ultra gaelic

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:

• hot-water heaters that run on demand: I know it saves energy, but it means it’s impossible to get a consistent water temperature from the tap
• a blind real-estate market: Transactions aren’t public records, so nobody knows what anybody paid for similar houses. Hard to create a liquid market that way!
• the institutional culture: Ask me in person if you’re interested in knowing more. It’s a big, complex issue that’s hard to distill into a blog post.

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!

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 7th, 2010 at 4:18 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. Both comments and pings are currently closed.