Vatican City, or Where is Monica's ID?

Our first (and only) morning in Rome was spent not actually in Italy, but instead in Vatican City.

Let's talk for a second about the Roman metro system. I know there are a cornucopia of ancient ruins that can't be disturbed by a subway system running underneath them, but something's got to be done! For those of you who haven't had the joy of taking the metro while in Rome, it's pretty easy, and cheap. Not hugely efficient, though --- there are two lines, A and B, and they intersect at only one station, Termini. Thank goodness our hostel was just two blocks from Termini, but really, Rome! There's got to be a better way. There's never not rush hour at Termini Station. It's like somebody combined a snowglobe and an ant farm. Lots of frantic scurrying, lots of shaking and looking around to see where the herd's going, zero elbow room. Needless to say, it made me miss New York quite a bit!

We beat the crowd to the Vatican, patting ourselves on the back. By this time, our merry group of travellers had split --- Carmen, Jac, Sarah and Will were off to Paris, while Nia went to London. Lexi and I wanted more time in Italy, so we swallowed all our doubts and language insecurites (there weren't many, actually, we figured our smiles and good intentions needed no translation) and headed off to Rome alone.


Something about this morning was very stressful. I'd heard that from other travellers we'd met along the way, that Saint Peter's and the Vatican Museums were the most hair-raising experiences you could have in Italy. It's overwhelming in every sense. Beautiful, absolutely, but nearly too much to take in. It was especially a mental shock for me to wander around the piazza and see the Church as an establishment, having spent the entire semester in Ireland, one of the most Catholic countries in the world. At the same time, how much of Irish history has been exhausted on the persecution of Catholics, or the war between the Catholics and Protestants? To step inside lavish Saint Peter's, to kneel and pray in the gilded and marble chapels, it was too much. How strange, to think about the young men and women who died because of their association with Catholicism. I doubt the religion they suffered for had much to do with the glory and extravagance in Saint Peter's.

Anyway! Though troubled by my thoughts, I was still able to appreciate the Vatican immensely. Easily two-thirds of my time there was spent with my jaw hanging open. Lexi, with her passion for audioguides, convinced me to pay five Euro and get one to show us around. The narration was pretty heavy-handed, what with the narrator calling me "pilgrim," but I learned a lot.


After we emerged bleary-eyed into the sunny noon, Lex and I went over to the Vatican Museum to see the Sistine Chapel. I hope I'm not offending anyone's artistic sensibilities if I say that I'm not sure the Sistine Chapel should get top billing there. Out of all the treasures and beautiful rooms there, I don't necessarily think the Sistine Chapel is a worthy centerpiece. All the tourists rushed from room to room, holding their breath until they reached the Chapel. Is it awful to say it's a little underwhelming? It's jammed full of people, with guards yelling "SILENCE PLEASE" in a half-dozen languages. It is anything but restful or reflective.

Feeling a little betrayed by Michaelangelo, Lexi and I trudged back to Saint Peter's to return our audioguides. By this time, the piazza was chockablock full of sweating pilgrims downing water and snapping photos. Knowing we had just a few more hours of daylight in Rome left, we were ready bid farewell to the Swiss Guards, handsome as they were, and to get out of the Vatican. Clutching our receipts, we arrived at the office to return our guides --- only to be instructed to go back out to the piazza and stand in the TWO AND A HALF HOUR line to get back in. "But, but," we stammered...No luck, just a stern Vatican grimace.


There was no way we were giving up two and a half hours to wait in line to return a piece of plastic. So, cringing at our dubious morality, we left.

Ahh! I'm still so guilty about it. Please don't think I'm proud of this! I'm mailing back the guide tomorrow. It's my very own telltale heart now, sitting in my bag under my bed. I know that if I want to, I can lean over and be told in eight different languages about the cupolas of the Basilica. I'm sick thinking about it.

In any case, it's not like I didn't make a sacrifice. The audioguide office required a deposit: a passport, a credit card, a student ID, or 100 Euro. So that's where my ID is. In the Vatican. I'm amazed --- if we had left any of those others as collateral, you're darn right we'd wait in line another two and a half hours to retrieve them. But our flimsy purple NYU IDs? Completely dispensible.

I'm awful, I know. But it makes a pretty good story!

Ryanair, and the Beginning of the End

After the past ten days of roaming around Spain and Italy, I am over the moon to be curled up on the couch in my apartment with tea and my journal, going back over all of our adventures. There's hot water in the kettle, clothes in the wash, and socks in the trash. There was no way of resurrecting them after the abuse they'd been through these past few days. So I tossed 'em.

Where to begin? Last Friday morning, I caught a cab at 4:30 with Carmen and Lexi, my companions for the first leg of the journey. Drowsy but excited, we headed out to Dublin Airport to catch our flight to Barcelona.
We flew Ryanair this fall break, which was an absolute experience in itself. Dirt cheap flights --- I don't think we paid more than 35 Euro, or about $50, for any of our three flights. In fact, going from Barcelona to Pisa was 11 Euro, taxes included. But here's the thing about Ryanair. It's awful. In a really entertaining way, of course, when you're a student backpacking on a budget, but it's just terrible. The plane's decorated in banana yellow and navy blue, the flight attendants are grumpy, and you have to pay for your own barf bags. But hey! If the plane can get on and off the ground when necessary, I'm a happy camper. The flights make for great blog fodder, at least.

Every Ryanair trip's a mixture of a gypsy caravan and a Tupperware party. There's complete anarchy as you board the plane, because there are no assigned seats, no first class or business class. Everyone scrambles for a seat, they strap you in, and we're off. No fuss. Until the official Ryanair jingle comes on! This is when things get exciting. You didn't think you paid 11 Euro to sleep on the flight, did you? Not a chance. The flight attendants, wan and smelling like Lysol, troll up and down the aisles for the entirety of the journey, hawking wares. Not the cool gadgetry you sometimes see in the catalogues on American Airlines planes. Ryanair sells discount makeup, phone cards, scratch-off tickets, generic corn-based snack products. It's like an infomercial without the charm, Chinatown in a culture vacuum. It is appalling and amazing, and you should try it at least once.

We're Getting Off the Island!

It's officially fall break! In six hours, I'll be hopping in a cab to Dublin Airport and heading over to Barcelona for the first leg of our journey. We'll be trekking around until the 27th --- then it's back to the grindstone! While I hope to stop in a few internet cafes whilst in Barcelona, Florence, Rome, and Venice, please don't be upset if I don't post any new entries. Just think of all the stories and photos I'll have you for when I get back!

Slan go foil, Dublin! I'll be back soon.

"O the bricks they will bleed and the rain it will weep,
And the damp Lagan fog lull the city to sleep,
It’s to hell with the future and live on the past,
May the Lord in his mercy be kind to Belfast."
-Maurice James Craig

Just got back from our second NYU-sponsored field trip --- this one was a whirlwind tour around Belfast. I don’t really like calling it a “tour,” since that makes it sound like a destination with novelty hats and theme parks and things like that. More like it was 26 hours in which to experience what we’ve been learning in our History, Politics, and Artistic Expression in Ireland class. And…yow.

I have to admit I was extremely nervous about heading up to Northern Ireland for the weekend. Whenever we mentioned to someone here in Dublin that we were planning a trip to Belfast, they grimaced as politely as they could, then wished us luck. Luck?!

It’s been ten years since the Belfast Agreement was signed, and I’m sure things are much better than they were during the Troubles, but it was shocking. For a few moments, I wanted to move to Belfast. It's lovely. The city center is honestly beautiful --- think of the nicest parts of Boston and add in the strong financial backing of British government, but the residential areas can hardly be explained. There’s literally a wall separating the predominantly Catholic Nationalists from the Protestant Unionists. What’s scary is that this is a hatred and prejudice that’s entirely self-policed. There’s no law that requires the two groups to live in separate neighborhood, or to eat at different restaurants. If somebody wanted to move into the Unionist side of Belfast, they legally would have every right to do so, if they were Catholic or Protestant. That doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t be harassed and their house vandalized. Remember, this is a place where Beechmount Avenue is known more commonly as R.P.G. Avenue --- as in “rocket-propelled grenade.”

We went through both the Unionist and the Nationalist neighborhoods looking at the murals painted on the sides of houses and local buildings. These weren’t faded and peeling, either. Bright, recently painted colors and strong messages --- many anti-American, although one in the Catholic neighborhood featured my fellow Marylander Frederick Douglass's quote: "Perhaps no class has carried prejudice against colour to a point more dangerous than have the Irish and yet no people have been more relentlessly oppressed on account of race and religions."

What was the most startling part of the entire experience was how the city just functioned. I'm not sure what I was imagining, some kind of war-torn wasteland with fires burning in trashcans and long lines outside the welfare office. But what I found was just the opposite: Belfast still runs smoothly, and is, dare I say it, kind of booming. There are two Ferris wheels within the city center, for gosh sakes! And I've never been waved at so much in my life. Standing on the sidewalk, looking at the murals along Falls Road and Shankill Road, cars of people drove by and honked pleasantly, waving --- like we were wandering around Des Moines or River City looking for an ice cream parlor recommendation.

Belfast's people are cheery, get up in the morning and enjoy their coffee, head out to work. They eat in front of the television, drop their kids at school and walk their dogs. They do all this, however, hating their neighbors to such an extent that streets are barricaded off from each other. Kids grow up not knowing half of the city, except for the fact that the other half is to be despised. I'm sure some people are optimistic, and some are hopeful, but most are probably resigned.

Love you guys.

With a Little Help From James Joyce...

' "There was no row," said Gabriel moodily, "only she wanted me to go for a trip to the west of Ireland and I said I wouldn't."

His wife clasped her hands excitedly and gave a little jump.

"O, do go, Gabriel," she cried. "I'd love to see Galway again."

"You can go if you like," said Gabriel coldly.'



Oh, Gabriel. What you missed out on, you'll never know.

Thankfully, we took a little field trip out to the west of Ireland this weekend, and it was just wonderful. Unlike the trip we'll be taking to Belfast in a couple of weeks, this excursion had nothing to do with any class --- it was pure fun and exploration, courtesy of Tisch. All of us students, plus our program director Susanne and our R.A. Sigita, drove out to Galway on Saturday morning, taking in kilometer after kilometer of green fields and dozy cattle.


Apparently Saturday was the best day of the entire Irish summer this year. It was nearly cloudless, with temperatures hovering in the low 80s. Coming from Washington, where the average summer day feels like the inside of a vacuum cleaner bag, hot and damp and dusty, that's laughable. But boy, did the people we encountered make the most of it! We strolled around Galway, munching on crepes as we took in the weekend farmers' market, packed with olives and leeks and blocks of limestone for sale --- all of it hawked by sunburnt smiley men. It's a sweet and good-natured town, far less industrial than Cork and less self-involved than Dublin. If only we had more time there!

But we hustled on. We had a ferry to catch, you know!

The next leg of our journey took us out to Inisheer, the smallest of the three Aran Islands. It's located between the Atlantic Ocean and the mouth of the Galway Bay. Let's go back to Joyce for an introduction to the Islands...

' "O, Mr. Conroy, will you come for an excursion to the Aran Isles this summer? We're going to stay there a whole month. It will be splendid out in the Atlantic. You ought to come...and haven't you your own language to keep in touch with -- Irish?" asked Miss Ivors.

"Well," said Gabriel, "if it comes to that, you know, Irish is not my language." '

Well, Gabriel, it is the language of Inisheer. All of the Islands are considered part of the Gaeltacht, or Irish-speaking region of contemporary Ireland. For the most part, Gaeltachts are quite traditional, close-knit communities. Inisheer is no exception. About 200 people live on the island, most of them fishermen. There are three pubs, two restaurants, a hostel, a bed and breakfast, and a general store. No police officers, no firemen, no bowling alley.


There are, however, ancient ruins and Napoleonic watchtowers, a rusted shipwreck on the shore, and a half-dozen loyal dogs who followed us over boulders and past blackberry hedges as high as my chest. It's a lonely, lovely place. With so much free time, I walked around the island, hearing at long last actual Irish spoken conversationally! I was so thrilled to finally be able to use what I'd learned from my two semesters of Irish. While everyone knows English, they always were happy to answer my "go raibh maith agat" with a "failte romhat." I wish we could have stayed longer.




Dead seagulls and all, it's an astounding place. But there was one leg left of our adventure: traveling back across Galway Bay to Doolin and the Cliffs of Moher. That's a story for another day. Maybe tomorrow! Stay tuned.

I love and miss you all!

See? The Cliffs of Insanity!

Remember this?



That's exactly how I spent my weekend:





NYU took us on a field trip this weekend --- Dublin to Galway, then out to the smallest of the Aran Islands, Inisheer, to spend the night. A few of the screenwriters broke off to spend an extra day exploring County Clare and the Cliffs of Moher, where that scene from "The Princess Bride" was filmed.

I'm getting together all of my stories from the past couple of days...stay tuned!

Uncorked

In keeping with the spontaneity of Ireland, a couple of us took a little jaunt to Cork this weekend, catching a bus early Friday. Cork, in the south of the country, is Ireland's second-biggest city after Dublin, and its third most populated after Dublin and Belfast. Historically, it's known as "The Rebel City," due to the role it played in the War for Independence and Ireland's Civil War.

Colloquially, it's known as a bit of a letdown. Cork's a mix of Cumberland's dreariness, Baltimore's unease, and the shopping centers of Queens. While very well-dressed, the people there were far less likely to return smiles. This may not be a reflection on the Corkonians themselves --- we were asked for directions by three different groups of Americans, some Canadian visitors, and a posse of Israeli tourists. Nobody's quite sure of their bearings in Cork, and somehow the atmosphere takes on the feeling of an outdoor warehouse full of strangers.

But even a bleak destination is manageable when you're traveling with friends. And what companions I had! The girls and I had such fun exploring up and down the River Lee while waiting for the others to arrive. A wonderful dinner at an organic place called Nutmeg cheered us all up immensely, and we ended the night in hilarity --- all ten NYU kids in one hostel room, trying to sleep and failing catastrophically.

There are a few ways still in which I am very much reckless and impetuous:
- I have never once separated my whites and colors in the wash.
- I squeeze my toothpaste anywhere but from the bottom up.
- I do not make my bed.
- I sleep with my contacts in.
- I blow my nose loudly and often.
- I walk briskly with scissors.

Here's another one to add to the list!

For the next three months, I'll be living here in Dublin, participating in NYU's study abroad program. It's coordinated by the Tisch School of the Arts --- so all twenty-four of us here are film majors, and we're more or less pretty familiar with each other. You can bet that after the next fourteen weeks of working together, crewing together, pubbing together and living together, we're going to be a heck of a lot closer.

I flew into Dublin from Dulles Saturday morning, and I'm only just now unpacking --- so forgive me for all these belated details, especially if you were expecting me to be in Manhattan this semester! After the first two days of settling in, we've finally found a slightly domestic pace to comfort ourselves with. That doesn't mean we'll be laying low, especially if this quote from Sir John Pentland Mahaffy is to be trusted:

"In Ireland the inevitable never happens and the unexpected constantly occurs."

I can only hope. Please stay tuned for more updates! I miss you and love you all!