Goodbye

It's 5 a.m. Monday morning, and it's dawn in Belfast. The window panes across the street at Methody are all pale gold, and birds are singing. I leave in an hour and a half for the city airport, to start the long flight home.

I don’t want to write this. I don’t want to leave: I’m eager to be home, but all that means is that someday I’ll have to come back and live here.

I love Northern Ireland, even more so than I thought I would... and the people here have been kind beyond all my expectations. Especially the other College Gardens students, the wonderful people at both St. Bart’s and Fisherwick, and all the others I’ve met along the way.

Here are a couple pictures of St. Bart’s folks:

This is Jenny Forbes, her mother (whose name I can't remember off the top of my head), and a lady named Pauline, at Jenny's house, with the dessert we had after a light dinner to follow up the C.S. Lewis tour. Here is her brother, Robert, with Lola, the neighbour’s cat:

At St. Bart’s on Saturday I helped out at the summer fair, setting up and clearing tables. I also ate my own weight in cakes. On Sunday, during the service, I was called up and presented with a matted photograph of the church, which I hope to frame and hang up at home.

I’ll keep posting after I come home – you’ll all see pictures from the fair, and more...!

Here are Janice, Ron, and Herbie:

I know Janice has said she’s been disappointed by student interest in the past, because they – being in such a busy area, with so many students and others coming and going – are really seeking to be welcoming to the outside community. I’d say that yes, maybe hundreds of students might pass by, but in at least one case the church welcomed in one - one shy kid who's been going through a lot of difficulties. And that made all the difference to that one kid... I mean it.

That goes for the lovely people at Fisherwick as well. Going to church – and to the few CU activities I managed to get to, and to the free lectures waaay back when at the beginning of the year – might be my clearest and best memories from the past six months. Thank you.

I will continue this blog once I get home, with more pictures, updating entries which my computer wouldn't let me edit, and more. Maybe even putting up some pictures from home - of MY cats, for instance, or of some of the odd things in Virginia that I've been talking about all this time.  

Till then... goodbye. Goodbye, NI - somehow, I'm coming back. Someday.

Jack

Do you know of any famous people from Belfast? I do! I do!

My knowledge of the famous and infamous is... limited. Most of my friends learn this soon enough, when they name famous actors/singers/existentialist philosophers/whatever, and watch comprehension slide off my face like cheese off hot pizza.*

It's rare for me to discover someone who 1) other people know about, and 2) who I know about, like, and understand. It's extremely rare. One of these someones is:

(These three photoes are all over the internet... I'm not going to bother with sources.)

Who, I discovered when I got here, was born and raised here. Literally, right down the road. I have got off class and was bored and wandered down the same roads that he got off class and was bored and wandered down. I still think this is really cool.

Photo from http://dnausers.d-n-a.net/cslewis/brochure9.html (Jack's on the left - the other kid is his brother, Warnie.)


You do know who this is, right? Maybe not from the photos. He was an author, after all - the only photos you see are the ones stuck on dust jackets. This is C.S. "Jack" Lewis,** scholar, author, Christian apologist, expert in Rennaisance literature, sci-fi enthusiast (before it was cool), and all-around oddball genius. He’s best known for the Narnia books, and for the fact that he replied to every letter a fan ever sent, and for being friends*** with J.R.R. Tolkien. He also loved tea, thought sports were boring, and, yes, was from Belfast.

The infinitely kind Dr. Forbes arranged for half a dozen or so of her family and neighbours to go on a C.S. Lewis tour, on the logic that they could use me as an excuse, as you don't usually go on tours of a city when you live there.

The guide's name was Sandy. We got in a little bus at city centre. He pointed out the shop where Lewis, as a child, had wandered in and heard the "Ride of the Valkyries" being played (to advertise a gramophone, I think), and we got off and looked at the building where his father – Albert Lewis – worked, the place where the house was where he was born, the school he spent some time at (and hated), the church his grandfather was rector at, and so on. The guide quoted extensively from Surprised By Joy, which I haven't read, so it was all wonderfully interesting...

It was a quote from that book, in fact, that first sparked my... spiritual interest, I suppose you'd say... early in my teens. For the first time I’d heard a famous thinker quoted, from a nonfiction book, and I’d actually understood exactly what they were talking about. And he was writing from a similar direction to the one which I was coming from, so I found myself reading arguments that could just as well be addressed to me... also a rare and thought-provoking occurrence.

But really, if you want to know anything about Lewis’ books, go and read one. He was annoyingly productive as an author. There must be hundreds of the things. The Chronicles of Narnia, Mere Christianity, and The Screwtape**** Letters are some of the more popular ones, and each (I think) is worth a read. I'm not quoting him here, because, if you're reading this, you're probably friends with me on Facebook, and you probably see C.S. Lewis quotes all the time because of that. But back to the tour.

We got off once more and huddled round the gates at Little Lea. This was the house the Lewis family moved to when little Jack was still very little, and it's the house he remembers best: the house where his mother died, and the house where he would climb through the attics and hide in corners and read.

You can just see the peaked roof above the trees.

Our last stop of all, however, was The Seeker.

This is a statue, dedicated to Lewis, that stands in front of one of the city’s libraries. It doesn’t depict Lewis – the figure opening the wardrobe door is Diggory Kirk, the Professor from the Narnia books. He’s posed just opening the wardrobe...

Around the sculpture, in the pavement, Lewis’s name is written, with his date of birth – and date of re-birth – and with a description of him as a writer, a scholar, a teacher, a Christian... and an Ulsterman.

Belfast doesn’t widely advertise its history – though next year, the hundredth anniversary of the Titanic, has got people planning. But it seems to be proud in a quiet sort of way of C.S. Lewis. There’s a mural somewhere as well, and of course, there’s the study room at the QUB library:

Maybe I’ll re-read the Narnia books when I get home...

* I'm hungry.
** All anecdotal stories aside... seriously... what would you call yourself if your parents had christened you Clive Staples?
*** Who disliked the Narnia books because they were incoherent and allegorical, and described Lewis’ style as “pompous silliness.” Lewis, in turn, said (upon meeting Tolkien) that he ought to be smacked. Ah, true friendship!
**** I still think Screwtape would be a great name for a cat.

Seannacht i nGaillimh, part 2: Inis Meain

I decided to spend my last day in Galway on Inis Meáin. As I overheard a Frenchman saying on the bus:

“If you really want to know what is France, you do not go to Paris. With all this beautiful countryside, why do you go to Paris?”

Sometimes you have to out in the middle of nowhere if you want to learn where you are. Inis Meáin (the "middle island") is the least-visited of the Aran Islands. The ferry there was carrying supplies - a new TV, among other items, loaded by squinting, sunburnt men in caps into the sides of the boat - as well as people, and most of the people were locals traveling between the island and the mainland.

The boat was named Banrionn na Fharraige (that spelling might be off - I've not got my dictionary with me), which means "Queen of the Sea."

Now, my computer isn't letting me upload photos, so I'll keep this short for now and edit more in later (I'm sure you're all devestated at this sudden absence of pretty rocks). I went onto the island, and found a shop, which was closed. As was the other shop (there are two, I think, on the island), as was the hotel. I had no map, so I walked along for an hour or so until I saw another human being. She was sitting in a chair reading a book, in the yard, outside a house with a small sign that was advertised as a tea shop.

I tiptoed up and tried to look lost and friendly at the same time. She looked up, and greeted me - in Irish. Then she laughed and apologized at the look on my face.

Keep in mind that I've been learning to read and write Irish, not speak it - like most languages, it can be hard to recognize off the page.

It turns out the lady was from the Netherlands. She was a psychologist who'd learned Irish, moved to the Aran Islands, and decided that was they needed was a tea shop. I bought tea and banana bread. She stood next to the table and we talked for a while. She pointed out the path, and I paid and wandered off, and promptly got lost again.

It was lovely, though. All I could think, walking down the road, was, "Lord, let this not be the last I see of this place."

As I said, photos later.

Seannacht i nGaillimh, part 2: Inis Mor WILL UPDATE WITH PHOTOS

The boat was crowded but comfortable. It went fast enough to kick up sprays of salt water over everyone on the lower deck. It was named “Ceol na Fharraige,” which means Music of the Sea.  “Inis Mor,” by the way, means Big Island.* Inis Mor is usually where visitors go – it has bikes for rent, Aran sweaters for sale, and a Centra.

I acquired a map at the information station and made a plan of what to see – the Aran Islands are full of ruins and interesting historical sites.

When I got there, however, I found at I had instead was a killer headache and no idea whatsoever where I was on the map. So I went to the Centra and bought water and painkillers (noting that the receipt printed Go Raibh Maith Agat at the bottom), and then... wandered.

I was feeling a little disconsolate and more than a little lonely. I don’t do well travelling on my own. So when I found myself walking down a road beside a beach, I stopped, and turned, and stared. It was the most beautiful thing I’d seen all spring, including all the flowers in Belfast, and it was EMPTY. It was still too early in the morning for people to have congregated on it, and it was mostly on the weedy end, full of shallow pools of snails and limpets, and vast fields of pebbles and seaweed drifts, and the kinds of rocks that just beg to have mermaids perched artistically among them.

I came back up the beach three hours later, smelling of salt water, with my trousers wet through and seaweed between my toes. It was glorious.

The only problem with this was that I now had no idea where I was. The only person I met on the road was a dog, who walked with me for a while till we came to the sign that pointed upwards towards a couple bored donkeys and a hiking trail. Thinking that a trail had to go somewhere, I followed it.

Needless to say, I got hopelessly lost. There were cliffs, with huge green pools in the rock, high hilltops where all you could see were rocky shingles, wildflowers and small striped snails, and long lines of walls that separated the cows’ pastures.

I was very proud of myself for climbing over several of these without serious injury, though there were some nasty brambles that tried their hardest to change this.

I made it back to the pier before the boat left, though, and got a sandwich and some crisps from Centra because my granola bars were gone. I wandered through the sweater store, surreptitiously taking photos of the sweaters there for future knitting reference.

We were ferried back to the mainland in time for dinner (granola bars and Guinness). I spent that evening trying to figure out where to go next, because it seemed silly just to go back (which was what I wanted to do).  

* Some place names sound better when they aren’t translated into English.

Seannacht i nGaillimh, part 1

Easter Monday I went to Galway. As it was a bank holiday, everything was closed, and there was only one bus to Dublin. In it, I sat next to a man named Frank, who was very nice, and who talked about water sports and Spanish classes.

The countryside was lovely as ever. The fields here – as I may have said before – are small and bordered with hedges. Most of them are full of cows, or sheep. It’s rare to see any devoted to plants. The most vivid of these were the rape fields – I’d never seen so much YELLOW being produced by a living thing. Second to that, the most striking sights were the cemeteries, with the crosses done in black and white, the sun shining.

This was the farthest from Belfast I’ve been. I wish I had time to go to Cork, to go to England even... but no. I just have to come back. I don’t know how, but I will. I honestly hate travelling for the sake of travelling, but if, for instance, I could live here for another few months... well.

In Galway city, I got off (asking the bus driver “This is Galway, right?” just to make sure). If you’re looking for a city that excels in aesthetic beauty or interesting architecture, you’re not looking for Galway. Galway is lots of winding streets and boxy buildings, pigeons and seagulls, pubs and tourist traps and convenience stores. There are a few large shops that open into different streets in seemingly unconnected parts of the city. There was not a single time, over the course of the week, where I left the hostel and did not get lost. But it’s lovely if you find the riverside. The river in Galway is the Corrib, and there is a constant sound of wind and water behind the sounds of the city.

My first day I’d planned to go to the museum – however, they’d neglected to put “Oh, by the way, we’ll be closed for the next two months” on their website. So I wandered around the city instead. I saw the Spanish Arch, and went to a few shops, and went down to the river. I went down to the river at low tide, skirting discarded beer cans and a rusty old shopping trolley, and watched the swans swimming out in the sun.

I stayed in the Sleepzone hostel, near Erie Square. I highly recommend it, if only because they politely and patiently dealt with me:

Me: Can I buy a ticket for this here?

Hostel guy: You can book it and buy the ticket when you go to the bus station.

Me: What?

Hostel guy: *explains again, more slowly*

Me: Oh. So how much is it?

Hostel guy: €4.

Me: ... can you take a debit card?

Hostel guy: No, but there’s an ATM right around the corner *gives directions*

Me: *doesn’t understand directions at all, goes outside and wanders around, hoping to run into it, but doesn’t*

Me: *back inside* I can’t find it. Can I pay you later? Will you still have the slip thingies later?

Hostel guy: Yes, but really, it’s right around the corner... *goes out, points to different places, trying to explain*

Me: *wanders around for about twenty minutes, happens upon it by chance*

Hotel guy: You’re back, did you find it?

Me: Can you change a twenty?

If they can deal with this popping up at the desk every half hour, and sneezing on the brochures, and who knew what else I was guilty of that week, than they can deal with anything.

Anyway, as for that ticket, it was for a bus/walking tour of the Burren and the Cliffs of Mohr. Most tours are bus tours, where you sit warm and comfortable in the bus and pay lots of money for some tour guide to be all Irish at you and let you off every now and then to stand someplace scenic and take pictures.

I picked the one I did, because I wanted to take at least one tour while I was here, and because it was advertised as a walking tour. If I have to sit on a bus for five hours to get there, I don’t want to sit on a bus for five hours while I’m there. It wasn’t a huge group, and seemed mostly made up of students, though many of these were clearly city kids who’d never seen a cowpat in their lives (this serves to increase the tour’s entertainment value).

The Burren is an expanse of rocky hills, limestone, that stretches for over a hundred miles.  It’s crossed over with stone walls and full of cows. Again, it didn’t look too unfamiliar, with its rolling hills and criss-crossed weathered rock, until I climbed it and kept looking down on unfamiliar flowers and rocks. The Burren is famous because of its strange geology and its resulting diverse range of plants and flowers. We walked by hundreds of different small wildflowers, and hazel trees, and more. It's beautiful - stunningly wild and calm all at once.

The guide’s name was John. At the top of the hill, he suddenly waved his arms and ordered us all to lay down on the grass and the rock and be silent – absolutely silent – for thirty seconds. We did, and it was lovely listening to the wind and the birds instead of the other people. And he said, “There. Now you know what it’s like to be a cow in the mountains.”

In the house they’d turned over to tours, I bought tea and apple pie after the tour, and looked at the wall covered in the names and places of everyone who’d come on the walking tour. We met the guide’s dad, and the guide’s dad’s two dogs, who were so excited to see us that they jumped in the cattle trough. It was a lot of fun. Here you can see the two dogs (and the dad), from out the window as the bus drove away:

The bus rambled through the countryside. Among the notable sights we passed were old stone buildings (lots of them in this area of the country). We stopped at a passage tomb called Poll na mBrón. This was the first real prehistoric monument I’d seen that hadn’t been all but annihilated by later generations, as it was roped off. The name means “Hole of Sorrows." The tomb is several thousands of years old, from the Neolithic.

The Cliffs of Mohr would have been beautiful had they not been infested with tourists. I felt bad for just existing when I saw a huge, sweeping expanse of rock and sea with signs saying PLEASE DO NOT LITTER, KEEP IRELAND NATURAL, etc, with cigarette butts stubbed out in the verdant green beneath them. But here is what they look like, from a good angle:

The geology of the area is really interesting. But I won't make this any longer than it already is... so back to the city.

In the hostel, I got five nights of international exposure. I shared the room with Daphne the Swiss student violinist, four Germans whose names I didn’t get, a thoughtful, middle-aged Australian named Nirelle who was travelling the world, an elegant Brazilian who bemoaned the state of the local cuisine, and a pack of pink-accessorised Londoners who trashed the bathroom. And two Americans – one, a talkative New Yorker named Chelsea, determined to have as much fun as possible during the week she had on the island, and the other, her quieter friend of South American descent who was also from the States.

This last was named Christina. I noticed with some surprise that she didn’t sound as though she had an accent. I asked her where she was from.

“Northern Virginia,” she said. And so I encountered the one other Virginian I’ve met abroad, in a hostel in Galway.

It was talking with the others that gave me ideas for the rest of the week. I’d go to Inis Mor, which I hadn’t planned to see, but which seemed easier (i.e. less expensive) to get to than I’d thought. So the next day I went down to the tourist office, got another ticket, got on another bus, got down to the ferry, and rode the ferry to the Aran Islands.

I'll write about the Aran Islands later, and show you pictures. I hope you find serene scenes of windy hills and old rocks as breathtaking as I do.

One of the girls from the walking tour, at one of the stops...