It's been a busy couple of weeks and I haven't been able to find the spare moments to compose a dispatch until now - on the train from Stuttgart to Munich. It occurs to me the last dispatch was written on the train from Beauvais to Koln. It goes to show you that when you're a captive audience, there's little to do but reflect, and in this case, write.
But my thoughts on Germany will have to wait for a few days, as there is so much to write about concerning Ireland. Deciding to deviate from our itinerary and visit Ireland was made very attractive by the cut-throat price war being waged between Aer Lingus, Ireland's major airline, and a low-cost competitor, Ryanair. For the astounding price of two euro cents (plus sixty euros worth of gate taxes) we were able to fly return between Beauvais and Shannon.
Now, there are few things you don't get with your ticket when you only pay the equivalent of a penny for it. Namely, any sense of structure or rules. Boarding at Beauvais was the equivalent of the cattle pushing and shoving to get into the abattoir. Ryanair tickets have a number at the top left between one and one hundred and eighty, and based on the number, you line up in one of two lines (typically, 1-90 and 91-180). I imagine how the system is supposed to work is the 1-90 people go first, and then the 91-180 people go; what actually happens is when the flight is announced for boarding, both lines stream and like two lanes of traffic merging to pass by an accident, flow out of the gate and onto the tarmac. From there you make your way out to the plane, and board from either the front or rear doors. There are no assigned seats, so it's first-come first-served.
You can tell there is an innovative strategy for making the airline profitable, and it's not based on the ticket price, given what we paid. I assume you'd pay more if you bought your ticket closer to the day, and you can only bring one piece of hand luggage onto the plane; any others must be checked, at ten euros per bag. While on board the plane, everything is for sale, including a pretty hefty duty-free section offering everything from booze and cigarettes to watches and cameras. And then there are the instant-win scratch tickets.
The best part, however, were the attendants, who would range from cheerful, warm and inviting, to clueless, cold and distant. My favourite was the attendant who was tasked to give the in-the-event-of-an-emergency briefing, whose command of French was excellent, but his English sounded like he was skipping every other word.
Wow, five paragraphs in and we're still on the plane. This is going to be a long dispatch!
It was raining in Shannon when we arrived; low-hanging, dense grey clouds greeted the plane on its descent, and it wasn't until just after the wheels descended that we actually saw green pastures and trees. I have to admit there was a part of me that wondered if we were actually going to land in a fogged-in airport, but I'm guessing there are rules against that. We breezed past security and picked up our bags, and were immediately greeted by my uncle William, who had driven out to fetch us from the airport, about an hour out from Fermoy, where my uncle Sandy lives; William, his wife Sue, and their son Nicholas were down for the weekend to visit.
Yes - I was a bit freaked out by the driving on the left, but only for a few moments. We encountered some fierce traffic driving through Limerick Junction, the city nearby Shannon, owing to the flooding of several roads. However it was William's view that since the explosion of the Irish economy, there is a huge increase in the number of cars, and expensive cars, on the roads, and the Irish road system just can't seem to handle it. There are apparently plans underway to create a beltway around the city, but there are some politics involved in getting the whole project moving.
(For the students of the Fermoy Adair school, which I'll talk about later, I'll pose a question for you to investigate: why would you put a belt around a city?)
Perhaps it was the rain, perhaps it was the traffic, perhaps it was the conversation - but I didn't smell Ireland when we exitted the airport. This point deserves some explanation. When I travelled previously to Ireland in 1998, my first experience that fired up the memory neurons was walking out of the airport in Cork to smells that harkened back to childhood visits to Ireland - in particular, the smell of peat moss. It was everywhere, and it's just something you don't smell in Canada. At least perhaps, the Irish variety of peat moss.
But the sights were very much as I remembered them, except it's clear that the driving economy has exerted its muscle upon things that were traditionally small and quaint. A few examples: massive housing development. The concept of a a planned suburb seems wrong for Ireland, where houses have a really unique character. But yet there they were, blocks of houses packed tightly together, each with a driveway and a patch of green grass. Motorways: with all of these cars, the major infrastructure had to be overhauled and augmented. So now the major north-south stretches have been expanded from two-lane highways to four-lane highways, complete with medians separating each side.
Oh - the Irish have turning circles as well (they call them roundabouts, which is fitting, as the french call them rondpoints), but of course they were extra scary for me because we were going around them the "wrong" way. I'm glad I wasn't called up to drive. Getting off the larger roads as we got closer to home, the roads returned to what I remember on my last visit - thin, two lane roads that curve unmercifully and provide little warning for what is around the corner. Despite the drought-like conditions both Sandy and William would later tell me Ireland had experienced earlier in the summer, the trees, vines and shrubs at the sides of the road look as if they are leaning out into the roadway, connecting at the top to make it look as if you are driving through a tunnel of foliage. And then you make a sharp turn and pass within an inch of a delivery truck.
So yes, Ireland is being carried into the modern world, for better or worse. There's no question the standard of living has changed; the value of property has apparently sky-rocketted, even for land that would have little appeal. Now anything runs the risk of being expanded into, and speculators have the opportunity to make some serious money.
Apart from the flooding, our trip to uncle Sandy's was uneventful and we arrived just in time for tea. Not that there is a set time for tea - my aunt Maggie made sure we knew where everything was so that we could fend for ourselves if the need arose. As it happened, we were so well cared for I think I got to boil one kettle of water for coffee by myself.
Boiling water even gets some mention in this dispatch. The often-times damp climate of Ireland made the sale of a certain type of oven very popular. Known as an AGA, this oven looks like it's made out of plated cast iron. It burns anthrocite - don't ask me what that is, other than black, shiny coal-looking stuff - and it burns it very slowly and efficiently, provided it's stoked every once and a while. The residual heat is efficiently transmitted through the entire unit, and provides four oven spaces, and three hot plates. Since it's on all the time, it is useful for drying laundry as well as boiling wate, the latter being done by finding the "sweet spot" of heat on the hot plate, and the former being done by arranging folding drying racks around the whole thing.
Arriving at Gurrane, the name of the ancestral home where Sandy and Maggie live, you get the impression that tree-lined streets are not just for France. It's perhaps a minute-long drive to get to the house, well removed from the street, and on your left is a high hedge separating the drive from a pasture, and on the right are old, tall, trees. And I'll show off my complete ignorance of architectural styles by describing the house as a big box. With windows and doors and walls and such. As several people I know, who know architecture, are currently cringing at my coarse description of the house, they will be happy to know I did take pictures, which will describe the house much better than I ever could.
It was at the house that I saw why they call Ireland the emerald isle; there is a lot of green, green grass, and it's a different colour of green than you see most other places. I think it has a lot to do with seeing the sun fall on a grassy meadow while dark clouds are over top of you. It's a trick of the light that you see more of in Ireland because, well, it rains a lot, and there are lots of clouds.
Catching up with Sandy and Maggie, William and Sue, and several of their friends over the weekend, was wonderful. As Sandy pointed out in discussion of the blog, talking about relatives to people who don't know them is often uninteresting, so I'll spare the majority of you by saying that we had an absolutely excellent time and left with clean clothes and contented spirits.
One of the non-family things we did do was make a visit to the Fermoy Adair school, where Sandy is on the board of directors and was himself a student many years ago. Sandy thought it would be an interesting idea for Amy and I to visit with the kids and tell them about our trip around the world; also, they receive a computer class and might be able to follow along with our blog to keep track of where we've been and where we'll be going. There were two classes, a younger junior class and an older senior class, probably in the range of five to twelve years old. It was really interesting having to explain our trip and answer questions about it - some of the questions were actually quite tricky! But it was great to meet them.
I did begin to smell Ireland at Gurrane - in addition to the unmistakeable smells of Irish vegetation outside, there's an air of history wafting through the house that hasn't changed since my first visit some twenty-five years ago. I like how certain things will trigger memories, like a smell or a taste, and it's definitely the case here. I can remember how large this house seemed when I first visited, and even though I know it's changed only because I've grown, memories of sliding down the bannisters beside the stairs and playing games after dinner are conjured up just by breathing in the air.
I'll only regret not spending more time in Ireland, and it's the best kind of trip that leaves you wanting more. Next up: Germany!
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