Gents in the Land of Ire

Matt and Me atop the Gravity Bar

Four Courts - directly across from our hostel

Liam and tim in a Viking Ship

The courtyard of Dublin Castle

Trinity College

The only medieval section of Dublin Castle

The streets of Dublin

The studio where U2 was discovered

The view from Halfpenny Bridge - so named because there used to be a tax collector for the people who crossed it - I'll let you guess the cost

Dublin Castle

Ireland

St. Sefan's Park

Guinness Storehouse

The Lease that Arthur Guiness signed - loaning the factory spot for 9000 years

Perfect brews

Killarney

Fixing a popped tire

Biking through Killarney

Nick and I

Irish Mountains

The group - sans Sean

Liam and Sean - the two casualties to the waterfall

Can you find Liam falling in?

Climbing the waterfall

Irish landscape

Setting sun

Blarney Castle

View from the top

Blarney Castle

The group in the "Dining Hall"

Me kissing the Blarney Stone

Me and Nick atop Blarney Castle

Playing in the playground

Cork Main Square during the day

Cork main square at night

The Gent's

“You have to let it settle,” the bartender said as she plopped two half liter glasses in front of us – the nitrogen in the beer sending golden bubbles up the side of the glass which was ¾ full. “Once it settles, we’ll top that off for you,” she assured us. So Matt and I waited patiently, gazing out the large glass windows that made a circumference around us, giving us 360 view of the city of Dublin – the roof tops of the city broken up by church spires that were all cast in a ruby glow from the setting sun. Sure enough the golden hue in the interior of the Guinness glass gave way to a dark rich beer – the signature of a good Guinness brew, which the bartender accordingly topped off. In terms of good brews, you can’t get one that’s much smoother than that of the Gravity Bar atop the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin, Ireland.

In case it wasn’t obvious quite yet, I spent this past weekend with my second “home coming” adventure, to the land of 12.5% of my relatives – Ireland. Thursday night, Matt, Liam, Tim, and I set out on a “Bro-tastic” adventure to meet up with a couple of our friends studying abroad in Cork. However, hoping to kill two birds with one stone, we began our adventure by first seeing the capital of the island, Dublin.

Seeing as how we didn’t have much time to tour Dublin – derived from the Irish expression “Dubh linn” meaning “black pool” – we began our trip with another “Free Tour” of the city, hoping to catch some sights and get an idea of things we’d want to go back and see. Our tour guide was a witty local who told the story of the Irish people with a mild yet sarcastic contempt for the English – it was particularly humorous for us Americans when he congratulated us on our relatively fast Independence.

Guiding us through the capital city, our tour guide focused on the main sights of Dublin: the State House, Dublin Castle, The Christ Church Cathedral (a church dating back to 1030), the Temple Bar (“bar” in Gaelic means pier and it was once on the riverfront), the studio where U2 was discovered, Trinity College (1592), the President’s Mansion, the Wolf Tane Memorial (a famous revolutionary from the 1800’s), and the St. Stephan’s Green park.

After our tour was finished, we headed out to see the city for ourselves. First we headed to the records office to try and trace our lineage, which proved futile because apparently we didn’t know enough about our past to learn about our past. We continued on our trip with a visit to the Chester Beatty Library where we viewed some of the oldest religious texts of both the Quran and the Bible – including what are believe to be some of the original letters of Paul.

At the Library, Matt and I, divided from Liam and Tim and headed to take a tour of the Guinness Storehouse. The self guided high-tech tour was very interesting and informative and finished with a freshly brewed Guinness at the Gravity Bar, which is a glass room at the top of the factory that provides a fantastic panorama of the city (described above). From the Guinness Storehouse, we raced to meet back up with Liam and Tim to grab a quick dinner at the Brazen Head Pub – what is believed to be the oldest pub in Ireland – though apparently there is some contention over that claim from Pub in Belfast. By the end of the night, we were in route to Cork via Ryanair.

If there is one thing that I’ve taken away from this past weekend full of hanging out with my good friends, its a little catch phrase which came to me while I was reflecting on the trip: do less – experience more. So often in life – especially in my travels through Europe – I get caught up with trying to do and see everything that I can. At the risk of sounding cliché – this weekend I realized how it’s not about the traveling or the site seeing, it’s the people you’re with. Our time in Cork wasn’t about how much we could see or site see, it was just a relaxing weekend hanging out with good friends enjoying their company. However, for the sake of my blog (and to explain the pictures above) I suppose I can relay to you the events of the weekend.

Our first full day in Cork, we headed out with our hosts to Killarney – about an hour and a half bus ride – to do some mountain biking and enjoy the Irish landscape. The sun blotched through clouds like an old light bulb in a yellowing lamp shade, casting an odd hue over the snowcapped mountains in the distance. As we road our bikes – both on the paved road and off in the rocky wooded paths – we caught several opportunities to stop and admire the landscape. The clouds in the distance slowly began to set in, engulfing the tips of the mountains around us and creating an eerie fog over the lake we biked around. Following on the coattails of the fog was the rain.

We had just arrived at beautiful waterfall when the rain began to come pouring down on us. Instead of just admiring the majestic natural beauty of our environment, we did what any group of 8 college kids would – we decided to climb in it. Two members of our group (Liam and Sean) soon found out that the only way to get wetter than being outside in the pouring rain is to slip into a riverbed while climbing on a waterfall. Though you would think that the rain would have dampened our mood (pun intended), it actually ended up adding to the enjoyment of the group – some of our best and most talked about memories from the trip derived from that bike ride and waterfall. Finally, waterlogged and exhausted, we headed back on the bus to the Cork, where we met up with some friends at a party and then headed to an Irish Pub – though they surprisingly only call them “pubs” over there.

We woke up the next morning and headed to an Irish mass – in a beautiful mosaic decorated church – followed by a traditional Irish breakfast. As the quirky Irish priest gave his fire and brimstone homily, in his thick brogue accent, I sat admiring the beauty of the interior of the church. When the mass ended (Irish masses are famous for being done in 35 minutes – ours took 40) we headed over to get a traditional Irish breakfast full of various sausages, potatoes and white and black pudding.

Straight from breakfast we headed out to Blarney to visit the castle and the famous Stone. The shadow of the stone castle stretched the distance of the grounds that surrounded it – partially because in the Irish winter the sun never fully rises and even though it was noon it was still behind the castle setting the sky and clouds around it aflame. The castle in Blarney is made most famous by the Blarney stone which is believed to bring the gift of eloquence to all those who kiss it. However, it’s not the most conveniently placed stone, which made kissing it quite a challenge – as grasping two poles and cracking your back to about a 90 degree angle is the only way to reach it.

After we finished our tour of the grounds around Blarney, which included a playground of adult proportions and a couple of other folklore attractions, we headed back to Cork for a night of hanging out with just the gentlemen. The guests were treated to homemade hamburgers and a local pub playing traditional music. We capped the night off with a pipe smoking circle where we discussed and debated until we began to get cold.

I had so thoroughly enjoyed my time hanging out with our group, that when I woke up the next day I couldn’t believe it was time to go back to Leuven. It was one of those “I felt like I just got here” experiences. We grabbed a quick lunch and then toured some of Cork, walking through the main square and the English market. Bidding farewell to our hospitable Irish hosts, me and the other 3 Leuvenites headed back on a bus to Shannon Airport for our flight home.

For one reason or another, the Leuven group has been in a bit of a “funk” since the end of finals. Whether its homesickness, or the excitement of being abroad wearing off, or the spending too much time together, the group has felt odd. However, after the enjoyment I got while hanging out with my good friends this past weekend, my attitude has been changed. “That was just a really good time,” was a common expression of Matt, Liam, Tim and I, as we headed on our bus to Shannon. For the guys on the trip, this adventure through Ireland was a nice reawakening for most of us to the wonders and beauty of Europe – but more importantly to the wonders and beauty of fellowship. I particularly had a great time and that seemed to be the common consensus among all the other “gent’s” that we spent the weekend with. So with that in mind, I have finished all my tales from Ireland, and I’m sorry to leave you so abruptly, but until next time – “Cheers.”

Prague - Saying Goodbye to Czech and Slovakian

The Three Misters

One of the Jewish Synagogues

The Charles Street Bridge

Prague Architecture

The Old City Gate

The Oldest Synagogue in Europe

Statue of Kafka

Statue of Jan Hus - religious reformer burned at the stake

Prague Castle

Tyre Cathedral

St. Nicholas Church

Prague City Hall

View from the Charles Street Bridge

View from the Charles Street Bridge

Astrological Clock

Three Misters and Prague in the background

Our Hippy-hostel

St. Victus Cathedral

View of the snow covered city from the Castle

Sky on the flight home

The fourth and final leg of our trip through Europa Centraal (Dutch) was to a city that has been hailed as one of the most beautiful in all of Europe – Praha (Czech) – and it certainly lived up to its reputation. We arrived late on the Saturday night and headed immediately from the bus station to our hostel: Hostel Elf. Now we knew we had picked a hostel on the edge of the city, so we weren’t expecting much, luckily that’s just what the Elf ordered. The night we arrived we walked into a smoke filled room (the reception area) at about midnight, a man, about our own age, rose from a couch full of chatting, intoxicated people, and with two beer bottles – on in each hand – asked for our information and checked us into the spray paint decorated hippy-hostel.

After a crappy night of sleep, due in large part to the noise both outside the window and inside the hostel, and in part to the missing plank in the bottom of my bed which caused a crink in my back, we headed out to see the wonders of Praha. We first ran into the group of Loyola-ites who had already toured Prague and were leaving at about noon – we caught them with just enough time to release them. After catching up with them, and finding out a few sights to see in the city, we headed out to experience the capital of the Czech Republic.

We wanted to catch a free walking tour (pay by tips) in the middle of the afternoon, but with time to spare, we did a little exploring of our own. Guided by a trusty map from the tourism center, we walked through the heart of the city and decided to try and climb toward the castle – our first of several trips up. After wandering significantly around the other side of the river we headed back over the river to the Old Town Square to meet our tour.

Our spunky tour guide was a half American/ half Czech girl named Katka, who was very excited to show us the city. We wandered through the old town square which dates back to the 10th century. We admired the sites of the main square including the Astrological Clock dating back to 1410, when it was built by Mikulas of Kadran. The rumor is that Kadran built such a beautiful clock that the Nobles of Prague had his eyes gouged out and tongue cut out because they didn’t want him to be able to build or tell anyone how to build a clock that beautiful in another city. As a result, Kadran came (stumbling I imagine) and put a curse on the clock, which stopped it from working for 100 years. We also saw the two churches that dominate the square: The Tyne Cathedral and St. Nicholas Church. The Tyne Cathedral is a distinct part of the Prague skyline because one of its spires is larger than the other.

From there we headed to the New Town square which was the center of the political turmoil in Prague during the Soviet regime – the center of the famous 1968 Prague Spring. In this famous act of non-violent protest, the Czech people, knowing that the Soviet army was headed in to end some political turmoil, removed all the signs from all the roads around Prague except the ones pointing back to Moscow, which caused a 3 day delay in what should have been an 8 hour trip to the Capital and largest city Czechoslovakia. The reason the Czech people were informed of the Soviet advance was because the Soviets had planned to move at midnight – after the radios were shut off – and arrive in Prague before the sun rose. However, they didn’t take into account day lights savings time, which meant that the army began to move at 11 – giving the people plenty of time to plan their mischief.

Following our free tour we headed through the Jewish section of Prague. The Jewish section of Prague has some of the best preserved synagogues in Central and Eastern Europe. The reason being that during his occupation of the Czech Republic, Hitler chose to preserve Prague’s Jewish section to make it a walk through museum dedicated to the extinguished race – a hollow thought.

After finishing our tour near the Charles Bridge, the Misters headed to a traditional Czech Pub recommended by one of Martin’s friends. After a delicious beef stew dish, we were headed back out to tour the city in the cold night. We wandered up near the castle on the opposite side of the river and then headed back to a local pub that was playing the Superbowl. Though Matt and I managed to stay up to watch the rest of the game, the Mister had had a long day and decided to head back to the hostel.

The next morning we were up early, and searched for an ATM, because our hostel would only take Czech Kroning and we didn’t have enough to pay the whole tab on our own. Our plan was to try and get a tour of the Prague Castle, however, our delay finding money meant that we were only able to wander about the other side of the river for a bit before needing to depart for the airport. Bidding farewell to our favorite Mister, and hoping to see him again, Matt and I headed to tour the Castle and the St. Vitus Cathedral while the Mister headed to his home in Slovakia.

By the end of our trip we had spend 8 days, in 7 cities, in 4 countries, with 2 Americans and 1 great Slovak hero.