Ireland

As soon as I handed my boarding pass to the Aer Lingus agent, who smiled as she cheerily exclaimed, "Enjoy your flight!" I was on vacation.  Stepping onto the plane in the Charles DeGaulle airport was like stepping into a US embassy in another country.  You may not be home, but theoretically you're on American soil.  But in this case, Irish soil.  I was off to Ireland once again, having become enamored by its lively beauty and friendly citizens back in 2008 during my fall break in Strasbourg.  Last time, I visited a friend from high school who was studying abroad in Cork, and together we also went to Dublin.  I'd be going back to Dublin this time too, as well as spending a night in Galway, but the real reason I going was to experience first-hand the enigmatic beauty of the Aran Islands.


I've wanted to visit the islands for quite some time.  I studied them in a 20th century Irish literature course a few years ago, and then performed in Martin McDonagh's The Cripple of Inishmaan last year, which takes place on the middle-sized island.  (McDonagh has written a play for each of the islands-- Inishmaan, The Lieutenant of Inishmore and The Banshees of Inisheer, which apparently was so bad that McDonagh never wanted it published.)  I had seen so many pictures of the islands' rocky landscapes and breathtaking cliffs that I knew I needed to see everything in person, and what better time to go than the beginning of March, when anyone with a lick of sense goes not to the Aran Islands, but to the Canary Islands. 

My adventures began in Galway.  Since the ferry for the islands left early Saturday morning, I needed to stay in Galway Friday night, and found refuge with a lovely couchsurfing host.  She showed me around the city, which is absolutely enchanting.  It's much less touristy than Dublin, and personally, I found it a lot more charming and welcoming.

 Saturday morning, I set off early for the ferry.  Calder, whom you may remember from my London adventures, was a fellow cast mate in Inishmaan and was my partner-in-crime on my Aran adventures.  We had wanted to visit all of the islands, but ended up just being able to go to Inishmore, the biggest of the three islands.  From here, I'll let the pictures do the talking...

 

The desolate landscape of the island in the gray and foggy morning gave way to a vibrant blue-green sea when the sun broke free in the afternoon.  Calder and I biked and hiked the length of the island, which is about a mile and a half wide and five and a half miles long.  Having come during the off-season, we had the island mostly to ourselves, relatively speaking.  There were a few bus tours full of day trippers, but it didn't begin to rival the 2,000 daily visitors the island receives in the summer, a local told me.  (There are only 800 inhabitants of the island to begin with.)  Not only were we able to visit the touristy sites in peace, like the ancient Dun Aengus fort set on the cliffs, we were also able to strike up conversations with the locals in the pubs (although they were the ones who struck up the conversations with us!)

Sadly, Monday came too soon and we had to head back to the mainland.  We wished we could've had more time to spend on the island, and, well, be careful what you wish for.  From the window of our lovely sea-facing hostel, as we were just about to head out the door to leave, I saw a ferry pulling out of the port.  Our ferry.  That apparently left at 8:15am and not 8:30am, as we had thought.  A quick, perhaps rather belated, glance at our tickets revealed that the ferry was indeed scheduled to leave at 8:15am.  The biggest problem was that there was only one other ferry to the mainland and it wasn't until the evening, and Calder had a plane to catch from Dublin that night.  Oops.  Those of you who know both Calder and me will probably be surprised that we could have done something so stupid.  And I'd be right with you on that.  However, we quickly rebounded and found the number for the airline that had multiple flights to and from Inishmore each day and were able to book a flight that left in a couple of hours.  In the end, we were able to have a few more hours on the island, which included the long but beautiful walk to the airport, and had a spectacular plane ride, just us and the pilot, in a little nine-seater  that afforded us an amazing aerial view of the islands.

Once in Dublin, I said goodbye to Calder and hello to Amelia!  She and I spent two nights in Dublin, packing in as much as we could in just a few days.

We weren't the only ones in Dublin.  Justin Bieber was there too. 
We didn't see him, but we did decide to follow around the
throng of screaming girls for awhile who were desperately
hoping to get a glimpse of him while he shopped in Tommy Hilfiger.

Finally, it was back home to France.... Not something either of us were looking forward to.  "But you're going to France!  A beautiful country!  Amazing food!  Fashion!  The Eiffel Tower!" you might say, using far too many exclamation marks.  And you'd be partly right.  It's true that there's still some excitement in coming back to France, a country that I love despite what I may write, but it's still a return to the known and to the ordinary.  It's still coming back home after vacation, even though you may be tired and smelly and looking forward to being back in your own bed after a nice long shower.  But as I laid in bed my first night back with my eyes close, all I could see were the stunning cliffs of Inishmore with the violently blue waves crashing loudly so far below where I lay peering down in frozen rapture.

Light Reading For Your Saint Patrick's Day Hangover

I do my fair share of France-bashing.  Sometimes it can get a little out of hand, and I have to remind myself that I do it out of love for a place that I have wanted to live in since I was in 6th grade.  But it's easy to get caught up in the frustrations of bureaucracy, language barriers and cultural differences, and then suddenly it's two hours later and you're still on your tirade about how the French wear winter coats and scarves in 65 degree weather and then look at you like you're the insane one in a dress and sandals. 

However, there are times when we all can put aside our own quirky differences and join together to celebrate another culture, and what better time is there than Saint Patrick's Day, when for 24 hours, everyone wants to believe that they are just a little bit Irish.  In America, we drink green beer.  In France, we have fancy sit-down dinners with whiskey, mini Heineken kegs and, of course, wine.  And let me say now, that I have never had a better St. Patrick's Day.  I had figured that St. Patty's would be a let down, having just been in Ireland last week (more on that next time) and watching cities gear up for their celebrations.  But when I was invited to this St. Patrick's party by some of my teachers with the promise of traditional music and food, I figured why not?

With the party to look forward to in the evening, I showed up for my three morning classes full of Irish spirit.  A few of my outstanding students had remembered to wear green and I had to make the hard decision as to whether or not I should pinch the rest.  (I ultimately decided it would be a bad idea.)  We read a little history of St. Patrick's Day, and then I put on some Irish music as they worked on their themed word search and asked each other, "Où est leepreeshaun?"

In a younger class, I had them repeat some St. Patrick's words while showing them the accompanying pictures.  I had an awful realization as I heard "shaymrack" parroted back at me, that I'm teaching my students to speak with an American accent.  I suppose there are worse things, but mostly it makes me want to scream, "Don't tell me I really sound like that!"  However, if you hear Amelia's impression of me, you'll realize that I do really sound like that.  I'd just like to point out that my impression of her is much nicer because I make her sound like the Queen.

Finally the evening arrived, and when Amelia and I showed up unfashionably early, I immediately became wary of the long, nicely set tables with pink and purple napkins (had none of my teachers listened to my St. Patrick's lesson when I stressed several times that green is a rather important color on this holiday?).  The fancy table settings were punctuated with bottles of red wine, and I suddenly felt a little hopeless.  Could it be that the French were the only nation of people impervious to the Irish brand of jovial merry-making?

But I needn't have feared, because soon the whiskey started flowing, as well as Heineken to my horror, and a few people commented on the Guinness shirt I was wearing by saying, "Do you actually like Guinness?" with looks of disgust.  It makes me wonder why Bud Light hasn't caught on in France yet.  There would be a killer market for it.  The first course was fish and coleslaw (first of all, ew.  Second of all, not Irish at all, unless you count the cabbage) and the second course, a very Irish beef stew and potatoes, arrived shortly after.  Amelia and I had to insist as vegetarians that no, it was not possible to just pick out the carrots from the beef stew and eat those, and that we were just fine eating bread, thanks.

And then finally, the music began!  Amelia and I were pulled up to sing with two of my teachers and we and the band (also comprised of some of my teachers) worked our way through the Irish songbook that had been meticulously put together and distributed to all of the party-goers.  We sang classics like Molly Malone, Dirty Old Town, The Wild Rover and... Lord of the Dance.  If you're not familiar with Lord of the Dance, it's a fast, upbeat little number that is the universal favorite church hymn, especially the line, "It's hard to dance with the devil on your back."  If you are familiar with the song, now try to imagine a room of thirty mostly non-English speakers try to get through it at a pace that was making even me foam at the mouth.  It was brilliant.

After the cheese course (we're still in France, after all) a bunch of us learned an Irish dance with partners.  I normally count myself as a very poor dancer indeed, but sadly I was one of the few who actually caught on.  Clearly, French men were not born to dance and unfortunately most of them were old and smelly.  But it was still really fun and everyone was laughing in spite of having their toes repeatedly stomped on.

The rest of the night was just spent socializing, but then suddenly, hop!  Everyone was putting on coats and leaving because it was nearly midnight and most of them had apparently arrived by pumpkin coach, not to mention they were all teachers and had school the next morning.  I had been hoping that the party would go on a little longer because I was having such a good time talking to my teachers outside of school, and having conversations that went beyond, "So, animals for the next lesson?  Great, see you then."  I knew mostly everyone at the party, and it seemed that even more people knew who I was, and it felt so good to finally be at a level of French where I could do what I love to do and socialize, schmooze and make jokes.  I felt that I gained some insight as to why people might actually enjoy living in Bar-le-Duc, as small and boring as it is.  Everyone knows everyone else.  Everyone knows where everyone else went on vacation.  Everyone knows everyone else's little quirks, but nevermind that, because when they all get together they still have a great time. 

My boss, Isabelle, told me that she was going to be sad to see me leave at the end of April, which is coming up so fast.  And for the first time, I realized how sad I was going to be too.  I've made great friends, most of them either twice or half my age, and will most likely never see them again.  I'll leave Bar-le-Duc in five weeks, au pair in Brittany, work at a camp in Switzerland, return to the States in August, start my Masters in September, and remain in Chicago for the foreseeable future.  While there's no doubt in my mind that I'll return to France someday in some capacity, I don't think I'll ever come back to Bar-le-Duc.  This town of fallen grandeur, that used to be wealthy and the seat of the duchy, is now poor and lacking in resources.  While it's smackdab between Paris and Strasbourg, the TGV speeds through ten times a day, not even slowing down enough for the passengers to read the name of the town on the side of the train station.  It's a little blip on the map, cut off from the rest of the country in a wealth of green countryside called Meuse, and most people who are born here die here too.  No one leaves because they're happy enough not exploring the world outside and honestly, it's an eerie little place.  Seven months have been quite enough here.  Perhaps when I think back on my time here, I'll remember how I stayed holed up in my apartment, or struggled to get my classes under control, or how I felt unimportant and insignificant in my schools.  But hindsight has a way of bedazzling our memories, and I have a feeling that I'll look back and remember laughing with my students, conversing fluidly in French without feeling self-conscious, and how we all crooned the sad fate of sweet Molly Malone and raised our glasses, our faces flushed with whiskey, and cried, "Sláinte!" in disparate unity.

First Week of Vacation Wasted? Check.

The first week of vacation is almost over and I couldn't be more thankful.  Awhile ago, I decided that I wouldn't mind spending the first week in Bar-le-Duc.  I figured I would finally finish reading Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections, perhaps start a new book (maybe even in French!), go for jogs, do yoga, hike through the forest, write, and generally do a lot of fun, relaxing things that I would feel good about myself for doing.  Fast forward to today:  I have done none of those things.  Okay, maybe hiking and running were ambitious as I would actually have to leave my apartment to do those things.  Yoga was a little iffy too because I'd have to unroll my mat, and who has time for those things?  And when I think about it, did I really imagine I could pick up that book completely within arm's reach and open it to the bookmarked page?  And writing?  HA!  I must've been drunk when I came up with my vacation to-do list.

Instead,  I have filled my days with Q.I. (Quite Interesting), the amazing BBC quiz-type show hosted by Stephen Fry from which I've learned an absurd number of things, none of which I can remember right now; Doctor Who (Amelia, I am shaking my fist at you for getting me hooked); and Frank McCourt's 'Tis on audiobook, which is like an Irish grandfather reading you the most depressing bedtime story ever.  So really, things could be worse.  Even though I have done nothing but go from lying in bed and doing the above things, to sitting in a chair and doing those things while eating, and then going back to lie in bed with a supply of cookies and tea to do those things, at least I haven't become a meth addict over break.  It's all about perspective.

Yesterday, however, I felt it was time to break the vicious BBC/ tea cycle, so I hopped on a train to Reims, the champagne capital of the world.  Just an hour away from Bar-le-Duc, Reims was a major city back in the day, hosting the coronations of all the French kings in its huge, gothic cathedral that gives Notre Dame of Paris a run for her money.  The city was badly damaged in both world wars, but it was in Reims that Eisenhower received word of the Germans' surrender in May 1945.   Reims is a modestly-sized city, probably comparable to nearby Nancy and Metz, so I was easily able to see its sights in just a day.  No, I didn't have any champagne (it's just as expensive in Reims as it is everywhere else) but getting out of Bar-le-Duc was refreshing and bubbly enough.

 The Subé fountain, erected in 1930.  The angel at the top, "Victory," was taken by the Germans in WWII, but finally given back in 1989. 

 Notre Dame of Reims (completed early 14th century).  The French kings have all been coronated on this very site, even before the cathedral was constructed.  Clovis, the first king of the Franks, was baptized on this spot in 496 AD by Saint Remi.

The interior

 Chagall's stained glass windows in the cathedral

 Saint Remi Basilica (early 11th century)

 The interior of the basilica

 The monastery, which is now the Saint Remi museum

 Buildings on one of the main roads

Today, I finally start my real vacation!  It'll be a whirlwind of planes, trains and automobiles as usual, plus ferries even.  Train to Paris tonight, plane to Dublin tomorrow morning, bus to Galway in the afternoon, and then a ferry to Inishmore on Saturday morning.  I will resist the urge to speak in an Irish accent, lest the locals think I'm mocking them and throw me off the cliffs... but I really can't be held responsible after a few pints.  Sláinte!