"Travelin' with just my thoughts and dreams..."

I really like The Saw Doctors. Like, really like. Really like, as in, I'm going to Ireland to see them live.

Did you catch that?

I'M GOING TO IRELAND TO SEE THE SAW DOCTORS LIVE!

In case you're still lagging behind the times, I'm very excited. Renate can't fathom that I'm interested in going to Ireland alone in December. Here's why I am excited to be going to Ireland, alone, in December.

1. The Saw Doctors are ridiculously good. Thank you, Dad, for finding them. The come from Ireland, and are very patriotic in a people-loving way, and very critical of the Church, can be of the government, etc. They're similar to Bruce Springsteen like that. And we all know that I really like Bruce Springsteen. Give him an Irish accent, and yummy. The same way seeing Bruce in Philly or NJ is special, so is seeing the Saw Docs in Ireland, especially west Ireland. The concert I'm going to is in Galway, at the Warwick Hotel, where the photo on the cover of The Saw Docs' first album was taken. Also, the guys in the picture are the dads of the band members. Or that's what the guy at the record shop in Galway told me. Anyways, it's a rather historic place for the band, and is bound to be a stunning show. The music is also simply beautiful at times. You hear a song and you are given this moment. It's a wonderful gift of a moment when you form a picture in your mind of a small island in Ireland, or what the night-time sky looks like, or the construction that is slowly destroying traditional culture, or you hear Gaelic lyrics and the language whirls around you and it's mystic and old and so very intangible.
   
2. My Irish Lit course was inspiring. Of course I didn't sign up for Irish Lit thinking, "Oh, yay! Irish literature! And reading James Joyce at the end my Senior year when I can't be bothered to think about anything challenging! Whoopee!" But I wanted a class (a real class, not Writing About Film) with Wendy, and Shakespeare didn't fit my schedule, and so Irish Lit it was. And I'm so glad I took it. The stuff we read was beautiful and thought-provoking, but what sticks with me most are the images. The images of a couple of birds or flowers which struck a bored monk hundreds of years ago as particularly noteworthy. Images of Ireland's fierce, craggy west coast and the vicious sea and wind. You read Synge's "Riders to the Sea" and you can feel the breeze burning your face and taste the salt air. And of course Joyce. What images don't appeare there? It's all imagery. The scene from Joyce that I remember best is from Dubliners' "The Dead," as they are riding in a carriage through the city and it's snowing and they come to a statue near Trinity College and there is snow on the statue. It sounds miserably, really, late at night, snow, marriage issues, carriage, snow. I doubt I will enjoy the weather in Ireland, but this image won't leave me alone. I really don't like winter. I especially don't like snow in winter. That said, part of me would be happy to see it snow, just so I can see these images in the flesh. To make them a bit more there.
3. I'm ready to do this alone. Although I am pretty much "on my own" this year, I'm by no means alone. Yeah, I get lonely sometimes, but I'm not alone. I have my family, both here in Germany and back in Philly, my fellow FSJlers, etc. I just have that feeling that I'm ready to do something alone. I'm an only child, not the most social person, and being alone doesn't bother me too much, as long as I know that when I come back, I won't still be alone.

My itinerary so far is:

Dec. 27 (Thursday): Fly from Berlin to Dublin. I'll be arriving in Dublin around 5pm, and taking either a train or a bus to Galway. A train would be nicer, prettier, but it will most likely already be dark, so it won't make much of a difference. Check in at the Inishmore Guesthouse
in Galway. Apparently they speak German there. *shrug* I made the reservations in English and she had an Irish accent. It is about a five minute walk from downtown Galway and five mins from the beach and near the concert hall.

Dec. 28 (Friday): Make my way into downtown Galway to pick up my ticket for the concert. The guy at the record store is really nice. I called today to make sure I could pick up the tickets the day of the concert, and he said, "Oh yeah, you're the lonely heart from Germany!" So, yeah, pick up my one single ticket to a concert I'm flying internationally to go to. Maybe I am a lonely heart? The concert is later this evening at the Warwick Hotel.

Dec. 29-31 (Sat - Mon): These are the other days I will be in Galway. There's a lot I want to do, numero uno being Soak Up The City. Just.... be there. Walk around a lot. Drink an Irish beer. Eat some mussels. Specifically, I would enjoy:

• Going to Claddagh, a small fishing village just outside of Galway, where the famed Claddagh ring has its origin.
• Visiting the Aran Islands, which lie off the west coast of Ireland. This could be problematic, as one must take a coach to a small village about an hour from Galway, then a ferry trip to the islands, and all that in reverse. What with it being just after Christmas, I'm not sure how often they will be traveling -- both due to the holiday and the weather.
• Going to the Market. There's supposed to be a big market every Saturday, and I'm hoping it happens despite winter.
• There is at least one Gaelic-language theater in Galway. I would very much like to go see a show there. Not that I would understand a word, but it would be very lovely, I'm sure.

Jan. 1 (Tuesday): Check out of the hotel and travel back to Dublin, where I will check myself into the River House Hotel in the Temple Bar district of the city.

Jan. 2-3 (Wed - Thurs): These are my two main days in Dublin, along with whatever is left of the day on Jan 1st. I'm not sure what I want to do in Dublin. Soak Up The City is a good start. I'll be doing some more research over the next month, but some sightseeing, some wandering, some eating. It can't be all that bad.

Jan. 4 (Friday): Leave bright and early for my 11:40am flight back to Berlin.


Whoosh! When I write it out like that, it suddenly seems like a lot more time and details than I thought it was. Not to mention that, although I feel ready to do this trip alone, I am freaking out about the organizational tidbits. I am really nervous about missing planes, getting the wrong plane, making reservations correctly, etc. But it looks like everything is going to be alright. Now I just need to do it.

Home

Slowly, but surely, I'm transforming things here into something like home. It's both nice, and also very sad. I ordered a cookbook the other day, and had a moment of homesickness -- not I'm-so-far-from-home homesickness, but I'm-on-my-own-now homesickness. Of course I will always have my family, wonderful wonderful family, but I'm here now, and then college, and then... life. And that's all me, not us. I bought tupperware and ziploc baggies and jars and candlestick holders and extension cords. I have a bag in the freezer for veggie ends. I bought these things. I have them. Things that scream HOME to me, what I know a home needs. I need them.

This evening I made borscht and improvised a Shabbas ceremony. I lit candles and had some wine and ate a roll. I even found all the prayers online and muddled through the transliterations. Mom asked if I'm going all Jewish on her. Maybe. Possibly. Certainly a bit. But a lot of it is that "Jewish" is so very much the opposite of "German," at least how I associate the experiences. Of course I don't mean there is no German Jew or German Jewish culture or history. But for me, Germany is the place where people ask me to explain things about Judaism that I don't understand. Where I'm somehow the Jewish expert who explains what a menorah is when we visit the Jewish Museum. Where I'm the one who knows what Channuka is. And at home, Jewish is family. Shabbas candles are Passover dinner at Grandmom Rose's when she and Grandpa Jack lived in the apartment on Belmont Avenue. Shabbas is when I'm at Jeanne and CA's on Friday night and their beautiful challah cloth and backyard table. Borscht is my mom's kitchen and warmth and things we cook so much of that we freeze it for months before we've eaten it all.

So, yeah. Jewish. Homesick. It all comes together somehow.

*grumble*

It's snowing. Not nearly enough to stick, but still. Yuck.

See the little pufferbellies all in a row?

Morgens um sieben,
unten am Bahnhof,
stehen die Züge
alle in einer Reihe.
Kommt der Schaffner,
dreht am Rädchen,
und whooosh!
Alle sind vorbei.

Only not today. The train drivers (is there a real English word for that? Engineer, says LEO) are striking again. I live right next to the train tracks, and can hear the trains coming and going. Today I've heard two. Normally it's constant. I like it. It's like home and you're never lonely: I don't have a pet, so I get to think: "Ooooh there's my train! Good train!" (Shush... I miss my pooks. Now if only they would occasionally roll over off the tracks like Gordy, everything would be perfect.)

It's the biggest strike in the history of Die Deutsche Bahn, the German Railway, which has been around since 1994. And what's more, they've been striking on and off for the past month. It's intense. Regional and long-distance trains aren't running. Commercial and freight trains aren't running. It's bad, or great, depending on what side you look at it from. But what gets me is that France's transport unions are also striking, and it's all over the BBC and when you search for "train strike" on the NYT, you also come up with articles about France. The German strike is mentioned as little side story sometimes, within the articles. But no, let's not write about a strike that is just as intense, simply because it isn't inspired by the president's pension plans. Zum kotzen.


But in happy news: I moved! I have my own room! That I can keep until I leave! Can you tell I'm excited? I moved! And I can stay!

My room is...

• ...on Hasselbachplatz, the big yuppie bar/restaurant neighborhood. The bars and stuff don't matter too much to me, except in that there's a nice amount of street traffic noise, which makes it just like home. There are several trolley lines and Tobi nearby.
• ...close to the railway, so I hear trains all the time and get to lie awake at night wondering who in their right minds would be traveling so late at night, or if they're simply cargo trains, etc.
• ...12 sq. meters, or about 130 square feet.
• ...part of a 3-persom WG. The other two are students.
• ...in an Altbau on the top floor. There is no elevator, but we have access to the roof, which is kinda a trade off, if you squint funny and forget I don't like heights.

The room is a bit under the weather looking. It needs some love. So, I'm gonna love it. Lutz and Renate recently did a marathon painting of their house and have a lot of terracotta color left over, which looks absolutely beautiful in their kitchen. It's so warm and cozy, especially with their dark brown kitchen table next to it. Copycat time! We're going to be painting my walls terracotta and I'm going tomorrow to order a dark brown carpet.

Do you know how hard it is to find a dark brown carpet that is not industrial-office thin and hard and scratchy? A nice warm dark brown carpet that is a bit thicker and you can dig your toesies into? In Magdeburg, it's near impossible. Maybe it's the whole German brown-taboo thing, what with the Nazis having worn it as a uniform color and all. Maybe. But I really doubt it. Which makes me wonder why my dream carpet is almost nowhere to be found. I should be able to buy my dreams everywhere, right? I'm American, damn it. I demand my dreams in every store, world-wide.