Signs of Life in Dublin

Since Northern Ireland is the last post on here and that happened a little over three weeks ago, I think I owe blogger a bit of a newsflash. Since the 18th, I've been to England, Wales, the Czech Republic and Matt came to visit for Thanksgiving so feel free to skip to whichever part of that interests you.

First was my weekend with the Gibsons (Matt met Thomasina some time ago through Harry Potter reporting) in their very small English town a half hour or so from Bristol. Ubley, unlike anyplace I'd ever actually been, consists of a single street with six solitary houses, a church and a gas station (and maybe a car repair shop? It was a little hard to tell when the town ended and the countryside began). Oh and two policemen that spend most of their shifts drinking tea because there isn't any crime. According to Thomasina, the last reported crime was 8 years ago when someone stole a lawn mower, mowed one of the few Ubley lawns and left it for the residents to find. So I don't know if it counts as a crime because everyone thought it was "riotously funny" but technically that was breaking and entering. And mowing.

But since everything in England seems to be just a short drive away and since Thomasina has an amazing endurance for sightseeing, I was given a very thorough tour around Harry Potter land (Gloucester Cathedral which plays parttime Hogwarts and the town of Lacock where Hogsmeade is filmed), Jane Austen country (Bath), Cheddar (the one-street town where Cheddar cheese originated), Cardiff (the capital of Wales) and Bristol. I also managed to watch Means Girls, two Will Smith movies and Top Gear ("the highlight of every Englishman's week" apparently, is when 3 British guys race cars and talk about them - I was not allowed to miss this). Saturday night, I went to a club in Bristol that had more security than the entire town of Ubley and somehow paid a negative cover charge. According to Stuart, though, it was lucky to have "armed reinforcements" because last month the Russian mafia murdered someone for dancing with one of their girlfriends there (of course he and his friend didn't mention this until we'd been there for a couple hours - maybe related to our less than free entry).

Anyone recognize the halls of Hogwarts?

The few days between the UK and Matt's visit, I spent terrorizing Dublin in search of pumpkin pie filling. And as a word of advice to Americans in Ireland, don't try to make a pumpkin pie here. Or if you can't live without it -personally, I've never had a Thanksgiving without pumpkin pie and was not about to let Dublin interfere with that- bring your own filling from home. I left home this summer under the vague impression that America does not really have a culture, but have found that things like Thanksgiving and pumpkin pie and even Peanut Butter & Jelly (which the Irish think is a very weird combination) actually give us a very distinct culture and tradition. Meaning, however, that not only does no one in Ireland eat pumpkin pie, but that many people have never even heard of the dish. A girl I met up north asked me if one would eat a pumpkin pie for dinner and I explained that no, pumpkin pie is a dessert and very sweet and as many times as I probably asked to have a pumpkin pie meal growing up, people tend to eat it after dinner.

Anyway, the ingredients for this particular dish are incredibly difficult to come by. First of all, it is no longer pumpkin season here and after Halloween, no one is very interested in having real pumpkins around. So that leaves pie filling. And after locating the one grocery store in Dublin that was reported to have pumpkin pie filling, I asked for some and was told that their last can sold the day before. Not only were they sold out, but the stores in the rest of the UK were out as well and no one was importing more from America before Thanksgiving. But he mentioned that one other grocer in Dublin occasionally gets pumpkin at this time of year and I trekked across town to find Fallon Byrne. Of course, they had also sold their last can the day before, but at my insistence they checked the kitchen and the chef had roasted some pumpkin himself and sold me four unofficial tubs of it in exchange for exuberant thanks. And that was how I found pumpkin in Dublin. And despite the substitutions and approximations and dysfunctional student housing oven, the pie actually turned out very well.

Unfortunately, this is the only photo I have of it.

And between the pumpkin discovery and pumpkin baking, Matt arrived from Boston for his first Thanksgiving away from home. Very away from home, but at least not entirely away from family. The twelve from our program plus Matt and a few Germans that live downstairs opted for a potluck feast in our apartment rather than the meal offered through the international office. And I will forever be grateful for our spontaneous urge to take action because I happen to live among several good cooks and several other closet cooks and the product was as Thanksgiving as it could get on this side of the pond. Between Rebecca's stuffing and Jenn's mac and cheese and Courtney's scalloped potatoes and salad and green beans and garlic bread and mashed potatoes and corn and, of course, turkey, we all felt sufficiently fed for maybe the first time all semester. Which is an appropriate time, I suppose.


At the beginning of Matt's stay, we had tea and biscuits with an Irish poet I'd been reading in class (Matt actually got to hear the governor of Montana speak that night on campus, who knew?). For the rest of it, we toured the city, ate at several of my favorite restaurants, walked around Phoenix Park (the biggest park in Europe and in the outskirts of Dublin) on the first below freezing day of the year, saw the Books of Kells in the Trinity Library (transcription of the four gospels by Celtic monks around 800 AD) and thousand year old "bog bodies" in the National Museum (they'd been preserved by the bogs all this time and one of them still had a full head of hair). Friday we saw a play in the basement of the Abbey (hopefully Matt could understand it all despite their very heavy Irish accents) and his last night here, the man sitting next to us in Elephant & Castle proposed to his girlfriend and she said yes. According to the manager, it was the table they had their first date at several years ago. And no wonder she said yes, the guy clearly had good taste to take her to this place for date number one. Also, the ring was really really pretty.

Matt in Stephen's Green

Sunday, Matt and I flew in opposite directions - Matt back to Boston and me to the Czech Republic, where I saw Rachel for the first time in many months and Prague for the first time in my life. As I'd been told time and time again, Prague was possibly the most beautiful city I have ever seen. Between Prague Castle and the Municipal House and even the more modern Dancing House (supposedly this was built to look like Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, but according to Rachel's architecture class -I went to class with her because it was at the top of this building!- the dancers were an afterthought), Prague is definitely like nothing I've ever seen before. I saw all of Rachel's favorite lookout spots, ate an overload of Goulash, had a mini reunion dinner with a couple other Vassarites, saw Aida the opera and bargained a Kashmir pashmina down from 1500 crowns to 650. The crown was about 20 to the dollar while I was there and that sounds expensive only because I wanted the really nice pashmina - actually Prague was insanely cheap. Especially coming from Dublin where it costs me 12 euros to do my laundry.

This is for Patrice - yes, Prague was a fairytale:

Oh I should also probably mention that we spent Wednesday wandering around the town of Kutna Hora, which is famous for its church made of human bones. This was by far the creepiest thing I have ever seen, even though its supposed to be tributary and spiritual. I think the church dated back to somewhere in the 1200s when the plague had struck the country and they had thousands of extra bodies to dispose of. In the foyer, the design on the wall says IHS in bones and according to the information sheet, they are supposed to "remind us that death is not what matters, that even death pales in comparison to God's eternity." Personally, I didn't get over the fact that everything was made of skulls and bones in time to reach this conclusion, but I could see how the plague may have changed things a little.

The chandelier supposedly contains every bone in the human body.

I left for the airport yesterday morning, as Rachel was leaving for Berlin (don't worry, we both took the time to realize how spoiled we are this semester). And although I miss Rachel and her roommate and her very high ceilings and their very pretty city, I will admit that it's nice to be able to speak English in a store again and not run the risk of being yelled at. And just in general the Irish demeanor is a nice one to return to - I hadn't realized just how friendly everyone is here until being somewhere... a little different. My experience may not have been the most accurate, although Rachel said it was fairly telling, but I had very few encounters with happy Czech people. All in all, I think they are not very tourist-friendly. Or very happy that I don't speak their language (with the exception of a couple words I learned this week). At least I had Rachel to mediate sometimes!

That pretty well summarizes the past few weeks and I will try to do a better job for the last two week (ahhh!) stretch of the semester. Anyway, I hope that everyone in Kansas is prepping for the Vines Christmas Party tonight. Sadly and yet again, I will not be sporting my "holiday snazzies" tonight and probably won't change out of my sweatpants since I'll be paper writing for the evening. But hopefully I will see photos of everyone else's holiday best and can partake of the leftover sugar cookies when I get home (thanks mom!). Matt noted during his visit that this will be the first childless Christmas party on Pershing in 20 years, which I think means the tradition should be rescheduled next year. Anyway, happy holidays and remember to show up a good hour late - they'll appreciate it!