Thursday is St Patrick's day, the national holiday of Ireland. Now that I work for the Irish Embassy, the day is more significant now. Having always been a big fan of the green isle, I usually tried to celebrate a bit by joining in the fun atmosphere in the Irish pub, but nobody celebrates st Paddy's like the Irish! This year I will get to experience just that. The Embassy is organising a big celebration in Leuven (big college city in Belgium) in an old building called 'The Irish college', and 600 people are likely to attend! That's a lot of people, and most of them will be Irish! I get to go too, at first mostly to show people where to be, but once everyone has arrived, I get to join in the festivities and have drinks and nibbles and mingle!
Everything will be in the spirit of Ireland, the drinks, the food and the musical performances. I'm very excited about it, I can't wait! Most of the people will probably be older, fancy goverment, EU and other high-up staff, but I hope there will be some people around my age to talk to!
Why am I so fond of Ireland you ask? Well to start with it's a beautiful country (been there 8 times now, first time when I was sixteen, on a holiday with the parents), there really are a hundred shades of green. When landing you already notice the beauty, you see all the little different patches of green that is the fields, mountains in the distance, rivers.. It really is something. Dublin is bustling just like any city, but it's great shopping and Temple Bar (the popular old outgoing part of the city) is great fun for a night out! Galway is calmer, a student city, and has the air of a seaside town, there's street musicians in the shopping street, the houses are colourful, it's my favourite Irish city. Had some great times there! Now the countryside is really something you must see when visiting Ireland. Especially the Connemara, one of my favourite places, it still has the air of calmness real country living about it, something that is hard to find nowadays. There's tiny little towns, with always at least one pub (of course :p) and a church. You need to beware of sheep, cows and even donkeys occasionally when driving on the road, because they roam all over the place. There's gorgeous mountains, and fields of heather, and sparkling lakes. I really do love it very much, and I will continue to go there.
The people are great (most of them anyway, you can find a grouch anywhere), they have a great sense of humour, they're fun-loving, easy-going and very social. Now, I may be biased, because I dated an Irish guy back in the day, but through him I met a lot of other Irish people, and all of them really fit the traits I just mentioned.
If you're a history buff, Ireland has a rich history, with lots of mythology from the days of the Celts, and a violent and interesting history from the days when the English decided to conquer Ireland and take over the land. I actually wrote my thesis about Ireland (mainly a comparative study of the view on Northern Ireland in the Flemish and Dutch press, but I also included a long historic background of Ireland). Therefor, I know a whole lot about the Irish history, and I found it very interesting, although sad at some point, Ireland has been through a lot.
As you can see in the title, the Irish have a second language, the old Irish language, gaelic. It's not spoken much, but they try to keep it alive by teaching children the language in school, and all the traffic signs etc. are both in English and Irish. I find it a very cool language, unfortunately you can only learn it in Ireland, as it's pretty pointless outside of it.
So hope I got you all a bit excited about Ireland, you should really go visit it! (good for the Irish economy :p.. hey I work for Ireland :P I need to promote :D)
Have a great St Paddy's day if you intend on celebrating!
Sláinte (cheers!)
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