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.