Excursion to Ireland

Part of D's job requires a monthly trip to Dublin. J joined him on this trip. They added a Saturday and Sunday to be tourists before the workweek.

After arriving on a Friday to some of the best weather possible in Ireland, D & J sampled the obligatory Guinness and some "meat and potatoes." On Saturday morning, they took the LUAS train into Dublin, from the outlying hotel. The LUAS was a clean modern train and the stations were clean and safe. Perfect for tourists. Once in Dublin and St. Stephen's green specifically, the cameras were brought out. You can view some of the photos by clicking on over to flickr. Don't forget to come back here.


After strolling down around St. Stephan's Green and Grafton street, they took the DART (Dublin Area Rapid Transit) to Malahide, a quaint seaside town north of Dublin by about 15 kilometers. Malahide is a treasure trove of photo opportunities. There's also a little bookshop: Village Books. Mary, the owner, is a most well-read owner. She has a "Bookshop Ladies Guide to a Good Read" with numerous new and good novels. Some samples are Brick Lane by Monica Ali, Oracle Night by Paul Auster, Lie in the Dark by Dan Ferperman, Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseni, The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing, Atonement by Ian McEwan, anything by T. Coraghessan Boyle and anything by the Colorado writer Kent Haruf, and A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth. Of course, D bought enough reading for a year.


Sunday was used for an all day tour by bus into the Wicklow mountains. This scenic ride was punctuated with a couple of tourist traps. One of the most interesting stops on the tour was Glendalough, the location of an 1200 year old Celtic monastery. The Celtic traditions gradually absorbed Christianity, often blending some old traditions with the new (1200 years ago) Christianity thing....At one time, the monastery was a thriving place for students all over the world to visit.

Summary, Ireland is a great place for anyone to visit. We as former South Carolinians enjoyed it immensely because of the kinship we have with the Irish. The western parts of South Carolina were settled by the Irish and Scots. They're both so green and also have old music traditions: the fondness for bluegrass, which owes it's origins to the Irish folk music. It also explains the fervent adherence to property rights, since the Irish and the Scots have a long history of having their property seized and reallocated. We saw more similarities, but that's another blog!

War Children (Krigsbarn)

Another one of my Swedish friends (of Finninsh heritage) had this to add to the post about the Battle of Hullock and the Easter Rising:

"I saw this movie Saturday and was wondering if you know about the warchildren (krigsbarn).

During the WW2, Finland was under attack and it was decided that Sweden as a "neutral" country would take some of these children to live in peace until the war was over. 70 000 children between 0-14 years of age were shipped to Sweden during 1939-1945, my father's family included. Some returned to Finland, others stayed for good.
It was emotionally very stressful for the children and their parents. The children were shipped off, all alone, with a tag around their neck, to a country were nobody understood their language.

I guess this is the tightest bond between the countries in modern time.

Norway and Denmark had effects on their children as well, but in different ways. Their description of krigsbarn is different. I'm sure they too must've sent children to Sweden, but in 1945 Norway wanted to send 9 000 children to Australia because they had German fathers, for example..."

The Battle of Hulloch and the Easter Rising

My adventure is spiced with meeting interesting people with interesting stories. An Irish colleague told me an interesting story about Irish history, with a personal irony folded in. We often hear of the human sacrifice in the Irish revolution of 1916, especially during the Easter Rising. The Easter Rising was a failure costing approximately 380 lives but did lead to eventual Irish independence from England. At about the same time, the Germans were gassing members of the Royal Dublin Fulisers in Hulluch, France. This was the first gas attack of the horrific World War I.

My colleague says "As my grandfather was fighting in the trenches with the Royal Dublin Fulisers, I regret that we, the southern Irish, don’t remember their courage and sacrifice. There were 35,000 Irish killed in WW I who are more or less forgotten. The victors write the history books and in this case it was the Irish Republican Army (the original IRA) who fought and eventually won independence. My personal irony is that my other grandfather was in the IRA shooting British at the same time as my maternal grandfather was in the British Army. Should the two of them have been in Dublin in April 1916, I might not be here saying this!!! Thankfully, my other granddad was from Cork (250 km south of Dublin!)."

This sort of imbalance is frequent all over the world.

As I write this, the BBC and CNN Europe airing in Stockholm are dwelling on the tragedy of the Virginia Tech shootings and suicide. They are interviewing the shooter's former teachers, roommates, classmates, etc. trying to understand the psychology of the shooter, a Korean immigrant named Cho. They are evaluating and scrutinizing the gun laws in the US. It seems ironic that 33 people die tragically in the US, a country of 400 million while the ticker at the bottom of the TV screen says 166 people died in a suicide bomber blast in Baghdad, Iraq, a much much smaller country. If they did a psyscho-analysis of the Baghdad suicide killer equivalent to the one afforded Cho, I think we'd all learn a lot: the West and the Islamic world. Instead we over-simplify it as a horror of war or the insanity of fundamentalism or whatever....

Ah, I wax political, sorry.