This weekend was darkened by two deaths in Westport. Friday evening a carload of young teenaged boys were in a terrible accident, slamming into a wall out on the Castlebar Rd going out of the town. Two of the boys escaped with minor cuts and contusions, but their 19 year old friend was killed. I heard about this tragedy as I walked from my house on the hill down into town and saw road workers detouring traffic, causing a huge slow-down just as folks were coming into town to do their weekly shopping. I stopped to chat and they gave me the news and we talked about how many young men were driving themselves to death, driving too fast on the West Ireland lanes, and despite strict laws and big fines for doing so, drinking and driving.
From my house into town is a five minute walk and on the weekend evenings, I will pass several packs of young people congregating on the corners, or along the Mall, a walkway on either side of the Carrowbeg River, and in the car parks. There's a youth cafe and many do go there but it isn't as exciting as seeing what kind of trouble you can get into in the streets. Drinking is legal at age 18 but I don't think that's the big problem. As my Irish friends have told me, The Pub and too much socializing is still a way of life, and for some a way of death. That poor family of this young man buried him by Sunday.
But nothing prepared the town for the next sad event -- a young 15 year old boy hung himself in the school yard where he was found Sunday evening. Everyone could remember seeing him on his bike on Sunday afternoon but by Sunday evening he was dead.
Was it an accident? Did he understand the permanence of this foolish sad move? And his poor parents, to lose their precious son, albeit maybe geeky, lost, unpopular, dark, struggling with all the issues young teenagers muddle through. As one woman told me, if he could have only waited 2 more years, his life would have seemed better, he would see that there is life after school, things even out among kids by 16, boys fill out, get more confident.
I stood watch as the funeral made its way up the main street, hundreds of people in tow, slowly following the hearse, many of them his 'mates' in their shcool uniforms, huddled against one another in the frigid wintry air.
There just is nothing sadder in the world than the too soon death of a young person.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Friday, February 15, 2008
Westport: Settling In
I arrived in Shannon and was familiar with the drill -- get through passport control, Nothing To Declare, push through the doors and there ye be, in Shannon airport. Fetch a great but pricey cup of coffee, relax in the comfy sofas, go to the toilet because there are no bathrooms on the busses here, then catch the 8:55 am bus to Galway, kill an hour or so there, then hop on the noon bus to Westport. The talk radio is omni-present on all Irish busses and God only knows how the driver doesn't rear-end the fella up ahead because mostly he is laughing his head off from all the nonsense the commentators are spouting.
Once again I stayed in the Old Mill Holiday Hostel, in the all-female dorm which in the deep of winter was brutally cold. There was a heater but w/o much in the way of traffic I think it had not been turned on. I slept in all my clothes and was STILL cold. The bathroom was the same -- the icy seat woke you up when you have to piddle in the middle of the night.
Lukas, a Polish guy living and working at the hostel, gave me some numbers for rooms for rent, also tips on finding more ads at the Super Valu market up the street. The first call led me to Michael O'Hallaran, a 29 yr old musician and Tesco market employee, who rents out rooms in the house he is mortgaged to the hilt for. The house was great, located only 3 blocks from the center of town, my room is on the third floor with one big window and a skylight. The price was excellent -- 60 € a week, 240 € a month. We have access to a washer and a dryer, a great kitchen, cable TV, and a fireplace plus a wall heater in the living room. By Sat. I was unpacking in my new home! My other roommate is Tommy, a Korean engineer who now owns an internet cafe in Westport.
Weather in Ireland is a big topic -- no matter what it is doing outside, everyone has something to say about it. The first weekend it snowed, but combined with gale force winds it was like a hurricane with snow! Very dramatic and lovely to be in a house with a fire, gazing from the comfort of an easy chair I have claimed as mine. Since then, we have had warm spring weather, gloomy winter weather, gales w/o rain, gales w/ rain, sunny but frigid, and today, gloomy but frigid. In short, winter in Ireland.
Pub life is still the center of society here. I limit myself to one drink and then wander from bar to bar in search of good music. Matt Malloy's, owned by The Chieftain's flutist Matt Malloy, has music every night. Young musicians just starting out may start the evening at 9 pm, playing alongside local singer Mick who knows hundreds of Irish folk songs, rebel songs, and ballads. Then around 10 pm, the Real Musicians show up 2-8 of them and they start playing in the small back bar with the coal fireplace. Porter's Pub next door has good music as well and there are other places in town that will offer traditional music on different evenings. There is also rock, sometimes hiphop and this weekend there is a Brasilian samba band playing at Shibeen's down on the Harbor.
As for how I fill up my days, I go walking most days. There is a branch of the Western Way pilgrimmage route nearby that takes me down a farm lane, past sheep and horses and meadows, then over hills toward the sea. I hope to travel it extensively up the coast but so far in my attempts, I have only gotten drenched to the skin. Another walk takes me to the old railway line, now a greenbelt, through a lovely river valley, then out to the coast, along the harbor and back into town. Last week I walked down hill towards the sailing club, through forests and past the old Westport Country House, an old expansive estate. I spotted two mating storks and could hear a woodpecker searching for food. But traffic on the narrow lane became brisk and I feared for my safety when the young male drivers raced by, so after 45 minutes, I turned back. Off-track walking is the best because you can relax and just enjoy the surroundings.
I am planning on getting a car one of these days but drivers here are among the most unsafe I have ever encountered. The combination of young people driving on narrow lanes edged with hedgerows adds up to many traffic fatalities. Mix in an active pub life and it is incredibly dangerous out there. Pedestrians are mere connon fodder -- no one sees them or even slows down for the elderly struggling to cross the street.
But life is good here, comfortable and so far easy. I joined a drumming group and am learning drumming rhythms from African, Latin, and Native American traditions. I find it relaxing to drum with others and I look forward to meeting with this group each month.
Once again I stayed in the Old Mill Holiday Hostel, in the all-female dorm which in the deep of winter was brutally cold. There was a heater but w/o much in the way of traffic I think it had not been turned on. I slept in all my clothes and was STILL cold. The bathroom was the same -- the icy seat woke you up when you have to piddle in the middle of the night.
Lukas, a Polish guy living and working at the hostel, gave me some numbers for rooms for rent, also tips on finding more ads at the Super Valu market up the street. The first call led me to Michael O'Hallaran, a 29 yr old musician and Tesco market employee, who rents out rooms in the house he is mortgaged to the hilt for. The house was great, located only 3 blocks from the center of town, my room is on the third floor with one big window and a skylight. The price was excellent -- 60 € a week, 240 € a month. We have access to a washer and a dryer, a great kitchen, cable TV, and a fireplace plus a wall heater in the living room. By Sat. I was unpacking in my new home! My other roommate is Tommy, a Korean engineer who now owns an internet cafe in Westport.
Weather in Ireland is a big topic -- no matter what it is doing outside, everyone has something to say about it. The first weekend it snowed, but combined with gale force winds it was like a hurricane with snow! Very dramatic and lovely to be in a house with a fire, gazing from the comfort of an easy chair I have claimed as mine. Since then, we have had warm spring weather, gloomy winter weather, gales w/o rain, gales w/ rain, sunny but frigid, and today, gloomy but frigid. In short, winter in Ireland.
Pub life is still the center of society here. I limit myself to one drink and then wander from bar to bar in search of good music. Matt Malloy's, owned by The Chieftain's flutist Matt Malloy, has music every night. Young musicians just starting out may start the evening at 9 pm, playing alongside local singer Mick who knows hundreds of Irish folk songs, rebel songs, and ballads. Then around 10 pm, the Real Musicians show up 2-8 of them and they start playing in the small back bar with the coal fireplace. Porter's Pub next door has good music as well and there are other places in town that will offer traditional music on different evenings. There is also rock, sometimes hiphop and this weekend there is a Brasilian samba band playing at Shibeen's down on the Harbor.
As for how I fill up my days, I go walking most days. There is a branch of the Western Way pilgrimmage route nearby that takes me down a farm lane, past sheep and horses and meadows, then over hills toward the sea. I hope to travel it extensively up the coast but so far in my attempts, I have only gotten drenched to the skin. Another walk takes me to the old railway line, now a greenbelt, through a lovely river valley, then out to the coast, along the harbor and back into town. Last week I walked down hill towards the sailing club, through forests and past the old Westport Country House, an old expansive estate. I spotted two mating storks and could hear a woodpecker searching for food. But traffic on the narrow lane became brisk and I feared for my safety when the young male drivers raced by, so after 45 minutes, I turned back. Off-track walking is the best because you can relax and just enjoy the surroundings.
I am planning on getting a car one of these days but drivers here are among the most unsafe I have ever encountered. The combination of young people driving on narrow lanes edged with hedgerows adds up to many traffic fatalities. Mix in an active pub life and it is incredibly dangerous out there. Pedestrians are mere connon fodder -- no one sees them or even slows down for the elderly struggling to cross the street.
But life is good here, comfortable and so far easy. I joined a drumming group and am learning drumming rhythms from African, Latin, and Native American traditions. I find it relaxing to drum with others and I look forward to meeting with this group each month.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Pergamon Museum & Jewish Museum
Located on Berlin's famous Museum Island, the Pergamon Museum offers something different from the ordinary exhibitions, statues, and pictures seen in all standard museums and galleries. It has several enormous reconstructions of parts of ancient cities.The star exhibition is the Pergamon Altar, a Greek construction with beautiful freezes that dates from the second century BC. The remains of this ancient building were shipped to Germany at the end of the nineteenth century during a period which German archeologists were very active. In contrast to the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum, some of the pillars came with and the display is build up so you can climb the decidedly modern stairs and see how it was presented originally.
In an adjacent room towers the Market Gate from Miletus. It is the façade of a market from a Roman town in Asia Minor and is more than 16 m high. Original date of construction is estimated to be about a century BC. Passing through this gate you enter what is if not the most beautiful definitely the most colorful of the major displays – the Ishtar Gate. This gate from Babylon dates from the sixth century BC and gives the Pergamon Altar strong competition for star of the show. The glazed tiles, mostly in blue, are in astonishingly good condition given the age. Large pieces from the Processional Way leading up to the Ishtar Gate decorate both sides of the passage.
The displays of Islamic art on the second floor are smaller but no less interesting. The façade of the Mshatta Palace in Jordan, eight century BC, fills a room while another displays the inside of a seventeenth century paneled room of a rich merchant in Syria. Also of interest is a large world map from India – the audio guide is necessary to make much sense of it from a modern viewpoint. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pergamon_Museum
The Jewish Museum Berlin (Jüdisches Museum Berlin) is a museum in Berlin covering two millennia of German Jewish history. The Jewish Museum in Berlin was founded on Oranienburger Straße in 1933. It was closed in 1938 by the Nazi regime. The idea to revive the museum was first voiced in 1971, and an "Association for a Jewish Museum" was founded in 1975. A Jewish department of the Berlin Museum was opened after the Berlin Museum first displayed an exhibition on Jewish history in Berlin in 1978. In 1999 the Jewish Museum Berlin was granted status as an independent institution. A building by Daniel Libeskind was finished in 1999 and officially opened in 2001.
The building is very distinctive from other museums, since it does not respond to any functional requirements, but is rather constructed to create spaces that tell the story of the Jewish people in Germany. The museum itself is a work of art, blurring the lines between architecture and sculpture.
The view from above is that of a large zig-zag line, which earned it the nickname "blitz", German word for thunderbolt. The main building is covered with zinc plating, and the windows are just lines that cross the surface in a random fashion. These lines were created from connecting different sites in a Berlin map that are important to Jewish history. This building has no access of any kind from the street. The entrance is located in an adjacent building, a museum of German history, through a staircase and tunnel embedded in a concrete tower that goes through all the floors of the German museum. This symbolizes that German and Jewish history are inseparable, violent and secret.
The staircase leads to an underground site, composed of three hallways, called axes: The Axis of Death, leads to a concrete tower that has been left empty, called The Holocaust Tower; The Axis of Exile, which leads to an exterior square courtyard composed of concrete columns and that has been tilted in one of its corners, called The Garden of Exile; and The Axis of Continuity, that goes through the other two hallways, representing the permanence of Jews in Germany in spite of the Holocaust and the Exile. This axis leads to a staircase, which in turn leads to the main building. The entrance to the museum is intentionally made difficult and long to instill in the visitor the feeling of challenge and hardship that is distinctive of Jewish history.
The main building, even though it seems skewed and irregular in general, hides a straight but discontinuous line, marked by hollow concrete towers painted black, with little windows from which visitors only can see the other visitors in opposite windows. One of these towers was called the Memory Void for those affected by the Holocaust.
As you walk down the long hall, you hear the clank of something -- is it silverware from the cafe kitchen, gears from the elevator, workmen moving contruction material? The closer you get, the louder the noise becomes until you turn the corner and see visitors cautiously walking across Menashe Kadishman's 'Shalechet' ('Fallen leaves') installation which has filled this void with 10,000 coarsely made iron faces. Visitors are encouraged to walk on the work, creating an almost 'industrial' noise, something with deep meaning.
Day trip from Malaga to Antequera
Antequera - the city of art. It has many palaces and churches built during the Renaissance and Baroque periods. There must be around 30 churches and convents, many containing a treasure trove of art. The Municipal Museum is located in the Palace of Najera and is a must see. It includes the ephebe, a Roman statue in bronze of a nude youth. There are only 6 known ephebes in the world and the one in this museum is the best preserved. On top of the hill is the Alcazaba, the old castle and fortress. Beside it is the important church of the Real Colegiata de Santa Maria la Mayor. And just outside the city one can find a dolmen complex, which consists of megaliths.
I went in no museums, just wandered through the alleyways and then sat and watched a storm build up and ooze over the mountains and down into the town.
Christmas Lights in Malaga
Malaga's main pedestrian shopping street, Avenida Larios, was blazing with an eye-popping display of Christmas lights and all along the 1 km way, traditional musicians, community groups of singers, magicians, classical musicians and weird odd types entertained every evening starting Dec. 1.
From the small balcony in my room in the Hostal Larios, I could take part in the festivities, watch the passing throng of excited children, giggling teenagers, and whole families agog with Christmas excitement.
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