In June of 2015, I traveled to Dublin, Ireland from San Francisco, California with my two best friends, Janna and Emily, and Emily's sister, Katie. The following three weeks were filled with sleeplessness, bedbugs, rain, wind, sunshine, and countless memories. Each location holds a special place in my heart.
These posts might be mostly for me (how many other people are reading this, anyway?), a digital scrapbook, if you will - to remember the experiences and, hopefully, the overall feelings I had. Because let's be real, the emotions going through you when you land somewhere knew, see something you've never seen before, experience a culture not your own - it's something you can't feel about that specific place again. No filters, no edits - just the way I saw things through my camera (and phone). Doesn't do it justice, but it's the best I've got.
So go on this journey with me.
First up, Ireland.
The first thing that struck me was how not different Ireland felt. People spoke English. I could read the street signs. Perhaps a little disappointing at first. But I was glad that we went to Dubin first. Similar enough that I didn't panic but, I would learn, different enough that my adventure in Europe began to feel real.
There's a wildness to Ireland, even in a city like Dublin. There's something in the way that the brick and sidewalks are so old the cobblstones are uneven enough to be a deathtrap. The way that the paint on old pubs are is so characteristic that there's no use or desire to repaint. There's a kind of almost ignorance towards tourists, a statement of "you might be visiting, but for the time you're here, you're going to be forced to temporarily become a resident of Dublin".
Ireland's history is so fraught with violence. Buildings in Dublin, no matter how beautiful, always appeared a bit looming. As we ventured out into the country side, towards the west coast and the Giant's Causeway, I was really struck by the organic beauty. It wasn't just "it's so green" (which, to be fair, I did say a lot) but it was also the reverence that the people of Ireland have towards their country's natural beauty, its natural wildness that didn't appear to be contained but rather built around, built upon, and showcased.
Even in the most beautiful of places, there was the biting wind coming off from the water, the swaying of the rope bridge at Carrick-a-Rede. Even at it's most calm, as the water lapped ashore at the Giant's Causeway, there was a roughness to the landscape that seemed, to me, unique to this place.
When were entered Northern Ireland to see the Cliffs of Moher, the city of Belfast felt completely different than Dublin. And traveling through the countryside, that feeling continued. Everywhere you looked there was stone, walls and ruins and long, endless fences of rock. Remnants of the great potato famine, the land seemed harder, less forgiving, and as the bus rocked side to side from the wind as it wove through narrow, winding streets, there was a sense of treacherousness.
The wind was so strong I watched an older man get blown over. Literally, he was pushed to the ground (don't worry, he was okay). Despite the steps with handrails, the guideposts, the trail etched along the edge, the Cliffs of Moher was an experience of power. It got my heart racing, whether from climbing the steps or battling the cold or facing the wind. It was exhilarating. And while I wasn't brave enough to jump over the fence to take a picture on the edge, the feeling of recklessness, the idea of that rush, was so tempting, I could (almost) understand why some people would risk their life to get that selfie.
My senior year I took a course in Oscar Wilde. It was one of my favorite classes, for while I find Oscar Wilde incredibly difficult to read and study, his life and why he wrote the things he did were endlessly fascinating to me. Wilde challenged so many ideas in his writing, and his life, and I was determined to find this statue of him in a park in Dublin. I fell in love with the parks in Europe, little havens blocked in by fences covered in vines, foliage, and trees, like a little jungle or something hidden in the middle of an urban hub.
Ireland was amazing. With a pothole in the cobblestone in front of Temple Bar, with a gust of wind from the top of the Cliffs of Moher, it imbedded in me a fear, reverence, and love for its wild, almost aggressive beauty. It told me, none to gently:
"You're here. You're in Europe. There is something intrinsically different in this place."
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