Growing Up and Reminiscing about it

"My" street

I did most of my growing up in a section of Bern called Holligen. Actually, Ausserholligen, since there is an outer and an inner Holligen, although the whole place consumes less than a square mile. Not exactly the most affluent area, but it does have a castle! It's quite old. According to this and the Wikipedia page, it is probably older than 800 years, although what is there today is at most 500 years old and much of it has been remodeled and added since then.

The Wikipedia page has a much nicer picture.

I'm not happy with the picture above, but it is the best I could do. The grounds were off-limits when I was growing up in that area, although my brother admitted that he and some friends had snuck in at some time. He wasn't very specific about what happened after that. Today it is a conference center.

Die Krippe an der Krippenstrasse. Built in 1906.

The street where we had our apartment is named after the day-care center, or creche as they call it here in Ireland. One of my aunts worked there for a while and ended up adopting one of the girls whose parents kept forgetting to pick her up.

We lived on the middle floor to the far left.

On each balcony there is is a closet, kind of like a shed, to store things. We had a cabinet out there filled with tools and junk people keep in their garage. The cabinet almost reached the ceiling, but not quite, was too heavy and wedged in to be moved, and there was a small gap between it and the wall it stood against.
The reason this is important has to do with the Teppichklopfer my Mom used to use on us kids when we got out of hand. We had grown enough that we were taller than her, but were still in much need of disciplining (at least in my Mom's opinion).
So, this common household tool came in handy once in a while.
At some point my sister and I began feeling (on our back sides ;-) that my Mom had too much of a strategic advantage with this advanced weaponry and we let it slide behind the closet in the balcony shed. Without the help of strong movers many years later when she moved out of that apartment, that carpet beater was out of reach and that period of our upbringing ended abruptly.

The library at the elementary school.

The primary school was a five-minute walk away. I loved the library! The librarians liked my frequent visits and they were my gods until one day when I brought back a book that had clearly gotten very wet at some time before I checked it out. When I returned it, the librarian accused me of having read it in, and dropped it into a bathtub. I assured her that it was exactly in the same state I had gotten it, but she remained skeptical. How could she not know that I would never treat a book like that? Unfathomable. Even gods do not know everything.

My 3rd and 4th grade building.

I spent four years in the Steigerhubel school buildings. Each building had four class rooms and each building had a name so us beginning learners could find the right building. My last two years there were in the badger cave.

On the right side of the building is a secluded covered area where my friend Peter let me try my first cigarette. I didn't care for it and never picked up the habit. I noticed that now there is a security camera back there. I guess nowadays they do more than having their first smoke back there.

We weren't the only ones smoking. Behind the school is the incinerator where the city of Bern burns its trash. Real estate is too expensive in Switzerland to be used for landfills, and ground water is heavily protected. You can walk up to a fountain and drink the water that comes straight out of the ground and it probably tastes better than any other water you ever had before. But that means trash has to be burned.

The fountain in front of the highschool. I have often drunk from it.

The stacks keep getting better and better filters to protect the air. Nevertheless, not a lovely sight. Maybe the filters weren't as good when I was a kid, or there are still some particles that escape. I remember it would sometimes snow in Holligen but nowhere else in the neighborhood. The smoke was seeding the clouds or the steam condensed into snow.
The heat that is generated is used to heat the university hospital on the other side of the incinerator and some other public buildings.

The school playground has improved too since then. Of course, I had to try it out!

Some things, like the building below, have not improved and are condemned now. We used to walk past it on our way to highschool.

The note attached to it asks whether the writer would be allowed into the building to take some photographs. He has heard that it will be torn down soon.

Let me in!

Walking further down the street along my daily path to highschool, we pass the university hospital with the women's clinic that wasn't here back then.

I seem to remember the buildings below looked like that back then. Maybe a little less graffiti but the level of soot seems similar. Maybe time for a wash and a fresh coat of paint.

The highschool has been repainted and they added a play ground. Things certainly have changed. Our hated gym, the one with the warped floor from the boots of the soldiers who had been stationed there during WWII, has been torn down and replaced with a multifunction facility.

I didn't take a picture of it because it is an ugly metal cube to the left of the picture below, but I am sure it is much nicer inside now than the torture chamber we had back then.

My Dad used to go to school here and maybe his Mom. I get conflicting information about that, but the buidling is certainly old enough: It was built in 1903.

On several trips to Switzerland over the last couple of years I have met with several of my schoolmates from back then. It has been interesting to hear what they have done and experienced over the last thirty years or so. All of us have memories about going to school here. By telling them one to another we can all refresh ours and hear things we didn't know back then.
Something we all knew was forbidden was to leave the school grounds and sneak into the bakery across the street. But, being teenagers, many of us did anyway because we could resist the tempting bread and chocolate for sale over there. And the urge to be naughty ;-)

The forbidden bakery.

No wonder it still exists. I bet the owner makes a fortune off those kids across the street. A pure gold mine and it is not even illegal! I'm looking forward (I think) to when I get to read the blog of my daughter's childhood memories. Or maybe they'll use a direct mind link by then.

The next generation.

Ripoffair

York Minster

Two weekends ago we flew to Leeds in England to drop off Anika so she can finish her semester abroad at the University of Leeds. We stayed over the weekend to see Leeds and explore the surrounding area. Leeds is nice, but (old) York is so close, a twenty-minute train ride, and there is so much to see there, that we spent the better part of two days there. You can view my pictures on picasa.

A tomb stone in a cemetery on the grounds of Leeds University. I've never seen the word reclict in that context. Also, what kind of stuff did he sell?

One disapointment were our flights. Ryanair was the only one that had direct flights between Dublin and Leeds, so we thought we would give them a try. Never again! They are known as a cheap airline which avoids the main airports and flies to the smaller and older ones, similar to Southwest in the States. It is popular with tourists because of the prices and those smaller airports sometimes happen to be actually closer to the beaches in southern Europe and are easier to get in and out of.

Maybe this used to be Thomas Callon's store. They sell stuff.

Ryanair is notorious for advertising flights for a couple of euro and then slapping on fees for everything imaginable until the price matches a regular airline ticket. The Irish government enacted a law to stop this and the advertised prices are now closer to what you'll eventually end up paying. Except in our case...

The city wall around York is still almost complete and you can walk on it around the perimeter of the old town.

Ryanair is often in the News. First about their misleading pricing practices and fees, then for thinking about letting passengers stand on short flights, making flight attendants co-pilots, or for requiring a credit card to use the on-board bathrooms.

From The Guardian

Of course, most of those are publicity stunts with no chance of getting implemented. I knew they had a bad reputation, but briefly researching them for this blog post made me realize how crappy and unsafe they are. Google "Ryanair News" and read about the various near misses they had only this year! The most recent one that showed up in my search has been reported on April 19, 2013. This weekend they are in the News for claiming charges were taxes they had to pass on to customers. Of course, a company like that is also not nice to their employees. They are accused of having their employees sign "slave contracts" and Ryanair may face a boycot over it in Norway.

Our trouble with Ryanair started in the morning flying out to Leeds. I couldn't get through security because I had the wrong boarding pass. Ryanair's web page printed both boarding passes, out and return, but we thought those were duplicates and grabbed only half of them. No big problem. Back to the checkin desk to have them print new ones. The agent told me there would be a fee and I would have to go to the ticket window to get them. First shock: 50 euro for repritning a boarding pass! That's more than a return ticket for that route, if you buy it early enough.

It's sorta getting Spring

After I paid the fee, got my handwritten receipt, I had to queue at another counter to have the missing boarding pass printed. Now it was almost too late for boarding. Lee Ann and Anika were already on the plane, and I was stuck in the security line. By the time I got to the gate, the door was closed and the gate agent had left.
The plane was still there, though, and its door was still open. I called Lee Ann and she charmed a flight attendant into coming to get me. I think the reason they were able to do that was the fog in Leeds and the one-hour wait for it to lift.

Another rite of Spring.

The 45-minute flight was uneventful. There was water dripping on me from somewhere (I think it was condensation, hopefully not water from the outside through a hole) and the door handle cover of the emergency exit kept falling off: the velcro had worn off. Food service was quick. The cheapest thing you could buy was a bottle of water for three euro. The service had to be quick, because there were also duty free things to be sold, smokeless cigarettes (after a brief announcement that they were not to be smoked on the plane or in the lavatories), and lottery tickets! The luggage compartments over our heads had large stickers on them, advertising apples from Spain.

When you go online to buy a ticket a barrage of ads begins and it is easy to click on something on that confusing web site that gets added to the ticket price. For example, we bought travel insurance by accident. And off course, amidst all this, you are supposed to read the detailed and complex rules. A woman who had to pay more than US $400 to have her boarding passes printed sued Ryanair in a Spansh court and won. Unfortunately, the ruling was later overturned.

I'd rather eat Kinky donuts than fry Ryanair ;-)

On our way back, I got hit a second time. Ryanair allows a single piece of luggage to be brought on board. Lee Ann was able to stuff her handbag into her duffel bag. I had my backpack with my laptop and camera equipment and a tiny bag for my clothes for three days. Both were full, and neither fit into the other. They made me check my bag: Another 70 euro down the drain! Never mind that this bag was not much bigger than two pair of rolled up jeans, nor that I had flown to Leeds with those two bags on board a Ryanair flight.

Live and learn and never fly Ryanair again, but watch out, they are headed for the US!

Connemara

We spent Easter weekend in Connemara, an area on the west side of Ireland. We got lucky: two of our three days there were sunny. Lee Ann remarked that that was the first time since she has moved here when it did not rain for a whole day. And we got two of those in a row! The third day was rainy, but even then we were able to get some cool pictures with a dark and mystic mood to them.

Maybe the mood was more misty than mystic, but I'm happy about how the pictures turned out anyway. You can see all of them on my Picasa album.

I know how the Easter bunny relates to Easter: It was the first animal Jesus saw when he came out of the tomb after his resurrection. But the association of lambs with Easter has always been a mystery to me; until now. Driving around Connemara, we saw a million sheep. And many of them had cute little lambs by their side. Easter is their season. By summer, they will all be teenagers in sheep years. Still not sure what all this has to do with Easter eggs, but I'm glad I solved one of the conundrums.

Irish sheep are pretty smart too. A fence is no match for the sheep's skill to get past it and conquer the roads. It seems the grass right next to the road tastes much better than the grass on the meadows behind the fences.

We did a lot of driving to cover a pretty large area. Some day it would be nice to go back and spend more time there and hike around more. Looking at the map to retrace the route we took, brings back chuckles and astonishment at these Irish town and place names.

Days 1: Dublin - Galway - Furbogh - Spiddal East - Spiddal Middle - Spiddal West - Screebe - Rosmuck - Kilkieran - Rusheennamanagh - Bunnahown - Cashel - Glenturkeen - Cloonacartan - Kylemore pass - Leenaun (Leenan).
We spent two nights in a charming old hotel in Leenan. Like many towns here, it has two names: An Irish one (Gaelic) and its Anglicization. We found it fun that it sounds almost like Lee Ann.

Kylemore Abbey

Day 2: Leenaun - Kylemore Abbey - Letterfrack - Letternoosh - Clifden - Gortrummagh - Belleek - Knockavally - Derrycunlagh - Roundstone - Errisbeg - Ballyconneely - Bunowen Beg - Bunowen More - Doonloughan - Clifden - Leenaun.

Roundstone

Day 3: Leenaun - Letterettrin - Gowlaun - Renvyle - Tully - Rusheenduff - Ardnagreevagh - Cloonlooaun - Derryinver - Ballinakill - Letterfrack - Leenaun - Munterowen - Rinavore - Kilmeelickin - Maum - Claggan - Comamona - Carrick Middle - Croaghrim - Clogher - Cong - Derryfadda - Clonbur - Comamona - Maam Cross - Derryerglinna - Oughterard - Tullyvealnaslee - Shanballymore - Currarevagh - Gorterwulla - Curraduff Middle - Curraun Beg - Oughterard - Gortrevagh - Knockkillaree - Ardnasillagh - Porridgetown East - Gortnagroagh - Rosscahill - Knockaunranny - Drimcong - Moycullen - Ballyquirke - Galway - Dublin.
Which one do you like best? I vote for Kilmeelickin, although Porridgetown and Letternoosh are cool too.

Bunowen castle

From the pictures you can tell it is a remote and barren landscape. I expected us to be the only ones visiting, but there were a fair number of tourists. It was not crowded, but we did run into one of my co-workers and his family at the Connemara National Park. The park is small and devoted to the bogs that are so common here and have given livelihood to the locals by providing them with fuel for heat, and grazing land for sheep and cattle. The bogs are also a rich source of folk tales, other tall stories, and artifacts that got buried, forgotten, and preserved by the nutrient-poor bog.

Bog tales in the national park museum (click to read)

This trip was a lot of fun in a beautiful landscape and cute little towns. It reminded me of one of the reasons we now live here in Ireland. Its an interesting and beautiful country. Unfortunately, it is usually wet and hidden under clouds.

Another reason for living in Ireland is that it is a two-hour trip away from Switzerland where we are this weekend. It is cold and cloud covered here as well. With some luck, however, I should get some pictures on that trip as well. Check back here!

The ruin of Renvyle castle

Paddy's Day

Yesterday was St. Patrick's day and Anika and I went into town to watch the parade. We found a front row spot near the end of the route and stood there for more than two hours. It took a while for the front of the parade to reach us and by the time the participants and performers had done the two miles to the place where we were, many of them were pretty exhausted.

It wasn't that easy for us watchers either. We had to wait quite a while -- otherwise you would be behind several rows of people -- and it was also cold and, of course, we got rained on. In the morning before we left home, it was snowing! I was hoping for some interesting Dublin pictures with snow on the ground, but by midday it was all gone. RTE, Ireland's TV network, is making footage from the parade available on its web site. I think they may take it down after a while, but I'm sure it will be on youtube as well.

My pictures are as usual on picasa. The city was packed with tourists. That is usually the case around St. Patrick's day, but this year there might be a few more. Ireland has called for a gathering this year. It asked all Irish descendants and friends around the world to come visit this year. This will help the economy here and also bring people together who may not have seen each other in decades; or ever. Although the crowds were probably thinner yesterday due to the bad weather, judging from the turnout, the Gathering is working.

Anika and I walked back to the train station through the Temple Bar district. This is the main area where people congregate after the parade for a beer or two or maybe a third. It seems people had been practicing starting at least the day before. Empty beer bottles littered the streets. I had hoped to be able to take pictures here of interesting faces, but it was raining again and so Anika and I decided to go back home.

Looking at the information board above, which platform do you think the 16:03 train for Maynooth will leave from? If you guessed platform 4, you would have been correct! Despite having been here for two years now, I keep forgetting that pubic transport here doesn't work like other places. We were standing on platform 7 and, of course, the train never came. When we finally went back down to ask about it, the guy in the information booth told us that we had just missed it. When asked about the platform, he said that extra trains for events like today, always leave from platform 4. Of course! How could we not have known.

Drinking coffee in the train station, waiting for the next one on platform 7.