First of all, big apologies again for not writing for so long. No real good excuse except the fact that since the 3 March I really haven't been able to find the time. Bobby arrived in Konstanz on the 3 and stayed till the 10 and the same morning he left I hopped on a plane to Ireland. I've just arrived back at home today so here I am, writing to you good folks and listening to the new Shins album, which, by the by, is the bizz; as Keith would put it. Since my trip to Ireland is still fresh in my mind I will begin with that and then will write later about Bob and our trip to England.
But first things first, Ireland, a small island nation of about 4 million folks, many of them being blue eyed, which I particularly found intriguing. The weather was abysmal to say the least. I've never been colder in my life and the fact that it was sunny, perhaps, fifty percent of the time was irrelevant because it rained even when the sun was out. I was sick for about four of the days, which undoubtedly marred the experience a bit. I blame it on the sudden change in climate. When I left Konstanz, the weather led me to believe that the dog days of winter had past and the mild, warm, days of spring were just around the corner. So you can imagine how shocked, and quite depressed, I was when I stepped off the plane and with one big whiff of the Dublin air, gave myself such a brain freeze that I thought my head would detonate right then and there.
I arrived in Dublin at about 1030 in the morning on the day of Keith’s 21 birthday, which was the sole reason I came to Ireland in the first place. I needed to take a four hour bus ride from Dublin down to Limerick, but it didn’t bother me much as I had both my iPod and a book to fill up my time. As the bus made it’s way southbound towards Limerick, the weather, much like the countryside, began to deteriorate. The landscape around Dublin and much of midland Ireland I found to be very nice. I was especially amazed by the rolling hills which possessed the greenest green I’ve ever seen.
About 2 hours into the trip we stopped at a whole in the wall general store in the middle of what seemed like nowhere, I stayed on the bus because I wasn’t thirsty or hungry and didn’t particularly need to pee, plus braving that frigid air was something I wasn’t very much up for. Everyone piled back onto the bus and I lost my quiet little slice of heaven in the back of the bus when 4 kids joined us in whatever town we had stopped ourselves in. By their accents, I could tell that the kids were Irish Travelers, also known as Knackers, Tinkers, Pavees, among other names. Despite being Irish, they are an actual ethnic group within Ireland with some abnormal ways of living their lives. For the most part, they live in caravans and, aside from being professional thieves, are unemployed. To make a long story very short, from what I‘ve researched about them and from what Keith and Sarah tell me, they are the scummiest people, with whom you will ever be unlucky enough to cross paths. They will steal anything from you that they find particularly worthwhile and, because of their upbringing, are extremely aggressive and brazen, which often characterizes them as notorious quarrelers. I wasn’t particularly afraid of them stealing my stuff, as where were they to go with it, we were stuck in a bus, but, not wanting to have anything to do with them, it made the rest of the trip to Limerick quite disagreeable. There were three girls and a boy in their little group. They didn’t harass anyone, but had quite the little mouths on them.
I arrived in Limerick around four in the afternoon and my first impression of the place was, suffice it to say, unimpressionable. Of course, I’m not sure what I was expecting from a place who’s nickname is Stab City.
Keith and his brother picked me up at the train and drove me through “Stab City” on the way to Keith’s house, which sat about 10 minutes outside of Limerick City itself. I met his family, who were all extremely nice and welcomed me into their home as if I were a part of the family. I owe his mother a debt of gratitude, as she was prepared to help me in anyway possible in order to alleviate the sickness that I would be nagged with during the next four days, but will get to that later.
After dinner, a group of Keith’s friends went out to a pub in Limerick. Knowing we had to meet up with Keith’s parents later at another pub, we didn‘t stay late. We made our way to meet with Keith’s parents and as we walked into the pub, to Keith’s surprise, the back room was filled with his extended family and friends. It was a very nice surprise and Keith looked genuinely astonished and grateful for the surprise party. I met many of Keith’s friends and some more of his family members at the pub. Everyone I met was very nice, but there is a pair of Irish syntactical norms which I found to be quite annoying and almost made it hard to talk to someone for an extended period of time. The words, “like”, or, “d’ya know” are used to add emphasis to something said. For example, “I didn’t want to see the movie, like.“ and, “I hit a lot of traffic getting here, d’ya know.“ and sometimes they’ll even be used together as in, “The place was crowded, like, d’ya know.“ Originating, and most prevalent, in the accents of County Cork and Cork City, this linguistic nuisance has disseminated into other regions of southern Ireland and kept my teeth permanently clinched the entire evening.
Irritating dialect or no, we spent the rest of the night in that pub, until about three in the morning. I myself, had had enough partying by 130 or so and spent the last hour and a half sleeping in a quiet corner of the room. During which time, I was told, there were many funny pictures of me taken. What was I to do, I had been up since 5 o’clock that morning and been through a 6 hour day of traveling to get there, I believed my rest was warranted.
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