Irish Tips

Tips to Surviving the Irish Experience
By Claire P. Whaley, Freelance Writer

Don’t ever yell, “They’re always after me Lucky Charms!” to an Irishman. They hate that.

I learned this the hard way while on tour with a group of chamber musicians. We always knew the Emerald Isle was beautiful; anyone can moon over a postcard. We always knew legends about leprechauns and pots of gold; we had all heard folklore since birth. But in our short stay in the country of Ireland, we learned a few things that only experience would teach.

1. Don’t be a tourist.

Had there been a record player, it would have screeched to a crackling stop when we stepped into the pub. Every face turned to look at the six of us – the ones who turned down the touristy night club to get a taste of the real Irish pub scene. We tried to be inconspicuous as we approached the bar, followed by every curious patron’s eye.

“We’ll each have a Guinness.” One of us dared to speak.

“Point?” the bartender asked.

We looked at each other in the hopes that one of us would know what to point to. The bartender rolled his eyes and offered help. “Duya wunt tha point, ar duya wunt the shart one?” He made “tall” and “short” motions with his hands.

“Ohhh!” we forced a giggle. “Pints! We all want the pints.”

“Arright.”

The pub patrons relaxed a little on their bar stools and chuckled to themselves while returning to the conversations we had interrupted. It was clear that everyone there knew everyone else, and no one expected newcomers, let alone foreigners. But we must have piqued interest, as several rounds of Guinness appeared before us, each credited to a random Irish face in the pub.

One of us spotted a juke box, and discovered a few American pop songs. Armed with several dollars and high blood alcohol content, we turned our corner of the pub into a dance floor.

As “Bootylicious” pumped away on the sleepy pub’s speakers, a group of middle aged men joined the dance party.

“Yer de biggest woman I ever seen!” one of them said to our particularly tall friend. “Om gunna call ya ‘Big Stouff!”

A woman approached one of the men in our group. “I dunt fancy ya, I jus like tha waya dance!”

That night in the sleepy Irish pub, we exchanged cultural flavors with a group of locals. It’s a flavor that’s unavailable at the tourist spots, and an image that will last longer than those of the green hills we’d seen in travel brochures.

2. Don’t let fear destroy the view

My travel cohorts decided it was a grand idea to crawl on their stomachs to the edge of the Cliffs of Moher and peer straight down. At first I vowed to stay far from the 250 meter-high cliffs’ edge, but the surreal view lured me closer. I remember finally thinking to myself, “At least if I lose my balance and fall to my death, the last thing I see will be the one place on earth that looks better in real life than any postcard.” And so, for a few brief picoseconds, I lay on my stomach and looked down the edge of the cliff. The view, although breathtaking, made me dizzy. I didn’t want to get up. I feared that the dizziness would make me stumble, thus ending my life and my vacation. I was not too ashamed to ask a friend to pull me away from the cliff by my ankles. It was worth it.

3. The soup of the day is potato. End of story.

“Soup of the Day” was listed on the menu. I was not about to order an anonymous soup, so when the waitress approached, I asked the logical question.

“Excuse me,” I said, “What’s the soup of the day?”

The waitress looked confused. “Soupatha dee?”

“Yes,” I said. “On the menu it says ‘soup of the day.”

“Yes?” the waitress said. “That’s th’ vegetable soup.” She looked back at me as though she were waiting for the real question.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll just have a cheeseburger.” I don’t care for vegetable soup, but my friend next to me ordered a bowl.

When the waitress returned with the meals, she handed my friend a bowl of what looked like watery mashed potatoes. I thought the waitress must have gotten the order wrong. But the exchange took place time after time at other restaurants throughout the country.

I finally concluded that the “soup of the day” was always called “vegetable,” and that “vegetable” meant “potato,” but “potato” meant “mashed potatoes.” It was an awful lot of trouble, but delicious nonetheless.

4. Kissing the Blarney Stone is more difficult than it seems.

Ireland fights illegal immigrants by providing them with large amounts of alcohol and then luring them to cliffs and rooftops disguised as “tourist spots.”

I stood in line to kiss the Blarney Stone, completely oblivious to the acrobatic feat I would have to perform. The line wound up the stairs of Blarney Castle to an open area on the roof. It wasn’t until I was only a few feet from the stone that I realized where in the wall it was located. There was a gap between the floor and the wall, and a tourist was lying on her back, dangling head first in through the floor and holding onto a pair of handrails on the wall.

“Hell no” I thought to myself, but there was no easy way to get out of the narrow line.

When I reached the front of the line, I realized that the stone was actually several feet down the wall, below the floor on which we stood. I thought it was an awful lot of trouble for a little good luck, but nonetheless I lay down and arched my back into a “C” shape, dangling my head through the gap in the floor, and kissed what looked to be a very unremarkable rock.

After risking my life at Blarney Castle and the Cliffs of Moher, I began to think that leprechauns must be sadists.