A Pub Quiz

Ireland's greatest export is, of course, people. Pubs come a close second.

Below are seven photos that we took on our trip. See if you can identify the country in which each one was taken. (Clicking on a photo will bring up a bigger version, which might help.)

The countries are Israel, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Romania, Czech Republic, Holland and USA.

We'll post the answers next week. Good luck!

What a Long, Strange Trip

Yes, folks, the honeymoon's over.

It feels like at least a year's worth of experiences packed into a few months. Right now, after a week back in Seattle, we're still enjoying a familiar routine: sleeping in the same bed, reuniting with our cat, speaking the same language for a few weeks in a row.

It's really impossible to sum things up--I'm still trying to process the sensory overload. Instead, here are some random statistics:

Kilometers bicycled: 3,746
Countries visited: 12 to 14 (depending if you include the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and Wales)
Days of cycling: 44
Longest day: 140 km (to Vienna)
Hardest day: 101 km (battling hills and a brutal a headwind to Bursa)
Average daily distance: 80 km
Average speed: 18 km per hour
Pannier weight: unknown, since we never weighed them, but probably around 40 lbs per person

Best cycling:

• Transylvania (when you can find a road)
• Tarsus Mountains in Turkey
  
• Austrian wine region
• West coast of Ireland

Most delicious food:

• Czech beer
• Israeli breakfasts (soft cheeses, salads, humus)
• Turkish desserts
• German bread

Most bike-friendly cities:

• Amsterdam
• Vienna
• Budapest
  

Trip lowlights:

• Turkish toilets
  
• Romanian "highways"
  
• British road signs
  

Gear we would take again:

• Ortlieb panniers
• Schwalbe tires (not a single flat on Hannah's bike!)
  
• Ear plugs
• Photocopies of credit card, passport, driver's license
  

Gear we would take next time:

• Mountain bike wheels (26-inch) for rough terrain
  
• More Ziploc bags (impossible to find and very useful)
• Kickstands
• Bar-end shifters
  

Words in the pan-European lexicon:

• Ciao
• Merci
• Problem
• Kaput
  

What North America could use more of:

• Turkish barbers
• Turkish baths
• Street food vendors
• Bicycling infrastructure from Germany/Austria/Holland/Hungary
  

Best hospitality:

• Everyone!
  

Thanks to everyone who put us up, fed us, offered to help, or just came up to say hello. New friends, old friends, new family, old family--the people made the trip memorable. We hope we'll get to cross paths again someday.

And, last but not least, thanks to everyone who's checked out the blog. It's been fun adventuring together.

Shalom, Lehitra'ot, Merhaba, Na shledanou, Auf wiedersehen, Vaarwel,
D & H

Hurling in Dublin

No... not quite what you were expecting from the title, although afterwards more than a few pints were consumed at the traditional meeting place.

Remember hurling? The ancient and still vital game of Ireland. We had the exceptional good luck to be invited to the all-Ireland quarter finals by Hannah's cousin, Gene. While the first match lacked some excitment--one of the teams was hopelessly outclassed--the second game was a nail-biter, and even featured the underdog, Waterford, coming up from behind and able to maintain a thin margin of points over their opponents, right until the end. Injuries were plentiful but I'm still amazed that no deaths occured. A testament to the skill of the players.

Ahh, but there are even more exciting and odd diversions to be found on Dublin's back streets. We had the privilege of visiting the one, and only, Irish Jewish Museum. A small and unassuming place, rarely heard of and even more rarely visited. But it was charming, a detailed and lovingly preserved history of this small, close-knit community. The story, as it is remembered, is the Jews came by boat to Cork from Lithuania. They had bought passage to America and when the captain stopped and told them they had arrived, it seemed reasonable enough. Everything must have looked different and the streets were filled with people speaking English. So off the deck and on to the New World--Cork, Dublin and Limerick. The captain made a nice profit, going a quarter of the distance, and picked up new passengers for the trans-Atlantic leg of the trip.

Given the desparation of the Irish economy, the population of Jews did not increase, and the population of Dublin's synagogues has dwindled, lost to emigration, assimilation, and migration to the suburbs. But the recent economic boom has seen the return of Jews to this island, even small communities of Israelis.

It seemed a fitting pilgrimage for the last day of our trip. The rest was spent packing, fortifying ourselves with one last Irish fry-up, and preparing for the long and circuitous journey home.

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?

A British Comedy of Errors

We were looking forward to an easy day. That was our first mistake. We set out from Eastleigh, in the south of England, where we'd been visiting David's cousin and family (three young sons, all very different, but united in their fascination with insects).

The day's destination was Reading, a few hours away. Easy riding, not too many hills, and more friends to stay with that evening. We dawdled in the morning and met Adar at his office for lunch. We cycled for a while, then passed a sign in Winchester saying "Oldest Bar in England." Of course that demanded stopping for a pint.

The distance for the day was 40 miles, which David's ale-infused brain somehow translated to 40 kilometers. I'd been researching the bicycle routes on the Internet that morning, but the Sustrans site was overrun with traffic--the only map I could print was up to Winchester, which I vaguely remembered as being a halfway point.

After walking around the quaint, cobblestoned town of Winchester, we stopped at a bookstore and finally bought a map of the UK, only to discover that Winchester is not the halfway point. It's maybe the one-fifth point. Back on the bikes. A brief stint along a motorway, being passed by frenzied yuppie commuters speeding home from London, convinced us to take the quieter roads. Quieter, it turns out, also means virtually no road signs.

It was, of course, raining the whole time. Before leaving, our friends John and Amity gave us a compass; I'd joked that this would be useful for navigating when we reached the British Isles and could no longer use the sun for direction. No joke, it turns out. As we biked through the drizzle I thought the sky to the right looked a slightly brighter shade of grey, which would suggest we were heading south, not north. But it's hard to compare shades of grey.

Eventually, as we began to see signs for Winchester once again, we got worried. After consulting a local farmer and our newly purchased map, it transpired that we'd done a perfect circle. We were, in fact, just a few miles from Eastleigh.

So we cycled to the train station and got to Reading barely before dark (lucky for us, darkness doesn't fall until after 10 pm). Helen and Tim, friends from Victoria, had Pimm's and a soul-reviving meal waiting for us in their converted barn. We had a great visit and slept soundly--but we decided not to underestimate the challenges of cycling through charming, rainy, densely populated England.

Close your eyes and think of England

ol' blighty.

The usual mad rush to the ferry. Ever since I met Hannah, I've been rushing to meet ferries. So really, having an indetermined number of kilometers to go, a vauge since of the general direction, the possibility of a strong headwind and a hard deadline, or the ship leaves without us, should be a totally familiar feeling. In fact, it was. So was the mounting stress.

While we promised once again to never make a reservation that needs to be met by bicycle, wandering through the dunes from Haarlem south, even getting lost and having to follow signs through Den Haag, was a fun and nice slice of Dutch life. I suspect the most civilized country we've visited yet. It's even hard to stay lost on bike in Holland. While we tried to follow LD1 (long-distance bike route 1) we had LD 7 and LD 9 to choose from. There's no question who has right of way on the road there.

So, with the usual few minutes to spare we collapsed in our seats, watch a football game with the local chapter of deaf Austrian bikers (why am I always suprised by how friendly Harley riders are?) and had a beer.

We were scooped up by Adar somewhere in the center of London and were able to stay with the whole family for the weekend. Highlights of course, a day in the british "wilds" and a trip to the natural history museum. Once we find a computer that will allow us to upload photos, we'll post a few.

And for biogeeks only--a portrait of Richard Owen