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!