Jade_Tarem
2008-06-14, 12:58 AM
The tale of an American college student going abroad for the first time, on a band trip to the Emerald Isle...
Hi!
You may remember, a long, long time ago I put up a thread called "I'm going to Ireland!" Well, I went, over spring break, with the Auburn University Marching Band, and just now remembered (and had the time to keep) my promise to post again about it.
Most criticism and negativity here is made to be funny or to give you an idea of what impression was made, so don't panic over it - I had a blast for the most part. Bear in mind that I was in varying mental and physical states throughout the trip - with the worst mental and physical states being the time I was leaving (to go back to the US) and, ironically, St. Patrick's Day. You'll see why below.
Days One and Two: The Trip to Ireland
So the final schedule, given to us roughly two seconds before we had to pack, was this:
Day One (The Thursday before St. Patrick's Day): Get on different busses, at different times, and go to either the Atlanta International Airport or else, I believe, the Montgomery Airport. (Auburn, USA is located on the eastern edge of Alabama). We were taking 200+ Members of the band, plus faculty and instruments, overseas. This is pretty much the biggest such trip undertaken by the University. Ever. To my knowledge, don't hold me to this.
So we find out at the meeting the night before that we'll be splitting into 7 groups, which will take various busses and planes (2 busses, but 7 planes, hence the seven groups) on the way out. Each plane is taking a different route to Ireland. This resulted in one particular group (group 1, I think) getting positively screwed. Twice. IIRC, they had to leave about an hour earlier and arrive 4 hours after everyone else due to some ridiculous layover in Nova Scotia. Fortunately (for me) this was not my flight. My flight was number 4, which took a bus to Atlanta, then a plane (Royal Dutch Airlines) to Amsterdam, then another plane (Aer Lingus) to Dublin, then a pair of busses to Limerick, which is the first city we stayed at on the trip.
The luggage was, for me, a bit of a problem. I had a suitcase that, through a miracle combination of intelligent packing and the ability to defy physics, managed to cram everything I would need to spend a week in Ireland down to the size and weight limits for the trip. Unfortunately, the suitcase was rather heavy and was designed to be dragged (via strap) on wheels. The problem was, it was missing the strap, so I had to either carry it or else bend partway over and drag it via handle, and one of the wheels kept sticking. All the way across the damn airport. This may not sound too bad, but I was also carrying a mellophone case the approximate size and wieght of the suitcase, and a backpack, both of which kept wanting to slide off my shoulders. I did a little dance when I got to leave the stuff (the case and the suitcase) at the airport to be put on the plane, until the Drum Major travelling with us reminded me that I'd have to carry it (and the case) again at the next airport. And Ireland. And up the stairs at the hotel. And at the other hotel. And at all those locations on the way back. What a jerk.
So we got to our plane, went through the official business with the passports, went through security, etc.
We got on the plane, and realized that it would be a long flight when the captain began speaking... in Dutch. I think it was Dutch, anyway. Considering how good I am with foreign languages it might as well have been Martian. Fortunately, a second set of announcements was done in English, wherein I realized that I would have preferred more Dutch as the safety video droned on and on about what we were supposed to do if we survived hitting the Atlantic ocean at 700 mph.:smallsigh:
The flight itself wasn't so bad. I had an aisle seat and managed to move around to avoid swelling and such, and got a good bit of sleep. The food was actually pretty good. The band had been instructed not to accept any alcholic drinks on the flight, and as for Ireland... "Please be reasonable" was the desperate plea of the TAs. It was greeted with hysterical laughter.:smalltongue:
We landed in Amsterdam. Suddenly. "Please fasten your safety belts and return your trays and seats to the upright position." *WHAM* "We have now landed at Amsterdam International Airport..." Just like that. :smalleek:
So we got off the plane in Amsterdam, and the Airport was all I got to see of it. It's kind of divided. There's an English section and then there's the Dutch section. Instructions were written in English, Advertisements were written in Dutch. For some reason I thought it would be the other way around, but there it is. I thought about calling home before realizing that due to the time difference, it was 2 a.m. in Huntsville, Alabama (my home town). :smallsigh:
Soon enough, we got on the Aer Lingus Airbus to Ireland. That was a short flight, and before too long we were in the Dublin International Airport, where we met our busses. Remember the suitcase I was talking about? Well, I was dragging it along here, getting more and more frustrated with it, dealing with combinaition jetlag and heavy stuff, and so in frustration, somewhere in the parking lot, a short distance from the busses (or "motorcoaches") that we were meeting, I delivered a heavy kick to the suitcase. At this point in time (proving God has a sense of humor) the wheels come unstuck, and the thing rolls clear through traffic at high speed straight into the back of a relatively short and petite girl some twenty yards away, nearly knocking her down. About twenty venomous looks later from the girl and all 3000 of her closest friends, I recovered my luggage and caught up to the group at the busses. :smallredface:
First Impressions of Ireland
I've already said that I had a blast in Ireland, but that didn't begin until the third day, as you'll see. Now, a word on first impressions. The Dublin international airport and the bus drivers didn't make a very good one. The airport itself was all construction and mud under an overcast sky, which I was looking at while the "Welcome to Scenic Ireland" travel commercial kept playing in the back of my mind. One bus driver was alright (he later proved to be quite funny), but the other one (an old, cranky, chubby guy), for whatever reason, spoke with the kind of outrageous accent that someone who was trying to maliciously stereotype the Irish might put on as an impression, and ran all of his words together to boot. When trying to tell me where to put my mellophone case, the words "Take it around and put it in the back of the van." Became "Taecgei'aronanpudihinnabaggovavan!" When I just stood there blinking at him, stunned by the syllabic barrage, he added (helpfully and irritably), "Taecgei'aronanpudihinnabaggovavan!" I eventually found out that what he meant was that I was to go take it over to the loading truck, being loaded (helpfully) by some guy who looked like the bastard child of Mr. Creely from "V for Vendetta" and Porky Pig. I know that it's unfair to judge by appearance, but I was getting to be in a pretty vile mood, which was not made better when I saw the wonderful care with which he was stacking our instruments, similar to the care you see being given to the items being thrown overboard in Pirates of the Carribbean when the Interceptor is trying to get away from the Black Pearl. That is to say, our multi-thousand dollar instruments were being stacked at the back of the "van" as though either the van or the instruments had personally offended the guy loading them. I took a picture just so that I could prove that any damage to my mellophone case wasn't my fault. Finally, the sky was a lovely shade of grey. I don't know what it's like the rest of the year in Ireland, but apparently during spring break a bleak grey is the default color for the sky.:smallannoyed:
The bus trip was a little better, for the first few seconds. Then I discovered one of the principle rules of driving in Ireland. I hate to keep referencing Pirates, but the lines on the road are apparently more guidelines than actual rules. The bus drivers seemed to endorse this philosophy, so while I tried to nap on the bus the thought that kept running through my mind was We're going to kill someone before I wake up.:smalleek:
This was fortunately not the case when I woke up. Also, things were beginning to get better. We'd made it out to the countryside where the drivers, while still just as crazy, were farther apart, allowing for more leeway in the response times of the drivers (I am so very not making this up). We made a rest/pit stop, where the bus driver for my bus (Owen, the good one - not the cranky guy) got out and had a break with us and had a good beer before getting back on the bus. I'm not sure what this means to you non-Americans out there, but this was a bit of a culture clash between the busses that Auburn uses to travel around the states and these guys. Perhaps it's not a big deal, but I'm pretty sure that the bus drivers here wouldn't dare get anything with alchohol anywhere near their shift, let alone on it. We decided that we weren't worried if the bus driver and our Irish guide weren't, and besides, it was a little late to get a different bus driver anyway.:smalleek:
The bus drove through some beautiful country, buy the way, if you don't count the sky. After enough sleep I was beginning to feel a bit better, especially as we finally arrived in Limerick after something like 18 hours of travel. This was the cue for Murphy to come in and screw with...
The hotel check in
Because of the size of the band, we were staying at two different hotels, and everyone was arriving at different times. One hotel was downtown, and the other was apparently on the edge of Limerick. The people at that hotel were able to bus over into Limerick, though, so it all worked out.
That said, everyone at each hotel checked in just fine with no problems. Except for me. I am still not making this up. It turns out that the lists the band had been given put me at the downtown hotel, while the lists on the Ireland end of things had me at the other one. This was only discovered later, after the poor hotel clerk at the first one checked through every record his hotel had kept over pretty much the past year. So I had to wait until the next group came by, and transfer over to the bus taking those going to the other hotel to said hotel. First I had to find my room-mates though, so that they would not befall the same fate. Technically, this would mean that I wasn't the only one not to have problems checking in - I was just the only one who had to wait around in the lobby for 45 minutes because the bus was going to be there "any minute now." To be fair, it probably wasn't a picnic for the guy at the front desk, either. This wait was used productively, however - a search of my possessions yielded the mysterious disappearing suitcase strap! That's right, all of the dragging, lifting, pushing, and kicking back in the states and in Dublin was completely unnecessary! Needless to say, I was just thrilled about that, but I didn't care because now I had the +5 Strap of Awesome Suitcase Pulling. The other bonus was that all instruments were staying in the van, right where the lightbulb-shaped Mr. Creely look-alike had viciously thrown them, and where they had settled after the high-G maneuvers that had brought us to Limerick, which meant that I didn't have to carry it anymore.
I got to the other hotel, took a shower, changed, and essentially passed out. This actually concludes Day Two of the trip, which had merged into one long super-day with Day One.:smallsigh:
Day Three: The Cliffs of Moher, and Galway
Third day made up for the previous two by being about 60,000 times better. I was rested, showered, changed, and ready to hit Ireland (not literally, of course).
This day was the day the band went to see the Cliffs of Moher (I think I spelled that right). It was a bit of a drive, but not too bad, and we were passing through more of the beautiful scenery (again, minus the sky).
The Cliffs were, well, tall. Really tall. The kind of tall people look at and go "Wow, that's tall." Apparently they were a hot suicide spot too. There were all kinds of signs around warning people about various things, although none of them were worded, so you had to assign your own meaning to them. Some of them appeared to be "Warning: Beware of Wile E. Coyote Syndrome" whereas others were more confusing. "Warning: If you are going to jump off a cliff, do not attempt to grab a bird on your way down.":smallconfused:
Then we went to Galway, and they cut us loose. I kinda hung out in the tourist trap zone there for a while with about half the band, while the other half went to a nearby cathedral. I would have done the Cathedral, but the weather had been pretty bad, temperature and rain wise, at the Cliffs of Moher and I wanted something hot to eat and a roof, rather than another bus ride and a hike. This ended up being ok. I explored the giant walking-only shopping center and got some nice stuff to eat. I also discovered the first rule of public sanitation in Europe: there are no trash cans. None. The lack of trash cans in Europe is so complete that there are also no trash cans in America - we just imagine there are because we want to believe in them so badly, like with Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. In reality, the Europeans actually destroyed the last trash cans in the New World during the French and Indian War.
Perhaps the Irish just don't throw away as much as the Americans (actually, they don't throw away nearly as much - America is pretty wasteful), but still, a wrapper is a wrapper, and you have to throw it away some time. To any Irish people on the Board: Do you just carry any garbage you aquire around until you get home?
Eventually, it was time to head back to Limerick. We did this, and then when we were given free time again I joined a group of fellow band members (about 10) in going around looking for "Genuine Irish Food." This was more difficult than you would think. According to the local residents that we asked, southeast asian food was becoming quite popular in the area. This meant that it was easier to aquire Thai food than Irish food. In Ireland.
We continued our quest, however, and eventually located a small shop at the same time as another group of band students and proceeded to overwhelm it with our ridiculous numbers, thus contributing to and improving the great reputation that Americans have overseas! Then again, your average elementary school class would have been twice what this little fish and chips place could handle, so it wasn't completely our fault. The food was actually incredibly good, although it was of the same *type* as that served at any Captain D's, so we left being not-so-sure that we had eaten "Genuine Irish Food" and not "I Can't Believe it's not Irish."
That finished, the time for me to head back to the bus at the hotel where I totally was *not* staying, so that I could go to the hotel where I was, had arrived, and so I went there, then took the other bus to the hotel where I was staying at in time to make room checks. The area around the downtown hotel was nice, featuring a variety of night-time amusements and places to eat. The area around the hotel I was staying at featured mostly run-down laundromats, so I went to bed.
Day 4: The Looting of Limerick
The next day, for those of you keeping track, was Sunday, and we were to pack up bright and early because we would never be coming back to these hotels again. This was met with nonchalance form the downtown group and cheering from the other group. This was the day when we were to march in the pre-St. Patrick's Day parade in Limerick. We hadn't taken our uniforms to Ireland because, in the esteemed and proper words of our Director of Bands, "It's a huge pain in the you-know-what." So the band ordered 200+ of these windsuit things and matching ballcaps, which was our official uniform for the trip. We went to the Limerick parade, which we found out was actually a competition. We didn't think much of that right then, especially when we found out that most (read also: all) of the other bands were high school bands. This wasn't arrogance on our part, but a bit of cultural confusion, I guess.
You see, in America, at least in the SEC, when a college band is in a competition with a whole bunch of high school bands, it is assumed, by all present and even those who are not, that the college band is an "exhibition band." What this means is that even though the band (the exhibition band) performs during the competition, the band is not scored, because that would be silly. If it was, the college band would pretty much always take home the proverbial bacon. So we lined up to go march in this parade, where we were convinced that by God, we were just going to have some fun and entertain some people, and that we weren't really competing, and the following scene played out:
Irish Parade Staff Person: "Good Luck with the Competition - I hope you do well!"
Band Students: "Oh, thanks!"
*Drum roll begins, signalling that the band is about to march.*
Band Students (Looking at each other): "Wait, what did she just say?"
Yes, we had been entered as a competitor. Now, I'm sure that Limerick has some great high school bands. Some of them, I hear, had practiced for weeks for this competition. We just kinda showed up. The scores went in, and we were presented with the "Best Overall Band," "Best in Music," and "Best in Marching" awards, which is pretty much all of the awards. In short, we crushed the hopes and dreams of several hundred Irish high school band students with little or no effort as we ran away with the trophies they had worked so hard for, thus contributing to and improving the great reputation that Americans have overseas!
The rest of the day was taken up with transferring all of our stuff to Dublin, where we fortunately were all staying at the same hotel - a very fancy one where every wing or ballroom was named for some mythological creature. I don't remember the name anymore. Oddly enough, the rest of that day was a blur in my mind. I guess I had a good time?
Day Five: St. Patrick's Day
At last! The whole reason we had come to Ireland was by invitation of the Lord Mayor of Dublin to march in the St. Patrick's Day parade. We got up semi-early, and headed to our Parade Staging Area.
A word on St. Patrick's Day in Ireland, for those of you who are not from Ireland but are for some reason still reading this: It's kind of a big deal, by which I mean that it is a big deal. It's something like Mardi Gras meets the Fourth of July meets the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, for those of you from America. Minus fireworks, at least inside Dublin. For those of you not from America or Ireland, it's a five day celebration where green predominates and all kinds of parties and festivals go on, all over the place.
For us, St. Patrick's Day in Ireland was a chance to perform without swiping trophies from high schoolers. We reached our assembly area and waited. And waited. And waited. For about three hours. During this time, the clouds parted, and for the parade, at least, the sun and some blue sky shone on Ireland. I had kind of forgotten what they looked like, as I hadn't seen the sun since it had set while we were flying over the Atlantic Ocean. We also cracked a few jokes ("How dare they keep us waiting? Do they not know of our reputation as the conquerors of Limerick?).
So we continued to wait, realizing that the St. Patrick's Day Parade was a big parade. How big, you ask? Half of Dublin's population participates, either in the parade or as a spectator (mostly spectators). Dublin's population is about a quarter of that of Ireland, which has a population of ~4.5 million people. That's right: 500,000+ people were at this parade.
Eventually we set off and marched the parade, which was nice except for two things.
1. We were behind the world's ugliest float. It was a float of an oil rig, as the "theme" for this year's parade was, IIRC, energy. Our bad luck.
2. The parade was quite a hike, in our windsuits, in the sun. We weren't walking this distance either - we were marching and playing, which means that you:
a) Can't stop
b) Are moving a good bit more aerobically than simple walking
and
c) Are playing an instrument, which means you aren't exactly breathing regularly.
So by the end of the parade, those less-physically inclined among us (like me) were not feeling so great. Fortunately, we got on the busses for our next stop.
The Guiness Brewery
There was one, and exactly one, part of the Guiness Brewery that was not awesome. That part was: Getting in.
Yes. You see, we pulled up at the rear entrance to the brewery, and they let us in, but we had to take our instruments. For me, this included the Mellophone Case from Hell, although for the baritones and sousaphones it was even worse. Not that carrying the instrument was so bad, it was that they led us up nine flights of !@#*&%* doubled stairs before we were allowed to ditch the instruments and take a break. They provided us with free food and drinks, though, which was very nice of them. This break lasted for a while, and then it was time for us to go put on a performance in the brewery itself, as part of the aforementioned five-day festival. We essentially put on a pep rally on the bottom floor of the museum-like area of the plant, and were recieved very well. We then went back up (we'd come down a couple of flights) to put our instruments away. Then we were given the run of the Brewery, to go on the tour, get our free cup of Guiness, and so forth. As the legal drinking age was well below even the youngest of us, a couple decided to go to the testing-bar they have at the plant. The free-run tour of the brewery floors was very well done, explaining how every part of the brewery worked in just enough detail that you couldn't reproduce it, all the while hinting that if you were drinking anything but Guiness, you might as well be drinking horse urine. Kidding aside, the place was amazing, and I recommend that you go if you ever end up in Dublin. The free-standing waterfall was a nice touch.
There was one final anecdote about the place. I went back up to the room where we'd stashed our instruments, I forget why. This was a kind of general-use storage room, and other groups had stuff there too. I passed a pair of local girls walking in on the way out, and heard one of them say, as they went in, "Oh! It smells like an orchestra died in here." I guess you may have had to be there, but I thought at the time that this was the absolute pinnacle of humor. :smallbiggrin:
Day 6: The Final Day in Dublin
Tuesday, we got up kinda late to go on a bus tour of Dublin. That is to say, most of us did that. 7 of the students, however, were missing passports due to the fact that while we were in the Guiness Brewery some "youthful offenders" had broken into one of the bussess and stolen some stuff, including personal baggage. Those people, plus one very unlucky TA, got to spend the day at the US Embassy getting emergency passports. The rest of did the bus tour thing. The weather for this part of the day was still nice and sunny, for a wonder. :smallcool:
The bus tour was very well done. The bus driver and the guide were apparently some kind of team. The guide himself was hilarious and informative, full of amusing stories. I can't go through the trip without visual aids, though, so I'm just going to say that Dublin is worth seeing and move on. :smallwink:
The tour concluded at Trinity College, where they let us go roam around Dublin for 5 hours or so. Unlike previous free time, I wandered around alone. My first stop was Trinity College itself, where I went to see (what else?) the Book of Kells. It was a long wait, but it was nice outside and it was good to stretch out my legs after the bus ride anyway. The Book of Kells was worth seeing, although it came after a whole bunch of light up displays on other stuff, and on the writing, binding, inking, painting, etc. of said book. Also worth the price of admission was the library at the end, which was one of those old, Indiana Jones-type things with the two-story balcony wooden arches, rolling ladders, really old books, and a wooden bust of every single Northern European playwright, poet, and author of any renown for the last half-century. :smallsmile:
With that done, I proceeded to wander around Dublin. For the next 4 hours. It wasn't nearly as boring as that sounds. I went into all kinds of shops, wandered around a park (not Phoenix Park - that was on the bus tour), ate, and so forth. 5 hours passed decently quickly. Then we came back to the hotel, where we recieved our instructions for the next day, and promptly began crying, because those instructions vaporized our dreams of a nice trip home. :smallfrown:
The wake up call for my group and three others was 3:30 a.m. Ahem, I'll put that down again. 3:30. In the morning. Our flight left at 6 a.m., so we had to get up that early or we'd miss it. The current time when we got these instructions was about 10 p.m, meaning that the most sleep we could possibly have, assuming that we passed out on the spot, was 5 and a half hours. Joy. :smallmad:
Day 7: Race for the Next Line
So we went to bed. Wake up call came, although it was at 3 a.m. rather than 3:30 due to our TA's strong-arming the bus drivers into leaving earlier. It was a good thing they did this, too. We loaded up the busses and drove to Dublin International, which took us about an hour to get to.
So we got to Dublin International at about 4:30 a.m. and it was packed to overflowing. We were in some pretty serious trouble, because it was about 5:10 before we got in line for our flight, and last call for getting on board the plane was 6. This was compounded by, you guessed it, the instruments, many of which did not fit through the scales and had to be taken to oversized luggage. This only occured later, though, closer to 10 minutes before the plane was to take off. :smalleek:
So now we're at the line, and many still hadn't gone through security. The band staff countered this by kind of... kind of stringing themselves out from the security station to the terminal, so that band students could get to the right terminal without actually having to read any of the signs. This was essential, as we would have to be navigating Dublin International at a full sprint to make it on time, which is what we proceeded to do (one and two at a time), trying not to knock people down in our path. In this manner, we contributed to and improved the great reputation that Americans have overseas!
Everyone did make it though, and we made the short hop over to Amsterdam (each flight group took the same path as before, only backwards). We got to Amsterdam an hour later, two hours after we had left (time zones). This made it 8 a.m. locally, with our plane concluding boarding at 9:40. I was pretty hungry at this point, not to mention tired from inadequate sleep, and so when I spotted a pizza place in the airport, I thought it was a Godsend. This is, of course, when they called up everyone on my flight to get in line to board the plane an hour and a half before boarding finished. The reason for this was for a passport validation check, which I thought, with some bitterness, was pretty funny, in that my passport had been checked and validated, or so it seemed, every time I needed to take a leak. Little did I know that I wasn't registered in their computer system as having a passport despite the fact that I had travelled through this exact terminal one week ago, wherein they had put my passport info into the computer and let me fly to Ireland. Fortunately, clearing it up was only a matter of a couple of minutes - I did actually *have* a passport, after all.
The flight over the Atlantic hadn't been too bad previously, and so I had assumed that it wouldn't be too bad going the other way. Wrong. I got to my seat on the plane to find it occupied by a venerable Indian man, with his wife in the seat next to him. The wife explained to the flight attendant and me (the husband apparently spoke no English) that the guy was somewhat incontenent and needed quick access to the bathroom. The flight attendant told me that If I wanted, I could boot the guy out of my seat and into his own, but being the Eagle Scout that I am, I said it was ok, that I would take the seat in the middle (one of two middle seats, really - there were four "middle" seats, an aisle on each side of those, and then a row of three seats on each side of that. Also, the rows were "lettered." The letter sequence went: A, B, C, E, F, G, H, J, K, L. Apparently the Dutch have something against the letters D and I). I did this because I figured that the person sitting next to me on the other side couldn't be too bad. I didn't even say that out loud, but apparently fate took it as a pick up line, and introduced me to the guy who took the aisle seat.
It wasn't that the guy had an annoying personality, or smelled bad, or had 30 electronic devices going off all the time, or had some beef with Americans or Band Students. Oh no, that would have been too merciful. No, this guy, the guy I sat next to for the next nine hours, was...
Well, I'm not sure how to put this. Ah, that's it. Do you remember the guy who loaded our instruments? The guy who was a cross between Mr. Creely and Porky Pig? Well, the heck with that. This guy was a cross between an ageing trucker and Jabba the Hutt. He actually smuggled a cheeseburger on to the plane, and ate it. I am not making this up. He filled up all of his seat, plus half the aisle, plus half of my seat, throughout the trip, so that I was squeezed into this position, if looked at from the front:
( <-- General shape of me during the trip. It was a curve.
Yes, it was that bad. If I'd known that this was going to happen I'd have told the flight attendant to make the Indian guy stew in his bodily fluids - not that he would have, as he didn't get up and go to the bathroom the entire damn trip!
I managed to sleep the first two hours of the trip, and then was awakened by a combination of hunger and heat. Yes, heat. The air conditioning on this particular flight was questionable at best, and combined with the warm, saggy sack of flesh next to me it was pretty uncomfortable. This situation held stable for the next 7 hours, alleviated when the guy went to the bathroom (not the Indian guy - Jabba), which is when I would get up, stretch, go to the bathroom, etc. I did get to eat, which was the only good part.
We got back to the states, though, and eventually made it back home, where I crashed at a friend's place in Auburn before making the drive back to Huntsville.
Ireland - Other Impressions
The Food! - It was really good, with the exception of bread products, like muffins and cookies. It wasn't that said products were bad tasting or badly prepared, they were just incredibly dry. I don't mean "not wet." I mean these things were so dry that one bite would have you shrivel up like the guy in Indiana Jones who drank from the wrong Grail, as the bun or whatever it was sucked all the moisture out of you. :smalleek:
The music - honestly, I was part of the production of most of the music that I heard, but the other sources of music were really nice - upbeat and traditional "Irish" stuff in the spirit of St. Patrick's Day. :smallwink:
The environment - the countryside was absolutely beautiful, if you don't mind permanently grey skies. :smallconfused:
Dublin - Honestly, I had more fun in Dublin than in New Orleans, which is a city famous for being entertaining. At least it was, until it became a city famous for being underwater.
Security - If you want ask me what Ireland Customs looks like, I can't tell you. I never saw any. I am not making this up, we basically got off the plane and walked into Dublin, with only one checkpoint where a sleepy guy verified that we were, in fact, people. :smallconfused:
This was sharply contrasted on the way home. Inbound to Atlanta, we were presented with several pages of customs paperwork, wherein we were to list everything we had bought overseas, plus some other stuff. Then we we set down, and presented this paperwork and said goods to a guard, and went to retrieve our luggage from a turntable after it had been scanned. Then we passed by heavily armed guards who investigated anything they thought looked funny. This is when WonderCase got me tangled up again. This is because my mellophone case is, externally, a metal box - and it looks almost exactly like one of those metal cases that Hollywood terrorists are always storing small thermonuclear devices in. Naturally, I got checked out pretty closely. This was followed by three security checkpoints and two more turntable things for luggage, in order to maximize the amount of chances you would have to lose said luggage. One girl in our group proceeded to do exactly that, holding us up at the airport for hours. It wasn't even her fault. :smallfrown:
Money - Ireland's on the Euro, if there's anyone reading this who didn't know that. The Euro is part of Europe's ongoing campaign to have money that is prettier than America's. They're winning. :smalltongue:
So that's it. If you actually read all of this, then thanks for taking an interest. Feel free to correct me on anything you saw that was flat wrong, but remember that most of it was how I percieved it, and worded to entertain rather than inform.
Hi!
You may remember, a long, long time ago I put up a thread called "I'm going to Ireland!" Well, I went, over spring break, with the Auburn University Marching Band, and just now remembered (and had the time to keep) my promise to post again about it.
Most criticism and negativity here is made to be funny or to give you an idea of what impression was made, so don't panic over it - I had a blast for the most part. Bear in mind that I was in varying mental and physical states throughout the trip - with the worst mental and physical states being the time I was leaving (to go back to the US) and, ironically, St. Patrick's Day. You'll see why below.
Days One and Two: The Trip to Ireland
So the final schedule, given to us roughly two seconds before we had to pack, was this:
Day One (The Thursday before St. Patrick's Day): Get on different busses, at different times, and go to either the Atlanta International Airport or else, I believe, the Montgomery Airport. (Auburn, USA is located on the eastern edge of Alabama). We were taking 200+ Members of the band, plus faculty and instruments, overseas. This is pretty much the biggest such trip undertaken by the University. Ever. To my knowledge, don't hold me to this.
So we find out at the meeting the night before that we'll be splitting into 7 groups, which will take various busses and planes (2 busses, but 7 planes, hence the seven groups) on the way out. Each plane is taking a different route to Ireland. This resulted in one particular group (group 1, I think) getting positively screwed. Twice. IIRC, they had to leave about an hour earlier and arrive 4 hours after everyone else due to some ridiculous layover in Nova Scotia. Fortunately (for me) this was not my flight. My flight was number 4, which took a bus to Atlanta, then a plane (Royal Dutch Airlines) to Amsterdam, then another plane (Aer Lingus) to Dublin, then a pair of busses to Limerick, which is the first city we stayed at on the trip.
The luggage was, for me, a bit of a problem. I had a suitcase that, through a miracle combination of intelligent packing and the ability to defy physics, managed to cram everything I would need to spend a week in Ireland down to the size and weight limits for the trip. Unfortunately, the suitcase was rather heavy and was designed to be dragged (via strap) on wheels. The problem was, it was missing the strap, so I had to either carry it or else bend partway over and drag it via handle, and one of the wheels kept sticking. All the way across the damn airport. This may not sound too bad, but I was also carrying a mellophone case the approximate size and wieght of the suitcase, and a backpack, both of which kept wanting to slide off my shoulders. I did a little dance when I got to leave the stuff (the case and the suitcase) at the airport to be put on the plane, until the Drum Major travelling with us reminded me that I'd have to carry it (and the case) again at the next airport. And Ireland. And up the stairs at the hotel. And at the other hotel. And at all those locations on the way back. What a jerk.
So we got to our plane, went through the official business with the passports, went through security, etc.
We got on the plane, and realized that it would be a long flight when the captain began speaking... in Dutch. I think it was Dutch, anyway. Considering how good I am with foreign languages it might as well have been Martian. Fortunately, a second set of announcements was done in English, wherein I realized that I would have preferred more Dutch as the safety video droned on and on about what we were supposed to do if we survived hitting the Atlantic ocean at 700 mph.:smallsigh:
The flight itself wasn't so bad. I had an aisle seat and managed to move around to avoid swelling and such, and got a good bit of sleep. The food was actually pretty good. The band had been instructed not to accept any alcholic drinks on the flight, and as for Ireland... "Please be reasonable" was the desperate plea of the TAs. It was greeted with hysterical laughter.:smalltongue:
We landed in Amsterdam. Suddenly. "Please fasten your safety belts and return your trays and seats to the upright position." *WHAM* "We have now landed at Amsterdam International Airport..." Just like that. :smalleek:
So we got off the plane in Amsterdam, and the Airport was all I got to see of it. It's kind of divided. There's an English section and then there's the Dutch section. Instructions were written in English, Advertisements were written in Dutch. For some reason I thought it would be the other way around, but there it is. I thought about calling home before realizing that due to the time difference, it was 2 a.m. in Huntsville, Alabama (my home town). :smallsigh:
Soon enough, we got on the Aer Lingus Airbus to Ireland. That was a short flight, and before too long we were in the Dublin International Airport, where we met our busses. Remember the suitcase I was talking about? Well, I was dragging it along here, getting more and more frustrated with it, dealing with combinaition jetlag and heavy stuff, and so in frustration, somewhere in the parking lot, a short distance from the busses (or "motorcoaches") that we were meeting, I delivered a heavy kick to the suitcase. At this point in time (proving God has a sense of humor) the wheels come unstuck, and the thing rolls clear through traffic at high speed straight into the back of a relatively short and petite girl some twenty yards away, nearly knocking her down. About twenty venomous looks later from the girl and all 3000 of her closest friends, I recovered my luggage and caught up to the group at the busses. :smallredface:
First Impressions of Ireland
I've already said that I had a blast in Ireland, but that didn't begin until the third day, as you'll see. Now, a word on first impressions. The Dublin international airport and the bus drivers didn't make a very good one. The airport itself was all construction and mud under an overcast sky, which I was looking at while the "Welcome to Scenic Ireland" travel commercial kept playing in the back of my mind. One bus driver was alright (he later proved to be quite funny), but the other one (an old, cranky, chubby guy), for whatever reason, spoke with the kind of outrageous accent that someone who was trying to maliciously stereotype the Irish might put on as an impression, and ran all of his words together to boot. When trying to tell me where to put my mellophone case, the words "Take it around and put it in the back of the van." Became "Taecgei'aronanpudihinnabaggovavan!" When I just stood there blinking at him, stunned by the syllabic barrage, he added (helpfully and irritably), "Taecgei'aronanpudihinnabaggovavan!" I eventually found out that what he meant was that I was to go take it over to the loading truck, being loaded (helpfully) by some guy who looked like the bastard child of Mr. Creely from "V for Vendetta" and Porky Pig. I know that it's unfair to judge by appearance, but I was getting to be in a pretty vile mood, which was not made better when I saw the wonderful care with which he was stacking our instruments, similar to the care you see being given to the items being thrown overboard in Pirates of the Carribbean when the Interceptor is trying to get away from the Black Pearl. That is to say, our multi-thousand dollar instruments were being stacked at the back of the "van" as though either the van or the instruments had personally offended the guy loading them. I took a picture just so that I could prove that any damage to my mellophone case wasn't my fault. Finally, the sky was a lovely shade of grey. I don't know what it's like the rest of the year in Ireland, but apparently during spring break a bleak grey is the default color for the sky.:smallannoyed:
The bus trip was a little better, for the first few seconds. Then I discovered one of the principle rules of driving in Ireland. I hate to keep referencing Pirates, but the lines on the road are apparently more guidelines than actual rules. The bus drivers seemed to endorse this philosophy, so while I tried to nap on the bus the thought that kept running through my mind was We're going to kill someone before I wake up.:smalleek:
This was fortunately not the case when I woke up. Also, things were beginning to get better. We'd made it out to the countryside where the drivers, while still just as crazy, were farther apart, allowing for more leeway in the response times of the drivers (I am so very not making this up). We made a rest/pit stop, where the bus driver for my bus (Owen, the good one - not the cranky guy) got out and had a break with us and had a good beer before getting back on the bus. I'm not sure what this means to you non-Americans out there, but this was a bit of a culture clash between the busses that Auburn uses to travel around the states and these guys. Perhaps it's not a big deal, but I'm pretty sure that the bus drivers here wouldn't dare get anything with alchohol anywhere near their shift, let alone on it. We decided that we weren't worried if the bus driver and our Irish guide weren't, and besides, it was a little late to get a different bus driver anyway.:smalleek:
The bus drove through some beautiful country, buy the way, if you don't count the sky. After enough sleep I was beginning to feel a bit better, especially as we finally arrived in Limerick after something like 18 hours of travel. This was the cue for Murphy to come in and screw with...
The hotel check in
Because of the size of the band, we were staying at two different hotels, and everyone was arriving at different times. One hotel was downtown, and the other was apparently on the edge of Limerick. The people at that hotel were able to bus over into Limerick, though, so it all worked out.
That said, everyone at each hotel checked in just fine with no problems. Except for me. I am still not making this up. It turns out that the lists the band had been given put me at the downtown hotel, while the lists on the Ireland end of things had me at the other one. This was only discovered later, after the poor hotel clerk at the first one checked through every record his hotel had kept over pretty much the past year. So I had to wait until the next group came by, and transfer over to the bus taking those going to the other hotel to said hotel. First I had to find my room-mates though, so that they would not befall the same fate. Technically, this would mean that I wasn't the only one not to have problems checking in - I was just the only one who had to wait around in the lobby for 45 minutes because the bus was going to be there "any minute now." To be fair, it probably wasn't a picnic for the guy at the front desk, either. This wait was used productively, however - a search of my possessions yielded the mysterious disappearing suitcase strap! That's right, all of the dragging, lifting, pushing, and kicking back in the states and in Dublin was completely unnecessary! Needless to say, I was just thrilled about that, but I didn't care because now I had the +5 Strap of Awesome Suitcase Pulling. The other bonus was that all instruments were staying in the van, right where the lightbulb-shaped Mr. Creely look-alike had viciously thrown them, and where they had settled after the high-G maneuvers that had brought us to Limerick, which meant that I didn't have to carry it anymore.
I got to the other hotel, took a shower, changed, and essentially passed out. This actually concludes Day Two of the trip, which had merged into one long super-day with Day One.:smallsigh:
Day Three: The Cliffs of Moher, and Galway
Third day made up for the previous two by being about 60,000 times better. I was rested, showered, changed, and ready to hit Ireland (not literally, of course).
This day was the day the band went to see the Cliffs of Moher (I think I spelled that right). It was a bit of a drive, but not too bad, and we were passing through more of the beautiful scenery (again, minus the sky).
The Cliffs were, well, tall. Really tall. The kind of tall people look at and go "Wow, that's tall." Apparently they were a hot suicide spot too. There were all kinds of signs around warning people about various things, although none of them were worded, so you had to assign your own meaning to them. Some of them appeared to be "Warning: Beware of Wile E. Coyote Syndrome" whereas others were more confusing. "Warning: If you are going to jump off a cliff, do not attempt to grab a bird on your way down.":smallconfused:
Then we went to Galway, and they cut us loose. I kinda hung out in the tourist trap zone there for a while with about half the band, while the other half went to a nearby cathedral. I would have done the Cathedral, but the weather had been pretty bad, temperature and rain wise, at the Cliffs of Moher and I wanted something hot to eat and a roof, rather than another bus ride and a hike. This ended up being ok. I explored the giant walking-only shopping center and got some nice stuff to eat. I also discovered the first rule of public sanitation in Europe: there are no trash cans. None. The lack of trash cans in Europe is so complete that there are also no trash cans in America - we just imagine there are because we want to believe in them so badly, like with Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. In reality, the Europeans actually destroyed the last trash cans in the New World during the French and Indian War.
Perhaps the Irish just don't throw away as much as the Americans (actually, they don't throw away nearly as much - America is pretty wasteful), but still, a wrapper is a wrapper, and you have to throw it away some time. To any Irish people on the Board: Do you just carry any garbage you aquire around until you get home?
Eventually, it was time to head back to Limerick. We did this, and then when we were given free time again I joined a group of fellow band members (about 10) in going around looking for "Genuine Irish Food." This was more difficult than you would think. According to the local residents that we asked, southeast asian food was becoming quite popular in the area. This meant that it was easier to aquire Thai food than Irish food. In Ireland.
We continued our quest, however, and eventually located a small shop at the same time as another group of band students and proceeded to overwhelm it with our ridiculous numbers, thus contributing to and improving the great reputation that Americans have overseas! Then again, your average elementary school class would have been twice what this little fish and chips place could handle, so it wasn't completely our fault. The food was actually incredibly good, although it was of the same *type* as that served at any Captain D's, so we left being not-so-sure that we had eaten "Genuine Irish Food" and not "I Can't Believe it's not Irish."
That finished, the time for me to head back to the bus at the hotel where I totally was *not* staying, so that I could go to the hotel where I was, had arrived, and so I went there, then took the other bus to the hotel where I was staying at in time to make room checks. The area around the downtown hotel was nice, featuring a variety of night-time amusements and places to eat. The area around the hotel I was staying at featured mostly run-down laundromats, so I went to bed.
Day 4: The Looting of Limerick
The next day, for those of you keeping track, was Sunday, and we were to pack up bright and early because we would never be coming back to these hotels again. This was met with nonchalance form the downtown group and cheering from the other group. This was the day when we were to march in the pre-St. Patrick's Day parade in Limerick. We hadn't taken our uniforms to Ireland because, in the esteemed and proper words of our Director of Bands, "It's a huge pain in the you-know-what." So the band ordered 200+ of these windsuit things and matching ballcaps, which was our official uniform for the trip. We went to the Limerick parade, which we found out was actually a competition. We didn't think much of that right then, especially when we found out that most (read also: all) of the other bands were high school bands. This wasn't arrogance on our part, but a bit of cultural confusion, I guess.
You see, in America, at least in the SEC, when a college band is in a competition with a whole bunch of high school bands, it is assumed, by all present and even those who are not, that the college band is an "exhibition band." What this means is that even though the band (the exhibition band) performs during the competition, the band is not scored, because that would be silly. If it was, the college band would pretty much always take home the proverbial bacon. So we lined up to go march in this parade, where we were convinced that by God, we were just going to have some fun and entertain some people, and that we weren't really competing, and the following scene played out:
Irish Parade Staff Person: "Good Luck with the Competition - I hope you do well!"
Band Students: "Oh, thanks!"
*Drum roll begins, signalling that the band is about to march.*
Band Students (Looking at each other): "Wait, what did she just say?"
Yes, we had been entered as a competitor. Now, I'm sure that Limerick has some great high school bands. Some of them, I hear, had practiced for weeks for this competition. We just kinda showed up. The scores went in, and we were presented with the "Best Overall Band," "Best in Music," and "Best in Marching" awards, which is pretty much all of the awards. In short, we crushed the hopes and dreams of several hundred Irish high school band students with little or no effort as we ran away with the trophies they had worked so hard for, thus contributing to and improving the great reputation that Americans have overseas!
The rest of the day was taken up with transferring all of our stuff to Dublin, where we fortunately were all staying at the same hotel - a very fancy one where every wing or ballroom was named for some mythological creature. I don't remember the name anymore. Oddly enough, the rest of that day was a blur in my mind. I guess I had a good time?
Day Five: St. Patrick's Day
At last! The whole reason we had come to Ireland was by invitation of the Lord Mayor of Dublin to march in the St. Patrick's Day parade. We got up semi-early, and headed to our Parade Staging Area.
A word on St. Patrick's Day in Ireland, for those of you who are not from Ireland but are for some reason still reading this: It's kind of a big deal, by which I mean that it is a big deal. It's something like Mardi Gras meets the Fourth of July meets the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, for those of you from America. Minus fireworks, at least inside Dublin. For those of you not from America or Ireland, it's a five day celebration where green predominates and all kinds of parties and festivals go on, all over the place.
For us, St. Patrick's Day in Ireland was a chance to perform without swiping trophies from high schoolers. We reached our assembly area and waited. And waited. And waited. For about three hours. During this time, the clouds parted, and for the parade, at least, the sun and some blue sky shone on Ireland. I had kind of forgotten what they looked like, as I hadn't seen the sun since it had set while we were flying over the Atlantic Ocean. We also cracked a few jokes ("How dare they keep us waiting? Do they not know of our reputation as the conquerors of Limerick?).
So we continued to wait, realizing that the St. Patrick's Day Parade was a big parade. How big, you ask? Half of Dublin's population participates, either in the parade or as a spectator (mostly spectators). Dublin's population is about a quarter of that of Ireland, which has a population of ~4.5 million people. That's right: 500,000+ people were at this parade.
Eventually we set off and marched the parade, which was nice except for two things.
1. We were behind the world's ugliest float. It was a float of an oil rig, as the "theme" for this year's parade was, IIRC, energy. Our bad luck.
2. The parade was quite a hike, in our windsuits, in the sun. We weren't walking this distance either - we were marching and playing, which means that you:
a) Can't stop
b) Are moving a good bit more aerobically than simple walking
and
c) Are playing an instrument, which means you aren't exactly breathing regularly.
So by the end of the parade, those less-physically inclined among us (like me) were not feeling so great. Fortunately, we got on the busses for our next stop.
The Guiness Brewery
There was one, and exactly one, part of the Guiness Brewery that was not awesome. That part was: Getting in.
Yes. You see, we pulled up at the rear entrance to the brewery, and they let us in, but we had to take our instruments. For me, this included the Mellophone Case from Hell, although for the baritones and sousaphones it was even worse. Not that carrying the instrument was so bad, it was that they led us up nine flights of !@#*&%* doubled stairs before we were allowed to ditch the instruments and take a break. They provided us with free food and drinks, though, which was very nice of them. This break lasted for a while, and then it was time for us to go put on a performance in the brewery itself, as part of the aforementioned five-day festival. We essentially put on a pep rally on the bottom floor of the museum-like area of the plant, and were recieved very well. We then went back up (we'd come down a couple of flights) to put our instruments away. Then we were given the run of the Brewery, to go on the tour, get our free cup of Guiness, and so forth. As the legal drinking age was well below even the youngest of us, a couple decided to go to the testing-bar they have at the plant. The free-run tour of the brewery floors was very well done, explaining how every part of the brewery worked in just enough detail that you couldn't reproduce it, all the while hinting that if you were drinking anything but Guiness, you might as well be drinking horse urine. Kidding aside, the place was amazing, and I recommend that you go if you ever end up in Dublin. The free-standing waterfall was a nice touch.
There was one final anecdote about the place. I went back up to the room where we'd stashed our instruments, I forget why. This was a kind of general-use storage room, and other groups had stuff there too. I passed a pair of local girls walking in on the way out, and heard one of them say, as they went in, "Oh! It smells like an orchestra died in here." I guess you may have had to be there, but I thought at the time that this was the absolute pinnacle of humor. :smallbiggrin:
Day 6: The Final Day in Dublin
Tuesday, we got up kinda late to go on a bus tour of Dublin. That is to say, most of us did that. 7 of the students, however, were missing passports due to the fact that while we were in the Guiness Brewery some "youthful offenders" had broken into one of the bussess and stolen some stuff, including personal baggage. Those people, plus one very unlucky TA, got to spend the day at the US Embassy getting emergency passports. The rest of did the bus tour thing. The weather for this part of the day was still nice and sunny, for a wonder. :smallcool:
The bus tour was very well done. The bus driver and the guide were apparently some kind of team. The guide himself was hilarious and informative, full of amusing stories. I can't go through the trip without visual aids, though, so I'm just going to say that Dublin is worth seeing and move on. :smallwink:
The tour concluded at Trinity College, where they let us go roam around Dublin for 5 hours or so. Unlike previous free time, I wandered around alone. My first stop was Trinity College itself, where I went to see (what else?) the Book of Kells. It was a long wait, but it was nice outside and it was good to stretch out my legs after the bus ride anyway. The Book of Kells was worth seeing, although it came after a whole bunch of light up displays on other stuff, and on the writing, binding, inking, painting, etc. of said book. Also worth the price of admission was the library at the end, which was one of those old, Indiana Jones-type things with the two-story balcony wooden arches, rolling ladders, really old books, and a wooden bust of every single Northern European playwright, poet, and author of any renown for the last half-century. :smallsmile:
With that done, I proceeded to wander around Dublin. For the next 4 hours. It wasn't nearly as boring as that sounds. I went into all kinds of shops, wandered around a park (not Phoenix Park - that was on the bus tour), ate, and so forth. 5 hours passed decently quickly. Then we came back to the hotel, where we recieved our instructions for the next day, and promptly began crying, because those instructions vaporized our dreams of a nice trip home. :smallfrown:
The wake up call for my group and three others was 3:30 a.m. Ahem, I'll put that down again. 3:30. In the morning. Our flight left at 6 a.m., so we had to get up that early or we'd miss it. The current time when we got these instructions was about 10 p.m, meaning that the most sleep we could possibly have, assuming that we passed out on the spot, was 5 and a half hours. Joy. :smallmad:
Day 7: Race for the Next Line
So we went to bed. Wake up call came, although it was at 3 a.m. rather than 3:30 due to our TA's strong-arming the bus drivers into leaving earlier. It was a good thing they did this, too. We loaded up the busses and drove to Dublin International, which took us about an hour to get to.
So we got to Dublin International at about 4:30 a.m. and it was packed to overflowing. We were in some pretty serious trouble, because it was about 5:10 before we got in line for our flight, and last call for getting on board the plane was 6. This was compounded by, you guessed it, the instruments, many of which did not fit through the scales and had to be taken to oversized luggage. This only occured later, though, closer to 10 minutes before the plane was to take off. :smalleek:
So now we're at the line, and many still hadn't gone through security. The band staff countered this by kind of... kind of stringing themselves out from the security station to the terminal, so that band students could get to the right terminal without actually having to read any of the signs. This was essential, as we would have to be navigating Dublin International at a full sprint to make it on time, which is what we proceeded to do (one and two at a time), trying not to knock people down in our path. In this manner, we contributed to and improved the great reputation that Americans have overseas!
Everyone did make it though, and we made the short hop over to Amsterdam (each flight group took the same path as before, only backwards). We got to Amsterdam an hour later, two hours after we had left (time zones). This made it 8 a.m. locally, with our plane concluding boarding at 9:40. I was pretty hungry at this point, not to mention tired from inadequate sleep, and so when I spotted a pizza place in the airport, I thought it was a Godsend. This is, of course, when they called up everyone on my flight to get in line to board the plane an hour and a half before boarding finished. The reason for this was for a passport validation check, which I thought, with some bitterness, was pretty funny, in that my passport had been checked and validated, or so it seemed, every time I needed to take a leak. Little did I know that I wasn't registered in their computer system as having a passport despite the fact that I had travelled through this exact terminal one week ago, wherein they had put my passport info into the computer and let me fly to Ireland. Fortunately, clearing it up was only a matter of a couple of minutes - I did actually *have* a passport, after all.
The flight over the Atlantic hadn't been too bad previously, and so I had assumed that it wouldn't be too bad going the other way. Wrong. I got to my seat on the plane to find it occupied by a venerable Indian man, with his wife in the seat next to him. The wife explained to the flight attendant and me (the husband apparently spoke no English) that the guy was somewhat incontenent and needed quick access to the bathroom. The flight attendant told me that If I wanted, I could boot the guy out of my seat and into his own, but being the Eagle Scout that I am, I said it was ok, that I would take the seat in the middle (one of two middle seats, really - there were four "middle" seats, an aisle on each side of those, and then a row of three seats on each side of that. Also, the rows were "lettered." The letter sequence went: A, B, C, E, F, G, H, J, K, L. Apparently the Dutch have something against the letters D and I). I did this because I figured that the person sitting next to me on the other side couldn't be too bad. I didn't even say that out loud, but apparently fate took it as a pick up line, and introduced me to the guy who took the aisle seat.
It wasn't that the guy had an annoying personality, or smelled bad, or had 30 electronic devices going off all the time, or had some beef with Americans or Band Students. Oh no, that would have been too merciful. No, this guy, the guy I sat next to for the next nine hours, was...
Well, I'm not sure how to put this. Ah, that's it. Do you remember the guy who loaded our instruments? The guy who was a cross between Mr. Creely and Porky Pig? Well, the heck with that. This guy was a cross between an ageing trucker and Jabba the Hutt. He actually smuggled a cheeseburger on to the plane, and ate it. I am not making this up. He filled up all of his seat, plus half the aisle, plus half of my seat, throughout the trip, so that I was squeezed into this position, if looked at from the front:
( <-- General shape of me during the trip. It was a curve.
Yes, it was that bad. If I'd known that this was going to happen I'd have told the flight attendant to make the Indian guy stew in his bodily fluids - not that he would have, as he didn't get up and go to the bathroom the entire damn trip!
I managed to sleep the first two hours of the trip, and then was awakened by a combination of hunger and heat. Yes, heat. The air conditioning on this particular flight was questionable at best, and combined with the warm, saggy sack of flesh next to me it was pretty uncomfortable. This situation held stable for the next 7 hours, alleviated when the guy went to the bathroom (not the Indian guy - Jabba), which is when I would get up, stretch, go to the bathroom, etc. I did get to eat, which was the only good part.
We got back to the states, though, and eventually made it back home, where I crashed at a friend's place in Auburn before making the drive back to Huntsville.
Ireland - Other Impressions
The Food! - It was really good, with the exception of bread products, like muffins and cookies. It wasn't that said products were bad tasting or badly prepared, they were just incredibly dry. I don't mean "not wet." I mean these things were so dry that one bite would have you shrivel up like the guy in Indiana Jones who drank from the wrong Grail, as the bun or whatever it was sucked all the moisture out of you. :smalleek:
The music - honestly, I was part of the production of most of the music that I heard, but the other sources of music were really nice - upbeat and traditional "Irish" stuff in the spirit of St. Patrick's Day. :smallwink:
The environment - the countryside was absolutely beautiful, if you don't mind permanently grey skies. :smallconfused:
Dublin - Honestly, I had more fun in Dublin than in New Orleans, which is a city famous for being entertaining. At least it was, until it became a city famous for being underwater.
Security - If you want ask me what Ireland Customs looks like, I can't tell you. I never saw any. I am not making this up, we basically got off the plane and walked into Dublin, with only one checkpoint where a sleepy guy verified that we were, in fact, people. :smallconfused:
This was sharply contrasted on the way home. Inbound to Atlanta, we were presented with several pages of customs paperwork, wherein we were to list everything we had bought overseas, plus some other stuff. Then we we set down, and presented this paperwork and said goods to a guard, and went to retrieve our luggage from a turntable after it had been scanned. Then we passed by heavily armed guards who investigated anything they thought looked funny. This is when WonderCase got me tangled up again. This is because my mellophone case is, externally, a metal box - and it looks almost exactly like one of those metal cases that Hollywood terrorists are always storing small thermonuclear devices in. Naturally, I got checked out pretty closely. This was followed by three security checkpoints and two more turntable things for luggage, in order to maximize the amount of chances you would have to lose said luggage. One girl in our group proceeded to do exactly that, holding us up at the airport for hours. It wasn't even her fault. :smallfrown:
Money - Ireland's on the Euro, if there's anyone reading this who didn't know that. The Euro is part of Europe's ongoing campaign to have money that is prettier than America's. They're winning. :smalltongue:
So that's it. If you actually read all of this, then thanks for taking an interest. Feel free to correct me on anything you saw that was flat wrong, but remember that most of it was how I percieved it, and worded to entertain rather than inform.