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!