Derry and the Irish Sea Shore

I've spent the last few days learning a lot of mistakes I made in my novel, a lot of assumptions that are either totally untrue or that I could have expanded further. Derry has been great. As opposed to Belfast which is a city with 300,000 Derry only has 100,000, and 16th century walls that encase the city center nicely. They are a great place to stroll and get a birds-eye view of everything here. The river Foyle cuts right through the center of town, with City Center and the Catholic Bogside on one shore, and the mostly Prodestant area on the other.

The weather has grown slightly sour, but nothing I can't handle. It's been cloudy and muggy for the last few days, so no more Irish sunburns for the time being. The people in this hostel, the Derry Independent Hostel, are GREAT. The owner is a fantastic and laid-back woman from New Zeland and the other people that work for her are pretty cool. There has been a group of about 5 or 6 of us who are all staying in Derry for more than a night or two, and we've kind of banded together and begun hanging out and going out to pubs and stuff at night. This group includes two students from Grenell in Iowa who are my age and doing research here for a month with one of their professors. They are Anthropology majors and are studying with the Tower Museum as they prepare an exibit on the Ulster Plantations, which is 400 years old this year, and really the start of the political unrest that is still happening on the island.

It was with them and their professor Doug that I went to a Catholic commemorative march. Every year the people walk through the Bogside and Craggin areas of town - once 'free' from British rule, with no outsiders entering the community without getting killed by the IRA (See the 'Now Entering Free Derry' sign for remaining proof) - with flags and flutes and pictures of all those who were killed in Derry and they go to the cemetary in commemoration of those who gave their lives for the cause. This year was particularily important because it is the 40th anniversary this summer of the Battle of the Bogside, which was the 3 day riot that finally pushed the British to deploy military troops into Northern Ireland. So we watched, and participated in the march with the people, which lead to the cemetary where the local Sinn Fein leaders gave speeches. It was pretty intense, the marches were really powerful and very dignified. Probably more than 200 people were there.

I've also seen the Free Derry Museum, gone on a few walking tours of the murals, and talked to the local people who's job it is to talk about the political nature of the 70's. One of them gave me the political walking tour, and I later found out he's good friends with the owner of the Hostel I'm at, so he's around all the time and we've been chatting.


Took the train to Castlerock today, a tiny town right on the ocean, with a huge beach and huge balck cliffs just a bit away. Across the water you can see county Donegal, and probably the city that I'll be living near while on the farm. It was not a super sunny day, but it was beautiful nonetheless. I read on the beach and wandered with my feet in the cool crisp waters, along the cliffs and back to the town where I got coffee and wrote for a couple of hours. The town was so silent and empty it was eerie, but I also kind of liked this, after the city it felt good to be in a place with less movement and noise for the afternoon. Took the train back to Derry and went to the pub across the road with the owner and some of the people I've been enjoying and enjoyed a half pint of cider while exchaning stories.

Tomorrow will be my last day in Derry then I head to Belfast on Wednesday morning to meet Josie. Though I am meeting people along the way, it will be so nice to have a companion who already knows me and who I can just relax with.

Belfast to Derry

I have really had a great couple of days. I had the priviledge to spend the evening with a Public Acheivement group called WIMPS (Where Is My Public Servent?) which is a group of young people in Belfast who talk to politicians and create a bi-weekly news cast that gets posted online. I got to chat with the youth - both Catholic and Prodestant - about their experiances with PA and how they got involved and such, as well as graze on life stories, though I was no in the position to press for details.

Afterwards, the leaders took me out for some pints and we talked about the meeting, what I saw and what I want to do back in America. Ben, the main leader and I stayed a bit longer and had a good talk over the walk home. It's looking like I have some people that I can meet up with in Derry, so we will see what happens in the next few days. Otherwise, on the way here we passed some beautiful little towns on the ocean with beaches, and if nothing else, I'll just go there for the day!

Yesturday I was on a tour bus along the coast and country side. It was so good to get out of the city and see everything here: it is unbelievably beautiful. Actually, its just like all the pictures, which is rather surprising. I'm so glad to be here. Went to the Giants Causeway and some other ruined castles and things along the north coast, all the way to Derry where I got a tour of the city walls and the Bogside murals. FINALLY. This is definatly the city where my novel takes place. I am back today, in my hostel and all set up, and I think I will be quite a bit happier here than in Belfast.

On the train a man talked to me the whole time, he was older and just sat down across from me and started chatting. It didn't take me long to realize I wasnt going to understand a word that came out of his mouth and that repeating 'What?' was not going to help either. So I just let him talk, laughed when he laughed and smiled a lot. I did understand him asking if I was married and that he was off to tell his son John right when he got home that he met a pretty girl for him on the train. By the end of the trip I was exhausted from trying to be polite and just wanted to head to the hostel, but he was really concered about my bag and me carrying it and wanted to hire me a taxi. Finally I just said 'Look, thanks, but I've hiked in the Rocky Mountains with a bag this big. I'm fine being lost in Derry for a few minutes.'

So I made it to the hostel alright. Seems like a good place. Josie will be here on Wednesday and I'll be glad to see her: traveling alone and not having another person who knows you well is rough. There are lots of great people around, but you have to meet each of them fresh and new and its taxing. I also realized I'm ready to be in the country for a long time and have some real work to be doing. The farm will be a good place to reach. For now I have some exploring to do. Heard they play traditional music every night at a pub down the road. Sounds good to me!

Belfast

It is the morning of my third day in Belfast now. Drinking some coffee and getting ready to head out into another warm sunny day.

I think I like Belfast more than London actually. It feels more real here, like an actual city, not just a place that is bulit to impress and be the imperial center of the western world. London was white all around. Belfast is brick and feels more like a place where people live.

On my first day here I was a block away from the road I needed to take to get to the hostel, but deicded to try going the oposite way. I ended up very lost on Queens University campus and student housing area. It was hot, muggy and I was carrying about 40 lbs of luggage on my back and shoulders. An hour later I found Fitzwilliam St: a block away from where I got off the bus.

Yestuday I went to the city center and wandered around the trouist part of Belfast. Read a book in sun on the grounds in front of the city center. Met Paul Smyth for lunch and we chatted about Public Acheivement in Northern Ireland and the situation today. In the evening I went on one of the Black Cab tours that takes you into both the Catholic and Prodestant gehttos and along the 'Peace Wall'. This is a 40ft wall that spans between all the Catholic and Prodestant areas with huge automatic gates that close at 11:30 every night, or whenever there is a fight. There are some 84 walls in Belfast to sperate the Catholics from the Prodestants, and though they have stopped killing each other, this hast just served to make them kill themselves more often.

It was very intense and good to see the places that I have been reading and writing about for so long. The Shankill road (prodestant) still has British flags drapped over the streets and on every door front. We saw an area of development with a totally empty place right in the middle.This was where some Prodestants lived who didnt agree with the Ulster Freedom Fighters and they got chased out of the area, then their houses were bombed so that they couldn't return. In the Catholic area, there is a highrise buliding that the British government put a military watch tower on top of because the Catholic families below make it impossible for the IRA to bomb. However, two soldiers were shot in the building, and a Catholic widdow cradled one while he was dieing, and got her knees blown off by the IRA. Besides all of this Belfast is the safest city in Europe for tourists, and our guide explained that as long as you don't go into these areas after nightfall - when people will start asking questions about your ancestry - you are totally fine. I'm really looking forward to going to Derry on Friday to see that city, which I have been researching even more.

This evening I'm going to see one of the PA groups here working on one of their projects, which should be really cool. Meet some youth and see what they care about. Tomorrow I'm taking a tour bus from the hostel up to Giants Causeway and Derry for the day, then heading to Derry for real on Friday. Josie joins me here next Wednesday, when we will head to the Fowlers' Farm once she has begun to recover from being jet-lagged.

London Day 2 & 3

It finally got sunny for an extended period of time in London today and I was in shorts and a t-shirt comfortably at last. Slept in quite a bit and pretty worn out from yesturday, so after spending a while at Greg's place with his Austrailian flatmates who are really great, I headed back into the city and straight to Buckingham Palace. From there I went to Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens which were both beautiful and well worth a long period of exploring time. I stopped every few minutes to read, rest, people watch, or briefly nap.

Ended up at a cafe on the lake and bought myself some lunch. Was joined by some Scottish men who needed a place to sit with one of their young son, Hemish (drop the H for pronouciation), who was running around sharing his stuffed animal sheep - Flossy - and cookies with all the women near by. After my time there I went home right away - don't want to totally wear myself out.

Yesturday I went to the National Portrait Gallery, which was REALLY great - protratits of kings, queens and other such important folk as William Shakespear (you know, that one picture that anyone has ever seen of him?) since the Tutor period all the way up to some modern art of famous people. Personally, I enjoyed the older portraits, espeically those of famlies - the way in which each person and their place within the family unit is represented is pretty incredible. Plus, the portraits back then were so lifelike, well, it was a really good couple of hours spent.

Wandered around the Soho area and the West Side theater disctrict for a while, then towards St Paul's Catherdial. They were starting a service in a half hour, so I got to go in for free, but did not get to go far. Which was enough, honestly. When all the really amazing artwork is on top of a cathedrial ceiling, being a little farther away from directly below it is not that disapointing, and certainly not worth £13. Then I walked all the way down to London Tower and saw the outside of that and the ancient moat and barriers and stuff, as well as signs pointed towards 'beheading'. This historic site was closed and also expensive, so I opted to not to back today and enjoy that I saw the outside.

All in all, I've wandered a LOT in the last few days and I'm looking foward to staying in for the rest of the night. Heading to Belfast tomorrow morning, so goodbye to London for now.

Romping through Wiltshire

I just returned to London from the last two days of exploring the countryside of Wiltshire with George and Barbara Brown, the parents of one of my neighbors out in Clover Valley. They were really lovely people, very obviously a happy British couple who were aboslutley wonderful to stay with. Didn't wear anyone out with over-talking, nor was it too quiet in the car and at dinner.

They picked me up at Chipenham train station and from there we went to the Avebury Village area, where there is an older stone ring structure than Stonehendge. Since I am on Greg's computer and not sure how he would feel about my uploading photos, here is a link to a picture of the site from above. In the back you can see the huge man-made hill.



http://www.yankee.flyer.co.uk/scannedimages/family_jan/avebury_card3.jpg

http://documents.kennet.gov.uk/Tourism/placestovisit/town-villages/images/avebury.jpg

The second is a picture closer to the actual stones. It has a better idea of the size and scope of the things next to the village.

There is a HUGE ring of stones in alternating long tall and diamond shapes. Probably these were representing of male and female and this was basically a place for ritual. Leading to this is a long avenue of standing stones that makes a road from a nearby burial ground to this large ring. Also about a mile away is a huge man-made hill that has nothing inside, and pre-dates even these stones. No one has any idea what that is about.

We went through several little villages, got coffee in Malbrough and went to Stonehendge. Stonehendge was one of those tourist things that you expect to be smaller in real life than it's always been protrayed to you - like Big Ben, or the Statue of Liberty - but it was absolutely not. It was incredibally big, clearly sacred, and impecibally designed. All of this has been said about it, but wow, having seen it myself I have no disapointments to report. The great thing about nearly all the sites I've been to is that most of the English historical sites have taken on the same system that Alcatraz prison has: a headset tour guide. That way you go at your own pace, skip the parts you dont care about and never run the risk of a bad guide. Stonehendge, the Roman Bath and Westminster Abbey all had this, and it was a really fantastic system.

After taking my time at Stonehendge, we made our way make to Melkshre, where the Browns live. Ate dinner then watched some British television. We ended up watching BBC and for the first time, I saw footage of a city in Iraq being bombed. Insane to realize that I had never seen footage of that on US news. This morning we went through some more tiny ancient villages - saw a chruch built by the Saxons in the 11th century with a celtic cross and everything. Followed the river Avon to Bath, which was extraordinarily Victorian paush. Inside the city is the ancient Roman Bath, back from when the Romans concured England and found a natural hotspring there, which they decided to build a bath house and temple around. Here are some links to pictures.

http://www-staff.it.uts.edu.au/~jenny/photos/2006/uk2006n/slides/Roman%20Baths.JPG



http://www.farmaccommodation.co.uk/images/roman%20baths1.jpg



The first shows that the place is in fact a ruin. The second has a few of the Bath Abbey on the other side of the square, about where one of the Roman temples used to stand. The Bath was built when the Romans invaded and discovered the natural hot springs there. They built temples and the bath house for social use. The actual spring is considred a holy place, and people dropped money and hand-writen curses into the water. Some of these curses have somehow been found and preserved. Mostly they were asking the goddess to kill people who stole things from them. From that holy spring there was a very well designed system of ways for the water to move to the differnt pools in the bath house. There were even pipes under pressure to create a swirling effect in one pool. The whole place fell into disrepair when the Romans left, and the temples were destoryed. The old stairs and a few peices of the altar still remain, but that is about it. They keep discovering more and more to the baths - beyond the pictures of the main lounging area above. There were rooms like saunas and several different pools for different uses.

Later the kings, and, naturally, the nobels came to the springs when they were rediscovered for healing purposes. Drinking the water is supposed to heal you - and so I had a glass, for good measure. As well as throw ten cents into the holy spring. After seeing Bath Abbey and all of it's tombs and wall memorial-notes, I got on the train back to London. Lovely ride, listening to Joanna Newsom and drinking coffee, watching the countryside pass on by. I have learned how to effectively ride the London Tube, and made it back to Greg's easily. He is gone for the weekend, so I have his computer and bed, which is nice. I believe that after tonight, I will feel fully caught up on sleep.

It is late now, and my eyes hurt. I think I should run down to the store and buy some dinner-like food. Tomorrow I'll be back in London city to do all the things I've mapped out for myself.

I have learned that traveling alone is really quite great. I am liking having freedom to wander, and not needing to wonder if there is something we'd both like to be doing better. It's all me, and this is fantastic!

28 hours and still not sleeping

So officially I did make it to London this morning - met up with Greg and he got me coffee and I did some exhausted exploring. To put my entire day into one thought I had this afternoon; (while walking along Queen's Walk along the Thames River for a few miles) 'Wait...what was i doing again? oohhh right: looking for Big Ben. Where the hell is that?'

As may be guesed, Big Ben is not all that big, but it is still pretty awesome. London itself is nice - not at all foreign feeling besides the accents, which is not totally jarring to me. I may just be really really tired though. I woke up at 9 AM MN time on Tuesday and have not slept. The flight was not exhausting enough for me to sleep at all, we caught up to daylight too quickly. I did watch Hotel For Dogs in english AND spanish though. I and my bag arrived fully intact despite much turbulance and I made my way sucessfully thoughout the city, along the river and found out that it's OK to run into people in London and you dont need to jump and freak out and apologize. If you do your just a midwestern tourist.

After seeing the river, the eye, the globe theater and all the other things along the way such as cobbled streets and bridges like london bridge, which is actually a lot lamer than the childhood song makes it sound, I crossed the bridge to big ben and the houses or parliment. Across the street, I found Westminster Abbey, which I decided to tour since I had time to kill and now I am not entirely sure if I should have left it till I was more awake. Don't get me wrong; it was beautiful and old and full of cool stuff like tombs, EVERYWHERE, but it was so crowded with sculptures and tombs and latin on the walls that it almost felt gawdy to me. I did light a candle and say a prayer - for good measure. I suppose thats what Europe is like in a way: overcrowded with monuments of a history someone decided should be remembered. And kings and scandel. I should be prepared for this.

Then I found a park nearby, got a glass of wine and a sandwhich - that had ONLY mushrooms and tomatoes in it, which surprised me till I remembered what everyone said about British cooking - and felt excellent and exhausted sitting in the rain, with a perfectly legal glass of wine which no one even carded me for, in London. England is just what one imagines it to be like, which is comforting. Greg's place is nice, and we went to dinner and found we had a lot more in common than I had previously thought.

But really now, I need to sleep. Like, REALLY. Getting up early to head into the country and meet the Browns.

Swine Flu

For those of you who have heard my recent worries, it seems I am not infected with H1N1...Or if I am I got the drugs and rest fast enough to effectively kick it while it was just getting it's feet on the ground in my body.


To clarify: I was exposed (yeah, it's been confirmed) on Sunday, Monday and possibly Wednesday, and there was worry, doctors, lots of surgical masks and lots of laying in bed. Now I seem to be fine, despite the vertigo I am receiving form the tamiflu I'm taking twice a day for good measure. (Though I can't get over the constant thought that needlessly taking these antibiotics just serve to strengthen viruses...)


So, it appears I will still be going to England on the 16th!

Plans Changing

Well, as I read once, "expect things to change so that they can." At the time I remember underlining this phrase over and over again excitedly, thinking, 'oh man, that is SO true in my life'.

So there have been a few changes. To put it simply, we will be cutting Italy out of the trip, and coming home on the 6th of August. This is extraordinarily disappointing to both Josie and I, but good in other ways. In the new plan, my whole time in London and Northern Ireland will stay the same, and we'll still be going to the Folwer's place on the Inishowen Peninsula of Ireland, maybe only for 2 or 2 and a half weeks now. We'll still see the greatness of Ireland such as Cork, Galloway and Dublin. From Dublin we'll fly to Paris, take the trains to Switzerland, see Zurich, Bern and stay with the friends in the Alps for a few days. Then we'll travel back through France, seeing Nice and Provance, perhaps Brittany (since we'll have a little extra cash by cutting off a month of travel) and fly out of London of the 6th of August.

...

In other news...packing right now. Got some lightweight, nice work pants for the farm. Firmed up my plans with at least one important person in Norther Ireland. Only two days left at American Girl Bistro (THANK GOD) and plenty of sudden interest in all the tourism books laying on the floor of my room has overcome me. I will have only 1 backpack to live out of for nearly 2 months, and it looks like I will actually start off with extra room!


6 days, well 5 days really, and counting till take-off...

General Itinerary

Now that it's only two weeks till I leave, I'm finalizing a lot of little details, most importantly the time between the 16th and the 1st of July when I will meet Josie and Belfast.

So...
-16th of June, I'll leave the US and fly to London
-17th I'll arrive in London and stay with my "uncle" Greg Barry
-18th-19th I'll be staying in the countryside with parents of a neighbor, which is all based on good luck and relationships for me.
-22nd I'll fly to Belfast - staying in Belfast and Derry for about a week and a half, meeting with some people who I know through a professor and doing more research for my novel. Finally seeing where the story actually takes place. Staying in hostels.
-1st of July, I'll meet Josie in Belfast
-2nd, we'll take buses west to County Donegal where we'll be living on a farm outside of Moville, Ireland for three weeks, exchanging labor for room and board. It's a little town on the sea, and we'll be 4 miles away with what looks like a great family working on their farm and in their farm store in town.
-Around the 26th of July, we'll go back to Belfast and fly to Basel, Switzerland, where we will then take a train to Bern and meet my friend Megan and her Swiss boyfriend. She is living with him for the summer, and they have so graciously offered to let us stay with them in his family's summer home in the Alps for a couple of nights. There we will hike and relax.
-By the 1st of August we will be in Gallipoli, Italy where we will be at a B&B exchanging our labor for room and board once again, only this time we will get every afternoon off to sit on the beach and explore the ancient city. We'll be there until the 15th.
-15th-31st, we'll travel north through Italy, seeing Florence and Rome, go through southern France to Nice and Avignon. Spend some time with Josie's friend's aunt on her farm in the countryside, then stay in Paris for 3-4 days. The only real major thing we have to do in this time is make it to London by the 31st to catch our flights home.
-6:08 PM central time, August 31st, I land, exhausted and jet lagged, ready to start school in a few days!

Finally, I feel like I can start getting excited. Josie and I talk nearly every day, keeping each other pumped because for obvious reasons, we're probably the only two people who can really get legitimately excited about this whole thing. For now, I am trying to stay present with my friends, working as much as I can to make little extra money, and doing last minute planning.