London Calling
Thursday, April 14, 2005
Tuesday, April 13, 2004
Upon our arrival in Rome, the first thing we saw was a Roadhouse Grill, which Becca explained to me was akin to Lone Star Texas.
"It's a peanuts on the floor, beer swillin', stomp your heart out kind of place," she said. "Funny that it's the first thing we see in Rome."
Additionally, we saw a poster for "Return of the King" -- in Italian. Took a picture of that. Saw sewer lids with the ancient initials of Rome. Took pictures of that, too. Basically the first hour was me taking pictures in honor of the guys from my Latin class in high school. Funny thing is, they didn't care too much about that stuff back then, and I can't imagine that they would care about it right now. Still, in honor of Todd, L*ndberg, Nathan, Reichert, G*ntli, K@linowski and Sasfai, I took pictures.
Of course, there were lots of unpicturesque things, like, say, countless anarchy signs, hammers and sickles, and anti-Bush sayings. I tried to avoid those, until I saw too many, and then I said, "Aw, heck, when in Rome..."
You were waiting for me to incorporate in here, weren't you?
Now I've done it.
Saturday started with us waking up early to get to the Vatican. We wanted to see the Sistine Chapel and the other Pieta, and we knew we'd have to wait a while.
In line for the Sistine Chapel, we were right in front of a couple from San Diego. The woman said that waiting in line was inconvenient and a big hassle. She suggested that instead of having a line, they should do what they do at Disney Land, which is to give each person a little ticket stub with a given time on it. That way, this woman said, they wouldn't wait in congested lines, but would just go enjoy the park and then come back at their time. We didn't try to ask this woman how much time she expected it to take to have people wait for stubs and then for them to come back and show those stubs. We just smiled and nodded.
I pulled out my camera to get ready for when we went inside the Vatican Museum (which leads to the Sistine Chapel). It was then that I noticed my batteries were running low and that I'd need to recharge them or get some disposable ones. The latter it had to be, because I don't have a charger and Caroline's was in London, with her.
Well, woman came by selling cameras and batteries came by, and we stopped her. She spoke broken English, and said the batteries would be 10 euros. No thanks. She then said 9, and I said no, and we did this one euro at a time until she said five. I should have gone down even further, because the batteries she sold me ended up not even working. Thankfully, Becca was able to get us some legit ones, and my pictures turned out great. No thanks to the woman who hawked bad wares. Shame on you. I should send the Don on you.
The woman behind us was still talking about how much more efficient it would be if they modeled the process at Disley Land. This was really miffing her, the whole waiting in line thing. Her husband, trying to veer her off that topic, said he wondered how fast they moved people through the museum. He figured they'd have to push them at a considerable pace, as there are so many people.
His wife agreed. Sort of.
"That's what they have to do when they've got 7,000 Chinese people behind us," she said. "They have to go through it quickly because those people can't go without a cigarette. They just go 'Snap! Snap! Snap!' with their cameras and then get the hell out."
This prompted a muted "Shup up and go back to Disney, you tanning cow." I love Becca.
The whole Vatican Museum is gorgeous, even if your trip through there is spent face to armpit with 20 million other tourists. The paintings in there are gorgeous, including the famous one of Plato and Socrates at the school in Athens. I made sure to get a picture of Nemo with that one.
Of course, the prettiness of those paintings don't slow down the herd, because most people just want to see the Sistine Chapel. We walked around corridors and hallways and tiny rooms before we finally got there. It felt like I was in "Labyrinth" or something, but sans David Bowie.
It was beautiful. You craned your neck to look at it, obviously, but even then, you couldn't see it all at once. It was too much to take in at once. You just meander around looking at it, but you have too look where you're going so you don't hit another armpit. Thankfully, the security guards hushed people, so it was relatively silent in there. Certainly not the din of noise at other museums. I've never been to see a painting where they asked you to be quiet. I wish they would do that more often.
They have a no photo policy here, too, but of course, Pat and Becca proved to be worthy of Danny Ocean's crew as we covertly pulled out our weapons (cameras) and flicked some pictures for posterity. I don't know, but I can imagine a world history teacher at a Catholic school showing slides of Nemo looking at all these pieces of art when she's teaching about the Medici era.
My mom's mom used to collect Madonna statues and after she died, my mom got all of them. Mom ended up putting them all over the house, and there were enough to be a museum. One of the ones she had was a porcelain miniature of the Pieta, and I remember I used to just sit and stare at it, touching the curves of it. The Pieta is intentionally disproportionate. Christ stretches out to about 13 feet because if it were in "real" proportions, certain things would look weird from a distance, so Michelangelo bent Christ's legs a bit at the knees so he could make them longer. You really get an appreciation for his suffering in that sculpture, but also from the way Mary is just holding him there. It's kind of a throwback to the Madonna and Child pictures, but in a morbid way. It really shows what she went through, or at least that's why my mom loves that sculpture. The emotions seen in the sculpture and the ones it evokes might be what make it my favorite above the David.
We woke up around 10 and packed our stuff. Becca took what she says is the coldest shower she's ever taken (I had taken a luke-warm one the night before), and after some more looking around and collecting our stuff, we head on out.
After I get a piece of pizza and Becca grabs what is to be her first of three ham sandwiches that day, we make way toward St. Peter's Square. We see Boy Scouts selling palms and frond crosses. We see throngs of people walking past us. It's pushing toward noon by this point, and we look to each other with skeptical looks.
"Anything Papal has got to be over by now, right?"
"Yeah."
"Oh well, let's just go toward it."
We hear singing. Angelic singing. Singing of choir quality. Opera quality, even.Beautiful, angelic singing. There's a platform set up in front of St. Peter's. Tons of people wearing the traditional colors of the hierarchy: purple, red, etc., and in the center there's a throne with a little man in reddish orange. Could it be? Nahh, it couldn't be, or else there would be much stronger security. We were able to just slip in, and not just past one security point, but three. If this were the real Pope, there'd be Swiss Guards looking to take our heads off if we slipped by, right?
Well, it was the real deal. John Paul II himself.
And our heads are still intact.
That slumped over old man in the throne with the reddish orange robes was indeed the Pope. We had assumed this all along, but it helped that the Jumbotron screen showed him. Yup, it was the Pope. No mistaking that one.
After it registered, we screamed like giddy schoolgirls. We were in the presence of the Pope. In Rome. On Palm Sunday. Can you get any more surreal? I think seeing The Clash in Hammersmith or Brixton in 1977 would only be more surreal, but in a cartoonish sort of way. This was just plain awesome.
I got to see the Pope in 1999 when he came to St. Louis, and that was one of the coolest things I ever experienced. I still have not been able to put that one into words. It was amazing; 36 hours of memories trapped in my head for safe keeping.
Seeing the Pope again released a lot of those memories, and I'm glad for that. And I'm just glad for the opportunity to see him again. Many people can't say they've ever seen him once, but I've seen him TWICE, and one of those times was on his stomping grounds.
It was pretty cool. You can tell I'm pretty spell-bound if all I can muster is "It was pretty cool." Throughout the day, Becca and I would turn to each other and say, "Wow, I can't believe we saw the Pope!" And all the other one could say was, "I know!"
I've been a little acid-tongued about the Vatican in the years since I last saw the Pope, what with the sex abuse scandal and the open campaign against gays. I thought he was too lenient on the priests, mistook issues of paedophilia as issues of homosexuality and made horrible blanket statements about a homosexual person's ability to raise a child. These all were issues that I as a Catholic had to deal with, and I know these were issues for other Catholics, too, who thought the Vatican was not necessarily mirroring the values of Christ. These are all struggles I've had, and will most likely continue to have.
But when you're there in Rome, in St. Peter's Square, in the presence of the Pope, watching a live feed from Berlin's World Youth Day, where millions of kids are screaming "John Paul, we love you" in German, you can't help but get swept up in the fervor. There were thousands of people in Rome, speaking different languages and representing different countries. All were united in that the Catholic Church was the way that they had opted to follow the Gospels. They were wild about the Pope, and after he pulled out in the Popemobile, they stayed to sing songs about Jesus. It was all pretty surreal. I would think even a jaded atheist would have to have a response of some kind after witnessing this event.
It was all, as I said, pretty cool. Awesome, even.
After an experience like that -- where we get to see the Roman head of the largest sect of Christianity -- it was only fitting that we go to the Colosseum, where the Romans used to feed Christians to the lions. If only they served Kool-Aid, it would have been perfect.
By this point, we had learned that half of the people you see on the street in Rome are trying to make a buck, and usually it's a dishonest buck. Someone's trying to scam you, whether it's by selling you a fake purse or watch, or trying to get you to give money to kids with AIDS. How they do it differs with each person, though by the end of the weekend Becca and I were good at guessing which technique a would-be swindler would use.
These people would all congregate where all the tourists were, which was everywhere, of course. When we got to the Colosseum, we saw dozens of stands selling shirts or guys dressed up like Roman soldiers who would have your buddies take a picture of you with them and then demand 5 euros.
My favorite ones would be the ones who came up to us and asked if we spoke English. Becca is about as white (read: pale) as I am, with brown curly hair. I, of course, am Joe American, with my Irish smile and my German lips. Sometimes we'd try to decline in Spanish, other times in French, and sometimes I would purse my lips in a knocking sound and clap my hands.
"Swahili!" I would say to these confused people.
Most often they'd be trying to sell you a tour of the Colosseum. There's no official tour of the Colosseum, just a couple signs here and there. What it calls a museum section of it is not really a museum, and there's not a whole lot to see. It's a spectacular sight simply because of the architectural feats pre-A.D., but if you don't have the context for the history, then it loses some of its magic. Thus, a tour would help out.
Except these people are frauds, and you can smell it on them the second they come up. We passed some of them, and they talked in circles to inflate their knowledge and waste time, so as to make it seem like a more substantial tour than it actually was. If there were pressed by questions they couldn't answer, they'd just talk in circles. If all these people wanted to do was push bullshit on people, they should be working at the MU News Bureau, but not at a place of historical importance. We ended up meeting a person later that day who said her guide had done nothing more than just memorize the Lonely Planet guide's history section and had added some things that people who passed 10th grade world history would know were incorrect.
Fortunately, I'm the son of one of the hippest world history teachers around, on either side of the Ol' Miss, so I was smart enough to not trust a yokel for my info.
That aside, it was an amazing building, but certainly not as awe-inspiring as the Sistine Chapel. It inspired awe, but not in the same kind of way. Perhaps the fact that the Colosseum was used to kill people affected my enthusiasm. Of course, I did find the torture chambers at Warwick Castle cool, so maybe the Colosseum was just not something I'd put in my top 5. Still, I think it's interesting that a building would add sand for the express purpose of soaking up blood. These Romans were intense mothers.
We didn't have tea with Mussolini, but we got to go the balcony of the palace where he would give speeches. Not surprisingly, there was a fascist woman with a mustache, who would chase people, tell them they couldn't hold hands, sit down or take pictures from certain places. Adding to the fascist ambience -- and making my heart beat just a tad faster -- were three gun-bearing guards dressed up in the traditional olive suits and red berets of the Italian army. These guys were not too much older than me. At oldest, they were 27, which is the same age as my brother Brian. That's creepy that people our age can be old enough to hold guns while a fascist lady with a mustache cracks down on ugly Albanians who make out on Mussolini's balcony.
...that the term "fascism" comes from the Latin word "fasces," meaning bundle of sticks? The fasces became the symbol of Roman power and unity, as a group of sticks tightly bound would be strong, hard to break, and could pack a wallop. This symbol of the city-state's unity came to represent power as the city-state grew into an empire, and eventually this symbol was perverted, until it came to represent the ideologies we now call "fascism."
Neat, huh?
It's at times like this that I can prove to my parents that my DeSmet education was by no means a waste.
See, if not for my work on the newspaper or the yearbook, or with the Dionysian Players or the speech team, or with academic bowl or Amnesty, then my parents should be proud of my prowess for trivial history info.
I bet most of you never even knew that I was in Junior Classical League, or in layman's terms, the Latin Club. We didn't do too much, except every spring we'd drive to Columbia for Certamen competitions held at Hickman. We usually kicked ass, but then there were times when we choked big time. Imagine Jeopardy with Caesar, Scaevola, Hippolytus and Vulcan, and well, my friend, you've got Certamen. We even had buzzers.
So, it was cool to arrive in Rome and see that the sewers said, "SPQR," in reference to the old Roman slogan, the people and senate's Republic of Rome. Becca found it weird that the first thing I did upon arriving in Rome was take pictures of the sewer lids, but hey, I'm a man with priorities.
We got one last plate of bruschetta and one last helping of gelato. It was sad to think we were leaving, but we couldn't be sad on a Sunday afternoon full of sun, blue skies, songs and West Africans hawking crappy mementos. You could almost fall in love, if you could overlook the fact that Rome's vandals have spraypainted more anarchy symbols and hammers and sickles around the city than I could have ever imagined possible. Oh well, I'm sure some people find that romantic. It's still a pretty city, though.
Ciao, Italia, I love you! Amo te!
Wednesday, April 07, 2004
Are you ready for an Italy update? Like, you know, a rundown of Italia? Sure you are.
Here goes.
-"Mr. Deeds Goes To Town"
We flew into Pisa on RyanAir, and took a bus around town. On said bus, a woman and her 8 million kids got on and went to the back. After a few minutes, the woman came up to me and asked, "Where's the bus?"
This was baffling to me, but her English was broken, so I was patient with her.
Until I realized she was distracting me and her daughter had her hand at the top of my pocket. I smacked her hand and pulled it out of my pocket. She didn't get anything, the dirty grubber.
We went to the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It leaned. We took pictures. We moved on.
We went to this cute little luncheonnette cafe with an outdoor patio. The sun was out and gorgeous and felt great, so we opted to sit outside.
Well, the patio was right off the street, so the street merchants and hawkers of wares were constantly walking up to us to ask us if we wanted watches, sunglasses, purses, marble turtles, etc. Most of them were from West Africa and had broken English, making it hard for them to understand the subtleties of our language. We'd try to push them away, because we couldn't walk away, as we were sitting at a table trying to have lunch. When trying to get us to buy their stuff didn't work, they'd ask us our names. We'd roll our eyes and tell them our names, and then they'd say, "That's a pretty name!" They'd give each of us an elephant or a turtle or something made out of marble, and say, "For you, for free!" We'd kind of just let it sit there, because we knew they were still up to something.
Sure enough, the guy would say, "I just want something to drink from the cafe."
I wanted to say, "Well, there it is, go on then."
Instead, I said, "Sorry, we have no money but our credit cards."
But the guy would say, "Just a few coins."
"But we don't have any coins."
"But just a few coins."
Finally he'd get the picture, pick up his turtle and elephant and then move on, as though we been horribly rude to him.
-"The Third Man"
After we got to Florence and checked into our hotel, we made a bee's line for Michelangelo's David. It was numero uno on our list of things to do in Florence, and when we found out the museum he's in was open till 7 p.m., we went for it.
David, as a sculpture-statue-piece of art, is huge. You never realize it until you actually see it. The pictures in the textbooks indicate that he's big, but there's so much that you don't see, and not because there's a conspiracy, but that you just can't fit it all into a two-dimensional thing like a picture.
Now, photography is not allowed in the museum. Not with a flash, without a flash, not at all. To ensure no one broke the rules, a Dabney Coleman-like man wearing a green polyester jacket roamed around the gallery looking for people using their cameras. Becca referred to this man as "a Nazi." I say that's a fitting term.
Thank goodness for the loud group of kids right in front of the David. They drew the attention of Mr. Nazi straight away, and they were all so dense that each one had to have Mr. Nazi tell them no photography. This bought Becca and me more than enough time to hide behind a column and snap some pics of David. Heck, I had time to include one with Nemo and one without. Thank you, loud American tourist girls. You helped my photo collection!
It's pretty cool that one of the main attractions in a city can be a giant naked guy. What's cooler is that people pay for pictures of him, it's not considered porn, and people send it in the mail -- to their mothers, even. I know that when my mom opens the mailbox and sees a naked man, she'll be proud, not horrified. What a beautiful thing art is.
Too bad she didn't feel the same about the Garbage Pail Kids, or else Brian and I would have been considered art connisseurs by the time we were 7.
We ended up not doing much that night, except pass out, as we had gotten up at 3 a.m. to catch our flight.
-"Brighton Beach Memoirs"
I will say this, though, and this pertains to all of Italy. The food was fantastic. Bruschetta at every meal. Fresh vegetables. Mozzarella that looks like hard-boiled eggs. Pizza sauce that makes you shake and stir. I run the risk of sounding like a little boy, but the only words that can sum it up are "yummy" and "divine," but because my mom said you shouldn't say "divine" unless you are actually talking about something divine, the word "yummy" will have to do.
Friday morning we woke up early to see the Duomo first thing, but the line was ridiculously long and they hadn't even opened yet. Thus, we opted to hit the museum with the Pieta in the hopes that when we were finished, the Duomo would be open and we would see it then.
See, the Lonely Planet book mentioned a museum in Florence as having Michelangelo's Pieta, and Becca and I both flipped. I still vividly remember my 10th grade history class about that sculpture, and it took up the whole class period.
I only wish I could have remembered that there were two sculptures of that name.
We got to that museum and sure enough, there was Michelangelo's Pieta, but instead of being the one where Mary is holding the dead Christ in her lap, it's the one where He's struggling to walk with the help of Mary Magdalene and a man whom I *believe* is Simon, but don't quote me on that. I won't say we were disappointed, per se, because it was still a Michelangelo, and it was beautiful. It had all the trademarks of Michelangelo's work: the attention to details, particularly in the male body, including arms, legs, veins, knee caps and hands. It turns out that the one we thought we would be seeing was in St. Peter's Basilica, in Rome...
We looked at it for what we deemed long enough and then headed back to the Duomo. At this point it was indeed open, but we couldn't figure out which entrance would get us up to the top. We asked some guards and they just said, "The entrance." If there was one entrance, or a specific entrance, that would help, but when this thing has doors at every other turn, you're kinda lost, and you can't just follow the tourists, because they are everywhere. There's no movement to follow so much as there is just a herd to push out of the way.
We got in the right door, though, and trekked our way up to the top. Nothing lets you know how out of shape you've gotten like steep steps in a narrow winding staircase. It also helps you pinpoint your claustrophobia right quick, too.
You don't walk straight to the top, but you walk up to levels where you then walk around a pathway where you can look down on the church and then look up. I thought this was pretty cool, but Becca was nearly hyperventilating, as she is afraid of heights. I thought I'd calm her down by shaking her shoulders and pretend my hand was a ball splattering onto the palm of my other hand. With friends like me, I can't see anyone could be neurotic.
The dome itself portrays scenes of heaven and hell. The lower part is hell and then as the painting starts to converge with the ceiling, it gets to images of heaven and Jesus. The colors were vibrant and the faces were real, perhaps too real. Hell is a pretty scary concept in and of itself, but seeing demons frolicking about and poking humans will put you on end, not to mention the depiction of Satan as a human with a bull's head and nasty wings, munching on humans as if they were snacks. It shows him mid swallow, with a pair of human legs dangling out of his mouth. It's pretty graphic, and well, it nearly scared the shit out of me. I don't think I've ever felt so compelled to live a life of virtue than I did for those 10 minutes.
And Rome is next...
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
Alright, my fine and furry friends, this is a post to say that early Thursday morning (late Wednesday night for most of you lot), I will be leaving for Italy, where I will be until Sunday night. Hopefully by then you Americans will have your daylight savings stuff worked out so that we're back to being 6 hours apart from the Midwest.
Friday, March 26, 2004
*Team is NOT an it over here. Imagine us reading the sports story that starts, "Chelsea have announced..."
*Courtesy titles like Mr. and Mrs. are used all over the place, ala The New York Times, but unlike The New York Times, these titles do not have periods. Mr, Mrs, Dr, etc.
*Sometimes, auxiliary verbs might be the only verbs you'll see in a headline. Headlines don't always use verbs. Apparently prepositions will do.
*Here, they'll put anyone's name in a headline, whether the public will know them or not. An example being that the day after the death of a random soldier who wouldn't receive a funeral, the headline was "No funeral for Andy." Who's Andy? Who knows.
*Attributing thoughts or ideas to sources is optional, as is pointing out that a claim is alleged and not proven.
*Pointing out that a movie star "has a plastic inflated chest" in a story that has nothing to do with plastics, inflatables or chests seems fair game, and is rather common.
*Quote marks go on the other side. Here, you'll see "...", rather than "...," which still irritates me.
*Scheme doesn't carry the same negative connotation that we ascribe to it in the States. Thus, talking about a legislative program or plan or proposal as a "scheme" is common here, and it has nothing to do with the program's ethics or intentions.
Thursday, March 25, 2004
Birthdays of note:
March 17 -- Protz
March 19 -- Wendy
March 25 -- Courtney's mom
March 26 -- Luke
I'm the Boss, Applesauce
I was at the Inns of Court yesterday on a lecture and trip explaining how the British legal system works. There were formalities (barristers still have to wear wigs and black gowns) and informalities (the barristers and the three judges interrupt each other, make jokes and talk a lot in ways I don't think would be kosher in the U.S.) Most of the tour was just walking around the neighborhood where all the lawyers have their "chambers," which is just near the Inns of Court. It was a pretty day, with just enough cloud cover and crisp, but not too crisp. We ended it by getting to sit in on a session, because they let the public in on sessions, as their mantra is "justice has to be seen to be served." We walked in during the middle of this session, but what I could gather is that the barristers were appealing their case on the basis of the admissability of a knife as a piece of evidence. They were belaboring the points on when it was and was not in a bag, when the bag was sealed, and so forth. Any case that includes a knife seems pretty shocking, especially for ol' Victorian England.
They were pretty informal, now that I think about it. Very informal, yes. I almost felt as though I was watching Judge Judy, what with the bickering back and forth. The only difference was there was no weave flapping back and forth. But there were wigs!
Last week's excursion was to Oxford. Thirty-nine colleges stake claims in Oxford, England; there is no one university that is called Oxford University. Going to Oxford just means that you are going to a college in that town, which is still prestigious, as they are selective schools for a competitive bunch.
To grasp the level of these schools' student bodies, just look at some of the alums.
I ate at a pub frequented by J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. The Eagle and Child, it is called, and it was a cozy place. They built an addition in the back with sun roofs, and it looks like the back room of a Denny's or a Coco's, but the original part is where those two used to talk. They had been best friends, it seems, until Tolkien introduced Lewis to Christianity. Tolkien had woven Catholic symbolism into his works. He was able to win Lewis over to Christ, but when Lewis converted to Christianity, he did so as a Protestant, not as a Catholic. The two of them ended up fighting for the rest of their lives, and weren't able to reconcile their differences before Lewis' death. Thank God that I don't mind having Protestant friends, because otherwise I'd have about 3 friends (not counting my industrial-sized family and relatives).
But there were two kids on my trip who actually were arguing religion. They're both Bible-thumping Kool-Aid types, and they both love getting in tiffs over how many sheep Moses had, etc.
Anywho, I got to eat a burger and have a pint in the same places where Tolkien and Lewis did. That's pretty cool, if you ask me. I told the others that in 50 years, this bar would be still getting tours, not only for Tolkien and Lewis, but for Garvin, that oddball American. I don't think they believed me.
I'm going to dedicate my first book to them.
You'll see that on the pound, the image of the Queen has changed as she has gotten older. Her head's gotten bigger, her face fatter and the crown has more jewels. It's kind of like young Elvis and fat Elvis on the stamps. But not quite.
You can't buy plain iced tea here. You have to get it with lemon or peach.
"That's not normal or right," my roommate Patrick said.
Patrick also says that the sodas are all different, but I don't completely agree. Dr. Pepper is different, and there's a subtle difference to 7Up, but I can't say that Coke or Sprite are noticeably different. Maybe I just don't drink those enough, but then again, I haven't been a regular soda drinker for years.
Another observation that Patrick (roommate, not moi) has made is that there are American food restaurants here, just like there are Mexican, Indian and Chinese restaurants. It's true. Not only are there the chains that began in the U.S. (KFC, McDonald's, Subway, Burger King, Starbucks, TGI Fridays), but there are restaurants that will say "American food here!" And this will sometimes include food that is actually indigenous to somewhere else: tacos, burritos, etc.
You can't really get Mexican here. My friends would say that about Columbia, and my brother lamented that St. Louis' Mexican offerings were nothing like those of Chicago, but London makes Missouri look like Tortilla Flats. There are some places that have tacos or fajitas, but it's too tomato-y and it's just not done right. A lot of the girls are drooling for some Taco Bell, others want some Chipotle, and still others want the everso fabulous El Maguey.
Me? I want some American pizza.
Oh man, the following places better look out when I return: Cici's, Shakespeare's and Imo's. As well as good ice cream places: Ted Drewes (which Erica had for the first time this week, sans moi) and Shake(y)'s. Oh, and don't think that I will be in the states without hitting the Artisan, Kaldi's or Coffee Cartel. I'm a man who loves his coffee.
Monday, March 22, 2004
NOTE: A few weeks ago, Patrick was on his Spring Break. For this holiday, he decided to go to Ireland with fellow I.E. student Erin. They went to Dublin, and then spent the weekend on a backpacking bus tour, seeing the countryside and rural sights. They returned on Sunday, 7 March.
Please enjoy this series of recollections, ending with this fourth edition.
Cheers,
The Management
It's been a few weeks since my trip to Ireland, but the experience still rings clear in my head, especially because last week brought some media-induced reminders.
London holds a special place in its heart for dear old St. Patrick's Day. Third-, fourth- and fifth-generation Irish people in the states can work up quite a party, but the celebrations I've seen state-side can't compare in terms of size, intensity or marketing to what I witnessed in London's St. Patrick's Day. Perhaps this shouldn't be so funny to me, but a part of me can't help but identify London as the capitol of the country hated by so many Irish nationalists. That this city, then, should have such a big celebration of an Irish holiday seems counterintuitive, but even those indigenous to Ireland will say that everyone is Irish on March 17.
The Irish bars here probably do their best business on St. Patrick's Day, but they probably aren't the only ones. The less obvious places also benefit from the holiday, because it's not just the Irish bars that have specials. Tons of places do. Because everyone is Irish on March 17, you'll probably find a Chinese restaurant calling itself O'McFitzLongDukDong, hoping to cash in on the good will of the holiday. You could probably get a green egg roll, but then again, knowing the places around here, a green egg roll doesn't seem that out of the ordinary.
Any place that's hoping to lure lots of people on St. Patrick's Day has drink specials, and as part of those drink specials, they have a deal where you can drink five pints of Guinness and then get a felt tophat. Very rarely are these tophats green, but then again, very rarely would you see someone wearing a tophat in Ireland, unless it's some drunk tourist. Of course, the people who are hitting these big promotional nights on March 17 are not real Irish, but drunk tourists. Myself included. Even if I can say I've lived here for most of 2004, all I'll ever be to 99 percent of London is a tourist. Thus, I'm at the tourist bars. Where the real Irish go on this day, who knows, because it's London, the capitol of the country hated by so many Irish nationalists. Oh well. Even those indigenous to Ireland will say that everyone is Irish on March 17.
-Dave, the tour guide
The conflicts in Ireland are hard to put into one line, because there are multiple parties involved. It's a conflict between Catholics and Protestants. It's a conflict between England and Ireland, and between the Republic and the North. It's an issue of land, politics, religion and sovereignty. Trying to put it into one line is pretty much impossible, especially for the people who know a lot about it, because the more you know about it, the more you realize that you just can't get it.
But one of the girls on the bus tour asked the tour guides to simplify the history of the situations. She didn't want them to give a big spiel, just a sentence or two so that she could have an idea. The tour guides, rightly so, said no, because they didn't want to short-shrift the history. They realized that it was a big story that would take time, but she wanted it now, in a small, bite-sized nugget. They wouldn't budge.
So she then asked Jared, the oddball hostel owner.
"Can you tell me about the North in one line?"
"The North of Ireland?"
"Yes."
"In one line?"
"Yes."
"The North is a beautiful place. How's that for your one line?"
Taken aback, she shut up.
At the time, I thought of the girl as an idiot, but she served as a good example of what many people don't like about American tourists. She wanted it now, in a small, bite-sized nugget. As a news person, I can appreciate this, but as a person with an interest in history, I realize that you can't boil down a multi-faceted problem to one sentence.
And she didn't quite pick up on the not-so-subtle clues that these guys didn't want to talk about it. She didn't make Americans look good.
Granted, we are taught to be tenacious seekers, and it's commendable to want to know about this country you'll be in for a while. But then again, couldn't she have Googled all this before she left for Ireland? Foreign countries are not just zoos or amusement parks. The people that live there don't exist to be cute for the tourists. I'm not saying this girl should know everything from Robert Peele to Bobby Sands, but I mean, I wouldn't go into a diner in South Africa and say, "So, what's apartheid?"
Specifically I want to talk about the 'famine'
About the fact that there never really was one
There was no 'famine'
See Irish people were only ALLOWED to eat potatoes
All of the other food
Meat fish vegetables
Were shipped out of the country under armed guard
To England while the Irish people starved
And then on the middle of all this
They gave us money not to teach our children Irish
And so we lost our history
And this is what I think is still hurting me
See we're like a child that's been battered
Has to drive itself out of it's head because it's fightened
Still feels all the painful feelings
But they lose contact with the memory
And this leads to massive self-destruction..."
-Sinead O'Connor, "Famine"
Though you can't simplify the situation, you can at least fill in some gaps. The Normans came over to Ireland in 1178 or so. Previous "visitors" had been the Vikings, the Anglo-Saxons and the Celts. St. Patrick had come over in the 5th century and Catholicized the country.
So in 1178, the Normans come over, too. The structures of the countries weren't too different in that they both had kings and lords and the like. Strongbow, the Earl of Pembroke (in England) marries into Ireland's hierarchy and it is because of that marriage relation that the Normans can come over as "guests" and, well, never leave. With a connection to the island through marriage, English monarch King Edward II declares himself Lord of Ireland.
Well, this is kinda rude, don't you think? A good number of the Irish thought so, too, and so there were some insurgencies. Yeah, Strongbow can marry someone in the hierarchy, but that doesn't mean his family now owns the country!
These insurgencies, of course, didn't really amount to much.
Fast forward to Henry VIII, good ol' model husband he was. You know the whole spiel about him and the heads and the wives and the Church of England. His split from Rome brought the Church of England into existence. Well, he also declares himself King of Ireland. Before this, the English monarch had only been Lord of Ireland. With Henry, he's the king, and that means Ireland is not its own country, but rather just a chunk of England, whose official state church has just changed.
Meaning that a bunch of Catholics were just absorbed into a country run by a guy who hates Catholics. To complicate matters, the English had transplanted a ton of Protestants to the Northern section of Ireland.
The English were notorious for exploiting their colonies and areas outside of the main island of England, and Ireland, too, was no exception. The Catholics fought for their freedoms to be Catholic, but even the non-religious Irish were upset, because they were being treated as second-class citizens. All sorts of riots, rebellions and wars have been fought.
This is a bare-bones version of history, of course. You could take a semester of it all and still not get everything.
You sure as hell can't put it into one line.
-Jimmy Rabbitte, "The Commitments"
From the freckled hills to the steel and glass canyons
From the stony fields, to hanging steel from the sky
From digging in our pockets, for a reason not to say goodbye..."
-U2, "The Hands That Built America"
Despite the strength of modern Ireland's economy, dubbed the "Celtic Tiger," a good number of Irish are still poor. The farmers, especially, have come into tough times. Many of the men have to stay in the towns to tend to the farms while a lot of women are moving to the larger towns to go to college. The male-female ratio then gets out of whack, leaving these poor farmers single and lonely. It's amazing that so many of them keep their spirits so high, but rural Ireland has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. You can get a hint of that sadness as you're there. You also can't help but think of all the events that shaped its history, beliefs and economy: Easter 1916 Rising, Bloody Sunday in '72 (which was actually Northern Ireland), the bombings, etc. They all have a somber sense about them, even if they are a bunch of jokesters. I think that a lot of what makes them so mischievious and joking is to take their minds off the troubles. Granted, Ireland is not the same as it was back in 1916 or even before the Good Friday Agreement, but as we've seen in America, it takes a long time for the effects of social separation and unrest to pass...
-Jackie Burkhardt, "That '70s Show"
Across the western ocean
Where the hand of opportunity
Draws tickets in a lottery
Where e'er we go, we celebrate
The land that makes us refugees
From fear of Priests with empty plates
From guilt and weeping effigies
And we danced to the music
And we dance..."
-The Pogues, "Thousands Are Sailing"
Ireland was not really all that depressing, though. It was all absolutely beautiful: rolling hills that are green throughout the year, hazy views of mountains, clean blue skies with the perfect amount of cloud cover and mossy stones and cliffs that overlook the Atlantic Ocean. Dublin was fun, a laid-back party of a place that's pretty calm, but I think I appreciated the countryside much more. The whole country has a feel about it as though it's perpetually Sunday afternoon.
It was one of those places that captivated me and made me think of love... Not like Paris or Italy in a lady and the tramp kind of way... Ireland's romance is not as refined as you'd see romance shown in the movies... It's a place where the little boy who throws rocks, cusses and gets in trouble on the school grows up to be a loud-mouthed but lovable guy who can't keep his mouth shut, but ends up having a heart of gold. That's Ireland's romantic hero. It was quite romantic, even though Yeats said that romantic Ireland was dead and gone, with O'Leary in the grave.
Thank you for tuning in to "London Calling" and its special Ireland editions. We now return you to your regular London editions.
Tuesday, March 16, 2004
We spent Friday night in Doolin, a sleepy little town on Ireland's west coast, past Lisdoonvarna and the cliffs of Moher. When I say sleepy little town, I do mean it. The roads were not paved, and instead were dirt and gravel. There were two pubs, and those were the landmarks, besides the hostels. There was one phone box in the town, and though Mick says there were seven stoplights, I didn't see any. I don't even know if there was a post box. I can't even say I saw residences that weren't hostels.
Our hostel was run by a family of redheads. Jared, the guy who ran it was a fry or two short of a Happy Meal, but he was a nice guy nonetheless. He was real antsy to sell us his T-shirts, which said "Fecker" and "Cool as Feck" on them. People would ask him if he had extra towels, and he'd say, "Don't ask me about towels! Ask me about T-shirts! I've got T-shirts!" He said he wanted to advertise them more, specifically by having "busty" women wear them. Sorry, Jared, can't help you there.
In Doolin, and the other sleepy towns we visited, food and the like did not come cheap. A plate of chicken, fries and vegetables ran about 10 euros, which is around 12 bucks or a little more. I surmised that they raked their prices so high because: a) they could and b) they had no choice. These towns were big tourist attractions, for people wanting to experience the quirks of rural and coastal Ireland. Anyone going there, with the exception of Kate Moss or her ilk, would have to eat, and since there's no McDonald's or anything like that, they'd have to eat at these pubs or Mom n' Pop restaurants. There's no real other choice. You eat at Cronin's, or you get on the highway and go another hour. Hence, they charge you up the wazoo. Then again, they wouldn't be able to make much revenue for the town otherwise. These aren't booming cities with lots of residents. Indeed, they are predominantly poor depressed farmers. It's the tourism that brings the money, and if there's nothing to bring you to the town but the mountains and green grass, then they have to take your money somehow.
We had been slated to leave at 8:15 on Saturday morning, but the bus had a breakdown of sorts. We still don't know of what exact sort this breakdown was, but we know that it slowed us down an hour or so. Mick and Dave apologized, and told us that if we were to stay on our original course, we wouldn't get into Killarney until 8 or 8:30 that night. Instead, Mick proposed, we could just hop on the ferry, cross the Shannon, hit a little town for lunch and then drive to Killarney by 2:30 or 3. Once there, we could go to the National Park, which had Ireland's largest mountain and we'd be able to have the park rangers pull us around in carts with horses. This won everyone. I hadn't cared one way or the other, but the original plan had us going to the Dingle Peninsula, where we could get Dingleberry jam. I swear, that's what it is called.
Once in Killarney, I popped some cold meds and wandered around the town. I saved funds by opting out of the horse and cart ride. This town was very indicative of most of the towns we saw that weekend: most of the businesses were pubs, and the other businesses were card shops with shamrock hats the size of Texas (read: tourist traps). There were bureaus de change on every corner, but a lack of working ATMs, which was also characteristic of the rest of Ireland.
The pubs were lively, because Ireland was playing England in the rugby championships (Ireland ended up winning 19-13). As we were in County Kerry, I found several places with my sister's name, as well as places called Courtney's, Brian's, O'Brien's and The Hussey. The best named place, though, was Kelly's Korner. In St. Louis, there's a bar of the same name, and I think I've spent more time in than any other bar. More so than the Heidelberg. I know -- that much.
After I took a nap, the majority of the bus group came back from the cart and horse ride. A lot of them had gotten wine to drink in the carts, meaning that a good number of them were tipsy. Now, many of the people on this tour were Australian or Canadian. Thus, the accents only got more annoying with alcohol. I swear, I could never marry a Canadian, because they always sound like they are whining, and I could not marry an Australian, because they sound like they are drunk, which could very well be the case. Either way, I've heard Germans sound more romantic, and we all know that those folks sound like their vocal cords have been chopped to bits.
So, when the people with whom I shared my room at the hostel (an Australian couple and a Scotsman on the prowl), we left for Cronin's, a nice restaurant along the main drag. It was here that the cheapest dish was the 10 euro chicken.
What ever it costs, I will pay.
So be easy and free, when you're drinking with me,
I'm a man you don't meet every day."
-"A Man You Don't Meet Every Day"
Mick and Dave were real excited for us to go see a storyteller after dinner. There's this crazy guy -- not surprisingly named Pat -- who tells longwinded stories with multiple voices, body convulsions, and unexpected outbursts. Again, it is no surprise that this guy is named Pat. Mick and Dave take groups to see this guy every time they're in Killarney, such that have long-running tabs with him. Not that this is a hard thing to achieve in Ireland; you could buy someone a pint of Guinness the first time you meet and then he'll name his next 7 kids after you.
This guy's schtick was that it was a one-man show in which he was a tavern-keeper telling tales and stories as he closes his tavern for the last night. As a kid who's been around taverns since I was a wee one, I must say, this guy had all the characters down. The important ones to note are: the guy who will mention any buzzword or topic so that he can push you into an argument; the guy who will cuss and drink and then leave when he realizes what time it is, because he has to get to Mass the next morning; the guy who likes to get his buddies drunk so that he can play tricks on them, like rifling through their stuff and writing stuff on their faces. He pulled it off well, probably because at one point or another, he's been one of these characters, if not all of them. And it helped that he was crazy. If he weren't Irish, I'd think he had tourrettes. Hell, he could very well have tourrettes, but in Ireland, that's seen as a charm, I think.
Please tune in to "London Calling" in the coming days when Patrick will deliver the next installment of "A Sort of Homecoming." The next installment will cover Blarney Castle, the Famine and Bloody Sunday. Please tune in.
Monday, March 15, 2004
We woke up early on Friday morning and trekked down O'Connell Street to the departing point for our Shamrocker bus tour. See, we had wanted to go to Dublin, but we also wanted to experience Ireland beyond the main tourist city, beyond the urban sites and attractions. We wanted to experience authentic Ireland, or if not 100 percent authentic, something simpler than Dublin. We had found a bus tour that would go to the Cliffs of Moher, Doolin, Killarney, Blarney Castle and all over the west and southern countrysides. Awesome.
Our tour guide and driver were both Irish guys in their early 30s. Mick was an athletic type, while Dave was a scrawnier guy, but he looked like Edward Norton with facial hair. They were native Irish, from areas not too far from Dublin, and they swelled with pride. They had lots of little anecdotes about anything; it seemed as though there was nothing they didn't know. They lightheartedly mocked each other, told dirty jokes, made fun of us on the bus and talked trash on America. They were your Irish guys who drank Guinness, talked dirty, helped old ladies across the street and told yarns.
In Ireland, no one would dare say the F-word (with the U). It's a dirty curse word! Instead, they work around it with a similar sounding word -- "feck."
Of course, the Irish accent sounds so peculiar, they could say either word and it would sound the same. Regardless, "feck off," "fecker" and "for feck's sake" are seen as acceptable for use, even by priests and grandmothers.
When we got on the Shamrocker Tour, we were initiated to this odd rule of dialect when Mick referred to something as "fan-feckin-tastic." My brother John used to say this (with the "u" in place of the "e") and so I was prepared to think of this hybrid word as an instance of cussing. Not so, Mick said, as he told the bus all about the feck. From that point on, everyone was a fecker and everything had the adjective feckin' in front of it. I did agree with him when he called the school children feckers, because when we passed them and waved, they made faces at us and flipped us their middle fingers. They were 10, if even. Inside, I was welling with pride at such Brian-like behavior, but I had to join the bus with the chorus: "Feckers! Little feckers!"
Our first stop was on old whiskey distillery. They don't actually make whiskey there anymore, but they have their stuff set up so they can show tourists how they did it. That's a lot of the schtick of Ireland, actually. If you have to close your business, you can still make money showing tourists how you did your business. It's quite genius, actually, if not sad, too. It was not as interesting as the Guinness Storehouse, and even that was not captivating. Booze is booze. It was cold and the distillery was not heated, but we were able to warm up when we got inside the bar and got to have our complimentary shots of whiskey.
At 10 in the morning.
We headed west for the rest of the day. Our stops were:
Clanmacnoise, a monastic settlement on the shores of the Shannon. This, like most of the monasteries we visited, had a huge collection of Celtic crosses and thus, you guessed it, graves. This particular monastery had been instrumental in preserving arts, culture and literature during the dark ages. When a lot of western Europe was "dark," the Monks were copying and copying old druid tales, Bible passages, Plato, Socrates, Celtic history and the histories of Ireland. After a while, the monks doing the copying were young enough that they had no connection to the era these works came from, but they copied it and preserved it. This was probably just because they were following orders, but it also takes a good amount of faith. Thus, I agreed when the tour guides told us that we owe our western styles of education to these monks who preserved the knowledge to pass it on to us. You go, funky monks.
Pol na Brone Dolmen, an ancient buriel tomb, which looked like a mini-Stonehenge.
Lisdoonvarna, a small town where there used to be a big annual music festival, hosting the likes of The Pogues, U2, Christy Moore, Liam Clancy and others. The promoters would only plan for 20,000 people, but upwards of 80,000 were coming by the early 1980s. People would camp out in the locals' yards, which of course caused a big stir. In 1983, the promoters decided they needed security to keep people off the fields. They chose the Hell's Angels, whom they paid in the form of free beer. In turn, the Hell's Angels would just have to sit there, look tough and keep people off the town lands. Well, they got so drunk and into the show that they abandoned their posts and thus the 80,000 crowdgoers were able to go anywhere they pleased. Two decided to go swimming (in the Atlantic) at the nearby beach, but the waters are so rough that they couldn't swim back. Two more went in to save them, but those two were stuck as well, so two more went in to get them. In the end, all six of them drowned, and so the Lisdoonvarna festival was cancelled.
But the best...
Cliffs of Moher which were quite possibly the prettiest formations of anything I have ever seen in nature. I still think the mountains in Kentucky and Appalachia were up there, but these just take your breath away. You walk up the steps and start to see the cliffs, and then it slowly comes into view. You think that it will never end, because it's big. The cliffs are rich in 100 different shades of brown, covered in green fuzzy moss. And then you get up there, and see how steep the decline is. It just falls, pulling your eyes to the Atlantic Ocean, where you see the furious waves pouring over each other toward the shore just before they crash into a jutting rock and turn to foam. The winds are strong, but the cold is not a hard, mean cold. It's almost nice, and you feel more alive as the air hits your face. The sun is unblocked, not harsh, just calmly resting on the rocks and water and fields in a soft light. You look out and see some of the islands, and for a moment -- and just a brief millisecond of a moment -- you want to jump into the ocean so you can swim toward those islands. You just want to become part this beautiful site you're seeing. You start to feel out of breath, because you can't see all of it at once. You have to take it in parts. Just at this point, the sun started to set, and a pink orange light started to bleed across the horizon. Absoulutely beautiful.
Please tune in to "London Calling" in the coming days when Patrick will deliver the next installment of "A Sort of Homecoming." The next installment will cover Killarney and the like. Please tune in.
Sunday, March 14, 2004
Birthdays of note:
March 14 -- My mom
That's right, folks, today is my mom's birthday.
It's that reason that we're taking a holiday. Today's post will have no other content but to say "Happy Birthday, Mom."
Thus, without further ado... Happy Birthday, Mom.
Neither I nor the management have forgotten about the Ireland postings. Part 2 is at the LondonNet office, and Part 3 has already been written, too. So, by St. Patrick's Day --- Wednesday -- you will have a boatload of Ireland. Get ready.
Please tune in to "London Calling" in the coming days when Patrick will deliver the next installment of "A Sort of Homecoming." The next installment will include details of the bus tour. Please tune in.
