A Lass in Ireland - The Stay
- Maitreyi K
- May 25, 2024
- 8 min read
Updated: May 2
Hello & Dia Duit! Here we are with Part 2 of Ireland Diaries :D Last time, I left y'all hanging at the rainy day entry we made to Dublin, after managing lots of baggage, a baby and bad weather. Now, I'll take you through the wonderous memories & observations I've made in this beautiful country!
1. A Jet Lag Nap
What would any average Indian do on getting back home after a long travel? Clean up and Nap before they go about the day! Drenched that I was post rains, I wanted to rush to get a shower done. Though my sister warned me to have brunch and get an energetic doze to combat the so called jetlag, I brushed off her concerns. True, I had kept vigil for a lot of the 12 hour travel we had endured but I assumed I could catch up on sleep in the night by calling in early that day. So I just had a quick breakfast, went for a shower and hit the bed thinking I'd take a short nap before lunch.
I woke up 8 hours later at 6 pm.
2. Culture & Climate Shock
a. The Tap Water
One of my very first culture shocks, was the drinking water. People drunk straight out of the tap in the kitchen while I was busy searching for the non existent RO Purifier. But damn, the water tasted refreshing and energizing! I later on understood that in her part of the city (which was the last station of the tram and hence closest to the base of the mountains), water was sent to homes straight from the clean springs and rivers!! Yet, I had a mental block ingrained which ensured I would always boil the water before I had it - much to the amusement of my sister.
b. The Silence (& Greenery!)
What does the combination of having a country spanning an area roughly equal to the state of Tamil Nadu with the population of the city of Chennai mean? Two Things.
Profound Greenery (The morning walks - a treat to the eyes, ears, lungs too! So many trees, fresh air and active winds) + Total and utter silence. Even the cars don't make noise (nobody honks!!). People keep to themselves, you can barely hear music or any form of loud sounds outside your home and if you are quite enough, you can hear your own heartbeat. Meditating here was a pleasure like none other!
On the contrary, it also meant I couldn't play anything on the TV at a volume louder than a whisper when my nephew took his afternoon nap and gave everyone a break from Wheels on the Bus go Round and Round (quite a banger to be honest). Doing otherwise meant the sound would travel from the living room to his bedroom quite prominently.
c. The Utter Lack of UPI
I was casually asking my sister to transfer a few euros into my Google Pay account, thinking it'd be a useful emergency fund. She sat and laughed at my audacity to assume UPI worked in Europe, or in any other country apart from India for that matter. She went on to break my bubble and say its either Cash or Card there, nothing digital. Imagine my shock.
No UPI?! But that also meant.... No Swiggy/Zomato/Blinkit/Dunzo/F&P - literally no convenience apps!! What if I had a craving in the middle of the night? What if I ran out of groceries the next day? What if I wanted to send a surprise cake to a friend living cities away from me?? Well, all these questions were met with silence, the answer being a very simple - You Can't.
d. Sunshine at 8 pm at 10°C
You read that right! I faced bright sunshine in a freezing cold temperature which ended up tanning and freezing me. Total contradictions. My poor body clock went for a total and utter toss, and that meant my sense of breakfast-lunch-dinner did too. I had to consciously make myself eat dinner everyday despite my brain refusing to accept a very sunny night being possible. Oh, and did I mention I would end up waking up at 10 am if I didn't set an alarm for before?
Coupling the confounding sun-freeze with my absolute lack of assignments/tasks/time tables and the lack of digital convenience, it was a very confusing time initially, as I had no clue what to do with my new found freedom but with a lack of mobility. The one main thing I had with me was my laptop (I had lugged it all the way crossing so many security checks), intended for movies, group calls and content streaming, only to lament that I hadn't brought a travel adapter with me!! Indian Rounds do not go well with British Squares. I later found joy in reading online books, albeit on my phone.
3. Fitting in with the Family
I soon got into a routine with my sister's family - it was pretty much the structure it gave me that helped me understand that a day had begun or was to end (else its very easy to forget to take a shower or eat your meals on time!!). I write it here for your entertainment benefit:
06:00 am - Wake Up, make my bed and tip toe my way to the bathroom
06:15 am - Sit in the living room to make calls to my friends & family in India
06:45 am - Meditate/Go for a Walk
07:00 am - Make a quick breakfast / Go with bro-in-law to buy hot croissants
08:30 am - Go back for a nap
10:00 am - Get woken up by my nephew and lock up my phone :P
12:00 pm - Take him and my sister to his play area in the nearby mall
02:00 pm - Get back home (maybe do a round of laundry)
03:00 pm - Lunch & some short films (His nap time, so the TV is mine)
05:00 pm - Bro in law comes back from office and we all go out for a car ride
06:00 pm - Play time with the kiddo
07:30 pm - Dinner Preps (for the kid and us)
08:00 pm - The kid has dinner and plays
10:00 pm - (usually earlier) we have dinner & pray he chooses to sleep
12:00 am - I go to sleep while my sister and bro in law tackle their baby :P
Quite an unconventional routine, but worked for the stay!
Nobody asked me to do anything in terms of helping around the house. The sheer amount of boredom I had at times, made me wash up dishes, fold clothes or do any little chores here and there. The part I absolutely loved doing was putting away his toys!! I created a mini library space for his books and boy am I proud that he learned to ask for books only from there. I'd at times laugh looking at the size of his clothes (smaller than my forearms) and smile at how mindbogglingly cute he is. My sister was very glad I took over the little things like this and majorly asked my help in keeping him engaged.
Let me tell you this. I have done engineering, MBA, been a TedX Speaker and even authored a book - but hands down one of the most difficult jobs in the world is to keep a 2-year old entertained!! No amount of YouTube, ingenuity or creativity is enough to keep him from getting bored. Why not let him be bored you ask? Well then he hunts for his mom. The poor lady would have gotten barely a few minutes of me-time before she hears those words "Amma Venum" (I want my mom) from him. The collective entertainment provided by me or his dad will not work, where one word from his mom does!
Tramping around:
Those of you following me on instagram (@parinaama_blog) might be curious at this point - how on earth did I travel so extensively, mostly alone, in a country devoid of Ola/Uber/UPI and taxi fares that go through the roof, despite my baby-centric schedule?
The answer is... TRAM! And of course a ton of walking (made more wonderful with an Irish Pastry in hand, crispy fresh air to inhale and serene silence to enjoy). I had a ball of a time roaming around as much as I could within Dublin. The tram system is highly efficient, punctual to a fault (meaning it also leaves on time, whether or not you have half or the entire body inside the compartments). The Irish government is very strict about tram tickets (fines can go up to 2000 Euros for violations). The speed of the tram can go up to 80 kmph and it is buttery smooth in transit.
Irish people are reserved and helpful. Like the kind hearted gentleman who warned me just in time before I rammed into a street lamp (I was unabashedly gawking at the architecture), the stern and matronly lady who took stunning pictures of me next to magnificent buildings (I had zero shame in asking her to) or even the jolly old tram driver who politely kept the doors of the tram open for just a second for me to fish out my shoe that had slipped off and in between the door and the pavement! (yikes).
There is also of course, the dark side. As it is in any country. Racism is predominant here. From what I could observe, looked like people of non-Irish origin ( such as other European immigrants, Asians, Africans) had taken up a lot of the well paying white-collar jobs, giving the natives tough competition. As a result, one can feel at the very least, the judgmental eyes of certain bitter Irish folks as you go by the tram, walk the street or even buy a coffee. At the very worst, drunken men shouting racial slurs indiscriminately.
Hindus are few and far apart here, meaning predominant places of worship are inside compounds, not temples, that too which should 'shut down and clear off' at predetermined timings. I recall a sorry incident where we had visited the nearest Vinayaka shrine for a micro sathsang and the priest was forced to encounter angry Irish families who were waiting to take over the open space, as he had not concluded the puja, aarti and bhajans in time (he had barely overshot by 10 minutes).
Renting / leasing an appartment or a home, is an instantaneous affair. You go and check out the place, and pay the initial brokerage immediately. There is a long line in the waiting list and you got to consider yourself lucky to even make it to the top of it! This is because all realtors evaluate your profile before you evaluate the house and want to ensure you are the best fit for the house, not the other way round. And no this is not the usual 'We want families only' kind of screening you see in India. They check everything possible, from your current employment to your credit score!!
The land itself, is beautiful, expansive and massively lonely. I had gone at the 'peak' of tourist season and I still managed to get last minute tickets to the best one day trips in and around Dublin - so you can imagine the feeble number of tourists who visit. And most of them are aged people who wish to enjoy a quiet country style vacation.
I have shared, in brutal as well as beautiful honesty, my end to end experience here. A beautiful country it is indeed, giving me so many of my travel & 'adulting' firsts! Overall, the land is scenic, the environment is straight out of all our favourite English Literature and the infrastructure is par excellence. Ireland is a must visit place, not for putting your instagram stamp onto, but for enjoying a truly English/Irish lifestyle.
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