Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Travel: mode

Ghazi and I arrived in Kilkenny a couple of days after Dolly Parton had performed. We've had near misses with other major acts: Radiohead at Malahide Castle, as well as Jay-Z, Neil Diamond, Lou Reed. (I would have liked to see the competition to determine the best Irish-African Gospel Choir, part of Cork's mid-summer festival.)

Accordingly, these various strains have been all over the airwaves of late. If you can pull them together into composition, you'll have an idea of the country-western / lyrical / lounge-lizard / indie rock / fusion soundtrack of our adventure in Ireland. As we speed along the narrow roads through the countryside, we'll see rolling green hills and fields where black and white cows are grazing, to the strains of Coldplay or Sara Bareilles or Sam Sparro. And then there's talk radio which, in small doses, entertains. RTE Hosts were excited about Spencer Tunick's nude photo shoot at Blarney Castle because the sheer possibility of the event meant that Ireland had truly emerged into modernity -- "Why, a decade ago, there would have been edicts, the bishops would have gotten involved, and now it's just happening in a perfectly ordinary way." I'm not sure that Tunick's nude photo shoot at Buffalo's Central Terminal didn't provoke more outrage than this one at the Blarney Castle.

As for travel, the left-side driving is slightly less terrifying than I expected... but only slightly. Before approaching the Hertz rental counter, I had diligently visualized the motions I expected to have to make, all imagined in mirror image of driving at home. Thus in my mental rehearsals the accelerator would be for the left foot, the brake would be in the center, and the right foot would tend to the clutch. First gear, I reasoned, would be closest to the body and proceed outwards. False expectations, fortunately. I also prepared a note to tape to the dashboard saying DRIVE ON THE LEFT, but Hertz was out ahead of me. Bitte links fahren! Rouler a` gauche! Four different brightly colored reminders facing the driver. Routine straight-ahead business is going well enough, but as soon as I attempt any maneuver, all my instincts are backwards. The same is true for us as pedestrians -- and here again the authorities have thoughtfully written reminders on street curbs at the airport and all over Dublin : LOOK RIGHT BEFORE CROSSING! Funny how difficult it is to make yourself conscious of these basic habits.

I discovered myself assuming that I wouldn't get sick in an English-speaking country. Surprise!

As for other unconscious expectations, I think that despite my professed indifference to my own Irishness -- which unlike my southernness has never seemed to explain anything -- I must have come expecting to feel a kinship with the people. I admit to being moved at Cobh, the southern port city from which so many thousands of starving Irish set out for the U.S. and Australia, but I would have felt the same way, and more so, at l'Ile de la Goree, for example. I've met very few Irish people, but that shouldn't be surprising under the circumstances.

I'm sure I would have liked to find an Irish society here that would feel "authentic" and "real," and I certainly didn't want to encounter the blight of retail chain outlets and cookie-cutter homes displacing the farms and villages. Probably most Americans come looking for "Irishness," rather than reflections of what we've left behind. The marketing opportunity created by this widespread longing is no more lost on the Irish than it is on Moroccans or the Egyptians, and it's not rare to see simulacra presented for touristic consumption.

We've had a grand time living in hostels, and the diversity and energy of our fellow travellers have kept our minds off the various inconveniences. We've encountered a good number of travellers who were, like us, following a counter-clockwise direction around Ireland; we've seen some at two or three hostels as we variously made our way down the west coast. Others are on the clockwise plan, and we sit and compare notes, each team telling the other what to expect at Galway, what to see in Killarney, where to find wifi in Gweedore. We've often given rides to people we meet in the hostels, and Ghazi has socialized in the evenings by going out with a group from the hostel to whatever pub was reputed to have the best music and the cheapest beer. Dinner time in the hostel is great -- most of the travellers actually go to some trouble to prepare a decent meal. The French distinguish themselves both by the quality of their impromptu dinners and by the almost formal tone of the event. We are certainly fortunate to have been able to stay in these places, since we could not have afforded to eat otherwise, and because the people and their stories are so interesting.


The actual itinerary, with high(and low)lights, in the final post.

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