even though the place we live at here in switzerland has a rather rural character — there are several livestock markets throughout the year down at the station square, very few regions regularly vote more conservative than ours — einsiedeln has a surprising cultural live. one of the driving forces is the chaernehus, which several times a year hosts cabaret, an exhibition, and stages a play.

this year’s play is kino etzel — which @jmdhh and i went to see tonight. kino etzel is played in the old cinema, kino etzel and is a tribute to the old swiss rural cinema of the 1950s. until the of 2010 einsiedeln’s kino etzel was still operating and it had been lovingly kept in the style of the 1950s — i loved it. unfortunately, the end of 2010 was also the last curtain for kino etzel — until this year when the chaernehus theater group decided to make it the subject of their 2012 production.

we had made seat reservations and when we arrived at 20:00 were greeted by cloakroom attendants in 1950s outfit — the price to leave our coats was 1950s as well: CHF 0.20 (tickets were 2012-ish price-wise though we had not only reserved seats in the show but also in the pre-show restaurant: the gallery had been turned into a typical 1950s swiss restaurant complete with a 1950s swiss menu, lovingly decorated with furnishings from that era. due to running a bit late but still had time to have an einsiedler beer and something to eat before the show started.

the play itself is a mixture of cinematic, theatrical, and musical elements — sometimes intermixed (the initial showing of a piece from the 1950s schweizer wochenschau about the bad wolf in wallis¹ was aborted by two 1950s policemen storming the cinema and reading out the regulations of the canton of schwyz regarding cabaret shows. all elements of the play work together to re-create the 1950s — and for most of the show it works quite well (the football piece was a bit drawn out and trying to imitate loriot but not quite achieving that really).

all in all: a very entertaining and interesting show, well worth a visit!

“kino etzel” is on until 11 february 2011

the other day @jmdhh and i were out shopping. while i was waiting at one of the shops i was “hit” by a smell of coffee — and immediately taken back to the apartment of my grandmother in the late 60s, early 70s. she lived in bremerhaven, one of the german sea ports, and had a penchant for coffee.

her apartment always smelled of coffee in a certain way — the smell of coffee emanating from that shop at which i was waiting for @jmdhh must have hit my olfactory memory at just the right spot and triggered that flashback to my childhood. all of a sudden i could remember how her apartment looked liked, the milk bar she sometimes would take me to for late lunches (milk rice with fruits and cinnamon!), the trips to look at — from my child’s perspective certainly — gigantic vessels moored at the columbuskaje, one of the oversea’s ports of bremerhaven. the visits to wremen where i played as a little kid on the beach and even remember taking a dip in the river weser — probably unheard of today. or, the visits to one of her friends who lived in a high rise close to one of the ship yards in bremerhaven, whose apartment had panoramic windows looking out across the north of bremerhaven and in particular over the ship yard. i also remember that there was a huge toy store in the bürgermeister-smidt-straße (huge, from my perspective as a little boy, that is) — which was a great place to be, certainly in the time before christmas

it’s interesting, how smells can cause an immediate memory flashback. i’ve googled for “smell memory” to find out more about it. jonah lehrer quotes in his post smell and memory the french author marcel proust —

But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, still, alone, more fragile, but with more vitality, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us, waiting and hoping for their moment, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection. — [marcel proust: swann's way, translated by c. k. scott moncrief]

— and goes on to explain that

[...] the olfactory cortex has a direct neural link to the hippocampus. in contrast, all of our other senses (sight, touch and hearing) are first processed somewhere else – they go to the thalamus – and only then make their way to our memory center.

so smell (and taste, really, since it’s connected to our smell sensors as you’ll find out once you have a severe cold) enjoys a direct link into our hippocampus which seems to play a, if not the, major role in what we consider to be our memory. the only other sensory input i can think of which seems to have some kind of unfiltered access to our brain and emotions is music.

interesting stuff.

meat:

• 1kg pork butt (blade)

crust:

• 1 glove garlic
• teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons italian herb mixture
• 1 teaspoon sweet paprika
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• freshly ground pepper
• 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar (aceto balsamico)

pre-heat the oven to 80–90°C

wash the pork and dry it with kitchen tissue. incise the pork butt all around in a diagonally criss-crossing pattern.

strip the garlic glove, place it together with the teaspoon of salt in a mortar and crush it with the pestle until you end up with a smooth paste. add the herbs, paprika, olive oil, pepper and vinegar and give it all a good mix.

next, rub the mixture on to the pork, making sure to cover all sides. place a casserole large enough to contain the pork on a high heat and once it’s hot, place the meat in the casserole and sear it on all sides for about 1min 30s on each side. once it’s brown on all sides, place the casserole into the pre-heated oven.

leave in the oven for 2h30m. serve with mashed potatoes or roasted potatoes and vegetable.

i’m in the process of re-working both this blog and my photo site. for the photo site i’ve switched from zenphoto to jalbum — zenphoto didn’t really offer any decent support for displaying geo-tagged pictures, had at the point in time of switching too many security issues for my taste, and didn’t have such a slick looking theme as jalbum’s turtle skin.

for a couple of sub-albums i wanted to make use of the background music feature offered by the turtle skin. naturally, just shoving in one of the thousands of MP3 that we have on our music players wouldn’t do as the license for those tracks didn’t allow that. a couple of google searches for “free music” later, i ended up on the fantastic freemusicarchive.org page which has an interesting range of music licensed under one or the other creative commons licenses.

browsing through their stuff, i quickly found two albums that i wanted to use: “the four seasons (vivaldi)” album by john harrison with the wichita state university chamber players and “the cup of tea” by sláinte. adding both to jalbum was easy — download and drag-and-drop to the folders —, adding the license information was a bit more involving. adding a caption to the MP3s caused the turtle skin music playback to ignore the MP3s. i ended up adding conditional footer code via turtle’s header and footer tab:

    <ja:if exists="musicLicense">
        <p>music © ${musicYear} <a href="${musicArtistURL}">${musicArtist}</a>, 
           album <a href="${musicAlbumURL}">${musicAlbum}</a> licensed under a 
           <a href="${musicLicenseURL}">${musicLicense}</a></p>
    </ja:if>

what this does is that if the user variable musicLicense is set, it then will include a music attribution in the footer of the sub-album page. you add user variable for a sub-album/folder in jalbum via the edit button for that and then selecting the user variable tab on the right hand side.

here are the variable that i’m using:

musicLicense

name of the music license; for example, CreativeCommons-ByAttribution-ShareAlike

musicLicenseURL

URL for the license

musicArtist

name of the artist(s)

musicArtistURL

URL for the artist page

musicAlbum

name of the album

musicAlbumURL

URL for the album page

musicYear

copyright year

the resulting footer then looks like this:

at the beginning of june @jmdhh and i spent two fantastic weeks in the english lake district — one of our walks took us up on top of silver how. the photo below shows @jmdhh enjoying the wonderful landscape and views, all of them at once it seems.

tortilla¹ ingredients:

• 300g potatoes
• 140g dried tomatoes in olive oil (aka vampire ears)
• 40g pitted black olives
• 5 large eggs
• clove of garlic
• 2 + 1 tablespoons olive oil

chutney ingredients:

• 200g cherry tomatoes
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
• 1/2 teaspoon sage
• 2 pinches basil
• 1 pinch sugar
• salt
• pepper

start with making the chutney: wash the cherry tomatoes and quarter them. heat the olive oil in a small pan and add the quartered tomatoes, then add the rest of the ingredients. cook over medium heat for 30min then reduce to the lowest setting to keep it warm.

for the tortilla peel the potatoes and cut them into 5mm wide slices and dry them using kitchen tissues. slice the olives. chop the clove of garlic. next heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a large pan at a medium heat. add the vampire ears aka dried tomatoes along with the garlic and olives. cook for about 5min. next add the potatoes, stir well to get all potato slices covered with oil. cover the pan and cook at low heat for 20min.

after 20min slightly scramble the eggs in a bowl, season with salt and pepper, add the potatoes and mix with the eggs.

turn the heat of the large pan up to medium, add a tablespoon of olive oil and then add the egg–potato mixture back to the pan. cook — without cover — for 20min. preheat plates in the oven at 60°C.

at the end of the 20min turn the tortilla over and heat at medium heat for a further 5min. then cut into quarters, place two quarters each on one of the preheated plates, add half of the tomato chutney on top.

enjoy!

last saturday mrs d and i did a snow shoe hike from alpthal stei up to hochstuckli and then across to biberegg. the views were fantastic, the snow was good prompted by mrs d, i tried my hand at taking a set of pictures to assemble as a panorama later.¹ here’s the result (you can use the mouse to drag the picture around):

i stitched it together using hugin — i’m quite pleased with it let’s see how it turns out as a 120cm wide print.

during sunday’s #twallfahrt i managed to take a couple of 5-step bracketed pictures, two of which i think produced some interesting results. the first one is the view from etzel pass towards einsiedeln:

at first i thought that it looks a bit weird, then i realized (and on my way home looked at the clouds with “different eyes”) that it does look like that.

the second one is a classical, an in-door shot in the church of the monastery of einsiedeln¹:

i kind of like both, but the second one is more the classical one and i like it best. what do you think?

9:10 — ms d and i arrive at einsiedeln railway station, all kitted out in our walking gear, ready to go. walking past the train we spot our fellow pilgrims. yep, pilgrims: we are on our way to the starting point of the world’s first twitter pilgrimage, the #twallfahrt¹ from pfäffikon to einsiedeln. in the train we meet @decolores1, @konzertharfe, @sempreincorsaa also ready to go on the #twallfahrt. just before the train is about to depart at 9:13 we are joined at the last second by @abtmartin — good thing, too, as he is supposed to lead us on our pilgrimage

i’m looking forward to the first twitter pilgrimage which is at the same time my first pilgrimage on foot (last year’s pilgrimage was by bus, which somehow gives it a different twist, i think). @abtmartin is apparently still in the “geheimprojekt” stage of the #twallfahrt, as he is not really forthcoming with any information about what’s planned.

we get to pfäffikon on time, cross through the station tunnel and see the #twilgrims gathered — a bit short of the maximum number of 8000 mentioned on @pixelfreund‘s blog (about 7969 short, in fact) bit still a sizable group. as various #twilgrims let us know via twitter, that they are still on their way, it’s a bit past 10:00 that we start on our way from pfäffikon up to etzel pass (where we’ll have a lunch break) and then on to einsiedeln to the benedictine monastery there.

the weather, fortunately, is cool, a bit humid, but not too bad, and the hike up “1000 steps” to etzel pass is easy to walk. the clouds are just fantastic (as a subscribed member of the cloud appreciation society i find blue sky days boring) — just past the autobahn we stop for our first #twallfahrt station: @abtmartin tells us a bit about the area (and the history of the monastery of einsiedeln), but the main focus is on two short canons (both in twitter length) that we even manage to render in a half decent way (no trees falling down, no birds falling from the sky). up and up it goes with the next stations at restaurant luegeten and at the fork in the road where the road from schindeleggi-feusisberg joins. around noon we are (as planned) on the etzel pass where a #twallfahrt group pictures are taken, we have a our lunch break, the sf drs tv team does the interviews with @abtmartin and we relax in the sun.

at 13:00 the #twallfahrt re-commences and via teufelsbrück and galgenenhügel we get closer and closer to our destination: the monastery of einsiedeln (interrupted by a short break to give the sf drs tv team a better take on us walking down to einsiedeln). the last station on our pilgrimage is at the gangulf chapel where we meet up with those #twitterati that couldn’t make it for the whole #twallfahrt, practice our twitter-length canons once more and then fight our way through the chilbi crowds to the klosterplatz — where we are greeted by a flag bearer and a cross bearer who lead the way, with the bells of the monastery ringing for our #twallfahrt, through the main entrance into the monastery church!

as we are a bit behind schedule, we #enjoy an even more twitterish worship service than planned — the highlight certainly being the twitterific organ piece (which @boumi manage to capture)!

an apero in the southern court yard concludes this unique #twallfahrt pilgrimage!

all in all: a very interesting and stimulating experience, meeting very different folks and with a couple of good spiritual impulses.

would i participate again? yes, i guess, i would

if you are interested, here are some further links:

• sf drs did a fairly lengthy piece (some german required)
• the katholische internationale presseagentur did a very good article (again, some german required)
• twitter’s #twallfahrt page
• the #twallfahrt flckr pool
• my set of pictures on 50mm-traveller

it’s taken a long time, but i finally managed to upload the pictures of our lake district vacation (back in may, yes…) to our photo website, the 50mm-traveller. for most of the pictures i used the exposure bracketing mode of my D700 (i.e., one picture taken at normal exposure, one a full stop below and the third a full stop above) together with the high-speed setting (5 pictures per second).

while sorting and enhancing the pictures in digikam i noticed that the latest version of digikam offered a blend bracketed images option and decided to give it a go. the experience was mixed: the plugin seems to be a bit on the unstable side of things, so saving to a PNG at the end of the process resulted in an ever increasing number of dialog box thrown at me, telling me that the work product could not be save because it already existed — it took a bit for me to realize that that was just a forcefully repeated lie: the picture had been saved, the plugin was just getting a bit confused, it seemed. otherwise the bracketed image blending tool worked rather well: it offered to align the photos i had taken, which was good, as i very very rarely carry a tripod with me and am just shooting from the hand. what was a bit of a “ok, now what” moment, was the final dialog: it offered a bunch of sliders and it’s not really obvious what each of them does. so i mucked around a bit, trying this and that.

here are two images that i quite like:

and

this next one looks nice in low resolution, but if you go to the full size version, you’ll notice that the alignment process didn’t really work out — and no surprise there: i was shooting that from a boat on the river thames in london, so quite a bit of movement there:

all in all, not too bad i think. stuff i want to try out: use the 5 bracket stop setting to get a wider range (-2 .. +2), perhaps invest in a power grip to boost the speed to 8 pics/sec.

yesterday’s tagesanzeiger report on a parliamentary motion of the swiss conservatives right-wing, nationalist party SVP to prepare the annexation of all regions surrounding switzerland — no, today’s not the first of april.

interesting.

as the tagesanzeiger rightly observes that would add about 10 million germans to the population (plus almost another million german speaking citizens of alsace, vorarlberg, & bolzano) — just a couple of months ago the SVP, never afraid of playing the lowest available instruments of fear, uncertainty, and doubt, staged a campaign claiming that the ETH was being overtaken by german professors (skillfully representing sliced statistics to “prove” their point).

according to the tagesanzeiger, the german embassy in bern when asked for comment, was just laughing out loud. probably the best reaction to any of the SVP motions…

…except, perhaps there’s more behind this, as der schweizer narr writes: right-wing politicians in switzerland and elsewhere in europe are voicing their opininon that the EU is doomed to fail and that we are currently seeing the beginning of the end of the EU — the SVP motion could be interpreted to play the separatist tune and try and solicit resonance from similarly minded circles in those surrounding regions.

is there method to the madness?

my grandfather was a sea-faring man.¹

my grandfather was a sea-faring man, and, what is more, he helped create an island… an island that is still visible today.

he was employed by the North German Lloyd aka Norddeutscher Lloyd as an officer, his last ship was the steamship goslar. shortly before the outbreak of world war II the goslar was on its way back to germany and had just passed the panama canal when adolf the terrible declared war on poland. to avoid being captured by the british marine (who was patrolling the atlantic) and also avoid US ports (and the US coast guard) the crew of the goslar had disguised the ship as at first a russian merchant ship and later apparently even sailed under american flag and where slowly making their way along the north-east south american coast until they reached suriname, then a dutch colony, where they anchored during the night of september 5, 1939, and applied for asylum.

at first things seemed to have been fairly relaxed, with the officers of the goslar even being invited by the citizens of paramaribo, that, however, changed on may 10, 1940, when germany invaded holland. the captain of the goslar had the ship moved into the middle of the river suriname and instructed the crew to scuttle the ship in the middle of the river — there are different reports regarding the reasons, and unfortantely, my grandfather has long since died otherwise i could have asked him. one version of the story is that the goslar was sunk to prevent it from falling into allied hands, another version, reported in the june 27, 1943, edition of the st petersburg times, is that the goslar was sunk in the hopes of blocking the harbour and bringing the bauxite export to a standstill (or at least slowing it down). there is even an implied link to an attempted coup to overthrow the government of the dutch colony, as reported in the december 1, 1941 edition of the pittsburgh press according to which the goslar was scuttled as part of the attempted coup. perhaps all stories are just different sides of the same coin.

the crew of the goslar along with my grandfather was then interned in suriname as prisoners of war. apparently there were a couple attempts of escaping from the internment camp, but none of them successful.

the goslar was never raised. according to the report in the st peterburg times it actually helped improve the harbour and bits and pieces of it were re-cycled by the US troops then stationed in suriname. if you look at google maps, you can still see the goslar today!

(larger view)

so, in a way, my grandfather (and the crew of the goslar) created an iron island…

after a long day on the train — starting with the 8:43 ICE International train from cologne to brussels, then the Eurostar to london st pancras, followed by the virgin pendolino from london euston (yep, a short walk from there) to oxenholme lake district, and, the last train for today, the First Penine 185 class service to windermere — we have finally arrived at the riverside hotel in ambleside.

the riverside is a small hotel run by david and brenda milne a bit outside ambleside, right next to the river rothay on the quiet under loughrigg lane leading from ambleside to rydal. our first impression: a lovely, well-lead hotel in a quiet spot of ambleside. nice. also, we like our room right at the top of the house with a window towards the rothay river. unusual for a UK hotel: the shower really does work and is not just a trickling-when-i’m-grown-up-i’ll-be-a-real-shower which we’ve encountered so often elsewhere in the british isles. all very promising

dinner was at zeffirellis, a restaurant recommended by our friends p & w (as well as our host david) — a vegetarian italian restaurant with an interesting menu. the food is good, as are the drinks (red wine for mrs d, a theakston for me) and the waiters are really friendly.

so far, so good let’s see how this all turns out…

good night.

ever wondered what happens behind the scenes of touristic switzerland? ever wanted to know how the swiss manage to present one of the most beautiful places on earth in such impeccable order? ever interested in the music that drives the swiss?¹

wonder no more: here’s a rare behind the scenes look at switzerland:

now you know the true story…

thanks to the excellent wordpress mobile pack wordpress plugin i’m pleased to announce that d2h.net is now mobile enabled: if you visit it on your android or iDon’t, err, iPhone you’ll get a mobile browser-friendly version of our web site. also, http://m.d2h.net/ will take you to the mobile version directly as well.

oh, and you might have noticed, i’ve re-organized the site structure slightly, the blog is now directly at the root of the site.

easy salad:

• about 125g rucola leaves
• about 80-100g smoked salmon
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 teaspoons of whole-grained mustard
• salt
• lemon juice

cut or shred the salmon into little pieces. wash the rucola leaves in a colander and shake off the excessive water. mix the rucola, and the salmon pieces in a bowl. add the oil and the mustard along with a couple of squirts of the lemon juice. mix well. season well with salt.

add croûtons if you like.

the last day of our irish pilgrimage! after another good breakfast at the newgrange hotel we pack once more and enter our pilgrims bus — which this morning has grown in size: morris, our excellent driver, swapped our smaller bus yesterday evening for a bigger one as he’s going to pick up a group of 50 at dublin airport right after dropping us off.

the final “building blocks” of our pilgrimage are kells and the hill of tara.

after a short ride we get to the little town of kells and disembark. first stop: the large celtic cross that used to stand in the middle of a busy crossroads but has now been relocated a little outside the town center. it’s been damaged — whether that damage originates with that unlucky encounter with that “cumbersome schoolbus”¹ or has been inflicted earlier is hard to tell — but still interesting nevertheless.

from the cross we make our way up to the site of what used to be the monastery of kells and is now a normal church — a church with four high crosses and a replica of the book of kells, though!

next and last pilgrimage stop: the hill of tara — another site close to the river boyne. legend has it that tara was the seat of the high king of ireland, the árd rí na héireann. was is known as fact is that the hill of tara was the site of iron age hilltop enclosure as well as the site of a neolithic passage grave. the hill itself offers a nice view across county meath (including slane which we visited yesterday). its other prominent features are a tea room and two (2) souvenir shops…

the visit to tara concludes our pilgrimage, our next and final stop is dublin airport with most of our co-pilgrims flying back to frankfurt and düsseldorf in the afternoon, and with mrs d and i taking the aircoach bus into dublin as our flight back to zurich will not leave until tomorrow.

dublin airport is busy, and we just have moments to grab our luggage, say our “goodbyes” and then we are all of a sudden by ourselves again. after some initial trouble we manage to find the aircoach bus stop, buy a return ticket and are soon on our way into dublin city center. the ride takes about 40min (longer than the first time when we used that tunnel which the aircoach buses don’t).

our hotel, the o’callaghan davenport hotel is right around the corner of the marrion square north aircoach bus stop. the room is OK and we just drop our luggage off and make our way to trinity college to visit the book of kells exhibition.

we are, not surprisingly, not alone in our quest, lots of tourists (american but also german) along with bus loads of school kids. we manage to squeeze in and slowly make our way through the very interesting exhibition explaining the background of the book of kells but also how it probably was created. fascinating and well worth the money. also, a very nice closure of our pilgrimage

the library’s long room is nice but nothing to get really excited about: it’s a typical old library. i had hoped for more trinity college or even ireland related material to be on display but instead get treated to an exhibition about napoleon bonaparte. hmph.

after the cultural part we are in dire need of a tea and something to eat. following the recommendation of ms p we follow the signs in grafton street for the powerscourt shopping center where we have a very nice “high tea” in the old courtyard — any thoughts on returning for dinner are kind of squashed when around 17:15 the staff of the café start collecting the menu cards and closing down. on leaving we find out that 18:00 is closing time — worse than germany in the bad old days of the ladenschlußgesetz! and this is the capital or ireland!

our walk back to the hotel is interrupted and severely cut short by the onset of very heavy rain. luckily we do have our umbrellas with us, but by the time we reach our hotel we are still a bit wet.

being tired all of a sudden (anti-climax?) we decide to stay at the hotel for the evening and conclude our ireland adventure with a couple of pints of cidre and guinness in the hotel bar.

mrs d and i slept surprisingly well this night, given the fact that one of the main thorough-fares passes the hotel just a couple of meters away.¹ breakfast is efficient and good and the waitresses are actually quite friendly and even know about gluten-free food for mrs j.²

the weather has become rather irish: it’s raining when we set off for a walk in the boyne valley, and it’s treating us to several showers on the otherwise rather pittoresque walk. in contrast to the previous walks we are to go by ourselves in silence and since we return to the bus mrs d and i for once can walk as it pleases us instead of forming the tail-end. rather quickly the whole group disperses over the length of the path, and i rather enjoy the quietude and the breathtaking scenery.³

next stop is newgrange, or rather the brú na bóinne visitor centre and the knowth neolithic passage grave. mrs dr, who has so far been doing a fantastic job translating for our non-english speaking co-pilgrims, unfortunately is under the weather today and mr tambour inquires whether i could be of assistance. i agree on condition that i can make things up if i loose the plot — to which he laughingly agrees. so, to cut a long story short: i learn quite a bit about knowth and its history through the milleniums — our group is a bit surprised to learn that knowth and the other mounds nearby are in fact modelled after what science assumes to be advanced flying objects and probably served as intergalactic beacons similar to the lighthouses of the 19th and 20th century…

…ok, ok, just kidding i try my best to translate everything⁴ and seem to get the job done in a half-decent way.⁵ knowth is the largest passage grave site in the area and even contains over one third of all megalithic art in all western europe! it’s also quite special in that several different cultures made use of it through the milleniums. fascinating stuff. as is the fact that knowth predates the pyramids by about 500 years! i quite enjoy the visit to knowth and the brú na bóinne visitor centre and am quite impressed by it.

after lunch at the visitor center we are on our way once more — the weather is becoming increasingly more friendly — and, with a short stop at the site of the battle of the boyne, visit monasterboice and the hill of slane.

monasterboice is most famous for its high crosses and has a couple of rather well-preserved specimen. it’s also a “living” grave-yard: “living” in the sense that it’s still in use today.

the last stop today is the hill of slane where st patrick supposedly lit the first easter fire. today it’s a ruined church with a churchyard and no fire — but lots of rain all of a sudden gushing down on us and we rather hastily beat a retreat to our waiting bus.

all in all a rather interesting day, knowth impressed me the most, i’ve to say.⁶

after a rather good night and an equally good and relaxed breakfast¹ at hotel doolin we pack once more and embark on the long trip across ireland, going from the atlantic west coast all the way to navan. the weather is not as good as it was yesterday with clouds covering most of the sky.

we don’t just go to navan directly but instead take the scenic route. our first stop is at burren national park, the smallest of the 6 national parks in ireland and part of the larger area the burren: a karst landscape exhibiting the typical karst limestone pavement and also host for a number of megalithic tombs and portal dolmens — rather impressive. after some time to our own we continue through the rather barren looking landscape — mr tambour cites edmund ludlow, an english parlimentarian, who is supposed to have said during counter-guerilla operations in 1651–1652:

a country where there is not enough water to drown a man, wood enough to hang one, nor earth enough to bury him
— [h2g2, hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy]²

we stop at burren house near ballyvaughan for a tea, some shopping,³ and some decompression. it’s the last chance to see the atlantic on our pilgrimage as from now on we are going to go east again.

aside from a short lunch stop in one of the little towns on the way east we stay on our pilgrimage bus until we reach the monastery of clonmacnoise in the afternoon.

the monastery of clonmacnoise was founded by st ciaráran in 545 AD. it was strategically located on the main east–west land route through ireland at that time. by the 9th century it had become the center of religion, learning, craftsmanship, and trade in ireland and was in fact a european academic focal point at the time. it’s not hard to imagine that from places like clonmacnoise western civilization was indeed brought back to the continent (and, thus, saved) as thomas cahill writes in his book how the irish saved civilization.

after an audio–visual about clonmacnoise in the visitor’s center we go and explore the ruins of the monastery.

it’s in the early evening when we arrive at our hotel in navan, the newgrange hotel — which despite looking rather old is supposedly only three years old! interesting.

at dinner we are joined by mr kleemann, the owner of the travel agency that arranged the hotels and our bus. it transpires that mr kleemann is originally from franconia in northern bavaria. he seems rather excited to see us — unfortunately that excitement doesn’t carry over to sponsoring the drinks oh, well, it was worth a try

after dinner we invite ms r for a pint of guinness — it’s been, after all, my birthday

p.s.: navan is a rather special city name: it’s one of the few places having a palindromic name!

it’s sunday. our last night at the ballygarry house hotel was quiet for a change, which is nice. also, as long as our group is having breakfast, we are spared the rather annoying radio blast.¹

after breakfast mrs d and i pack our stuff and join the rest of the pilgrims in our pilgrims bus. the first stop today is in listowel — apparently the literary capital of ireland. our stop is short: mr tambour, our pilgrimage guide, as always, is extremely well prepared and we learn quite a bit about listowel and its literary sons and daughters — but also take a look at listowel’s racetrack during the bus ride from tralee to listowel a co-pilgrim mentioned that apparently writers with a residence in ireland would live tax-free: might that explain the relatively high percentage of writers in relation to the total population? oh, one other thing that’s worth mentioning about listowel: the pedestrian crossing at the newsagents on the main square has an absolutely cool sounding free-to-walk alarm…

it’s a short stop only as we need to catch the 10:00 ferry from tarbert across the river shannon and after 20min or so we are on our way again.

the ferry across the river shannon is a double-ended, open top type of ferry with integral ramps which just drop down to the concrete ferry slips. we do make it to tarbert with about 10min to spare and take the opportunity to have a look across the shannon estuary. the crossing itself is fairly eventless (ignoring that strong shower just before we reach the other side of the river shannon) and we are soon on our way through county clare to lahinch with a short stop at kilkee to have a look at kilkee cliffs.

lahinch means lunch-time! we get dropped off at the sea promenade and mrs d and i do find a nice pub-cum-restaurant, the shamrock inn where we have a rather nice little lunch. it’s a popular place with the locals it seems and service is very friendly and prompt. the food is excellent (as is my pint of guinness )

at about 14:00 we reconvene at our pilgrims’s bus and are off again. next stop: brigid’s well — yep, there’s another one!² this one, in contrast to the other wells we’ve seen so far, is located directly next to the main road and sits to the side of a pub and below a cemetery. interesting combination that. the highlight of our visit is another story by our master story teller, ms k, about the celtic goddess brigid.

of the three places, cemetery, well, and pub, we unfortunately only get to see the well and are soon on our way again to the cliffs of moher!

now, the cliffs of moher: a name that seems to have jumped right of the pages of the hobbit, conjuring up images of wild, remote, difficult to reach cliffs…

well…

…not exactly. if there are any links to hobbit land, then it must be the sticky spider’s web of the black forest of mirkwood which trapped bilbo’s dwarf companions — the cliffs of moher are one gigantic tourist trap. the scenery is nice, what with dramatic cliffs and views west.³ that is true — just don’t look at the king-sized cafeteria, the exhibition center⁴, and a large shopping area selling all the kitsch ireland can throw at you — plus several smaller shops (more kitsch and even more kitsch). mrs d and i speed up to the cliff tops on either side, take a peek at the tower on the north cliff, decide to not pay the entrance fee for the tower, and fight our way back down to the cafeteria — the wind is blowing strongly today — and have a cup of tea, take a look at the kitsch on sale, and settle down to enjoy the sun.

from the cliffs of moher tourist trap our pilgrimage continues towards doolin. instead of going there directly by bus, we get to do a little walk today and approach it from lough north, a nice little walk taking us through the west irish coastal scenery.

our hotel in doolin, hotel doolin, is a newly build hotel in a modern, contemporary style, quite nice. dinner is is the adjoining pub–restaurant, a bit relaxed and not as speedy as the busy ballygarry house hotel, but i quite like it. the food is excellent!

after dinner we split up into little groups and swarm out into the scattered village of doolin to visit the pubs — tonight is “irish pub night”! mrs d and i opt for the “original one”, gus o’connors, founded in 1832.

when we arrive at about 21:45, the live music is already playing (a bit slowly still, but picking up steam [literally] as the night progresses). we settle in with a pint of guinness and cidre and enjoy the music and also the chat with our co-pilgrims.

quite a day