Pick of Pics: Textures of Kilmainham

A few more pictures from my textural trip through Kilmainham Jail

A cell wall in the "new" block

Close-up of a cell door in the old block

Another look at an excellent door

Random Acts of Tourism

Astute GSRED Twitter followers may have noticed a certain ennui in some of my tweets recently. In truth, I've been having trouble finding my stride since I left Scotland. Maybe I've been making poor choices about where to go and what to do. Maybe I'm expecting to have great and meaningful experiences every time I round a corner. Maybe I'm already haunted by too many sights-not-seen and too many roads-not-taken. Or maybe there's the tiniest chance that it's actually not possible to sustain a high level of savvy travel and serendipitous encounters for weeks on end. I know intellectually that sometimes it's going to be Rucksacks Hostel and wrong turns - I never expected otherwise. The sad thing is it turns out that knowing bad times are inevitable doesn't actually help when I'm hurdling a dead body to get to the toilet after spending a day walking in ever-decreasing concentric circles around my intended destination before confidently striding off towards a part of town that turns out to be inhabited entirely by packs of feral children and mobile phone shops.*

People who know me may recall that I'm ever-so-slightly fond of a good plan. (Which is a bit like saying Hitler had a vague interest in expanding his real estate portfolio.) This meant I happily spent last year planning everything to do with the trip, and had a great time doing it. But it also means that when I don't have a plan I get a bit antsy, and end up spending a lot of time trying to devise a plan instead of just picking something to do and going with it.

One day in Dublin I bounced aimlessly around the city until I finally committed to a museum that ended up being closed for renovations. Left without a plan, I took one of the cheesey hop-on, hop-off bus tours that are in every major city, intending to ride it all the way around to get the lay of the land and then decide what to do (In other words, I was going to sit on the bus in order to make a plan). Instead, on a whim, I got off the bus at the far end of the route and took a tour around Kilmainham Jail**. It was a Random Act of Tourism, and it was good. There was a guided tour, and it was interesting to be in the jail, which actually reminded me a bit of the good old Millennium Falcon Room. I also had fun taking weird pictures, because the whole place was so... textured. And it had really really good doors. I zoned out of what the guide was saying a lot of the time because I was just looking at how interesting the surfaces were, and I thought about all the designers and scenic artists I've known who would have been in raptures about the place. It was a really different perspective.

One of the fantastic doors of Kilmainham

And it was good. I felt like I'd done something, and thus felt free to go and have a nice bit of lunch. So it turned out that doing anything was better than obsessing about trying to figure out the best thing. Lesson learned. Not the first, and not the last.

It's funny, though. In the end, the best things that happened that day were getting an excellent an unexpected email from a new friend I met over here, and skyping with an old friend who happened to see that I'd left myself signed on from a previous skype session and called me up on a whim. Once again, it's the people***, not the places that really save the day.

* Mom: Not really. But there are a LOT of mobile phone shops...

** Well, actually Kilmainham Gaol, which is pronounced "jail" but looks like, well, you can see that it just looks weird. Like tyre, and aluminium.

***The Dublin hashers have also been fantastic. I went out for drinks with them this week, and I believe I may take part in their annual Bog Hash on Saturday. As far as I can tell, this involves hashing through an actual bog. I'm not sure my shoes will recover, and I need to find a way to get back to Dublin airport in time for my 7:55 am flight to Moscow on Sunday, but I was assured by somewhat-sober hashers that there would be a way. Originally I intended to move to a nice, big, Days Inn near the airport for a quiet Saturday so I could revel in anonymity and fluffy towels, and get myself organized for Russia. (There are also some significant laundry issues that I need to address before attempting a new continent.) But the bog is calling, and really, how could I pass up the offer? Especially since it could result in a Bog Blog...

Surf's Up! (Or: Just call me Lefty)

If you had asked me to compile a list of things I would NOT be doing on my around-the-world trip, surfing in Ireland would have been at or near the top, along with snow-shoeing in Egypt and pearl-diving in Moscow. Then again, camping on a beach in Scotland probably also would have made the top ten, so I guess I should just toss out all those preconceptions and go with the flow.

And that's what I did. I'd had a couple of bleah days in Bushmills, N. Ireland. This may have been because my internet access was inconvenient and expensive (£1 for 20 minutes!)*. Or it may have been because the hostel I stayed in felt like a big, institutional ghost town compared to Arnie's. Or it may have been that Bushmills was not exactly brimming with things to do. There's the Bushmills Distillery (the tour of which wasn't nearly as good as Oban) and there's the Giant's Causeway, which is undeniably cool, but can only sustain interest for an hour or so, at most.

See? They really are cool.

And that's about it. So it was that I found myself staring a a poster for Trogg's Surf School in Portrush, just a 25 minute bus ride down the road from Bushmills. Seizing the moment, I splurged on a B&B for a night and arranged to join the 1:00pm - 3:00pm surfing lesson on Friday, for a mere £30.00.

I rolled in to town at about 11:30 and spent a happy few minutes strewing my belongings around a very pleasant room at the B&B and then marched down to the surf school to get kitted out for the lesson. I met up with Carl and James, the two instructors, who were both appropriately wind-blown and wet-suited. There was also a family of Irish holidaymakers from Belfast in the group and they were very friendly, so it was looked like I was in for a fun time. First James fitted us with wetsuits, and I went off to struggle into mine, which is not easy at the best of times (as anyone who's done it will know). It also didn't help that these suits were damp, though it turns out that there was another reason I was having such trouble...

Eventually I got the bottom half on and went out seek assistance with the top half. Imagine the delight of James and his lifeguard buddy when they informed me I had the damned suit on inside-out. Oh, the hilarity! And here I thought I was a wetsuit pro after my experience in Perranporth. After all, I knew the zipper goes in the back...**

Anyways, once James recovered his breath, and I got myself turned around (literally), we went off to the beach. They made up do a bunch of goofy warm-ups, and gave us some good instruction, and then we were off into the sea to have a go.

Naturally I did not take my camera surfing with me, so all you get is a shot of the beach

In fact, it may have been the longest two hours of my life. Most of the time was spent waiting for a decent wave, hopping onto the board, laying on my stomach, and paddling like mad, as per instructions. Then the wave would come up behind me and I'd attempt to get to me feet while being propelled forward. This would inevitably end up with me emerging sputtering from underwater with my surfboard bobbing merrily by its tether, while another, bigger wave crashed in on top of me to add insult to injury. I believe I passed a quantity of seawater roughly equivalent to that of the Suez Canal through my nose.

(It actually reminded me a bit of my first and only attempt at downhill skiing. There was a lot more falling involved than there was skiing. Perhaps those of us from flat, land-locked places should just stick to more geographically appropriate pursuits, like curling or Tag-Team-Dead-Battery-Jump-Start Relays.)

Actually though, it was madly fun. James and Carl were really nice, and helpful and encouraging, and not at all surfer-dude too-cool-for-school. I even started to get the hang of things and managed, on one notable occasion, to get to my feet and ride for about 2.5 inches before the water ran out and I was at the beach, whereupon I hopped off the board quite jauntily and pumped my fists in triumph.

But it was also really exhausting, so near the end of the two hours (Two hours? It felt like a week and a half) I was getting a bit punchy and committed a grave surfing sin. James had made a point of telling us that we should always make sure not to hold the board broadside between ourselves and an approaching wave, or the wave could cause the board to smack into us with, er, a tiny bit of force.

So naturally that's exactly how I ended up. I think I'd just got upright again after spitting out a gallon of seawater, a bundle of seaweed and a starfish or two (Did I mention that the sea tastes yucky?). I grabbed my board to head back out and was stuck in exactly the wrong position when the next wave hit. I think the board must have caught my right thumb and bent it back at an unnatural angle, because once I'd gained my feet again I realized that something was quite wrong. I wisely retreated to shallower water, and James came over to check on me, though I could tell the thumb wasn't broken or dislocated, or even respectably sprained, since I could sort of move it. He made me sit with my hand in the water to keep it cool, and I elected to sit out the rest of the lesson, and was grateful for the excuse.

After we'd finished I went and hung out with the instructors and lifeguards for a bit, because they were friendly and had icepacks. Then there was the tricky matter of getting out of a damp wetsuit with only one functioning opposable thumb. Finally I made it back to the hostel and downed 3 ibuprofens and had a well-earned lie-down while waiting for the drugs to kick in. The swelling went down enough that I could use my hand again in time for supper, and so I was able to hoist my pint of Guinness and handle cutlery. I had a celebratory sticky toffee pudding (sub-par, I am sad to report) and retired for an early night.

Saturday morning the swelling was back and the whole meaty part of my thumb had turned into one big, festively coloured bruise.

See? Dramatic! In fact, the bruise shows up better on camera than it does in real life.

The ibuprofen didn't helping with the swelling much that morning, but I could move the thumb reasonably well, and was able to close all the zippers on my bag when I vacated the B&B, which I'd been worried about the night before.

So now I've got a swollen, semi-functional right hand, and an interesting story. I can only hope that the injury will turn into one of those things that lets me predict when a nor-easter will be a-blowin' in. "Ach," says Pam, " I think we're in fer a spell o' bad weather. Me old surfin' injury is actin' up!"

* I know, I know - there are lots of times coming when I won't be able to roll out of bed and check my email before getting dressed. I know I need to get used to that. Just leave me to my fantasy for a while longer.

** In my defense, when I was handed the suit it was inside-out. And it was a much more interesting colour on the inside than the outside.

The "Peace" Wall

I didn't do a lot of touristy stuff during my short time in Belfast, but I did one really important thing. I took a black cab tour of West Belfast to see the sectarian murals, and the Protestant and Catholic neighbourhoods. (Those of you who know how I spent my last few months of work will understand why this was important.) These tours are quite common - the cabbie takes you around and gives you a guided tour as he drives. I think I got a good one - it was recommended by the hostel I was at*, and the cabbie was very good, though the whole experience was a bit uncomfortable and strange, as you will see.

I suspect that the whole idea of the tours sprung up because people wanted to have a look at these neighbourhoods, so they must have just started getting into cabs and asking to driver to take them, and the now-formalized tours grew out of that. I did my tour with a Mickey and Tasha, two girls from the hostel who happened to be around when I arrived, and arranged the whole thing. Because there were three of us it only cost me £8.50, though it would have be £25 if I'd been alone.

The cabbie picked us up right at the hostel and drove us through downtown, pointing out the sights as we went. He stopped in front of the Europa Hotel which used to be the most-bombed hotel in the world. Or in Europe. Or something like that. In any case, it wasn't a place you could confidently expect to pass more than a few nights without incident. It's better now, but the IRA used to target it regularly because it was a favourite spot for foreign journalists, so any incident there was guaranteed to garner international attention in the press.

From the Europa we headed to the Protestant Shankhill Road area, and that's when it started to get weird. I suppose it was hopelessly naive of me, but I really did think that most of the sectarian trouble that plagued Northern Ireland was over, so it was a real shock to find out that there's still a huge wall dividing the Protestant and Loyalist Shankhill area from Catholic, Republican Falls Road. The wall is euphemistically referred to as the Peace Line or the Peace Wall. In fact, there are (I think) three different walls in the city, though that's something I only vaguely remember from the tour. In any case, the fact that even ONE wall still necessary was totally unexpected. The one I saw actually has gates in it that get opened every morning and closed every night. The other walls don't have gates - you just have to go around them.

A gate

Learning about the wall was the first weird and uncomfortable thing. Then we passed through one of the gates into the Protestant area, and I really felt uneasy. It's not that I felt unsafe, but I remember going by a woman pushing a baby carriage, and I could tell that she knew we were tourists and it just made me feel creepy and voyeuristic to be gawking at this woman like she was an animal in the zoo. I suppose the residents are used to it, and it's a damned sight better to be stared at than shot at, but still...

The cabbie stopped and let us off in a green(ish) space near a bunch of row houses, many of which were flying Union Jack pennants. There was a sort of community centre, and there were kids playing football and stuff, but it was obviously a pretty poor neighbourhood. The gable ends of each row of houses was decorated with giant colour murals, and most of them were quite political, and there was a lot of orange.

They call this one the "Mona Lisa" because the barrel of the gun follows you as you walk around. It's creepy.

And another shock - these murals are not a relic from the past. There are new ones planned and painted frequently. I saw scaffolding set up near one house where new mural was being painted to commemorate a local soldier who died in combat in 2000. At least now they're moving away from the overtly political (unlike this one).

Cromwell? Seriously? That was 350 years ago...

So I walked around the immediate area a bit before rejoining the cab and getting some more of the history. We piled back in and drove to a spot where we could really get a sense of the wall. It's big.

The Wall

And then it got weird again. The cabbie pulled over so we could take pictures, and he kind of insisted on taking a picture of me at the wall, so I have a oddly incongruous photo of me, smiling, in front of this horrible blight of a thing. He also gave us felt markers to write a message on the wall, which is very common. I wrote a message, but it wasn't particularly inspired or anything. Most of the messages were just a cry for peace.

The writing on the wall.

After the wall we went back through a gate into the Catholic area, to a memorial garden. Right next to the garden there was a house that backed up against the wall, and behind the house there was a big sort of shelter to protect people who might be out in the garden. Apparently, things still get throw over the wall.

Clonard Martyrs Memorial Garden, and the wall, and the house and the shelter

Then we went by some more murals - these ones Catholic. The traffic was quite busy, but still the cabbie was insisting we hop out into the street to take pictures. It was mad. Setting aside the obvious problem of snapping photos while dodging oncoming traffic, there was the deeper and infinitely more disquieting feeling of being an insensitive intruder in this place. I stayed in the cab.

And here's the other other other creepy thing - the cabbie told us that the various paramilitary organizations are still very present and "in control" of these areas. There's the IRA (Irish Republican Army, or some variant) in the Catholic area, and the Ulster Volunteer Force and Ulster Defence Association for the Protestants**. It's not like they're patrolling the streets with machine guns, but he claimed "they know everything that's going on." I'm telling you, it's madness. I can only hope he may have been overstating for effect. Then again, that was a really big wall.

Thankfully, it was over shortly after that. The cabbie dropped us off near City Hall with the cheerily expressed hope that we'd enjoyed our little tour. Just bizarre. I'm glad I did it, but wow, I was glad when it was over.

And what else can I say? I wish I could sum up with an eloquent plea for peace in our time, but really all I can think is "Smarten up and get over it."

* Arnie's Backpackers, which was really really excellent, and I'm not just saying that because the Glasgow place was such a horror. Arnie's was the real deal - a small independant hostel that was super friendly, with a comfortable living room, a shared kitchen and a homey dining/common room. There was free tea or coffee whenever you wanted it, and a coal fire Tuesday evening, and a couple of Jack Russell terriers. And they'd do you a load of laundry (wash and tumble dry) for £4, which Arnie donated to charity. The rooms were basic dorms, and the toilets and showers were reasonable, but the real treat was the vibe. It was the kind of place that just made you want to chat with whoever was in the room, which I did, which was great. I even ended up going out on my second night with a new friend from there, and we had a fantastic time at a local pub that was fully equipped with a good live jazz band and hot-and-cold running Guinness. Arnie himself even came to the pub, as did a bunch of other hostel people. And there was dancing. All that for £12/night - a steal. Please let there be more Arnie's in my future.

** Apparently the UVF and the UDA have even feuded among themselves. Insane. And please don't spam me with stuff about the "Provisional IRA" and the "Real IRA" and the UDU and blah blah blah. I'm presenting my own simplified, barely understood version here. I can scarcely grasp the whole thing, so give me a break.