Eire.
The rest of the Ireland pics, again with babble.
To put it simply, Connemara was disarming. We stayed at this farm and I guess you could say time stood still there. Nobody knew what day or time it was, they still baked their own bread and everything. There were other people as well, an American girl, some Irish people and this strange Italian guy who spoke Finnish, and two French boys. In the mornings we did nothing but lay on the sofa reading books and drinking tea, in the evenings we sat by the fire while one of the French boys (they were too lovely!) read Ecce Homo to us in French. Modern life is rubbish!
The population of the village was somewhere around 300. This is the only pub:
Tiina waiting for the bus (that drove by three times a week and that we nearly missed):
The forest just before dusk:
Connemara national park:
Dear Lord, Galway. What to say. We used to think it was a charming little town, but we kept getting stuck there. We were always just meant to change buses there or just stay for one night, but things always went wrong and all in all we had to stay there 3 times during our trip.
Galway does have an interesting history. About 14 Irish clans used to live there, the O'Flahertys being the most notorious. Tiina and I are convinced we have been cursed by the O'Flahertys, for the rest of our lives we will never be able to go from place A to place B without going through Galway first. Well, I guess there are worse fates to think of.
Tiina eating fish&chips. You can tell by the look on her face that she really enjoyed it.
The suburbs, where everyone is a solicitor or a dentist.
During the third time we got stuck in Galway we simply couldn't take it anymore and we decided to get completely hammered. After too many pints (of cider!) we decided it'd be a great idea to try some Guinness even though both of us would drink gasoline before beer. Notice my excellent photography, influenced by Bulmers Cider of Ireland.
Guinness is a horrible, horrible drink. It does taste better than regular beer but what it does to you, oh dear. I felt possessed the entire night, like feverish and taken over by some demon. Never touching that stuff again, mark my words, never.
From Galway we took a ferry to Aran islands, which were amazing. Such incredible views are hard to describe.. We managed to get this man who had lived there his entire life give us a tour. It was great, he was a bit weird and funny so we were able to ask stupid questions and he knew the answers to everything. All the locals knew each other and still spoke Gaelic (Irish) as their first language.
Me standing on the edge of Europe (and being scared to death):
I am completely crap at taking pictures, I just push the button and never give it any thought. But I must say that I am so proud of the following picture, it's possibly the best I've ever taken. I mean, look at it. How can the sky just start like that, out of a stone wall??? HOW IS IT POSSIBLE? Now you tell me there's no God!
Here you can see the stone walls that cover the entire island. Bernie (the guy who was our guide for the day) told us that every man on the island had been building them. When I asked why they made them, because I couldn't see any special function they would have served, he said "because we had to think of something to do with all the stone!". I loved that story.
Well I must say I didn't fall madly in love with Dublin, which was the opposite to what everyone in the world kept telling me. It was too crowded, walking on a street was nearly impossible. It was even more expensive than Helsinki, which was a huge shock. All the hostels had been fully booked weeks ahead and we had to spend some of our nights at the airport. Going clubbing or seeing a concert was out of the question because the admission fees alone were something like 15 euros minimum.
Luckily I met some great people at the hostel and had fun anyway. There was Adrian from California who was supposed to come and see me but he probably won't make it before I move to Turku. Then Tomas from Poland who was a huge fan of Finland because "we kicked Russia's ass in WWII" (I didn't have the heart to tell him that we were sort of friends with Germany and in the end Russia sort of kicked our ass anyway). He was only 18 and wanted to work in Ireland but had no work experience, so I helped him to... pad out the truth in his CV. He also had a 200 year old grand piano.
And this crazy lawyer, originally Filipino but nowadays living in the UK. She was something, that one, I learned so much from her. She would say anything to anyone, at first I thought she was horrible but then I fell in love with her just like the rest of the world. She had been everywhere and done everything and she just didn't care, at all, about what anyone thought, and I believe that is one of the rarest and most admirable features a person can have. She told me (after knowing me for 2 minutes) that I must be very spiritual since I grew up with so much water around me (Finland has many lakes). Ha-ha. Spiritual, me, what.
And Rupert, with whom I've been e-mailing almost daily since coming back. He's like a character from a book which is of course why I like him, he's lived in boarding schools since he was 5 years old and he is exactly like the boys S. J. Fry would describe as HEALTHY!!.
After this we sort of stopped bothering with the camera... we never had it with us when we were having the most fun anyway. What happened after this: three boring days in Cork, Josh Rouse live (the electricity went dead and he played acoustic in candlelight, it was magical, and Irish people are the best audience), worst luck ever in Stab City Limerick, spending more nights at airports with San Diegans, our luck finally turning and us getting a perfect cottage of our own for 10 euros per night, getting locked inside a castle after they closed it for visitors (it was like out of a suspense novel, us going "there's gotta be a way!!" and climbing and digging our way out, I've always wished for something like that to happen).. and general happiness and notwantingtogobackhome-ness.