New website about the Titanic

Reading this entry from Keithblog I stumbled upon this fantastic new website dedicated to the Titanic. It is set up by the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum. Chockablock with info, photos and newsreels it is an absolutely fantastic resource for the Titanic nut.

Sons of the Desert Convention in Dublin

If during the weekend of August 24-27 you encounter a large bunch of strangers in Dublin walking around wearing a Fez – or should I say fezes? - on their head giggling madly, then you will have met the attendees of the 8th European Sons of the Desert convention.

The Sons of the Desert are named after the eponymous comedy film starring Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. This society celebrates life and work of those two comic geniuses and now has a large number of international affiliates.

In the film Stan and Ollie manage to get a weekend away from the nagging wives and attend the “Sons of the Desert” Lodge convention. I hope you don’t need to resort to all those lies and deceptions that they’re up to if you want to join the society’s first European get-together in Ireland.

Start saving now as the costs are €419 per attendee…. though these cover the accomodation as well as all the dinners. More details can be found here.

Dawson’s Lounge

I spent the New Year’s Eve weekend as usual in Dublin with a brunch in the Westin and a bunch of cocktails in their Mint Bar.

The night before I finally made it to Dawson’s Lounge. Dawson’s Lounge is located on Dawson Street, just a step away from St Stephen’s Green and around the corner from Grafton Street. It is advertised as Dublin’s smallest pub and I was previously jinxed in always visiting Dublin the few days when they were closed for some private functions. So I was pretty excited to finally find it open.

It sure was worth the wait. I absolutely love pubs with an atmosphere, and this little bar sure was oozing with it. You enter through a very narrow set of stairs that lead down to a little room that is vaguely reminiscent of a private living room and can be considered chockablock once you have a dozen people or so inside. The atmosphere was great and we soon got talking to a bunch of people from all over the place and fell out the door a few hours later to wake up with a severe hangover afterwards.

I always enjoy exploring new pubs in Dublin. True, Temple Bar is overrated and only bearable on some quiet afternoons and needs to be avoided like the plague during the weekends or other busy nights. Nevertheless, Dublin still has a large share of old fashioned pubs that don’t seem to be majorly touched by new trends in bar design. That always comes as a pleasant surprise for me as here in Cork pretty much most of the city centre pubs over the last ten years have been remodelled, modernised and refurbished and often turned into super pubs that bear little resemblance to their older predecessors. Dublin on the other hand still has more than their fair share of relaxing hang outs where you still find time for a chat with the owners or other fellow drinkers.

As nicely developed as Dublin’s pub scene still is, a visit to one of the Porterhouse bars reconfirmed what I long suspected: The Irish brewery scene is pretty much dead. OK, we still have Irish beer, but all the major breweries now belong to foreign companies:

Guinness? Diageo!
Murphys? Heineken!
Beamish & Crawford? Scottish and Newcastle!

Little wonder so that the Porthouse Brewery can now claim to be “Ireland’s largest genuine brewery”.

But let’s not ponder too much on the implications of Globalisation.

Instead I would like to wish you all

A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR AND A PROSPEROUS 2007!!!

My resolution for this year: To get this blog updated much more regularly.

Something to look forward to

Keith Barry is touring Ireland again and will perform in the Everyman Palace in Cork on January 21.

Can. Not. Wait.

Missing.ie

I discovered an Irish blog entry the other day that listed all the missing people in Limerick and encouraged everyone to go and pay Missing.ie a visit. Now I can’t for the life of me remember which blog that was and can’t link to that particular entry. Mea culpa.

Either way, that recommendation is indeed a valid one: There appear to be more and more Irish people missing these days. Joseph Mullaly from Cork is the latest one I am familiar with. I know some people who know him (well, in Ireland you always know someone who knows someone!) and a site like this does provide a great local service.

From the Missing Persons list to date 68 have been found (38 of them deceased). Missing.ie also has a Lost Contact section: 134 of these families have been reunited, some of them after decades. My fiancée herself had a brother that was missing in London for more than 30 years and only in the late 1990s made contact with the family again. He has since passed away. So these are by far not unusual cases.

I do hope that some of those missing will soon be found alive. Of course, there are a number that will quite clearly not have “just” gone missing, but that ended up murdered and I have no doubt that for a good number of those cases there are people out there who know more, but are not willing to talk.

One of the most heart wrenching cases is that of Lisa Dorrian from Co. Down. A murder inquiry has since been launched, though her body has never been found. Her family has set up their own website and launched a YouTube video in the hope that some day they can finally bring some closure to this case and discover what really happened to Lisa.

So do pay Missing.ie a short visit and have a quick glance at the photos. At the worst this may take a minute out of your schedule, at the best you may be able to provide some valuable evidence and help locate somebody’s loved one.

Bearduary, Belfast

No New Years Resolution in mind yet? How about growing a beard?

The Bearduary Elders have chosen Belfast to be their venue of choice for their 2007 event. The plan is that on January 01, 2007 you stop shaving and develop a proper beard. You capture the progress and on March 02 at a yet to be determined venue a shaving ceremony will take place and a prize will be handed out to the person with the most creative beard. The number of participants is restricted to only 25, though some places are still available, so check out the rules soon if you’re interested.

But remember: Gentlemen, only!

Now that’s what I call good news for a change!

Ryanair loses battle with online critic

Hands up who hasn’t flown with Ryanair yet? Any horror stories to tell? Chances are that once you have repeatedly flown with the airline that doesn’t care, you will come to a point where you are standing raging at Ryanair’s complete lack of customer services and swear that you’ll never use them again.

When things go right, Ryanair is quite possibly the best airline you can imagine, sending you to far away places (sometimes so far that you’re not even in the city you’re thinking you’re flying into) for little money. But if things go wrong, they generally go so seriously wrong that you are left with nothing but a serious attack of Tourette Syndrome.

I, too, have my story (don’t ask: some other time) from a few years back and at the time had planned to set up a web site to make sure everyone can share their own nightmare stories. I also planned that I would only use that airline again when hell freezes over. Needless to say I never set up that web site and after ignoring all their offers for a couple of years ended up eating my words, and have on occasion booked them again when there was no alternative choice available.

Nevertheless I am more than pleased to hear that Ryanair’s plan to shut up Michael Coulston’s criticism of the way they run their business has failed. Coulston had set up Ryanaircampaign.org in order to inform travellers what they can expect when booking flights with that company and also to share contact details for the company that is notoriously reluctant to engage in any kind of customer dialogue.

Following today’s ruling Coulston can continue using his domain name.

Tony Hawks: Round Ireland With a Fridge

One of the many books I read in 2007 was Tony Hawks’ ROUND IRELAND WITH A FRIDGE. It’s been recommended to me a good while ago and I’ve been meaning to read this for quite some time, but it was only this year that I picked it up in a second hand book store, the place where I now buy most of my books these days.

Although I knew I was a little bit behind with my reading of this book, it still came as a surprise to me when I noticed that it was first published in 1998. Hell, has it really been that long that his journey was reported on a daily basis in Gerry Ryan’s radio show?

First things first (and entirely for the non-initiated), no, this is not THE Tony Hawk, skater extraordinaire and hero of a million Playstation games, but Tony Hawks, comedian, writer and panelist on UK TV and radio shows such as Have I Got News For You, who has now also developed a very lucrative side line as a travel book writer (PLAYING THE MOLDOVANS AT TENNIS, ONE HIT WONDERLAND as well as his recent A PIANO IN THE PYRENEES).

As it goes with travel books these days it is generally not enough to just go to a country and explore people, culture and countryside. Like other current travel writers, Hawks’ journeys all need to have an outlandish premise, are often based on - alleged? - bets and are clearly inspired by the concept of Experimental Travel. For ROUND IRELAND Hawks decides to hitch a ride around the island with a fridge as a companion.

Have all those low budget flying opportunities really made us so jaded with the idea of travelling that we now need to have ever more outlandish mottos at hand to encourage us to go abroad? Not too long ago travelling meant hooking up with your mates, going aboard a ship, sailing the oceans and screwing the local lasses before being eaten by cannibals with only you left to survive to tell the story. And a bit more recently going abroad meant living the high life of a jet setter, flying in style to meet the crème de la crème in New York, Rio, Tokyo. Now your social welfare recipient from around the corner sits next to you on your €1 flight to Stockholm (that sets you back another €50 or so more once tax and ever other barely imaginable charge is taken into account), you can’t go anywhere without dropping into the people you’d choose to ignore at home and need to walk a country backwards or with a funny hat on your head to demonstrate to everyone and their mother that you are still an original traveller who is truly interested in exploring another nation.

In case it’s not clear enough, but I still prefer just going up and travelling motto less, so I was initially suspicious when I heard of Hawks’ concept of visiting Eire. I also had alarm bells ringing when I read the blurb stating that this was “one of the most inspirational stories you will ever read”. The last thing the world needs is yet another inspirational/self-help/delusional book on your shelves, yet to my surprise this was indeed a great, very humorous and, yes, inspirational read that I devoured nearly in one go.

Hawks clearly has a storyteller’s knack for detail. You can easily imagine him sitting in a pub with a pint in his hand, telling everyone about his crazy journey around Ireland. Just that you don’t need to await a chance to meet him in a pub, but for the prize of two beers can read his exploits at home. His passion for meeting people comes out of every page in the book and you will for a long time be able to remember some of the characters he encounters. It’s been a while since I last properly got up and actually travelled the length and breadth of this country, but this book stirred up my passion again, so in 2007 I intend to pay every single county a visit again.

Thanks, Tony.

Science Fiction and Fantasy novels set in Ireland

Via the Irish Sci-Fi News blog I just discovered this interesting list of Science Fiction and Fantasy novels set in Ireland. Must admit that I haven’t even heard of most of them, but this list sure has peaked my curiosity.

You gotta love YouTube

Bonane Heritage Park

Been travelling pretty much non-stop for the last two months, so couldn’t post anything here for love or money. (Hell, that’s my excuse anyway.) During a brief period back in Ireland during that time, I did, however, manage to do a little tour around and discovered Bonane Heritage Park. I had previously never even heard about it and came across it purely by chance when passing through Kenmare.

A little research online showed that this park is a very recent development and only opened to the public in June this year. It is based outside of Bonane, near Kenmare.

It is a community run project and charges a ridiculously low entrance fee of just €2.00… which is pretty much unheard of in this day and age for Ireland and borders at being practically free of charge. The volunteers who are manning the entrance booth all seem to be incredibly eager to help with whatever info you may like to know from them. Their enthusiasm for the project clearly shows and is a real tonic in comparison to some bored and disinterested hired assistants you may find in some of the other better known tourist attractions all around Ireland.

If you can, bring some food for a picnic. At the start of the walk, you can find some benches with beautiful views that will invite you to just while away some time before you approach the proper 3km long circular walk that contains half a dozen archaeological artefacts that give an insight into the life of early settlers: a ring fort (some 1500 years old), a famine ruin, a stone circle and boulder burial, a fulacht fiadh (ancient cooking pit), a bullaun stone (large rock with a carved out basin used for…. no-one knows exactly what) and a standing stone.

Overall, this truly is a little undiscovered secret. A project so new, and yet so old, that it has yet to find its way into Irish guide books. Come on a clear day and you can see for miles over the Bantry/Kenmare countryside. The location is so wonderfully off the beaten track that you can easily get lost on the narrow, unmarked dirt roads that lead to and from the site. Believe me, we did… and loved every minute of it.