Galway, Ireland

Irishmen totally love to trick people. They’re pranksters, the lot of them. Three of them spent like 25 minutes discussing the “leprechaun problem”. When I told them it sounded like they were oppressing a minority population, each of them chimed in, without skipping a beat, that I “just don’t get it.” They all love calling me “American,” against my wildest protests. They call their behaviour craic, a ‘being Irish’ of sorts that’s similar to the Israeli pride and attitude I’m familiar with, and it consists of being a total joker and causing mischief at every moment.

Galway is loaded with several times the amount of craic Dublin has. Where Dublin is Ireland’s metropolis, Galway is the stereotypically jovial little brother you envision when you close your eyes and think of the country. Buskers line the cobblestone streets and the whole place just feels quaint. Though only a town of 70 000, it’s still the third largest city in Ireland. Bounded by the west coast, it’s the home to many tourist attractions and natural wonders… such as the cliffs of Moher:

Surrounding Galway is what’s known as the Barren – a string of never-ending rolling hills made entirely of limestone. If you didn’t know (I didn’t), limestone is extremely permeable to water. In the cold winter months, any water absorbed in the rock freezes, expands, and splits the rock into smaller pieces:

Thus, these mountains, from the wear and tear of thousands of winters, have turned into thousands of smaller stones which make up a beautiful landscape:

 
Galway had  much more to offer than plain tourist attractions, however – the pub scene is brilliant. (Did I used to say ‘brilliant’ before I left home? It’s so hard not to get swept up in their madness here…) I don’t mean we partied hard and drank harder than in Dublin – it’s just a different atmosphere. There’s live traditional Irish music everywhere, often lead by patrons who’ve brought their tin whistle or fiddle to the bar:

Even more incredible is when one of the other patrons decides to sing. Someone just gets a feeling, stands up, and starts singing a song. It’s amazing how immediately people around them react to it, shushing people around them until the entire bar is silent. And this happens all the time, maybe twice or three times an hour! It’s very similar to how the tamtams self-organize on Sunday mornings at Mount Royal park, and it really does reaffirm to me that music is a universal language.

When I first got into London or Dublin, the first question I asked was, “where is the best meal I can get around here? Which place has the best Irish Stew?” My question has always been met with confusion.  I now realize that this is a very Montrealer (Canadian?) kind of question. We’re very obsessed with the “best” smoked meat (Schwarts’z), the “best” midnight poutine (La Banquise), the “best” shish taouk (Boustan)… but this mentality apparently doesn’t leave Montreal. And… to be honest, that’s kind of disappointing, because one of the things I wanted to find on this trek was more delicious food (as if we’ve exhausted all of the ones in Montreal).

What I have found (so far)  is this traditional music scene. So, fine, nobody in Ireland knows where to get a good burger – but everyone knows which pub has the best music. These gems can be found, you just have to know how to ask the right questions.

Another interesting thing to note is that I’ve stopped buying fast food. I thought I was being frugal by eating for 5 Euros a day, but I was just putting crap in my body. (Even Subway is crap if it’s all you eat!) So I went to the supermarket and bought a loaf of bread, a bag of potatoes and a dozen hot dogs. It now only costs me like 80 cents a meal, cutting my cost by another third! The only thing that sucks is that I’m going to get sick of eating the same thing every day, but if you’re lucky, people will trade food with you. Some guy traded a hamburger steak for 35 cents worth of potatoes! I had myself a feast!
It’s also forcing me to learn how to cook, but the guys living here all have experience and cool tricks to make a quick meal!

There were other tours, and actually so much more to see. It’s interesting that I never heard of any of these places until Phil told me of them on the plane. (Thanks Phil!) If I could do it again, I’d have spent 5 days in Galway and 2 in Dublin, instead of vice versa! This city has really taught me to go with your gut and see smaller unknown towns instead of sticking to the metropolises.

Now it’s time for…. IRISHISMS!!?? (This needs a more evident title. How about:)

IRISHISMs

They have self-serve beer taps, with a digital display all over the place:

Pear flavoured cider:

Right now, I’m no the train towards Dublin for a few days to spend St. Patrick’s day. Ankita’s cousin Apratim will be joining me, and hopefully we’ll make our way to Belfast for a day or two to see what (British / Protestant) Northern Ireland is like. I’m supposed to land in Paris on this Saturday (the 20th).

Dublin, Ireland

You may or may not know this, but when I first conceived of this Eurotrip, I had originally planned to stay in Dublin for a year. Something about the pub scene and how jovial leprechauns always seemed to be  must have had something to do with it. This should hopefully convey to you how anticipated this part of my trip was for me, and how genuinely excited  I was about coming here.

I flew on budget airline Ryanair. If you book it early enough (and fly to their few select destinations) a flight can cost as little as $30! That’s why they do everything in their power to squeeze another buck from you. They don’t serve a meal and hand out

Apparently I like profiling my flight mates, so this time I sat to this guy Phil, who turned out to be pretty awesome! We chatted the whole flight through, and he eventually treated me to the cab ride home! (We were going the same way anyway, apparently…) He works in IT in some odd gambling website (the equivalent of which is illegal in North America, but awesome elsewhere in the world.)

In Dublin I stayed in my first hostel. Turns out I was way over-anxios about the whole ordeal. It’s right in the middle of the citycenter (in Europe it’s not called “down town” like it is in Montreal).

I actually feel very homesick here. It reminds me a lot of Montreal – People look more like Montrealers here than Londoners do. Also, this is the first time I’m actually by myself, without Tara or Julien or anybody familiar. You wake up in the morning, walk around town, and then having nothing to do for the rest of the day.

Here’s an odd thought: people told me London would be very cold, but it was actually much warmer than Montreal. So was Coventry. From there,  I was told Dublin would be colder, but it’s even warmer. This is making me worry about Paris and Spain… Also, it hasn’t even drizzled once since I left home 13 days ago. I thought it always rained in England…

Talking with Phil, I realized that Ireland is the Canada of England. Many Irishmen seem to agree with my analogy. Think about it – they are the less populated, more polite little brother to the north with a slightly less valuable currency and a self-esteem problem. England and the US are both at the forefront of the world news and politics, whereas Canada and Ireland kinda just sit back. Ireland also had a an odd tense cultural environment (due to campaigns by organizations with Three-letter acronym), resulting in a significant portion of the population having a different cultural identity. I know I’m really stretching it, but the available parallels are quite impressive nonetheless.

Odd Irishism: men here tend to shave their head much more. I haven’t seen any balding men, only completely bald ones. I have also seen one (total: 1) asian person.

Quick one: Guinness actually tastes way better here.

Here’s another: if you ask for the time and it’s around 1:30, people call it “half one”. Extremely confusing the first few times.

Another: there are switches on the power outlets here. You can plug in your laptop, and then it’ll die half an hour later, and you’ll just sit there wondering what the hell happened.

One last one: everything around here happens in a pub. You eat lunch there, you bring your kids there for dinner. It’s weird. This was the case in England, but it’s worse in Ireland.

While we’re on the topic of drinking in Ireland, I have to share the experience of my birthday. There was this big rugby game, so I hop into a pub and meet some friendly people. We eat, drink, be merry. And then they drink more. Then some more. At a certain point, I’m feeling way too buzzed for 5:30 in the afternoon, so I start drinking water, and they mock me for it. Then they drink another few drinks – and they don’t look the slightest bit tipsy. Meanwhile, I’m falling over, but I swear each one of them had at least 3 times what I had to drink! I’m talking young adults and middle-aged men and women.

Photo time!

The Spire of Dublin:

I couldn’t not share this with you:

Dublin Bixis!

Birds have no respect for public property:
 

This also makes no sense:

My next stop is Galway, on the west coast of Ireland. I’ve been here days already and it’s awesome. Post to come tomorrow.

London, UK

I just landed in Dublin a couple of hours ago. I’ve already checked into my hostel, and decided to go for a walk. I haven’t really discussed my stay in London though, so I’ll go ahead and do that now, and I’ll catch you up on Ireland later. Before I say anything else, though, I wanted to show you this:

This is the view I have from where I’m sitting while I’m typing this at the moment. With the help of a handful of (oddly, Canadian) tourists, I came upon this lovely park (St. Stephen’s Green), and am enjoying the cool spring air while I type on my netbook. (To be honest, I’m pretty exhausted, and this is entertaining enough to keep me up but relaxing enough that I can actually do it.)

So, yeah, London has turned out to be like New York city, in that you can say you’re from there but you actually live an hour or so away. My initial impressions were of the “Manhattan” of London, if you will, as I tubed (that’s what Brits call the metro) in for a day and then back out to Coventry. Living in Kingston upon Thames, however, has given me a real perspective on the size of the city.

My hosts were Julien and Gus. Here they are standing in front of the Big Ben not wearing any pants:
 

They were incredibly resourceful and fun. They spent a day sight-seeing with me. Together, we saw:

The London Eye (We actually, quite coincidentally, in fact, arrived on the Eye’s 10 year anniversary day!)

Buckingham Palace

Here’s a photo of me standing beside one of those famous guards who are forced to look forwards in those commercials. (I was actually too afraid to step too close because I didn’t know where “the personal bubble” began on an inanimate person.)
 

Oh, here’s one I’m most excited about – Me trying to re-enact the Abbey Road album cover:

I know the photo isn’t very good, but the battery died for good right after this shot, so there were no retakes.

For the sciency folk in the audience, Julien came with me to the Science museum, and, though we were only there for a short time, I got to see a whole bunch of awesome stuff – Faraday’s magnet and coil; Edison’s light bulb; Joule’s heat experiment apparatus; Roentgen’s x-ray tube. J. J. Thompson’s original cathode ray tube should have been there, but it was at another exhibit when I went. I also saw some old-school computers from the ‘60s and ‘70s, but I can’t remember their names of the top of my head.

Another odd quirk (Britishism, or, reverse-Americanism) that differentiates Canada from the UK is their coke bottles:

Why don’t they have those odd curves our bottles do?

Also, squirrels and pigeons seem to be much friendlier in London than in Montreal:


Actually, even right now a whole bunch of them (like seven?) are walking around me, cooing, completely unthreatened by my furious typing.

If I had to summarize what I feel I’ve learned from these first two legs of my trip, it’s that North America isn’t as big a part of the game as we feel it is – Canada is so US-obsessed all the time, we feel (or, at the very least, I know I do) that they dominate the world, but in fact we’re very much on the sidelines. They have gossip rags with celebrities I’ve never heard of, they really don’t care about our music scene, and everyone here seems to have been everywhere in Europe already. Think about how exotic a trip to Spain sounds. For a $1200, 7 hour flight, you wouldn’t be wrong in feeling it was uncommon, but people around here can fly there for a few hundred dollars. You can spend a weekend in Dublin or Prague on any given week, if you like. The world feels much smaller around here; different foods, music and cultures clash and it’s not that uncommon to meet someone from another country that we don’t hear from as much in Montreal.

People here also have no idea where Montreal is. The first thing I said on the first day was that they don’t care about hockey (go Habs! 4 out of 5, nice!) or the olympics, but the fact of the matter is that it seems we don’t really factor into their everyday life much at all. The US is merely a nuisance that controls the internet, and Canada is a mere afterthought, if given any thought at all.

At least, that’s how it feels for now. I’m going to snap this thing shut and go for a walk now. :)

Birmingham, UK / Last night in Coventry

Two days ago I rounded up my stay at Coventry with a visit to Birmingham. My friendly and hospitable Indian hostesses showed me around, and we did some quick shopping. Apparently, you can’t get a copy of Settlers anywhere, though.

Here are some shots of the city. There isn’t much to differentiate it from the pictures I put up of London last week (although, to be honest, we spent 2 of the 3 hours we were in town at the pub…)

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I’d like to take this moment to thank Tara and Ankita for being so wonderful to me last week. They were incredibly welcoming, and really treated me like I was part of the family. They also introduced me to the best baklava I’ve ever had in my life.

So thank you, ladies. I owe you one:

Here’s one last Britishism:

Fish and Chips! This slab of fish is ginormous, btw. My hand’s in there to give you a sense of scale.

Following this will be a post about my few days in London proper. I have taken quite a few good pictures with my new hosts Julien and Gus.

What Coventry is good for…

I’m going to start this post with a video I took in London that I forgot to upload to the last post. It’s just people walking in a really busy intersection, but I tried to capture how busy the streets were for a Tuesday evening:

While we’re at it, here’s another of a funky light-bright-crosswalk-thing they have all over the place. Again, my awesome hostess, Tara, provides comic relief:

Anyhow, I thought I’d spend some time discussing how awesome Coventry turned out to be. There are two universities flanking our apartment, so much of the population (of over 300 000) is roughly my age.   

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There is also a famous cathedral. This cathedral is best known for being mostly destroyed in a bombing during the second world war (and of being completely rebuilt later on). After seeing the cathedral today, I thought I’d share some pictures I took! That is, that was the plan, until I saw that most of them were posted on the link its page on wikipedia, taken by photographers far more talented than I.

A picture they failed to post, however, is one of the pipe organ inside. This thing is really wicked. I got to speak to the organist who was playing it:

He explained to me that this organ was actually fitted to the cathedral as it was being built, as opposed to most others which are added afterwards. Here is a picture of one of the columns of pipes. (There’s a matching other one on the other side of the gigantic tapestry to the right):

Coventry is also well known for being where Lady Godiva rode naked on her horse. Yea, this Lady Godiva:

Coventry is also the origin of the term “Peeping Tom”. Here is a statue dedicated to him, staring at Godiva through the windows behind her:

All right, back to our regular scheduled programming of slightly odd, yet comical, British stuff:

Forget Dollarama. Here in England we have Poundland!!

Red telephone booths!!! (Don’t ask what’s posted inside! :o)

What I had for lunch today – a chicken sandwich from the dollar store… I mean, Poundland.

In other news, at the Poundland, I bought that razor and that toothpaste I needed. I also got ahold of a cheap umbrella. I don’t know when I’ll use it – it’s been so bloody sunny this whole week. (Still kinda chilly, for the record.)

I’ve also booked some transport – I’ll be catching a bus to London on Monday, and then a flight to Dublin next Friday. Keep your eyes peeled.

First time in London

Before I begin describing the day (in a friendly pictorial format!) I wanted to mention that I sat beside an interesting person on the planeride over here. Her name is Pam Robertshaw, and she’s from Oxford. Here’s Pam:

Pam was a nurse who took part of the relief effort in Haiti, and was flying home to the UK. She was also extremely friendly and gave me a well-needed tylenol when I had a splitting head ache during the flight. (I also think she’ll kill me for posting this image online.)

 

Anyhow, back to London:

I still can’t get used to the prices here. I keep thinking things like “3$? That’s so cheap!! Oh.. wait…” It doesn’t help that British coins look exactly like Canadian coins, down to the Queen and everything…

Here’s a partial list of things I’ve realized that I’ve forgotten at home:

• Toothpaste (though I packed a toothbrush)
• A razor (though I packed shaving cream)

Thankfully, each of my socks have pairs, and I didn’t forget any of the plugs to any of the electronics I’ve brought.

Also, I’m fairly certain the GPS I bought (with the “Europe City Navigator” pack I bought) does not work. I’m not quite sure, yet, but further testing will determine this.

On with the photos and slightly comical commentary (click to embiggen):

Double Decker Bus!!

How I Met Your Mother!! (Goliath National Baaaaaaaaaank)

Tara and I waiting for the train

 
An ad that apparently doesn’t get its audience…

 
Many curbs in London have this spray-painted on the ground to remind you that their streets are ass-backwards.

Most of the buildings in London look like old Montreal on steroids. They’re also very clean. Probably because the rain keeps falling and constantly washing everything…?

This one’s for dad…

 
Wtf kind of flavours are these? Also, are these supposed to be Lay’s?

 
This city really is gorgeous. Every single street looks like this!

and last but not least:

I couldn’t help but share this. For the record, there was nothing but a pub named “City of Quebec” down this road.

Well, goodnight blog-people. That is all for today. Tomorrow’s a resting day – I’ll catch up on some e-mail, do some further planning, and maybe catch some more rest. Also, it took longer than I thought to put these pictures up. I don’t know if it’s worth it to keep documenting the trip like this. What do you guys think? Room for comments below!

PS: After being the last guy to get on board on both of my planes, I finally missed a train today. (Actually not my fault.) I thought you guys would enjoy that…