We wandered around Cork today, a surreal experience with so few people on the streets. Tomorrow is Saint Patrick’s Day, which will have no pubs open and all the parades cancelled.
People are being optimistic, hoping that the impact won’t be too great, but taking it very seriously nonetheless. The theatre sign shows they’ll be closed until March 29th at least:
Cork theatre closed until after March 29
Shop signs up give warnings about keeping your distance from others, and pharmacies have taken to printing notices telling potential customers what they do/don’t have (and sometimes appearing to be cashing-in on things a little):
Pharmacy offering 2 masks, 10 gloves and 50ml antibac for €9.95
The roads are a lot less busy, and street signs show advice to wash hands regularly. The below photo also shows a hint of normality still (someone parking on double yellows in the bus lane).
As our enforced staycation continues (due to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis), we headed to West Cork for the day, taking in a few towns on the way to our final stop in Bantry.
There seemed to be a marked difference in the level of health measures taken in different towns as the pressure to close things stepped up.
The first ‘big’ place we passed through was Bandon, ancestral home of Graham Norton and formerly a bit exclusionary towards Catholics – a sign at the walls from the 18th century apparently read:
Entrance to Jew, Turk or Atheist; any man except a Papist
We went on from there along quite narrow country roads, stopping next at a small pub we came upon at a crossroads (the Beehive at Dungannon).
Beehive bar in Dungannon
After a quick non-alcoholic pint and general discussion of the evil virus taking hold, we headed on.
Baltimore was a nice place to stop and have lunch. We ate a fantastic meal of hake, chips and salad while looking out to sea.
Hake and chips from La Jolie Brise, Baltimore
Baltimore has a decent enough seafront and harbour, with regular boat trips out to Sherkin Island, Cape Clear and Fastnet Rock.
The COVID-19 outbreak and subsequent risk of humanity’s weakening and ultimate destruction by gangs of emancipated horses has meant that we are unable to fly off somewhere sunny for a well-earned break… so we’re going to be exploring county Cork for a few days.
First stop was Midleton, which has a food market on Saturday, amongst other attractions including distilleries of whiskey, gin, vodka and er… oil. Cork is known as the foodie capital of Ireland, and the market had a quite a few stalls selling expensive but nice home-made things like wild garlic pesto (from the Ballymaloe stand). I didn’t ask if they had any other under-the-counter remedies, as it seemed like it might cause offence.
There’s actually a lot to Midleton, and it feels like a very solid town with an excellent high street. They also have some sculptures worth a look, including the “Kindred Spirits” feathers, which commemorates the selflessness of the Choctaw Native American people in sending money to the famine-stricken Irish back in 1847, and the significantly less tear-jerking “Flock of Geese And Boy” one near the market:
A gentle start with Julian Barnes (author of loads of books I really like) and Paul Muldoon (Pulitzer Prize-winner for poetry) chatting about life in a very unstructured fashion.
An excellent continuation of the day’s talks with Ed Vulliamy (journalist/writer/singer) and Fiachna Ó Braonáin (Hothouse Flowers / radio presenter) discussing Ed’s book “When Words Fail” as part of the overall topic “Musicians are the heralds of the future”. Not sure if I’d read the book, but I’d gladly go and see him talk and perform any time. Picture below is a grainy effort of a shot during their cover of Mr. Tamborine Man. The audience got behind it well.
A hard act to follow, for sure.
However, the last talk we went to on that Sunday blew the rest away… Tim Smit (do-er of stuff) was an inspiration. He talked about how he came to set up the Eden Project and the Lost Gardens of Helligan, which you’d expect, but also how he went from having a very successful music career to walking away and doing something different.
11-12 noon: Dalrymple’s India. An hour of William Dalrymple presenting some highlights of the last five years of his work on the book “The Anarchy: The Fall of the Mughal Empire and the Rise of the East India Company”. He had some fascinating stories and related them to the current death throes of the British empire and the prevalence of global corporations that appear beyond the law (Facebook vs. East India Company, etc.)
12.30-1.30pm: Up Against The Wall: real-life Narcos, Trump’s wall, etc.
L-R: Carl Bernstein, Misha Glenny, Ed Vulliamy
Out of the dimly-lit hotel, and back to the sunny fields of the main festival area.
View of Borris house
2-3pm: Return to Libya. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author Hisham Matar and the Irish Times’ Paris Correspondent Lara Marlowe talking about the truth behind the disappearance of Matar’s father. Without wishing to appear callous, it didn’t hold my interest well… not due to the subject, but I just didn’t find the interviewing style engaging.
3.30-4.30pm: On a bit of a downer from the last talk, I went to a performance of four 15-minute slots by different people:
Anne Enright talking about something I’ve long since forgotten.
Martha West, who gave an excellent performance of some of her poems about growing up – a real highlight.
Lucy Siegle talking about fast fashion.
Finally, a dessert course of William Dalrymple talking about the Coptic influence on the Celtic church.
To be honest, I wish I’d had a liquid lunch as it might have taken the edge off the afternoon nicely. As it was, I decided to call it a day on the talks after that.
Straight off the Dublin ferry at 5am, we made our way through the quiet streets towards Boris. We weren’t allowed to show up until early afternoon, but thankfully friends in Kildare were awake enough that we could visit them along the way. I was towing the Cabanon trailer tent, which added to the fun and games.
When we finally pitched up in Borris, the hard standing was basically a car park with some fine gravel on it. The neighbours were very friendly, especially one we spent a good deal of time with. She even made us tea in the mornings, and we shared our banana bread. The camping facilities were woeful, unfortunately. For a festival that’s not really aimed at the same demographic as Electric Picnic or Glastonbury, they really should have provided enough portaloos and ensured that they were hygenic throughout – at one point they’d run out of running water.
The shower was a converted horse box, which obviously struck someone as quirky and fun at the time, but was heavily over-subscribed. The only thing in its favour was that I met some interesting people while queuing for it in the mornings.
There were a number of speakers on at any given time slot, so choosing was quite difficult with some of them. Thankfully the same speakers gave different talks throughout the weekend, so if there was one particular person you wanted to see, it would probably be possible if you weren’t so worried about their topic.
The Friday programme was quite speaker-packed, despite the shorter time available.
4-5pm: The West Cork Podcast crew discussed their true crime reporting of the Sophie Toscan du Plantier murder case. It would probably have helped to have been following their series, but I’d read about the case before at least. If I’m honest, I found it a bit ghoulish, but what could you expect?
Garden marquee for West Cork Podcast discussion
5.15 – 6.15pm: Crimes against humanity? Philippe Sands discussing the road from Nuremburg to now with the great Fintan O’Toole.
6.30 – 7.30pm: Water off a duck’s back? Carl Bernstein, Martin Amis and Ed Vulliamy discussing the difficulty of reporting on scandals nowadays when investigative journalists are branded ‘enemies of the people’.
L-R: Martin Amis, Ed Vulliamy, Carl Bernstein
7.30 – 8.30pm: The Misinformation Age: Simon Schama, Misha Glenny and Fintan O’Toole talking about the survival of democracy in a world run by algorithms.
Had to do it, sorry. Vienna is full of Egon Schiele‘s paintings. We saw a lot of them on our first day in the city at the Leopold Museum, and then in pretty much every other gallery too. The last museum we went to (the Belvedere) even had a big exhibition (now finished) about how they came to acquire his paintings, and the use of various technologies to reveal construction and earlier versions of paintings beneath the ones we can see now.
I think it’s fair to say that Schiele was pretty rock ‘n’ roll for his day (unfortunately including allegations of inappropriate behaviour with children), and was very prolific in his output (> 3000 paintings up until his death aged 28 in 1918). We saw a lot of his most famous work, and it’s brilliant and totally original in its style.
Can you have too much Vienna? I doubt it somehow, although you can certainly push your luck with its patisserie.
Today we went to the Kunsthistoriches Museum, which was amazing. In addition to the priceless works of art, it had an awesome cafe, where we had lunch and coffee.
Lunch at the museum
More artwork was then looked-at, followed by hot chocolate and cake at the Cafe Museum on the way back to our hotel. I got to try something on my “to eat” list – this little tortchen is a mini black forest gateau. The cafe itself was ok, if a little odd with large metal balls suspended along the ceiling.
We started the day with cakes from the hotel, then moved on to a proper buffet breakfast.
Suitably fuelled, we went to the Wiener Eistraum, which is German for “sausage pain”. We skated there for quite a long time, but were under no pressure to keep going at the ticket lasted all day and lockers were provided. There were snack stalls around the rinks, where we had these Berliners:
Doughnut with plum jam inside
These doughnuts are called “krapfen” in Austria, which is obviously hilarious.
I wrote “rinks” before, because there were several of them, all linked up with ice corridors and ramps. You could actually skate uphill to a big rink closer to the clock tower of the parliament building.
We got the tram to the train station from close to our hotel in Bratislava. The city’s main train station looks like it has been frozen in time to a great extent – the general feel is one of non-deliberate retro.
Bratislava’s old-school central train station
It took about an hour to get from there to Vienna’s central train station, which was extremely modern and well-appointed… worlds apart.
Vienna is one stunning building after another, with a ridiculous number of top-quality galleries and museums. We were there for four nights, didn’t go overboard with trying to see everything, and still managed to walk about 12km a day.
