Party!

Party at Knockanstockan

Not to give anyone the wrong impression, but aside from all the work at Knockanstockan, I had some pretty damn good time partying with some of the coolest people I've ever met from all over the world. For three days straight, we worked during the day, and listened to music on giant stages while jumping up and down and making up our own super cool dance moves. It wasn't quite as crowded as I was expecting, which almost made it nicer because you couldn't go 2 feet without running into a friend or someone you had already met.

Ida and Sinead dancing

We were sooo excited once the festival began because that meant that the one porter potty that the 20 or so of us had been sharing all week multiplied into 20 or so, except that within about 5 hours, they were all even dirtier than ours had been. The mud on the farm also got increasingly difficult to get through, but surprisingly it never got completely out of hand, and there were never any naked mud dances like I had heard there were last year. Tear.

Sinead and Antonio Dancing

Mostly everyone's favorite part of the festival was when the eco-showers arrived. We had been going a week without a shower and finally they set up these absolutely beautiful and enclosed eco-showers that ran at a temperature of somewhere around 45 degrees Fahrenheit. Even though I couldn't really breathe while I showered, it was still a vast improvement to my last cleaning adventure. A couple of days earlier I had stupidly followed Jared and Sebastian with a few other people up a mountain and over thorny bushes up to my arms just to get to a freezing cold and dirty river. So an eco-shower in our own lovely muddy farm was quiet an improvement! And then add an eco-loo which I helped build (essentially a giant hole in the ground with a raised wooden box that had holes cut out of it in which to shit covered in a tipi) and we were all grand.

Eco-Shower

So overall, the entire camp experience I'd say was a huge success. Although there were definitely mixed opinions about it all (some thought it was horrible conditions, others had a lot of fun) I had a blast. I only wish I hadn't spent so much damn money, but I guess that just means I'll be eating €1.77 chicken baguettes from Londis for the next few days and no more pints for a while. The fun can't last forever, especially in Dublin when I had to spend €7 for one damn pint of cider at Temple Bar last night. It's getting time to head back to the country and get back to work! For now, I have a 2-day vacation just chilling at my friend's place and then back to the farms come Sunday!

Kevin and Sebastian (Seabass)

Antonio having too much fun

My favorite stage: The Fish Stage

Some additional pics before I go

The americans!!! Raja, me, and Jared, at a super cool pub in Ballyknockan on our last night.


Me at Glendalough, an old monastic ruins in the Wicklow mountains. We got to take a bus there on our last day at the festival.


Party in Kevin's tent. He's the Canadian throwing up the rock on sign, and he also happened to come to the camp with a mansion sized tent that just about fit the entire VSI crew

Kevin and Rory (left to right), both volunteers and also musicians in my absolutely favorite band. I'm staying at Kevin's house for free with a couple of other volunteers this weekend, yay!!

I'm a Cooking Fool

So back at Knockanstockan we were all given tons of work to do in order to get the festival up and running. Before we arrived, the deal was supposed to be that everyone did 6 hours of work, either in the morning or the evening, and the rest of the time was free. Once we arrived, of course, we realized we wouldn't be nearly as lucky.

Besides being just about completely isolated in our giant knockanstockan farm because of no public transportation, we basically just worked all day for the first 4 or 5 days we were at the camp, and then partied all night. I was lucky enough, at least it seemed at first, to be chosen to work the kitchen staff. So instead of having to do physical labor all day like carrying giant heavy palettes of wood across huge fields, I got to chop onions and scrub dishes, and carry giant buckets of water up and down hills. Plus my shift was always 7:30am-1:30pm. I covered breakfast and lunch and got to skip out on the dishes after lunch for the next shift to do.

Of course during the first few days when I still had a ton of energy, I went and helped everyone else for the next 6 hours, building tipis (yes, I mean real giant native American tipis), clearing nettles and plants from the camping fields, and dragging palettes across fields. I was one of the few brilliant people who brought work gloves, which made the work not nearly as bad.

As for the food, there was a constant lack of funds sent to the kitchen, so for the most part, in the morning we cooked porridge with raisins and cut fruit. Sometimes there were rasher sandwiches (bacon sandwiches) and if we were really lucky, there were rasher and egg sandwiches with sausage. I think that only happened once.

For lunch we usually had some type of stew which was basically just tons of chopped potatoes, leeks, onions, carrots, and any other veg we could get our hands on. We'd also do some buttered bread and maybe a bit more sausages or rashers. It doesn't seem like much to cook, but most of our time was spent trying to keep this outdoor kitchen in some form of sanitary conditions without any running water. It was pretty ridiculous actually. Everyone had to wash their dishes in tubs of water that got dirty almost instantly. Halfway through the camp we also found out that we couldn't dump our dirty water in the stream right next to the tent so I had to start lugging the giant buckets of water down to the pig pen an entire field away. That was no fun at all.

Then once the festival started all hell broke loose. It was pretty much impossible to keep volunteers from destroying the kitchen and it would take all morning just to clean up the drunken mess they'd made the night before. After a day of this, most of the kitchen volunteers, including myself, just failed to show up to make breakfast....heheh. And that was about the time we all decided to check out a day early and go to the city, which is where I am now! Yay!

The only other really cool fact about working in the kitchen is that the tent was from the 40's and was used during either some Irish civil war or WWII. I'm not sure which but it's some damn old army tent and it was really cool.

People eating in the tent on a rainy day


Fiona, the coolest kitchen volunteer around and me. She was my mama hen during the entire festival and made sure I was okay and well fed :)


The giant cooking pots and paella dish (even though we never made paella)



Chopping the veg in the kitchen

Dún Laoghaire

Dun Laoghaire

Okay, it's time to take a step back. Now that I'm officially back in Dublin after my rockin' music fest gig I can actually bum around on the internet a bit. Especially now that I have a Dublin library card and can get free internet for an hour a day! Woo!

On my last day in Dublin before the music fest I decided to take an evening and go out to Dun Laoghaire (sounds like Leary) on the outskirts of Dublin. It was a quick 20 minute Dart ride to the seaside, the Dart being a beautifully pristine version of what the L in Chicago could be if it wasn't so crappy.

Dun Laoghaire was absolutely beautiful. I arrived with plenty of time before the sunset and walked a 2ish mile strip up the coast to a small beach next to the James Joyce Museum below. The cylindrical building in the photo is the museum and is apparently where Joyce set the opening scene of Ulysses or something like that. He also apparently wrote Ulysses in Dun Laoghaire and I can definitely understand why.

By the beach there were giant boulders and crazy Irish men were jumping off of them into the FREEZING water. I didn't get any pictures of them but it was a pretty wild scene. As I made my way back to the train station I walked up the pier and tried my first cone of Irish Whipped Ice Cream. It's like frozen yogurt, but it's not as cold and it's really fluffy. So overall it was a wonderful evening and next time I'm in Dublin I'll definitely be staying here and jetting into the city. It was just a much nicer and cleaner and more relaxed place in general. And even better, I'm going back tomorrow and Sat. night to stay at a friend's house from the music festival who lives nearby. So most likely more pictures to come.

Before festival dirtiness kicks in

What a beautiful sunset

Knockanstockan

Knockanstockan Tent Village

I've only got 21 minutes on one of the only computers in town after waiting an hour to get a ride into town. So this is one damn precious blog entry. For the last 10 days I've been camping in a field in Ballyknockan, about 1 hour south of Dublin. I've been part of a national volunteer group called VSI, who sets up work camps all over Ireland. This camp has been helping set up a music festival called Knockanstockan. It's basically a 3-day multi-stage fest where tons of independent bands from all over Ireland and the UK come to play to crowds of people in muddy fields. In the last 10 days, our group of 15 or so international volunteers plus an additional 50-100 independent volunteers have set up and run the festival. For the next 3 days we'll be breaking it down and cleaning up the giant mess that everyone left behind.


So that's the basic rundown. I've had an absolute blast meeting all the people in our volunteer group. There are people from Spain, Belgium, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Sweden, Germany, Canada, the USA, and Italy. I think that's it... For my work, I've been helping out in the make-shift outdoor kitchen everyday around 730am-2:30pm. It's been pretty amazing cooking up real Irish food, but I've definitely had enough of the unsanitized work preparation to last me a lifetime. So for the most part during the morning I worked, I slept in the afternoon, and then stayed up very late having the 'craic' or fun as they say here, mostly just dancing around to live music.

Once the festival started on Friday, everything changed. Before we had been all hanging out in a small building that used to be a pig pen, and then hundreds of people came for the festival and just about everything got dirty and muddy. There were also bands playing all the time, and food to be bought and eaten, so we were all pretty busy. Although the bands were all awesome, and it was a serious treat to see so many good musicians in a short period of time, it was a bit hectic having so many people in our space all at once. Luckily they have all mostly left and we just have to leisurely clean up the place for the next few days, so it should be back to a bit more quiet by the time I get back to camp.


Here are a few pictures of the madness! I'll be back in Dublin on either Wed. night or Thur. so I'll write more then. Cheers!



A view of Blessington Lake (main stage on rt)






My American and Canadian boys (from left: Kevin (Can.), Jared (US), Raja (US))


My friend Ida from Sweden





The Fish Stage (f**king deadly as they say here)

You're Story Checks Out Just Grand

Oscar Wilde in the Park

I've officially made it to Dublin and spent an entire day/night here on my own! It's your average run-of-the-mill modern city from what I can tell, not all that different from downtown Chicago, except without all the skyscrapers. It's got a river running through the center, some great cultural sites, and a ton of awesome pubs. I was actually incredibly surprised at how authentic the pubs in Chicago and LA have been to a true Irish pub. At least to the touristy version that I've found here in Dublin. It's all been pretty much exactly what I was expecting.

My arrival in Ireland did not go off without a hitch though. When I arrived at customs after a wonderfully comfortable 6.5 hour flight (complete with on-demand movies...I watched 17 Again...sooo cute!) I was met by an incredibly inquisitive customs official who did not believe one ounce of my story about what I was doing in Ireland. I was also not being 100 % honest because I had been told they don't like Wwoofers and you shouldn't mention it. So I just said I was staying with friends. The angry little man made me surrender all my papers with phone numbers and contact information and preceeded to make me wait while he called everyone to verify I was not some vagabond who would be running tricks on the street. After only 30 minutes of waiting (not too bad), he took me aside and said it all checked out just grand, and he let me into the country. I got a stern lecture before I was allowed in though because apparently I must say I have much more money if I am to be let into the U.K. for the rest of my travels. And I am not allowed to go anywhere to experience 'culture,' only for big touristy landmarks I'm told. What a strange experience, especially coming from a country where if you don't answer how they please they just don't let you in, rather than take you aside and give you a speech. Guess I got off pretty lucky thank goodness or things may have been over before they even had begun!

Besides that, everything else has been going well. My hostel, although small and semi-gross, only cost me $12 a night and is safe from what I can tell. Yesterday I managed to see Trinity College w/ the largest single room library in the world, The Book of Kells (the most decorated text from the dark ages), a recreation of a Georgian house from the 1800's, and some lively pub grub and music at the oldest pub in Dublin (800 years old!). I've managed to meet 4 people from the midwest, 2 recent graduates of Depaul (hey Mike and Kristen if you're reading this!) and another recent graduate of IU. It always amuses me how you can travel halfway around the world just to make friends from your home-town.

Library @ Trinity College (stealth pic taking skills as it was not allowed)

Music at Brazen Head Pub ~ Oldest Pub in Dublin

On my second day, I'll be checking out the two national museums, the Guinness brewery and an old English jail if I can manage to keep on schedule. And then more music in the evening! More updates to come.

Anxiety and Procrastination

Less than 48 hours and I'll be on a plane to Dublin.  And I have yet to start packing, not to mention even having acquired all the of things that are needed when planning a long-term backpacking trip.  

I have about 5 bags full of necessities sitting in my room at the moment, waiting to be compacted into little stuff sacks and fit into a giant backpack that must somehow be light enough for me to carry.  And this already gigantic pile doesn't even include clothes.  .  

As for my itinerary, it's been finalized through Sept, at least as much as anything can be finalized for this type of trip and it goes as follows:

July 15-17: Dublin (tourist)

July 18-30: Volunteer at Knockanstockan Music Festival (see website below)

7/31-8/1: Most likely Dublin again (tourist)

8/2-15: Wwoof volunteer at Greenan Farm Museums and Mazes (http://www.greenanmaze.com)

8/15-16: Galway (tourist)

8/17-26: Wwoof volunteer at Tullyboy Farm (see website below)

8/26: Belfast (tourist)

8/27: Ferry to Glasgow (tourist)

8/28-30: Edinburgh for Fringe Fest (tourist)

8/30-9/5: Wwoof volunteer at Craigencalt Farm (http://www.theecologycentre.org)

9/5: Somewhere in Scotland, perhaps finding Nessy!

9/6-18ish: Wwoof volunteer at One World Community Farm and Cafe (http://oneworldcommunity.org)

With 2 months planned, that leaves about another 2 months of unplanned adventure if I'm to make it back in time for Thanksgiving.  Although if I'm having way to much fun, I can stretch it another month til the end of December, but I'll have to be back in time for my grandparent's fiftieth wedding anniversary trip to Costa Rica.  Man, life can be so harsh sometimes.  Right now, I'm thinking I'll make it to London by the end of Sept, Netherlands, Belgium, and France in October and Spain in November (and possibly December).   So that's it!  Next time you hear from me it will be from Dublin!