I studied abroad in Ireland | Part IV: Five Things Most People Don’t Know About Me

               It started with a three-and-a-half-hour car ride across Washington with my parents, from Ritzville to Tacoma. As the sagebrush-adorned hills transformed into mountains and the trees crept down from the skyline to hang over the highway, I began to get excited. I was headed to Ireland, the home of my forefathers. It was my first time leaving the continent.

               Shortly after arriving at my aunt and uncle’s home in Tacoma, we all departed to take part in the consumption of fine beverages at a three-story bar, aptly named McMenamins. There could be no more fitting place to start my five-week journey.

               I departed Seattle around 11:00 am. After five and a half hours I arrived in JFK. From JFK, I hopped the pond to Ireland, departing at 9:30 pm NYT and arriving in Dublin at 9:00 am local time.

               Once I began to pass over the western coast of the Emerald Isle, it only took around 20 minutes to get to Dublin on the other side. The first dozen miles were a disappointment. The ground was brown and grey, with hills almost – but not quite – tall enough to call mountains. As the plane moved farther inland, the landscape rapidly changed. The dreary ground turned the shade of the darkest green and the barren landscape became both alive and intentional. Stone walls and hedgerows lined tiny pastures as far as the eye could see. The land was divided, not into squares or circles, but randomly, as if an entire nation were told they need only build a fence to claim their land and scrambled to do so as fast as they could, using only the stones at their feet. Most of the pastures were small – I doubt a single one amounts to a square mile.

               Customs took an hour and a half. There were several flights from America that landed around the same time and only two stations to take U.S. Passports. After I grabbed my luggage, I took a taxi from the airport. The driver was a kind man, probably in his 60s. He made no use of a GPS to take me where I needed to go. He dropped me off at “The Ardcairn House” around noon. The Ardcairn House was a modern student housing unit with individual apartments surrounding a courtyard. It was to be my home for the next three weeks.  

“You Have to Try the Guinness” - My First Night in Dublin

               When I travel to a new place, I like to take a walk to get my bearings, so I started my day with a four-mile walk around Dublin. I began to get a feel for where everything was located, the churches, the factories, the shops, the bars, and importantly the Liffey (a river running through the city from east to west). Shortly after I made it back, other students began to arrive. They were tired from their flights and I was determined to stay awake in the hope of getting used to the time change. Thus, I went off to the pubs on my own.

               My first stop was the Cobblestone, which proved to be my favorite pub in Dublin. It was a tiny spot. It had live music most every night and was usually crammed with more locals than tourists. The first beer I had there was a “Stag Ban” which proved to be my favorite from the trip. I stayed there for a few hours and chatted with quite an assortment of characters – the bartenders, an avowed Irish Marxist, a British tourist, and an American who was just ending his stay in Ireland. When I was done at the Cobblestone, I moved on to Delaney’s pub just down the road. After a quick beer there, I decided I’d go to one more bar for a nightcap.

               I went to a place called Barber’s Bar, just down the road from The Ardcairn House. I sat down, ordered a pale ale, and struck up a conversation with an elderly woman sitting at the bar. We talked for more than an hour. She insisted that I try the Guinness because “It’s better here” and “it doesn’t travel well,” so I obliged (spoiler alert, it tastes exactly the same). When she finally decided to leave, I helped her across the street and then stood outside the bar chatting with a man in his 30s until his fiancé (of quite literally 5 hours) came out and drug him inside so they could continue to celebrate their engagement. Before I took off, he told me that, the next time I went to Delaney’s, to say I was “Billy’s” cousin.

               I don’t like to draw conclusions too quickly but I knew by then, it was safe to say, the Irish are a friendly people.

Experiencing Dublin

               In the weeks that followed I did my best to see everything Dublin had to offer, sometimes with my classmates and sometimes on my own. I toured the Guinness Storehouse, the Irish Whiskey Museum, and the Four Courts building. I saw Trinity College, St. Stephen’s Green, and The Famine Sculptures. I played Gaelic games, danced, made Irish soda bread, jumped in a bog, and listened to Irish music (and oddly enough a lot of 90s country hits – I think pop culture moves a little slower in Ireland).

               One of my favorite days was when I decided to take a run through Phoenix Park, a sprawling greenscape in Eastern Dublin about twice the size of Central Park in New York. I’d done very little research into the park and had no preconceived notions as to its size or attractions. It did not disappoint.

               The walk from my apartment to the park was about a mile and a half. When I hit the bottom of the park on the southeast end, I started to run. The grass was tall in some places and short in others. The trees offered some protection from the rain, which came and went as it pleased. Small herds of deer wandered throughout. The gentle rise from the base of the park to its center was just steep enough that the horizon always concealed the next attraction – and there were many. In the next few hours, I saw an old horse racing track, a military fort, a 116-foot-tall cross, a 203-foot-tall obelisk, and the home of the Ambassador to the United States.

Northern Ireland and Its Troubles

               Staying in Dublin afforded me the opportunity to see where my mom’s side of my family came from. One weekend, I took a two-hour bus ride to the city of Monoghan where I was met by Tom and Mary, two relatives I’d seen only once before, when I was two years old. They took me into their home in the tiny town of Rosslea just across the border into Northern Ireland. They toured me around the countryside, told me about “the troubles” of the past, and showed me roughly where my great, great, great grandfather grew up before he made his way to the United States in the early 1900s. It was an opportune weekend to visit because it was my young cousin’s first communion, which effectively amounted to a family reunion. I met many wonderful people. Tom and Mary’s son, Thomas, made a point of introducing me to new things (like black pudding) and making me feel at home.

               Visiting my family wasn’t my only adventure into Northern Ireland. On a different weekend, I accompanied a few of my classmates on a taxi tour of Belfast to see the peace walls and learn about the city. On the same trip, we ventured to the northern coast and saw the Giant’s Causeway. There, massive columns of basalt run from the land and disappear into the ocean as if part of a bridge to Scotland that sank long ago. Growing up in Eastern Washington, I’ve seen plenty of remarkable rock formations (which for some reason seem to have gone unnoticed by the rest of the world) but there is something about being in the place where the rock meets the ocean that makes it all the more remarkable.

Academic Life

               In between my many wanderings, I attended classes led by wonderful professors from my alma mater, Washington State University. Most mornings, I’d start my day with a coffee and some rashers from a shop near my apartment, then take a bus to the University College Dublin, where I’d sit through courses on financial accounting and other matters. The campus itself was a bit of a spectacle, with a large pond with fountains in its center and a few new buildings with modern architecture. At the same time, just like the universities in the United States, it also had a familiar smattering of ugly and eclectic buildings, collected over the decades.

Moving on to Galway

               After three weeks in Dublin, we hopped a train and rode across the country. Looking out the train windows, it felt like there were more run-down castles per acre in Ireland than there are run-down barns in rural America. While each of the towering structures is unique and beautiful in its own right, the novelty quickly wore off.

               Instead of a modern apartment complex like The Ardcairn House, the digs in Galway consisted of a college dorm, but that was something I was quite accustomed to. We stayed at the west end of a sprawling college campus which was a brisk 20-minute walk from downtown.

               The river Corrib runs through Galway from north to south. Most of the time, at least a few people in hip waders can be seen fly fishing just above the Salmon Weir Bridge. A couple of narrow canals branch off from the Corrib creating an area called Nun’s Island, where the Galway Cathedral is located. The main attractions of Galway lie to the east of the river on Queen’s Street and in the Latin Quarter, both bustling areas with colorful pubs, shops, seafood, and music all around. Galway was much more touristy than Dublin but I tried my best to get a local experience.

               The only person I remember meeting from Galway was an older gentleman. He wasn’t Irish but he’d lived in the city for many years. He met me at a pub somewhere near the Latin Quarter and took me under his wing for the evening. He thought of himself as quite the beer connoisseur, so he ushered me to another bar where he introduced me to all manner of Irish stouts. Ironically, he drank Sierra Nevada Indian Pale Ale out of a can the entire night. He said it was his favorite beer.

               On the other hand, I did partake in quite possibly the most touristy thing you can do in Galway, purchasing a Claddagh Ring. Claddagh rings originated from an Irish fishing village which was eventually consumed by Galway. While the rings were once almost exclusively used for weddings and engagements, they are now commonplace amongst people in Ireland for all purposes. The ring has two hands (for friendship), a heart (for love), and a crown (for loyalty). If you wear it with the heart pointed toward you, it means your heart is taken. If you wear it with the heart pointed away from you, it means you’re looking for love (I guess the Irish figure it’s easier to flip a ring around than have to take it off when you decide to cheat). I bought one for myself and one for my girlfriend at the time, whom I now call my wife.

               While staying in Galway, our group took a trip to the Glenlo Abbey Estate and learned about its management. It is a posh hotel in an almost 300-year-old building located on a sprawling estate. Afterward, we boarded a train car parked behind the hotel and ate dinner at the “Pullman Restaurant,” which, funny enough, shared the same name as the college town where we all lived. I had the lamb. It was delicious but, after several weeks in Ireland, I was beginning to crave a cheeseburger.

The Burren, Doolin, & The Cliffs of Moher

               While based in Galway, my group took a tour to the Cliffs of Moher, where green plateaus meet the sea with an abrupt 700-foot drop unadulterated by fences. For a tourist with a selfie stick, a stiff breeze could be the difference between life and death. You can rest assured there would be plenty of time to contemplate your life choices before you hit the bottom. It seems the Irish would rather risk the death of an idiot than encumber the beauty of nature and that’s a philosophy I can get behind. I’d imagine there is no other place in the world with such a vantage point. An uncorrupted view of the Atlantic Ocean begins where it thrashes against the rocks below and continues until it meets the sky which, on the day I was there, was a greyish color almost indistinguishable from the water.

               On our way to the Cliffs of Moher, we passed through the Burren, a region in County Clare that I can describe only as a beautiful wasteland. It is the home of archeological sites that perplex anthropologists, yet it is devoid of land that appears to be of any use – you couldn’t throw one stone without hitting another. The landscape is adorned with reminders of generations of oppression. Rock fences, which have never and will never serve a purpose, decorate the hillsides, showing the needless labor the British required of Irishmen to “earn” their rations in times of famine.

               On our way back, we stopped in Doolin, a little town known for its music. I happened into a little store chock-full of books and maps about the region. I came across a map explaining the history of the O’Brien family. While the family on my father’s side departed the Emerald Isle long before my mother’s side, I found reading about my ancestors quite fascinating.

The Trip Home

               By the time my five weeks in Ireland were up, I was ready to go. I traveled back across the country to Dublin. I’d planned to crash on a couch at an Airbnb rented by my professors but it turned out they’d accidentally booked the place for the following year. It so happened there were several different concerts in Dublin that night and there was not a single hostel or hotel available (I don’t remember who the artists were but it might as well have been Garth Brooks and Beyonce for how packed the city was).

               Without a reasonable alternative, I went through security and spent the next 16 hours at Dublin Airport. I, along with many other tourists in the same boat, spent the night sleeping in a booth in an airport restaurant and awoke abruptly at 4:00 am to the sound of Nickelback’s “How You Remind Me” blaring at an unreasonable volume. It was their way of discouraging our vagrancy.

               After a long journey back, I was met at the Sea-Tac Airport by my girlfriend, who drove me directly to my family’s elk camp in the hills above Ellensburg, Washington, just in time to celebrate Father’s Day.

               My time in Ireland opened my eyes in more ways than I can count. It is a journey I will never forget. I look forward to the day when I return, hopefully with family, and share in new experiences on the Emerald Isle.

– Tyler O’Brien –