Forcing Light Through the Darkness
Waking up to the news that the country of my girlfriend and her family ─ a country and people that I’ve grown to love ─ is being brutally attacked by terrorists, upset me deeply. Luckily, they’re all safe. I was pretty shaken this morning, overcome with emotions. I went for a long walk to the beach 45 minutes away and sat on the rocks in silence, somehow trying to clear my mind and sort out all the thoughts going through my head. After a good 30 minutes surrounded by nothing but the sound of the incoming waves kissing the sand and feeling the salty wind on my face, the fogginess in my mind had cleared up a bit.
Writing this blog feels weird. I was planning to write this blog about the Easter Rising of 1916, since I visited an exhibition on it last week. But due to the events of today in Brussels, I decided not to. I’m going to write about all the fun I had last week around St. Patrick’s Day.
So instead of writing a blog about another bloody event 100 years ago or ranting about Islamic extremism, I decided to do what the people of Belgium are good at and what I love them for; focus on the positives and get on with life. Thus I decided to look back on some fun things that happened last week, which will hopefully bring some light in the darkness for some.
So last week, my long-time friend from The Netherlands, Tycho, came to visit me in Dublin for a couple of days. As they say, you haven’t properly experienced St. Patrick’s Day, until an Irishman had committed in your face. And I kid you not, we were on the bus from Dublin to Bray, and the bloke behind us projectile vomited over Tycho’s back and seat. Welcome to Ireland. The damage wasn’t too bad; only his coat was defiled. The guy himself was the biggest victim. His whole beard, hands and lap were covered in sick. Somehow he thought we were German and he kept repeating: “Es tut mir so leit”, despite us saying we weren’t German. Anyway, we managed to clean the coat pretty easily. Not a bad first day in Ireland I must say.
We also went to the Comedy Crunch, a basement under a pub where there are free comedy shows (and free ice-cream!). I love this place, the people who organize it are great and I always try to take people to this place some way or another. Besides that, we also went to the Irish Whiskey Museum. We are both whiskey admirers, so it seemed the place to be for us. We got a tour by a great tour guide and he told us everything about the history of whiskey in Ireland. It turns out the Irish really REALLY love whiskey. In 1781, private distillation was banned by the UK government. Where the other countries in the UK had a couple of hundred illegal distilleries following the ban, Ireland had a couple of thousand. Don’t mess with their whiskey people.
March 17th meant it was St. Patrick’s Day. Celebrating the man who brought Catholicism to Ireland and apparently drove all the snakes out too, while he was at it. Nowadays it’s mainly about drinking a lot and having fun, I like to compare it to Koningsdag (King’s Day) in The Netherlands. We were advised not to go to Dublin and not to go near Temple Bar district on St. Patrick’s Day, but we’re stubborn. So we went to Dublin. And we got near Temple Bar district.
It was incredibly packed in Temple Bar district and we weren’t able to get in there. We were however able to get in a pub at the edge of the district and we enjoyed ourselves there. We managed to smuggle in some beers, being the greedy Dutchmen that we are, and enjoyed the music and atmosphere. What stood out to me, is that there was absolutely no trouble whatsoever and no one was drinking in public; very different from King’s Day in that way. I loved it.
This is it for now, next time I will write about the Easter Rising, that’s a promise.
