And, well, the answer is probably yes. I do plenty of brilliant (and by brilliant I mean dumb), coordinated things every week. I fall over magically appearing bikes on my way to class. I walk into fire hydrants in the middle of Fred Meyer. And I think it's a great idea to go check out the ocean by plowing down a stone ramp which leads into the ocean, without first noticing that the cobblestones are covered with seaweed. I do a spectacular butt-plant, slide halfway down the ramp, and scramble back up (only to take half the seaweed with me in exchange for half my pride). People might say I need to be more aware of my surroundings. Yes. More specifically, I need to become better at simultaneously being social and moving. It is increasingly evident that kissing the Blarney Stone did not increase eloquence levels in any aspect of my being. But eh, never give up, right?
The Spectacular Episode of the Seaweed in the Daytime is just one example of my adventures in Cobh (pronounced Cove) this past Sunday. Cobh is a small coastal town about 25 minutes train ride from Cork. A friend and I marched the 45 minutes to the Cork train station and made it just in time for the 11 am train out. The ease of taking a train was very exciting to me. I like trains, buses, subways...any sort of public transportation, really. They are great for people watching, the opportunity to observe little snippets of others' everyday lives as people enter and exit--all while maintaining a shared sense of community. I talk about it as if it is a religious experience, and it kind of is. Trains and subways aren't super available on the West Coast, or at least there aren't the hop-on, hop-off opportunities there are here. That said, the train ride to Cobh was beautiful and amazing. Yet again, we sped past another "casual ruin," as my friend likes to call them. Just an unmarked, solitary castle crumbling over the edge of jetty, next to the zoo. No big deal (but we were freaking out).
Cobh is a very nice town. I liked it a little better than Kinsale, which is another nearby, popular coastal destination. Cobh seems larger and a little less...fancy, I suppose. Cobh was the last port of call for the Titanic before its departure for New York. On 11 April 1912, 123 Irish boarded at Cobh, three days before the ship hit the iceberg. Of the 123, 44 survived. In Cobh (and many places in Cork), you will find monuments to those who died in the Titanic disaster. Cobh actually runs an exhibit entitled The Titanic Experience, which takes you through the events leading up to the sinking, shows you some model rooms aboard the Titanic, and provides snippets on the people who boarded in Cobh. At the beginning, you get assigned one of the 123 Cobh passengers. At the end, you get to check whether they survived or not. I survived. My friend survived. The guy we met off the train and traveled through Cobh with did not.
Interesting fact: At the time, the number of lifeboats required on-board a ship was not dictated by the number of passengers the ship could carry, but by the size of the ship. Though it did not have enough lifeboats for all of its passengers, the Titanic was actually carrying more lifeboats than the minimum required by law for a ship in its "bracket." Law required 16 lifeboats. The Titanic carried 20, and it had space for many more. These were not installed in favor of more desk space (though the lifeboat law was looking at imminent change).
The other must-see site I wanted to check out in Cobh was the cathedral. I was bent on finding the iconic hill with the multi-colored houses and the cathedral in the background--that picture that shows up in virtually every Ireland-themed calendar you will ever find. Well, I didn't get to the exact street, but I sure got to check out the cathedral. Man, that is some brilliant architecture. We got there just as Sunday mass was letting out. It was pouring rain, so people clustered beneath the stone entryway. There were so many people that it took at least 15 minutes of standing with everyone on the steps before the entrance was clear enough to enter. No matter--the 15 minutes provided another great round of people watching. A handful of people crossed themselves with water from a basin as they exited. A guy asked me if the taxis had arrived yet. At the time, I didn't understand him over the noise and his accent, so I just smiled and nodded, and he went to go check it out for himself. The taxis hadn't arrived yet--oops.
The inside of the cathedral was spectacularly ornate. It makes one feel small and insignificant, and I suppose that's one of the points the architecture is supposed to make. But it also feels cold and...well, I never feel happy after coming out of such cathedrals--just kind of awe-struck.
By the time we exited the cathedral, it was steadily pouring. We decided to head back to Cork around 4:30 pm and by 5 pm, it was half snowing, half raining. It was also time to walk the 45 minutes back to campus accommodation. It was a cold walk back...very cold. I hit my room and turned on the heater almost full blast--no shame. Then cleaned the kitchen and hit the hot cocoa. No shame there, either. It was an awesome day of adventuring.
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