Sunshine, wedding and general madness

It wasn't a surprise that Ireland has changed completely. My first inkling came a few years ago, when my Dad mentioned he’d visited the Caribbean food market in Tralee. What? When I visited in 1997, the new Italian restaurant seemed out of place--suspiciously close to “ethnic food.” But in the last 10 years the Celtic Tiger has emerged, and left its clawprints everywhere.

We arrived in Galway under a glorious Irish heat wave, and after a day at the beach we enjoyed a pint of heavenly Czech lager. Which is easy to find, naturally, in the local Polish bar. Apparently there are 10,000 Eastern Europeans arriving every month to Ireland, which was one of the few E.U. countries to offer free entry to the new member countries. A vast majority are from Poland. The local Dunnes grocery stores now have a Polish foods section that stocks rye bread and sauerkraut. Billboards advertise cheap calling rates and flights to Warsaw. Any type of service job is now likely to be filled by someone from Eastern Europe. In the 1980s, when all the Irish were emigrating, there was a saying: “Last one to leave turn out the lights.” Now, one imagines they must be saying the same thing in Poland.

And everywhere, everywhere, construction and for sale signs. The newly affluent Irish are building like mad. When I first visited California, I was amazed at people’s never-ending ability to talk about housing prices. Well, I’m afraid the Irish would now give them a run for their money. Young people are speculating on when, if ever, the “bubble will burst” (a two-bedroom townhouse in Dublin goes for a million euros). People lucky enough to own a house are looking for investment properties or second homes in places like Budapest and Croatia. “Forget the so-called important subjects, like politics or religion,” my mom’s friend Maeve told us. “Now everyone’s talking about property values.”

The tourist industry is slow to catch up, no surprise. Yesterday we saw a postcard that showed a herd of cows in a laneway and read “Traffic jam in Ireland.” Who do they think they’re kidding? When people aren’t talking about gazoomping home prices, they’re complaining about traffic. The last weekend the radio announced there had been 12 deaths on Irish roads, in eight separate accidents. Some justification for our being lazy, taking the bus and enjoying the visits.

But more to the point, we were in town for the wedding of my friend Siobhan, whose family lived up the street from us in Ottawa in the mid-1980s. The Dorai-Raj family welcomed us in fine Irish-Malaysian style, with tea and curry, and all seemed amazingly relaxed. Siobhan and Justin had a beautiful wedding on Galway Bay. (This photo proves the wedding photographers have nothing to fear from me.) Drinking started early and lasted into the wee hours, and the dance floor started heating up at 1 a.m. The next day, the younger guests all met up for--guess what?--a few pints in the neighborhood bar. Until last year it was an old mans' drinking hole, but it’s newly renovated and now a hipster joint serving tapas and chips with mango salsa at exorbitant prices.

Yeesh. Did I mention that Irish people now fly over to New York for the weekend to do their Christmas shopping, and take advantage of the exchange rates? Here, it’s hard to even find street food for less than $10. We’re not exactly living it up. Luckily the relatives have been feeding us well and David does wonders with a tin of baked beans, so we're not starving yet.

Deep in the Heart of Kerry

Hannah keeps saying how tough I am, surviving the onslaught of relatives. I must say, while long drives aren't my favorite way to pass time, I am a big fan of endless cups of tea and hot whiskey, family lore, visits to ol' haunts and long chats around the kitchen stove.

With all this discussion of the "New Ireland," the "Celtic Tiger," rising house prices, aggressive BMW drivers, immigration, and the rest of the modern global village's travails, it was reassuring to start in Ireland's heartland.

Hannah's mother, Margaret, met us in Cork and we watched the scenery fly by as we headed for Kerry in the luxury of a rental car. The bike odometers stalled at 3,600 kilometers, while we enjoyed the rest.

In North Kerry we watched a DVD of Hannah's cousin, Sean, playing in the local hurling championship. (If you don't know, this is a traditional Irish game that's similar to field hockey, except that it's full contact and much of the game is played with raised sticks. They recently introduced helmets. The older players are all missing teeth.) A commemorative DVD includes a charmistic announcer complaining of a hangover, an interview with the hurling-mad local priest, and a final victory of which one player said: "joy would not begin to describe it." This was the first time the local hurling club had won the coveted championship in thirty years, and the celebration showed more real passion, pleasure and joy in the win than any professional footballer winning the World Cup--especially when it's a penalty shoot-out between Italy and France.


But I digress. Hannah's family made me feel not like a guest, but more like just another kid, or cousin, or only-slightly-distant family member. We were ferried to the various family graveyards to wander among the lichen-covered headstones (and fancy new polished-marble hulks complete with laser-etched pictures of Jesus and Mary). We climbed fences and dodged nettles, brambles and gorse walking the ancestral farm.

We toured around the scenic Dingle Peninsula. We even trekked up to the family section of bog, where strips of peat are still cut and dried to make fuel.



One of the Hickey uncles invited us to a Monday night "session" at a pub in a local town. Again, the scene, or the "craic," was gay and genuine. Everyone, their cheeks pink with drink, would be nudged into giving a song for the crowd.


Eventually, the umbilical cord was cut and we got back on the bikes. We took the coast road north through County Clare, home of Ireland's traditional music scene. In a little pub in Doolin, we actually found ourselves a little disappointed. This was a scene of self-styled professional muscians playing for an audience of tourists. They were fine musicans but it wasn't to be confused with vibrant, healthy culture.

Further north along the coast, we crossed the desolate limestone pavement of the Burren, and stopped and looked out on a turquoise sea. We wasted hours lolling about, watching dolphins swim by, cormorants carrying out fishing trips from their perches on the cliffs, and the odd fisherman, swinging by to pick up lobster traps.

But we had business to attend to. The now Siobhan O'Grady was about to get married in Galway, and we needed to get there and find acommodations--not only in high season, but in a town whose population had already swollen in anticipation of the great Galways Arts Festival.

And we thought we were going to get some rest.

A Wales Tale

It's a complete mystery to our naive selves that Brits would fly off to Bulgaria, Cyprus, and the likes, when we've enjoyed so many sunny days in Wales. I know, I know, it's hard to believe, but it's true.














We've also had the extraordinary fortune to have some adventurous souls join us on this ramble 'cross Europe. Here, Nathan and Virginie experience one of our "short cuts" through the English countryside, English nettles, English gorse, English brambles... brave souls indeed.

Communication must have been poor. Somehow, Helen and Tim weren't warned in time, and they joined us for a urban ride through the abandoned Welsh coalmine country and the down-on-their-heels towns to.... lovely Swansea by the sea.

Ahhh, Swansea. The smell of the sea, the cry of the gulls, the fresh breeze nearly broke my heart with the weight of dear memories (have I been in Ireland long enough to write like this?) But as I was saying to Hannah, Swansea has another side. Gangs of drunken, tattoed toughs lying about the boardwalk, glowering at the passers-by. And the guys were pretty scary-looking, too.

But still, the unbelieveable weather continued. We reached the coast with time to spare, so we did a victory lap around the Gower Peninsula. That night the whole gang camped on the tip of the peninsula, among British surfers waiting for waves. And waiting. And waiting.

The following night we made our way down a gorse- and heather-covered hillside (complete with crumbling castle) to a white sandy beach. Took a swim in the ocean, through a rock arch and back to the beach, and dried off in the heat of the sun. In Wales mind you. Told you, you wouldn't believe it.

Than back to Swansea. It was with no small amount of relief that we boarded an overnight ferry to.... Ireland. For a time, it really felt like our trip was almost over.

The Cotswolds - A Haiku

English paradise:
Stone manors, flowered gardens.
Why so many hills?

Our Days at Oxford

We didn't actually attend classes in Oxford. Just biked through and played at being students: slept in residences, drank in pubs, ate tofu salad at the covered market, and visited a museum that's like the attic of a nineteenth-century colonial explorer: glass cases of shrunken heads; guns and exotic daggers; outrigger canoes hanging from the ceiling.

Is this enough to be awarded a degree?