Dan Makovec’s blog

Irish Rovering

Galway, Republic of Ireland

What a great break this has been so far! First things first - no, Brian and I haven’t torn each other’s hair out yet - so that’s good
The trip started at 5.30 on Saturday morning, when the alarm went off and we quickly had breakfast and set off in the freezing pre-dawn Baron’s Court air to the morning tube to Heathrow. Checking in with BMI was a breeze, and the queue was only about 10 minutes. The airline itself is quite decent - nothing too flashy, but a good, clean, comfy ride that got us to our destination within about 10 minutes of the due time.

We touched down in Belfast at about 10am, and no sooner had my feet left the plane than things got interesting. As I was walking down the airbridge, a walk I’m accustomed to from many many prior flights, my attention was momentarily caught by a newspaper stand with warm friendly writing inviting me to take a free paper - yet with no papers actually *on* the stand. I turned to Brian to comment on this, then turned back and smacked face-first straight into a steel pillar at the end of the air bridge, to the sound of gasps and “ooo”’s from the people following me up the passage. I staggered momentarily, then just grinned and walked on. I am happy to say that the swelling to my face all under my right eye has finally abated as of today!

The people in Belfast were amazingly friendly. Unlike London where nobody would give you the time of day if you asked, over there all you have to do is look lost and somebody comes up to you and offers directions as to where you should be going! Within our first hour of landing 2 people alone helped us out without even being asked.

While the sky was beautiful and blue at the airport, 15km south in the city itself was a different story. I had earlier successfully convinced Brian that it would be a piece of cake to walk into any hostel and grab a room - after all, I’d done Worldfest, so I knew what I was talking about, right? The result of this tactical faux pas was that we trudged around between hostels and guesthouses for about two hours in the pouring rain before finally admitting defeat and ending up at the Belfast Welcome Centre. The ladies there rang every B&B and hotel in their books. When we were just about to give up hope, they finally found us some accomodation at Perl Court, just south of town in the university district for the very reasonable rate of £26/person/night including breakfast.

One side effect of the walking in the rain was that my 3-day cold that I’d picked up the previous week returned in a new way. I completely lost my voice for 2 days! Brian says I sounded like a cross between Darth Vader and the pimple-faced takeaway food kid in the Simpsons!

We spent Saturday afternoon wandering around the city and checking out the landmarks such as City Hall, the University and the shopping areas. Would you believe they actually have a Westfield shopping centre right in the middle of Belfast! It was called Castle Court, and reminded me of the malls back home so much it was uncanny.

Sunday we took a bus up to Derry (or Londonderry, depending on whether you’re Catholic or Protestant). This was a fascinating town, the original part of it sitting behind walls up on a hill, Toledo style, with new suburbs spread out around both sides of the River Foyle.

We strolled along the top of the city walls, which were roughly the same width as the Great Wall of China, right around the city, then walked down to the northern suburbs where we came across some amazing murals painted on the side of housing blocks, and of course the Bloody Sunday memorial, on the site of the actual event.

It’s so difficult to picture, but 31 years ago over a dozen Catholics, most of whom were under 25, were killed by the British army in the streets of a medium-density suburban housing block not unlike that you’d see in any large town. We took lots of photos of the area, and I’ll put some up soon.

Londonderry will also go down in history as the place where Brian was re-introduced to Guinness, this time with a positive effect - he can’t get enough of the stuff now! A couple of pints over a Sunday roast dinner in the local pub was enough to get him hooked. By the time we caught the bus back home, we were both feeling pretty relaxed!

Monday morning we hopped on a bus and took a guided tour of Belfast’s trouble spots. Now, the CBD of Belfast is much like any other European city. The suburbs though, are something very different. My fellow Worldfesters will probably only understand what it’s like when they think of the suburbs of Guatemala City. Various zones have been set up with groups of houses in them. Some zones are Catholic, some are Protestant. The zones are surrounded by brick walls about 10 feet high, with wire fences another 10 feet on top of those, and razor wire on top.

Entrances to the zones are guarded by huge steel gates that are closed at 7pm every night of the week, and don’t open for anyone until 7am the next day. On weekends they shut at 7pm on Friday night and open at 7am Monday. People try to avoid crossing between them as much as possible. The police stations in the Catholic areas are protected by their own huge walls, and the only windows on them are on the guard towers that sit about 20 feet above the police stations, protected by rocket-proof mesh shielding.

We got taken up the Falls and Shankill Road areas, where most of the sectarian violence has occurred, and still does quite often. On both sides, many spectacular and somewhat disturbing murals depicting scenes from the ongoing conflict have been painted on the walls of houses facing onto main roads. Some of the most impressive of these were painted on or near the Sinn Fein press centre, where Jerry Adams is based. After having a rather simplistic view of the Northern Ireland mess prior to visiting the country, I’ve been somewhat enlightened into the complexity of the situation and how it’s not just going to take a simple matter of the English giving the country back to the Irish to clear up any of the problems that are happening in the region.

After going through all the war-torn areas, we went up to the picturesque Belfast Castle, where we walked amongst the gardens and looked out over the city and harbour and could just make out the coast of Scotland in the distance. Coming back into town, we went past the docks where the Titanic and her sister ship the Olympic were built.

That afternoon, we hopped on the train from the rather inaccurately named Central Station, and rode for 3 hours down to Dublin.

I’m not really sure what to say about Dublin. It’s really not the most exciting of towns. It was clean and comfortable (compared to London), and the amount of construction and number of cranes on the horizon (I lost count at 35) suggested some serious money being invested in the town. Yet, we both agreed that the town lacked a certain something, a certain va va voom factor.

We stayed in the very cool Litten Lane hostel, which used to be Sinead O’Connor’s and Van Morrison’s personal recording studio. The decor, heavily Andy Warhol influenced screenprints on the walls of Sinead, Van, U2 and other Irish pop stars, really showed this fact off.

We stayed in a dorm for 8, although for the most part it was empty. Although on the first night, a very rude guy and girl checked in at about midnight, burst in the room and turned the light on and took up the bunks at the opposite end of the room to us. Once they’d finally settled in and we thought we were going to get back to sleep, they actually started having sex right there in the room! I guess they assumed we were asleep, and went ahead fairly quietly, but there was still no hiding what was going on. I felt a bit sorry for the girl however. It became pretty obvious that the guy didn’t have much stamina, and it was all over in under 10 minutes.

When we got up the next morning, the guy had gone up to the top bunk and left the girl in the wet patch, and both were asleep. By the time we came back from exploring the city that day, both of them had well departed and we had the room to ourself again that night.

The highlight of Dublin was undoubtedly the Guinness factory tour. It’s not just a beer here - it’s a way of life, and the tour showed this. They’ve obviously spared no expense in making the whole factory as interesting to the public as possible, building a complete museum dedicated to the 250+ year history of Ireland’s favorite brew. We started at the bottom, and over the next 3 hours made our way through seven storeys of Guinness religious instruction, before reaching the Gravity Bar, a large bar in a lookout tower far above the factory, where we received a free pint. The whole experience was a bit like the Simpson’s episode where the family visit the Duff Beer amusement park! I can just hear the tune playing - Guinness for me, Guinness for you, I’ll have a Guinness, you’ll have one too… But I have to say that the drink we had in that bar was the freshest, best tasting Guinness I’ve ever had - and it certainly didn’t dent Brian’s newfound love of the drink either
We checked out most of the city, taking in O’Connell Street, Trinity College, Temple Bar, St Patrick’s Cathedral and Dublin Castle, and had a lovely lunch in the shopping area just north of St Stephen’s Green. We also found Oscar Wilde’s childhood home and his Irish monument. This gave me a sense of completion, now having seen both the place he grew up and his final resting place in Paris.

Maybe our two nights in Dublin, and being a bit tired and all, didn’t allow us to give the city’s vibe a fair go, but while it was enjoyable I personally found Belfast more interesting.

Yesterday we hopped on the bus and rode west to Galway, the harbour town where most of the Irish settlers emmigrated to the US during the period of the Great Famine. While much smaller than Dublin, this town really oozes character and we’re loving it here. Yesterday we spent the afternoon wandering around the shops and canals, before taking in a brew or two (or was that 3 or 4?) at a couple of pubs. Everything about the town is so clean and fresh, and the people warm and friendly.

We stayed in a bit of a dodgey hostel yesterday (The Salmon Weir Hostel), but were so drunk by the time we got back that we didn’t really notice its dodginess until this morning, when we promptly checked out and wandered up the road to the uber-modern Sleepzone, where I’m sitting at the moment on my free Internet terminal. Salmon Weir charged us €14.50 for a rather dirty room and bathroom facilities, without breakfast. Fortunately, when we came over to Sleepzone at about 9am without eating, there was a bit of a queue at check-in, so the lady behind reception invited us to leave our bags and have a free breakfast here! So we got our free breakfast after all, and a much better room tonight in the bargain
Today we took a coach day tour down to County Clare, where we saw the Burren and Cliffs of Mohair. If you’ve ever seen the video to the Westlife song “My Love”, you’ll know about the cliffs. They’re spectacular, jutting out right onto the Atlantic and several hundred feet high. The weather today was pretty bleak, so there was a bit of fog around, but in my view it just made the cliffs that much more majestic and mysterious.

As part of the journey we also took in a few castles and went down into the Aillwee Cave which runs about 1km underground in the side of one of the hills in the Burren. The hills themselves are a sight to behold. I’m not sure whether the stone is slate or shale, but you can see millions of perfectly flat dark-grey stones raise mountains from the flat green pastures where sheep and cows are grazing in fields bordered by meticulously hand-constructed stone walls, which would have taken hundreds of years themselves to have been all built. We also got to see the Poulnabrone Dolmen, a 5000 year old burial tomb.

So far the trip’s been fantastic. All the stresses associated with London life have just melted away. Tomorrow morning we’re taking a ferry out to the Aran Islands, where we’ll be spending the night on Inishmore, before traveling down to Cork and Blarney Castle, with its famous stone.

We’d both have loved to have seen the Ring of Kerry, but alas can’t fit it in this trip. Maybe next time!

In the republic

OK, a really crappy keyboard here so I can’t type too much, but suffice to say I’ve hand written a couple of journal entries which I’ll type up at a later time.

The quick summary: Flew into Belfast on Saturday, had an interesting encounter that left me with facial bruising that’s still healing, am just getting my voice back, saw Derry and all the violent areas of Belfast, came to Dublin, got kept awake by dorm-mates having sex, went to the Guinness factory, toured the city, all worn out, having a fantastic time!

The details will follow soon…

I’m off!

Thank god, it looks like the system I’ve been working on for the past 9 months, which fell in a pile of poo 2 weeks ago, is happy again, as of this evening.

Just as well! Tomorrow morning, I fly to Belfast for 9 days of Irish rovering
I can’t wait to get there. This will be my first prolonged break since Worldfest, and especially with the stress of the past few weeks, I’m really needing it!

Hey, what am I sitting around here at work for? I’m outta here! If I find anything interesting (and let’s face it, I’m sure I will) I’ll post updates and maybe a photo or two on here!

Bye bye birdie

I just watched the last two Concordes fly into Heathrow over our building. Then we ran over to the TV where they showed them touching down.

What a shame, I never got to fly on one. Nobody seems interested in developing new supersonic jets, so that’s probably the last time anybody will fly faster than the speed of sound for the next 30 years or so.

A giant leap backward in technology

Compatibility test

Another cute WOFTAM…

benshan

91%











jtzapp

80%








How compatible with me are YOU?

benshan

70%











jtzapp

53%








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Bush in charge

I really need a laugh this afternoon, and this article, supplied to me courtesy of my Fark.com newsfeed (RSS) really supplied it.

Sorry, the man’s an idiot.

Krispy Kreme has arrived

Uh oh….

One of the managers popped into Harrods this morning, where they’ve just opened a Krispy Kreme outlet. He couldn’t resist, and bought two boxes with a dozen of the most delicious donuts (he says after licking the icing sugar off his keyboard, thanks to two hurriedly scoffed morsels) each.

I sense cronic weight gain coming on…

What a week

I haven’t had much time to update my journal lately.. or reply to emails.. or make phone calls.. or pretty much do anything really - sorry to those guys and gals who have tried to contact me to no avail.

Work’s been really busy, and I’m in the middle of a 4 day rescue mission there at the moment. Hopefully I’ll come to the end of that mission tonight.

Anyway, I got a chuckle today from this year’s nominations for the Darwin Awards, which “commemorate those who improve our gene pool by removing themselves from it.” If you’ve never seen them, I recommend them to you

Office Assistant for Vi

I got a chuckle out of this project underway at Sourceforge. Honestly, some people have too much time on their hands

They found Nemo!

Poor little fella…