Majesty and Awe

majestæt og ærefrygt

(didn't know those words in Danish until the online dictionary told me...)

Leprechaun? only in Ireland :)

Well it has been a packed couple of weeks since my last post!  The climax of work has come and nearly passed…we have had a rough couple of weeks of papers and tests, because after this week, everyone leaves for a two week travel back and when we return, finals are just around the corner!  Wowww this semester has really FLOWN by!

map of Christiania

Three big things I’ve done these last two weeks are tour Christiania with my Danish class, go to a medical museum in København and go to an FCK game!  No, that is not a play on words, FCK is Fodbold Club København :)  My Danish class arrived in Christiania bright and early on a cold sunny morning, and we met with a wonderful woman who has lived in Christiania since the beginning.  I wish I had a picture of her, she was so eccentric and awesome!   

best pizza in the world (Bo's Pizza =])

Christiania's rules

She helped to start Christiania in the 70s and has lived through all of its changes…hard drugs, gang violence, and now peaceful living…all while raising three children there.  It is definitely a place of alternative living where everyone, no matter the house you reside in, big or small, pays 2000 kr a month towards the community, and all decisions are made by big “town” meetings- all are welcome to come and express their opinions.  This results in a longggg decision process, but one in which agreement is met for everyone. 

Amalie with pizza

 After touring Christiania, we grabbed hot chocolate in one of the cafes in the town.  Charlotte- our Danish teacher, Sam and myself had a pretty interesting conversation about the use of marijuana (hash) in the United States and Denmark.  In Christiania, it is sold “legally” (to the community, though technically it is illegal in Denmark) on Pusher Street in broad daylight.  It was interesting because everyone knows people who smoke it, and often they go through sketchy means of obtaining it, while there in Christiania, it’s a open dealing. 
I don’t know, I am pretty sure it’s a drug that alters brain function so I don’t think it should really be legal, but if people are going to smoke it anyway, it seems like the way Christiania deals with it is a “safer” way…who knows though?  Definitely just thought it was an interesting topic of conversation to have with my teacher haha

Rachel and I at the FCK game

skeleton at medical museum

Wednesday, a group of us went to the medical museum run by København Universitet, which was pretty interesting to see.  The tour was in Danish (oh shoot), but luckily they had little pamphlets with English descriptions of every room, and those were vital haha.

wooo FCK!

Last Sunday, I went to the FCK game against Brønby, their big rival.  Brønby was actually protesting the game because they would be fingerprinted if they came to the stadium.  Not everyone, JUST Brønby fans.  Why might you ask?  Well, last time this match up occurred, Brønby fans caused $100,000 in property damage…WOAHH. 

Brønby section

So maybe, profiling based on team preference is the wrong way to go about fingerprinting, (like maybe just fingerprint everyone?), but I see FCK’s point here…needless to say, the match was quite uneventful in this regard since all of 20 Brønby fans showed up and their section was quite dismal.  FCK won 2-1 which was exciting to see, and overall the experience was way different from American sports. People cheer when it’s a big play or focal moment in the game, but here, they were singing and chanting and waving their flags legitimately the ENTIRE time.  It was really cool to be a part of :)

FCK with garbage bags!!

St. Stephen's Green

Alrighty, fast forward through the week of work, and we come to the long weekend we just had!  Katie, Michelle and I went to IRELAND!  And I will say, it is by far the favorite of places that I have been, and the Cliffs of Moher, easily tied with Litchfield Beach, SC for my favorite place in the world!  Ah, but I will back up and tell of our adventures… :)

St. Stephen's Green

First stop- Dublin!  Katie and I flew into Dublin after a layover in London on Thursday night.  From here, Paddy’s Palace (our hostel), offered a free shuttle to the place, so we hopped on that, excited about the Irishness of the hostel we would be staying it!  Turns out, the Irishness is really just in the name, but hey, the place was safe and only for sleeping!  We, quite exhausted from traveling, hopped into our questionably clean beds and went to sleep, excited for what the next day would bring us! 

St. Stephen's Green

We woke up and met Michelle, who flew in Friday morning, in beautiful 13 C weather!  The sun was shinning brightly and you could smell spring in the air.  We were on a mission to find the “free bike” rental place, but unfortunately were not successful.  We did stumble upon St. Stephen’s Green, which was a wonderful surprise.  

Flowers blooming EVERYWHERE, colors EVERYWHERE. It was so beautiful and wonderful to see after cold gray days in København.  We then meandered towards City Hall and Dublin Castle, where our free walking tour was to begin.   

Temple Bar

Peter

Peter, our lively South Dublin native tour guide, showed us all around Dublin, giving great tidbits of history along the way.  We explored Dublin Castle, Christ Church Cathedral, Trinity College and Temple Bar area.  In Temple Bar, I ran into Jeff Crum!  A fellow Kinneloner, who I went to middle school with…He’s studying abroad in London, visiting Dublin for the weekend, and we just happen to bump into one another on a small road in the Temple Bar area of town…quite funny!! :)  

Memorial to the lives lost in the Potatoe Famine

 After the lovely walking tour, we took a break-stopping at Marks & Spencer, my new favorite grocery store, and buying our next 4 meals in groceries-and headed back to the hostel for a quick nap!

Howth Harbor

For the evening, we decided to head to Howth, a small fishing town on the coast, facing the Irish Sea.  We took the train and arrived here around dusk- just in time to watch the sunset over the water.  This town was BEAUTIFUL.   It was small and quaint- and bonus- we saw no other tourists!

We meandered around, snapping lots of pictures of the boats, greenery, and many colorful buildings, and then decided on Seafood Bar Café as our one nice Irish meal.  This place was incredible.
 We sat in the bar area at a stool table, and became like flies on the wall for the next few hours.

Seafood Bar Cafe :)

Dinner took a longgg time, but it was okay, because we got to witness such “irishness” haha.There was folk irish music playing, a rugby match on TV, and many funny Irish men providing entertainment at the bar.  It was a great way to spend our evening. 

extreme ireland tour!

 SATURDAY.  Perhaps my favorite day of traveling yet.  We woke up to meet our Cliffs of Moher/Burren Day Tour group at 530am…wooo.  And we nearly missed our tour since we got a little turned around!  Luckily, all worked itself out and this was the only minor mishap of the day!

Bunratty Castle

Ivane, our lovely Irish tour guide, was great!  She was an insanely awesome multitasker too…driving a big tour bus through the winding streets of Ireland all while entertaining us with great stories and random facts
On this tour we stopped briefly in Limerick to see John’s Castle, which was a big castle-y looking castle (you know what I mean!).  Then we stopped at Bunratty Castle, built by none other than the O’Brien family, who apparently built the majority of buildings in western Ireland, which they basically owned all of anyway.  Pretty cool to be friends with such a good Irish family haha :)

John's Castle, Limerick

From here on out, the landscape continued to get more and more beautiful.  We were on our way to the Cliffs of Moher!  It could not have been a more perfect day either- 16C, sunshine and big fluffy white clouds, a light breeze.  The cool thing was that it started out so darn cloudy near Dublin, and as we pulled through Limerick, the clouds literally ceased and blue sky was all that was to be seen! What a wonderful gift :)

cliffs!!!!

The Cliffs of Moher are one of the most beautiful places I have ever been, and I don’t really have words to describe them, so I am just going to put a few pictures, and also I will update Shutterfly where all pictures can be seen…yeah, it was truly one of the most amazing places I have ever been.  Such a sign of God’s majesty, power, and delight in making beautiful things :)


 

cliffs, O'Brien's Tower in the distance

 

path along the ridge edge

shadow fun

cave

on top of the world :)

edge of the cliff! such an adrenaline rush taking this picture haha

"pond" of water along cliff's edge path

in total bliss :)

After an hour and a half at the Cliffs, which was absolutely no where NEAR enough time for me haha, we headed into the town of Doolin, just a few kilometers down the road, where we were able to buy lunch.

Doolin

Doolin

Doolin

heyyy, buddy

beautiful

Since Katie Michelle and I packed our lunches, we decided to walk into the town a bit, and wandered down a beautiful countryside road of Ireland, where we met a couple of horses, rolling green hills, and beautiful rock walls.  

We ended up in a fudge shop, and enjoyed some homemade treats :)

walking down a country road :)

After Doolin, we headed into the Burren, which is kilometers and kilometers (miles and miles!) of bare-faced Limestone rock, left here by glaciers thousands of years ago!  

The Burren

Repelling...will be doing this in a few weeks in the Czech Republic!

The coolest thing about this place is the vegetation- it has fauna that is normally found in sub-Sahara Africa growing in the same place as fauna from the Alps!  It’s because the crevices in the limestone protect the plants from extreme weather, and the stone itself never gets too hot or too cold.  Super cool!  After stopping at a stop to take pictures in the Burren, we drove through it for a long while, listening to great folk music along the way.

Burren meets Atlantic

 

 

Burren

shall we go?

While driving through the Burren, Ivane told us about Lisdoonvarna, which is a town that has a matchmaking festival each year in September.  It is historically for the farmers, who worked so hard in the summers, and then came September, were looking for some love!  Throughout different parts of Ireland’s history, there were big waves of immigration, and because women often did not inherent their parents land in Ireland, they were some of the first to immigrate.  This left the farmers quite lonely and without women.  So the town started this festival, which they still have!  Quite funny, quite funny :)

hey there!

At one point while driving down the small one lane roads, we came upon another bus, and literally were inches from hitting one another…that’s where the lovely picture of people in a bus comes from!

O'Brien Abbey

Irish culture

Celtic Cross

The last two places we visited after Doolin were O’Brien Abbey and Kinvara, a small fishing village near Galway city.  The abbey was really cool to see!  And I learned about the Celtic cross. 
The circle around the top of the cross was a use of the pagan god the sun.  This was an interesting combination of Christianity and paganism, and the only sign of paganism left for many Irish Christians.

Kinvara Harbor

Kinvara was a very picturesque place too, as was all of Ireland, but still, really cool to stop in another small town and get a taste of more Irish culture. 


From Kinvara we headed straight back to Dublin, 3 hours away.  The last lovely surprise of the evening was that Ivane had to return the bus to the Dublin Airport!!!! Which meant, we got a free ride to the airport from our lovely tour guide :)  We then began our long journey back to København, which included a pretty sleepless night in the cold London-Stansted airport…hey, at least it was an adventure :)

oh, Ireland :)

That’s all for now!  This Thursday I leave for Stockholm to meet Jenni :) And next Wednesday, I begin the crazy 2.5 weeks of travel, with the last 4 days still unplanned, certainly surprise and adventure await…

 

:)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKIl-v18mgo
Being in Ireland and listening to this song (Galway Girl) brought back the love of this movie- PS I Love You.