Reviewing the notes I kept during my trip, I realize that I did a lousy job of keeping track of where I was, exactly, when I made this observation or that one. But the route I followed was around the country, counter-clockwise, starting in Dublin and ending up in Dublin again about a week and a half later.
So at this point in the adventure, I've crossed the entire country from east to west--Dublin to Galway--and then headed south. Within a day or so I'll get about as far south as you can go, and then I'll start heading northeast, back toward Dublin...
As I mentioned in an earlier post, the sport of hurling is as big in Ireland as football is in the U.S. I had the good fortune to be in Ireland for the all-Ireland hurling championship, which I definitely wanted to see. I didn't, and don't, give a flip about hurling, of course, but I thought it would be a unique cultural experience.
There are no big sports bars in Ireland, so if you want to watch sports on TV, you just try to find a pub with a decent set and a place to sit. Turns out this wasn't nearly as difficult as I thought it would be. I was able to find a good, non-touristy place to watch the game...lots of room to stretch out, but also an abundant supply of Irish who were happy to answer my hurling questions. ("Wait...why did that guy just give the thing to the other guy? I thought he was trying to keep it away from him..." "How many points do you get for that?" "Why is the crowd booing?" "Have you ever seen American football? Oh my God it's so much better than this.")
The game didn't do much for me, to be honest, but I still have a few memories from that day. First, there was a kid playing pool in the pub, with no apparent supervision, who kept looking up at the TV screen and saying, "Oh, for fuck's sake." (His team was losing.) This is a common expression in Ireland, but to hear it coming from the mouth of an 8-year-old pool player was enough to make half the room laugh.
Second, I took a bathroom break during the match, and I met a guy whose Irish brogue was so thick, I simply couldn't understand him. That happened twice on this trip. (It happened a couple of times on my trip to Scotland, too.) There we were, both speaking English, but I could not make out what he said. And this "conversation" took place in the bathroom, which made it all the more awkward.
Third, I took off my money belt in the bathroom so I could pee. When I got back to my table, I realized that I no longer had it. So, I went back into the bathroom, but it wasn't there. I asked the bartender if anyone had turned it in, and he said no.
So there I was, having lost my passport and several hundred dollars in cash. Except that I hadn't, because I had stuffed the money belt in my back pocket! I didn't figure that out, though, until I had gone through the whole panicky thing of thinking I'd lost it, trying to find it, and then finally accepting that I'd stupidly left it in the bathroom and it had been stolen.
Even though it wasn't actually stolen, I have to say that when I thought it was, I handled the situation pretty calmly. What bothered me most was the idea of having to spend time getting a new passport, when I'd rather have been in a pub drinking so much that I couldn't keep track of the old one.
Anyway, once I realized that I still had my money belt, I was too embarrassed to say, "I found it!" So, I just skulked out of the place.
During the course of my trip, I found myself getting self-conscious over the phrase, "you guys." It just sounds so middle-American and unsophisticated. But what's the alternative? I can't pull off "y'all," and "you all" is barely any better than "you guys."
"You guys"--and the word "guys" in general--is something that you'll hear the English and Irish say when they imitate Americans. (And when I would reciprocate by imitating the Irish, I'd say, "Oh, for fuck's sake." Or I'd say, "Brushing my teeth with porridge and whiskey--it's lovely, it is. It's just grand.")
Here's a mystery I wasn't able to solve during my trip: Why does everyone think it's cool to be Irish? There's a lot of pride among the Irish in being Irish; there's a lot of pride among people of Irish descent, wherever they may be in the world, in being of Irish descent; and finally, there's a lot of pride among the Irish with respect to the foothold they've established in other parts of the world (in Boston, for example).
Why is that, do you think? Where does that come from? You don't see it among Scotsmen or the English, or among Italians or Germans or the Spanish. For whatever reason, though, the Irish are pretty much the Texans of Europe.