Chill farewell

Our last day in Dublin dawned cloudy and cold, just barely above the freezing mark. The chill breeze seems at odds with all the cheery daffodils everywhere we turn, along with the summery dresses and shoes in the shop windows. We decided to play tourist (since that’s what we are) and hopped onto a double-decker tour bus that took us around town, letting us off wherever we wanted. Only a few brave souls dared sit in the open top, ourselves among them.

Yesterday we spent the afternoon poking around the countryside, discovering a little corner we’ve never visited before just the other side of the Wicklow mountains. We found an exceedingly picturesque town called Moone, that has not only a 17^th century mill and manor house, but a thousand year-old high cross. When we finally located the cross (on the other side of the bridge with the swans swimming below), it was absolutely pouring rain, so we huddled in the car and read aloud about the Master of Moone, who took course granite and created delightful renderings of biblical stories and a bestiary to make a monk proud.

On both outings, we needed to warm up afterwards. With our fill of Celtic carvings, we headed up the road, stopping short of the Dublin suburbs and found an Edwardian-era pub, complete with (fake) peat fire, where we filled our bellies with pub grub and cider. Number One Son decided he wanted some meat, and ordered a cheeseburger—nothing like the McWhatever, this one was a hefty patty of Wicklow County beef, with real local cheddar melted on top. Little One’s fish and chips (malt vinegar on the side) were more fish than chips, and it wasn’t a small portion of chips. I enjoyed a “salad” of smoked salmon and shrimp (what they call prawns), while Darling Husband swapped me his chips for my brown bread and Kerry butter.

This afternoon, our cheeks reddened from the upper bus deck, we alit in Phoenix Park and found a tiny tea house, where a frothy cup of Cadbury cocoa and toffee biscuit cake made our noses run as they thawed.

We’ll have supper in tonight, and polish off our own breaded haddock and brown rice with Bullmer’s cider. Unfortunately, real lettuce could not be found, so it’s salad from a bag, and designer peas from Marks and Spencer (“petit pois and baby onions”). Our (very) early breakfast tomorrow will already be continental; pain au chocolat and orange juice eaten on the airport shuttle bus.

Square cakes in round holes

I can still vividly recall my first night in Germany, some twenty years ago. We arrived late, and settled into borrowed dorm room accommodations quickly thereafter. Curled up under an incredibly warm feather duvet, I realized I needed to go to the bathroom. Not wanting to disturb the whole floor, I slipped quietly to the bathroom, closed the door ever so gently, and reached out to turn on the light. But my hand met only bare wall. It took what seemed forever to find the switch, groping in the darkness, the time likely amplified by the growing pressure in my bladder. In the light of day, I could see that all the switches were about ten inches lower than I was expecting or used to. My Darling Husband (who was just a Handsome Boyfriend at the time), explained that the switches were low down so children could reach them. I figured we put them up higher so kids couldn’t reach them.

When Number One Son was but a wee two, we spent a cold January in Dublin in what is called a self-catering flat, really a short stay row house. It had every modern convenience (a dishwasher would have been entirely too modern) and the property manager was most proud of the power shower. It was, alarmingly, an electric box that hung in the shower itself—as if there was plenty of room in the already cramped quarters for a small appliance—and boosted either the water pressure or temperature. Truth be told, neither of us ever really figured out what it was supposed to do, as it generally gave us a tepid dribble no matter how we set it. But we did discover it was a lesser, colder dribble with the thing turned off.

Last week, as I scoured Tesco’s shelves for some crackers that might be a tasty wheat-free alternative for some tempting Wexford cheese, I found a package of rye crackers, and chuckled when I noted they were round. My cheddar cheese is square however, so the corners hang off—for easily nibbling, I suppose. I didn’t see any rice cakes, or so I thought. But wait, here they are, and they’re square! (They’re also smaller, so you can easily have a little something.) It’s just the opposite of home, where rye crackers are square and rice cakes are round (and big).

When we are removed from our habits and comfort zone, it is easy to dwell on the differences. Even as experienced world travelers, we sometimes refer to our travels as adventures in plumbing. But when we dig past the superficial differences, we realize that there far more similarity than difference. Light switches still allow electricity to pass, regardless of the current or their position on the walls; knobs and valves still allow water (however warm) to pass through pipes onto our shampooed heads; and foods play the same role.

This evening at dinner (rosemary tofu, rice, broccoli and the sweetest carrots from down the road near Cheddar) our olio of nationalities mused at how different the world would be if everyone (and especially world leaders) were required to spend a few months living in another culture. By learning the differences on a visceral, everyday level, they just might discover that we have far more in common than we think.