Dublin to Derry

I went with my Modern Irish Literature class on a week-long trip to Ireland, which is a pretty fantastic deal I would say. We took RyanAir, and although reviews online mention instances where the airline employees, halfway through conversation, feigned not knowing English when faced with difficult problems, our flight was uneventful (although there was pretty loud techno music playing for a lot of it).

We started in Dublin. We went on a lot of tours, of the sites of the Easter 1916 rising (including the post office, HQ of the republicans and still a fully functioning post office today), of Kilmainham Gaol (which conveniently housed like every single Irish republican from the 19th to the early 20th century), of Glasnevin Cemetery (where our tour guide pointed out that you can write that you're an in the IRA or any other illegal organization when you're dead as they can't arrest you then). We also saw a fantastic exhibition on WB Yeats (which noted that Yeats had a vasectomy late in life so that he could experience a 'second puberty'), the James Joyce Martello tower (the site of the first chapter of Ulysses, complete with old Irish swimmers bathing in the freezing, turbulent waters of Dublin bay, and the Book of Kells (one of the most famous and beautiful illuminated bibles, full of gorgeous Celtic designs and definite influences from the East, the Middle East, Germany, etc). We also went on a musical pub crawl which involved a lot of Guinness (it's better in Dublin) and very talented Irish folk musicians who explained their craft and then performed a lot of traditional songs.

After a few days in Dublin, we headed to Derry, or Londonderry. The name depends on where you are and who you're talking to; in the Republic of Ireland, it's Derry, but in the North it's Londonderry due to the fact that London sent over its guilds centuries ago to set up shop there, and the name people use depends on whether they're republicans or unionists (consequently, the 'London' is crossed out on a lot of the signs in the North). Derry was home to a lot of the bloodiest fighting during the Troubles of the past forty years, including both the Battle of the Bogside and Bloody Sunday (in which the British military killed thirteen civil rights protesters), and the city's past is commemorated in a lot of giant murals throughout. It's quite safe now (although the Catholic and Protestant populations are becoming more and more stratified), and the people are unbelievably warm and welcoming. Also the city itself is really cool, with the only complete city wall in Britain never to be breached, and probably some of the steepest commercial streets I have ever seen.

Derry's location also set us up to do numerous trips to the countryside. On the way from Dublin we stopped at Newgrange, a prehistoric tomb that's older than Stonehenge or the Pyramids. We also went to Grianan of Aileach, an Iron Age fort in Donegal, and from there Malin Head, northernmost point of Donegal and Ireland, at the same latitude as about halfway up Newfoundland. Malin Head, which we arrived at right as the sun began to set, featured the most riveting, majestic scenery I have ever seen, with giant cliffs overlooking the sea and enormous multicolor waves and basically the sort of landscape that makes you feel like this guy. After all this we returned home to London.

It's crazy that this semester is nearly over. Two more weeks of classes, and then I go to Budapest for a week, and then I go back to America. In a lot of ways it will be nice, but in a lot of ways I am totally unprepared.

Italia (Venezia + Bologna + Firenze + Ravenna)

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Oh lordy it's been weeks. I've been so busy that it's been difficult to find times to update. But here's something.

Maddie and I went to Italy for break. We planned to do Venice with Maddie's mom and then Bologna but ended up doing Venice and Bologna and Florence and Ravenna, and all in all it was thrilling. I can't hope to recount everything we did, but Venice was a truly tangibly magical place, one that shines through the enormous crowds of slow moving tourists because at the bottom of it all is the fact that we were in a city with canals for streets, and consequently a city without cars or significant pollution or anything else you would expect in any other city in the world. What's more is that Venice is incredibly silent—living in London means I don't think I've heard silence in months, but in Venice it's commonplace.

I'm sure this has all been said before re Venice, but it's something to come to those sorts of realizations yourself. There's something about the city that can't be captured in any amount of words, and that's what makes it magical. And obviously the Doge's Palace and San Marco are some of the most striking (and ludicrously ornate) buildings I've seen, and the Ghetto is fascinating, especially since Jews weren't permitted to work as architects so the interiors of the synagogues look like weird hybrids between baroque churches and synagogues. Oh, and despite the next stop being the one known for its food, I had some incredible dishes in Venice; notably, fried zucchini flowers filled with ricotta and spaghetti cooked in cuttlefish ink (and thus pitch black).

I should mention also that there's this problem in Venice called acqua alta, where the water rises to the point where it floods Piazza San Marco and sometimes the basilica itself.

We went to Bologna next, which was a totally different experience. Bologna is still pretty medieval in appearance (if not function), and there are still majestic loggias flanking every street that radiates out from the central Piazza San Maggiore. The piazza itself featured one of the biggest basilicas in Europe, the production of which the Vatican tried actively to halt as it rivaled the size of St. Peter's in Rome (consequently the facade is only half-completed). We went at a slower pace than we did in Venice, and consequently didn't see as much, although we did see an old operating room with Renaissance-style anatomical figures (think David but with only muscle, no skin) in one of the older parts of the university (the oldest university in Europe, by the way).

The best part about Bologna was the food, though. On via Broccaindosso we found a place where you ring a doorbell, and if there's room inside, they let you into a place where you can simply say 'antipasti' and they put you through a gauntlet of fifteen different kinds of antipasti, from bruschetta to sausages to polenta (also big pieces of mortadella, the precursor to baloney). If that weren't enough, they do the same with desserts, urging you to try all the different mousses and cream puffs and everything else (my favorite being just a giant tub of mascarpone). On another night we went to a gelateria called Sorbeteria Castiglione where we had between the two of us some transcendent chocolate, pistachio, and hazelnut gelato, plus weirder varieties like fig and ricotta.

We realized a night into our stay in Bologna that we were very close to both Ravenna and Florence, and ended up taking day trips to each. Florence is not the sort of city that can be seen in a day, but we tried and saw the Duomo, the Baptistry, Santa Croce, and the Uffizi. The views from the basilica's belltower were stunning, and the entire city is just bursting with culture and history in the most overwhelming way (seeing both Michelangelo's and Galileo's tombs in the same church is pretty astounding), but the city itself didn't lend itself to walking around in the way that Venice or Bologna did, it seemed. I'm still unsure why.

Ravenna was awesome throughout. The onetime capital of the Roman Empire, we saw a lot of early Christian churches which reminded me in a big way of the churches I saw in Tbilisi last year, but the perfectly preserved mosaics inside—particularly in the basilicas of San Vitale and Sant' Apollonaire in Classe and in the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia—totally blew me away. We also saw Dante's tomb and an Italian taxi driver yelled at me in incomprehensible Italian over the phone.

We returned to London the day after Ravenna, and I've been busy since. Next Wednesday I go to Ireland with my Irish literature class, and I'm very excited. And then the program's nearly over. It's amazing how quickly time passes sometimes.