Lefterly Winds

So I have to amend a very minor comment I made early on about the north end of a street being referred to as "the bottom" and the south end as "the top." Actually, I've found, the two are just used interchangeably because no one knows the difference between north and south. That may be an overgeneralization, but for the most part - people really don't function in cardinal directions. A friend of mine was explaining it to me and, pragmatically, it makes sense because no street here runs due north or south or east or west and if it does it's a fluke street and no one would know that anyway. Because the city is set up with such disregard to a compass, the directions you will find yourself following are inevitably along the lines of "walk down Dame street, away from Trinity and it will be on your right." And I definitely underestimated the extent of this rule until I asked someone on O'Connell Street (I hadn't slept the night before and lost all sense of orientation) which way was north and she looked blankly to either side, stammering. So I rephrased the question and asked her which direction the Liffey was in and she smiled and pointed, saying "Ah just to your left now."

I still couldn't say why all the "upper" streets are south and all the "lower" streets are north except that they were just turned around when they named things? Alec and I realized when we put a map of Amsterdam on my wall that everything was upside down. We considered it for a moment, wondering if we had been turned around the whole time we were there, but according to the compass at the bottom, the map was simply made with north at the bottom and south at the top. So all I can think is that it really doesn't matter much when your city looks like it was modeled after an ant farm.

And maybe all this disorientation comes from being blown about in the fierce Irish winds. I thought I had experienced wind on the Kansas plains, but for some reason, the air seems to fly much much faster on this part of the globe. For instance, I've never heard much from the wind before. Usually I hear a faint whirring sound in my ears and occasionally it will whistle, but here the wind actually howls. Turns out it's not just a saying after all because it actually makes the sound "hoooowl." Well, it doesn't usually say discernible things, but it is definitely very audible. On a particularly voluable day last week, I was in class and the professor actually had to shout the entire period to be heard over the winds outside. So that was a new experience.

And on that note, Happy Halloween! As I wrote this, I watched fireworks outside because apparently all holidays are fireworkable when you don't celebrate July 4th.