry Ireland, you’re a close second. The sheer number of brews available in Germany is overwhelming, but I tried to make a small dent. Every kind I had was nearly flawless. Even types of beer I’m not too crazy about––weiss beers and pilsners, for example––I have to give two thumbs up. (If you don’t like beer, maybe go to Italy on a holiday instead.)

One more observation: my God, the Germans are into the World Cup. Maybe their enthusiasm was dampened by their recent loss to Serbia, but I doubt it. While in Rothenburg we watched Germany beat up Australia 4–0. Locals then proceeded to drive around the town in a circle, probably a hundred times until 11:30 at night, honking their horns, singing, and blowing into bugles. This was a preliminary match…I don’t know what they’ll do if Germany wins the cup.

***

Much to my horror June is already drawing to a close, as is our time in Ireland. I’m going to be upfront with my loyal readers: Katherine and I might not be staying in Ireland for the full twelve months of our visas. A combination of factors has us thinking about heading home in late September, but I won’t bore you with them. The easy explanation is that we’ll run out of money.

I am currently limping along at the warehouse, that place won’t let me go. (One of my bosses joked that he originally came to the company sixteen years ago as a deliveryman trying to drop off a box. At least I think it’s a joke.) Nonetheless they won’t have any work for me after June, and the job market in Cork is, well, unchanged.

Right now our preliminary plan for the rest of our time is to enjoy summer in Ireland the best we can. We are seriously considering doing a month or five-week stint at an intensive language school on the Continent at the end of the summer. When are we ever again going to be living in Europe, sans career and other responsibilities? Might as well try to pick up a language, or at least jumpstart the learning process. If we commit to this then we commit to our finances being taxed beyond repair––thus the early return to the ol’ USA.

Note: I have no idea why this post is having formatting problems. I don't know enough about HTML to fix them. Sorry!

June Already?

2010-06-05T08:55:00.000-07:00

May came and went nearly unnoticed in Cork. Between our interesting trip to Italy and France and the visit of Katherine's brothers there was little time to sit out in the sunshine and smell the roses. It will be more of the same in the coming weeks, of course. We head to Germany on Tuesday: we're flying into Munich and start a week of exploring around Bavaria. And there is still a slate of friends and relatives planning to visit this month and next.

Cork is fully awake for summer. Today I saw two parades, of sorts. The first was a rather large march in protest of Israel's actions this past week. In case you didn't watch the news, Israeli commandos stormed an aid ship bound for Gaza, killing nine crew members and humanitarian workers in the process. Today we learn from the news that another ship––this one Irish-owned––has been seized by Israel while on the same course.

As with any other situation involving Israel, folks are riled up about the seizure of the aid ships. So what I saw today was a rather large (by Cork standards) demonstration against Israel's aggressive actions. The second "parade" I witnessed was a raucous procession by the Cork LGBT community (Google it if you don't know what I mean). There was a massive flotilla of dancing people surrounded by rainbow balloons while the Pussycat Dolls was blasted for the whole city to hear. Again a reminder of how much Ireland has changed.

The derelict building next to ours has started to literally crumble into the street below, a spectacle that offered some entertainment last night. The fire brigade noisily arrived to assess the situation. To examine the building closely, they of course had to use a cherry-picker.

But the biggest hazard turned out to be not the unstable building, but advertising banners:

But they're professionals. They managed to get past this hiccup and focus on the task at hand:

The whole fiasco went well into the night––I think it was around midnight before the hubbub died down.

Firemen working away into the evening.

The solution? They ended up gating off the sidewalk and street around the crumbling building. We'll see what happens next...

***

I just finished my first week back at the warehouse, and it's like I never left. They want me back when we return from Germany too, so I don't know where exactly this is heading. On-and-off work throughout the summer? Who knows?

On the economic front, more of the same. I have been fascinated by the slow collapse of the European economy for the past couple of months, and it seems like talk about a break-up of the euro is more common by the day. While no country that I know of has officially endorsed a revision of the common currency, it might be a matter of time. Markets plunged again yesterday as Hungary has admitted it has a Greek-style debt problem. Things will get really interesting if Spain or Italy eventually require bailouts, a situation that would compel the stronger economies (France and Germany) to abandon the currency.

But for the time being the union is holding together. We're going to take advantage by spending some euros in Germany. I'll report upon our return, of course.

A Triumphant Return

2010-06-01T12:38:00.000-07:00

At last entry Katherine's brothers were visiting from the States, and playing hosts kept us busy for much of the last week. They departed over the weekend and it's back to the work week...a work week that holds some surprises? Read on.

But first, I would like to report that we finally made a visit to the fabled Fota Wildlife Park, a Cork institution. It's about a hundred acres of exotic animals, some of which you can get very up close and personal with.

These guanacos were hanging out on the footpath. Kevin (in the yellow hat) got too close and one of them tried to stomp on his foot.

Brother Matt with some ring-tailed lemurs.

Fota is good craic, and the park's attractions are very informative. And I got to see an ostrich chase off––at a full run––not one, but two giraffes simultaneously. That alone was worth the money.

***

Throughout last week I kept my eye on help-wanted ads. And as I last reported, things are slow. Being unemployed has its benefits, of course: while Katherine was at work (before her brothers came) I was cranking out a good amount of writing. Currently I'm working on an article-length piece––it needs a lot of work before I think about submitting it to someone, but I like how it has taken shape thus far.

This week was meant to be the same way––that is, until I got a phone call on Friday. It was from my former boss at the warehouse in Blackpool. They need me back for another temporary stint! This one for two or three weeks! Call me the Brett Favre of warehousing. So instead of lounging around and working on my article this week, I have fallen back into the familiar routine of walking three miles to Blackpool in the morning and three miles back in the evening. Fun stuff.

A Close Shave

2010-05-22T02:19:00.000-07:00

My brothers-in-law are visiting us in Cork this week––young lads both of them, but they're finally over the legal pub age. So naturally seeing some watering holes has been an integral part of their trip. Yesterday we were walking around the North Side and, as tends to happen on a warm day, we got thirsty. A pub called Mo Chuisle caught our eye and we wandered in for some Murphy's. It was a nice place, complete with pool table. But only a few hours after our visit Mo Chuisle was the scene of some American-esque drama:

From the Irish Independent: ARMED gardai last night dramatically foiled an apparent murder bid after shooting a young man who had threatened staff and customers with a shotgun in a busy pub.

The man – who is in his 20s – was fighting for his life after he was shot by Cork-based members of the Garda Regional Support Unit (RSU).

He was shot after he had repeatedly ignored shouted warnings from RSU officers to drop his firearm and surrender to gardai.

It is the first time RSU officers have been involved in such a shooting, with their only previous armed intervention being the use of a Taser stun gun in Limerick.

The drama unfolded after the armed man walked into the Mo Chuisle Pub on Cork’s Blarney Street at 6.40pm. He was carrying a shotgun and asked for an individual by name. The individual was not on the premises at the time – but the man then proceeded to threaten customers and staff, demanding to know the whereabouts of the named man.

A passerby spotted what had happened and alerted Gurranabraher garda station.

An RSU team was already in the vicinity and they arrived within minutes of the alarm being raised.

Several armed officers entered the pub and demanded that the man drop the shotgun and surrender.

However, the man ignored the orders and turned, apparently sweeping the shotgun towards pub customers.

One garda source said the man’s action was deemed to represent a serious threat to both pub patrons and the RSU officers so he was shot in an effort to incapacitate him.

A number of shots were discharged and the young man was hit at least once in the stomach.

An ambulance was called and he was transferred to Cork University Hospital (CUH), where he was undergoing emergency surgery last night.

The young man’s condition is understood to be critical.

Gardai immediately sealed off the scene and assisted the traumatised customers and staff out of the pub. Detectives were investigating whether the incident may be linked to the tragic death of Anthony Hennessy (41) outside the Mo Chuisle pub in March 2008.

Good thing we wound up at Costigan's to finish the evening! The article goes on to say that Mo Chuisle has had other armed encounters in recent years. Take a look if you're in the neighborhood around midday, but stay away in the evenings.

Muy Bien

2010-05-18T07:00:00.000-07:00

Cork’s only Mexican restaurant, Café Mexicana, caught my eye as soon as we arrived in this fair city six months ago. I am quite fond of Mexican food. From the time we were of legal driving age, my group of friends would seek out new “authentic” Mexican joints to sample––which, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, amounted to about three different locations.

Nonetheless, I consider myself rather experienced with the cuisine. In fact, Mexican is the one culinary territory where Europeans will concede that I know more than them. Regarding French, Italian, or even Indian food, I am a sorely uneducated American. But with Mexican (in addition to anything that involves maple) I achieve expert status. This is, of course, because as an American I live closer to Mexico than the Europeans, and we all know that being in close proximity to something results in expertise.

Nevermind that my Mexican-food street-cred is laughable compared to a southern Californian’s, or––God forbid the comparison––an actual Mexican’s. It didn’t matter for the first six months we were here because we avoided that lone Mexican restaurant. We’re in Europe after all, let’s indulge in the fancy European things that don’t exist in the States. And indulge we have: I have many pints of stout and many chipper visits under my belt. But deep down I always knew that one day I would have to confront Café Mexicana.

That day was today. I donned my Expert of Mexican Food cap and we headed in for lunch (their lunch menu is considerably more affordable than the regular offering). The décor, I must say, is spot-on. Brightly colored chairs and tables, and the obligatory pictures of Zapata gracing the walls. Good music too.

Your man Zapata.

The first hitch was the appetizer offerings. They were all labeled as “nachos”. Not a huge problem, but it’s debatable whether or not they can be considered authentic Mexican. And the practice of heaping everything under the sun on top of a pile of corn chips and broiling it is a delicious, yes, but purely gringo invention.

I quickly recovered from this and was considering the beef enchilada when I noticed it. The smell. A familiar aroma––smoky and pleasing…oh God, they’re roasting potatoes. A quick scan over the menu confirmed my suspicions: an appetizer of potato skins.

And so I ate my enchilada not enjoying the scent of cilantro (none to be see in the place!), but of potatoes. I really mean it because my dear wife, Katherine, ordered the potatoes and ate them right in front of me. I can’t pretend to be too amazed by this, we’re in Ireland after all. It’s mainly the deficit of cilantro that’s tough to wrap my mind around.

Based on the Mexican food you can get in the States, Café Mexicana earns a five out of ten. It’s a good start, but there are some gaping holes that purists will find tough to ignore. But it’s only fair to have a separate grading scale for Mexican food available in Ireland––and with that rubric Café Mexicana earns a nine. It’s the only game in town!

She Says...about Italy and France

2010-05-15T16:59:00.000-07:00

For the first time in my life, I saw planning ahead bite Brandon in the butt. We were meant to leave for our grand tour of Italy on Wednesday, 5 May. Brandon, always the one who plans ahead in our relationship, bought train tickets online to get us from Pisa to Lucca on Friday, 7 May. But that volcano in Iceland is still erupting and the changing winds and weather patterns mean that flights over Ireland (and Europe) will continue to be canceled whenever winds blow in an unfavorable direction.

Our flight to Pisa was canceled, and our train tickets were null and void. So I think from now on, Brandon will probably start to plan ahead at the last possible minute. This cancelation ended up being for the best though, really, because we got to see Venice. We were able to rebook our tickets for Friday morning; the only catch was that we had to fly into either Rome or Venice. We chose the latter because we thought it would be more manageable with the limited time we had there.

You’d think getting to Venice would be easy, right? We’re already in Europe. All we have to do is hop on a plane and fly there. Not so.

Oh, what a journey it was! Brandon and I woke up at 6:30 a.m. on Thursday, May 6. I worked a full day and we caught the last train from Cork to Dublin. There were even complications the night before we flew out. News reports late in the day on Thursday were saying wind conditions might change over night and early morning flights could very possibly be affected.

When would the Irish Aviation Authority issue a statement on that possibility? At 8:30 p.m. of course: the same time as the last train to Dublin. Dublin doesn’t have any 24-hour internet cafes (somehow Cork does, though), so we stopped into a hostel to find out if they knew the flight situation. We heard that all was good to go, and decided we would head to the airport. The time was now roughly 12:30 a.m. We caught a bus and got there a little after 1 a.m.

We did our best to sleep in the airport. We settled in a spot downstairs that was quiet for about 40 minutes, until a woman sitting near us started speaking very loudly in another language on her mobile. It wasn’t a short phone call either. So we got up and desperately looked for another seat. We eventually found one. The time was now about 2 a.m. We dozed off and on for about two hours before the cricks in our neck and the early morning buzz of travelers checking in woke us up. It was now 3:30 a.m., we wearily got up, ate a breakfast we had packed, and checked in for our flight.

Almost as soon as we were up in the air, Brandon asked me, “Do you mind if I sleep on your lap?”

“No,” I responded, “Go ahead.” And go ahead he did, he did a diagonal, across-the-airplane-armrest face plant and woke up two hours later with the imprint of my jeans on his face. To be fair to Brandon, he did wake up half way through the flight and asked me if I wanted to sleep on his lap. It didn’t exactly look comfortable, so I said I was fine and continued to try to sleep sitting up.

I mention all this because, by the time we got to Venice, I could barely lift my backpack up and put one foot in front of the other. And somehow Brandon’s two hours of sleep had refreshed him completely. He even went so far as to say, “I feel great,” at some point that morning.

As you will read in Brandon’s entry, things didn’t go so well from that point on. You’ll have to read his take on this trip for the full story with all the juicy details. But basically, we got off at the wrong bus stop. I asked Brandon, “Should I go ask the bus driver which stop is for Marghera?”

“Sure?” He responded, and with that the bus came to a halt and Brandon got up. I assumed he was going to walk to the front of the bus to talk to the driver, but no, he walked straight off the bus. I just about got off after him, the doors closed and the bus drove away. It was not the correct stop, and we ended up walking three to four miles through Venice’s deserted, ugly, somewhat frightening industrial park to get to our hotel.

***

Once I finally did get a few hours of solid sleep though, I felt a million times better, and we both completely and thoroughly enjoyed Venice. The Rough Guides series says one of the best things you can do in Venice is get lost, and that is exactly what we did. Brandon and I wandered around the islands of the city for about five hours, occasionally ducking into churches to look at the incredible extravagance, until 9:30 that night. At one point, Brandon told me he thought he should give me a big hug and kiss on a bridge over one of the canals, and he did just that. There were even church bells ringing. It was beautiful.

St. Mark's Square

We spent the next morning in Venice too, and then left for Lucca. (If you want to say it like a true Italian, make it a long “u” so that it sounds like “Looo-ka.”) We had one full day in Lucca, and that was really about all we needed. It was enough to go to the top of the Guinigi Tower, eat gelato, see all the churches (that were not quite as impressive as the churches in Venice), and walk around the medieval walls of the city.

Atop the Guinigi Tower

From Lucca, we went to Corniglia, a small town on the Cinque Terre. This trip turned out to be an adventure full of twists and turns. We planned this trip to Italy so that we could do some hiking on the Cinque Terre trails. And when we got there, we found out that the trails were closed. We were both a little bummed, but I embraced this change. After all, our flight to Pisa being canceled ended up being the best thing that happened on the trip.

We made a split second decision to cancel our reservation at the hostel for the second night, and move to Nice a day early. This, too, ended up being the right move, because the hostel in Corniglia was a prison-style hostel. Seriously. It was the strictest hostel we have stayed in yet. The man at the front desk had the biggest case of seriousitis I have ever seen. That man did not smile. At all. We were really nice to him, tried to speak in Italian, always gave him a big hello. You’d think he’d at least smile. But he was the most serious person I’ve ever met. And he really didn’t have to be: he works at a hostel in a tiny town of maybe a few hundred people that looks out over the Mediterranean Sea.

This hostel had rules like: “Check out time before or ABSOLUTELY by 10 a.m.,” “Excessive alcohol consumption will NOT be tolerated. Guests who violate this rule will be thrown out on the spot.” There was video surveillance, and you also were not allowed to hold onto the key to your room. You had to leave the key at the front desk with the man that did not smile every time you went out of the hostel. I’m guessing that he used the video surveillance to see which guests were coming in and out, because he always had our two keys ready and a complete stone-faced stare on his face every time we came back in. Oh, and if you lost the key somewhere in the five feet between your room and the front desk, they charged you €5.

Corniglia was beautiful, though. You could see most of the town in under twenty minutes. But we found our way down to the marina, and sat out on the docks with our feet dipped into the sea for about forty minutes. We also found a pretty cool waterfall. And the terraced olive orchards, the mountains, and the little villages nestled into the hillside just added to the charm and the beauty.

It took about seven hours by train to get to Nice, all said and done. Nice was our last port of call, and we were happy to be done with public transit for this trip. We didn’t realize this when we booked our trip, but we arrived in Nice right before Grand Prix weekend in Monaco. And the Cannes Film Festival started while we were there. There was a good energy in the city, everything seemed very much alive and happy. We enjoyed just sitting by the beach, walking around the old town, and relaxing a little bit.

Nice water in Nice, but a rocky beach. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

There were two South African men staying in our hostel, both in their mid-forties or early fifties, who were there for Grand Prix weekend. Over several hours of wine and whiskey, they told us all about South Africa, and invited us down. We exchanged e-mails and we may take them up on it some day. That remains to be seen.

***

Thankfully, the ash cloud didn’t interfere with our flight back to Ireland. We made it back, tired, but happy. Life on the Continent seems to be a little bit more private and reserved; the South Africans picked up on this too. I was happy to get back to Ireland, where life is quite the opposite. People always go out to meet in the pub, everyone is always up for a laugh, and life in general is just a little more social.

We both found it amazing how quickly our minds adapted to another language. In the four to five days we were in Italy we both started picking up Italian very quickly. Nevertheless, after a week in a foreign country, the English language is one of the most beautiful sounds you will ever hear.

He Says...about Italy and France

2010-05-15T16:43:00.000-07:00

Getting to Italy was supposed to be simple: we were going to arrive in Pisa at 11:55 p.m., head immediately to our booked room, and get a good night’s sleep for the days ahead. Instead, after rebooking thanks to that damn volcano, we had to catch a plane in Dublin for Venice. At six in the morning.

Katherine didn’t get off of work until late in the afternoon, and we scrambled to catch a train to Dublin at 8:30 in the evening. We got to the capital city at midnight; figuring it wasn’t worth the money for a room to get only three or so hours of sleep, we had to camp out in the Dublin airport. I only have one thing to say about that: don’t try to sleep in the Dublin airport. It sucks.

So we landed in Venice nearly comatose with fatigue. The next adventure was finding a bus to the hotel room I hastily booked twelve hours before. We get on a bus. It says “Venezia” on it, a good sign. The first stop was at the Mestre train station outside of Venice––our hotel is also outside of Venice, but we figure it’s probably easier to ride into the city, then catch another bus out of it. My synapses were no longer firing by the time we go the Venice depot. We got on a bus––the number six––that someone says is going to Marghera, the town on the mainland where our hotel resides. Sounds good to me.

I had a crude black-and-white map of Venice and Marghera with me that I printed off of the internet. A quick judgement of distance told me that Marghera should be one of the first stops. Sure enough, someone dinged the bell and the bus stopped once on the mainland. I told Katherine that we should get out here, my worst fear being that the bus goes too far inland.

The bus took off, and then I realized that I had a new worst fear. I had no idea where we were. We were dropped off in the median of a four-lane highway. The stop was called Righi, which was cute.

See?

We darted to the side of the highway and I consulted my map. I figured we got off too early, and we were still in the industrial port area that skirts Marghera. Trying to project confidence for Katherine (who was fading fast at this point), I gestured to the north and said, “We need to go that way. Marghera should only be a few minute’s walk.”

Another bit of advice, if you’re ever heading into the industrial port area around Marghera, Italy: it is much, much bigger than it looks on a map. And much scarier. Into it we headed, and most of it looked like it was never rebuilt after World War II. Decrepit old factories and warehouses as far as the eye can see, and occasionally a dodgy character is present to stare at you. We walked for about an hour. At this point––how should I put this?––Katherine was…not happy. She was being quite vocal about how we were hopelessly lost, and that we’d never find Marghera or a bed. In her most desperate moment, she wailed (and I’m not joking), “I hate Italy and I hate Italians! Italy is nothing but a bunch of freaking lies!!!” Long story short: not an ideal start to our visit to Venice.

At the very least my sense of direction was correct. After about three miles of hot, sweaty walking through the industrial wasteland from hell, we got into the heart of Marghera. Just in time to see the number six bus driving by our hotel.

Oh, and the Mestre train station I mentioned earlier? That was a five-minute stroll from our room.

***

Thankfully, everything went much smoother after this. We had about twenty-four hours in Venice, more than enough time to get lost in its magical maze of streets and canals. It’s truly a stunning city, I can’t recommend it enough. Sure, there are literally more tourists than residents. And English is the default language, which does much to kill the exoticism. But the beauty of it all more than makes up for the shortcomings. The city is sinking into the sea as we speak, so you better go soon!

From there we went to Lucca, an small old fortified city north of Pisa. I finally got to ride one of Europe’s fancy high-speed trains––it’s a pretty sweet way to travel. Lucca is not as stunning as Venice, but manageable in size with a tiny fraction of the Venice’s crush of tourists. Fewer people speak English, so at least we got the chance to stumble through some Italian.

Outside of Lucca I found something I never thought I would be happy to see: an American-style big-box store. After two days of eating sausage and cheese from convenience stores (now that’s budget travelling), Lucca’s Esselunga Superstore was a joy to behold. We did rather well: one shopping trip there totalling €37 got us enough food for five meals, for two people. That’s €3.70 per meal, per person. Not bad!

***

Italy had one more disappointment in store for us. After Lucca we went to the Cinque Terre, a national park south of Genoa in Liguria. The park is famous for its hiking––notably the “blue route,” a path along the sea cliffs that links five small picturesque villages. The blue route was the impetus for the whole Italy trip in the first place. Well, we arrived in Corniglia (one of the villages) to find the hiking trails closed. If they get a few days of rain on the Cinque Terre the paths are apparently prone to earthslides.

Corniglia and its environs are beautiful, but without the hiking there wasn’t much to keep us there. Not a terrible thing, because the Cinque Terre towns are geared entirely toward fleecing tourists. And boy, do the tourists come in force. In Corniglia we heard English, German, French, and more English being spoken, but very little Italian. Such is the price of beauty.

Italy made me aware of how ubiquitous English has become. It’s the twenty-first century verion of Latin. Numerous times Katherine and I walked into shops, museums, or restaurants to have the Italian employees greet us in English before we even opened our mouths. Either I just look like an English speaker, or the assumption is as follows: regardless of where this tourist is from, he most likely will understand some English.

At least the French are holding out against the Anglicization of European languages. Even if they know English (and most of them seem to) it’s tough to get it out of them. My rudimentary knowledge of their language thus came in handy when we showed up in Nice, our final stop. In a nutshell Nice is like Miami, Florida, but in southern France. A Miami where the women sunbathe topless.

***

Coming through customs once back in Dublin, we were reminded of the difference between Ireland and the Continent. In the mainland airports we’ve been in, the custom officials pay only enough attention to you to determine if you’re the person pictured in your passport. They don’t say hello, they don’t smile. They generally seem miserable. But airport officials in Ireland have always been chatty, and this time was no different. The man we got this time asked us about our luck finding work, and then lapsed into a very Irish lecture of “This country is going downhill very quickly, lads. Things are getting very bad––you’ll be heading back to the States just in time.” Depressing, yes, but better than the chat I had with the customs official at Shannon Airport in County Limerick: after telling him that we have visas and live in Cork he said, “Well someone has to, I guess.”

Back to the Classifieds

2010-05-15T04:23:00.000-07:00

After another long absence (thanks to another Euro-trip), I am back. Katherine and I were in northern Italy and southern France for a week, pursuing an extremely ambitious itinerary that nearly killed us. As mentioned in my previous entry, the holiday started off with a canceled flight. That turned out to be only the first unexpected hiccup of several more to come.

Either later today, or possibly tomorrow, keep an eye out for a deluxe, rarely seen double-entry describing our journey. Along with yours truly (of course), Katherine will co-author a "He said, She Said"-style article, complete with pictures.

***

What awaited me when we got back to Ireland was unemployment, a situation I have been trying to improve today. The online Irish job banks made it easy by having absolutely nothing helpful. I guess it's back to working the pavement.

In recent weeks we have been watching the death spiral of the Euro. At first it seemed like an overreaction on the part of the Greeks, who eagerly resort to street riots even at the best of times. But now European markets from Madrid to London are in a near free-fall, as is the value of the currency. Americans have no doubt noticed the effect on Wall Street too.

Now I'm not qualified enough to translate the trials of high-finance to scarcity of part-time jobs in Cork, but I know the connection is there. When markets plummet and folks are worried that the Great Recession is regaining momentum, small businesses hide the "Help Wanted" signs and refrain from posting positions online. At the moment it's a nice sunny day, so I'll go looking nonetheless.

The Wrath of Eyjafjallajokull, Part II

2010-05-06T01:49:00.000-07:00

We all thought this volcano business was behind us. I did at least. Well, it's not––our flight to Pisa was canceled yesterday. Canceled flights aren't cheap, we were unfortunate enough to discover. We lost the deposits we made for accommodations, as well as what I spent on some pre-booked––and non-refundable––train tickets. Oh, not to mention the €8 or so it cost me to sit on hold while I waited to speak to someone in the RyanAir reservation office. C'est la vie...volcanoes happen.

So here I still sit in Cork, waiting for plan b to unfold: we should be heading to Venice early tomorrow morning (flight departs at 6:05...aarggh), and from there we'll make our way to the Cinque Terre in the Liguria region.

***

Katherine and I have been lucky enough to see floods, an epic winter, and volcanoes, so why not the collapse of Europe's single currency? Quite a year, if you ask me. Unless you hide from the news, you've heard that Greece is "on the edge of the abyss" thanks to violent reaction over the country's near-default and subsequent bailout. The murmurs are that if the Greek bailout fails, then the future of the euro becomes highly uncertain.

The value of the currency has already plummeted in recent days. I would like to look at this from a selfish angle for a moment: Friggin' wonderful. When we bought euros so we could come to Europe, the dollar was weak and the currency conversion cost us dearly. Now when we head back to the States and need to sell our euros for greenbacks, we'll be taken deep again. How's that for timing? I guess this creates an incentive to spend all of our euros while in Europe (if the currency survives).

***

Meanwhile, Cork is losing a landmark. A couple of days ago I noticed the dismemberment of the old Beamish brewery on the Lee, closed by Heineken over a year ago after almost 300 years of operation (also see this). Sure, the place has sat idle for fourteen months now, and there has been preliminary demolition work going on for some time. But it was still a shock seeing the tanks ripped up:

Bye-bye, Beamish. Wonder where they're taking the tanks?
Cashing them in for scrap?

Some locals looked on while they took the wrecking ball to the old girl.

After buying the historic Beamish & Crawford brewing company, Heineken
made a half-assed effort at getting rid of the "Crawford" (for some unknown reason).

The last photo is of the famous Beamish "counting house," a protected structure. Rumor has it that the building will be turned into condos, apartments, or some similar sort of abomination. (Another historic, and even more beautiful, building being turned into flats is the old Our Lady's Hospital––formerly Eglinton Mental Hospital––found just outside of the city. Now called "Atkins Hall".)

I bemoan all of this not because of some emotional attachment to Beamish. I prefer Murphy's anyway. Specifically I'm disturbed by the endless coalescing of international corporations we see in the food and drink industries. Guinness, which owns most Irish beers, is part of Diageo, a particuarly evil-sounding company (and also the largest beer and spirits company in the world). Beamish––and Murphy's too!––are owned by Heineken. That covers the famous Irish stouts. Another recent example is Cadbury's takeover by Kraft. How perverse things must be when people mourn the sale of Cadbury––a multi-billion-pound international operation––as the loss of another small independent operation.

To be fair, Beamish is still brewed in Cork, only about a half-mile away from the old location. It's made in the same facility as its former competitor, Murphy's. It still tastes the same. But it just feels dirty.

Some Spring Traveling

2010-05-01T05:39:00.000-07:00

To my few faithful readers who haven't lost patience with me: thanks for checking back. For various reasons I haven't been able to write much in the past two weeks, but primarily because of work and our mothers coming to visit.

Yes, the mothers finally made their much-anticipated trip to Ireland. Missing the volcanic flight disruption by only a day, they landed last Friday morning. Last weekend was devoted to Cork City––we strolled the city centre and hit all of the obligatory stops (the English Market and the Idaho Cafe). At night pubs were the destinations, and I'm happy to say that my mother also finds Murphy's to be the superior stout.

But the best part of the past week was our three-day whirlwind tour of western Ireland. First stop was Inisheer, one of the Aran Islands off of the coast of County Clare.

This photo sums up the island: stone walls everywhere. The island is only a little over two hundred acres in area, but has thousands of miles of stone walls. We thought this was some unique holdover from ancient Irish farmers until a local told us the real reason: not that long ago (early twentieth century?) the government offered grants to farmers so that they could build stone walls as "land improvement". The more stone walls they built, the more money they got. And since the Aran Islands are so remote, no bureaucrats ever stopped by to see if all of those walls were actually necessary. Well, you get the picture.

Inisheer, and the Aran Islands in general, are a treasure-trove of ancient sites. This castle was fun to romp around.

As were the medieval churches. One of them still has this wonderful carving on the altar, as well as the body of the patron saint of Inisheer buried a few feet away.

I can't recommend the Aran Islands enough. They are beautiful, ringed by rocky coasts, some sandy beaches, and Carribean-blue water. There is a slow pace of life, with the local population depending on ferry loads of supplies and tourists from the mainland. And it was fascinating to be in a Gaeltacht (or Irish-speaking area) for the first time, to hear the country's native tongue. Our first encounter with spoken Irish was in a pub next to our hostel, where we encountered several severely inebriated locals––at 1 p.m. After asking all of the females in our group if they were married, the merrymakers sang a traditional Irish song. One drooling fellow even played air guitar for us.

Our ferry ride back to Co. Clare from Inisheer was on rough seas, so after landing we made a nauseous stop at the Cliffs of Moher. Here's the group with some guy standing behind us:

Even in heavy rain and severe wind the Cliffs were wonderful. They definitely live up to the hype. Of course, I had to get a very close look:

To wrap up the western tour, we stayed for a day on the Dingle peninsula (another Gaeltacht, as it turns out). The town of Dingle is another tourist magnet that completely lives up the reputation. The town's setting is magnificent, ringed by spectacular mountains, lush valleys, and a nice harbor that has a friendly dolphin named Fungi.

A short drive around the the peninsula yielded the best scenery I've yet seen in Ireland, and––honest to God––we even got stuck behind a shepherd herding his flock along the road. It was good to see that "postcard Ireland," as we called it, still exists.

The peninsula also has several places named after St. Brandon, who is famous for being able to cure cancer. I didn't even know I was named after a Saint.

The best part was seeing my name in Irish. This is the sign that greets you coming into the village of Brandon. (As you might notice with the two signs, "Brandon" has a couple of spellings in Irish. I have noticed with with other place names in the country as well).

We all went to Dublin to conclude our mothers' visit. Heavy rain and fatigue prevented extensive sight-seeing, but all was well: we had a fantastic dinner at Shebeen Chic, an Irish-cuisine restaurant in city centre. If you're ever in town, do yourself a favor and stop by for a meal. It seems to be patronized mostly by the young and trendy; some of the customers were downright Greenwich Village-esque. But most importantly, the food was top notch.

***

Sightseeing aside, Katherine and I are working––I have yet another thesis to edit––and preparing for more trips and visitors. We head off for Italy on Wednesday, and when we return there are several waves of siblings, friends, and relatives coming to stay with us. Spring will quickly melt into summer.

The Wrath of Eyjafjallajokull

2010-04-17T05:19:00.000-07:00

I know it looks like I passed out and bashed my head against the keyboard, but "Eyjafjallajokull" happens to be the name of that pesky Icelandic volcano. Europe is absolutely crippled by the cloud of ash that has most airports closed until the eruption ends––and no one knows when that will be. Things are especially problematic in Ireland and Britain. Being islands, there are only a few other travel options: you can take a ferry, or the Chunnel. And from what I've been reading, all ferry and Chunnel crossings are sold out.

The eruption has been anticlimactic for us so far. All I see is a clear blue sky, no ominous cloud of ash! But that will change soon. According to the an article from the Washington Post, Scottish health authorities said that this weekend we'll see the ash "wafting to the ground...producing a dusty haze and a strong sulfuric smell akin to that of rotten eggs." Sweet! My first encounter with volcanic ash.

To recap, in Ireland we have seen the worst flooding in centuries, the coldest winter in a lifetime, and now a massive volcanic eruption. As far as natural phenomenon this trip hasn't been disappointing!

***

Some of the cliffs at the entrance to the Old Head. Notice the ancient
fortification wall in the foreground.

Now for the promised report on my trip to Old Head. The work I was doing there, as predicted, was dull and I therefore won't talk about it. But the weather was perfect and the scenery beautiful.

The view from the clubhouse's patio. Not a shabby place to
play a €200 round of golf or have a €15 drink, is it?

I had to spend two work days at the Old Head Links. Not too long after I left on Monday a guy plunged to his death off of the cliffs––a very scenic suicide. This last photo was taken on Tuesday; apparently they were still looking for his body. The chopper was slowly working its way along the coastline. Anyway, it made for a neat shot with the lighthouse in view.

***

I had an interesting cab ride back from the airport on Tuesday (I had to take cabs from City Centre to the airport each day, because that's the only place where one can rent a car in Cork!). The driver and I engaged in the obligatory small talk at first--he told me that he drives a Harley, and did a two-month motorcycle trip across the United States. He also told me about the way Old Head used to be before it was colonized by the upper-bourgeois. "'Twas a very wild place, Old Head. I used to go out there with me shotgun and blast away at the sea gulls. 'Twas cruel of me, yes, but I like to think they would have done the same if they had shotguns."

This is where the conversation turned from harmless to serious. Referring to the recent bank bailouts (see previous entries), my driver made it clear he was disgusted by the €54 billion hole Ireland dug itself. "For a small country, for a country with only one million full-time employees, 'tis a grave." He then told me his big plans: "I think it's time for some assassinations, starting at the top and working down the line. Somebody needs to take out these politicians."

"Still have the old shotgun?" I asked.

"Oh yes, I have plenty of guns. But a shotgun would be too good for them. The person that takes them out will be a hero to the people. I'm an old man [he was about 70] that has nothing to lose, so it looks like it will have to be me. They don't hang people anymore, so what are they going to do? Throw me in jail for the rest of my life?" He laughed at the prospect.

We arrived at my apartment. "I'm a real Cork man, a true rebel, and I'll shoot them all," he concluded. By this point he was also referring to the "foreign" cab drivers who undercut Irish cabbies, robbing the latter of business. All I could think to say was "Well, good luck with that. Your secret is safe with me."

Beerfest

2010-04-11T10:27:00.000-07:00

I hope everyone had a good Easter, even if it didn't mean a three-day weekend (which is what it always means here). Our visit to the Franciscan Well's Easter Beerfest was excellent. Their beer garden was lined with stalls representing different Irish microbreweries––my favorite was Molly's Chocolate Truffle Stout. I have seen Molly's beers in the States, you come across them once in a while. Keep an eye out for this particular brew!

I got my pay stub for the week of our trip to Edinburgh. I only worked two days that week, so the pay should have been a small one. But I was surprised to see that they gave me a full week's wage. My conscience (and Katherine) dictated that I talk to my boss about this overpayment. As it turns out, they didn't make a mistake: I was given vacation days. Talk about something that would never happen in the US! Work a temporary position––even a part-time one––in Ireland and you accumulate paid vacation based on the number of hours you put in. One vacation day for every hundred hours in my case.

Tomorrow I get to go on my first and probably last business trip for warehouse work. The company shipped a thousand or so embroidered shirts to Old Head Golf Club in Kinsale, only for the Old Head folks to complain that they weren't correctly tagged. Therefore I get to hire a car and drive to the club and fix the tags. Mindless work, maybe. But at least I'll get to see one of the most beautiful courses in the world. Check it out:

(Sorry, couldn't find a better picture that would fit. Just check out the link I posted above). The Old Head peninsula used to be open to the public until the Celtic Tiger days of the '90s. As the Irish describe it, that's when "rich people" bought up the land and made it one of the most exclusive private clubs in the country.

Stuff like the Old Head controversy doesn't help the average Irish person's view of golf as a solidly elitist activity. I'll put such scandal aside in my mind as I walk around to enjoy the view.

My Warehouse Twilight

2010-04-04T08:46:00.000-07:00

Warehousing and––as of late––another PhD thesis to edit have been cramping Éire Apparent's style. Not to fear, for I will be out of work again soon. The third week of April is the swan song of my career as a stock counter. So be prepared for the return of Brandon the mega-blogger.

As I write, my employment prospects are as bleak as before the warehousing stint. There's still nothing on the horizon other than restauranting and bar tending, and I didn't have much luck in those industries (the whole lack of "experience" thing). If I can manage to procure a nice flow of PhD theses to edit I will be fine––professional editing pays pretty well as it turns out!

***

Happy Easter! to those who observe it. Katherine, always the good Catholic, had us go to Easter Mass this morning. Since we slept in we had to go to the noon mass, which turned out to be the traditional Latin Rite. Aye carumba! I now completely understand why Vatican II was necessary. I've never seen priests do so much kneeling and standing and incense (Katherine said maybe the traditional mass was thought up as an exercise routine for the clergy). And there was the slight problem of the incoherently mumbled Latin.

To celebrate Christ's Resurrection Katherine and I are going to an Easter beer festival at the Franciscan Well, something that would make Him proud I'm sure.

***

We have joined in with the British/Irish tradition of "Easter Eggs," which are large chocolate....eggs. This is their standard Easter morning treat. Our friend Gemma's family gave us ours: I had a hollow egg that came with some Maltesers, and Katherine had the Cadbury (Kraft) "Flake" version. Good stuff.

My boss as the warehouse, Laurence, had a Jedward Eastern Egg. If you want a vision of the Antichrist, run a Google search for "Jedward." They're a corporate pop duo, and thanks to them we are now being tortured by a resurrection of Vanilla Ice in Ireland. Didn't think bringing back Vanilla Ice was possible? Yeah, I didn't either. Can't wait for the Second Coming of Milli Vanilli!!

If you purchase a Jedward Easter Egg you have a chance at a "golden ticket," which wins you a chance to meet them in person. This is why Laurence chose this egg. Laurence and I are on the same page when it comes to the disaster that is Irish pop radio––he told me that if he had the pleasure to meet Jedward, maybe he would have a chance to take out at least one of them. "Maybe that would kill the magic," he mused. But he didn't get the ticket. And, alas, the problem we face with pop music in Ireland is bigger than Jedward, anyway.

***

Anyway, to close I will do my spot for the Scottish Ministry of Tourism. Go to Edinburgh! It's wonderful. And with sterling being weak at the moment, it's downright affordable.

Dancin' Days Are Here Again

2010-03-31T12:23:00.000-07:00

We're back from Edinburgh as of last Sunday. Since then work has dominated our time, and so I can only leave a stop-gap entry for my devoted army of readers.

First, a quick word about Edinburgh: do yourself a favor and skip London. Just go right to the capital of Scotland. It is a gorgeous city––prettier than any we have seen thus far. It's a World Heritage Site, and it earns that honor easily.

Second, just when you thought the Irish economic situation looked bleak we get "Black Tuesday". The Irish government has decided to bail out a few (more) large banks, and folks are so angered by this and other revelations that some have accused the current government of treason. Pretty volatile stuff flying around right now. The government has taken on something like €50 billion in debt from bailouts––a tiny amount when compared to the trillions and bazillions the US government has been throwing around. But for a country of only four million that is some serious cash.

Patty's Day

2010-03-18T14:23:00.000-07:00

The rain returned today with a vengeance––my trek to Blackpool left me soaked. Thankfully the weather had the decency to hold off until the day after St. Patrick's Day, a much-awaited milestone for our time in Ireland.

March 17 is indeed an important holiday for Ireland, but the nature of the celebration can be a little surprising to American expectations. My sweeping generalization would be that for Ireland, St. Patrick's Day is a day to have a little fun, take a day off of work (very important), and to celebrate the present. It's different than the American version, which tends to be an orgy of Irish traditionalism and stereotypes––St. Patrick's Day in the USA is the holiday of a diaspora remembering the "old country."

Sure, there were green wigs and Irish flags in Cork, but not much green beer or green rivers, trad music, or even traditional food. Believe it or not, Katherine and I had trouble finding corned beef; instead we made Irish soda bread as our paean to the country's cuisine.

(For some reason Katherine's gluten-free loaf––on the left––turned out looking more attractive and loaf-like). Embarrassing confession: until yesterday, I had never had Irish soda bread. I highly suggest it. As far as breads go it is very easy to make, and ours turned out quite well.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that on St. Patty's Day Ireland celebrates Ireland, and in this day and age that means more than fiddles, red beards, Guinness, and potatoes.

That said, parades are obligatory. We went to Cork's, which had some predictable elements:

Like martial displays, including the Irish Army and Navy (seen above). Don't bother making jokes about this being the Irish Navy's only vessel––I'm way ahead of you. I have a feeling it's trailered most of the time.

There were also some surprises, such as:

Transformers.

But surprisingly, most of the celebration was devoted to the many non-Irish cultures that now call Cork home.

There were the Filipino-Irish (seen here), as well as Latvians, Africans, Hungarians, and––of course––Poles.

After the parade the crowd moved to a part of the City Centre called the Grand Parade, where there was an outdoor market and concert. Some Irish trad music, maybe? No, just a jazz band fronted by an Englishman sporting a mohawk. They played Sinatra and the Stray Cats.

After the mid-day festivities, Katherine and I went to some pubs. This also seemed obligatory. Our first stop––the famous Franciscan Well––greeted me with the sought-after trad music and some stout. In another establishment we sat next to a warm coal fire, a comfortable spot to sip some Jameson. This satisfied the need for some good old Irish nostalgia.

***

When I got to work today, my boss asked if I went to the Patty's Day parade. "Yes, it was nice," I said.

"You must have gone to a different parade than me," he shot back. "Be honest, you weren't a little disappointed? That naval display was hilarious!"

So I guess it's a fortunate coincidence that Cork's was the first St. Patrick's Day parade I've ever seen.

The Sunny Day Blues

2010-03-13T02:28:00.000-08:00

Alas, another extended break between entries. I am sorry, eager readers. It's just that this whole full-time work thing has greatly reduced my wandering around Cork. As for work itself, most of what I do is too mundane even for the blog format (not that this is a blog). So I'll spare you. Mostly.

Early morning Blackpool by Dennehy's Fish Shop and Healy's Baker. Oh, and
the Great Wall Chinese take-out place. This is the twenty-first century after all.

It's true in many cases that foreigners, either living or visiting a new land, experience more of a place than the locals ever have. Locals get tied down to work and other routines, and inherit preconceived notions about their community or country. And it can simply be tough to see what's special about a place when you're around it all of the time.

And so it is with the North Side of Cork, of which Blackpool is a part. I walk through this part of the city each day and––with each new nook of it I discover––I think it's the most interesting. Considering how vehemently Irish South Siders denounce the North Side as a crime-infested cesspool, it can be pretty surprising to find that many of the neighborhoods are warm and vibrant. The South Side has modern shopping centers and comfortably spaced houses (i.e., classic suburban sprawl), but the northern neighborhoods have a delightful traditional feel along with unique independent shops and eateries. It's all very rough around the edges in places, but Blackpool, Shandon, Sunday's Well (which can actually get quite swanky in parts) and others are the best place to see "Old Cork". If you're ever in town, take a long stroll north of the River Lee.

***

There are only two days out of the year that pubs are required to close in Ireland, and Good Friday is one of them. But this year, many Irish have a big problem with this old tradition: there happens to be a rugby match scheduled for Good Friday. How on Earth can the nation enjoy a rugby match without a pint??? Seriously, this is a big issue and many want the old Good Friday rule thrown out, at least for 2010.

I think Americans would be happy to drink at home, watching the match on their own couches. Not to say that that is preferable; I find that watching rugby in a crowded pub is helpful. Not fully understanding the rules, I can gather from other patrons' groans or cheers what is happening.

***

The fabled Irish gift of gab can indeed be a good thing. If the gabber you're dealing with is cheerful and emotionally well-balanced. It's when you run into an Irish person that hates his life that you discover the dark side of the national propensity for chatting: a never-ending, bottomless pit of complaining.

Complaining is a national pastime in Ireland, and even the happiest people partake. (A doctor Katherine and I visited––he was English, to be fair––said, "the Irish are born pointing their fingers"). The best example is the weather––the past two weeks have been very sunny, clear, and even warm at times. Steve, a friend of ours and a Cork native, described this stretch of pleasantness as "fierce mild." On one particularly sunny day when I was at work, a driver for the warehouse's shipping contractor had an interesting take on things. When his box scanner wasn't working as well as he would have liked, he blamed "all of this bloody sunlight. The thing's just not used to it. None of us are." He continued on the topic: "F'ing weather. When I got up it was cold, so I put on a jacket. Now it's f'ing sunny and warm and I had to take off some layers. It's a pain!"

All of this is usually good natured. Not to be taken as a genuine complaint but as a conversation starter or ice-breaker. But other drivers for that shipping company I mentioned fall squarely in the unfortunate territory of chronic griping. Many of them are profoundly dissatisfied with coming to our warehouse and lifting dozens of boxes into their vans (prompting me to say things like, "Wow, it almost like you work for a shipping company or something").

One fellow was especially irritable the other day because we requested a pick-up when it was getting close to 5:00 p.m. He grumbled during his whole visit using language extremely foul even by Irish standards, and, when he found out we were preparing still more outgoing boxes, he marched into the warehouse itself and told the employees––again using the most indelicate language possible––that they had better stop.

It's the flavor of Irish charm they don't tell you about in tourism advertisements.

***

A complaint of my own about airlines. Katherine and I bought round-trip tickets when we first came to Ireland last fall; the embassy made us do this, otherwise we would bought one-way fares. Well the other day we tried to move the date for the return ticket back to the USA to October, when we have to go to the States for a wedding. Total price for moving the tickets: $2100. On the other hand, we could simply not use our return tickets at all and buy a new set of round-trip fares for the wedding. Total price for the latter option is nearly $1000 less. How does this make sense?

***

At the warehouse I get a 50% discount off of the wholesale price on the golf clothing they sell. It's a great perk and I get pieces that would usually sell for over €100 for around €20.

But how much I save is dampened quite a bit by the value added tax, or VAT, which is European jargon for sales tax. The VAT is added onto every sale of every item; grocery, vehicle, or home. And in Ireland, the current VAT rate is 21%. You read that correctly. So next time you find yourself complaining about a 6 or 7% state sales tax rate, think how much worse it could be (Denmark has a VAT rate of 25%).

The Burren

2010-03-02T11:21:00.000-08:00

It might have taken over four hours in a bus––to travel only about seventy miles––but the Burren weekend was worth every minute of Bus Éireann toil. On Friday we traveled first to Doolin, on County Clare's west coast, very near the Aran Islands and the Cliffs of Moher. From there we walked to Lisdoonvarna, a small town that dubs itself the "Gateway to the Burren."

The countryside between Doolin and Lisdoon.

Lisdoonvarna's other claim to fame is the Matchmaking Festival: the town employs and honest-to-god matchmaker (the family vocation for generations), and the festival brings in big crowds by rural Irish standards (ten thousand visitors to a town of nine hundred). We spent Friday night in Lisdoonvarna at the town's one hostel. There we met a South African, a Canadian, and an Oregonian. All were quite friendly––you never meet locals in hostels!

But the most important part of our visit was the walk from Lisdoonvarna to Ballyvaughan along the Burren Way trail. The Burren, I should explain, is a unique geological formation characterized mainly by tons of exposed limestone. And I mean tons. As an added bonus, it's on the Atlantic coast and offers some nice sea views too.

The countryside around Doolin. You can see the Cliffs of Moher in the distance.

Portions of the Burren Way was along a Green Road, or Famine Relief Road. As you can guess, this route was built to make it easier to get supplies into the countryside during the Potato Famine. Many famine-era farm ruins greet the hiker along this route:

Oh, and that limestone. The Burren is all about "clints" and "grykes." The clints are the large flat slabs of rock (the region was a tropical seabed millions of years ago), and the grykes are the large––and sometimes very deep––gaps in the limestone.

When you really get into the heart of the region, it's stone as far as the eye can see:

The Burren Way turned out to be longer than we calculated: the hike from Lisdoonvarna to Ballyvaughan was about eighteen miles. But all for the better, really. With the scenery as impressive as it was, we didn't want the journey to end. That said, we were a bit sore the next day...

Hiking adventures aside, not too much has changed in the Era of the Warehouse. Our training for volunteer work is nearly complete, and in the coming weeks we should be out in the field. We will be doing home visits with the impoverished for the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, the purpose being that home visits help the Society determine how much assistance a person or family needs.

We probably won't leave Cork again until our trip to Edinburgh, Scotland, at the end of this month. Until then, back to the boxes!

Our First "Walking" Experience

2010-02-25T10:34:00.000-08:00

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.

***

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

2010-02-17T10:20:00.000-08:00

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.

***

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.).

***

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

2010-02-13T04:04:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-06T12:30:00.000-08:00

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...

Transformed into a Weekend Warrior

2010-01-31T09:15:00.001-08:00

Working full days is tough...I don't know how people do it. Getting up before the sun rises, lifting heavy things all day, and trudging home just as the evening falls––quite an adjustment for me. But it beats doing nothing at all, an existence I was flirting with before I got this warehouse work. In all seriousness, it's a good place to work with good, friendly co-workers. Compared with my stint at Michael Guineys it doesn't even seem like work at all.

My new job has coincided with Katherine also having more work, in the same warehouse. Our new existences as working stiffs has us valuing the weekend more than usual. The weather has been uncharacteristically sunny and clear lately, and today was no exception; to make the most of our Sunday, we took a stroll around town.

We came across this excellent band of street performers in the center of town. Great musicians all, and they were belting out fantastic bluesy rock jams. A good sense of humor too: the sign on their open guitar case read, "Please help us, our girlfriends want new clothes."

How beautiful their music was to my ears cannot be fully understood until I explain something. This has been on my mind for a while, and I just have to say it: pop music in Ireland––in Europe, generally––is dreadful. You might be thinking, "Oh wait a sec, Brandon. What about Britney Spears, Kanye, the Jonas Brothers, etc, in the USA? Surely that's dreadful too?" Indeed it is. But in Ireland, that's all you ever hear. There is no other genre, no relief. No jazz, no blues, no rock. No folk, no R&B. Nothing even approaching a poor caricature of these. It's all corporate electronica pop. And judging by the pop stations' playlists, there are only seven songs fit for radio at any given time. If you know me well you know I feel strongly about music, and I don't mean to offend anyone. But, for me, this is the stuff they play in Hell.

So maybe you can understand why upon hearing these brave pioneering young musicians on Patrick Street, I wanted to put a €50 note in their case and simply say––with a tear in my eye, no doubt––"Thank you."

Alas, I didn't have any cash on me.

Later on in the day we made our way down the "quays," the streets that line the river. There are ample reminders of downtown Cork's former existence as an active port, such as these old platforms for docking and unloading vessels. There are also countless stone staircases that descend from street level down into the water. Much of this maritime infrastructure looks like it could be thrown back into use without much repair, but it will likely continue to rot away.

On Union Quay (pronounced "key") we encountered a pub with a traditional music session in full swing. I don't know how we missed this place for two and a half months––it's a two-minute walk from our apartment and it is wonderful. Small and cozy with a warm coal fire, the pub managed to fit a small army of "trad" players into one corner: I think there were five fiddles, two banjos, two accordions, plus some flutes and percussion. At one point a patron at the bar took the floor and sang a traditional tune without accompaniment. At the end of his fine performance he sat back down to his glass of Beamish and continued reading the newspaper where he had left off. They were all very talented, and were another blessed reminder that you can still find good music.

Like with the street performers, more of the Irish humor. During a break between songs an older man with wild hair––he seemed to be a "regular"––approached Katherine. "Is it legal?" he asked. "Is what legal?" she responded. "Is it legal for you to look so good?" He had a good laugh and shook her hand.

Then he turned to me: "Are you on holiday here?" "No," I said, "we live here, we're here on a work permit. We're Americans." He shook his head and said, "We all have our problems."

Movin' On Up

2010-01-27T04:29:00.000-08:00

The new furniture finally arrived yesterday, and it feels like a new apartment. The sofa has some lumbar support (and enough room for two people to sit), and the chairs don't throw out your lower back by slanting your hips ten degrees to the right. Remarkable stuff. The new couch goes with with our jerry-rigged accent lighting, seen hanging on the picture frame. That's our Christmas tree boxed up in the corner...not quite sure what to do with it.

Oh, and our bed-of-nails mattress––which was so old I'm pretty sure it was partly stuffed with horse hair––is gone too.

The stack of travel literature you can see in the fore has occupied my time in recent days. Katherine and I are trying to plot trips to the Continent for the spring and early summer. Funding for our coming travels was mysterious––even to us––until this morning. We met with the owners of the Katherine's golf shop [see previous entry] and they offered me temporary full-time hours in their warehouse. It's a sweet gig; although I would prefer part-time work, they're very accommodating to our holiday-riddled schedule.

***

And so it is in Ireland, as it is in the United States: who you know trumps what you know. After thinking back on my work experience, I can say that Guineys (of all places) was the first and only job of mine that I landed the "traditional" way. In all of my other searches going to temp agencies, looking for ads in the paper, and cold calling has failed.

Every job I've had started with an informal connection––i.e., I knew someone on the inside. And don't get the wrong idea....these weren't special places to work. At all. To work at a plant nursery, mow grass on a horse farm, work as a construction laborer, and even do freelance research has all required that special "in." When I don't have the "in" the results have been depressing: even the bagel restaurant down the street won't respond to my application.

***

Some sad news: the legendary Waterford Crystal factory has closed down. A US-based consortium, in true US consortium style, is moving the production of the crystal to locations "across the globe." This is an obvious euphemism for Poland and China. Or just China.

Why? Why would anyone buy Waterford Crystal if it's made in Slovenia? The whole point, I thought, was the famous and unparalleled Irish skill at crystal carving. They apparently think that the Waterford brand name is strong enough that ignorant customers will continue to buy it regardless of where it's made. They might be right. I'm sure people with MBA's are making these decisions. But I'm not going to be fooled, and my readers shouldn't be either. Spread the word!

Instead, check out Kinsale Crystal. This stuff is made in a small independently owned shop by a former Waterford craftsman, and it is extremely impressive. Check out some of the pictures on the website. His prices aren't that different from what Waterford was recently charging, and you get a much better product.

Op-Ed

2010-01-25T06:37:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone! Katherine here. I’ve been asked to write a “guest entry” for Éire Apparent.

My “accent” is quite a topic of discussion in the golf store where I work. Most of the time customers wait until they are paying for their items at the till: “Where are you from?” they ask curiously. I used to respond, “From the United States” but most of the time the reaction was, “Well, I guessed that! Where in the U.S. are you from?”

Where it all happens.

In my defense, I thought I could have been mistaken as a Canadian, as I once was in London. I stopped at the Ritz to ask for directions three years ago, at the end of my study abroad experience. “Are you from Canada?” the Ritz Carlton doorman asked me. “No, I’m actually from northern New Jersey." ("Right outside of New York City,” I hastily added as I saw a confused look coming over his face.) “Oh righttt!," he recovered, "I figured you must have been a Canadian, because, well, you don’t have a Boston accent or a New York accent.” I didn’t mention to this poor chap that I also don’t have a Southern accent, a Midwestern accent, or any of the numerous other accents can be heard in United States.

Since most of the Irish seem to guess that I’m from the United States, I’ve modified the way I respond: “I’m originally from northern New Jersey, about twenty miles outside of New York City.”

In the two months or so that I’ve been working at the golf shop, I have gotten several amusing reactions to this. Most of the people make a friendly, though vain, effort to relate to my nationality.

“Oh! I have family in San Francisco,” one woman told me just a few weeks ago. “I get out there at least twice a year.” Luckily I have been to San Francisco and could respond, “Yes, San Francisco is beautiful.” “It is,” she responded with vigor, “I love it there.”

This past week, all of the customers I had seemed to have family in Chicago. “New Jersey, huh? My brother-in-law / sister / son / best friend’s cousin live in Chicago!,” to which I smile politely. I’ve never been to Chicago, but I’ve been in the airport.

Never mind the fact that these places are hundreds or thousands of miles from my hometown, and many are completely different from the area I grew up in. European’s have a much different sense of a country's size. The Irish, for example, can drive from the island's northern tip its southern extent in about eight hours. That’s it. (That time would be a lot shorter if they had Interstate-style highways running the length of the country).

Many of the customers make an effort to relate to the fact that I’m from New Jersey. One woman recently told me she had family in the Garden State. “Oh, where about?” I asked. “Hmmm,” she responded, “Shirley Hill?” “Do you mean Cherry Hill?” I ask. “Yes! That’s it! Cherry Hill!” she says with a smile. “That’s about two hours from where I grew up. I passed it every time I drove to college, though.” I said. “Oh goodness, two hours! Why, New Jersey is huge! It must be roughly the size of Munster!” (Munster is one of the four provinces of Ireland. The other three are Leinster, Connaught, and Ulster).

One customer confidently told me that she used to have a son who lived there, and whom she had visited every year for many years. “Do you know the name of the town?” I ask. “Oh, no, I couldn’t tell you. Somewhere near the Hudson River.”

Another time a customer said she knew northern New Jersey well. Her sister lives there, as a matter of fact. And what town did her sister live in? “Something that ends with –field.” So I named a few of them off the top of my head: Springfield, Bergenfield, Westfield, Bloomfield, Plainfield? None of them rang a bell.

As for my personal favorite, the caretaker of the “Winthrop Arcade” shops where I work stopped me one night as I was closing up for the evening. “Where are you from, love?” he said in a thick Cork accent. He laughed when I told him I was from outside of New York City. “New York? I’ve never been.” “You’ll have to try to get there someday,” I replied. “Oh no, I don’t think so,” he said. “I’m rather used to the tallest building in Cork City being about six stories high,” he said as he walked away with a chuckle.

And I Forgot to Add....

2010-01-22T14:42:00.001-08:00

I just wanted everyone to know that Subway's official name for the people who assemble your hoagie is––seriously––"sandwich artist." I learned this because a Subway in County Cork is looking for a full-time "sandwich artist" (previous experience required, of course).

An Opportunity

2010-01-22T04:45:00.000-08:00

The 2010 job market has been completely flat. I still make the effort of checking the job banks each day, and each day I am reminded that if I was fluent in Danish, Italian, or even Swahili, I would probably be able to land work. I also take regular walking tours around the city hunting for "help wanted" signs about twice a week––the problem with this method is there seems to be fewer and fewer businesses each time. Really, I notice newly boarded-up storefronts each time I go out. Some brief research proves that it's not just my imagination, and businesses are closing at a high clip these days.

And as predicted, the gig at the baby clothing/toy store was not meant to be. The owner found a predictably feminine person to fill the spot.

Luckily, yesterday I ran into one of the owners of the golf shop where Katherine works. He told me there is a temporary "data entry" job at their warehouse, which is also within walking distance from our flat. It would only be for a couple of months, but it could lead to other things. He also told me he would keep an eye out for other opportunities at the warehouse. When he asked me what type of work I am looking for, I said "anything." This was apparently hard to believe, because when we were parting ways he said, "You really mean you'll do anything?" I was, and am, worried about what he might have been implying, but I nonetheless replied yes. Hey, times are tough.

New Digs?

2010-01-20T02:57:00.000-08:00

The time has finally come for Katherine and I to decide what to do about our lease. To extend or not to extend? We're supposed to notify our landlord about our decision twenty-eight days before the contract expires. That would mean today.

Leading up to this moment––when we were not dilly-dallying in London––Katherine and I have been researching other potential flats in the city. We have learned a couple of lessons: the good apartments are listed for about 3.7 seconds until someone snatches them up; rent prices, inexplicably, seem to have gone up since we arrived two months ago; and finding a landlord willing to do short (three-month) leases is about as easy as finding a warm sandy beach in Ulster. We did find an apartment in Shandon, a neighborhood in the North Side, that was reasonably priced and has no minimum lease, so yesterday we went and had a look.

Let me tell you, it's not an easy sell when you find this about a block from the apartment:

Burnt-out cars aside, this place wasn't for us. It's in an old house, has old paint and old windows, and the only source of heat are portable electric-oil heaters. We tried all of that in Williamsburg and, frankly, it sucked.

Shandon also has a reputation, at least among the Irish. It's an "ethnic" neighborhood, and the Irish folks I have talked to are convinced it is the bastion of Cork crime. Keep in mind that Cork's definition of a "crime problem" is a little different than an American definition. According to an article I found, 2007 saw a record high in Irish violent crime. How many? Seventy murders in the entire country. Since that high- (or low-)water mark, violent crime has dropped off by two-thirds. In short, by an American definition violent crime is nearly non-existent in the Republic of Ireland.

Regardless of these facts, no matter how safe a country is many of the residents are going to be convinced that crime is a problem. And so it is with Ireland. What is striking about the murder statistics is that a disproportionate number of the victims and murderers are not Irish: a "vast majority [are] natives of Russian or former Russian states." The same is true of the population as a whole of Shandon and other "ethnic" enclaves in Cork and in Ireland overall.

In the minds of the Irish––even though they would deny it––large numbers of Eastern Europeans equals crime. It's similar to the common (white) American perception of places that are majority African-American or Hispanic. The current population distribution of Cork even follows what we would call "white flight" in the States. The City Centre and the North Side is where you find most of the Eastern Europeans; most of the tenants in our building (including us) are not Irish. And most of the middle-class Irish people we know live in the South Side suburbs, where you find recently built housing developments and shopping centers.

But since everyone we're talking about is white, we'll have to call it Gaelic Flight.

Putting such analysis behind us, the good news is I talked to our current landlord, and he has agreed to buy new furniture for our current place. New mattress, couch, and chairs. This development has it looking like we will be staying put.

As for work, I'm still on the prowl. There is a small store that sells baby clothes and toys that is looking for part-time help next door to Katherine's golf shop, and Katherine even knows the manager. Sounds promising but, as you could probably predict, the owner prefers to hire women. 'Tis a shame, because a young handsome male employee would probably help sales at such a store.

Back from Britain

2010-01-18T05:51:00.000-08:00

Our flight back from London was the first time I have had a clear view of Ireland from the air. I got a few photos of County Cork when we were landing, and what you see above is the best shot I took. That's essentially what the whole country looks like from an airplane.

London was "grand," as they say in these parts. Grand to walk around in and take in the sights, but not grand for the wallet. We stayed with some distant relatives outside of the city; before heading in for the first time, our host referred to the city as "Rip-Me-Off London." This is an appropriate epithet. Westminster Abbey was £15 per person, the Tower of London a whopping £17.50. It hurts even more when you convert it to dollars. Needless to say, we didn't go into most of these places. Luckily the Natural History Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the National Gallery are free!

Here are some other places we visited:

If you don't know what this is, just Google it.

For all of you Pink Floyd fans, Battersea Power Station.

One of the more famous front doors in London (sorry, couldn't find Madonna's).

Our host, Tony, is a police officer and he was able to get us into some neat places with relative ease. That's how we got to pose at No. 10 Downing Street. He also set us up with a private tour of Westminster Palace, also known as the Houses of Parliament:

Unfortunately, photography was not allowed inside. Too bad, because the interior is fantastic. The Queen's Robing Room and the House of Lords are the more opulent places, the House of Commons is more austere, or common. Among the highlights was a beautiful clock in the Queen's Robing Room that originally belonged to Marie Antoinette. Our guide told us that the French want it back, but the Greeks also want back the Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon. If the British have taught us anything, it's finders keepers.

Since I was in London I was looking forward to some English pub food. My quest for bar cuisine turned out to be disappointing: about 80% of the "traditional" English pubs in London are owned by the same company, and they all have the exact same menu. This unfortunate situation holds true for much of Britain, I'm afraid. The independent English pub is nearly extinct, I have heard that they're closing at a rate of thirteen a day. Anyway, by a mild stroke of luck I found a pub owned by a smaller pub conglomerate in which to sample some fish and chips.

Tony's wife, Jackie, treated us to some excellent dinners, including a wonderful "curry." "Going to get a curry" (i.e. Indian food) is ingrained in British culture––every menu of 'traditional British food' I saw included at least one Indian entrée. You could say curry is the Mexican food of Britain (Mexican restaurants, on the other hand, were nowhere to be seen. Business opportunity?).

Katherine and I took obligatory pictures with the famous red London phone boxes. Ever wonder what they look like inside?:

Most of the boxes I saw had similar advertisements. If that isn't charming enough, this one also seems to be used as a urinal on a regular basis.

These minor problems aside, I recommend visiting London. It's not as jaw-droppingly beautiful as Paris or Rome, and has more of a business-like feel. Like New York. As a result, the amount of wealth in London is incredible. You can't walk far in the city without coming across rows of imposing mansions, and I saw so many Bentleys and Aston Martins I actually lost count. In the Mayfair neighborhood Katherine and I counted seven Bentleys, two Rolls-Royces, and two Aston Martins parked along the street on one block. That's impressive.

The Blizzard

2010-01-11T13:49:00.000-08:00

Cork's biggest snowfall in years came down yesterday––as divined by my previous entry––burying the region in about one inch. The weather actually persuaded an across-the-board school closure for the entire country, an unpopular decision in some circles. Cork International Airport closed down entirely at 7:00 p.m. last night, and only reopened midday today.

It was surreal, seeing the city struggle with the snow this morning. Many City Centre businesses opened late, and most closed early since there were hardly any shoppers willing to brave the roads into town. A lot of storefronts were closed the entire day. I was scheduled to meet with our realtor, but she wasn't able to get to her office. Buses were no alternative because many of the routes were out of service.

Katherine and I are lucky enough to have seen once-in-a-generation floods, and now once-in-a-generation winter weather. Anyway, here's my photographic proof that it has snowed in Cork:

And even more impressive, proof that it has been cold enough for the "Lough" (pronounced like "loch"), a lake in southern Cork City, to freeze over:

Photos courtesy of Sam O Reilly

That's right, there are even people walking on it! Or playing ice hockey, more specifically. The last time that it was cold enough for people to walk on the Lough: 1964.

Well, my readers, Katherine and I are off to London tomorrow. That is, if the airport is indeed open and our flight isn't cancelled. I will be back Saturday evening, continuing my online magazining shortly thereafter. Caveat: we will be back on Saturday if our flight out of London isn't affected, although that's very possible. England has experienced heavy snowfall, and it is likely to continue this week.

No Subject

2010-01-09T04:44:00.001-08:00

After a week into the new year I have had a taste of the 2010 Irish job market, and it needs some sugar. There are fewer positions open than before Christmas. I have found a couple of potentials, but they're all in food service. Needless to say, I have dropped off CVs and haven't received any phone calls. The retail experience I recently earned isn't going to be much help, I think. Retail has fallen off hard since Christmas.

But it's all good. I've been doing some shopping. Check out this sweet wool "jumper" I got for €20:

As you can see, we are still celebrating Christmas. That tree is lit every evening. This is partly because we are waiting on some packages of gifts that were sent from the States. It just doesn't seem right to un-decorate until we receive them. Also notice that I have removed one of the eye-splitting rose pictures and replaced it with a calendar––and not just any calendar: this one has a pictures of "wild and scenic Maryland." Whoever assembled it was inexcusably lazy, because most of the photos are from only two counties: Garrett and Worcester (!).

You can also see in the photo our very rigid and uncomfortable sofa, the only "social" piece of furniture we have. This along with our mattress––about as thick and comfortable as a graham cracker––have persuaded us to seek a new residence. There are several one-bedroom apartments open in the city with much nicer furniture. Our backs need it.

***

Ireland continues to be paralyzed by the mysterious weather phenomenon known as "cold." It has been below freezing (just barely) for about a week now: schools are closed, commerce has ground to a halt, and terrifying rumors abound of the yet-to-be-witnessed "freezing fog." Check out the some of the press coverage:

Yes, that says two centimeters. In all fairness, it has been probably thirty years since Cork has seen an inch of snow. And few municipalities have the equipment to salt the roads. It could be worse: in parts of England there are eighteen inches of the white stuff, which has thrown the once mighty empire back into the fourteenth century. Katherine and I are scheduled to fly to London on Tuesday, but there is a good chance we'll be facing long delays or cancellations.

Speak of the devil! As I write this the Cork sky has broken into flurries:

I swear there's snow in these pictures. Click on them for a zoom view.

The Irish are dealing with the adverse weather mainly through lots of moaning. The cold is a surefire way to start a conversation with a stranger, a good icebreaker (pun intended). My Irish friend, Steve, and I sometimes get into slightly academic conversations over glasses of Jameson about Irish and American cultures. During a pub crawl the other night, he came up with a good synopsis of Irish society: Unlike America, which tends to be a society of extremes, Ireland is very "middle of the road." [i.e., culturally homogeneous]. The problems that the Irish complain about are actually quite tame––there is the mild weather that they complain about, there is a mild flow of immigration that they complain about. Pretty mild budget cuts by the government have people really bent out of shape, and folks gripe about traffic that really isn't that bad. But I can't pass judgment, I am guilty of complaining about traffic backups in Elkton, Md.

Katherine and I continue to write articles for the Chestertown Spy, so I encourage you all to check out that publication on a regular basis.

Operation Decycle

2010-01-06T04:46:00.000-08:00

As you know, my search for a solution to our growing recycling problem ended in failure. I should say, my search for a simple solution. After going through the proper channels of City Hall and our agent (who, I have a feeling, never really contacted the landlord about this), Katherine and I were forced to consider other options. We settled on a covert nighttime mission.

Adopting the plan for its simplicity and sheer cunning, we headed out into the darkness with our recyclables packed into spare shopping bags (which wouldn't arouse suspicion, you see). The idea was to either distribute the items into various city litter bins, or find a dumpster. Heading into the north side, we came across a large blue container labeled "recyclables only" sitting by the curb in front of a business. We decided to take advantage of this unexpectedly easy solution, and, as casually as possible, threw four large bags of recycling into the bin and walked away.

For a few minutes we were simply content with being rid of the garbage. But after walking a few hundred yards Katherine asked me, "There wasn't anything in that with our names and addresses, right?" Oh shit, I thought. After talking it over, we decided yes, there is actually a ton of junk mail with our names and addresses all through those bags. And all the disgruntled business owner would have to do is pick through our recyclables, contact the authorities with the address, and we would be fined for illegal dumping.

If it was difficult to act naturally when leaving the recycling in a bin on a busy street corner, imagine how hard it was to retrieve it. Thankfully, we were spared questioning. On the way back to our apartment we scoped out a large dumpster only a block from our building: we agreed this would be a much better dump site.

After eating dinner we headed back out with the shopping bags of contraband in tow. This time, however, the dumpster was gated and locked. Foiled again and desperate, we resorted to distributing what we had into several of the city-centre trash cans. Thankfully this worked, more or less, without a hitch. There was the awkward moment when I was frantically cramming old cereal boxes into a bin, only to look up and notice a Garda (police) officer sitting in his car watching me. He didn't do anything. I like to think it was the civil authorities' way of finally cutting me a break.

And so the recycling subplot has concluded. A commenter suggested that I take a picture of the pile, but did so after we had already disposed of it. I'm sorry, I should have thought of it myself!

Hello 2010!

2010-01-04T06:30:00.001-08:00

New Year's was more intense than I was expecting––we went to a party that ended at around 4:30 a.m.––thus the delay for the greatly anticipated First Entry of 2010. Cork and Ireland are finally back to "normal business hours" after a relaxing break that started on December 23, with the one change that many businesses are no longer open on Sundays. It seems that seven-days-a-week retail only exists in the weeks leading up to Christmas.

As I have previously mentioned, our kitchen is slowly starting to resemble a landfill because we are accumulating recyclables. We haven't been able to dispose of them for two reasons: You need to have a special recycling bag approved by the City Council; and if you try to throw out recycling with regular garbage and are caught, you are subject to massive fines. Finally, after much patient waiting and careful stacking of empty milk jugs, the first post-holiday business arrives. I headed to City Hall.

Seen here amid rare blue sky and sunshine, the Temple of Red Tape (City Hall).

My quest for the elusive official bags started smoothly, there were no long lines that are usually found at government offices. I was first helped by a nice young lady with a tongue stud:

I attempted to subtly emphasize how small my request is with the greeting, "Hello, I just need some of the clear plastic recycling bags."

"What's the account number?" she replied.

"Um, I don't know. I can give you the address," I said, and did so.

"Do you know if it's a residential or commercial property?"

"I have no idea. I live there, so I assume residential."

(Tapping and clicking away on her computer) "Well it's not coming up as a residential listing. Hold on a minute." The young lady then proceeded to call two or three different extensions, trying to find out the property's 'classification.' You see (I was informed), the recycling bags are different for commercial and residential properties.

After a few minutes of phone play, she tracked down some information. "Your building is classified as commercial"––she writes down the account number on a Post-It––"Do you have your lease agreement on you?"

I was taken aback by this...in my naïveté, I didn't think such documentation would be necessary for picking up some plastic bags. I confessed, "No, I don't."

"Well just bring back your lease agreement and a form of identification, and we'll see if we can get you the recycling bags."

Fifteen minutes later, after running back to our apartment, I returned to City Hall with the requested documentation. To my dismay, there was no tongue-studded lady behind the counter; after glancing at my watch, I realized she must have gone to lunch. Now I have a bald-headed man to plead my case to.

"Hello, I just need some plastic recycling bags. I have the account number here," pointing to the Post-It, "the property is classified as commercial. I also have my lease and identification." I was confident at this point that I would make progress, that I would finally have the bags in my hand after thirty minutes.

The bald man scratched his head, and said, "Residential or commercial?"

Trying to remain calm, I replied, "Commerical."

He squints at the lease agreement, looking confused, then dials an extension. The same exact extension the tongue-studded lady had dialed. "Ah, you know what, the extension I need is busy, could you go sit over there and I will give you a shout when I get through."

A surreal feeling, the feeling that sometimes accompanies an encounter with incomprehensible bureaucracy, crept over me at this point. I just want some clear bags, man. But I remained quiet and had a seat. After a few minutes of dealing with the other people in the queue, the bald man was able to get through to the extension he needed. He waves me over.

"....yeah, I'm just trying to figure out if this property is residential or commercial and what we are supposed to do if it's commercial...." I'm sure my blood pressure was rising when I heard this. "...okay, well why don't you look into it and call me back, I have a queue forming here." He hangs up. "He's just going to call me back, you can have a seat again and I'll give you a shout soon." As this transpired, my eyes wandered to the wall behind my bald receptionist. There they were. In small cardboard box, only three feet behind him, the recycling bags. For the love of God, man, just hand me a couple bags. But I kept my mouth shut; obviously, what ails this whole process is bigger than any one city employee. At this juncture I was intrigued to see how far it would go.

A few more minutes passed, and finally the magic phone call came in. I didn't bother to get up, but I saw the bald-man shake his head, squint some more at the lease, then scribble something else down on the Post-It. After this he walked up to me with his explanation: "You see, the problem here is the property where you live is classified as 'commercial'"––I hear screaming in my head––"you need to call your landlord and have him call this number." He pointed to what he had written on the Post-It, "Your landlord has to call this to order commercial recycling bags, they cost €150 for fifty bags [emphasis mine]."

Somehow managing to initially ignore the price of the bags, I said, "Look, I don't know the landlord and I don't know how to get in contact with him. He lives in Dublin. The property is managed for him by a company in town."

"Oh, well walk over to them, they might be able to help." And with this I left City Hall empty-handed, after about an hour of wrangling.

A few minutes later I was in our realtor's office, talking to my agent. I gave her the same sob story about needing to get rid of recyclables. "Oh, I don't know how the recycling works for that property, I'll have to call the landlord," was her response. Sometimes I can be a little thick, because upon this I finally realized that no one is recycling. The tenants in our building are obviously not going through this on a regular basis, they are obviously not running around like fools every so often looking for recycling bags. They're just throwing out the recycling with the regular garbage and hoping to not get caught. Can I blame them?

After all of this, I still have the pile of milk jugs and tin cans in my corner. I guess that's our prize for trying to do things the right way.

Irish News

2009-12-29T05:52:00.000-08:00

Christmas is over, and today Katherine and I return to the work routine. Correction: Katherine does, since I was deemed by my former employer to be unfit to return after the holiday. The pain is still fresh.

I felt very foolish this morning. Having some errands that have been waiting since early in the month, I set out on the first post-Christmas, post-Bank Holiday weekday that has come around in quite some time. Our kitchen is being overtaken by a rapidly growing pile of recyclables––I can no longer ignore the need to go to city hall and get some 'official' recycling bags––and I have some letters to mail. I felt foolish because, you see, I was assuming that places like the post office, city hall, and banks would be open. I probably should have known that today is the traditional, um, Holiday Following the Bank Holiday That Comes After Christmas; or, St. Jimmy's Day; or, The Feast of the Holy Virgin of Whitsuntide Boxing Day...whatever, the point is nothing is open and I walked through 33º-farenheit horizontal rain for nothing.

In the wake of this snafu I decided to do something useful, so I surfed Irish news sites. I have provided the highlights of this cyber-adventure below complete with pictures, saving you, the reader, the time of slogging through mundane and confusing headlines such as, "Rise in Number of Calls to Embassies," "Jurys Inns Expects Profits to Fall by 30%," and "Cheika Chops and Changes" (a piece about 'sport,' I think Gaelic Football or some similarly primitive game).

This could easily be an allegorical representation of Ireland in 2009. Unusual weather leaving Irish folks upside-down in a ditch of debt, unemployment, and losing their World Cup qualifying match to a bunch of cheaters (the French). But in fact, it is the picture being carried by the Irish Independent for their lead article on the recent foul weather. The country has been ravaged by an rare winter bout with––yes––below-freezing temperatures. Couple this with the country's average of two inches of precipitation per day, and you get slick roads and even snow. I don't know the exact number, but I think Ireland has around three plowing/salt-spreading trucks for the entire country.

The dearth of snow equipment helps explain the coverage from the Independent: "Freezing fog and ice left many roads in Co Cork and Co Kerry treacherous yesterday..." Wait...freezing fog?! What the hell is that? I've heard many mentions of this apocalyptic weather condition, and I hope to God I never see it. Sounds like something from a bad horror movie.

The reader of the Independent is also confronted with this image today. Without an explanatory article accompanying it (this is part of the "Best Images of 2009" slideshow), I am forced to rely on educated guesses as to what is going on. My more cultured readers will recognize that the vegetable (fungus?) on the velvety pillow is a massive truffle. The truffle is either standing trial or being auctioned. I think the latter, as the best way to judge a truffle's value is to test its texture on the nose and face, which is obviously what this woman is engaged in.

In entertainment news, Ireland is closely following the Christmas domestic disturbance story that saw Charlie Sheen (seen above in a recent photograph) spending the day in jail. The conflicting accounts of the fight between the Sheens are intriguing. Consider the discrepancies:

According to the Independent, Mrs. Sheen reported that Charlie "straddled her on a bed with one hand grasping her neck and the other holding the knife. She said Sheen told her: 'You better be in fear. If you tell anybody, I'll kill you.' He also told her 'Your mother's money means nothing, I have ex-police I can hire who know how to get the job done and they won't leave any trace,' according to the affidavit."

Wow, serious stuff. But there must be some misunderstanding, because "Charlie Sheen, who is listed in the affidavit as Carlos Irwin Estevez, told police....they had slapped each other on the arms and that he had snapped two pairs of her glasses in front of her." Oh, Carlos.

Who do you believe? I believe that it's a slow news day.

***

As you can probably gather from what I wrote at the beginning of the entry, the country is still in Christmas Holiday mode. The job search was especially dry today, as no new listings have been posted since before Christmas. Next week will give me a better sense of where things stands.

For now, a disturbing development is that Ireland's Training and Employment Authority, FÁS (an acronym standing for some Irish words), had nearly four hundred jobs listed for Counties Cork and Kerry about a month ago, and now there are under three hundred. Many of the listings in that dwindling total are essentially reserved for Irish nationals as part of an employment scheme, wherein jobs are open only to those who have been out of work for six months or more. Aye, the job databases are dry at the moment. Hopefully January brings a spike (and not the trough many are predicting)!

Happy Christmas and Merry St. Stephen's Day

2009-12-27T05:49:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas! to everyone, a couple of days late. Ireland has taken full advantage of a Friday Christmas: Monday is one of the famous “bank holidays,” ensuring a four- to five-day break for everyone (unless you work retail). Christmas day and yesterday––the twenty-sixth, which is apparently called St. Stephen’s Day––produced a sight I didn’t think possible. I refer to Oliver Plunkett Street, the heart of Cork City and also where our apartment is situated, being completely deserted. Not a soul! No drunk revelers and road work crews at midnight. A miracle.

Well, maybe not too miraculous. All of the shops and watering holes closed early, naturally, for Christmas Eve. And as it turns out, Christmas day is one of two days out of the entire year when pubs are required by law to be closed (Good Friday is the other).

Christmas day we spent with the family of our friend, Gemma. We had many Irish Christmas specialties, including spiced beef (a Cork tradition), pork liver pâté (Katherine “forgot” to try this), potato-leek soup, and roasted potatoes (the secret is to baste the spuds with goose fat). We also had time to watch the 1994 remake of Miracle on 34th Street. While Richard Atterborough is jolly and entertaining in a hard-to-describe way, my advice is to stick with the original. The newer version doesn’t even have the Macy’s v. Gimball’s dimension!

Tomorrow is Katherine’s birthday, she joins me in the doldrums of the mid-twenties. Send her some birthday wishes to cheer her up. On Tuesday I begin anew my job search efforts, as well as my entry writing.

Les Parisiens

2009-12-23T11:34:00.000-08:00

In response to the request for more Paris photos, I give you this picture. It conveniently sums up the whole city (or at least the heart of it) and its inhabitants:

Paris is basically lots of beautiful, perfectly proportioned people parading around under magnificently opulent architecture. The City of Lights, and of Gold Leaf too!

The End of an Era; and, Paris Afterthoughts

2009-12-22T12:26:00.000-08:00

It became official today. After an epic tenure marked by stunning successes, bitter disappointments, volatile personality clashes and life-long friendships, my manager at Michael Guiney's informed me today that the store will no longer need my services after Christmas. The official explanation is that holiday sales have been weak and post-Christmas is going to be quite slow. He and I understood, however, the real reason: I am a threat to his job security.

My approaching departure from the world of bargain retail has led, of course, to nostalgia. Allow me to recount some of the more interesting memories. My first day on the job––my first day in retail––when I was instructed to organize the women's underwear. Or my big break: promotion to the "hardware department." There my humiliation subsided, as I was stocking Christmas decorations and scented candles instead of enormous women's briefs. Or my proudest accomplishment in hardware, the erection of a formidable rug display. There was the day that I was told to condense the contents of two shelving units of kitchen wares into the space of one shelving unit, a feat all thought to be impossible. I did it in one afternoon without breaking a sweat.

The shining moment of my time at Guiney's, without a doubt, involved the complicated relocation effort of a large bin full of brushes (or, as we would say in the US, a box full of brooms). Three employees including myself were tasked with moving the bin down one floor so it could be placed in front of the store as a clearance item. Weighing in at about two hundred pounds, and of awkward proportions, the bin was too much for us to get down the steps without serious injury to ourselves and/or customers. We stood around the bin, each man deep in thought. We furrowed our brows, scratched our heads. Then it came to me: take the brushes out of the container, and move them downstairs separately! My plan was a smashing success: the empty bin's weight was manageable, and I carried my head higher from that day forward.

There were countless other victories, large and small. Too many to describe. My final days at Guiney's have come full circle. I am back in the women's department, only this time I am pricing gloves and winter hats––a task reflective of my senior status, of how far I have come.

***

The rumors are true, it takes forever to get anything done in Ireland. Over two weeks ago we stopped into a bank to open up a joint account, as we had finally received our PPS numbers. We gave the bank all of the information they needed; they made copies of all of our documents, and put it all together in a package for Dublin (everything has to be done with the permission of some person in Dublin. Katherine's co-worker, Paula, says that her 'favorite' phrase is, "We just have to send this up to Dublin, it will only take a few days.").

"This will take five days, maximum," we were told, after which our account information would be mailed to us. Well, we came back from Paris and, two weeks after this bank visit, nothing had arrived. Katherine went back to the bank today to see what was behind the delay. What was behind the delay? The slight hiccup that they managed to lose all of our information. Gone! All of the photocopies, forms....they are "sure" they sent it to "Dublin," but "Dublin" never got it. That's okay, nevermind the fact that I need a bank account to get paid. Or that fact that it should take all of fifteen minutes to set up an account and deposit money.

While we're on the topic of things moving as slow as molasses in January, I should say that we just received out "welcome letter" from the electric company. We've been here for over a month, and we just got notification that our meter has been activated. Our lease is only for three months, I wonder if we'll ever see a bill?

***

As for Paris, my advice is to go. It's a wonderful experience. If you've any appreciation for art, architecture, or just enjoy looking at completely over-the-top opulence, then the city founded by the Celtic Parisii tribe is the place for you.

I thought I had seen fancy, I thought I had experienced luxury. I was wrong. Katherine aptly called Paris "The City that is Forever Competing with Itself." That's the key to the grandeur: many successive generations of megalomaniacs determined to leave an unrivaled mark. But I'm not down on it at all. On the contrary, I'm glad there are places where we can see what happens when individuals, when societies, really push the envelope. Sometimes the results are jaw-droppingly beautiful (as in experiencing the Louvre for the first time), or shockingly heinous (as in the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution, when over 1100 people were beheaded for, well, I can't really say what).

I could go on and on about our experience, but instead I will be briefly suggest some activities. First, go to (and in) all of the clichéd places: the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Notre Dame, le Jardin du Luxembourg, Sacre Coeur, and so on. Second, admire––and consume––the wonderful food. There's nothing like it. And third, walk everywhere. At night. They don't call it the "City of Light" for nothing.

I highly suggest a winter visit, the crowds were very manageable and there's the chance of snow:

Between us, Katherine and I have over a hundred pictures. Conveniently, Katherine has posted all of them on her Facebook profile. If you're interested in more visuals, take a peek at her Paris photo album. If you don't have Facebook, then I can post more pictures here (if I'm asked nicely).

Hello from Paris

2009-12-18T00:23:00.000-08:00

Katherine and I have the ability to bring unusual weather with us: we're in Paris just in time for some very early snowfall. Not that I'm complaining, it's absolutely beautiful. Take a look. Of course it would have been a good idea to bring the proper hardware to post my own personal pictures, but I will just have to rely on Le Monde.

I will keep this brief since I'm using a French keyboard, which is tougher to use than I ever would have imagined. I hope the photos above whet your appetites for the much better visuals I have recorded.

Chionn tSaile

2009-12-14T00:17:00.000-08:00

Yesterday Katherine and I made our way to Kinsale, an ancient Atlantic port that had its heyday a few centuries ago, before Cork took over as the dominant city in the County. Now, kind of like our college town of Chestertown, Maryland, Kinsale relies not on ships and commerce but tourists. We were happy to oblige.

We have a busy couple of days until the departure for Paris––Katherine is working nine-hour days at the golf shop as the acting manager. I am doing full shifts as well, the stores are swelled with Christmas shoppers. Wednesday afternoon we leave for France: the apartment we're renting has a computer, so there's a chance I will update Éire Apparent from the Continent!

Katherine taking a photo of a disused portion of St. Multose Church in Kinsale. The church was built by Normans in the twelfth century, and most of it is still used to this day (but as an Anglican house of worship). This incarnation of St. Multose is actually the "new" building, as it replaced a previous church built in the sixth century.

Me beside the old French Prison. This miniscule window was too good to pass up.

James Fort, about two kilometers outside of Kinsale. This fortification was one of two that guarded the harbor. At the bottom right of the picture you can see the gate I had to jump to get inside.

The port of Kinsale (Chionn tSaile in Irish) from the James Fort peninsula.

Charles Fort, the other (much larger) fortification near Kinsale. This one was in use until 1921 when the British finally evacuated. They burnt and destroyed most of it in the process.

Ah, even the Irish are capable of hideous condominiums. This row of waterfront flats (seen through a gap in the James Fort wall) appear as a montrous scar on the landscape, a scar that someone unsuccessfully tried to stitch up. You can't escape mass-produced housing!

***

The jury is definitely still out on living in an apartment complex. Out flat is the first time I have lived in a proper city, and my first tenancy in a building devoted to apartments. My one firm conclusion is that I miss the quiet of the country. Call me a bumpkin, but I grew quite used to not hearing anything, and, in turn, being able to hear myself think. The bustle of a downtown area in addition to the racket tenants above, below, and beside you can make adds up to, at times, an unbearable din. If we're lucky enough to have quiet neighbors, there's a good chance there will be jackhammering outside (at night). If there's no road work, the folks below us play loud music (at night). And if that's not happening, there's a good chance our upstairs neighbors will be doing laundry (at 2 a.m.––I'm not kidding).

Of course you get what you pay for, and we're not paying much. If we were shelling out €1200 a month for a luxury apartment, things would be different. At the very least there wouldn't be leaky windows.

Correction

2009-12-13T11:26:00.000-08:00

It was brought to my attention that the links I am posting do not work. I have fixed the problem, at least in the most recent entry. If older links have issues, just Google it! I'll make sure this doesn't happen again.

We're back from a day in Kinsale, I have some good photographs to post. Probably will happen tonight or tomorrow night. Keep checking in!

Living the Grind

2009-12-12T12:43:00.000-08:00

All of the sudden, I have work every day. I've only had one full eight-hour day, but the usual six-hour stints are more than enough. We were out late last night at a very cool place called The Crane Lane (it also houses a burlesque theatre––last night's show was "Adult Panto-Mimes"), and I was again made aware of the reputation of my employer. Upon telling folks were I work during a normal conversation, the usual reaction is a hearty laugh. One fellow told me it's "[blanking] hilarious!" that I work at Guiney's, after which he told me to be careful to not get "beat up" while on the job. But he works for the Irish revenue authority, so I can at least be grateful that I'm not the dreaded tax man.

To be honest, Guiney's is not my ideal job, even as far as part-time gigs in a foreign country go. I have continued to look for work, but the market seems more desolate than ever. Over the past week the best source for job opportunities, the internet, has become completely barren. I might become much more concerned about this in a few weeks' time, as my job is still officially temporary for the Christmas season. Because of the Paris trip we have next week I have only five more work days before the holiday.

The harsh realities of the working world aside, we are still having fun. The other night Katherine and I went for a long walk through the city's north side, a journey that produced some photographs (as promised):

This picture features one of the minor threads in Éire Apparent: St. Finbarre's Cathedral. You can just see the twin spires in this photograph. The church absolutely dwarfs the rest of the city, and is easily the dominant landmark (especially at night).

Here is some of the blight that you see in certain sections, although this ancient doorway was pretty camera-friendly. My camera takes pretty grainy pictures in low-light situations, my apologies. I'm not willing to buy another one on Guiney's wages.

More blight. And how about a picture that speaks volumes! This is all that hardcore Irish Republicans can muster anymore, a bill posted on a run-down hovel. The free-state Irish population cares little for reunification these days. The issue is hardly on the minds of the younger population at all, from what I gather. But then again, maybe it is and they don't voice their opinions in the presence of mixed company. The Irish, self-admittedly, tend to be polite to a fault.

Lastly: I always keep an eye out for Maryland connections in Ireland. This is not a conscious effort, but just the basic instinct to notice the things that are familiar. I don't experience too many Maryland "hits"; probably 90 percent of the people I have met here have (a) never heard of Maryland, or (b) haven't the slightest idea where it is. The best I can do is say, "It's next to Washington, D.C."

But inexplicably, the Old Line State has made one indelible impression on the Irish culinary landscape. I'm talking about Chicken Maryland, of course. Or Maryland Fried Chicken, or whatever you want to call it. This stuff is a fixture at Cork's famous English Market:

Strange, since most Americans (most Marylanders?) have never had it, or even heard of it. Look it up. According to an old recipe I've seen, Maryland Fried Chicken should be served with a gravy topping. I presume this is so the deep-fried poultry easily slides down the esophagus, among other healthy bonuses. Alas, the Irish don't seem to have the gravy. Amateurs.

The Golfer and the Scobe

2009-12-09T12:54:00.000-08:00

Katherine and I managed to find retail jobs catering to the opposite extremes of Cork society, which has made for interesting conversation and armchair sociology. Far more so than in the United States, playing golf in Ireland is a very class-conscious affair. Sure, there are snoody golfers on American courses, especially at the more expensive clubs. But there are also countless public links full of beer-guzzling Joes hacking divots the size of mortar impacts. Alas, I have witnessed the latter half much more so than the former.

In Ireland, if you golf it means that you're rich. Or, at the very least, you want people to think you're rich. During my visits to Katherine's workplace it isn't too hard to see what stratum of people she's dealing with: well-dressed, well-educated folks (it's easy to tell the education level by the accent, or lack thereof). And some of them are willing to shell out a few hundred euro for golf attire in the middle of a nasty recession. Katherine's customers are also all Irish...for the significance of this, read on.

My employer, Guiney's, is a different story. There we cater to the most modest of shoppers, who are desperately looking for deals. On my first day a woman asked me about winter coats, one of which she wanted to buy for her construction worker husband. Relying on my own knowledge of construction attire, I found her a good candidate for €29. Her response? "That's a bit expensive, don't you think?"

Guiney's customers are a good cross-section of the new immigration to Ireland, as are the employees. I work with Slovaks and Poles, and I have only met about 20 percent of the workers. Of the dozen or more customers who ask me for help during the day, probably three to four are Slavic, one or two are African, one is Indian, and the rest are Irish. And the Irish are sometimes the hardest to understand––this is where I run into the real Cork accent that everyone grumbles about. But it's fine because half of the time they don't understand me.

Why golf is so class-biased I'm not entirely certain. The easy answer is tempting: it's because of the English. They certainly exported a class system along with settlers. In a similar vein is hunting: here, and in Britain, hunting is a very elitist activity, dating back to when the forests and the game therein were property of the barons and the King. It's funny how utterly opposite the situation is in America. Please speak up if you disagree, but for the most part hunting is regarded as a poor rural activity.

Long story short: Katherine keeps track of seventy-euro golf jackets, and I arrange brooms that are worth €1.50 each. But we earn about the same, so I'm not complaining.

****

I'm painfully aware that I haven't been posting many photos recently. The fact that it has been raining constantly is partially to blame, as is the work schedule. We have tentative plans to journey out to Kinsale or somewhere this weekend, I'll be sure to have a full photographic record. But for now, I will add to the visual appeal of this entry with an older picture I took in Killarney––the interior of St. Mary's Cathedral, which took about seventy years to build:

Michael Guiney's

2009-12-08T12:20:00.000-08:00

Well, the unlikely happened––I got a job. It's at a bargain retailer called Guiney's. And I mean bargain retailer. This place makes K-mart look like Nordstrom. But hey, I am finally gaining that valuable, and elusive, retail experience. The path before me is paved with gold.

Not too much rejoicing is in order. My employment is a "trial period," according to the manager, a trial period that ends with the Christmas season. Until that point I'm working around twenty hours a week. My first day's duties included reorganizing the clothing in the women's section. Picking up loose articles from the ground, putting articles back where they belong, etc. About an hour into this I had, I admit, a bit of a existential crisis. Five years of higher education and I'm arranging thermal underwear? Humiliation began to creep its way into my consciousness.

But that's all just pride, and I've put it behind me. Guiney's is not a career path for me, it's a little extra money before Christmas. And as a friend of ours said, having a Master's and working at Guiney's is better than having a Master's and not working at all. I'm getting to know some of my Polish co-workers who have very tough-to-pronounce names, and, thank goodness, they got me out of the women's section. It'll all be okay. Paris is only a week away.

Have You Ever Seen the Rain Coming Down on a Sunny Day?

2009-12-07T04:14:00.000-08:00

As I am sure you all and the rest of the world wide web noticed, I took the weekend off to lick my wounds from another emasculating week of job searching. I also dried my socks, which takes at least forty-eight hours since Cork's atmosphere is at a constant 98 percent humidity. It reminds me of a section of Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes, which rings truer than I ever expected:

From October to April the walls of Limerick [or Cork!] glistened with the damp. Clothes never dried: tweed and woolen coats housed living things, sometimes sprouted mysterious vegetations. In pubs, steam rose from damp bodies and garments.... (12)

Thank God Ireland now has electricity!

The weather is playing with me. I really feel this way. Every morning for the past week I wake up, throw aside the curtains and embrace a perfectly clear sky. "It's going to be a nice day!," I think to myself. I shower, eat, doddle around a little bit, and eventually leave my building to go conquer the day (which, admittedly, is usually around 11 a.m.). By this time it is usually dark, windy, and raining. All one can really do in these conditions is drink tea. Indeed, I will never make fun of the British and Irish tea habit again. The fact is the weather absolutely requires it. (I will continue to ridicule the "tea time," which is asking for it).

While I'm on the topic of perplexing phenomena, a few words on systems of measurement. The Irish have no idea which system they're on. For all intents and purposes, both English and Metric are official. One trend I have noticed, for example, is that most measurements of distance, area, or speed are expressed in metric. Speed limit signs are in km/h, apartments are advertised in square meters, and the nearest market is "oh, fifty or so meters up the hill." But most measurements of height and weight, especially when described verbally, are in English. So-and-so is six-foot-one, I went on a diet and lost forty-three pounds, etc. Most of the personal scales are in stones! (For the Americans: one stone equals fourteen pounds. I weigh twelve and one-quarter stones, how about you? Break out a calculator and have fun with it). And at open-air markets, about half of the prices you see are "per pound," the other half "per kilogram." At the very least, these circumstance can make one fluent in metric pretty quickly.

But every culture has some peculiarities. Walking around the city last night––Sunday night––I saw something that I think I admire: most of the pubs were not only open, there were full.

Oh, Tannenbaum; or, Maryland, My Maryland

2009-12-04T06:17:00.000-08:00

I now have to adjust to Katherine going off to work every day. It's only for four or five hours at a time, but it's four or five hours when I have nothing to do and no one to talk to. As I write it is raining outside, so walking around and desperately looking for new "help wanted" signs is not too attractive.

The internet is, of course, the main way to apply for jobs these days, even in Ireland. Despite work being as rare as hen's teeth, folks try to give helpful advice. My personal favorite (and this has happened at least five times) is when an Irish person says, "You know, you should really have a look at IrishJobs.ie, they have a lot of work postings." This is like saying to anyone with a computer, "You're trying to search for something on the internet? You should try Google.com, they have a decent search engine." But it's the thought that counts.

My drill is to scan the new postings every day, with the hope that I'll find something that doesn't require fluency in Dutch or Swedish or extensive experience in the lady's fashion industry. Speaking of the lady's fashion industry, in our wanderings a few nights ago we came across a storefront with a help-wanted sign for part-time seasonal retail work. I figured "What the hell?, I'll go in tomorrow to see if they'll hire me." I entered the store the next day only to realize that they sell only women's knitwear, and that I was the only male out of about fifteen people in the room. I turned around and left. This pretty much sums up the reality of retail work in Cork. And it also might help explain why, in the middle of the workday, the pubs are busy serving an all-male crowd of patrons.

The job descriptions should include caveats such as "extensive retail [or serving, or bartending] experience required. Unless you're a cute little thing, in which case all training will be provided."

Good Brews

To celebrate Katherine's new job we went out and spent all of the money she earned on her first day. The first stop was the Bierhaus, which has the largest beer selection in the city. I had a bottle of "Chimay Blue," a dark Belgian porter that really packs a punch. Nine percent alcohol content...goes straight to your head and is very tasty. We then stumbled to the Franciscan Well, Cork's justly famous microbrewery.

Finally, we have decorated our Christmas tree. As you all know, the tree itself was criminally cheap. It definitely doesn't meet the State of California's flame retardant standards. And Katherine came up with another brilliant idea to keep costs down: decorate the trees with colorful paper gift tags, which come in packs of twenty for €1. Throw on a fifteen-meter string of lights (€6), and we're in business:

As you can see, the tree is accented by the exquisitely ugly rose picture. We are lucky enough to have a copy of that photography in every one of our rooms. And each copy is listed as inventory in our lease, so we can't even do future tenants a favor and destroy them.

Anyway, other than Éire Apparent being an obvious cure for my downtime, I have ideas for how to stay busy. I might do some volunteer work for the History Department at University College Cork. I might do what I do best and find some archives and see if there's anything interesting to write about. And, to be sure, I'll stay optimistic that something paid will turn up.

A Breakthrough

2009-12-02T08:41:00.000-08:00

As you can surmise from my previous entries, Katherine and I have been a little pessimistic about finding work. But rather than being down about it, we think we should take advantage of all of the time on our hands and do some traveling. So two nights ago we booked five nights in Paris for December 16–21. Capitalizing on an idea I gained from the Frugal Traveler, we looked into vacant apartments on Craigslist.org. Worked like a charm: we will be staying in a fully furnished studio within a few minutes' walk from the Louvre for €50 a night––cheaper than most of the hostels.

What happens right after we finalize this journey? Katherine lands a retail job with a golf store. Very luckily, her new boss is willing to work around the trip. This position might be our saving grace, at least for our goal of staying in Europe for a year.

In other news, I bought the last €15 fake Christmas tree in Cork City today. Dunne's had them, six-foot, fairly realistic trees for only fifteen quid. I bought the floor model. I don't know how it was only €15, it's probably extremely flammable or gives off toxic fumes. Luckily our windows are as drafty as screen doors, shouldn't be too dangerous.

Last but not least, we found the best pan-handler in all of Ireland:

This guy––unlike the other street performers in the city––has real talent. I mean, look at those dancing figurines! Elvis actually hit the cymbal! The other accordion players of the city are endlessly annoying. In particular, the man who plays "Jingle Bells" in a constant loop for sixteen hours a day (I wish I was exaggerating). But not this fellow, with his band members Marilyn and Elvis. We walked past him a half-hour later, and he was rosining up a bow to play a fiddle. That's impressive!

The Heat, Revisited

2009-11-30T09:27:00.001-08:00

Funny thing about the heater––it seems to work after all. There were a couple of problems: a type of heating and wiring set-up I have never seen before and would never have figured out on my own, and a lack of instruction.

It turns out that our main heater is something called a 'storage' heater. There are actually two electric meters for the apartment: one for the heater and one for the rest of the flat. At night, the electric––and meter––for the heater activate. The heater then "stores" the electricity for the coming day. When you wake up, and you're cold, you turn on the storage heater and heat will come out of it. The problem was when I flipped the switch the indicator light would not come on, giving the appearance that there is no power (which, technically, there wasn't). It is a very strange system. I hope it's more efficient this way. Because if it is not then all it accomplishes is being wildly over-complicated.

Today was one of the few clear, sunny days we have had (there have been three so far), perfect weather for some exploration. On the menu for this afternoon was the city's north side. The north side is less vibrant, less economically successful than the south, but also, I think, more authentic. There aren't chic all-glass building housing GAPs, Top Shops, H&Ms, and the like. Cork's ethnic population is also concentrated on the north side: most of the areas Poles (as well as Africans and Turks, judging from the ethnic food stores) live here. But it's mostly Irish, modest, realistic.

Possibly the best part about the north side is the view:
What I could see from St. Patrick's hill had me reflecting on urban centers of the US. What we're used to seeing in an America city––at least on the East Coast––is a large urban center ringed by miles of suburbia, followed by miles of exurbs. Escape all of that and you might, eventually, reach some countryside (which will inevitably be pock-marked by a few more odd subdivisions). In the second photograph you can just make out the green hills of the country, only a couple of miles from the foreground's City Centre. There are indeed suburbs where Cork's wealthier residents seek refuge, but they're tiny compared to what we have come to expect.

I'm not trying to make a value judgment about Irish or European urbanization vs. American. It's just an interesting land-use observation. Ireland has not experienced anything like the boom-and-bust cycle of the States; the island's only bull market economy was 1990–2007. Before that there was only poverty and emigration. In short, the Irish haven't had the money to alter their land in quite the same way we have.

Compared to my visit eighteen months ago, and to the semester Katherine spent at University College Cork in 2006, the city is absolutely covered in graffiti (especially the north side (Photo credit to Katherine!)). There are definitely more young people with a lot of time on their hands these days. Minor vandalism such as this is the artwork of the times. The growing number of boarded up businesses decorate the stage and the rapidly multiplying number panhandlers serve as the actors. Katherine has even noticed the difference in what you see on the sidewalk: three years ago, the ground was seemingly littered with one- and two-cent coins. Not any more!

I don't mean to be so dreary. It is still a vibrant place, especially around 10 p.m. on a Saturday. Not too many spirits have been defeated, except for the ones in glass bottles.

The Crucial Week Ahead

2009-11-28T10:16:00.000-08:00

Among the many things I have learned in Ireland (other than that zucchinis are called courgettes) is that it is possible to get a satisfying caffeine fix from tea. If you drink seven cups of black tea in a short time, it does the trick. This will be shocking for some, but I haven't had a cup of coffee since I've been here. In most of the cafés a small coffee will run around €2, or over three bucks, and I'm not willing to buy a coffee maker. On the other hand, tea is so cheap it must be subsidized by the government.

Dilemmas

Our third week in Cork will be one of our most momentous, a little earlier than I expected for big decisions to be made. I'm talking about what to do in the face of no employment and no heat. As for the latter: our apartment––despite all of its cuteness––is quite cold. The main reason is that the biggest room doesn't have a heat source. There is an electric radiator mounted to the wall, but the power switch only works about 5 percent of the time. Even when it does turn on it only produces enough energy to warm a tiny closet.

According to Irish tenant law, landlords are required to provide a reliable heat source. We have reported the repairs that are needed (including some leaky windows) to the agency/landlord, but have been stonewalled by the Irish "mañana" tendency. One day a handyman did show up and had a look at the windows––he decided he knew what needed to be done, and promised he would return. Problem is, he never did. When I complained to the agency a second time they said they would have someone stop by "to look at the windows and heater." A whole lot of looking, and no fixing, has been the landlord's remedy. And tonight we were promised a repair of the heat, but it looks like we are to be stood up again.

We have a three-month lease but I believe we have grounds to break it. Absent a swift resolution to the heating problem I will have to resort to that. This isn't too big of a tragedy since we can't find work. Katherine's potential gig at the chocolate shop has died since they never called her back after the interview. She also had an interview at a golf equipment store, but for very limited hours. And no ring from them either.

Thus, we have decided that this week is an important one because if we don't hear from somebody, an important milestone will be reached: we will start to get bored. After you've applied to every open position that you're qualified for––and many more that you're barely qualified for––you run out of things to do. And our consensus is that if we start to get bored, then the whole experiment has gone defective. We can sit around and live dull existences in the States; it is a waste to do that here.

Sans employment, we will turn to the ultimate level of financial irresponsibility and travel. Willy-nilly, all over the Continent. Seriously, I'm making up an itinerary in my head right now. More on this to come...

Volunteer? What's the Rush?

Katherine's answer to long stretches of inactivity was to volunteer around the city. This is a good idea for a few reasons: we would get out and meet people, we would gain the satisfaction of "helping," and our networking could turn into employment opportunities. In the States, if you want to volunteer it takes about 37 seconds of waiting before you're sent to work in a soup kitchen or paint over graffiti. There is a fantastic infrastructure designed to get volunteers to the "front line" in a very short amount of time.

With so many people out of work it is logical to think that Irish non-profits would be desperate to mobilize volunteers. What we have encountered is more of a blasé attitude. The lady at the first volunteer agency we went to, associated with the Church, took our information and told us that they are so busy that they might not be able to contact us for a while. Ironic, no? We then stopped in Cork City's main volunteer network, where we were told, "Oh, take time to think it over. We have a volunteer fair here in a week's time, come by then and you might find something." What the hell? Is quickly and efficiently taking advantage of people's kindness only an American specialty?

On the Lighter Side

We watched the Ireland v. South Africa rugby match today in a pub, an exciting experience. Problem is, it might have ruined the NFL for me. For those who don't know (and that's pretty much everyone in the US), a rugby match is eighty (that's 80) minutes of playing time. How long from start to finish? Under two hours total, no commercial breaks. How long for sixty minutes of NFL action? Three hours, with 257 commercial breaks (which is, of course, why the games are three hours long).

Ireland won in a nail-biter, 15–10, to finish the season undefeated. (Photo credit to Katherine!)

As a final note in this long entry, I am impressed by the Christmas decorations the city has put up. There's no attempt at political correctness here! It's all 'bout Christmas, baby. The following photo is just a tiny sample of the lights around City Centre.

Online Article

2009-11-27T08:00:00.000-08:00

Hello all! Check out Katherine's article in the online newspaper Chestertown Spy. A great piece of writing. Similar to what you've been reading here regarding lack of work, but then again that's what most twenty-somethings are obsessed with these days. Anyway, the article is on the home page and can also be found in the "Curiosities" section.

Jaunting to Cill Airne

2009-11-26T07:21:00.000-08:00

After over a week of constant canvassing for work, Katherine and I took a break and headed to Killarney (known in Irish as Cill Airne). The downside to Killarney is that it is a tourist trap: all of the tours for the famous "Ring of Kerry" as well as trips to the Dingle peninsula start in Killarney. The upside is that the town is situated on a beautiful lake, surrounded by mountains, and that we went during the offseason.

So after buying bus tickets that were more expensive than RyanAir flights to London (I'm not joking), we arrived for a day of hill walking.Katherine is our great white hope for finding work: she has been contacted for another interview, this one in retail sales. The two months of experience she has from a sandwich shop in Williamsburg, Va., is really coming in handy. On the other hand––with my lack of retail/restaurant employment history––I have not heard from anyone. These complaints aside, we are determinedly celebrating Thanksgiving today. We have made: turkey with stuffing, creamy onions, green bean casserole, mashed sweet potatoes, regular mashed potatoes, apple pie, and zucchini bread (note: zucs are called "courgettes" here).

The Irish are in good spirits despite the doom and gloom and flooding. Perhaps it's in their genetic makeup at this point, to shrug off bad times. The other night a fellow told us that "this is the worst time since the famine" to be on the island, but even so it's still a good place to be. At a restaurant where I was dropping off a CV, the hostess told me that everyone eventually finds work, even these days. And that she would recommend me to her manager. I haven't heard from him.

The Strike

2009-11-24T07:21:00.000-08:00

Underscoring the economic problems facing Ireland, many "public sector workers" staged walkouts today to protest a €1.3 billion wage cut.

Katherine and I learned––through hearsay, admittedly––that there would be picketers outside of Cork's City Hall, so we trudged over in the cold wind and spraying rain to take a look. If there were picketers they must have been discouraged by the crumby weather.In the photo you can see city hall, the Irish flag flailing in the wind, and, in the background, Ireland's tallest building (no joke). The "skyscraper" is new and houses luxury apartments and office space; nearly the entire building is vacant. The best flats go for around €2 million. We've heard that the owner is trying to buy out the four people who have taken up residence so he can just shut off the power to the entire complex.

On the job front, glimmers of hope. Katherine found some nannying positions online that she's very well qualified for, and actually has an interview this afternoon for a temporary Christmas position at a chocolate shop. I have come across a couple of restaurant/bar tending opportunities that could bear some fruit. A pub in town called Costigan's had a Bingo night yesterday with a jackpot of €575: we attended without luck.

A Slow Sunday

2009-11-22T09:43:00.000-08:00

I know this article's connection with Ireland is tenuous at first glance, but chalk it up to mere geography: Going Home During the Recession.

It's one of the Post's main article from the Sunday paper, so many of you may have already seen it. The experience of Melissa Meyer neatly summarizes the collapse of the job market––specifically, the job market for professionals. 'Tis a reality we are grappling with in Europe as well. To be honest, if I had two solid years retail experience, or two solid years of restaurant work, I would have landed a job on one of our first days here. But unfortunately I have not only a BA, but a Master's. I am hopelessly overqualified for "till" positions, and somehow I managed to go all this time without experience as a waiter.

It's frustrating because 99 percent of the time these are positions that I am more than capable of doing. Pardon my lack of humility, but come on, serving food? How much training time am I going to knot up? And in return a restaurant would get a reliable, professional, punctual person that won't show up to work drunk. Problem is you can't explain these things on a CV. Instead, I have had my CV handed back to me when I admit that I don't have restaurant experience. For a minimum-wage serving position. Ouch.

C'est la vie. It's a buyer's market if you're hiring. You can afford to be picky. The truth is these pubs and restaurants will not fail at finding people with experience. If I get desperate I will simply invent past experience, so I feel no need to panic yet.

a quick story

2009-11-20T14:02:00.001-08:00

I forgot to mention in my previous entry that I found an honest-to-God outdoor store in Cork. It's the perfect place for me to work. They have all of the things I know about, inside and out: fishing equipment, knives, archery equipment, billiards, and––yes––guns. Judging from their inventory all that the Irish are allowed to own are rimfire rifles and double-barrel shotguns, but that would make my job all the easier, wouldn't it?

Alas, they weren't hiring. For a brief moment I thought the planets were aligning. Not so...

The Floods

2009-11-20T13:12:00.000-08:00

We have been "lucky" enough to witness the worst flooding in Ireland in living memory. Large portions of the city were impassable today, adding a little bit of difficulty to our job searching. To add to the mess, about half of the city is out of drinking water. But by the grace of another one of those little miracles, our apartment still has tasty water coming out of the tap.

In the above picture you will see many important things: a massive Beamish can (the Guinness of the south) part of the Beamish brewery, St. Finbarre Cathedral (one of the prettiest I've seen, but then again, I've never been to France or Italy), and a very rough River Lee. The river was about as fast and full as you can see it. Makes sense, since some of it was in the streets as well.

Another view of flooded street to the right, and (I couldn't help it), a nice beer I tried this evening. It's a cream ale, something you hardly ever see in the States. I was disheartened to learn it is owned by Guinness (do they own every Irish brewery?), but I couldn't help but enjoy it.

But I have been doing more than stare at floodwater and drink ale. Today was our first real push at finding work, a sobering experience. The first––and easiest––strategy was to go for the temp agencies. We have distributed our information to most of them in City Centre by now, but no hits. Quite the opposite: almost immediately after handing over your CV and cover letters, you tend to get an email saying they have nothing that suits your skill set at the moment. Not all of them have disappointed us yet, but it is not looking good.

We have also started what will likely be our only chance of success: working the pavement. Katherine and I each ducked into a few retail locations this afternoon, with not much luck. The handful (and when I say handful I mean two) positions we have seen are for the Christmas season only, not a good sign for the January job market. Of course, before it is all said and done, we will have to conduct a nearly door-to-door search of the city. My fingers are crossed that something comes up before that.

Building on a comment posted to one of my earlier entries about the bureaucratic illness that seems to infect much of Europe, I call attention to a piece of mail we received today. From the government, it is a notice that they do not have a television license on file for our apartment. So, it says, we should be prepared for an inspection so authorities can make sure we are not keeping an unlicensed boob tube. Apparently, in order to lawfully have a television, you need to pay 160 euros for a "television license." Go figure.

Digs

2009-11-19T07:20:00.000-08:00

We went to the Office of Social Welfare today to apply for a PPS number (the explanation for which is in my previous entry). It also happened to be "dole day," Thursday being the day welfare checks are given out. It was also raining heavily with wind gusts around 30 miles per hour.

It seemed funny to me that we were waiting in a dole line to get permission to work, one of the many things I pondered in an effort to distract myself from the fact that I was completely soaked and cold. Once we got into the building and found the PPS Number window, my dripping wet hair nearly ruined my application form. But in the end we were successful thanks to the minor miracle that we had all of the proper paperwork on hand. (Another not-too-surprising observation from the social welfare office: many of the signs are in the usual Irish and English, accompanied by Polish). Now all that we have to do is sit on our hands until the application is processed and our numbers are mailed to us. (The photo of Katherine on our way back hardly does justice to how soggy it was).

We returned to cute little apartment, which deserves a few words. I like how efficient everything is: in particular, how the water heater stays off until one needs to shower or clean some dishes is very nice. I've had surprises in the past with boilers using a LOT of energy (and, thus, racking up high bills) to keep the hot water hot all of the time. The convenience factor of our current set-up is lower, but I don't mind.

Included in the kitchen are a fridge and a washing machine, both endearingly tiny. As you can see in the picture I have taken, the hatch of the washing machine is nearly the same size as a 20 euro-cent coin. An Irish friend of ours expressed dismay when we told her how large American washing machines are. This one is also a dryer, in the same unit! This is incredibly novel, but I guess things don't have to be too exotic to seem novel to me.

Of course, the point of all of this––the apartment, the PPS number––is to find work. With these two pieces in place we can start on that. More on that to come...

The First Day

2009-11-18T01:38:00.000-08:00

I can't comment much on the journey to Ireland, other than we left Sunday evening and arrived in Dublin Monday morning. The plane ride was the typical traveling time warp that I have not yet figured out: we were en route for only five or six hours, but we somehow gained twelve. Anyway, I hadn't slept in twenty-nine hours or so, and I drifted in and out of consciousness on the bus down to Cork City (a five-hour journey).

I know that I had a good first day in Cork because I got to see a rainbow and got to dodge heavy rain showers. Our hosts for our first few days in the city told us that in a typical day, it will be hot and cold, sunny and rainy, and this proved to be true. We also got our first taste of Irish government bureaucracy. Arriving at the Garda (police) station to register as foreign nationals living in the country––something that has to be done within the first month––we were told that we can't register without proof of residence, i.e. a lease agreement. We also can't get work without a "PPS" number, basically a social security number, and you can't get a PPS number without, yes, proof of residence. So signs pointed to getting an apartment. The realtor we worked with told us you usually can’t rent an apartment without a PPS number, but thankfully she was willing to overlook that requirement.

As the economy is sluggish and immigration greatly slowed, there are ample rental properties with rents that have been "consistently dropping for the past eighteen months," or so I heard on the radio. We found very nice places for reasonable prices in the north side of the city, but the man very openly smoking a joint on the front step of the building clued us in to the nature of the neighborhood. Instead we have settled on a flat in the "City Centre." The apartment comes with a washing machine big enough to wash three whole pairs of socks at one time.

I also had my first dilemma with our common language with the Irish. Having forgotten mine in New Jersey, I was in a TESCO looking for a comb. I asked an employee where to find one, but the problem was my long Maryland "o". She had no idea what I was talking about, looking as though I had asked where to find the Molotov Cocktails. After I said "cohwmb" a few more times, she eventually understood. Later I was instructed on how to say comb, but I haven't yet been able to master it.

After moving in, we will follow the PPS-number-then-job progression of things, or at least try to. Our hosts gave us other bits of wisdom last night. On the job front, “All you need to know about the Irish economy is: we're screwed. We are borrowing 2 billion euro a month to keep the government afloat, and this for a population the size of greater Manchester.” It’s not anything unfamiliar to Americans––the talk here is dominated by the double-digit unemployment rate and stagnant/falling wages. The government is borrowing billions to stay afloat, but, of course, public servants have scheduled a nationwide strike to protest wage cuts.

Like in the States, economic hardship has created some political turmoil, or at least dissatisfaction with the folks currently running the country. There is an Obama-esque challenger to the current Taoiseach (pronounced TEE-shuck; the Irish Prime Minister) who has harnessed the “Yes We Can” attitude. But, we’ve been told, the more Irish way to state it is, “Well, Maybe, You Never Know.”

So it stands at the moment. I will continue to update the magazine and work on my Cork accent.

The Prelude

2009-11-12T11:28:00.000-08:00

All of the nice things we were lucky enough to get for our wedding.... It's strange to be packing them up for storage in my grandmother-in-law's basement. We're approaching departure, and I have been hunting for jobs and places to live in Cork. I have blanketed the temp agencies with my CV, and have come up with a few housing leads.

One situation is a nice house five minutes' walk from Cork City Centre. The fellow I have corresponded with sounds very jolly, and the monthly rent is reasonable. Another possibility is sharing an apartment with a Frenchman and a––and I'm quoting––"very serious German guy." If that doesn't sound terrifying enough, they have a "strictly enforced" cleaning schedule. I'm pulling for the jolly house mate to work out.

Thanks to all that have become followers of my, um, online magazine. A gentleman very intimate with the ways of the press, who might be associated with Washington College, and who might have something to do with the Chestertown Spy, has advised me that "blog" is a word I should avoid. Everyone has a blog these days, but how many have online magazines? Did I call this a blog? My bad.

A few more things...

2009-11-10T11:46:00.000-08:00

We are leaving in just a few days, so packing, planning, and final visits with relatives and friends are going to take up much of my time until then. Please be patient, I'll start blogging away once in Cork City (our destination on the Emerald Isle). And if I can't find work, I'll have enough time to blog more than any of you would ever want me to. I'm planning on fully embracing 21st-century voyeurism.

The Skinny

2009-11-10T11:05:00.000-08:00

This 'blog is an experiment to see if I can make my international excursion––a 12-month work holiday in Ireland––sound interesting. The idea to broadcast my experience in a public forum first came to me about a year ago, when the Western economy was burning to the ground. Ireland was hit particularly hard, the "Celtic Tiger" actually having depended on a faulty housing boom even more than the US of A. I'm a news hound, and I was amazed at the amount of ink the Irish crash was getting in America. I knew that Americans almost consider Ireland to be the 52nd state, but the intense interest in the economic troubles of a nation of four million was more than I expected.

Therefore, I thought that perhaps my tale of moving to Éire ("Ireland" in Irish) and trying to find work could garner at least a handful of readers. Which is more readers than I'm used to having. My Master's thesis was read by five people, including my wife, Katherine, and me.

Since this is my first post and I'm rather enjoying talking about myself, a little more explanation about the Ireland trip: it's my wife's doing. A year ago I was in the first semester of a six-year Ph.D. program at The College of William and Mary, but it wasn't for me. It was a typical grad student crisis...I couldn't find a topic for my thesis/dissertation that at all interested me, my social life was non-existent, and the Williamsburg area was sucking the life out of me. My then-fiancée, Katherine simply could not find work. As fate would have it, the USA and Ireland struck up a deal last October to offer a new, one-year work holiday visa for "recent" college students. We weren't interested in staying in Hampton Roads for much longer, so we went for the visa. I say "it's my wife's doing" because it has been her dream to try to live in Ireland ever since she studied abroad there as an undergraduate. It was a opportunity we couldn't pass up.

We were married this past October 23rd, and now we're packing up our lives into two suitcases and heading to Europe. We're happily exchanging the financial ruin that might accompany this decision for the opportunity to see a little more of the world. Even Ireland, a white, English-speaking, very "westernized" country will pack more cultural diversity than I'm used to. I'm from Earleville, Md., folks.

My intention is to regularly update about our travels, with a loose focus on the Irish economy and job market. As someone said to me recently, "You're going to try to find work in Ireland? You know, even the Poles have been leaving." Thanks. It should be interesting.