November and Norwegia

Hello again, readers. I see now that I'm logged back in here on the ol' blog that I didn't actually post anything for the entire month of November. Nothing all that interesting happened, obviously, or I would have written about it, but here are some highlights:

- Ate sushi! With chopsticks, because I am an adult.

- Went to see the Christmas lights turned on at Grafton Street, where we all met this scary creature and his other half, a woman in a white witch costume at whom I repeatedly shouted, "TILDA SWINTON, I LOVE YOUR WORK."

- Finally went to Fallon & Byrne and to Avoca, two magical Dublin foodie wonderlands.

- Finally watched Brave, which I had somehow failed to do in the entire time it's existed.

- Did some ~networking~

- Did some ~calligraphy~

- Ate a five-course meal at a five-star hotel for Thanksgiving dinner. 

- Went to Norway. 

Obviously, this last one is why we're here. I went to Norway this weekend - a nation whose name would be a lot more fun if it were, as its adjectival form would lead you to believe, "Norwegia" - and it was pretty cool. There was snow on the ground, which, having lived in Ireland for the past three months, I'd basically forgotten was possible. Everyone was attractive. There was a lot of focus on stark, clean, colorless Scandinavian design. It was like an extremely chic and vaguely emo Arendelle, and I was one happy tourist. 

We had two primary goals for our time in fair Norwegia. The first was to be shameless tourists and see as many sites as possible in our very brief visit. The second, of course, was to eat a lot. On both fronts, we succeeded. In our one day of sightseeing, we saw the Vigeland sculpture park (lots of naked people), the Viking Ship Museum (if you bury silk in a box in clay dirt, it will continue to be recognizable silk for 1100 years), a big fjordy island (terrifying in winter), the Norewegian National Gallery (The Scream!!), and the Opera House (structural soundness is nowhere near as important as looking cool). Clearly, I learned a lot at each place we visited. It was quite the day of touristing.

Unsurprisingly, my favorite stops were those places where I was in greatest danger of spending every last dollar that I own. First was the Mathallen food hall. Wikipedia describes it as a food court, but Wikipedia is stupid and wrong. Mathallen is not a food court; it is a dreamland. Once an industrial warehouse, Mathallen is basically just a big ol' barn filled with every kind of food you could ever want to eat. There's a tapas restaurant. (We picked that one for lunch because their menu was in Spanish, and we figured 30% comprehension was better than the 0% comprehension we'd have at the Norwegian menus at all the other restaurants.) There are several bakeries. There's one shop that sells only pies, another that sells only chicken, and a third that sells only cheese. There are multiple artisan grocery shops. There's everything. When we'd finished our lunch, we had to more or less run away from Mathallen, because, without a formal exit strategy, I would have stayed in Mathallen until I literally ate so much that I died.

My other favorite stop was a wonderful store called Granit, which 1) is basically a Scandinavian Crate & Barrel, 2) we referred to as "the pretty store" every time we walked by it, and 3) is precisely what my heaven looks like. They had big geometric stars you could make out of cardboard and hang around your house. They had whole rooms of just storage systems. They had DIY calendars. Scattered around randomly, they had jams and jarred candies and stuff, which I didn't totally understand. They had Christmas decorations. And most importantly, they had craft supplies. 

My friends, I have no idea what I'm buying anyone for Christmas this year. No clue. But after my frenzied shopping spree in the pretty store, I know exactly how it's all getting wrapped. I bought washi tape. I bought twine. I bought some paper. I considered buying a literal stick of wax and stamp press with which to make my own envelope seals, just because the option was presented to me. This store had everything a person could ever need and, again, I didn't want to leave. Family members reading this, I'll warn you now: your Christmas gift from me will probably be average, but it will be wrapped in some flawless Scandinavian hipster art, and you had better appreciate it.

In summary, my bestie trip to Norwegia turned out to be quite the success. And now that we're into December, we're four weeks of classic Christmas-prep insanity from my week back home and my second Eurotrip of the year, a week of travel which, because I live for spontaneity (??), I have not yet planned. See you soon, readers - if you need me, I'll be crafting stuff with my new art supplies from Scandinavia. 

Domerberry Album Review: 1989

This Monday, Ireland celebrated a bank holiday. Schools and offices were closed, I had the day off of work, and I woke up sans alarm feeling as giddy as Vernon Dursley when he remembers there's no post on Sundays. Before long, it was noon, and I was sitting in my pajamas on my couch, scrolling through my Instagram feed, and wondering, "How can I be more basic today?" And then I saw it.

My word. Today was the day of Taylor Swift's new album drop. "Shake It Off" is a hot club banger. I like Polaroids. I needed to make it mine. 

I bought the album, and I soon knew I would have to reprise my role as T Swiz blogger (a la 2012) to write a review. Friends, don't get me wrong: I like this album. A lot. I was very literally dancing around the kitchen while listening to it the first time three times and attempting to sort my laundry. But I have an assertion to make about this album, dear readers, and I make no apologies for it: this is not her best work. 

This is a good album, filled to the brim with fun pop songs. But Tay Tay does not succeed at pure pop in the way that she succeeded in her former brand of pop-country. Red certainly was, in almost all senses of the word, a pop album, but Tay Tay's team still branded it as country, kind of - and it was better for it. In her adamant declarations that this is her first pop venture, T-Money has lost on 1989 the storytelling ethos that made her songs so good back when they still clung to some semblance of country. Polaroids are an apt symbol for this album, because where Taylor once gave us fully-formed stories that made us relate and feel and cry like an eighth-grader, 1989's lyrics give us merely blurry snapshots of the stories that are hiding somewhere behind her sea of one-line choruses and club-banger hook-y jams. 

In scrolling through Tay Tay's Instagram this morning, I found that Billboard's review says 1989 "finds Swift meeting Katy and Miley on their home turf and staring them down." I disagree. 1989 certainly finds T Swiz meeting pop stars on their home turf, but it finds her merely casting friendly glances across the turf at them and inviting them over for tea, not in any way "staring them down." The pop songs of 1989 are good, but in their attempts to mimic current pop trends, the only distinctive thing about them is Taylor's now very recognizable voice - which, if we're being honest with ourselves, isn't good enough to carry an album by itself. 

What can carry and is carrying an album - and, indeed, a career - is Tay Tay's relentlessly charming persona. With her "quirkiness" and her love of cats and filters and sweaters and hair and stuff, Taylor Swift makes you (more and more by the day) want to be her best friend. It is for this reason that I love this album so darn much, even as I can stand back and observe that she peaked musically at Speak Now. (I SAID IT.) The appeal of good pop music lies in its ability to make you love it whether you want to or not, and the appeal of Taylor Swift lies in the exact same practice. Put those two together and you've got an album that I haven't stopped listening to for the past 72 hours. 

LIGHTNING SPEED IMPORTANT TRACKS RUN-DOWN

"Welcome to New York" - absurdly bright-eyed and idealistic about the concept of New York City, which is exactly how I feel about New York City; will feature in every montage of young movie heroines Arriving In The City for the First Time for the next decade without exception, and I will love it every time. 

"Out of the Woods" - verses come so close to giving us an actual story, then she hits that awful chorus and dashes my hopes forever; "fli-ying" is not a word.

"All You Had to Do Was Stay" - DO YOU WANT HIM TO STAY, THOUGH, TAYLOR?

"Bad Blood" - jam. This is a jam. That's all I can say. Good call to put reverb on the chorus to make it sound like there's a throng of angsty teens and twenty-somethings singing along with you, T Swiz, because there is such a throng. It's called everyone who's bought this album. I am their leader. 

"Wildest Dreams" - you are trying very hard to be Lana Del Rey, and I would like you to stop.

"I Know Places" - 1) Title makes me think of "I Know Things Now," which is a little too close to relevant for the content of this song, which makes me a little uncomfortable. 2) Possibly my favorite song on the album. When she hits the chorus for the second time and shrieks out that "WE RUN!" at 1:39, all of my can is lost, and I, in fact, cannot even. 

Taylor Swift, I stand by my assertion that you have done better than 1989. But man, this album is good.

A Series of Fortunate Events

Before I begin this post, which (to spoil the surprise) is just going to be a very run-of-the-mill post about How My Life Is Going In Ireland, I need to have a small rant about the 2004 film Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. 

For those of you who have forgotten or may not know, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events is one of the worst films ever made. For starters, the book author's name is included in the already verbose title, in the great tradition of such movies as J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Nicholas Sparks' The Notebook. A Series of Unfortunate Events was and is completely flawless as a book series, and the casting of the film was and is completely flawless (Jim Carrey as Count Olaf? Meryl Streep as a paranoid elderly woman in Victorian mourning dress? Cedric the Entertainer as an old-timey police officer? THIS?!), so, by all accounts, this movie should have just rocked, relentlessly. But, as I was reminded upon finding it on Irish network television yesterday afternoon, this movie is terrible, and that just makes me a little sad. I needed to get that out there. Forgive me.

What does not make me sad, however, is how fantastic my last week was. It began at a hotel in Wexford where I returned from lunch to find this in my room.

My friends, no week can be bad when it starts with strawberries and a sundae flute full of melted chocolate. The first part of the week went by with a very busy work schedule and not a lot of things as exciting as the above chocolate, but then on Tuesday night, my friends appeared!! 

FRIENDS! 

From there, the week continued to be (despite a 24-hour flu pestilence descending on everyone at O'Connell House, myself included) almost ceaselessly fantastic. On Wednesday, we went to see the new Nicholas Sparks movie. There were mullets and cornrows. There was teen pregnancy. There was angst. There was a lot of James Marsden working as a mechanic. It made for a good afternoon. On Thursday, I ate an artisan grilled cheese culled before my eyes from a block of coolea so large that a bystander asked if it was a loaf of bread. And then I went to a playground with my friends and did a lot of swinging and stuff. 

And then there was Friday. Friday was one of those rare and glorious city days where, all day long, you know your way around, you know all the Cool Stuff To Do, and you feel as if you are the quirky-cute heroine of a charming rom-com in which Daniel Radcliffe could be hiding around any nearby corner waiting to love you unconditionally until death do you part. First, I took my visiting friends to the National Gallery, like a hip young urbanite would do. I looked at art. I created some funny art+caption Snapchats. I lived. After this Living and Art, I took my friends to the eclectic little restaurant I'd been eyeing, where we sat next to a life-sized gold sequined statue of a horse and ate sun-dried tomato tapenade and a pasta made out of pears. From there, we lucked into a free guided tour of the grounds of Dublin Castle and spent an hour coloring at a children's art display at the Chester Beatty Library. We went to Penneys (aka PRIMARK, Y'ALL), and I bought polka dotted dress pants for less than five euro. The sun set. 

And for these reasons, I am happy to say, The Domerberry was very fortunate indeed.

Breaking: Sarah Likes a Sport

In a move that is somehow both timely and outdated, I have decided this week to tell you all about my new favorite sport, hurling. This topic is timely, fresh, hip, and relevant insofar as the all-Ireland hurling final is slated for this Sunday. It is outdated and sad in that my sole encounter with hurling – the original all-Ireland final before they decided to end in a tie and require a stupid rematch – was (whoops) two and a half weeks ago. In either case, though, hurling is awesome. Allow me to enlighten you.

Despite the fact that no other country on earth plays or understands this sport, hurling is enormously popular here in its country of origin. Weird, right?

…Oh.

Going into the Match Formerly Known as Final earlier this month, I knew nothing about hurling. I’d heard it was fast-paced.  I’d heard it was violent. I knew who was playing, vaguely. All I knew for sure was that it was a sport – and, as we all know, “sport” in Latin, roughly translated, means “Sarah’s gonna hate every second of this.”

My dear friends and readers, when I thought of hurling, I thought wrong. Hurling is the greatest sport that has ever been. As advertised, the violence is completely senseless and relentlessly entertaining. Pretty much no maneuver is illegal in this sport, including, from what I gather, beating your opponent to a pulp with your hurling wand in the interest of stealing the ball from them. These guys go out there in shiny shirts, tiny shorts, and literally no padding anywhere and just destroy each other for seventy-five minutes…without stopping. There is a halftime built in to the game, but outside of those blessed fifteen minutes, the action literally never stopped. No time-outs. No stopping of the clock. No halt in the action to deal with injuries, because injuries are for far weaker men than hurlers. On two occasions during the game, a player was so badly injured that he could not stand back up. In these instances, paramedics simply ran through the field of play to the player in question, formed a human wall to keep the guy’s own teammates from landing an errant stomp on his concussed head, and basically smacked him around a bit until he could get up and walk it off. I think I saw three substitutions the whole time.

Hurling. Is. Insane.

As the match went on, I eventually realized that hurling reminded me of a lot of other sports I’ve seen through the years. In fact, thought I, hurling might be better called by modified names of several of these sports. What might those be, you ask? Well, well, well.

-       On-the-ground Quidditch with only Beaters

-       Public school lacrosse

-       Soccer at that tense moment right before people stop playing and start just punching each other, plus sticks you can hit people with, minus rules

-       American football back in the Rockne-ish era where your death on the field was not just an occupational hazard but in fact pretty much a guarantee

-       Attempted Murder: The Game

If you can find a way to watch the all-Ireland hurling final (Round Two) this Sunday, I would highly encourage you to do so. The teams in play are underdog Tipperary, whose colors are blue and gold, which is the home county of my ancestors, and who you should clearly be rooting for, and win factory Kilkenny, whom one guy on Tinder described as “the Miami Heat to your Indianapolis Pacers.” Oh, and how do you spell those teams in Irish, you ask? Thiobraid Arann and Cill Chainnigh.

Nothing in this country makes sense. I love it all.

So Hello, I Live in Ireland

This is probably unlikely for anyone who has found their way to this blog, but if you do not know this already, I have recently moved to Ireland. Surprise! I'm doing a year of service here in the employ of my alma mater and will be living right in the center of Dublin from last Thursday until the end of next June. Since I am A) once again international and B) only abroad for a finite period of time, it seemed an appropriate choice to return to the blog I made when I studied abroad. Welcome and/or welcome back, then, to The Domerberry International!

Anyway, with that out of the way, let us commence with the first Ireland blog post: Lessons I've Learned In Five Days As an Irish Poser.

1. Driving in this country is absolutely, certifiably insane. Somehow, I've already ridden in about seven cars since arriving here. The first was a cab ride from the airport. I have no memory of it. Was I conscious? Was I even technically there? Unknown. The second car was a van that was shuttling people from one end of Trinity College to another. It was driven by two students who were blasting the radio, making jokes about our imaginary boyfriends when they should probably have been watching the road, flying around corners, hurtling down alleys about an inch wider than their van, and altogether endangering everyone's lives. This was, while a bit of an adventure primarily because the guys were hot, mostly terrifying. But they were young! They weren't on real streets! This insane style of driving isn't normal, is it?

WRONG. Every car I've been in since arriving here has produced nonstop insanity. You can legally pass cars on the highway in this country by simply waiting for them to slide onto the shoulder a little bit and sneaking past them while a car speeds toward you in the other lane. Nearly all cars here seem to have automatic transmission and nearly zero drivers seem to know how to operate them. Our bus driver for the two-hour drive back from Wexford wore headphones for the duration of the trip. He ran two red lights. Between Irish driving habits and my complete lack of driving ability, let us all thoroughly hope that I never end up behind the wheel of a car in this country, because no one will get out alive.

2. You can't buy alcohol after 10 PM. This is just a fact. Apparently. Learned this the hard way. Thanks, Ireland.

3. If you're pale enough, you can convince Irish people you are one of them. Tonight on my bus home, a pair of men in Stetson hats and a state of general confusion about the Euro stepped on and began to make a big ol' touristy ruckus. In case literally everything else about them failed to give it away, I noticed when they started talking to each other/everyone that they were American. Eventually, after listening for three stops to their spirited discussion with an Irish businessman about why Irish fellers don't wear hats, I spoke up and asked where they were from. To the surprise of no one, they said they were from Texas. I explained that I'd asked because I, too, am American, from Indiana. "Oh!" said the Irish businessman. "I'd have guessed you were Irish!" Just as I was celebrating my successfully European street style and independent city-girl-ing, he added, "...With your complexion." So, lesson learned, y'all. Irish people may laugh at Americans with 1/256th Irish ancestry referring to themselves as Irish, but if you've kept your fair Irish skin and you can keep your mouth shut, you can totally trick them into thinking you're legit.

4. "What's the craic" is actually one of the few conversation starters on Tinder that isn't off-color. I obviously had come across the word "craic" before deciding to move to Ireland for ten months. It means a lot of things, including but not limited to fun, food, possibly alcohol (?), and a whole bunch of other stuff, all of them harmless as far as I know. But I must say, I was still a bit thrown off when a match on Tinder started a conversation with me with simply, "What's the craic?" After all, this is the app that I myself have publicly called a hookup app. Turns out the guy literally just meant, "what's up." Go ahead, dude. Say "craic" again.

5. There is a British equivalent of the Jersey Shore on which the cast is somehow even less intelligible than its American counterparts, and there is an Irish cooking show literally called "Two Fat Ladies." In pretty much every other way, Irish TV is American TV. In case anyone was worried that my productivity would triple in Ireland since I couldn't watch SVU marathons for hours on end anymore, worry not - I totally still can.

Keep checking back for more on my adventures abroad 2.0!