The luck of the Irish.

There's more to Ireland than Guinness, of course, and since I don't even like beer all that much I had every intention of finding it.

Every intention. And I did do a lot, but not half of what was on my hastily written list. I guess I feel like I'll be going back there. I guess I was content just being there.

I went to the National Gallery, which is fantastic. We've all heard of W.B. Yeats (right?), but I had no idea the rest of his family was so talented -- his father, brother, and daughter were all painters. I'm partial to the work of the brother, Jack. Good stuff.

I went to Howth and walked the cliffs with my new friend Sketch. From Howth, the world looks a lot like this:

May you be a day in heaven before the devil knows you're dead.

Five days in Ireland, and I'm toasting with a Guinness like Joyce himself.

This is one of the best trips I've ever taken.

I stayed, again, with a stranger, which was excellent. He has four Spanish roommates, which was wholly frustrating for me, because there's no excuse for my inability to speak that language, and it makes me want to move to Spain until I learn. Anyway. They were great people, too.

Dublin. Dublin. Where do I start? Is it enough to say it's one of the only European cities I've visited, if not the only, that I could actually see myself choosing to live? It's remarkably diverse -- I don't think I even met any Irish people, aside from the few museum workers I talked with at length, just Spaniards and Italians and Canadians. It's compact, easy to get around. Traffic is terrible, but it's easy to walk everywhere so it's only a bother when you have to wait for ages to cross the street.

And the nightlife is okay, too.











You should know that these people are amazing and wonderful. Also, my hair is very long.

It should never be said that I'm not head-over-feet in love with my life.

This was me...

...after I had an A+ parenting day. There were no fights. I didn't want to throttle anyone. Much of this is to the kids' credit, of course, but I was still damn awesome.

Like a Polish Queen: Adventures in Eating

Food isn't really the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Poland, but maybe it should be. I like Polish food. Quite a lot. I made an A+ effort to eat as much of it as possible.

Pierogi: Dumplings, stuffed with anything you can think of -- meat, vegetables, cheese, fruit, chocolate. Good stuff. I was partial to mushrooms and cabbage. I tried the pig lung version. To my dismay, it was good, but I refrained from eating another.

Zurek: A sour rye soup with potatoes and sausage.

Paczek: These put jelly donuts to shame. In fact, they would be insulted that I even compared them to jelly donuts. The filling is slightly tart, and there's not so much of it that it pours out of the cake when you take a bite. The Poles love them. There's a day (Marcin tried to explain when, and my best guess is Fat Tuesday) when everyone eats as many of them as they can. I could get behind that.

Pomidorowa: A tomato and, usually, rice soup. Beats Campbells.

Nalesniki: When it comes to crepes, the French have nothing on the Poles.

Grzybowa: Mushroom soup. My favorite of the soups.

Pakora: This isn't Polish, but Indian, I think. Who cares? Fried vegetables -- you can't go wrong.

Samosa: Also Indian. Also delicious.

Awas chlebowy: A drink based on bread...something. (Again, something about the description was lost in translation.) Sort of soft-drink-esque, and surprisingly good.

Podpiwek: Another drink, this one based on beer. Not alcoholic. Again, like a soft drink, and the beer taste is slight. I don't like beer, but I liked this very much.

Barszcz: Beetroot soup. Unless you have a thing for beets and the concept of cold soup, avoid this at all costs.

Arbeit Macht Frei

The most important part of my time in Poland was a trip to Auschwitz. It's something I've always felt I had to do, something I feel everyone should do.

It doesn't matter how many books you've read, how many stories you've heard, how much studying you've done about the war and the Holocaust. You're not prepared to see what's left of it. I was there, in the midst of it, standing in a solitary confinement cell, wandering through the walled yard where thousands of people were shot, staring into the former gas chambers, and I still couldn't get my head around it. It was so recent. The pond next to the crematoriums is still gray with the ash of the people who should still be alive today. You feel terrible, and you want to feel worse, and you know that it's still not enough, could never be enough.

Poland

Poland has always pulled at me for reasons I'm only beginning to grasp. Maybe it started with those accents -- I could listen to Poles talk all day long. Luckily, I'm seeing it goes deeper than that.

I left the Netherlands on the evening of April 27 aboard a night train -- a trip that proved problem-free. And I really liked it. Since I was sleeping much of the time (minus the 3:15 a.m. passport check), the 13 hours went very quickly.

Just as I was getting ready to make hostel reservations, I heard about a couple of websites that allow you to search for people in the towns you plan to visit who are willing to host you in their homes. Sounds great! Save a lot of money (8 nights is a lot, even in hostels), meet some locals, and take a minor risk with your life! What's to lose?

So, yeah, a little nervous. I contacted a dozen or so people in Warsaw and Krakow. This is when I found out that May 1 and 3 are holidays in Poland, so everyone takes a 5-day weekend. Many of the people signed up on these sites are travelers as well, so they take advantage of such time to, of course, travel. Many responded that they couldn't host me, as they would be out of town. I was starting to lose hope.

A few days before I left, I heard from Marcin in Warsaw and Szymon in Krakow, both of whom said they could keep me for the nights I needed.

I wasn't expecting much. This is all out of the goodness of their hearts, so the bare minimum is really more than enough. Just a little space on the floor, access to a shower, permission to use the microwave.

These guys were great. Marcin met me at the train station. He took me to various site around Warsaw, including Wilanow,



to the top of a tower to view Stare Miasto (Old Town),



the Umschlagplatz (the platform from which the Warsaw Jews were loaded onto the trains and shipped to concentration camps),



the monument to the ghetto heroes,



the roof of the Warsaw University library (from which you can see Warsaw like this:),



Lazienki Park (which is home to:),



and the Palace of Culture and Science.

He also prepared some traditional Polish food for me, gave me his room, and accompanied me back to the train station when I was ready to go to Krakow.

Szymon met me at the station in Krakow. Szymon is a theatre student (studying dramaturgy), so we had plenty in common. He took me to watch a scene from Hedda Gabler that his classmates were performing, and to a performance of The Maids by Jean Genet. Of course, these were in Polish. I didn't enjoy the Hedda Gabler scene at all, but actually loved The Maids even though I couldn't follow the story through the words. He let me stay at his place even on the night he wasn't there, and even though I accidently locked his roommate out of the flat.

Warsaw and Krakow are very different cities. I liked Krakow a lot better. Warsaw, having been entirely destroyed in the war and the uprising, lacks atmosphere. Pretty much everything we see there is barely 60 years old. You just can't get a feeling from it. Except in the former ghetto, where a couple of the apartment buildings still stand -- and people still live in them.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

While I can't say I live by that philosophy, it is the first thing that comes to mind after I come close to chickening out of various activities. I've used that one sentence to talk myself into taking up scene painting, asking handsome men to dinner, and moving to Europe, among other things. I highly recommend that you do the same. If fear is the only thing stopping you from something, you're crazy not to do it.

So where to begin with this new angle at attacking life? The possibilities are endless -- just do whatever it is that makes you nervous enough to want to avoid doing. Here are some ideas to get you started.

1. Take a night train to a former communist country despite your trusty guidebook's boldfaced suggestion to avoid night trains in this particular part of the world.

2. Stay at the homes of complete "friends you've yet to meet".

3. Order from a menu you can't begin to decipher. Extra points for confirming your selection after the waiter gives you a quizzical look.

I want you all to think about that, consider your options. Tomorrow, I'll tell you more about my trip to Poland.