Chug! Chug! Chug!

Chugging. It's not downing your beverage quickly. Well, that too. It's also short for "charity mugging". The people, usually attractive young kids fresh out of uni or college, who approach innocent passers-by, present a sad story about [homeless people, veterans, abused animals, so on] and then ask for a donation: they are chugging.

Turns out [many? most? some?] people get paid to chug.

Creche. Daycare centers. In commercial centres, it seems. I heard an advertisement on the radio today that a new shopping mall has a large creche. This weekend, a few parents were chugging outside the local swimming pool (located on my block) with signs saying "Save Our Creche".


For those of you keeping track at home, today in Edinburgh the sun rose at 05:38 AM and set at 8:45 PM. That's over 15 hours of sunlight! And it's only the end of April. No wonder I can't sleep in the mornings.

Compare, for DC: 6:15 AM sunrise, 7:58 PM sunset. 13.5 hours of sunlight.

The temperature was in the mid-60's, very sunny with a slight breeze. And at the beginning of exam time, so people studied outside in shorts and tanks.
That seems a little extreme to me.

Physics on TV

A couple of days ago a friend (Physics major) introduced me to the sitcom, "The Big Bang Theory", which is about a few socially inept physicists.

How often can you find physicist main characters?

It's a new show this year, and it's amazing, but at times very true to life.



You know the British cooking show "Two Fat Ladies"?
Well, it's not anymore because one of the Fat Ladies died, I think.
Anyway.
Sometimes I ride a bus route in Edinburgh that takes me by a cafe.
"Two Thin Laddies."

That's brilliant.

Notes on Ireland: 2

-the police are called the Gardai (with an accented i: i', I forget the keyboard shortcut for this). Maps show the Gardai station, newspapers say "The Gardai have two suspects in custody..", etc.

-The first day I was in the Doolin area, I walked down to the Cliffs of Moher. My photos for this are pretty easy to find, they're pretty much the first ones in the album. The Cliffs were absolutely beautiful! The Visitors' Center (not Centre here!) was halfway. To the left were the Cliffs, but you could only see them by walking up the steps to the right. Also on the right was O'Brien's Tower, built in 1890 or so to impress female visitors. It was pretty, but closed, so I wasn't able to go inside.

That whole area was very nice, unfortunately the walk was all along roads. The Burren Way going south from Doolin used to go along the coast, and go right to the Cliffs, but it also cut through farmholds. So, the roads.

-Also along the Burren Way, coming down south from the trailhead at Ballyvaughan, was a small tower called the Newtown Castle. The buildings around it hold the College of Art. The Castle can be entered free of charge, and all five or so circular floors have completely open access, as does the roof terrace. Each floor seemed to be a studio for a different student/instructor, I'm not sure which because no one was there when I visited.

-Shannon Airport, coming home: of fifteen gates, eight were devoted to US travel, and had a large US Customs area to go through before the gates. (The international gates all seemed to be served by RyanAir, the budget/no-frills airline that connects European cities.) It was pretty small, but jammed full of people. I would estimate that about 2/3 of them were wearing fatigues. My first thought was "I didn't know the Irish Army was so extensive", then I realised that the camoflage patterns and accents were American. Shannon Airport is a stopping point for the US military, at least the US Air Force and the Marines. Who knew.

Notes on Ireland

-the local grocery chain is called SPAR

-the stereotype of the friendly/jolly Irish farmer seemed to be pretty true. When I was out walking, you could tell the natives from the tourists: the tourists scowled and were silent. The Irish smiled and waved hello

-"How are you?" was the standard greeting

-When in Scotland, people want to know if DC is close to New York.
In Ireland they wanted to know if it's close to Boston.

-When eating dinner in Inis Oirr (I really didn't have enough food to be stranded on this island!) the TV had on a Celtic vs. Rangers football match. (They are both Glasgow teams: the Celtics have mostly Catholic fans, and the Rangers mostly Protestant fans.) Everyone in the pub, all seven of them, were rooting heavily for Celtic.

-There was an interesting mix of Americanisms and Britishisms. They sold sweaters and not jumpers, and we were to form a line not a queue, but I still boiled my water in an electric kettle, followed the ferry timetable, and 'couldn't be bothered' to do things, except maybe if they were 'well good'.

-I had some truly delicious Irish stew. And soda bread, that was pretty popular as well.

-Everyone drank Guinness. Seriously. Everyone. (Okay,maybe except for some older couples who seemed to all drink red wine.) And it was no better coming out of the Irish taps than any other Guinness, that myth is such a lie.

Aran Islands

The Aran Islands are just off the shore of County Clare, there in the middle of the West Coast of Ireland. The nearest one is Inis Oirr in Gaelic, or 'Inishere', and is the smallest in size and in population (about 1,000). Inis Mor, roughly the same in both languages, is the biggest and most commercial, with a population of about 8,000. The last, whose name I forget, has about 2,000. The Aran Islands can only be reached by ferry from either Doolin, to the east, or Galway, to the north.

The Arans were apparently settled way back in the Bronze Age. That's pretty cool.

-The tourist season in Ireland is pretty much May-September, but only truly exists July and August, and so when I was on Inishere the only place serving dinner was the hotel bar. Well worth the visit, even though nothing was open.
-I think the Gaelic-speaking population lies mostly in the northernish parts of the west coast, but also includes the Arans.

As you can see in my photos of Inishere, there were a lot of cool ruins on this small island. Most people lived along the northern coast, but a few lived in farmhouses in the central part, and the land was divided out by stone fences as in the Burren area I walked though. The ruins were also mostly on the northern side, including two churches, one of which was located in the center of a hill but 'underground', and surrounded by a graveyard. There was a stone circle, a small castle, and a rusted-through shipwreck. I never got a story of how the Plassy ended up on the Inishere beach, but maybe I should do some research.

There were only three of us staying in the hostel, and as far as I know, only one other mainlander was staying there that night. Definitely the off-season---during the summer months all the accommodation fills up.

Coming back the seas were so rough that they weren't going to the Inis Mor pier. I thought I was going to be sick on the way back to Doolin. I don't get seasick, so it was interesting.

The ferry back was called the Happy Hooker.

County Clare; Doolin; music

County Clare is located in the middle of the west coast of Ireland. Mostly it seems to be farmland (and this mostly seems to be cows and sheep, not crops so much) in the fertile areas. An important distinction, because the northern part of County Clare, where I spent my week, is also home to the Burren. My research before I departed for Ireland frequently described this as a 'lunar landscape', which I'm not sure is completely accurate but ah well.

Mostly my impression of the Burren was a hilly region full of large rocks. A lot of places the rocks had been cleared out of the fields to make a grazing ground for animals, and these rocks were piled into short walls dividing out the land.

In my pictures you can see a lot of ruined houses, castles, churches, and so on. These were everywhere, after a while I learned to stop photographing them because there were too many. All the ruins I saw were stone structures, usually a small two-room building with the roof caved in; the castles were more like towers situated on the tops of hills, and always very striking against the green fields.

Up until maybe thirty years ago, County Clare was extremely poor. It still is, but tourism has been improving the local economy ever since the area was discovered as a haven of traditional music. People started coming to Clare for the music, and slowly other tourist activities developed, but there's still not much "to do" there, and the majority of people seem to own small farms.

Of all the places in Clare, the village of Doolin is one of the most famous; apparently it was the first to have its music 'discovered'. Nearby villages I visited were Visdoonvarna, home to a long Matchmaking Festival in September, and Ballyvaughan/Ballyvaghan--both spellings were used even on adjacent signs, no one seems able to agree. I have no guess on the population of Doolin, I don't know what the boundaries are, but a few hundred people living there permanently? And yet the village has three traditional pubs, all of which have music nightly, in-season and off. The more touristy area of the village is Fisherstreet, almost a separate village from Roadford.

Fisherstreet has a few shops, including the expensive& poorly-stocked grocery, and is a kilometer away from the pier. My hostel was in this area. Roadford is inland a little more, a little quieter, a little less touristy---the two pubs in the Roadford end of the village are more popular with locals. Most of the nights I was in Doolin I spent listening to music, and it was always very different.

First night: two accordians (one the large kind you're thinking of, the other is more palm-sized), one guitar, and a percussionist who played flutes, whistles, and wooden spoons.
Second night: fiddle, drum, guitar
Third night: small accordian (what are these called?), banjo, drum. The drummer here used a wide variety of things to strike the drum, and had an amazing solo that must have lasted several minutes
Fourth: two guitars and a set of pipes, like bagpipes.

It was, really, a wide variety in the music. I wish I could have recorded those evenings, the experience was absolutely phenomenal.

Ireland Photos Up!

Once, when I was about twelve maybe? we took a long weekend trip to Kitty Hawk, NC. Actually to Kill Devil Hills, but that is actually not an important part of the story.

We rented an apartment-style accomodation for the time there, and this place happened to have a sofa. The first night I was sitting on the couch and noticed something poking out between the cushions.

A small Swiss Army knife, about an inch long and quarter-inch thick, pretty small, but one of the three tools on it was a miniature pair of scissors. This is pretty darn useful to have, especially when one is travelling around with embroidery projects (as I am keen on doing). I kept it clipped on my key ring for the past few years, you never know when you'll need a small blade for opening packages, etc.

This knife, I had for eight? years maybe. It has passed through I don't know how many metal detectors. Once I visited the UN in NYC and they took my knife from me, and I collected it out of a gigantic manilla envelope. It went in and out of US security and customs without a problem. In and out of Edinburgh at least three times, through Nurnberg, the list goes on.

It was Shannon Airport, a tiny tiny airport, that finally caught my little pocketknife. RIP.


In more important news, Ireland photos are now up!
I pared the original 161 down to 59 for y'all at home, count yourselves lucky.

Back from Ireland!

Yeah... so I'll bet most of you didn't even know I had an Irish trip planned, but I didn't want to put such info online for security reasons.. anyway, I was there a week and am back in Edinburgh! Which means over the next day(s?) I'll put up some notes about my travels, and more importantly, my photos.

So watch this space!

Notes on Home

Since being home I've had to adjust to a few things of course, but most of it came back. Driving, for example. DC drivers still manage to get under my skin but it's okay, hopefully I'll escape before all the bad driving habits come back, and I managed to not get in an accident (yet? knock on wood). I remembered you're allowed to turn right on red. I remembered the plus-five rule on speed limits. Just like riding a bicycle.

The weather is extremely warm right now, but when I first got home the end of March it was a wee bit chilly, but I was a confused girl because I know how to dress for Edinburgh temperatures---which I only know in Celsius. I can convert them to Fahrenheit, sure, but the Celsius drove into my brain to become instinctual. I think the temperatures here were more or less the same, into the 30's and 40's, but I completely forgot how to dress for weather that was cold-ish but not windy. In Scotland the game is to cover as much skin as possible without bundling up too much; especially for the two-mile walk to KB. At home? I couldn't really remember how to dress for a 42F evening stroll with the dogs. But that kind of knowledge comes back too.
Of course now it's hotter than Scotland will see for months, and I'm trying not to get used to that.

More phrases I remembered.

Other words I may or may not have mentioned.

Bursting. When you really, really have to pee.
"Is this the queue to the loo? I'm absolutely bursting!"

Thanking you. When someone does something for you that's more of a small favor than a big favor. It's not a deep, heartful thank-you but you want to acknowledge what they did. A step up from 'cheers', which seems to register common courtesies like holding he door open, this is more like "Hey, do you mind folding that jumper for me? ... Thanking you!"

That's me! You're leaving somewhere you've been for awhile. The ladies at the Shop use it at the end of their shift, as they're getting on their coats. A friend once said it to me to let me know she was leaving the hairdressers and that she was coming home. "Well, that's me! See you tomorrow!"

You can also say that to someone else, more like "It's half-four, so that'll be you, eh?" ("It's four-thirty, so time for you to go, eh?")

More on foods.

Today I had a revelation.
Potato chips ('crisps' to the British) and fries ('chips') are made exactly the same way, one's just cut thinner than the other.


A lot of things taste different across the ocean.
Take Coke as an example. I decided that maybe the perceived difference in taste was due to being unused to drinking it. Or maybe the smaller can size.
Coke is not imported in Britain, they have bottling centers within the country. And you know what they don't have in Britain? States full of cornfields.
The more I looked, the less I saw 'corn syrup' included in ingredient lists. The only reason we use it is because it's cheap. I'm sure the British use some other sweetener strictly because that's cheaper.

I think you can learn a lot about a country from its food. Food products, ingredients, labelling, marketing.


In the local grocery store, one can purchase Walkers shortbread. I have yet to buy shortbread here but I wonder if the recipe is the same, or if it's an imported product, or if maybe it tastes better. I wonder, too, are these available in Charlottesville? Probably not, except for maybe a 'Foods of All Nations', though for some reason Scotland may not be what they have in mind.
Next time I'm bringing back shortbread of a better brand.