Independence Days

On Saturday, July 7th, we gathered with some friends to celebrate Independence Day! Since we couldn't really celebrate the day of American Independence on the 4th, our American friends and a few other non-American friends who have lived in America gathered on a hill overlooking the town of Kappelrodek (about 20 minutes south of us) to do a good ol' American barbeque!

Here's our view of Kappelrodek from our grill site:



A chapel dedicated to men from the area who died in the World Wars, just up from our grill site:



Karl was our Grillmeister:







The following Saturday, July 14th, was an important holiday next door in France. Karl and I decided to spend part of our day in Strasbourg, France, to help celebrate Bastille Day. The storming of the Bastille prison in Paris on July 14, 1789, is considered the beginning of the French Revolution as the people fought to create a democracy and the date now commemorates the beginning of modern France.



The Strasbourg Cathedral:









We also wandered through an old and quaint neighborhood of Strasbourg known as "Petite France":







It was fun to celebrate the struggle for democracy for two countries this month!

Grüße aus...Ireland! Part III: The Blasket Islands

About half-way through my day bicycling through Dingle I got off the bike and took a ferry off the Irish mainland to the Great Blasket Island.

I didn't know much about this island before visiting it. After exploring it I took the ferry back to the mainland where I visited the Great Blasket Centre, a heritage center all about life on these islands. I left knowing so much more and with a huge appreciation and respect for the people who use to live on these islands.

The Blasket Islands are a small group of six islands just off the Dingle Peninsula. The Great Blasket Island is the largest and is surrounded by the small islands of Tuaisceart, Tearacht, Inis na Bro, Inishvickillaune, and Beiginis. A village was established on one end of the Great Blasket, and a few people lived on the smaller islands on and off over the years.



No one is sure how long ago the first settlers came to the island. There may have been Celtic and early Christian inhabitors. The first mention of a settlement there in recorded history is in 1736, though legend says there was a castle there in the middle ages.

During the Great Potato Famine in the 1840s and 1850s, the people of the Great Blasket survived relatively well. They actually had other resources to fall back on after the failure of the potato crops and the luck of a few different shipwrecks not far from the island provided them with more food and supplies.

Life on the Great Blasket was not easy. At its height, the island only had a population of 176. They had no church, no graveyard, and no doctor, so each Sunday they would row to the mainland to go to church services and would need to row to the mainland to fetch a doctor or bury their dead. That is...if there was good weather. Bad weather could keep them bound to their island for days or even weeks at a time.

After World War I (when its population reached its height), the population began to dwindle until only 23 people were left on the island by the beginning of the 1950s. At one point in this time a young man lay dying for days on the island and bad weather prevented the villigers from going to the mainland for a doctor. When the man died, weather again prevented them from being able to take the body to the mainland to be buried. This difficult experience combined with their dwindling population, finally led them to the decision to leave the island. In 1953 the island was evacuated and the government helped in rehousing them on the mainland. So now the homes they left behind are in ruins.



Ireland is working on making the island into a National Park or a World Heritage Site or at least setting up some conservation and minimun development guidelines...but apparently there are a lot of legalities to work out before that can happen. But the island is open for visitors like me to explore amongst the sheep, rabbits and other animals left grazing the island (their owners live on the mainland) and the only other overnight guests are a few campers.

The Great Blasket Island was incredible. I only spent about an hour walking around the ruins of the village, but I wished I had had all day to explore it.



"On a green grassy bank I rested
There a panorama for the eyes
I sat by beauty's spells invested
Spells of birdsong and sea-washed isles."
-Micheal O'Guiheen, A beautiful morning

During my visit in Dublin, I learned that in the 19th century, the Irish began to see the western regions of their island as the "real" Ireland. The Wild Irish West was romanticized. But while the landscape was incredibly beautiful, and while life here must have been simple it certainly would not have been easy. The homes on the Great Blasket are all clustered relatively close together on the eastern end of the island where there is the most protection from ocean winds and where the view of the mainland would have been at least a psychological comfort. There is really no level ground, the island is a large hump rising out of the ocean and you're constantly walking on a slope. And I realized shortly after my arrival that the constant roaring of the ocean waves would have been just that...constant. It's hard to imagine what life on this island really must have been like...how difficult it must have been.

Although a lot of past outsiders have characterized the islanders as "squatters whoe exceeded all others in poverty, misery and lawlessness" (T.F. O'Sullivan, Romantic Hidden Kerry, 1931), those who knew the islanders more intimately saw past their roughness and described them as some of the best Ireland had to offer: "Quiet, honest, warm-hearted, hospitable folk they are, and the stranger will find friendship and kindliness - if not, when the fault's in himself" (Pieg Sayers, An Old Woman's Reflections, 1962 ).

"I shall have eternal life
Though a white shroud my body cages
Only my corpse lies in the grave
But my voice shall flower throughout the ages."
-Micheal O'Guiheen, My spirit in a book shall live

Their life wasn't pure survival. I learned that some of Ireland's great literature has come from the Great Blasket. When scholars of Irish culture and language came to Dingle in the 1920s and 1930s, they discovered a rich oral history in the village on the Great Blasket. Between the years of 1929 to 1935 the three best known Blasket writers published their best known books: The Islandman by Tomas O Criomhthain, Peig by Peig Sayers and Twenty Years A-Growing by Maurice O'Sullivan. All three books tell about the personal life of the author and stories of what life on the island was like. Several other books and poems by other islanders followed...all in the Irish language. It's one of the remarkable aspects of the Blasket Islands that such an Irish literary treasure has come from this tiny island. (All the poem quotations that I've been using in this post and my last Dingle post came from the book I bought in Dingle: Poets and Poetry of the Great Blasket.)

I spent my final day in Dingle quiet and restful from the marathon of the day before. I slept in, returned my rented bike, read more James Joyce, wandered around Dingle shopping at the tourist shops and ate gourmet ice cream at Murphey's Ice Cream shop (this was a yummy flavor: Strawberry with Sage!). The next morning I took the bus back to Tralee and the train back to Dublin to catch my flight home that evening.

I loved my time in Ireland. I found Ireland to be like comfort food: nothing flashy...only the cozy comfort of wool, pubs, books, good music and green hills. As the plane landed, I was surprised to find that the Black Forest outside my window just wasn't quite as beautiful as it looked before I went to Ireland. I think the beauty of Dingle and Blasket has spoiled me for life.

Look at all my Blasket photos here.

Grüße aus...Ireland! Part II: Dingle

On June 22nd I made my way from Dublin to Dingle! The train ride through the Irish country side was lovely: lots of cows, lots of sheep and lots of green.

Dingle is a peninsula on the southern west coast of the island. It is located in one of Ireland's Gaeltacht regions. These are regions where the Irish language and culture are protected by the government. For many people in these regions Irish is their first language and most signage is only in Irish. There are about 10,000 people on the peninsula and about 500,000 sheep. And very few trees. Everything is very green but grows very low to the ground. And there are a lot of rocks. Its amazing to think about how anyone could have got anything to grow in the land much less cleared enough rock away to plant anything.

When my train reached the town of Tralee, just before entering the peninsula, I had to change to a bus to travel to Dingle Town on the peninsula's far coast. Once the bus left Tralee and began winding its way through the peninsula, I swear, I entered a fairy land! If this beautiful landscape was any indication of what was to come (which I learned it was) then I knew I was in for a lovely weekend (which I did have)!

I arrived late in the afternoon, found my hostel and got my dinner at a grocery store which I ate sitting on the harbour. Dingle is a very small harbor town. Very small. I think in the three days I was there I must have walked every street in the town at least half-a-dozen times or more. The town is now mostly made up of tourists and tourist shops and restaurants. But it was charming, nonetheless.

That evening I went to an concert of traditional Irish music in an old church. Apparently, the church sponsors Irish music concerts throughout the summer for the tourists three times a week. The concert was wonderful! There were two women who were from the Blasket Islands and whose parents were among those who were evacuated from the islands in 1953 (more on the Blasket Islands and why the people were evacuated in my next post!) and they sang beautiful Irish language songs and played the accordion and the Irish drum. Two men also performed playing the guitar and very complicated Irish bagpipes. I got more of my fill of Irish music!

I tried to get to bed fairly early that night because I knew I needed my rest for the next day, my birthday. I had planned a 47 kilometer (about 30 miles) bike ride around the peninsula! I rented a bike first thing in the morning and was riding out of Dingle just after 9:00 am. The ride took all day but it wasn't very difficult. I met other tourists along the route, most of them in cars. I'm so glad I did it by bike, though. It was wonderful to be out in the air (thankfully, the only sunny day I had in Ireland) and be surrounded by this incredible landscape. It also made it easy to stop and take photos and try to take it all in. I followed my Rick Steves guide book that laid out both my riding directions and the sights I would see along the way.

Ireland has a long and interesting history. The Celtics settled the island by 700 BC. Ireland is one of the only places in Europe that was not conquered by the Roman Empire. The Romans came, hated the cold and rainy weather, named the island Hibernia (which means "land of winter") and left. This is why the Celtic, or Gaelic, culture was able to thrive. The Christians came by 500 AD and gradually Christianized the island. In fact, Ireland was a favorite place for hermit monks to go to create isolated monasteries. Their writings helped to keep knowledge alive during the middle ages. Then, by 800 AD, the invasions started. First the Vikings, then the Normans and Ireland came eventually under control of England which only ended (expect in Northern Ireland) in 1949 with the creation of the Republic of Ireland.

So, I tell you all this so you will get a sense of how amazing the Dingle Peninsula is. Ireland's long history can be found, piece by piece, on this peninsula in the form of ruined forts, homes, churches and stone markers...and I saw many of them on my 47 kilometer bike ride! (My photos have more sights and information than I will write here, so take a look!) So...here are the sights I saw and the landscape I fell in love with...

"On my travels I do not imagine
Any splendour I saw in my time
But this jewel that was crafted of fashions
This double-width quilt of the isle."
-Sean Dunleavy, The crafted quilt of the isle

One of my first stops was at a "Fairy Fort". One of the reasons that there are still so many prehistoric and medieval sites still to be found at Dingle is that the locals were superstitious about them. Because they didn't always know what these old stone shelters and walls were, they thought they were built by fairies. And there were all kinds of bad-luck stories about the people who disturbed these fairy forts. In the nineteenth century, scholars began to excavate these forts and learn more about them. This fort, however, has yet to be excavated but is believed to have been a Celtic chieftain's home. For now, it is a grass and shrub covered mound of rocks that the sheep graze over.

My next stop was at Dunbeg Fort: a fort of ditches and rock walls that date from around 580 BC and was also used in the 8th-11th centuries AD.

Next, I saw more ancient forts called Beehive Huts. Named for their beehive shapes, these huts were used from prehistoric times to 12oo AD. Because there are no trees and a lot of rocks, homes from ancient times to the present day were built out of rocks and no mortar was used in building these ancient shelters. They are amazing structures.

To give you an idea of how beautiful Dingle was, go out and rent a couple of movies that were filmed here: Ryan's Daughter and Far and Away. In fact, this field was used in the filming of Far and Away:

As I rode, the ocean came gradually into view and the land got more and more interesting. The rolling land would suddenly break off into great cliffs falling into the ocean. Soon, small islands a few miles out to sea came into view. I stopped for my picnic lunch of berries and a salami sandwich on the slope of Dunmore Head, a piece of rounded land jutting out from the peninsula.

After my lunch and rest I continued to the Dunquin Pier where I took the ferry boat to the Great Blasket Island, three miles out from the mainland. My Blasket experience was unexpectedly fascinating and took up much of my afternoon, so I've decided to save relating that for another day....so....back to the mainland! (Watch for my next post to read about the Blasket Islands!)

After learning about the Blasket Islands, I continued around the west edge of the peninsula, where I saw these fields going up the mountainside:

See the plow lines? These fields have not been planted since the Great Potato Famine and those plow lines are from the last planting when the potatoes rotted in the ground. Ireland was not the only place where the famine affected potato crops, but western Ireland was so hard hit because it was the only crop growing here. The rocky ground didn't allow much to flourish here but the potato. So when the crops failed, the people here had nothing else to survive on. Nearly a million people died and another million left for America, Canada and Australia. Ireland is only now recovering from this population depletion.

My next stop was another one of those old "fairy forts". This one was hidden in a small residential neighborhood: a mideval monastary called the Reasc Monastery. It dates back to the 6th-12th centuries. The roofs are long gone but the ring of foundation and low walls are still there and continue to be excavated and restored. The site has a large stone with ancient Celtic markings. The monks added their own Christian cross to the stone which they did with many Celtic sites...they simply adapted the Celtic culture and remains to their own needs.

My next stop was another early Christian site: the Gallarus Oratory. This structure was built as a church. Remember, there was no lumber for building so the monks followed the local practice of building with stones without mortar...and it is still waterproof! This little church was built 1,300 years ago and is still in almost perfect condition.

Not too far away was another early Christian church: the church of Kilmalkedar. This one dates from the 12th centuary and is not in such good condition. It's located in a graveyard, still being used by the locals. But there were other, older structures in this graveyard: a Celtic sundial and a 1,700 year old ogham stone. An ogham stone was a Celtic made stone with and ancient form of writing on it. This one was marking a grave.

My last stop was the last of the "fairy forts" I saw that day: the Chancellor's House. This was the excavated ruins of what was beleived to be the home of a 14th century chancellor.

As I returned to my bike after exploring the Chancellor's House, it started to rain. It was just a drizzle but thankfully I had no more stops to make, just a long 4 mile bike ride home. I walked up a long hill for about a mile and then coasted downhill to Dingle for the final 3 miles and rode back into Dingle just before 9 pm, soaking wet. But oh! so happy after one of the most amazing 12 hours I've ever had the pleasure of living!

Please take a look at all of my Dingle photos...I'm amazed when I look at them that there are actually such places in the world and that I was actually there!

"No wonder men of action fought
For this green land, now in its prime
For I see by this glorious splendour
That our fair maiden wins the prize.

Lord strengthen those of the liberation
Who smashed her shackles and made her free
Lord she is all of your creation
Down to its very smallest tree."
-Micheal O'Guiheen, A beautiful morning

Grüße aus...Ireland! Part I: Dublin

I had a wonderful Birthday!! Thanks to all of you who gave cards or phone calls or other well-wishes!

Several months ago, I informed Karl that I wanted to go to Ireland for my birthday. He was fully supportive. So on June 19th, I got on a plane to Dublin and I spent three days there and then traveled to the Dingle Peninsula for another three days. It was an absolutely marvelous journey!

Dublin was fun! It is a very urban city and I learned a lot about it's history, as well as the history of Ireland, while I was there. Ireland has a complex and oppressive history. Its economy has been spiraling downward since the Great Potato Famine of the 1840s...until suddenly in the 1990s when it has since become the "Celtic Tiger": one of the strongest economies in Europe.

I learned that Ireland was a bi-lingual country. I knew that the native tongue of Ireland was Irish (or Gaelic) but I didn't realize how prominent the language was. Everything was written in both Irish and English. I heard some Irish spoken and sung during my time there and It sounds nothing like English, nor anything else I've ever heard but I found it quite beautiful.

I also realized throughout my travels how many great writers and poets came from Ireland: James Joyce, W.B. Yeats, Oscar Wilde, Jonathan Swift... In fact, the Irish are known for their writers and their gift of gab. So, during my trip I decided I would immerse myself in Irish writers and I began reading James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as the plane took off!

"The grey block of Trinity on his left, set heavily in the city's ignorance like a great dull stone set in a cumbrous ring..." -James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

On my first morning, I took a tour of Trinity College, the most prestigious university in Ireland. The college site was originally a monastery. It was closed by Henry VIII when he formed the Church of England and in 1592, his daughter, Queen Elizabeth I, created a university on the site. The original monastery buildings are long gone (the only thing remaining is the bell in the the central bell tower in the main square) and the oldest buildings at the college now were built during the mid-1700s. (In fact, I noticed that most of the great buildings throughout Dublin were built in the the 1700s...the hey-day of Dublin, apparently.) There is a chapel and an examination hall directly across a square from each other and identical to each other. (We were told by the Trinity College graduate guide that on examination days you literally see students making paths back and forth between the chapel and their exams!) The Chapel is unique in that is was the first church in Ireland that was consecrated for the services of all the 4 religions of Ireland at the time: the Catholic church and the three Protestant churches. We also stood underneath a very large Oregon Maple Tree...the largest Oregon Maple in Europe. Two of these large trees were planted in what was the monastery graveyard (which is probably why they grew so large!) in 1820.

Our tour ended at the Old Library where I entered to see the Book of Kells! This is an illuminated manuscript of the four Gospels, beautifully decorated! It is more than 1,000 years old! After viewing the book I was able to walk through the Old Library's Long Room. This is the main chamber of the library, built in 1712, is 65 meters long, and holds 200,000 of the library's oldest books and it was truly stunning! Unfortunately, photography was not allowed, but believe me, it was beautiful (here's a shot of the brochure from the library)!

Two stories of old leather-bound books, underneath a wooden vaulted ceiling! All the books were organized by size: the large books on the bottom shelves and the smaller books on the top shelves. I didn't want to leave. But leave I did eventually because I had to find some lunch. On my way back through the campus I noticed that the old 18th century Dining Hall next to the Chapel was open for visitors. So I had my lunch sitting in the old Dining Hall of Trinity College surrounded by wood paneling and large portraits of past chancellors.

After my historical-feeling lunch, I made my way down historical Nassau street to the National Gallery of Ireland. I had wanted to visit this museum to see this particular artwork but I was delighted to find that there were so many more treasures there! I spent my afternoon wandering around its beautiful galleries seeing French Impressionists, Italian masters, incredible Dutch masters, and discovering some wonderful Irish artists.

Later that day I saw the exteriors of St. Patrick's Cathedral and Christ's Church Cathedral (both were closed to visitors at the time, one because they were getting prepared for a performance, the other because a TV show was filming there). But that evening I did something that really made me feel like I had arrived in Ireland: I hit the pubs!

"A good puzzle would be to cross Ireland without passing a pub." -James Joyce, Ulysses

Yes, even I, a non-drinker, couldn't pass through Ireland without hitting the pubs! But instead of going for the Guinness, I went for the music! I participated in a Traditional Irish Musical Pub Crawl. This tour became at this slightly touristy but historical Gogarty's Pub on Temple Bar...

...and continued to two other pubs in the area over the course of 2 1/2 hours. Our guides were two traditional Irish musicians who played both old and new Irish music as everyone sipped their beers. I had a wonderful evening! I've always like traditional Irish music, but it sounds about 10 times better in a comfortable Irish pub. At the last pub, the musicians gave us what they called the Noble Call: they explained that normally at a session (that's what it's called when the Irish gather around, normally at a pub or a home, and talk and make music) everyone is expected to contribute and so they asked us tourists to share some song or something. A woman from Ohio sang an old Shaker song. An English woman sang a little song she sings for her two-year-old. And then, since no one else was volunteering, I raised my hand, stood up, and sang Johnny Cash's song Delia's Gone! Yep! I sang in an Irish pub!

I enjoyed the pubs and the music so much that when the crawl ended I wandered back to Gogarty's Pub to enjoy more traditional music until past midnight. They had a young group playing traditional Irish instruments who mixed traditional tunes with more modern covers: you haven't heard Metallica until you've heard it sung to an acoustic guitar, a flute, a fiddle, and an Irish drum!

All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
-W.B. Yeats, Easter 1916

The next morning I took a walking tour of Dublin. This was an excellent tour of the city by a history graduate who enlightened me on both the interesting history of Dublin and the fascinating history of Ireland. Their history is full of invasions and resistance which finally resulted in an independent Republic of Ireland...unfortunately the country is still not united. The Irish still work for the day when Northern Ireland, still under British control, becomes united with the Republic. This guard box at Dublin Castle use to be red with a gold crown for the British royalty and housed guards during the time when Ireland was controlled by Britain. Now the boxes are empty, black, and carry the Irish harp as a symbol of the independence of present-day Republic of Ireland. (Take a look at my photos of the trip for some more details from the tour!)

After a lunch of traditional fish and chips (they were even wrapped up in news print) sitting in the park behind St. Patrick's Cathedral, I went to the Chester Beatty Library behind Dublin Castle. This is one of the world's greatest collection of books and manuscripts, some of them more than a millennium old! I learned from our tour guide that morning that the Library was having an exhibition on Leonardo da Vinci's Leicester Codex! This is a collection of his scientific writings on his theories on the motion of water. It was fairly recently purchased by Bill Gates and was now on display in Dublin! So I wandered through a darkened gallery looking at Leonardo's sketches of water and backwards handwriting for an hour or two. They also had on display several books from the Library's collection, old scientific books that would have been available to Leonardo in the fifteenth century.

"But the tree's in Stephen's Green were fragrant of rain and the rainsodden earth gave forth its mortal odour..." -James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man



After the exhibition I walked through the drizzling rain down historic Grafton Street and through part of the large city park of St. Stephen's Green to another museum: Number Twenty-Nine. This is a restored Georgian (Neoclassical) townhouse at number 29 Lower Fitzwilliam Street in Dublin. The home was built in 1790 in a then-new neighborhood, now famously lined with many-colored Georgian doorways. The home was restored to its original condition and I was able to tour through its elegant and beautifully simple rooms. I loved this tour! Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take photos, but here is a link to the museum's website where you can take a virtual tour (I especially loved the stenciling on the wooden floorboards of the governess's room).

That night I attended a performance at the Gate Theater: Sweeny Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. This was a Steven Sondheim musical that my sister (the musical queen) recommended. The story was from an actual London legend of a barber who killed his costumers that were then cooked into meat pies by his neighbor. The musical form of the legend was just as creepy and very good!

The next morning I woke early to take a bus, then a train, then another train, then another bus to the Dingle Peninsula! But more on that adventure later...

Dublin was a lot of fun and I began to fall in love with Ireland there. It was fun to be reading James Joyce, whose books take place in Dublin, while I was exploring the city. I noticed many landmarks marking places that appear in his books. In fact, I learned that I just missed one of the biggest holidays in Dublin: Bloomsday on June 16th. Joyce's masterwork, Uylsses, takes place on one day in Dublin, June 16, 1904. So Dublin celebrates Joyce and his book and their city every June 16th! Hmmm....maybe I'll be spending another birthday in Ireland next year! See my Dublin photos here!