Adventure on the Emerald Isle: Part II

Dearest followers,

I am officially the worst blogger to have ever blogged. Okay, maybe not the the worst, but still, I'm really sorry this is such a terribly late post.

But in a shocking turn of events, my cold actually turned out to be bronchitis!  

(No, seriously, I got bronchitis. While in Germany. Another life event to file under: "Only Me".)

Which meant I had to take a week off of school (and also life) to give my lungs a rest.  On the bright side, I got to take 5 hour naps and catch up on all of the Game of Thrones and the Good Wife, so maybe not being able to breathe properly has its silver lining too?  (On the other hand, I might not have been fully lucid while I watched said shows, so no pop quizzes, please.)

Anyway, I have a lot of things to catch up on - or rather, catch you up on, dearest reader, so let's get started!

For those of you playing along at home, we last left off with Chelsea and me returning to Dublin. Chelsea only got one week of break (but she got two for Easter, so who's laughing now?), so she had to catch a flight the next morning, but fortunately, I was not to be left alone in Ireland.

The same day Chelsea and I came back to Dublin, another friendly face arrived - my friend Claire! (Who you may recall also went to the Alma Mater and currently teaches in Leipzig. I visited her in Berlin.) 

Also, Claire became our photographer for the second week and all of the lovely photos below are Claire's pictures.

Since I'm a big believer in the whole "Make New Friends But Keep the Old" (I can't help it - I was in Girl Scouts for a long time), we had a nice evening out on the town for Chelsea's last day and Claire's first day in Dublin.

After strolling for a while through the Temple Bar area, we found a pub, delightfully named the crowbar (no capitalization because that's too mainstream), where we perched on old sofas and arm chairs while sitting by a large window, looking out onto the street.  It was especially amusing to watch people as they headed out (or tottered back) from various pubs.  

Temple Bar

One of the best part of the evening window viewing was definitely watching a young couple, who were clearly lost, pass by us at least six times.  The girlfriend/wife looked pretty confident she was going in the right direction each time while the boyfriend/husband each time seemed to sigh and say "Yes dear" as they headed off in yet another wrong direction.  Eventually, the boyfriend seemed to catch on that we were watching them as they passed by, which was also pretty funny.

The next morning, Chelsea left bright and early for her flight, while Claire and I left (a little less) bright and early as well to explore Dublin.  We took another free walking tour - this one was better than the one I had been on before, so I learned a lot more about Irish history.

Dublin Castle

Dublin Castle and Gardens

The weird backside of Dublin Castle

Trinity College

A haunting statue to commemorate
the victims of the Potato Famine. 

After the tour, we wound up at an Irish pub for lunch with some of the other people who were on our tour and our tour guide, who was a friendly Irish college student.  We ended up befriending and chatting a lot with our tour guide and an Australian college student named Jeremy.  We swapped stories of international travel, showed off passports, and, all in all, had a splendid time.

We eventually ended up heading over to the Jameson distillery (Yes! Again! But I swear I'm not an alcoholic. We mostly went because the Guinness factory was closed by then) and Jeremy came with us.

Needless to say, good times were had.

Jeremy had to catch his flight home (after nearly 6 months of traveling across Europe) the next morning, so we parted after we got back from the Jameson factory (but we solidified our friendship with a Facebook request). 

Nevertheless, the theme of new and unexpected friends would come even more important at our next destination: Galway!

I hadn't intended to head back to the West Coast, but Claire desperately wanted to see the Cliffs of Moher and I loved my first experience in Galway so much, I couldn't say no!

Our first night in Galway was interesting to say the least: we wanted to explore the city, but were stymied by ferocious winds!  But that didn't deter us and instead we used it as an opportunity for some cool photoshoots.

Claire against the wind!

Yours Truly with the "wind at her back"
as per that all too often and obnoxiously
repeated "Irish Proverb"

Claire couldn't resist taking this one.

Solid advice.

The next morning we took a bus tour out to the Cliffs (since you can't really get there via public transportation in the off season).  

Our bus driver was filled with amazing facts but even more amazing verbal ticks, which included such phrases as "liquid sunshine" (aka rain) and "in and of itself" (which he used in nearly every sentence, apropos of nothing, in any context, and by the end of the tour the phrase lost all meaning).  But the fan favorite was the keyword: "fresh".

Nevertheless, "fresh" was the right word to describe the day we had on the tour.  It was a cool, rainy day with a chilly wind that took your breath away when you stepped off the bus.  But there is something delightful about the air in Ireland because it is both fresh and clean (or maybe I've been in Germany, with their love of smoking, for too long).

Although the sights below are familiar to you readers who perused the last Ireland entry, Claire's photos are very lovely.

Claire in a wee arch!

On the Burren.

Things got interesting on the Cliffs of Moher.

When we first arrived, it was pouring down rain, so we rushed into the visitor's center (or is it centre?). Once the rain had subsided a bit, we climbed up the right bank of the cliff, where we tried desperately not to get blown over by the violent winds.  Claire almost lost her gloves and we had to run into the wind to catch them before they tumbled off the Cliffs!

Mostly rain, but you can see the sunshine peaking
through on the left side!

Yours Truly, looking a little more
windswept than usual.

It wasn't until we tried to climb the left side of the Cliffs that things got dicey.  It started to rain again and then began to hail enormous pellets while the winds threatened to throw us against the safety barriers.

Misery.

Once the rain, hail, and wind let up...

We were happy again.

Oh and...

RAINBOWS!!!!

I use this gif so much, but it accurately summarizes
my reaction to a lot of things in life, so that's okay.

NOT JUST ONE BUT TWO!

Look to the right of the main rainbow and you can see
the second one.

TWO FULL DOUBLE RAINBOWS!!

WHAT THE WHAT

It was a good thing we were basically alone on that side of the Cliffs because the amount of screeching and squealing probably would have made anyone else's ears bleed.

And for the record, if you saw a double rainbow you would freak out too.

Bringin' around this classic viral vid from 4 years ago.
You really only need to watch the first 30 second to get the gist.

Double rainbow, man.

It was pretty amazing and we kept talking about it for most of the ride home.

The evening picked up when we returned to the hostel and met one of our roommates - another American named Abbi!  

We immediately bonded over stories of traveling (she had been in England as an au pair and is currently traveling around Europe) and then we headed to a local pub for a pint.  At the pub, we chatted with some locals at the bar and some French students studying at the university in Galway.

But when we got back to our hostel, we discovered that someone had taken Abbi's bed in our room!  So we immediately rushed downstairs to the front desk to figure out where Abbi was going to sleep. We then discovered that Abbi had been given the keys to the wrong room and that she wasn't supposed to be in our room! Yet fate intervened and we made a new friend that night - a friend who would later visit us in Germany!

In the morning, we also befriended the roommates from Abbi's new/correct room, who were both German university students on vacation.

All in all, our experience in Galway was great, just proving that a great hostel in a great city can really make a trip memorable.

We returned to Dublin in the evening, where we met another new friend - an Italian boy named Alex who had just moved to Dublin to find a job. He was just starting to learn English and was eager to chat with us.  We also found out that his English classes at a night school were followed by salsa dancing lessons!  (It was really cute; apparently, he and a Polish girl from his English class are dance partners and while they dance, they practice English because that's the only language they both know.)

Which meant then for the next three nights at our hostel, we exchanged English lessons for salsa dancing lessons with Alex.  The hostel manager was pretty obliging and would turn on some classic ballroom dancing hits for us every night.  To no one's surprise, Alex was a much better student at English than I was at salsa!

During the day time, we visited some of Dublin's main attractions and museums.  

One of my favorites was the National Library of Ireland (NLI) which is not a gorgeous building, but also had a really cool exhibit about W.B. Yeats (aka "my main man Yeats" as I like to call him).

Obligatory picture next to the library gates

Now before I gush on about the exhibit, go do yourself a favor and edify yourself by reading some Yeats poems.

Back?

Okay.

So here's the thing.  Even though I am/was an English major, I was never really a poetry person. 

Even though I had a very good middle school teacher, who tried to instill a love of poetry into me, it got beaten out of me in high school with all the "Look, the stanzas make the shape of a wheelbarrow! This is great poetry!" nonsense.  (For the record, I still hate that poem. Why can't high school literature anthologies pick another, any other, William Carlos Williams poem?!)

Throughout my college experience, I bumped into other poets and poems, but the big turning point (I almost wrote "wendepunkt" - there goes my English) came during the fall of senior year in one of my research classes.  It was time to submit ideas for our papers and I still had nothing, and I found myself in my professor's office vaguely mumbling about various stupid ideas before he cut me short and told me to write about Yeats.  I left his office, confused and slightly overwhelmed about what I just agreed to:  A research paper on poetry?  I hate poetry!

And so began my love-hate relationship with Willy B.  Long nights were spent agonizing in the library, reading, swearing at my poetry book, explicating, swearing at my poetry book, writing, and swearing at my computer.  

And slowly but surely, I found myself sort of falling in love with this crazy, angsty, Irish occultist, politician, ladies man, and damn good poet.   Yeats' (or Yeats's?!  It's both in the academic literature, which convinces me that no English speakers can properly use an apostrophe) personal life just as weird as his poetry and everything about him made the paper writing actually (slightly) fun.  Yeats brought me back into the world of poetry and, in hindsight, I'm grateful for having to write that extremely stressful paper.

Which meant, when I strolled into the Yeats exhibit in Dublin, I majorly geeked out and had a really good nerdy time.  

Pictured:Me, geeking out, the way
English majors are wont to do.

Claire was a very good sport about the whole thing and eventually, I brought her over to Yeats lovin' lifestyle.  It also helped that the exhibit was really gorgeous and very well presented.  My favorite part, by far, was the poetry experience section, where you got to sit and listen to his poetry as the words and thematic images were projected in front of you.  

One of my other favorite museums was the Chester Beatty Library museum.  Alfred Chester Beatty was a famous rare book collector, who donated his amazing stash of books and manuscripts to Ireland (even though he was American).  He really only collected books for their aesthetic value and, man, did he have exquisite taste.  

Although the museum is mostly religious texts (the library is the second largest holder of Qur'ans outside of Mecca, which is pretty cool), they also had some other gorgeous books on display.  While we were there they had a display of Mrs. Beatty's turn-of-the-century fashion plates and dresses, which I really loved.

We wrapped up our week with some more art galleries, some shopping, pub hopping, and salsa lessons!  By the time we had to fly home, we were both very reluctant to leave the country! 

All in all, I loved my time in Ireland.  It's a gorgeous country with ridiculously friendly people, which in turn made for a friendly vibe at the hostels!  Galway was my favorite city, although Dublin has a lot to offer.  If I could do it again (and hopefully I will), I would definitely try to rent a car and drive around the island, stopping in little B&Bs.

Oh, and the guy at customs saw my last name on my passport and my pasty skin and asked me if I was visiting relatives in Ireland, which made me feel really special about my 1/4 Irish-ness.

So leor de ghrá or Lots of Love,

Your Humble Blogger

PS.  If you have any burning (or not burning) questions about Germany, my school, or my life here you want me to talk about in future posts, please shoot me an email at travelswithsimba@gmail.com!

Adventures with Kohlrabi: The First Weeks Back

Hello my dearest followers,

Sorry this last post has been so delayed! I hope all of you, especially those in the grip of the notorious "polar vortex", are enjoying your snow days and staying comfy and warm at home.

It's quite cold here in Chemnitz and we got our first snow (that stuck around and then turned into sheets of ice) this Monday.  But more on that later...

Coming back to Germany after spending nearly 3 weeks in America was a rougher transition than I had expected.

First of all, each time I take a transatlantic flight they seem to get longer and more terrible. The flight back to Berlin was pretty terrifying, we had a lot of turbulence going over Iceland and I was having Tower of Terror flashbacks while the dude next to me was peacefully snoring away, blissfully unaware of the possibility that this could have gone all "Lost" at any moment (or at least it seemed that way).

Luckily, for the long flight I had a trusty companion (other than Simba, of course): my friend Calie, who is currently working in Reutlingen.  Through a stroke of luck, we had seats near to each other and I could happily spend the flight kicking Calie's seat.  (I jest.)

Then of course, the jet lag.  The first day back was manageable, considering that I had to spend my time getting from Berlin to Chemnitz (although I did break up the trip to visit Claire in Leipzig).

The whole time on the train was a test of wills: Don't fall asleep. Don't fall asleep.

DON'T. FALL. ASLEEP.

When I finally got back to Chemnitz, I happily collapsed onto my bed and basically spent the whole first weekend back sleeping.

It was glorious.

Although during the flight back, I was filled with a tinge of reluctance about going back to Chemnitz and school, once I arrived on Monday, I was so happily greeted by my students and my coworkers, I felt immediately back home.

Within the first week, I was happily back in classroom and helping to lead lessons.

But sometimes, I do have suppress my laughter in class.

Last week, one of my eighth graders asked me for the opposite of word "expensive" and I told him.

And I watched as he wrote down "sheep".

(I did correct him, after feigning a coughing fit to cover up the urge to laugh.)

Please give me the Teacher of the Year award.

Oh look, you find them online and you can fill them
out yourself!

Printing one out and hanging it up right now.

Now, as for the title of this post.

One my fellow teachers has taken me under her wing, which is really sweet of her, and one day we were discussing cooking and winter meals.  She was giving me advice for making homemade soup bases and one of her directions included Kohlrabi.

Huh?

My confusion was evident.  We searched in vain in multiple dictionaries only to discover that "Kohlrabi" is also kohlrabi in English.

Behold! Kohlrabi!

Then the next day, to my amazement, my coworker brought me an enormous kohlrabi as well as another kohlrabi head (not sure if that's the technical term, but oh well, using the German method of making up new words) which she had chopped up and placed into a snack box for me. (Which is SO German, by the way.)  She kept smiling encouragingly at me as I timidly tried the raw pieces of kohlrabi, which has a melon-y texture but a bland vegetable taste.

Kohlrabi is a weird vegetable and I still have no idea what I'm supposed to do with it.

Eat it raw? Sauté it? Roast it?

WHO KNOWS.

But hopefully I will figure out what to do with it before it rots in my fridge.

No promises, though.


Finally, I want to end with a little tale of woe that will hopefully amuse you, dear reader.

So it finally snowed here in Chemnitz and okay, we barely got 3 inches, but Germans clearly have different ways of dealing with snow and ice.

And by that, I mean, that instead of shovels, they opt for just walking over the snow until it compacts into sheets of ice; and instead of salt, they opt for throwing down tiny chunks of rocks, or even more ineffectively, sand.

Have you ever walked on cobblestones covered in ice with tiny rocks frozen into it, dear reader?

No, of course not, because Americans salt the earth because we want the ice to, you know, go away.

Another fact for you:  I live at awkward distance to my school.

It takes about 25 minutes to walk there. But if I want to take the bus, I would have to wake up earlier to get to school at the same time.

Which is a big no.

So I usually walk to school, which
is actually quite refreshing.

And the final pertinent fact for this story: As many of you are aware, I have a higher than average klutz ratio, which is normally endearing RomCom heroine, but less endearing and funny in real life.

Anyway, this little story takes place earlier this week when I was tragically running late to school.  I had gotten nicely dressed up and was wearing a new pair of (frankly) adorable pants.

You can see where this is going.

I was about halfway to school when I slipped and fell on a patch of rocky ice.  After realizing that not only had I ripped my new pants at the knee, but that I was also gushing blood everywhere.

I then had to make the choice between heading onward to school or turning back home. Judging by the general unfriendliness of our school secretary (who really has no right to be that grumpy ALL THE TIME. Seriously, how can someone be so grumpy all the time?!), I made the fateful decision to go home and open up my stash of BandAids.  (Which are not Disney Princess themed, which might be the greatest tragedy of the whole affair.)

But that also required calling the school and telling them about the whole thing.

Pride comes before the fall, but sometimes it seems the other way around happens too.

After sucking it up, I set out again to get to school for the next class period on time.

When I slipped.

And fell.

Again.

After mumbling some choice words in both English and German and brushing myself off again, I arrived at school only to find out that the class I had tried to come to was taking an exam.

Which meant I really didn't need to come at school at all.

ONLY MY LIFE.

Such is life and luckily I have a good sense of humor!

Because, really, all I could do at that point was laugh.

Anyway, my dearest followers, the moral of the story is: stay safe out there in the winter weather!

Lots of Love,

Your Humble Blogger

(Whose bruises and scrapes are healing quite nicely.  Today they're sort of a shade of purple-green.)

PS. The long-awaited Tübingen post will be up soon, I hope!