Anita and I listen to Today FM in the morning. It’s a national station, broadcasting somewhere between 100 and 102 MHz all over the country. Most of the radio stations here have a programming format that I would describe as old-fashioned: a potpourri of DJ banter, call-in games and prizes, comedy routines, and pop music across at thirty-year span.
Here’s a sampling of music that we hear quite frequently on the radio. You’ll probably recognize most of it from American radio! (more…)
I am no Rick Steves, but here’s what he won’t tell you about Dublin, Ireland….
There is a new place called the Bakker B&B, est 2007. Conveniently located to the airport and is walk-able to many tourist attractions, such as Trinity College, Grafton St Shopping, St Stephen’s Green, etc.
The Bakker B&B is very homey & welcoming. Don’t let the name of the address fool you. “The Basement” is the place to be with a radiantly heated stone floor & crazy fireplace. This place is comfy & warm, not damp & misty, like the Ireland outside its door in November.
The guest accommodations are suitable for double occupancy & are the same rate for singles even during the peak season…(more about that later). Your stay at the BBB includes breakfast, but upon request may also include lunch & dinner (or dinner & supper).
Be sure to engage the owners in local and national news in the States. If you are lucky, they will even share a pint with you at the local pub, whether Guinness or Jameson, both are sure to make fast friends, especially if you buy a round or two.
Extra Special Perks include – a free walking tour of Dublin and Tourist information, such as info on local customs, maps, pamphlets, & reading materials. Internet connection is available by request.
The BBB is open all year round, but only exclusively by reservation. A minimum of 6 weeks notice is required.
Though the Euro is currently a lot stronger than the dollar, this visit is a must for all loyal (passport carrying) Bakker Bugle Blog readers. During the high season (April/May/June) visitors should book their exact dates of travel to lock in their stay.
Your satisfaction, like the coffee…….may be instant.
In no particular order:
The B.B. B&B hosts Sharon and Jaime, great friends and honoured Commenters of this blog. Their visit started with a chilly walk around Dublin, but all four of us were pleasantly surprised to see that Grafton Street has been decorated for Christmas.
Tomorrow, we depart for the Ring of Kerry. Anita and I saved this famous Irish destination for our esteemed visitors. Our first stops will be the Cliffs of Moher and the Burren, followed by a night at a B&B in Killarney. On Monday, we’ll drive around the Ring of Kerry clockwise — the opposite of the direction that the tour buses use. On Tuesday, we plan to visit the Rock of Cashel.
By coincidence, we served Cashel Blue cheese at our party last night.
Let’s talk about population first. The population of the island of Ireland is about 6 million persons. About 4.25 million of them live in the Republic of Ireland (the twenty-six counties). For the rest of this post, “Ireland” means the entire Ireland: Northern Ireland and the Republic (that is, all thirty-two counties).
Since so many readers of this blog are American, I’ll use US states for comparison. Illinois has a bit more than double the population of the island of Ireland.
The states that have approximately the same population as Ireland? (more…)
Are you wondering about the significance of Halloween in Ireland? Have you wondered why your co-worker Pádraig Ó Branagáin calls October 31st “Samhain“?
Look no further than the part of this blog’s sidebar entitled “My Web 2.0 Links”! The staff have free reign over this part of the blog, and you’ll find that they select timely links to satisfy your idle curiosity. If you need to catch up, just click on the title itself.
Just one of the many services provided by the Bakker Bugle. By the way, Keely, your comparison of Project Minutiae with The Week is apt! Due to financial regulations, however, I can’t discuss whether there are any plans to divest the Bugle’s Web Log, as a distinct product, in the future. For now, enjoy the free subscription.
While on a short cab ride in Westport, Kathryn and I struck up a conversation with the driver. We both mentioned how we had visited Westport in August (with our respective families) and how much we enjoyed the town. Kathryn was there during the Arts Festival and she had a specific question for the driver. There were orange “heads” in the river, barely peering out of the water. She wondered if this was just for the festival, or if there were always orange heads in the river.
The driver proceeded to tell us the following story. First, it was a part of the arts festival. We learned that a term of endearment for fellow “Westportians” is Covey. (Will overheard this term during his wandering around during the day, as in “Hello, Covey” or “How are you doing, Covey?”)
Apparently, the town 10 miles over, Castlebar, is a much less desirable place. According to our driver, no self-respecting Westportian would ever want to live in Castlebar. In fact, people from Westport refer to the folks in Castlebar as “Fish-heads”, versus their own friendly “Coveys”.
Our driver said that the joke around town during the festival was that the heads in the water were the Castlebar folks, since they are Fish-heads. The whole town was enjoying the thought of the Castlebar citizens as silly fish-heads in the water.
It’s good to know that friendly rivalries are typical the world around.
Anita had a corporate retreat on the West of Ireland this week, in the town of Westport. I traveled with her, and I wound up walking all around the Westport area. She was cooped up in conference rooms, participating in Important Meetings.
I walked a lot, and almost entirely through rural places. I saw many beautiful and awe-inspiring things. I’ll post the photos soon. Also, Anita and I have some good stories to tell in the coming days.
Anita’s co-workers are intelligent, lively, and they come from all over the world. The best part of the trip was meeting them and talking to them. Plus, the hotel was very nice. For me, it was a pretty good way to spend a few days.
The turning of the leaves in Dublin and London seems to be less spectacular than in the US, but there’s no question that autumn is here. In London, we stopped to admire a particular kind of tree by Constitution Hill in Green Park.
It was similar to many trees in Dublin, and it also looked very much like a tree that Anita admired in Philadelphia last year. We were both drawn to the unusual bark of a tree near Independence Hall.
I think I know what kind of tree we saw: London plane trees. Given the apparent age of the tree in Philadelphia, however, it’s probably an American sycamore. They’re both remarkable trees, beyond their obvious beauty.
The London plane tree is a type of sycamore that was especially popular with Victorians in London. Given the smog over London at that time, it was one of the Victorian fads that made sense. Maybe it was the obvious choice for a city tree because all the others kept dying in the miserable environment.
The unique look of its trunk is due to the fact that the London plane tree sheds its bark. When the soot of London clogged the pores of these trees, the trees shed the old “skin” and revealed new bark with clear pores. (The photo on the right is the tree in Philadelphia, for the nit-pickers in the audience.)
Sycamores have distinctive fruit, of course. They have two more special features: their young leaves are hairy and their mature leaves are large and waxy. In suburban environments, these features seem like disadvantages, because the hairs aggravate allergies when they fall off in the spring. And the large leaves take forever to rot away.
But in polluted air, the springtime hairs trap airborne pollutants and keep them out of human lungs. The hairs fall to the ground when the leaves mature, escorting the particulates to the sewer system. Later in the year, the mature waxy leaves provide acres of surface area to collect dust and soot, and they rinse clean in the rain. In other words, the London plane tree is ideally suited for scrubbing the air of large-particulate pollution — the original London fog.
So, it’s not just another pretty tree.
I assume that only the most inquisitive American sports fans know that the 2007 Rugby World Cup is in its final stages. In fact, I’d guess that more Americans are familiar with Quad Rugby (aka murderball) than the US Rugby team. The venues for the quadrennial World Cup are mostly in France, with a few fixtures in Scotland and Wales. The US team lost all four of its pool matches, and thus didn’t get to compete in the knock-out stage.
The Irish were crazy about World Cup Rugby — especially Dublin and especially especially where we live. This appears to be part of a general disposition to support any national team with a fighting chance, which was intensified in our area by the residents’ experience with rugby as schoolchildren. As in the US, supporting a team includes scrutinizing its players and managers to an irrational extent.
Team Ireland were considered the sixth strongest team in the world prior to the World Cup. Advertisements from the team’s sponsors began appearing all over Dublin as the team played Namibia and Georgia. Ireland won both matches, but they didn’t look very good. Still, Ireland rugby jerseys became increasingly ubiquitous on the city’s streets. Opinions about the team and its coach, Eddie O’Sullivan, dominated the TV, the radio, and ordinary conversation. The next match was against France, the third best team (and admittedly on a different level of play).
Anita and I resolved to watch it at our local pub, the Pembroke. Neither of us understood the game’s rules, although we’d shared a bar with the University of Illinois’s rugby team during our undergrad years. But we wanted to participate in a national event. We arrived as the French national anthem was playing. (I found myself signing along automatically — oops.) When I write, “we arrived,” I mean that we walked right up to the area of the bar from which a TV was visible, and then hit a wall of human bodies. We had as much a chance as an American fly-half against a New Zealand fullback.
We walked to the back entrance, and found some space in the “outdoor” terrance. Most Irish pubs have outdoor spaces to accommodate smokers, and the Pembroke’s really pushes the definition of “outdoor.” Aside from the smoke, it was comfortable, and had a small TV in one corner. We made friends as Ireland played to a lackluster loss against France. (Our new friend is a story for another day.) Even to my novice eyes, Ireland looked badly outclassed. The radio the next day confirmed my observations.
Ireland were expected to win against Namibia and Georgia, and rack up enough points to survive the predicted losses to France and Argentina. Of the last two, Argentina were the most evenly matched with Ireland. After the loss to France, Ireland would have to beat Argentina resoundingly in order to continue to the knock-out round. It was possible, given Ireland’s performance before the World Cup began, but hardly if they continued their Cup performance.
One of the prominent ads portrayed the Ireland team pushing a famous Dublin pub to the Eiffel Tower. That pub, Doheny & Nesbitt’s, is in our neighbourhood. We’d stopped there several times. It had a reputation as the pub of choice for government-types, reporters, and generally upper-class Dubliners. So it made sense that it was the rugby pub of choice — not because it was well-suited to watching rugby, but because it catered to the type of people who support rugby. Still, it was amusing to see one of “our” pubs on billboards all over Dublin (and beyond).
So when the Argentina match fell on Doug’s last evening in Dublin, we proposed watching the match in Ireland’s premiere venue for rugby fans. It was just as crowded as the Pembroke was two weeks previous, but that’s part of the fun!
Our friend Kathryn secured a seat along one wall well before the match began, and Anita joined her. After Doug and I finished dinner, we walked to the pub. Doug’s height was helpful, because we watched the first half from doorways into the TV-equipped rooms. We watched the second half near the spot that Kathryn secured for us, with the emotions of the crowd literally pressing in on us.
They were not happy emotions. Ireland occasionally threatened to go ahead of Argentina on points, but never looked like they could control the game. The crowd was frustrated, but no more than a typical, partisan bunch of American professional football fans. On reflection, the people at the Pembroke were more into the game — maybe too many tourists (like us) had seen the billboards.
I wasn’t surprised when the vitrol hit the media, just as it would in the US. What shocked me was the number of fans who came to Dublin airport to welcome back the national team that had been Ireland’s obsession for months:
I continue to resist the urge to comment on this. All I can say, justifiably, is that I can’t wrap my mind around it and that it makes me feel sad, like I should have gone out there myself. Those of you who know me must understand that I feel compelled to explain this, and that I have to work hard to keep from filling the explanatory void with my favorite social theories. I’m rambling right now to keep myself from floating those theories in public. I’ll just leave the number there, and wonder what y’all think about it.
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