Fluxosaurus abroad – Dublin, Ireland 2011

..Dublin..

Well after the debacle of missing my first flight to Edinburgh, I made sure to leave a little earlier for Heathrow airport this time, and arrived in good time to travel to Dublin Ireland where I was to stay with my good mate Grant and his recent bride Nicky. Grant and I have been friends since highschool, and I had missed both of them since they had emigrated from sunny Durban, South Africa to Dublin, Ireland where Grant had been offered a better job as a medical rep for a spinal implant company. They had left our shores to make a better life in Ireland. I was sad to see them go, and had missed them both a great deal in the 8 months they had been gone.

I flew Aer Lingus, the Irish National carrier, and found it to be quite good. Pleasant staff and a smart plane. On the plane I met up with a very attractive and intelligent girl from Tennessee USA who was also a Couchsurfer. She was reading Nabokov’s Lolita, and I struck up a conversation with her after asking her what she thought of the book. I was very pleased to meet another Couchsurfer and we chatted about our respective lives and interests for the entire flight. She had been travelling through Europe for 2 years and was meeting a friend in Ireland to finally return home to the U.S. We spoke extensively about a wide range of topics and the peculiarities of life in the South of the United States of America. It was interesting and she was very kind to vouch for me on the Couchsurfing website which I am convinced resulted in me getting my first experience with that mode of travel later on my journey (in San Francisco). It was a short flight from London to Dublin airport and then a rainy landing.

I was most pleased to see my friends at the airport, patiently waiting for me, and we exchanged hugs and smiles all around. I acquiesced to their insistence that I “eat something”, and I had a really delicious savoury roll from one of the vendors. That went down like a Protoceratops – delicious and tummy-filling!

We hopped into their car and drove down the freeway to their abode, a quaint home along a pretty street. On the way they described the automatic tolling system they tolerate on their freeways, an electronic tagging system which punishes the motorist if they have not paid up for the required toll. Annoying, and expensive that!

It was great to see Grant and Nicky’s home – a cool back yard leading on to a river, and to have my very own room and bathroom. Besides the cool house, Grant took no time to show me the super fast internet speeds they are afforded in Ireland – I turned a little green with jealousy.

We went shopping, and I enjoyed seeing all the different foods and produce available in Ireland. I noticed a strange-looking vegetable on the shelves and asked a fellow shopper what it was…

“A turnip of course, you have never seen a turnip before?” she asked.

“No,” I replied “I’m from South Africa” – hoping to gain some caché with my accent, but she just sauntered off.

So much for the foreign guy being a local curiosity. Perhaps she had seen a South African before, a few of us have been known to venture into these parts. Well I had never seen a turnip before and made a mental note to try one of those. I was surprised that the Irish have to pay for a trolley (for my US friends, read shopping cart) before braving the old ladies in the aisles of the grocery store.

Unfortunately, I was not feeling very well at this point, and the next few days were to be marred by my considerable case of man flu, which we all know is that specific malady which is most debilitating and destructive to the male of any species. I am not sure why a viral infection of this mutation is so gender specific because the symptomatology is vastly more pronounced in the male patient and just not that serious in the female patient. Oh well.

I acquired some scientifically proven, quality controlled, dose-specific modulated Western medicine and we proceeded to return to the home for a good nights rest.

I awoke the next day in the full throes of the man flu, but determined to battle through it and see some of this Ireland.

It was raining and we decided to leave our extensive journey plans to the following day which was also a weekend.

We went to movies instead and saw Pirates of the Caribbean, On Stranger Tides. I was not overly impressed, the plot essentially a rehash of the previous offerings but it was a good escapist suspension of reality for a while.

The next day we went to Dublin and walked around the city a bit. It was cold but enjoyable. We skeedaddled when it began to rain with greater seriousness and retreated to the car for a bit of a drive. We tried to get into a beautiful park near my friend’s home area, but President Obama was in town and the security was tighter than a duck’s arsehole so we were turned away. I will have to return to Ireland to see that park, and see for myself the reported Deer population roaming freely around on the grounds.

The next day was awesome. We took a drive out to the “beach”. I say “beach” because the first beach was cold and windy and mostly inhospitable, and the second beach was covered in pebbles and equally uninviting. Perhaps we had chosen a poor day, perhaps not. It’s not Durban, that I can tell you.

The absolute highlight for me, was the stop over for lunch after the first beach. We found this quaint little eatery near the coast and sat down to some lunch. Well, the place had a real farmhouse feel about it, but jazzed up a bit and modernised in some ways. It was comfortable and filled with the intoxicating aromas of hearty food. As the cold wailed outside, we sat in relative comfort and ordered a Bulmers Pear Cider – just the most delicious Cider ever!

Without food in our bellies, the cider soon went to our heads and we got some looks from the local Irish when we let the volume slip a bit. I was feeling most rotten but the food and the grand company more than made up for the effects of my poor health.

We had roast Pork and potato, and lovely broiled turnip. It was smothered in a rich and tantalizingly tasty gravy, and was simply heavenly. I was pleased to have finally had turnip and found it to be somewhere between pumpkin and sweet potato on my scale of desirability of vegetables. I suppose without knowing the full range of the scale this statement is rather meaningless, but let’s just say that it fell within the most acceptable range and I would definitely eat turnip again.

After lunch we travelled past the beautiful green pastoral fields that Ireland is so famous for, and had a walk on the second beach which was covered in uncomfortable pebbles.

After my few ill, but really enjoyable days in Ireland, I said a sad goodbye to my friends and returned my heavy heart to London to make preparations for my trip to Italy.

One final note about my time in Ireland. I listen to music all the time; when I work, wash dishes and sometimes when I write. I have always found music to be a comfort and a soothing structured timekeeper against which I feel some stability in the swirling storm of mental cyclonics that is my ever active mind.

“Musick has Charms to sooth a savage Breast,
To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak.“

The Mourning Bride (1697) William Congreve

There is a comfort in the regularity of structure in music, like the feeling of stability in a square, or the peacefulness of not stepping on the cracks between pavement segments, or the focus of a walking meditation. I had been travelling without a music player and when I remarked to my friends that I missed this, Nicky very kindly lent me her iPod. Well, I had such great comfort from having that device on the rest of my journey. Her kindness helped me stay sane and relax into a mindframe of presence so that I could really maximise the experience of the rest of my journey.

I am indebted to the kindness of my friends, and miss my friends in foreign lands every day.