Ireland in a Blur

I've been in Ireland for a couple weeks now, and have been travel(l)ing for nearly a month! A semi-quick overview of my schedule: After leaving my hosts in Saaremaa, I spent a couple of days in Tallinn ,the capital of Estonia. I remember it being rather quiet, medieval, and undiscovered during a frozen April last year. Not so on a Saturday in August. There were too many people for anything to feel undiscovered. I spent most of my time revisiting places I had been to while studying abroad. Honey beer at the medieval restaurant (though slightly disappointing since it was not enjoyed as a respite from the cold and I was by myself), views from the top of a church tower, and a walk to the airport figure prominently.

My first few days in Ireland were decidedly underwhelming. Dublin is a giant tourist trap of a city in the middle of the summer, in my opinion. I'm sure it's perfectly lovely when we're not all tramping through wearing Guiness hats and gawping at things, but while I was there, I waded through crowds of tourists in search of anything to do with sustainable agriculture. I spent four nights there and found a total of one locally sourced restaurant and an Organic Food Co-op that was tucked away in an almost-impossible to find location. I did see plenty of nice museums and parks, and took a trip out to some breathtaking cliffs covered with heather. But in general, people weren't particularly friendly, and I didn't find much of interest for my studies. However, I did go to the public library...

By this time, I was tired of living in hostels and traveling alone. It's awfully hard to fill every hour in the day sometimes, and it's hard only having the briefest of conversations with shopkeepers or hostel guests. I was more hopeful of my next stage, Cork, but was starting to look around for a farm or something I could go to for a few days at least.

As soon as I got out of the bus station at Cork, I knew it was a much better place to be. I walked to my hostel, past coffee shops and outdoor living stores. When I got in to the lobby, I immediately picked up a brochure for a musuem dedicated to butter, which happened to be free that day, and about two steps from where I was standing. I headed that direction, but first found a cafe that served homemade food made from local ingredients. Aha! People were also much friendlier in general- for example, a random old women told me about her childhood in Cork, and I met a couple people in my hostel that night and finally got around to a glass of Guiness (fyi, a bit better in Ireland, but NOT the world's best beer, I will fight with anyone).

The next day I wandered around the city a bit more, and stumbled across a farmers market. And here is where I acheived some of the spontaneity I was looking for in this trip. I started talking to a vendor, and got an invitation to work on her farm for a while. I had no idea where I was going, but I jumped at the chance to stop spending money at hostels and find some focus!

So, I've been working at an organic farm for about a week, picking many, many pounds of tomatoes and weeding carrot rows while lying down on this contraption that looks like a hang-glider. The family is nice, a bit colorful, and there are other young people working on the farm as well. (I've learned that a thimble is called a fingerhut {finger-hoot} in German, one of the many exciting lessons of the past few days).

I'm off to Black Isle Brewery in Scotland sometime next weekend- it is surprisingly hard to get from where I am now to where I need to be, so I've got to spend some time planning that and buying tickets. I'll write some more about agricultural/culinary lessons when I can wrap my mind around what exactly I've been doing and learning.

And finally, it's strange not to be going back to school of some sort right now, the first time in 18 odd years. Happy studying to all of you going back to school...enjoy it while it lasts!

Goodbye Eesti

Today is my last day in Estonia- I had a wonderful time, and like this country immensely, but as I'm heading off to Ireland, I won't be too sad.

Well, I came to learn about food and agriculture, and that is mostly what I have done so far. Estonia is a good example of a country that is not, in my opinion, in desperate need of an organic movement. My hosts would dearly love it if everyone suddenly thought organic and local were the sole way they chose food, and are trying to start up the trend. However, I'm struggling to understand why exactly they feel so strongly about this. Estonia doesn't need an organic/local food movement precisely because their food is already mostly organic and local. To be fair, I am looking at it from an American perspective, where factory farms, pollution, and corn rule. In Estonia, almost everyone has at least some of their food sourced directly from a small garden or farm and buys local packaged goods because that is what is available.

I asked Karen, my host, what she sees for the future of Estonian agriculture. She cited a food system that sounded a bit more like what we see in the US today. If she's right, then perhaps she and her minions are right to start this organic thing now, rather than wishing they did 20 years from now. The problem they are coming up against is that they want to add meaning to the words organic and local, so that it becomes a conscious choice, a valuable lesson for their American counterparts.

In other news, I spent a day foraging for mushrooms and blueberries in the forest. We cooked up our bucketful of chanterelles that night for dinner, after which I woke up at about 6am with the realization that something was very wrong. My hypothesis is that somebody picked a bad mushroom and I was the lucky person to eat it. Or the sheer volume of mushrooms I ate overwhelmed my system. The next day was, needless to say, spent in bed. It was interesting, however, that everyone kept offering me herbal suggestions rather than medicine. I drank some rosemary tea (didn't help) but eventually felt fine the next day. Mushrooms are now eaten with a wary eye.

Why didn't I bring my Renaissance gown?

I've finally got a couple of free minutes, so I should take a minute and digest exactly what's been going on for the last five days.

I stopped over in London for two days, which was lovely, but somewhat of a whirlwind. Traveling alone is certainly different than traveling with a companion, though not necessarily inferior. You can do what you want, travel at your own pace, and no one cares when you get lost except yourself. It also forces you to talk to people, since it's easy to slip into a world of your own, and listen only to your own thoughts. I enjoyed my first solo meal in London at a nice Moroccan restaurant, talked to a farmers market manager about London markets, and slept in a hostel bunk that resembled a small and comfortable cave.

The real adventure began in Estonia. I feel as if I've been here for a week, though it's only been two days. This is probably because I've only slept about 7 hours in the past 48+. There's so much going on, all of it rather bizarre compared to, say, the day before I left.

I'm currently in a town called Kuressaare, on the island of Saaremaa, closish to Finland if you'd like a reference. It felt a bit as if I were going to the ends of the earth, as I boarded first a bus, then a ferry, then another bus to get from the capital, Tallinn, to Kuressarre. It turns out that it's a quaint little town where people leave their keys in their unlocked cars, and leave their doors to their houses wide open. There is a nice little downtown, a 700 year old castle, and a harbor.

I was under the impression that I was going to work on a farm that provided food for a restaurant. Once I met my hosts, Karen and Alar, it was soon clear that the restaurant was closed, the garden out of comission. Instead, I am helping them with their several "projects," which are a little vague, but mostly involve encouraging organic food production and local eating. So far, I have used my anthropology skills to interview people about their food choices. Too bad I never learned how to conduct interviews in Estonian. Or at an Estonian festival, complete with dancing and smoked fish with heads. I managed to find a few people who spoke at least broken English, and learned some interesting things.

And then last night, my first night in Kurresaare, I accompanied my hosts to a birthday party: a medieval themed birthday party. We showed up, and there were various Estonians wearing medieval garb, with clay mugs, and gathering around a roasting pig. The entertainment for the night included a magician, fire breathers, and lute players. Ummmm, not what I was expecting for my first night here, or really ever, but a fantastic experience. Many Estonians speak a little English, and there are various North American expats around (my hosts are both Canadian- Estonian) so the awkwardness of being the only one who didn't speak Estonian was kept to a minimum.

I have no idea what I'm doing the rest of the week, but I expect it will be great fun. When I'm done with my time here, I'll post something extensive about the agriculture and food- I've already learned a lot, but there's a lot more to figure out.

So, I'm alive, having a lot of fun, and being productive. I'll keep up with this when I can!