Look Left, Look Right

All the intersections here have that written on the appropriate side of the street. Curiously, even though it is in big letters right in front of my face, I have to frantically look both ways every time because I am confused about other-side-of-the-road driving.

Dublin is small and friendly. The first day I was here we went to a co-op with some of Whitney's friends, and walked everywhere and went grocery shopping (there are a lot of things to be fascinated with in foreign supermarkets). The Irish, bless them, have a plastic bag tax, and most people bring their own bags out shopping. I keep forgetting and thus have been caught almost every day wandering Dublin with something ridiculous in my arms - yesterday coconut biscuits and laughing cow "cheez dippers," the day before "coffee milk" and chutney flavored "crisps." Man, does this country know how to do potato chips. And pastries. Yesterday we had something called "flapjacks" which are sort of like very peanut-buttery and delicious chunks of granola bar. I've also had a few notable jam donuts.

Sunday and Monday we spent parts of the day wandering Dublin and parts of the day on the train and in parts of the countryside - Sunday we went to Howth, which is a very charming seaside town. We did a cliff hike, it was beautiful and muddy, and I'll post pictures of everything on my Flickr once I locate my camera cord, which I seem to have misplaced (hopefully in my disorganized luggage, and not in Saint Paul). I ate fish and chips and had a pint of Guinness in a pub as it rained and we chatted and watched people walk along harbor wall hand in hand twirling their umbrellas. We bought fudge and saw a seal and then came back to Dublin and walked some more. My rain jacket has served me well. I can't get over how warm it is here. The sky doesn't look that extraordinary most of the time, to the naked eye, but it has been coming out wild and sassy in my photos, without exception. I'm not complaining - a crazy sky can make an otherwise banal picture incredible.

Monday we went to Newgrange, which required hopping a commuter train to Drogheda, an outer-ring suburb, and then a bus to the Visitor Center and then another bus to the monument. It was sort of an inhospitable day (cold and windy) to be roaming the countryside, and it took us a bazillion hours and euros to get there, but it was definitely worth it. Newgrange is a Neolithic mound-style tomb, older than Stonehenge and the Pyramids of Giza, and the burial chamber is lit for 17 minutes on six mornings including and surrounding the winter solstice. Some of the stonework is incredible. What struck me the most was that the site has been protected since 1880, but the guides talk about visitors who made their mark on the site prior to that as "graffiti artists" and "vandals." History is conceptualized very differently over here. We would probably consider 19th century graffiti cool and historic on an American monument.

Yesterday was Phoenix Park, which is the largest urban park in the world, and beautiful and enormous, but surprisingly not particularly pedestrian friendly (meaning there was a lot of chaotic thru traffic). Irish drivers are maniacs, and don't seem to care about the repercussions of running over pedestrians. Maybe there aren't any? It seems odd that there is this constant war being waged between equally fierce drivers and walkers, when most people don't have cars in the city anyways. We tried to go to Kilmainham Gaol, which is a beautiful jail that now uses its museum as a springboard for anti-capital-punishment propaganda, but we didn't have time to take a tour, so we just poked around the museum. The Irish Museum of Modern Art, which has beautiful grounds and looks like (is?) a castle, is adjacent, but we didn't make it there either. Toured the Guinness storehouse in the afternoon, the floor dedicated to advertising was in particular fascinating. You can watch every Guinness TV spot since the 1950s. Also,I had no idea that the Guinness Book of World Records was affiliated with Guinness the drink, but there you have it. On the top floor you receive a free pint and there are floor to ceiling windows on every wall of the circular room, so you get a panoramic view of Dublin - it was amazing. I wish I could have taken a panoramic photo, but of course there were lots of people standing in front of every part of the window. I sat in on Whitney's lecture on Postcolonialism - it made me very glad that I go to a small and discussion-oriented school. Then we went back to her friend Emma's flat (all the flats here have tiny balconies that you can crawl out to through the windows), and made ratatouille and drank mint tea and I did the dishes and Emma read aloud to us from Heart of Darkness. It was all very charming and domectic and made me want very badly to settle into a house and not be traveling (even though I love traveling). This morning was full Irish breakfast (minus the black and white pudding, which is kind of integral, but I am a wimp sometimes) and now I have to lose ten pounds out of my pack and head off to Andrew, and Barcelona. I am excited for even warmer weather and perhaps some sunshine, but sad to leave Whitney. It would be nice to live here. Maybe funds will permit me to come back sometime.

Anywho, I hate travel updates, I feel like it's hard to create a meaningful narrative when everything you do is an event and a point of interest in and of itself, but maybe soon I will have some more time to spend and can insert all of my reflections as well. I've been thinking a lot about class here, which isn't unusual for me, but there are very different race and class dynamics and it's much more difficult to locate myself within them. Also I've been thinking a lot about foreignness. I'll update again in a few days. Love/miss you all.