"Through travel I first became aware of the outside world; it was through travel that I found my own introspective way into becoming a part of it."-Eudora Welty
I spent the last few days on a bus tour of the Ring of Kerry and the Dingle Peninsula, both pristine pieces of western Ireland. The best part: the weather here has been unusually beautiful! The past two days have been 65 and sunny! For Ireland in March this is really (really really really) unusual. Needless to say the country is going wild! I've never seen so many pairs of shorts for 65 degrees. There is this kind of neat/sort of odd celebration in "bad weather" countries when they get a piece of nice sunshine. The whole country joins in this awesome mood and celebrates together for a few days. Basically one big outdoor party!
I went on the trip with the International Society at NUIM. The International Society puts together trips, almost every other week, for any student interested at Maynooth. But because most of the trips are around Ireland and it is called the International Society, the trips are usually filled with students studying abroad. So at any time on the bus you could walk down the aisle to hear French, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, English, and I'm sure a few others thrown in.
This week is packed. I got back from Killarney late last night and am turning around on Wednesday to head to Brussels, Belgium for a few days with the Mitchell Scholars. So I'm going to leave this post mainly to pictures. Brief run down-left on Thursday around noon for the five and a half hour drive. Made it to Killarney, the place we used as home base for the three days. Spent Friday on a day trip of the Ring of Kerry. Then Saturday on a day trip of the Dingle Peninsula. Sunday we had a free day in Killarney where I got to take in mass at St. Mary's Cathedral and spend some time soaking up the wonderful sunshine while reading outside.
Last bit before the pictures, Irish landscape is starting to all look the same to me. This shouldn't come as a major surprise, it is a small island so it makes sense there aren't major difference in landscape. But I'm also becoming immune to the beauty of it all which is the downside to being in anyone place for very long. So I fell victim to thinking that the Ring of Kerry sort of looked like everything else I have seen (especially the landscape around the Cliffs of Moher). However, the Dingle Peninsula switched it up a bit with more fishing villages and a greener hillside. This switch up made me partial and Dingle was my favorite stop of the trip.
The Ring of Kerry-hard to explain, but it refers to an area in southwestern Ireland. One of the favorite spots for tourists in Ireland who have rented a car because it can get pretty remote
Killarney National Park-Ring of Kerry. I take these solo shots everywhere I go. Cheesy yes, but my Mom likes them.
No Moroccan waves but nice for Ireland
(a few of my friends from the Morocco Surf Trip were on this trip as well so we impressed everyone by talking about the waves like we had a clue, I personally had no clue but just learned to use words like swell and sets from Blue Crush).
Homemade in Dingle, Ireland. With flavors like honeycomb and sea salt how could you not love Dingle, Ireland?
Dingle Harbor
I'll be back sometime next week with updates from Brussels! Enjoy your week!
Before I get to St. Patrick's Day, I've got to fill you in on something else first. I saw The Civil Wars on a few days ago in Dublin and I am still in a state of ecstatic giddiness from the concert. Hands down, one of the best live shows I've seen in a long time. It was intimate and had that sort of electric feel to it you only catch occasionally at shows. I used to get that feeling when I watched Dave Matthews Band live (shout out to Oak Grove High School, when Dave brought Warren Haynes on stage in Antioch...yall know what I'm talking about) but oh how times change. Thanks goodness. Back to the Civil Wars, they were so good live I can't listen to the album now. And their album is incredible!
Have a listen for yourself but GO see them if you get the chance!
The stuff they write is just as incredible, but I can't get enough of this cover
Then onto this weekend. There was this small celebration here in Ireland, you might have heard of it? St.Patrick's Day?
The celebration of St. Patrick's day across the US has left this as one of the biggest questions I get asked about when I tell Americans that I'm living in Ireland. Sorry to disappoint, but the Irish take on St. Patrick's is a little different than just the big drunken fest we expect at home. I would be doing you all an injustice if I didn't tell you this history (and this is where everyone stops reading) but I promise it won't be too long!
Well to begin with the day is a celebration of a patron saint. This might seem obvious by the name but I think its really easy to not think about when the green beer is flowing. Saint Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland and is credited with bringing Christianity to the Emerald Isle. The story goes that Patrick was kidnapped from Wales by Irish slave dealers and kept in Ireland as a slave for several years. Upon his escape he returned to his family, joined the Catholic Church and then moved back to Ireland to spread the message of the Catholic Church throughout the island. There is some historical dispute, but he died in the middle of the 400s on what some have agreed to be March 17th.
*Just a quick side note, Patrick is probably the most popular of all Irish names. Every good Irish Catholic family has at least one Patrick and one Brid. Brigid of Kildare is another of Ireland's patron saints and Brid is the Irish version of Brigit or Brigid.
Back to March 17th...with the history as a saint's holiday the country often referred to as "the Pope's children"(much more historically than present) celebrates the day accordingly. St.Patrick's day for many Irish growing up and for a lot of families still today centers around mass attendance.
After mass many celebrate sort of like we would on July 4th, they spend the day with family and friends in homes or in small towns at the pub. The big celebration that happens in Dublin is used to promote Ireland and Irish culture. What that turns out to be is a lot of tourists and foreigners (think Mardi Gras, you can't keep a big party quiet for very long). There is a huge parade in the morning and then the see of green, orange, and white (the Irish tricolor) fill up all the local pubs in Dublin city center and spend the rest of the day drinking like the Irish. And this is largely why the actual Irish don't go to Dublin City Center on St.Patrick's Day.
Front of the USA Today-Dublin
The disappointing part of the parade: No Sweet Potato Queens....
I personally did a little bit of both. So I went into the city and watched some of the parade. Then a group of us rode out to Howth for a pub lunch and nice scenic walk. So a nice mix of tourist and local. Howth is a really cute, quaint fishing village just a 20 minute train ride North of Dublin.
Sorry to disappoint that I didn't have the wildest beer filled St. Patrick's day ever. I think my partying ways got left behind at Ole Miss. But I did have a really nice fun filled day! I hope all of yall had fun celebrating St.Patrick's wherever you were! Up next, I'm spending the end of this week traveling the Ring of Kerry in southwestern Ireland! Updates soon!
Cheers Yall!
chelsea
(please forgive the google images, I was hoping my camera would be in by St.Pattys and well it didn't quite make it. Good news-it is here now! So I won't bore you with anymore google images and I won't have to keep pestering my friends to be my photographer)
Fair warning, this post has nothing to do with Ireland…
While in Berlin, my friend Jess made the comment that all of her "cool" friends from Yale had moved South (some through TFA, some just because). We had a little bit of a chat about the evolution of southern culture: something that was once insular and shunned by the rest of the nation, into something now with a hip almost cult like status.
In the last post I spent a good bit of
a ramble talking about my connection to place, my sense of place and my
definition of a sense of place. All really vague ways of saying that I like a
certain type of culture. No surprise that how I define my sense of place fits pretty perfectly into a southern Americana context (surprisingly an Irish one in
a lot of ways as well, oh should I change the first line?). Anyway, these next few
random bits are in this similar thread of place. It probably seems like after two posts about my sense of place that I'm feeling homesick or that I am just spending all my time in my room thinking about MS and not experiencing Ireland. Trust me on this one, I'm doing alright. I’m actually feeling really good this semester. I’m just
having to create my own space to talk about these things since I no longer live in a place where these discussions happen just about everywhere (Barnard classrooms, Square Books porch, or Larry's patio with a beer in hand).
To create my own form of southern hipster, here are a few things that I've been lovin' on lately and thought you might enjoy them too!
For the ears…
Ryan Adams with Emmylou Harris-Oh My Sweet Carolina
I like to think of this as the musical version of Willie Morris' North Towards Home
The editor of OA gives some critique to the competition, Garden&Gun, but in the critique you hear the real conflict about modern southern culture. Great stuff!
From and for my soul (but I will share)…
missing my camera these days. it should be back in my hands very soon!
Caveny Barn, Kings Mountain, NC
missing summertime these days too! Luckily the weather is showing signs of promise here. It is staying lighter longer and we are seeing sunshine!
Last bit, Charter Schools in MS made the Huffington Post, the
state is close to raising our HOPS and Water Valley gets a big shout out in the New York Times! All this positive press adds to my theory about recent southern "coolness."
Don’t let the title fool you, I have mixed feelings about
Berlin. Since last summer, I’veheard over and over that Berlin is loved by all my friends who have ramblin’
ways. This praise comes from a wide range of friends with an even wider range of
tastes. I thought, “wow if all of these people love Berlin, how could I
not love Berlin?”
Sorry to disappoint, but the love wasn’t there. Maybe I set
my expectations too high and there is no city in the world that could compete
with what I was expecting? This could be a
possibility but I think more likely it was that my expectations were misplaced.
So with the little bit of traveling that I’ve been doing,
along with an awesome class that I am taking about how we define communities, I’ve
been doing some thinking about what I value in place.Because as most of you know, and you might be able to tell from
that blog post about how I vacation in the MS Delta, I am a person of place.
Sense of place is important to me.
It is easy to confuse my constant talk of MS with just an
abnormal amount of state pride. But I’ve come to realize more recently my attachment to place, and place based culture and history are things
that I like find myself attracted to, even when dropped around the World, say in a place like Ireland.You can never really answer questions like this, but I think my natural inclination to place isn't as much Mississippi as I once thought. Say if I had
grown up in West Virginia instead of Mississippi, I like to think I would still have an abnormal
amount of pride in my Appalatchian roots. Mississippi just happened to be a place that fostered and brought out this connection to place within me (honestly, West Virginia probably wasn't the best example because I think in this respect it is really similar to MS).
My reference to this idea of "sense of place" can often seem really vague. Here are some of the particulars that I keep returning to:
-more rural than
urban
-a distinct foodways, music scene or accent
- resident’s close connection to
the land
-the local history is acknowledged/promoted/taught
So the argument could be made that all cities, no matter the
size, have their own food, accent, music and history. Or the opposite that no
place really has these features anymore because of globalization. Both have a
bit of truth. But the last bit to my thoughts on place, is harder to quantify but can't be ignored. There is a sometimes
indescrible spirit to a place. Tough stuff to put into words, but I don’t want
to discount it. (These last few paragraphs are filled with problems, wholes and generalities when ti comes to this debate on place. I'm just going to leave all that to be fleshed out in the halls of Barnard Observatory).
That turned into a bit of a ramble but I think it helps
explain why Berlin wasn’t my city. Berlin has some really cool things going for
it. Incredible museums being the top of the list! It is clean and has great
public transit. And from what I can tell, loved by most people.
For me, the buildings just felt too big.It all just felt big. And while there
is this acknowledgement of the dramatic history of the city, mainly through the
wide range of museums, that history felt really removed from the actual people
of Berlin. The museums are for tourists and they are curated by people from around
the World.
To be fair, I didn’t spend time with local residents. I
didn’t eat at their favorite restaurant, or hear about a community oral history
project or even see the up and coming band of Berlin. I’m sure all of these
things exist. I'm sure if a Berlin resident read this post and my made-up list of place definition they would have a serious bone to pick with me.
Last point so I don't seem so harsh, this is the first point where
I have really critiqued a city. My other travel posts usually just include a
run through of the events (which is soon to come) but I think my thinking about
place means that I should be more honest about what I like and don’t like while traveling. (I almost feel bad critiquing things in a city, like the city itself has feelings and I'm going to hurt them. Maybe this idea of place has gone too far....)
Despite what above sounds like me being a Debbie Downer, the
weekend was fun. Jess and I (the photog that you hear so much about)
successfully navigated our way through a weekend filled public transit
riding and days spent with heads cocked to the side looking at museum exhibits.
"Mr. Gorbachev, Mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall!" at the Brandenburg Gate
And no, I do not know the guy posing at the bottom of the picture
Checkpoint Charlie
One of the highlights was getting to visit the Berlin Jewish Museum on a private tour with the lead curator. This is one of those times when
having cool friends really pays off (despite the fact that everyday you get to
have a cool friend). Really random part about our tour. Our tour guide’s father
was born in Berlin, immigrated to Cuba and then somehow ended up in Vicksburg,
MS. Small World. (if I can get in a bit about MS everywhere I go this semester
I think I might have a new skill to add to my resume. Chelsea Caveny: Spotter
of All Things MS Around the World)
The Pergamon Museum. The most visited museum in Berlin and one of the cooler things I've seen within a museum. They have huge rooms that house antiquities. This is part of a gate of Babylon pieced back together. My snap and shoot camera doesn't really do justice to the size and detail of the gate...
Reichstag: home of the German parliament. HUGE! Just plain ol BIG
pieces from the Berlin wall that have been moved to the site of the Berlin Wall Memorial
For all the Berlin lovers, sorry to disappoint. I learned a
lot and had a good weekend! But I’m not giving it high marks as my favorite
city.
Next up, a week without travel to work on class assignments
and reading. Really living on the edge.
I’m listening to this while writing this post. Maybe this
explains my need to get very southern studies and explain my feelings on place?
