Saturday, September 30, 2017
Get a good guide, navigator, driver, cook, animal keeper, and conversationalist, and any place will be paradise. Ireland this month was paradise for me, thanks to my sister Maryanne, an Irish citizen because our dad's mom was born in Ireland. Today is 98 years after Granny bore Dad in Quesnel, after immigrating from Ireland during a world war and a war of national liberation. I don't know why Granny left Ireland. She died before I was born. Did Dad know why she left Ireland? I don't remember hearing any reason. Her brother was in Canada and invited her, probably a woman looking for a better life. In Canada, Granny met her husband, born in Canada to parents born in Ireland. Dad, who died 28 years ago yesterday, went to see some of his mom's friends in Ireland during his wartime leave from the Royal Canadian Navy. I got to Ireland in 2015 and 2017. Each trip showed me more sights and gave me more memories than any package tour, thanks to Maryanne, better than any packaged tour guide.
This first of several posts I plan about this trip has as its theme Maryanne's thrifty, comprehensive, thoughtful company. From our meeting in the Coleraine train station upon my arrival from Canada, to our parting in the Dublin airport before I flew back to Canada, I saw more of Ireland, learned more about Ireland, and had better company than I would have had during the best packaged tour. Maryanne is unpackageable and I am grateful.
First topic: thrift. Maryanne has house sat in Europe for most of the past three years, since getting Irish citizenship in the early-2010s. More than three quarters of her time has been rent-free: hired rooms and European friends' places between house sits. Her friends are lucky to know Maryanne.
She bought me a $740 Vancouver-Dublin return plane ticket, which I happily repaid her for; in 2015 and 2016 she bought my tickets to Europe. One can scarcely fly from Vancouver to Toronto return for $740. I rode a Greyhound bus from Williams Lake 550 kilometres to Vancouver, flew from Vancouver to Toronto, and flew from Toronto to Dublin. I came home to Williams Lake by the same route, in reverse.
Before I left, Maryanne advised me to bus from Dublin to Belfast, and ride a train from Belfast to Coleraine, a train ride of a few kilometres from the Portrush house and two small dogs she was watching for a few weeks, during the owners' vacation in France. Thrift meets comprehensiveness meets thoughtfulness.
We ate sometimes in the house, for example Irish stew as good as what we ate in Belfast City Hall in 2015, or marvelous vegetable dishes, or fish as good as swim in the rivers near where I live. We ate sometimes in restaurants, such as the local Indian resturant with friends of the Portrush homeowners. We ate picnics sometimes, such as on a bench under the sun beside Trim Castle a few days before I returned to Canada. I had the odd beer and even a glass of whisky,here and there. I think it was as good here as there. In the Dublin airport, someone was handing out whisky samples, and my Canadian politeness made me drink one, diplomat that I am; but I declined her offer of a sale bottle. Maryanne didn't touch a drop during our time together.
Second topic: comprehensiveness. Ireland is a small but intricate country, best seen by car, such as Maryanne rented for a week from a Derry place. She at the wheel, on the right side of the car, me in the passenger seat, we rolled that car 851 kilometres and saw things no bus or train would have taken me to, even if I knew where to go. We rumbled rural Donegal after crossing the Foyle River ferry from McGilligan to Greencastle, where the Irish football final made for a noisy pub, outside of which we had a picnic under the sun.
One day, Maryanne got a sunburn in Ireland, a pretty good trick.
She booked train tickets for us to get to Derry to fetch the car, a bright red, five-speed, four-door Ford Fiesta hatchback. She made sure we reached Derry in enough time to see that historic city, and even take a Bogside Tour. Our guide was 9 in 1969, when British Army bullets flew past his front door: the occupying soldiers resented peaceful activism for better living and working conditions by the Derry poor, mostly Catholic. When we returned the car a week later, Maryanne planned enough time for the rental people to drive us to the station for our train from Derry to Drougheda, near her second house sit during my time with her.
I forgot my umbrella in the Derry station that day, but most of the days had been without rain, as would most remaining days be. Maryanne's no Prospero from Shakespeare's Tempest, perhaps; but we sure had nice weather during my visit. "You and Harold bring nice weather," she said more than once, including in pouring rain in Dublin the day I flew back to Canada. When Maryanne next visits Canada, perhaps she could pack a rain cloud or two, to prove she was in Ireland; or just bring her sunny self.
She comprehends Ireland enough that she advised me to bring a tuque rather than a hat, which the wind and rain would assail to the level of discomfort. She leveled no discomfort during my trip. I brought a balaclava, which I fittingly lost in the parking lot of a Coleraine grocery store before we left Northern for Southern Ireland. For decades, Coleraine had a British Army interrogation centre for interning and inconveniencing and even torturing Irish people who want one country on one island. What's one more balaclava for a colonized people? Perhaps someone will use it to help finish the job of unifying Ireland.
Third topic: thoughtfulness. Maryanne knows I like to walk. We walked. She knows I like to sleep. She let me sleep when and for how long I wanted. This was a holiday, not a military campaign. Ireland lately has a welcome rest from military campaigns.
Ireland has a long and ongoing military history, though. She knows I like history. She read an Irish Republic Army memoir in the tea shop while I wandered around the grounds and interpretive centre of the Battle of the Boyne site near Slane, the village near her second house sit during my time inn Ireland.
The book was not from the tea shop. It was from a book signing in the Greyhound Pub in nearby Duleek. Author Paul McGlinchey, imprisoned for more than 12 years by the occupying Britishm, wrote a memoir. A couple days before, we had seen a poster in the pub, and we stayed for the event it advertised. One island, one Ireland.
The standout thoughtful item was Maryanne's efforts regarding my birthday during our time together. She bought a cake mix, which included cupcake papers and icing, unlike Canadian mixes I know. She had not made a cake in years, but this red velvet cake was perfect, and what we did not eat that day was portable for subsequent picnics. She even bought candles spelling my name, and she bought candles that will spell the names of my spouse Carla and our daughter Chelsea on future cakes. How thoughtful.
How urban was that birthday, in Dublin, precious, historic, bustling Dublin, where we went by bus from Slane. She knew where the bus stop was on the highway near the rural house, she found out where the stop was in Dublin for coming back, and in between we walked around Stephen's Green, had lunch in a Persian cafe, got to the National Art Gallery, and meandered across and along the Liffey River.
Maryanne's birthday is in October. Today I mailed her a present, which will land in Potsdam, Germany, where she will house sit from October to February. In 2016, she welcomed me to a house sit in a Hamburg suburb. Search this blog using the keywords Neugraben, Hamburg, Lubeck, Luneberg, Rostock, Elbe River, and many other German places, and some English and Welsh places we saw during those 2016 travels: London, Brighton, Conwy, Llandudno, and Manchester among them. You will see that Maryanne is a guide like no other: thrifty, comprehensive, and thoughtful.
