Uneasy Metamorphosis

So I walked down into Limerick city on Wednesday. I just walked around, found bookstores (chains), the train station (small), the tourist information shop (pathetic), and the river (big and fast). But mostly I looked at people. You know how at American catholic schools the skirts are almost scandalously short? Well, Ireland seems to have noticed that, too. As school let out at 3:00, I noticed hordes of young girls in ankle length pleated skirts. And the Irish nuns (surely the priests would not have mentioned it) must also have noticed that the pleats on the short skirts emphasize the sway of young girls’ hips in a most noticeable way. These long skirts are also pleated, but the pleats do are sewed down until after the gluteal curve so that there is no sway in the skirt at all. They have kept the sweater and tie combo, so I must say that it is the most unattractive ensemble. That must have been the intent, I’m sure.

The city of Limerick is working desperately to overcome a rather bleak history of poverty and violence. There are pedestrian zones and smart shops, the fashions in the boutiques are, well, fashionable, and there are little parks dotted all around. But the pedestrian zones are grimy and small, the fashions, while fashionable, are not apparently worn by anybody in the street outside the shops, and the parks are full of litter and sad people. Of course, the same could be said for any urban area. EU sponsored building is all around, too, so there are cranes everywhere putting up modern glass and steel multi-storey office buildings. But it’s not so easy to modernize in a place that hangs onto history, good or bad. Downtown is mostly two, maybe three stories high. The Glass-n-Steel is mostly in the suburban ring area. Even though big shopping centers are coming into vogue, there is still a certain separation of goods that requires a person to go to more than one shop for items. For example, pharmacies hang onto all the drug business, even over the counter stuff and first aid items. In the down town area, there were many more specialty shops like in Europe where you get vegetables here, meat here, and dry goods here. There were also a number of Indian and West African specialty shops. One car repair shop had all the signs in Czech. The word “pump” in Czech is “pompy”. I thought that was funny.

The treatment of Irish language here is very interesting. The University student who picked us up at the airport said, “I’m not bilingual. I just know English and Irish.” I’m still thinking about what that meant to her. Of course, on the surface it meant that she didn’t speak any other European languages, but somehow it also links English and Irish in an interesting way. I heard many people greet each other in Irish, and then converse in English, which was also true at the University as well as downtown. Thus, so far is seems that Irish is used for social formulas while content is left to English. I’ll ask about this when my Irish language class starts next week.

Limerick is also known as the literary location of Angela’s Ashes. This was the very first book that Ralph recommended to me that I read! At the very small and utter stereotyped Tourist Information center, they advertised literary tours where you go see the locations detailed in the book, which is a litany of poverty and violence, by the way. I suppose, for my liberal arts education, I should go. When we took students in Dublin on the literary pub crawl, our group won most of the prizes they were giving away! I doubt I’ll have as much luck here.

Thomas, my brother, told me stories of his trip to Venezuela where nothing dried. Well, Thomas, the same is true of Ireland. Nothing dries. I had to turn on my little, tiny room heater to dry my towel so it would be dry for the first time since I arrived. I’m pleased to report that my little stratagem worked perfectly. To do a load of wash and one dry costs 4.80 Euro, and the washers are tiny. Gadzooks!