Postcards from the Edge Episode IX Part IV

Ireland is very green. Apparently it's known as the land of "60 shades of green". No kidding. You can easily get green fatigue out here... :P Too much nature... Too beautiful all of the time... too much blue sky and green grass and trees... too much Irish dancing and Guiness and whiskey...
Now, of course, the most obvious thing I would do once I personally got to Ireland is do my little U2 pilgrimage... did my homage to the various studios that they've recorded in, visited sites that they've recorded videos in, seen old places that they've played in, signed various walls and locales to prove that I was there... even visited a pub that Bono hangs out in when he gets the chance... Of course, no one else was even remotely interested in coming along with me (what??? Why not??)... :P Didn't meet any of the men themselves (yet! Can you possibly imagine???? That would be superfragilistically wonderful!), but we still have several days to go... I even went to visit Larry Mullen Jr's childhood home!!! Whoo hoo!!! OK, I know for absolutely every one of you, this is totally not interesting, but, as you well know, this is a BIG DEAL for me :) Big like discovering the cure of cancer... no, OK, more like Big like... uh... actually, I can't really think of any parallel... Big like winning the lottery? Becoming PM? (Can someone please tell me who won the election?)
I've been landscaping the grounds of a castle in the Irish countryside for the past few days, earning my keep for my accomodation... now that is neat-o stuff... mainly raking and weeding so far, but hopefully will get into some trimming and pruning.... actually it's been quite exciting to look at the potential of these grounds for true beautification... I'm proposing returning next year to do some more gardening work... does anyone else want to come on a working holiday to Ireland next year? I think it's a great opportunity to travel and see Ireland with free accomodation... if you think you'd be interested, let me know! We'll talk! It's this lovely castle an hour out of Dublin in the country with grounds that could really use some grunt work... I'll take pics to show people who're interested in coming to garden for a bit, and then travel for the rest... :)
julia

Postcards from the Edge Episode IX Part III

Greetings from bonny Scotland! Lemme tell you something: Sleeping on marble ain't all it's cracked up to be. For various reasons, we ended up having to sleep at the airport last night... I thought it would be fool-proof; who in their right mind (besides myself) would sleep in an airport? At any rate, for some of those various reasons, we ended up pulling up into the airport at 1am, believing that it should be deserted by that point, curling up on some lounge chairs and waiting till morning... do you remember that Simpsons episode where Maggie gets sent to the Ayn Rand Nursery and saves all those pacifiers and then when the Simpsons come to get Maggie, all the babies are in the gymnasium sucking on their soothers, and then they back away out the door because of the weirdness?... well, it was exactly the same way when we got to the airport, only it was adults, not babies, and no one was using pacifiers... however, the whole freaking airport was full (!) of people lying on the chairs, on the floors, under the cafe tables... it was weird! People were pushing each other around go-karting with the luggage trolleys! At any rate, because we were so 'late' we ended up sleeping between some Americans and some Brits on the marble overlooking the control tower... weirdness... I've also learned something else: Marble doesn't retain heat. 'Nuff said.
Some stereotypes preserved, others not: We passed about FIVE golf courses on the train from the airport into Glasgow, and we actually saw some men (OK, well, one guy) dressed in a kilt playing golf (aye indeed, my laddies!) on a Monday morning... Men do not walk around normally in kilts... I haven't seen anyone that looks like Willie the Groundskeepers... The wedding shoppes actually have bridal gown models besides models with full Scottish regalia, kilt and all... There was a busker playing the bagpipes (do they pay him to stop?)... I actually haven't seen any restaurants deliberately trying to sell haggis, nor do they sell 'instant haggis stuffing' in the supermarkets... I know it's a Robbie Burns day kind of thing, but still...
julia

Postcards from the Edge Episode IX Part II

So here we are in the south of England (alas, not the south of France...) visiting our good friends Pastor Dave and Linda (for those CGYGers who know who they are). We are having a jolly good time wandering the English channel coast and looking at carnivals and castles. They are doing quite well and have a lovely home near the seaside... did you know that most of the English can reach a coastline within two hours and get to beachfront? Niiiiiice... except for the English beaches are made up of rocks, not sand. Mind you, they are small, round stones (and yes, Dave and Denis, I got you rocks), but it's still rocks... Yet the English will sit and lie upon them like they're the sands of California... weird... personally, I like feeling like I'm lying upon cushions, not in a Shiatsu session or on a bed of nails...
Furthermore, being coastline, there are a lot of seagulls. Except unlike being 'pigs with wings' as I so affectionately call them in Toronto ('mine, mine, mine')... these guys are actually CLEAN. They're actually quite beautiful birds, relatively speaking. They're actually quite white and have clean beaks, and don't have that kind of disease, 'I-have-the-equivalent-of-bird-rabies' look about them. They're also HUGE! They're the size of toddlers, kind of like around the size of the Arctic ravens... honestly, they look like if they teamed up, they could do a lot better than leftover bagels and popcorn and actually go for a small child... yummmm.... Atkins for birds...
For those of you who know that I decided to go to the UK this time around because I figured "They speak English, just like me... how hard could it be to get around?".... uhhh, I'm realizing English isn't all it's cracked up to be... We've actually had a hard time a)reading b)understanding and c)being understood by other people. Hunh? What the?? I've had to repeat myself several times to a police officer the other day as I was looking for a PARK to eat my lunch in. He thought I was looking for SHOPS and was trying to explain how to get to the nearest shopping area. Then he got really confused when I was explaining, "You know, a park, that has trees and grass and stuff"... "Oh, I'm sure that there are trees over in [said shopping area], see, there's one over there..." "no, no a PARK, PAR-KE" "OOOOOHHHHH, you're looking for a PARK with trees and grass in it... oh well, in that case..." (oh dear Lord, please help me...)
On the other hand, some of the words I've learned, vaguely:
Yob, or yobbo: Jerk, hooligan, much like drunken English thugs who beat up people with blue shirts
Slapper: Refers to women who sleep around
Wanker: jerk
Bangers and mash: The British delusion of high cuisine :P
Uhhhh, so basically, I've learned some insulting slang... I guess that's not really helpful... oh well...
julia

Postcards from the Edge Episode IX Part I

Hello all! Welcome again (already?!?!) to another set of PFTEs. For those of you new to the series, I just send out periodic updates from places I've travelled with bizarre, strange or interesting observations that I note. If you'd like to be taken off this list, please let me know!
This time around, I'm in the UK for the next few weeks, cruising through England, Scotland and Ireland. As you know, of course, I've already met Bono, so most of my motivation for going to Ireland's already dealt with (har har har).
Airport security post 9-11 has taken great heights... on our way in through Pearson, they stopped a NUN. A nun... come now, what is this world coming to if you're going to stop a little 80-something year old nun??? They emptied out her bag with the jellies and jams that she was taking home... right, weapons of mass destruction via blueberries and rhubarb...
Otherwise, the Brits are stereotypically staid and formal. So much so that we have never encountered such bad service. I don't remember it being this bad last time I was through, however, it is stunning the lack of desire to actually be helpful. We've noticed that most of the people we ask directions to, who bother to stop and answer, don't have British accents. We've had our food practically thrown at us in restaurants, have had to beg for napkins, and use puppydog eyes to get some water. I think in North America, despite it's many faults, we've at least gotten the customer service thing down pretty good.
Not surprisingly, as the Euro Cup 2004 is on in Portugal right now, the British are rabidly following the proceedings. Actually, on Tuesday night, they were beaten by the French, mainly b/c Beckham missed a goal. And, of course, drunken British hooligans started beating up police officers and people on the streets that night. It's funny that the country that gives us Keats, Shakespeare, Cromwell, Wilde, Dickens, etc etc etc etc, is also famous for beating up random people in a drunken fury...
julia