I'm in Ireland for a purpose, which I find much more enjoyable than being here as a tourist. Instead of staying in a hostel in the midst of loud, frenetic central Dublin, I'm living in a small, adorable house 15 minutes out of town. My room came with a bike, and I've been using it.
Biking on the left isn't difficult, at least after the first five minutes or so. What is difficult, actually, is walking. I generally try to do as the locals do, which means walking on the left side of the sidewalk. No tourists do this. As a result, the pedestrian arteries of Dublin are constantly clogged: a stumbling chaos of backpacks and underdressed Italians.
It's cool in Ireland, even in the summer, and no one seems to have anticipated this while packing. Tourists from warmer climes walk around, shivering, wearing two shirts and buying scarves on the street to wrap around their goosebumped necks. It's not really that cold, just much colder than most of the world at the moment. Now that I've been here a few weeks, I am acclimated enough to wear a skirt and sandals in temperatures around 60, but for the first few days I, too, huddled under my raincoat and wore only long pants.
For a while I kept thinking I'd just heard people speaking German or Dutch, or at the least maybe Gaelic, but each time it turned out to just be Irish people mumbling in English. I've also become accustomed to this, and can now usually understand people, but during my early errands, it caused some problems:
Me: I need to buy an ethernet cable.
Clerk: A whhhoth?
Me: I mean, an ethernet "lead."
Clerk: Ehhhrh! A lead. Noo, we'ven't got those. Try Mcgnnennds.
Me: Try - sorry, where?
Clerk: Margnehhns.
Me: I... what?
Clerk: [glaring]
Me: Can you just spell it for me?
But now, for whatever reason, people's accents are usually easier to understand. I have to remember to alter my own vocabulary a little: pants are trousers; elevators are lifts; awesome occurrences are grand, or deadly, or brilliant; that jumper looks "well" on you; 4:30 is half four.
As far as I can tell, about half the people here have red hair; most of these are also curly. Everyone is extremely charming, except for boys between the ages of 12 and 22: these are the most disrespectful, insolent of their age group in any country I've been to. I've gotten more guff from nice-looking Irish lads in three weeks than I did from youths the whole time I was in Amsterdam or the six weeks I've been in New York. Maybe it's the claustrophobia of living on an island where nothing is more than five hours away, or maybe it's frustration over the frequent rain; in any case, Irish boys are kind of jerks.
But every few blocks there's someone heating their house with a peat-burning stove. It smells so lovely, and so Irish.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Saturday, July 19, 2008
making the theatre
Six weeks after moving to New York, I left it to return, temporarily, to Europe. In February, Aoife approached me with a proposition. Remember when we used to do plays together? she asked. You were such a great producer, she said. Why don't you come produce a play I want to direct? We'll take it to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
This is the type of suggestion that normally I would respond to with a sad but dutiful, "I can't," but in this case, I could. So now I am.
In what was guaranteed to be a folly of gigantic proportions, at least monetarily, I made plans to come to Dublin for July, Edinburgh for August. So now I'm in Ireland for the fourth time in three years, producing a play. It's called All Dressed Up to Go Dreaming, and it is going to be fabulous.
I was scheduled to leave the night of July 4th, a great time to fly, I thought—maybe the plane wouldn't be horribly full. I had taken my last summer-school exam the day before, and was sitting in my room on the afternoon of the 4th, catching up on the old episodes of 30
Rock I coudn't access while in Europe and occasionally throwing a garment in the general direction of my suitcase. My flight was at 9:40pm; I was planning on leaving the house at about 6pm.
Then the airline called to say that my flight had been cancelled.
There was another flight at 9pm, the woman said, but it connected in Shannon, with about a four-hour layover. I had done the Shannon-layover thing before, and it resulted in me barfing on the plane for the first and, I can only hope, last time in my life; I wasn't about to sign up for that again. My other option was to try to catch the 5:40 direct flight. It was 2pm, and JFK is an optimistic 90 minutes from my apartment. And my suitcase was somewhere beneath a pile of unfolded clothes on my bed.
"You can check in as late as 4:30," the woman told me. "I'll see you there," I said.
By 4:15 I was waiting in the airport lounge, having spent about 15 minutes at check-in and security. The airport was quiet, and it was clear why my flight had been cancelled: no one else but me was on it. Even with all the other passengers bumped onto my new flight, the plane was only 1/3 full. If the lights above my side of the cabin hadn't been flickering on and off for about 4 of the 5 hours of the flight, it might actually have been pleasant.
I was supposed to get in to Dublin at 9am, and meet Aoife at Heuston Station at 10. I arrived at 4:40am, and even after holding out for the direct bus, found myself wandering, dripping, into the station only a little after 6am. It had started raining at about the time my plane touched down, but at this point I've come to expect that from Dublin. I took out my towel, spread it across my damp legs, and settled down to read.
A traditional Irish breakfast (bacon, cheese, and chicken panini) helped calibrate my internal clock, and as soon as the Butler's stand opened at 7, I allowed myself my first caffeinated drink in about a year and a half. (I say first, but that's probably a lie: more than once, after ordering a decaf mocha in what I knew to be correct Dutch, a familiar buzzy headache told me that someone had accidentally given me the real stuff.)
When Aoife found me at 8am (I had just enough credit left on my Dutch sim card to text her about my new schedule) I was dry, full, and wide awake. She managed to keep me moving and awake the whole day, no mean feat for a girl who had been up late herself, partying with the American ambassador and former Irish Prime Minister. Yes, Aoife knows everyone in Ireland.
This is the type of suggestion that normally I would respond to with a sad but dutiful, "I can't," but in this case, I could. So now I am.
In what was guaranteed to be a folly of gigantic proportions, at least monetarily, I made plans to come to Dublin for July, Edinburgh for August. So now I'm in Ireland for the fourth time in three years, producing a play. It's called All Dressed Up to Go Dreaming, and it is going to be fabulous.
I was scheduled to leave the night of July 4th, a great time to fly, I thought—maybe the plane wouldn't be horribly full. I had taken my last summer-school exam the day before, and was sitting in my room on the afternoon of the 4th, catching up on the old episodes of 30
Rock I coudn't access while in Europe and occasionally throwing a garment in the general direction of my suitcase. My flight was at 9:40pm; I was planning on leaving the house at about 6pm.
Then the airline called to say that my flight had been cancelled.
There was another flight at 9pm, the woman said, but it connected in Shannon, with about a four-hour layover. I had done the Shannon-layover thing before, and it resulted in me barfing on the plane for the first and, I can only hope, last time in my life; I wasn't about to sign up for that again. My other option was to try to catch the 5:40 direct flight. It was 2pm, and JFK is an optimistic 90 minutes from my apartment. And my suitcase was somewhere beneath a pile of unfolded clothes on my bed.
"You can check in as late as 4:30," the woman told me. "I'll see you there," I said.
By 4:15 I was waiting in the airport lounge, having spent about 15 minutes at check-in and security. The airport was quiet, and it was clear why my flight had been cancelled: no one else but me was on it. Even with all the other passengers bumped onto my new flight, the plane was only 1/3 full. If the lights above my side of the cabin hadn't been flickering on and off for about 4 of the 5 hours of the flight, it might actually have been pleasant.
I was supposed to get in to Dublin at 9am, and meet Aoife at Heuston Station at 10. I arrived at 4:40am, and even after holding out for the direct bus, found myself wandering, dripping, into the station only a little after 6am. It had started raining at about the time my plane touched down, but at this point I've come to expect that from Dublin. I took out my towel, spread it across my damp legs, and settled down to read.
A traditional Irish breakfast (bacon, cheese, and chicken panini) helped calibrate my internal clock, and as soon as the Butler's stand opened at 7, I allowed myself my first caffeinated drink in about a year and a half. (I say first, but that's probably a lie: more than once, after ordering a decaf mocha in what I knew to be correct Dutch, a familiar buzzy headache told me that someone had accidentally given me the real stuff.)
When Aoife found me at 8am (I had just enough credit left on my Dutch sim card to text her about my new schedule) I was dry, full, and wide awake. She managed to keep me moving and awake the whole day, no mean feat for a girl who had been up late herself, partying with the American ambassador and former Irish Prime Minister. Yes, Aoife knows everyone in Ireland.
in the barrio
I live in New York now, in an fairly amazingly cheap four-bedroom with three of the loveliest medical students there ever have been. One of them is Adrienne, Icky's other mommy, and the other two are natural cat lovers; this kitty now exists at pretty much a constant purr.
The apartment is up up up at the top of Manhattan, in Washington Heights. Until I got a bike I didn't really think about the implications of the toponym, but I am now in a position to tell you that the Heights was not named in the same way that Lakewood (no discernible body of water; all trees at least 20 feet apart from each other) apparently was.
From Broadway over to the Hudson, the neighborhood is populated by a mix of young Hispanic families and medical students; walk east of Broadway, and you're entering the northermost outpost of the Dominican Republic. This means color and chaos; bodegas selling plantains; take-out shops offering cheap, plentiful arroz con pollo and mofongo; and occasional boisterous, mystifying parades. It is a lovely neighborhood in many ways—surprisingly quiet, partially patrolled by Columbia Med School police at all times, possessed of a nice little park and ever-present ice cream truck.
The kitty, needless to say, was intrigued by these new surroundings.
He's always been interested in the outside world, but his interaction with it has mostly consisted of growling softly at birds cavorting on the roof opposite my window at Ellery Street, and gazing transfixed at squirrels climbing the drainpipes at Jesse's house. When once we had the idea to "take the kitty on a walk!," the result was decisive. Upon being placed on the walkway, safely strapped into his harness and leash, Icarus hunkered down as low to the ground as he could get, alert and frozen in terror. When a car sped by one street over, he panicked, running back up the steps so fast the line went taught and I had to lunge after him to open the front door before he ran headfirst into it. We never again tried to take him outside.
So I could, perhaps, be excused for thinking that even if he were able to fit through the child-safety grilles that adorn our New York windows, he never would slip himself between them. First of all, there would be nowhere for him to go after reaching the narrow ledge. Second, he would quickly realize that he was now Outside, and remember how much he doesn't actually like to be there.
Obviously, I was completely wrong.
One Sunday, an episode or two into an Arrested Development marathon, I wandered around looking for the cat. We sometimes like to wake him up in the evening in some vain hope that it will make him tired enough not to do horrible, noisy things in the night: this never works, but it's a hard habit to quit. But I couldn't find him under my bed, or under Adrienne's. Diana's door was closed, and Angela's room was open but devoid of cat. Her windows were open a couple of inches, so we closed them ("Just in case. But it's not like he could ever fit out them anyway.") and checked under the sinks, in cabinets, closets, on top of high bookcases. The cat was not in the apartment.
I hadn't actually started to panic yet by the time Angela thought to open one of her windows all the way and look out. I had done the same in the living room, where the windows with the biggest ledge are, and seen no cat on the sill or slinking around the courtyard below. When Angela stuck her head out, she saw green eyes glowing back at her from the fire escape, a few feet to the left of her window and a floor below.
It was a good test of how quickly I could open the safety grate on Adrienne's window, the one that leads to the fire escape. Icky had retreated another floor down in the meantime, but had the sense not to run away from us. We brought him back inside, closed all the windows, no matter how narrowly they had been open, and went online to research microchipping.
The kitty retreated under a bed and presumably slept soundly. He has since tried many times to squeeze his head out of barely open windows, but jumps away whenever he notices that I'm watching him. The one upside of New York summers is that the windows now all have air conditioners blocking them.
The apartment is up up up at the top of Manhattan, in Washington Heights. Until I got a bike I didn't really think about the implications of the toponym, but I am now in a position to tell you that the Heights was not named in the same way that Lakewood (no discernible body of water; all trees at least 20 feet apart from each other) apparently was.
From Broadway over to the Hudson, the neighborhood is populated by a mix of young Hispanic families and medical students; walk east of Broadway, and you're entering the northermost outpost of the Dominican Republic. This means color and chaos; bodegas selling plantains; take-out shops offering cheap, plentiful arroz con pollo and mofongo; and occasional boisterous, mystifying parades. It is a lovely neighborhood in many ways—surprisingly quiet, partially patrolled by Columbia Med School police at all times, possessed of a nice little park and ever-present ice cream truck.
The kitty, needless to say, was intrigued by these new surroundings.
He's always been interested in the outside world, but his interaction with it has mostly consisted of growling softly at birds cavorting on the roof opposite my window at Ellery Street, and gazing transfixed at squirrels climbing the drainpipes at Jesse's house. When once we had the idea to "take the kitty on a walk!," the result was decisive. Upon being placed on the walkway, safely strapped into his harness and leash, Icarus hunkered down as low to the ground as he could get, alert and frozen in terror. When a car sped by one street over, he panicked, running back up the steps so fast the line went taught and I had to lunge after him to open the front door before he ran headfirst into it. We never again tried to take him outside.
So I could, perhaps, be excused for thinking that even if he were able to fit through the child-safety grilles that adorn our New York windows, he never would slip himself between them. First of all, there would be nowhere for him to go after reaching the narrow ledge. Second, he would quickly realize that he was now Outside, and remember how much he doesn't actually like to be there.
Obviously, I was completely wrong.
One Sunday, an episode or two into an Arrested Development marathon, I wandered around looking for the cat. We sometimes like to wake him up in the evening in some vain hope that it will make him tired enough not to do horrible, noisy things in the night: this never works, but it's a hard habit to quit. But I couldn't find him under my bed, or under Adrienne's. Diana's door was closed, and Angela's room was open but devoid of cat. Her windows were open a couple of inches, so we closed them ("Just in case. But it's not like he could ever fit out them anyway.") and checked under the sinks, in cabinets, closets, on top of high bookcases. The cat was not in the apartment.
I hadn't actually started to panic yet by the time Angela thought to open one of her windows all the way and look out. I had done the same in the living room, where the windows with the biggest ledge are, and seen no cat on the sill or slinking around the courtyard below. When Angela stuck her head out, she saw green eyes glowing back at her from the fire escape, a few feet to the left of her window and a floor below.
It was a good test of how quickly I could open the safety grate on Adrienne's window, the one that leads to the fire escape. Icky had retreated another floor down in the meantime, but had the sense not to run away from us. We brought him back inside, closed all the windows, no matter how narrowly they had been open, and went online to research microchipping.
The kitty retreated under a bed and presumably slept soundly. He has since tried many times to squeeze his head out of barely open windows, but jumps away whenever he notices that I'm watching him. The one upside of New York summers is that the windows now all have air conditioners blocking them.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
the audacity of spelling
While crashing in Boston until my apartment is ready in New York (I somehow have a claim on an affordable room right near Columbia Med School, thanks mostly to Adrienne), I've been passing the time with a lot of editing. And because I have a borrowed bike, a fantastic Australian messenger bag, and a fearlessness borne of cycling the streets of Amsterdam, I do much of that editing at Toscanini's in Central Square.
Perhaps the best way to describe the clientel of Tosc's is to relate this exchange, overheard today between a patient young mother and her ice cream-covered five-year-old:
Child (reading a poster on the wall): I... F... F...
Mother: Good! That stands for "International Film Festival." They show lots of movies from all over the world. What's that next word?
Child, haltingly: B... O... S... T... O... N.
Mother: Do you think you can you sound that word out, Abby? It's a word you know.
Child, at once, triumphantly: Barack Obama?!
Mother: Nnnnnnooo.
Perhaps the best way to describe the clientel of Tosc's is to relate this exchange, overheard today between a patient young mother and her ice cream-covered five-year-old:
Child (reading a poster on the wall): I... F... F...
Mother: Good! That stands for "International Film Festival." They show lots of movies from all over the world. What's that next word?
Child, haltingly: B... O... S... T... O... N.
Mother: Do you think you can you sound that word out, Abby? It's a word you know.
Child, at once, triumphantly: Barack Obama?!
Mother: Nnnnnnooo.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Io must have had powerful gams
The domestic cat would be, as a species, in big trouble if it weren't for humans. I base this assertion mostly on the behavior and weaknesses of my cat, who—I am perfectly willing to believe—is a particularly feeble-minded example of his kind. Icky is slow at adapting to new surroundings, terrified of benign objects like brooms, and pretty bad at balancing. He has only recently reached a grudging truce with the dustbuster; like a human toddler, he will attempt to eat any small-ish object he comes across on the ground, which means his snacks tend to be small scraps of paper and balls of his own hair mixed with dust.
Much of this may be particular to this cat, but cats in general are still in a pretty bad way. They clean their outsides by removing all dirt to their insides, a process that is not helped by the weakness of their stomachs. Anyone who has heard the dreadful hrrrrruk-ing sounds of a hairball on its way up has had occasion to marvel that cats have survived so many millennia of evolution despite being poisonous to their own selves.
These were my ideas about cats, but I discovered how wrong they actually were during my last week in Amsterdam, which I spent mostly in Istanbul. (I've left Amsterdam, by the way. More on that, possibly, later.) Istanbul, besides being the fourth largest city in the world in terms of human population, is probably the first or second in terms of feral cat numbers. Istanbul has cats like Trafalgar Square has pigeons and Harvard Square has squirrels: they are bold, they are hungry, and they would overwhelm you in a fight with swiftness and ease, if it came to that.
There was a lot to Istanbul besides the cats, and I may get to the monuments and mosques and museums later. But my first and most striking impression was of a feline city incidentally inhabited by humans; the cats there, on the whole, are doing pretty well for themselves. With a few notable (and gross) exceptions, they are thin but not emaciated, hungry but not starving. Sometimes shopkeepers seem to put out bowls of water for them, but mostly they seem to be able to fend for themselves. Turkey must have the lowest population of rodents and small birds of any European city.
The cats in the western half of the city probably have no idea about the equally scrappy population on the Asian side: the two halves of the city are connected by a couple of bridges and several ferries, neither of which is a favored transport route for kitties. The Bosphorus Strait is much wider than I had been lead to believe by the myths. I don't think even an enchanted cow could cross it under her own power.
Much of this may be particular to this cat, but cats in general are still in a pretty bad way. They clean their outsides by removing all dirt to their insides, a process that is not helped by the weakness of their stomachs. Anyone who has heard the dreadful hrrrrruk-ing sounds of a hairball on its way up has had occasion to marvel that cats have survived so many millennia of evolution despite being poisonous to their own selves.
These were my ideas about cats, but I discovered how wrong they actually were during my last week in Amsterdam, which I spent mostly in Istanbul. (I've left Amsterdam, by the way. More on that, possibly, later.) Istanbul, besides being the fourth largest city in the world in terms of human population, is probably the first or second in terms of feral cat numbers. Istanbul has cats like Trafalgar Square has pigeons and Harvard Square has squirrels: they are bold, they are hungry, and they would overwhelm you in a fight with swiftness and ease, if it came to that.
There was a lot to Istanbul besides the cats, and I may get to the monuments and mosques and museums later. But my first and most striking impression was of a feline city incidentally inhabited by humans; the cats there, on the whole, are doing pretty well for themselves. With a few notable (and gross) exceptions, they are thin but not emaciated, hungry but not starving. Sometimes shopkeepers seem to put out bowls of water for them, but mostly they seem to be able to fend for themselves. Turkey must have the lowest population of rodents and small birds of any European city.
The cats in the western half of the city probably have no idea about the equally scrappy population on the Asian side: the two halves of the city are connected by a couple of bridges and several ferries, neither of which is a favored transport route for kitties. The Bosphorus Strait is much wider than I had been lead to believe by the myths. I don't think even an enchanted cow could cross it under her own power.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Easier to overhear than to converse
Most of the Dutch speak English, to the extent that they pretty much categorically refuse to let me practice my Dutch by about a half-sentence into any given conversation. And by "most of the Dutch" I of course mean "students and shopkeepers."
Blue-collar workers, however, don't generally have any need to keep up their Engels skills.
On the one hand, this is cool, as it forces me to really dig into my vocabulary and hone my listening comprehension skills whenever a repairman crosses my path. On the other, it makes me sound like a fool.
Especially over the phone.
Usually, my Dutch phone conversations are limited to me saying "he's not here" or "I'll go get him," since no one ever calls for me. But today a plumber phoned up—let's call him Henk—and launched into a lengthy, mostly one-sided conversation that went something like this:
me: hallo.
Henk: grble scharben Sarphatistraat 674 hartshmink walls -
me: uh, this is Sarphatistraat 682.
Henk: kolachedm smifften under-neighbors itsje water on the ceiling gijdesch korble come upstairs -
me: uh huh...
Henk: brijter kerbing op niedepor take a look at prijstenk rarster -
me: uh. huh.
Henk:
me:
Henk: sortgrap eenarm -
me: i, um. i don't speak a whole lot of Dutch.
Henk: your under neighbors, in 674, they have a laaking so i will come up to take a look.
me: that sounds. that would be great. yeah.
Henk: ok see you soon!
me: yeah. bye!
Henk popped round a few minutes later, covered in plaster and exceedingly interested in our floors. I was able to tell him that "it hasn't been wet," and that "a plumber should be coming here but i don't know why or when," but he didn't seem very impressed with my information. I called my roommate and offered to put him on the phone with Henk, who looked doubtful.
"He speaks Nederlands?" Henk asked.
"Ja," I said. Their conversation was, from what I could follow, about 40% about me and my communication skills.
"Your floor is not wet," Henk told me as he collected his tools.
"Nope," I agreed.
"You don't have a leak," he assured me.
"Great!" I said, and he left.
We have someone coming to look at the oven later this week. Maybe I should study or something.
Blue-collar workers, however, don't generally have any need to keep up their Engels skills.
On the one hand, this is cool, as it forces me to really dig into my vocabulary and hone my listening comprehension skills whenever a repairman crosses my path. On the other, it makes me sound like a fool.
Especially over the phone.
Usually, my Dutch phone conversations are limited to me saying "he's not here" or "I'll go get him," since no one ever calls for me. But today a plumber phoned up—let's call him Henk—and launched into a lengthy, mostly one-sided conversation that went something like this:
me: hallo.
Henk: grble scharben Sarphatistraat 674 hartshmink walls -
me: uh, this is Sarphatistraat 682.
Henk: kolachedm smifften under-neighbors itsje water on the ceiling gijdesch korble come upstairs -
me: uh huh...
Henk: brijter kerbing op niedepor take a look at prijstenk rarster -
me: uh. huh.
Henk:
me:
Henk: sortgrap eenarm -
me: i, um. i don't speak a whole lot of Dutch.
Henk: your under neighbors, in 674, they have a laaking so i will come up to take a look.
me: that sounds. that would be great. yeah.
Henk: ok see you soon!
me: yeah. bye!
Henk popped round a few minutes later, covered in plaster and exceedingly interested in our floors. I was able to tell him that "it hasn't been wet," and that "a plumber should be coming here but i don't know why or when," but he didn't seem very impressed with my information. I called my roommate and offered to put him on the phone with Henk, who looked doubtful.
"He speaks Nederlands?" Henk asked.
"Ja," I said. Their conversation was, from what I could follow, about 40% about me and my communication skills.
"Your floor is not wet," Henk told me as he collected his tools.
"Nope," I agreed.
"You don't have a leak," he assured me.
"Great!" I said, and he left.
We have someone coming to look at the oven later this week. Maybe I should study or something.
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