Visits, Belfast, and Thankgiving

If you’re wondering why it’s been so long since last made a post, I have an answer: Midterms. How did said midterms go? Imagine the most fun activity you enjoy. Said activity makes you really love life, doesn’t it? Keep imagining how happy you feel… Now imagine the exact opposite. That’s how my midterms went. If you’re thinking because I got bad grades on them, your guess is as good as mine. The Irish academic system allows professors to take their good auld time, as part of the “laid back” culture. Pulling all-nighters on every single midterm was not fun.

Now that my angry rant about how hellish my midterms were, I can get to the good parts that happened a little before, in between, and a little after midterms were done. I shall begin with the story of my friend, Joe, visiting me a few weekends back. Joe is an old friend of mine from high school who is studying abroad in Salamanca, Spain for this semester. He, and his friend, Taylor, who goes to college with him back in the States, flew into Dublin and bussed their way to see me in Cork. They both got there pretty late, Joe at about 9:20 p.m. and Taylor about an hour after that. After both of them checked into their hostel I took them to eat, and then introduced them to young pub life and Beamish. Sadly, most of the day time I was writing my midterm essays, so the touristy things they did during the days were the two of them. However, most of the things they did, I had already done, or about to do in the coming weeks. The real fun for me though was guiding them to the nice, authentically Irish pubs like An Réalt Dearg and Sin é and drinking. A lot.

The weekend after that, IFSA-Butler had a sponsored trip to Belfast. The first night nothing happened. Going to bed at 9 o’clock has that effect on events. Why did I go to bed that early? The answer is, you guessed it, midterms. See, because of midterms I had a 48 hour span of time immediately prior to the Belfast trip where only four of those hours were spent sleeping. In fact, the prior 24 hours to the trip contained exactly 0 hours of sleep. Thank you, midterms, for reminding me that sleep is only necessary when you’re dead. But back to the good part. Belfast is a neat little city that, despite its diminutive size making it a pretty sad fact that it is, indeed, a city, has a lot of history to it. Do I remember any of those history lessons? No. You know why? The tour guide on the bus heading for Carrick-a-Rede and the Giant’s Causeway said it best, “The Ulster accent sounds like the Scottish accent with the life taken out of it.” It is extremely funny how accurate that description is. But the landscape is Northern Ireland is absolutely beautiful. Walking on the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge, visiting Dunluce castle, walking on the very, very windy Giant’s Causeway area. All of it was simply picturesque. The last full day, we were given Black taxi tours throughout Belfast where they told us all about “The Troubles,” the period of time when sectarian violence between Protestants and Catholics were really bad. There is a wall that now divides the Protestant and Catholic sides of the residential section in Belfast. Said wall now sports my name. Violence has calmed down between the two groups considerably, however the resentment between the two groups still exists. In talking about the dividing wall, one of the taxi drivers said, “It’ll be about 20 years until they even think about taking down the wall.”

What you might not know is that the separation isn’t just about religion; it’s about politics and culture as well. See, the Protestants are loyal to the British crown. The Catholics are not at all loyal to the crown. That is a very, very key point that often gets overlooked. That view shapes everything about the tensions. It shapes who’s on what side. It also shapes key identifiers, like names. For example, if you live in Belfast and you’re Protestant your name will derive from an English king or queen. If you’re Catholic, your name more than likely comes from the Bible. One exception though, is the name William. William is the one name used by both Protestants and Catholics, but there is a way to tell what “side” you’re on, the nickname. If you’re called “Billy” or “Bill,” you’re Protestant. If you’re called “Liam,” you’re Catholic. Interesting tidbits.

And then comes the night time. Obviously, I drank and had a blast both of the nights I actually went out. There was also a Christmas festival in the city center that was really neat to see and look around the little shops that were selling food and other things.

The final story I have regards this past week and Thanksgiving. Wait, never mind about the whole week thing because sizable chunks of the week are now actually missing in my memory. But my first Thanksgiving away from home (and in a foreign country) was interesting. I dealt with my first bout of homesickness since being over here. I think it’s understandable considering the significance of the day. However, said homesickness was cured quickly when I Skyped with pretty much my whole family and was quickly reminded how bat-shit insane they all are. I love them to death though. The Thanksgiving meal that the UCC Chaplincy held for American students was not surprisingly small portioned.  But I did meet some new people and had a good time. And it was pretty much uneventful for me otherwise, though I went out to the pubs every night during the weekend.  And I ended up doing a lot of talking to Irish people each night I went out.

Lesson of the week: Wearing a baseball cap of a team that’s not the Yankees in Europe will get you noticed, and not always in a good way. And hot drunk girls are almost always going to try and steal your hat.

The English Market, The Jazz Festival, and Halloween

I apologize again for not updating this after awhile, but I have been quite busy with Midterms coming up and other school related projects to deal with in the mean time. There aren’t too many stories that happened since the last time I posted (at least stories that are blog appropriate), so most of this blog entry will be covering mostly observations of some places and events that I encountered/had occurred within the past two or three weeks.

First, the English Market in Cork is a wonderful closed canopy-style market right in the City Center. It has a wide array of local meat stands, produce, cheese, fish confectionaries, etc. at some surprisingly affordable prices. The best deal that stands out in my memory was the 5 regular (though still good size in comparison to other “regular” sized portions) chicken breasts for €6.50. Even my roommates thought that it was a good deal. But even then so, if you don’t mind making the 40-minute walk from University Hall to the English Market, you can find good deals there, especially on any produce (also consider produce from the Market doesn’t expire as quickly as produce from places like Tesco).  In addition, they a have a very cozy (or cramped depending on your outlook) restaurant upstairs in the English Market called the Farmgate Café. It was a little pricey for a student on a budget, but the Irish lamb stew I ordered from them was simply unbeatable. They get all of their ingredients fresh right from all the vendors downstairs in the Market (the menu board will even tell you which vendor sold which products you were ordering). The restaurant is worth it if you’re visiting Cork, and the English Market is worth shopping at if you’re living in Cork for an extended period of time.

Next, The Presidential Election just took place about a week ago. Ireland’s next president is… a leprechaun? Yes, if you read my last post, you’d know I’m of course referring to Michael D. Higgins, who ended up winning the election when just two weeks prior he was easily second or third choice unanimously. The reason for the last minute change was due to a huge controversy over the previous front-runner, Sean Gallagher, who was discovered to have essentially taken a bribe from shady sources during a fundraiser for his former party, Fianna Fáil. So there you have it, a 70-year-old leprechaun is Ireland’s new President. Hey, at least I can say I met the President of Ireland when I come back to the States.

Finally, The Guinness Jazz Festival and Halloween were savage craic (lots of fun) here in Cork. The Jazz Festival is held every year usually in the last or second to last weekend of October. Most of the big-name Jazz performers were pay only venues, most of them at least €20 and some as much as €35. Luckily for me, there were plenty of other free venues. However, a fair amount of the free venues are not part of the Jazz genre. The one band I actually got to see, twice, was actually a 60s/70s rock tribute band. They were quite talented, quite simply because some of their songs they sang sounded almost exactly like he originals (vocals and all). Halloween on Monday was a crazy good time. I was half expecting town to be empty since the whole weekend had the city center completely packed with people in costumes, but actual Halloween had much of the same. I only dressed up on Halloween (well, unless you count my half assed attempt on Friday as “balding hipster”) and I went as an American douchebag (Phillies hat tilted to the side, American Eagle shirt with a collar popped). It was a pretty good idea, until it became even better when an Irish chick holding a tube of fake blood asked me “Do ye want some fake blood?” Being full of stout at that point, of course I said yes. For the rest of the night, I was zombie bro. And all was spooky and there was craic all around.

Lesson of the week: Unrelated to anything I’ve mentioned in this post, but it turns out if you get kicked out of a pub one night (as long as what you did wasn’t too serious) then you’re still allowed back in that same pub the next night. (Just don’t be surprised when the security guards inside give you funny looks the next time you’re in there.)

That’s all for now, stay tuned.