Trip to Dublin!

Let's be honest, nothing exciting happens on a day-to-day basis in London, especially when you have a lot of work to do and thus no excitement or energy can be summoned for going out.

But, Reading Week (or, go out for a bit then come back and cram homework) presents a unique opportunity to, like, go someplace.  And so, off to Dublin!


While I was sort of excited to go, the main thing I was interested in finding is the music they listen to.  While Top 40 generally rules in the US and the UK, Ireland doesn't really take to it.  A lot of it is quasi-"alternative" rock, which I can characterize as quasi-R.E.M.  Sort of like it, with variations here and there...but really, if you want the stuff, just listen to R.E.M.  Seriously.  The most surprising part?  They love their reggae.  First full day, went to a pub that evening.  A band composed of 4 Irishmen and what I think was a Middle Eastern saxophone player were playing reggae!  And it was awesome.  For one reason or another, I got into the groove and went and watched the band (and danced, mind you) for the most part.  I recognized "Pressure Drop," which was pretty much it.  Because the Clash recorded "Pressure Drop" at some point in their careers (shows up on Black Market Clash and its variations).

All the sights and stuff were great.  The highlight was Phoenix Park by far.  For €5 each, bikes were rented and ridden around it.  For the scope of the park, Central Park is four times as small as Phoenix Park, and every park in England combined doesn't even come close.  It was remarkable.  My favorite part was likely the Papal Cross.  While I certainly have my qualms with religion as a social structure and have never been a part of that system, as a mode or method of faith, there are admirable parts.  But the cross itself was awe-inspiring, as I would estimate it being at least 60m tall...I'm not too sure.  Here's the photo of it:

Other crazy things about Phoenix Park consist of the random herd of 500+ deer that live there, unfenced, and the generally ridiculous hills on the outer edges of the park which make for painful uphill biking (but excellent downhill riding).

Then, the next "tourist-y" day was action-packed.  The morning included a trip to Howth Harbor.  It's basically a tiny seaside town, and it's amazingly beautiful.  There's apparently a golf course to stumble upon (if you take the unbeaten path to the castle as we did), but the real draw is the harbor, with the breathtaking view out to sea.  Here's what that looks like:

It looks unreal, like those really cheesy photos that OS developers put in as default backgrounds and such, but that, yes, was definitely the view I got.  I mean, I'm happy with that picture, but it looks almost too good or too unreal.

For those inclined for seals, there were plenty of those, too.  Since Howth is essentially a fishing town, you could have gotten fish and fed them to the seals.  We were all starting to go a bit broke, so that didn't quite work out.  Cash had to be saved for Dublin's finest: the Guinness Storehouse.  If you go to Dublin, you really, really, really, really, really, really, really have to go.  It was awesome.  If you don't like beer, ok, but really, you're in Dublin, so you will like Guinness...at least in Dublin.  It goes over a lot of stuff about beer and Guinness, and they are kind enough to provide you with a free pint at the bar located at the top of the storehouse.  The view is phenomenal.  It's the highest point in Dublin, so you see everything.  I ended up drinking two more pints than the one allotted, as somehow some folks in my travel group didn't like Guinness.  It would have been tragic if I hadn't saved the day.  But here's a good idea of what it was like up there:

The day we left was mostly smaller stuff like visiting the whole lot of cathedrals around there.  Christchurch Cathedral, St. Patrick's Cathedral, St. Catherine's Cathedral, and etc.  They are architecture marvels, just stunning.  Other sights included the Dublin Castle (actually rather lame), and Trinity College.

Overall, Dublin was a fantastic place.  I would highly recommend going, but mostly only to visit.  Dublin is a rather small city for being a capital of a country.  My approximation is that someone so inclined could definitely walk across the city of Dublin in about an hour.  I wouldn't expect that getting through the majority of the stuff there would take more than, say, 4 days at the most, as I did.

So yeah, that's most of it.  See all ya'll soon.

-e.

NP: Funkadelic - Maggot Brain

Ah, an update.

No, I'm not particularly good about updating this on a normal basis.  Terribly sorry about that.  But regardless, I'm obviously the only one in the unique position to tell about what I'm doing and thinking, so you may just have to deal, hah.

But an update!  Classes progressed in their normal, unexciting manner, and then it was Friday.  Friday was undoubtedly the best day in London thus far. 50ºF, sunny, and everything.  I even went out on a run, which will probably surprise a lot of you.  The evening involved going to a pub with friends.  First, though, a trip to the ATM resulted in my check card being randomly consumed by the ATM machine.  Luckily, I have a backup, but I gotta get that card back from the bank.  Now, I didn't eat at all before going out (so, last meal at around 3, which was also the only meal of that day), so after a pint of Guinness and chugging the rest of someone's beer/cider mix (I believe it's called Snakebite?), I had a pretty good buzz going.  And so I went to grab some food, which was delicious, and ironically my buzz was gone right after I left the food place.  But the night was hilarious.  Also learned some new games, but uh, yeah.

Saturday was a lot of fun, with a day trip to Greenwich.  It's pronounced Gren-ich (Gren as in rhyming with "wren" and the w in "wich" is silent), which basically makes zero sense.  We took the ferry east on the river, and while cold, I got some nice photos which are all cataloged on Facebook and flickr for viewing.  But here's one of my favorites from the trip down:

 

This one occurs closer to Greenwich, and the photo shows some luxury flats (really really really expensive ones at that, apparently at least £1000000 each), and in the back are some financial buildings (i.e. that HSBC building...not plugging them at all, really).  The tallest building with the pyramid sort of top is apparently the tallest in Britain, at 850m.  Another photo I really liked was this one a lot early on in the ferry ride:

It's really just the London Eye, but the lighting was all strange because of the weather, which makes for good photography, I suppose.  But we arrived to Greenwich, and it was really awesome.  They have a pretty legit market there, seen thus:

There were loads of ethnic foods and everything.  Of course, it turns out everyone wanted to get out of the cold and sit down, so we ended up at a sit-in place called "Phillies," which is owned by a guy who lived in Philly for awhile, obviously.  But after we went to that, we decided to come back to the market, but only after checking out the Meridian line at the Royal Observatory.  There were a lot of good photos, but here's the favorite that I took there:

It's of the planetarium there, and I really like it.  I've realized that most of photography is being at the right place and the right time, so I wouldn't consider any good photos I take to be the strokes of a master of photography, as the camera does most of the lifting and the sun (very rarely around in London) is there to provide the lighting.  I mean, I took the photo, so I'm not totally useless.  But back on track, the planetarium was cool, and they have a lot of exhibits there which explain a whole lot.  Like how the Andromeda galaxy will absorb the Milky Way soon.  And by soon I mean, like, billions and billions of years away.  So time is ticking, so I should, uh, finish what I have planned.  Which is nothing (or everything, depending on the way you look at it).

Also, there was the Meridian Line, nicely splitting the world in two.  I hesitated in getting the traditional photo of straddling the line as I wanted to be slightly more original, but I didn't come up with much (my Facebook profile photo is the result).  But it does seem strange to realize that, at least by some arbitrary standard, the world starts and ends here, because that's where all time is based off of.

But back to the market!  And I got some gifts for people, namely my sisters, and started compiling gifts for friends before making a return trip on the ferry.  So all was good.  Of course, in total, I ended up dropping £35 that day.  Yikes.  I spent most of the rest of the day really tired, possibly due to the impromptu run from the day before, from which I woke up extremely sore.

Today has mostly been relaxing.  Pretty good.  I still get the strange "I'm on a boat" feeling (yes, the song pops up in my head when I say that), which I don't like.  But I am done for tonight so I get to relax a bit.  Yay.

I leave for Dublin next Saturday, which is awesome, I'll be there for four days.  It'll be awesome and exciting.  I'm not sure what actually is in Dublin, but I figure that it's a place everyone should get to eventually.

Alright, I'm out, I'll write again soon, but if you want more, talk to me before!

-e.

NP: The Strokes - Is This It

Such a fantastic record.  I mean, it's the Strokes' best record, and I love it.  Actually, who doesn't love this record?

The Realization about England

But first, an update since I've sorta been slacking: but in a stroke of (mis)fortune, the only real significant thing on my plate this past week was a homestay in Southport, which is basically extremely close to Liverpool and Manchester.  I stayed with a nice British family, a mom and twins (the father and the other kid were in the States).  The father has a job in Hollywood or something, which explains that.  But it was nice.  I was taken around Southport the first day (some people ventured off to Liverpool, I think), and here's my favorite photo from that sojourn:

 

This is what's known as a Victorian arcade, which basically is a mall.  But since it's older, it's smaller (you could perhaps argue it's smaller since the nature of business then was small business, not like it is today).  I got to meet a butcher in what's apparently a pretty famous butchery in one of the parts of Southport, and another guy working there had a friend or relative in Dayton, which I found pretty amusing.

The next day we went out to the pier.  The day was sort of cold, blustery, and really gray, but I do like this photo that I took:

The lantern sort of reminds me of something out of a video game.  Zelda, perhaps, but I'm not sure.  And then everyone went back to London.  So, 11+ hours on a bus to stay for, like, less than 48 hours.  That led to some good feelings the next day (sitting down still gave me that "I'm on a bus" feeling, which is not great when you're sitting on solid ground).

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But to my realization.  England, all in all, is not terribly different from the United States.  Sure, you have the "driving on the other side of the road" and the accent and all sorts of that, but outside of the eccentricities and niceties of a culture, it's still almost the same as United States.  Everyone speaks English here, and it just doesn't feel like an entirely different entity from the US.  In some ways, it almost feels like just being on a farther away campus from home (as at Ohio State, home was 15min. away, this just feels farther rather than being totally removed from home).

Now, some of those niceties and differences do get on my nerves sometimes (i.e. my previous saga of getting charged for EVERYTHING, having to walk for copious amounts of time to get to places), and sometimes I love the differences (the accents, the good beer), but no, it doesn't feel that different in the long run.  A staff member at Arcadia told us that England was "80% the United States" when it came to resemblance.  He also noted that what differences there are between the two are not glaring; they're rather subtle, and as he put it, they "poke you in the face constantly" rather than punch you in the gut.  I'd agree with both statements.

Part of this, I suppose, stemmed from my expectations.  Having romanticized the British culture for most of my modern existence, I saw Britain as a sort of paradise (I do hear that Wales and Scotland come pretty damn close to paradise, though).  And, well, no place is really ever paradise, is it?  London is a city like many other cities, just bigger, with better public transportation, and is, well, British.  I also saw Britain as some sort of wild new world out there, which is definitely not the case.  I'm not saying that I don't like living here at all, because it's great and I love it and it's been rewarding, but no, it's not terribly different from the United States.

I considered, in my romanticizing of London, that I would perhaps come back after this abroad experience and simply just live here forever.  But after even a short month, I realize that I truly appreciate the Kraft macaroni and cheese, and in general the American niceties.  For sure, I'd love to come back as a vacation opportunity, but in some ways I'm not ready to give up being American (at least yet).

But yeah, I should really get to doing work.  I have a paper due Monday and two problem sets due Thursday, and I'm nowhere near as far into any of them as I'd like to be.

-e.