In which I catch up, Part I: Amsterdam and Dublin

I haven’t really written in awhile, and don’t really feel like catching up. The thing is, the longer I wait, the less I feel like catching up. I guess that means I ought to write a bit about things I don’t want to forget, eh?

I’m currently sitting in one of the two Mocha Beans in Salthill, drinking tea and listening to Niamh Murphy. My exams are all over, as is my travel, and I’ve spent the last few days catching up on picture-posting and various errands that needed running (including getting a low D whistle, finally! I’ve only been waiting since my birthday last year, but that’s another story…) and reading and sleeping in and going swimming.

The swimming is a new one for me, this semester. I’m trying to get back in the habit so that I can maybe keep it up this summer in Ithaca. At any rate, I’ve been every day for the past four days, and plan to continue going until I leave a week from tomorrow. The pool is in Salthill; there’s one on campus, but they are just as expensive and the Salthill one is nicer and more of a novelty. It’s at “Leisureland” –a complex that also has a fitness center and fair rides (a tiny rollercoaster, a spinning thing, and –temporarily—a Ferris wheel). The pool is 25m, but there is also a small short pool for people doing water walking (erm, under the water!) and a big water slide that is only open at night and kiddie section (that I desperately want to play on but am far too self-conscious to do so on my own!) with a pirate ship and water mushroom things and a tiny water slide…). The name is hokey, but it’s easily accessible and relatively empty (as in, if I get there at the start of adult lap swim I can have my own lane for twenty minutes). The most confusing part of swimming here is the circular swimming in the lap pool…in the US, it is standard to go anti-clockwise (i.e. we swim like we drive, on the right side of the lane). You might think that over here they’d swim on the opposite side, since they drive the opposite side, but you’d be wrong. Instead, they put a sign in front of each lane during lap swim: each lane is labeled slow, medium, or fast, and they alternate in swimming direction. This means that, depending on which lane I’m in at any given time, I have to remember to swim in a different direction. It is very confusing for my poor little pea brain. If I was in the same lane all the time this wouldn’t be a problem, but that isn’t really the case, since I switch lanes depending on how empty the pool is and how many others are (believe it or not) slower than me. Also, there’s this really irritating woman who by all rights should be in the slow lane, but who likes to be in the medium one, even as she mucks about and does dolphin dives (slowwwwwwly) all down the lane. I’m not about to confront her about this, so I waffle back and forth between the slow and medium lanes, depending on who else is in them. I’ve rediscovered just how weak I am, and the places where my arm muscles used to be do not like me very much right now, but it’s good to have some semblance of schedule and it really does feel nice to be back in the water. Also, swim caps are required, which means I’m now the proud owner of a hokey 2-euro “Leisureland” cap. Woo!

So, to start this whole “catching up” thing, I guess I have to go back to…

Amsterdam:

Ages ago, I met Lis and Hallie in Amsterdam. It was fun. The end.

I guess I can elaborate a little more than that! It was back in March, and a quick trip, less “let’s travel!” than a “we want to see a Vienna Teng concert this semester, what’s the nearest she’s playing?” We stayed in a hostel that was a boat, which was pretty cool. Our berth was cozy, barely room for the three beds (two of them were bunked) and with a tiny portal/window, and we couldn’t really feel the boat move at all (the only indication of movement was watching one of the lines outside the portal sway a bit). The location was super handy –a short walking distance from the train station, where we’d all arrived, the concert hall (which we could actually see from our dock), and the bits of Amsterdam worth wandering. Meeting up at the beginning was the only rocky bit; Lis had arrived earlier in the morning, and we’d all planned to meet at the train station when Hallie’s train and my airport-train-shuttle got in at about the same time. Well, Hallie and I found each other, but couldn’t find Lis. After wandering around the station a bit we had her paged (and amazingly they pronounced her name right, even though the woman taking the info from us had a very strong accent and couldn’t pronounce the “W” not as a “V”). Eventually we decided to check at the boat, and luckily she found us there –we hadn’t taken the time change into account when planning to meet.

We didn’t really “do” much in the sense of “traveling to see Things” and “going to Tourist Attractions,” but nevertheless it was a lovely time of wandering and browsing shops and coffee jumping (no, not “coffee shops,” thank you!) and just hanging out. (You can see bits of the wandering in my photos.) My favorite part of Amsterdam was probably just the hanging out in the somewhat classy restaurant in the public library, which was a short walk (across the docks and a bridge) from our boat. It had big glass windows to look out over Oosterdok* (East Dock?) and tall tables with tall stools to perch on and pots of herbs (cooking herbs, not Amsterdam herbs!) on all the tables and in a big lit case of plants in the middle. At any rate, we comfortably spent a good deal of both evenings there.

The concert was on Sunday afternoon (who has concerts on Sunday afternoons?) and was very much worth the trip. For this tour, Vienna brought along Alex Wong (her producer, and a fantastic musician in his own right) and a third musician who very obviously Did Not Know Vienna’s Music and Wanted To Be Playing In A Country Band. Sigh. I suppose I should be charitable, but really. When performers make mistakes, there are several kinds: the ‘whoops, I accidentally missed the note because my finger slipped’ kind, the ‘hah, oops, brain fart!’ kind, the ‘huh. I thought the song went in a different direction right there, I played the wrong bit’ kind, and the ‘whoops, missed accidentals and notes because I’m sight-reading and don’t know the music that well yet’ kind. His were all the latter. Mistakes due to inexperience are excusable, but if you’re on tour with someone you should have at least listened to their music enough to know where the songs go and how to fit within their music. He clearly had not. [/end rant]. Aside from his playing, the concert was really, really good, and the venue (Bimhuis) was similarly small and personal and I highly recommend seeing a concert there if you ever happen to be in Amsterdam (their line-up was really good, and if it was closer and cheaper I would have loved to go back and see The Bad Plus later in the semester…).

Dublin and Padds:

Lis flew back to Ireland with me on Monday morning, and we spent the afternoon and most of the next day (St. Patty’s Day!) in Dublin. I only have pictures from the first half of this bit; all my pictures from the parade were eaten by the luminiferous ether** when I moved them to my computer (note: pay close attention to computer notifications when you’re dealing with photos; they probably say important things like “are you SURE you want me to delete half your pictures?”). Ah well.

Dublin. Much smaller than I’d anticipated; I hadn’t realized that it was so walkable. And walk we did! We went exploring and saw the GPO (which had no front steps? huh?) and Trinity College (where we accidentally followed around some guy with massive audio recording equipment, apparently recording ambient noise at various locations around campus) and ended up in the Temple Bar district, where we had a drink and people-watched and listened to some fairly awful music played by some fairly drunk house musicians and enjoyed by some fairly drunk foreigners. A good time!

We stayed in a B&B/hotel place extremely close to O’Connell street; lucky, given that we’d made reservations all of three days before, and it was the night before St. Patty’s! After the (somewhat cramped and much in-demand) shower on the boat in Amsterdam a Real Quality Shower was a relief, but we did not take advantage of the trouser-press. (What is it with Irish hotels and trouser presses? I’ve never seen them in the US…)

The next morning we set off to wander Dublin a bit more before the parade. The place was quickly filling up with people lining the parade route, and when I say “people” I don’t mean “Irish people,” I mean “non-Irish people.” Seriously, the only other place here where I’ve seen a higher foreigner to Irish ratio was the international student orientation on the first day! Most were decked out in green hats (Leprechaun and Viking) and flags and green face paint; there were stands all selling all the stuff. Were the stands owned by Irish? For the most part, nope! We searched out (but couldn’t go inside) Christchurch Cathedral (because that’s where Artemis Fowl’s parents were married! Book-nerds, what?) and then fought for places to stand outside the bank, across from the Trinity entrance. After a foiled attempt to meet up with a friend from choir who was also in Dublin, we then proceeded to wait (and wait and wait) for the parade. The waiting took forever.

The parade itself was a mixed bag. It kind of sort of had a “flight” theme, although we couldn’t figure out why, and the “floats” were mostly groups of dancing people in really exquisite costumes: some were obviously birds, some were bird-like, and some were just fantastical beings in pretty colors. My favorite float (which I can’t show you because these are all the pictures that disappeared!) was this huge metal dragon, but there were also some pretty awesome Lion King-esque costumes. There were marching bands, too –and not particularly high quality ones at that. The best one was Scottish, but the rest (save one) were American high schools. I’m not quite sure why. They definitely weren’t picked on skill –sloppy, out of step, and look at the angles of those flutes! Hah. (Plainwell’s band would have looked pretty good in comparison…) I was somewhat confused; the parade is a point of pride for Dublin (even if it’s people go home to their local communities for the local parades) and the costumes were quite high quality, so what was with the music? The other odd thing about it was that it just ended. It had been pretty well spaced out all along, so it was hard to tell what was the end, and it took everyone around us awhile to realize that the group of uncostumed people marching along weren’t, in fact, parade marchers but regular spectators like themselves. You can see other people’s pictures of the parade here, if you want: http://www.irishtimes.com/indepth/slideshows/patricks-day-2009/

Getting back to the hotel was another matter entirely –I’m not sure I’ve ever been part of such a huge group of people. They herded us (like cows!) down some back smaller roads and eventually we made it back to the center of town. We met up with some of Lis’s Oxford folk briefly –they’d been in town since the night before, but we hadn’t realized it—and then hopped a (three hour) bus back to Galway. In the evening we met Alex (aka Wellesley; look, Alex, you finally rate your real name! :) ) and another girl at the Roisín. Galway was trashed…I couldn’t believe how much garbage was everywhere, and how many cans/bottles were piled up next to the garbage cans. Ridiculous!

I hereby determine this post to be long enough. Coming up next: London and Beyond!

*I may have made a nuisance of myself by saying Oosterdok repeatedly…it’s a fun word! Try it! Say it out loud, right now! Stretch out the “ooh” sound and say it in a monotone

**Luminiferous ether has to be blamable for SOMETHING!