A Day in Sunny Dún Laoghaire

Elise is here! It’s “Reading Week” now, a time midway through the semester when there are no classes so you have time to catch up on your studies. I, on the other hand, have interpreted it as “spring break” and the ideal time for my college roommate to come for a visit and explore more of this country’s great beauty with me!

Elise left snowy Iowa and landed in sunny Dublin early this morning ready to see the sites, but I just couldn’t stand to spend such a gorgeous day touring the insides of museums, so after a lovely breakfast at my local café, Cinnamon, we decided to let the museums wait a day and made our way instead to Dún Laoghaire, a port town on the south side of Dublin Bay.














We took a leisurely stroll in to town through St. Stephen’s Green, and had our cameras ready to capture the sites: the Molly Malone statue, buskers (musicians playing) on Grafton Street as leprechauns wandered by soliciting donations to their pots of gold, and through Trinity’s main square with a brief detour through the Book of Kells and old library before arriving at Pearse Station to catch the Dart train to the seaside.











With such a pleasant day, we spent most of our time in Dún Laoghaire strolling along the promenade, catching up on the news back home, and eating ice cream from Teddy’s, the local establishment, because it was a sunny day in February and we could.











We even caught sight of a few brave souls scuba diving in wetsuits, and bravest (craziest?) wetsuit-free, swimming around the historic Forty Foot beach, once a ‘Gentleman’s bathing place’ (read: nude beach), but now co-ed and (somewhat) clothed.











The jetlag set in about mid-afternoon for Elise, and I was a bit tired from our class potluck the night before* so we headed back to the house for dinner and a movie and to plot our next adventures. [*Sidebar: my apple-snicker side salad was a hit, though certain of my classmates questioned calling my creation a ‘salad’ when to them anything involving whipped cream and a candybar was clearly a dessert, apple or not…we agreed to disagree.]

We have a full week ahead of us, continuing first thing tomorrow morning. Check back for posts on some more of Dublin’s tourist highlights and few day trips around the island (and possibly off it!).

You can keep your traveling pants, I have traveling genes

So as I mentioned in my last post, I received some surprise visitors this week! Grandma and Grandpa Tobin have been touring about Mediterranean Europe for the past week with my cousins and had a few days of rest and relaxation planned in Zug, Switzerland, before returning home to the US, but decided last-minute that they had enough energy to visit me in ‘the homeland’ afterall. We'd decided in January that fitting in a trip to Dublin seemed like a little much for them at 78 and 80 years old, but they haven't let their ages slow them down yet and they weren't about to start now - and I'm all the luckier for it.

They arrived on Ash Wednesday, so our first stop was the airport chapel before making our way in to town to get settled into the hotel and find some lunch – a nice Irish potato and leek soup with brown bread gave us some energy to head on over to Trinity College for the afternoon where we walked around the main square and toured the Book of Kells and the Long Room, Trinity’s old library, which always reminds me of the library from Beauty and the Beast.

That evening was the highlight of the trip for me, as I got to take my grandparents to the Rotary meeting and introduce them around to the people who’ve been so hospitable and supportive to me this year. It was the perfect night for them to visit as a fellow Ambassadorial Scholar, Kate Goodrich (pictured), was presenting to the club on Texan culture (quite distinct from Iowan, I must say), so they got a taste of what I do as I visit the clubs around Ireland, and I was so thrilled that so many members were in attendance, including a few spouses as well. Once Kate finished her presentation and answered a few pointed questions about Texan-American views and culture, we all went to a nice dinner afterward to continue the conversations.

We had decided over tea earlier in the afternoon that rather than taking spending the next day on a bus trip elsewhere in Ireland, which could make for a long day of travel, Grandma and Grandpa would prefer to stay in Dublin and maybe visit the village where I live and see a few sights they hadn’t seen on previous visits, possibly even catch a movie at the Jameson International Film Festival that was on since they’d traveled around Ireland a few times before (most recently in 2010 when my cousin Zachary studied abroad in Cork) and besides, they never really had time to make it to the movies since there’s no cinema in the rural Iowa town where they live.

But sure enough, the spirit of adventure caught up to them and by the end of dinner as I walked them back towards their hotel, Grandpa turned to me and asked, “Is it true that Belfast is only 2 hours away from here? Boy I’d sure like to see it – we’ve never been able to go up North before.” So the next morning we slept in a bit and then caught a bus up to Belfast for the day where we sipped tea in the Europa Hotel (“the most bombed hotel in Europe,” having survived 28 attacks during the Troubles), took a bus tour past the top sight-seeing spots including the docks where the Titanic was first launched, the “peace wall” that separates neighborhoods that have historically been in conflict, the murals on Falls and Shankill Roads (pictured), and the Queens University campus where I might have studied if the Rotary Foundation had so decided. We wrapped up the trip with a visit to the Crown Bar on Great Victoria Street, which prides itself on retaining “an indelible flavour of yesteryear” where “there are no strangers, only friends who have yet to meet,” and as it turns out, we found that to be true.

The pub is an old Victorian with short walls surrounding the cozy booths, or ‘snugs.’ Since it was already busy when we arrived, one couple agreed to share their booth with us and we struck up a lively conversation with an Irish journalist ranging from his experiences serving in the Irish Defense Forces and his visit to Guantanamo Bay to cover a story in 2005 to the prices of farmland in Ireland and Iowa, to my proposed thesis topic on whether reintegrating former combatants into post-conflict societies as tour guides of conflict sites fosters reconciliation or keeps the conflicts and divides of the past alive. We had to cut the conversation short to catch our bus back to Dublin, but I hope to continue it another time.

Back in Dublin, we had dinner and listened to some live ‘trad’ – traditional Irish music – before cal ling it a very full day and quite a full trip for just two days. After a final leisurely breakfast, we said our ‘until we meet agains’ at the airport this morning, Grandma and Grandpa returned to Switzerland for the rest of their vacation, and I’m off to class and a potluck with my classmates tonight before I return to the airport tomorrow morning to pick up college roommate Elise for a weeklong visit over my spring break! More posts about our tour of the Irish countryside to come – stay tuned!

Carnival in Cologne

The year I moved out of my family home to start university, my family got a new addition: Katharina Jenni, an exchange student from Essen, Germany joined our family for the year to learn English and American culture, and of course we got a few lessons in German culture and festivals as well. So after hearing all the rave reviews of the German version of Mardi Gras, Carnival, in Cologne, my sister Helen and I wanted to go check it out for ourselves.

I arrived on Saturday morning, passport in hand. I consider myself a fairly experienced traveler, but sometimes it’s the simplest things that escape me…such as the most important of travel documents that remained hidden in my room as I took off for the airport at 4am. Thank goodness for the local cab driver who knew how to avoid the after-closing-time traffic as he drove me back home and into the city again, allowing me to catch the airport bus with plenty of time to spare and make my flight without a problem (well, once I convinced the airport security that my glasses case was not filled with liquid as their x-rays seemed to indicate).

So it was a relief when I arrived on Saturday morning, and my lovely sisters picked me up with coffee in hand. We went back to the house to drop off my bags and then headed into Essen to do a bit of shopping and catch up over lunch at Vapiano’s (one of Katharina’s favorite restaurants here, which also happens to be one of mine in DC). It was there that not one, but two dogs joined in the dining experience at the next tables over. To Helen and I, this was a bit mind-boggling as I’m pretty sure it’s against the health code in most restaurants in the US to have dogs sitting below the tables, and just unpleasant to have them yapping back and forth, but it’s apparently not that uncommon here. We also discovered later in the weekend that not all bars are smoke-free. It’s been a while since I’ve come home so smoky, but it was Katharina’s favorite place and I can see why, but I do like my smoke-free restaurants and bars in Iowa and DC.

On Sunday after a delicious breakfast of Nutella (I forgot how tasty that stuff is!), we visited a really cool photography exhibit inside the Gasometer Oberhausen called “Magische Orte” that featured photos of magic of the natural world in its own right as well as some man-made wonders of the world. We also rode the elevator (lift) to the top and had a lovely view of the city and the river with it’s frozen pieces of ice – it was a cold one, but the sun felt nice on my shoulders.


Then we warmed up back at the house with a delicious German meal of meat (there isn’t really a good English translation), potatoes and sauerkraut that Katharina’s mom made for us, and some chocolate cupcakes that we had made the night before – with lovely “schokoladedekorhartzen” (sprinkles) on top. Ask Helen for the pronunciation of the word, she had some fun with it.

But Monday was really the main event (a surprise to me since we celebrate Mardi Gras on Tuesday in the US, but Germans also open presents on Christmas Eve rather than Christmas Day, so I suppose I shouldn’t have been too surprised about the jump start). We got up early and dressed in costume, and all five of us (parents included) piled into the car to drive to Cologne. We parked a bit outside the city center, put the final touches on our costumes: two hippies, Little Red Riding Hood, a peacock, and an Eskimo, and boarded the tram along with Superman, a couple of polar bears, and any number of other unidentifiable but sufficiently wacky costumes.

We strolled through town a bit taking in the sights, then found a nice spot with plenty of room to view the parade, and the Jennis all refreshed our memories of how to interact with those parading through the streets: when they say “Kolle,” we say “Alaaf,” and you can ask them for “kamelle” (candy) or “strussia” (flowers) – but fair warning, if the men give you flowers, they expect a “butzien” (kiss) in return [Note: spellings are approximate].

We were surrounded by people of all ages from the 3 year old in the helmet to my right to the college kids that started off behind us but somehow ended up in the front row during “butzien” time to the middle aged couple to my left, and the paraders ranged from very young to very old as well. It wasn’t long before I found out why the kid was wearing the helmet – the candy bars they throw are legit! I’m used to fun-sized parade candy or the occasional full-sized candy bar, but at Carnival, the full-sized candy bar seems to be the norm and you’ll even get a mega-candy bar or a full pack of cookies here and there – helmets were definitely a good idea.


All in all, people were cheery and out for a good time. At the point when I was expecting the parade to wind down (maybe 90 minutes in), Katharina told me we had just seen float 20 of 40! My toes were in need of some warmth at that point, so we stepped in to an adjacent restaurant for some coffee before calling it a day and heading home. But the whole experience was just fantastic and even the photos I’m posting don’t do it justice – if you have a chance, it’s definitely worth a visit, and I for one, hope to do so very soon.

We wrapped up today (Tuesday) with Katharina and I teaching Helen how to drive a stick-shift car on Idiot’s Hill. While I’d love to credit the back-seat instruction, she’s a quick learner and had it down within the hour. Granted, she already knew how to drive automatic transmission, but still, I walked away without even a hint of whiplash, and then Katharina took the wheel again to head over to Dusseldorf for lunch and stroll through town before Helen and I headed back to our respective homes in the British Isles, ready to take on the next adventure: Grandma and Grandpa Tobin planned a surprise visit to Dublin and arrive in the morning!!