By popular demand:

At long last I am going to take on this epic challenge to describe Miriam and my holiday of Irish wayfaring. I´ll warn in advance that this will be a record post length... you might want to read it in small chunks. Or not at all. I´ll even break it into "chapters" for you, if it helps. As you know, being concise is not a strength of mine, but I´ll do my best to eliminate unnecessary details. Mostly I want to include as much as possible simply for my own documenting purposes. My "journal" from the trip consists of incoherent rambles and choppy lists, and I´d like to have a better record for myself. Please excuse all that is to follow... If you´re really up to the challenge, be sure to boil yourself a pot of tea or something first. Maybe keep some snacks on hand. :)

I´ll start with the weekend before our trip. Miriam arrived early in the evening on Friday, April 3, on the most beautiful day of the year so far. She came just in time for my self-indulgent garden grilling party. The event combined the celebration of my 23rd birthday with Miriam´s welcome and my dear Anna and Nanna´s farewells. It was a small group. In addition to Miriam, Anna, and Nanna, I invited friends Sam, Kristin, Milena, and Jose from Kiel, neighbor Harry and his housemates, and the host family came by for a couple hours to grill with us. It was a bizarre but nice combination of people! I was mixing parts of my past college life with random new friends, language classmate, fellow au pairs, family, and neighbors. With less than 10-15 people, we represented parts of the U.S., Sweden, Finland, England, Kiel, and Bordesholm. I think Torsten was more excited about the party than I was, and surprised me by buying loads of meat and a variety of beverage options. It was thoughtful, but he kind of went too far and was really obsessive about grilling and presenting everything perfectly, with the appropriate condiments and cutlery. I´m used to casual, unimpressive, and informal grilling, but never really felt like I could relax until after he left! The thought was sweet, though, and to be honest if I had tried to do everything myself people might have gone hungry or something... But the weather could not have been more perfect, and we sat around the fire roasting marshmallows (apparently not common in Germany - they don´t know s´mores!!), sharing stories, and listening to music until well past midnight. The next morning I said goodbyes to Nanna and Anna, and then Miriam and I had the next couple days to polish "plans" for Ireland. We also found time to ride bikes to the moor, watch Steel Magnolias, go shopping in Kiel, and celebrate my birthday with the host family by eating a big birthday breakfast, going to a historical village, followed by tea and cakes and the German birthday song accompanied by Opa Lothar´s legendary harmonica.

Part One: Off on the wrong foot
The beginning of our journey probably could have involved a bit less anxiety. We left bright and early for the Kiel station Monday, April 6 to catch a train to Lübeck, where we´d then take a bus to the airport. Simple enough, right? Our train from Bordesholm was several minutes late, so when we got to Kiel we only had a couple minutes to make the transfer. I told Miriam to jump on the train and hold the door for me as I bought our tickets. Of course before the machine finished printing our tickets, I saw the doors close solidly as the train pulled away with Miriam inside, as I ran screaming (yes, I was that crazy person) alongside until the platform ended. There is only one train to Lübeck per hour, and we were already nervous about arriving at the airport in time for our flight. Now might be a good time to mention that neither Miriam nor I own a mobile phone... something we´d both resent many times during the week. Somehow I´ve survived 8 months in Germany quite happily (despite complaints from my friends in Kiel) without a phone, but it certainly would have been helpful during our trip. Na ja, this is character building stuff, right? My only option was to sit in the station for an agonizing hour until the next train, with hopes that I´d find Miriam at the station in Lübeck. After another hour by train, I arrived to find no trace of my friend. The next move was to find a bus to the airport. I arrived feeling quite dazed and hopeless in the terminal, again with no signs of my Miriam. I decided to get in the check-in line to see if they´d seen her yet, when I noticed a familiar form sitting by the vending machines. I stopped in my tracks, said her name, and cannot describe our ecstatic relief to be reunited at long last! After a few more complications with American visa stamps and such (c´mon RyanAir...), we settled happily into our seats on the plane and decided that it was good to get the stressful part of the trip out of the way in the beginning, and it would be smooth sailing from there on out! For the most part, we were right! I would have changed very little about the rest of our trip.

Arrival: Dublin
Taking a friend´s advice, the first thing we did when we arrived in Dublin was take a city bus to the centre. We stepped out, ate at a fish ´n chips place, and wandered the city. To be honest, Dublin was not our favorite city in the world, but we spent the next two days content in wandering around, talking to art gallery, thrift store, and antique shop workers, walking through colorful parks and buildings that were certainly filled with historical significance (we weren´t responsible historians during this trip...), attempting to find good music at pubs, and spending a mediocre night in an alley hostel. We decided we could only expect to find tourist-driven industries in the Temble Bar district, but didn´t know the city well enough to find the gems. We decided at this point to test out the couch-surfing network and contact a potential host in Dun Laoghaire, just south of Dublin and very near to our car rental place. It was settled, and our experience began to improve significantly from this point forward. We had a great time talking, solving crosswords, and making music with our hosts in Dun Laoghaire. We decided we all felt like comfortable old friends, and were very happy with the first of several successful couch surfing experiences. Forget hotels and hostels! My mode of traveling will never be the same again, and I can´t wait to return everyone´s generosity by hosting travelers myself someday when I have a place of my own.

The Rental Car:
After being 23 for only a couple days, I was allowed to drive a rental car. Our trusty Lonely Planet guide book highly recommended driving, as buses can be complicated and hitchhiking, while still quite safe in Ireland, is not always reliable or efficient. After the first hour of terror, driving on the left with the steering wheel and turn signal on the right, and getting a bit lost, Miriam safely navigated me out of the stressful city of Dublin and out onto those beautiful open motorways. Her dependable navigation, subtle driving tips ("Kate... don´t panic, but maybe you should get on the other side of the road..."), words of encouragement and undeserved driving compliments were so incredibly helpful in my driving confidence. Such a dear! It could not have been easy to be in that passenger seat. I was actually surprised at how comfortable I was with driving in Ireland by the end of the week. We worked our way north through pastoral scenic routes, taking frequent picnics and breaks to enjoy the flora and fauna. The sheep are mostly there for tourists, we later learned. Even the guide books says "for some reason Americans love taking photos of the sheep...," so I resisted this temptation (for the most part), but my heart still warms when I think of those baby lambs bounding up the hills!. And of course just when we thought things surely couldn´t become more idyllic, a rainbow would appear! Completely unnecessary. Oh Ireland... just too much. We drove through Belfast and up to the north coast to take in Giant´s Causeway before dusk. It was stunning, to say the least. We hated to leave, but wanted to finish the drive to our next couch-surfing host in Limavedy before it became too dark. Our host Nathalie was middle-aged, lived alone in a little pink house, and had some very interesting life stories. She was born in Paris, and has lived many years in various parts of Africa and Europe, with plans to move soon to Norway with her daughter. We had the impression that she was a kind of sad and isolated person, but she was very kind, making us tea and helping us feel most welcomed. She recommended that we stop through Donegal the next day - advice we were happy to take! Once again, let me preach how amazing the couch-surfing network is. Not only did we happily receive local insight and advice, save money, and at all times felt 100% safe and welcomed, but our experience was so enriched making new friends and connections, and feeling that we left bits of ourselves at each place rather than just "passing though." I highly recommend this to everyone. Obviously one has to be careful depending on where and how they are traveling, but after my experiences it just makes me feel good about humanity again, and I like being able to choose to live that way.

To the West:
We left early the next morning, with flexible goals to pass through Donegal and reach Galway by nightfall. We took some quiet, narrow and winding routes through the spectacular (Miriam and I tired of saying "wow" and "beautiful" all the time and challenged ourselves to increase our "gorgeous" and "breathtaking" vocabulary categories!) Blue Stack and Derryweagh mountains. They were unexpected - rugged and rocky red and purple hills with dark woody bushes displaying vibrant yellow blossoms. Behind the fog and light rain, it all felt so surreal, almost of another world. I appreciate the typical "green fields" of Ireland that you find on calendars, but found that the more rugged landscapes were my favorite. Thankfully we had to drive quite slow, because I was too distracted by the scenery to commit all my attention to the road! Without a proper radio, Miriam and I had started to teach each other old and new songs, inventing new harmonies and changing some cheesy verses to better suit ourselves. A couple songs became very important to us, and this part of our trip was completely unexpected but very fulfilling. I sense that this will be a part of our friendship that we will remember fondly someday. At one point in the mountains, we noticed a tire leaking air and stopped in a remote village to ask for help. There a man kindly opened his garage to refill our tire, and told us that tourists only stop through his town if they´re lost or need help. I guess we fit into that 2nd category... We offered to pay for his services, to which he replied "don´t be daft! Just keep an eye out for those kamikaze sheep" - advice well heeded! They were everywhere on those little roads, and seemed to deliberately reject the function of fences. We continued through the rain to find St. Columbcille´s well and to see some fascinating examples of sacred stones that blurred the lines between paganism and Christianity. The roads became questionable, and soon felt more like steep bike paths. Eventually the "road" became a few scattered stones on a steep grassy hill, and we abandoned the car to sludge through the slippery grass and rocks to find the well. It was ill-marked and strange, with a random collection of religious tokens that made little sense to us. But the view was spectacular, and we didn´t regret the journey at all. However by this point we realized how ambitious and impossible our goal to reach Galway was for that day. With it being too late to arrange a couch-surfing plan, we checked into a nice hostel (White House) in Sligo. There we met Nadja from Switzerland, and found some incredible traditional music in a little pub. It was very relaxed and unpretentious, with a few people sitting around a table informally playing music together. I talked with a delightfully crass old man at the bar, who sang me an old song about Kansas City. I wish I could have stayed there for hours, but we were quite exhausted from the day´s events and soon retired back to the hostel for some well-deserved shut eye.

And South:
The next morning we offered to give Nadja, who was also bound for Galway, a ride in our car. It was kind of fun to have a new person along, and we were happy to see her experience the fun little roads and flexibility we´d been experiencing all week, rather than boring bus routes. We drove through the lovely Westport and stopped in the Connemara National Park for a hike and picnic (interrupted by a freakish hail storm), then arrived at a little Coral Beach at the tip of a small secluded peninsula. Here our car battery temporarily stalled, and we had to seek help from some locals. This proved to be more complicated than we thought, as it turned out to be an old Gaelic-speaking peninsula (I think this village was called Spiddle?) and everything was closed on Good Friday. People were friendly and helpful, and soon our car recovered itself and we were shortly on the road again after a few minutes of panic. After another couple of stressful hours in Galway, helping Nadja find lodging and having car problems again, we decided to go ahead and drive further South to Doolin, a village recommended to us by our first host. We had no lodging arranged for ourselves, and decided to simply camp out in our car for the night. Not ideal, but nice to have as an option. The plan started out happily, as we hiked out in the dark to the rocky beach and watched the full moon rise above the cliffs. As we settled in to the car, however, we soon came to regret the decision. Even after layering every article of clothing I had brought along, I couldn´t feel my toes and didn´t sleep a wink the entire night. I was willing the sun to rise just so we could draw some solar warmth and go find some coffee and breakfast! At long last morning arrived, and after some gate barrier issues we were the first to leave the campgrounds. Our mission to find food and gasoline proved to be more difficult than expected, as most people in Doolin and surrounding villages don´t rise until late. No shops were open until 9:30 or 10. Finally we treated ourselves to hearty Irish breakfasts at a tea shop (the woman must have thought we were starving, which was kind of true after sustaining on mostly rye cracker and mustard picnics for the last couple days) and visited a little local craft fair happening down the street. We checked into the Ailee River hostel early after noon and were so impressed with the place! The building itself was just incredible, as it was an old farm/boarding house from the 1600s with a beautiful full kitchen, free laundry and internet, and spotless sunny bedrooms and bathrooms. We expressed interest in seeing the Cliffs of Moher, and the friendly owner Karl sketched us a detailed hiking map that would take us along the edge the entire way. It was one of our best experiences of the week! A couple parts made us nervous, but the sights were exhilarating to say the least. The hike turned into a many-hour-long excursion, and at the end we climbed over the fence to the tourist look-out spot, completely winded and a bit sunburned. I´ll admit that I felt very smug as we realized that the spot from which all the other tourists (arriving in droves by buses) could view the cliffs was nothing at all in comparison to everything we had just seen! I guess there are just some things in life you have to really work for to enjoy, and I am so glad that we could experience that! After stopping by a nice little local jam shop (and shamelessly drawing sweet calories from the jar with our fingers in proper Cold Mountain Ada form as we walked back!) we returned to the hostel exhausted. We ventured out again in Doolin, where we shared a nice supper at a pub with a friendly old couple from Cork named Joel and Irene. Beautiful traditional music followed, but with it being a holiday the pub was far too crowded and we decided to leave after just a few songs. It was a pity because we really liked the place and the music was phenomenal, but it had already been a long day and the previous sleepless night was catching up with us.

Easter Sunday:
We left the hostel early the next morning to return our rental car, happily accepting Cadbury eggs from the basket left by Karl at the door. On our way to Dublin we decided to celebrate the day in some form and tried to remember some old Easter-related songs from childhood Sunday services. As we´d forgotten most words, we put on some humorous and exaggerated renditions of what should have been solemn, well-intended hymns! If only we´d had some giant hats with flowers... and smelled of lavender musk. We realized our route took us right past Edenderry, a town from which my Grandpa Applegate´s grandmother Margaret McAvoy came. We decided to stop through and took a few photos. I should have taken some dirt or a stone or something, but didn´t think of it as were were already late to return the rental car. Someday I´d like to return when I can commit more time to research some parish records and such. Finally back in Dublin, we reluctantly returned our trusty car and kissed it goodbye. Exhausted, we wandered into the UCD campus park, took a nap in the grass, and made a patchwork picnic leftover from our days on the road. We wandered the city and park a bit more, then returned that evening to Dun Laoghaire to our same old host-friends from the beginning of the trip. We had a fun evening out with the whole family, and the next day was nice and relaxed. Despite the rain we went down to Wicklow see a beautiful lake below a steep hill/cliff (I forgot the name of this place), had tea at a peace and reconciliation center, then returned to cook a nice roast and vegetables and watch an intense film about the Irish hunger strikes. It was a chill and satisfying way to end our trip, and I slept like a rock that night - missing our alarm! After a panicked late start, Conor kindly drove us to the airport and we arrived just in time for the flight. Whew!

I now find myself back in Bordesholm. I´ll be honest in that it took me a while to resettle myself here and find contentment. In fact I´m still working on it. After being high all week on the independence of traveling, being reunited with Miriam after not seeing each other for nearly a year, and having no cares at all in the world, it was a harsh adjustment to know that it was just a short holiday, and that the "real world" was still waiting for me. Now I´m working back into my old routine, and things are starting to look up again. It helps that the weather has been beautiful. Spring arrived while we were gone, and I never tire of walking through Bordesholm´s abundant cherry and magnolia-blossomed trees. Right now out my window I see trees and bushes with purple, white, pink, yellow, red, and every shade of green. There is a lot to distract myself with now - this morning I walked to the farmers market for honey, apples, and kohlrabi starter plants, bought some yarn, and have been continuing my fruitless job search for the fall. My gardens keep me very busy - I´m almost obsessive about it. Even so, I keep finding myself dreamily remembering our week in Ireland as if it was yesterday. There is hardly anything at all I would have changed; our self-made itinerary was just perfect (we should write to Lonely Planet)! The trip was good for me in so many ways. Not only was I in dire need of a break, but it gave me a chance to feel completely confident and independent in many unexpected new ways. In fact, I almost felt like I developed more as a person in that week than I have in an entire year in Germany. This probably isn´t true at all, as it is difficult to notice subtle but significant changes over the course of a year. Who knows. Of one thing I´m sure. A week was not enough at all, and I have a feeling that I´m not completely done with my time in Ireland yet - I´m not exactly sure what, but I think there could still be more for me there. Maybe I´m just humoring myself, but I would seriously look into returning someday for several months as part of a work-away or volunteer program. I´m sure everyone says things like this after a vacation where they felt a strong connection to the place, but I can let myself dream a bit, right? If someone were to tell me that a year or two from now I´d be refurbishing an old farm, pulling weeds, or something in Ireland, I would not at all be surprised.

I´ve had many special experiences with my host family this year - the sea in Denmark, the cozy cottage in the Harz, etc., but my week with Miriam in Ireland was by far the most liberating and genuinely happy week of my year. It was so nice to be with a familiar friend who knows me so well, and I miss her terribly! I have a new energy now to make plans for this Fall to return to old friends and family in the Midwest. I have no idea how I´ll make a living, where I´ll live, etc., but these things have always had ways of working out before. I can´t let myself be too naive or carefree, but I have to believe things will work out or all of the questions and uncertainties will make me crazy! In the meantime, I´m going to do everything I can to draw as much as possible from my last few months here in Germany. On that note... maybe I should at long last bring this post to a close, and try to enjoy the rest of this sunny Saturday!

For any of you who have lasted this far, good work! I am impressed, and you have my most sincere apologies. I solemnly promise that future posts will never be this long again.

Cheers!

Ireland

I know folks have been awaiting this post for quite some time. I apologize in advance for the disappointment that will follow now. I´m not going to give a summary of my trip just yet. But know that it is coming soon! In the meantime, I´m posting some music that played an important role in Miriam and my road trip. Enjoy!