Just down the street from where I work, a new take-away food place has opened. It’s called “Pablo Picanté” (their accent mark, not mine) and is labeled a “Californian Burrito Bar”. Looks like a small version of Chipotle/Qdoda/Pancheros. I was impressed with their viral marketing campaign and had high hopes for it, which were dashed today once I tried a burrito. Forget celery in curry, may I suggest feta in a burrito?
In addition to pondering those two articles on British and American cultural differences that I mentioned last month, I’ve been thinking about a commentary about customer service in France that I read more recently. The anecdotes seem too outrageous to believe, but I get flashbacks to unpleasant encounters in shops in Russia and start to think they are possible. Even the surly English “barman” (bartender) in the New York Times article seems familiar from my travels.
What puzzles me the most is that, despite the turmoil of the French Revolution, France maintained a remarkably polite public culture. American English and French both have commonly used terms for addressing strangers that are used without a person’s name (sir/monsieur, ma’am/madame, miss/mademoiselle), which, it turns out, is uncommon in most of Europe. Furthermore, the French are of course known for their copious use of these terms and bonjour in greeting strangers. I find it strange that, while subservience went out the door with the French Revolution, gentility did not, whereas in Russia both were lost after the Russian Revolution.
Not only can you wander the streets of St. Petersburg without the hassle of getting a visa to visit, now you can also ride the Trans-Siberian Railway from the comfort of your living room. Check out the various things to listen to on your journey.
Google sent their Street View car around Oslo recently, but Boing Boing recently reported that some friends of the drivers waited to ambush the car. While Google Street View hasn’t come to Russia yet, it turns out that Yandex, the predominant search engine in Russia, has been adding their own street views. Some users have discovered an Easter egg (in the software sense of the term) in the street views of St. Petersburg.
Étudiant № 7 est une étudiante portugaise!
You know how some people have a collection of exercise equipment in their basement from unkept resolutions? I have a small collection of French textbooks. My first was acquired almost five years ago in Moscow: a cheap paperback that I could travel with. While learning through Russian was not a problem (in fact, helpful in certain ways), I found two many errors in the book to trust it any more. My second was a gift (book and CD), but I never made time for it. Later I invested in an overpriced textbook with exercise book (and CD), and made it through a chapter or two. But still never found time and motivation to concentrate.
But then, in December, I disovered the Alliance Française in Dublin, conveniently located downtown, not far from work, with courses twice a week in the evening, two hours each night. Put this together with my employer’s benefit of reimbursement of up to €75 from my employer for a personal-enrichment course (every little bit helps!) and it starts to sound like a pretty good deal.
So my first class was last night. Thanks to my years of not actuallly practicing, I started with a beginner class. Naturally you have to start with simple phrases and expressions, so we learned how to say our name, where we live, and what our nationality is. So, our of six people, we had:
So … only one Irish person. And it came out that her father is Dutch, so, you know, she’s only half Irish.
Reminds me of the staff at work: one Canadian, one English, three American, one Italian, and one Irish. Or of a meeting I had at NUI Galway in August: four American, one Hungarian, two French (or was one Italian?), and one Irish. “Typical Galway meeting,” they said. Wikipedia tells me that 10% of the country’s population are foreign citizens, but someone I keep running into all of them!
After my encounter with a bland curry with celery, you would think I had learned to stay away from ethnic food in Ireland. However, I fell for it again. At a farmer’s market there was a stand with a Mexican guy and his Irish wife selling various Mexican dishes. (Think Pilar’s Tamales in Ann Arbor.) I thought I would risk it since he was actually Russian, but my burrito came with … carrots and celery. You call that a burrito?
Haven’t really written much of anything about life in Ireland since complaining about the country being unprepared for winter weather. (This despite the Economist warning expats not to complain about your host country.) First, to follow up on my complaints about management of city water, I’m pleased to report that last night was the first time our apartment had water through the whole night. (We had lost water pressure every night starting around 8 p.m. and going through the night for the past month, so I’m hoping things are fixed for good now.)
Anyway, the days are slowly getting longer and warmer, and work has slowed down, so both have allowed me to explore Dublin a bit more, formulating and revising my thoughts on the city as I get to know it better. I could offer comparison between Dublin and Ann Arbor, but I’ve been thinking a lot about how Dublin would compare to a similar US city (Providence seems like a good fit) and about the ways in which Dublin is similar to or different from other European cities. So let me approach it this way.
It’s nice to be in a city and not just a college town. There are real adults on the streets who live, work and shop there. They dress like adults and have good taste in food, sustaining a strong restaurant scene.
As is more common in Europe than the US, the center of the city has real stores that people shop in, and there are convenience stores within walking distance of anywhere you live that have things you might actually buy, not just junk food. Ann Arbor is more walkable than your average American city but still caters mostly to out-of-town visitors.
Through a Russian conversation group, I’ve met a number of students at Trinity. It’s good to see that so many of them, even those not majoring in Russian, have a chance to study abroad for a whole year. I’ve encountered a higher level of language proficiency than I generally find among US students, though I’ll admit that the group is self-selective.
Now for a few things I don’t like:
I came back from Russia drinking more tea than I used to, and I expect to come back from Ireland eating digestive cookies.
If you’ve been avoiding answering an email from me, let me just say that it’s okay that you won’t be coming to visit me. I understand. While I was optimistic that I’d have more visitors than in Russia five years ago, I understand that life keeps people busy. And I haven’t made Dublin sound all that appealing anyway. I’ll soon have to give back the sleeping bag anyway, so perhaps it’s all for the better!
I’ll interrupt my desert adventure story briefly by updating you on life in wintry Dublin.
The weather has been colder than usual since I arrived, much like the whole northern hemisphere. (December was the coldest month in 28 years, and the cold spell was the longest in 40.) This, of course, hastened my departure from the place I stayed in for three days. But, you see, the cold weather has brought all sorts of additional problems to Ireland, including impassable roads and water shortages. How could Ireland possibly be short of water when we’ve had lots of rain and snow? I’ll tell you.
Since a lot of people leave their homes during the holidays (to visit family or to go to the Canary Islands or something), insurance companies urged people to leave their taps trickling to keep pipes from freezing (since nothing around here is built to handle temperatures below freezing). Lots of people did so, meaning that by January the reservoirs were running dangerously low in Dublin and some other parts of the country. The government started warning people they might need to ration, so usage shot up because everyone panicked. Parts of the city found themselves without water, so the city brought in tanker trucks where people could go fill up jugs. Now water pressure is quite low nearly everywhere (especially if you live on an upper floor of a building), so the city is intentionally lowering water pressure in various parts of the city at various times of the day in order to save water. If you like somewhere with radiators (as I do), this means you also lose heating. Luckily we have an electric shower, a gas-powered fireplace, and electric radiator on loan from Brian’s sister. And just tonight I’ve secured an electric blanket to keep till May!
Of course, many pipes did freeze anyway, especially in schools that were closed for the holidays. Most schools were supposed to reopen on January 7, but at that point we were in the thick of the freeze, so the minister for eduction announced that schools wouldn’t open till January 14. Then we had an unexpected thaw on January 9-10, so he was put under pressure to reverse his decision. He eventually did, telling them to reopen on January 12 … unless they couldn’t (because of burst pipes), in which case they shouldn’t.
Sporadic flooding continues across the country, leading to occasional suspension of coach (long-distance bus) and train service and occasionally closing of roads.
Most towns nearly ran out of road salt, but I hear more shipments have arrived. But even when supplies exist, if the snow falls during the day, they won’t salt the roads (or “grit the roads”, as they say here, though “grit” actually refers to sand mixtures) in Dublin because the “gritters” (the trucks that spread salt or grit) “get caught in congested areas and people leave their offices early.” Really? So instead people pack down the snow, making it more difficult to remove later, and they get into fender-benders because the roads haven’t been treated. I believe the word for this in Ireland and the UK is “brilliant”. In fact, the roads get so treacherous that the city bus system has to suspend bus service one afternoon, stranding commuters in the center of the city. Positively brilliant.
In any case, I’ll do my part to conserve water by growing a beard again for a few days.
Good news: I have secured my colleague’s LL Bean “Base Camp Classic” sleeping bag (rated for 20 °F and −7 °C), which got me through cold desert nights in Morocco, until I leave Ireland or he needs it back, whichever comes first. Even if he needs it, I bet I could get it back. This, combined with my “camping and leisure roll mat” (acquired in a Dublin camping store) and my travel pillow (also acquired there) should be sufficient comfort for me to survive a few nights on the floor of my apartment when you come to visit. I only have a single bed, so only one guest at a time.
I am frantically preparing for three presentations at the end of the week in Cork, plus planning an event in April and writing some conference paper proposals. However, I plan to write about my experiences in Morocco on the train to Cork (or on the way back) and provide links to lots of photos. It’s been a bit difficult for me to acquire photos since I’m not on Facebook, but luckily a few people have been willing to accommodate my backwards ways.