I’ve been learning so many interesting things about Cork and Ireland that I can’t resist sharing them in this blog! So, this is less of an “Ode to Cork Part 2” post and more of an “interesting facts about Cork and Ireland” post. Additionally, this post will probably be less introspective than some of my others, but sometimes it’s nice to look outward for a bit.

The Church of St Anne, which I mentioned in my previous post, is interesting for many reasons. It is most famous for its bells, nicknamed the Shandon Bells because St Anne is in the historic Shandon district of Cork city. I didn’t know the Shandon Bells were such a popular tourist destination, but it turns out they topped Time Out’s list of the 14 best things to do in Cork. (I happen to really like a lot of what is on this list.) In addition to the bells, the clock tower has four faces, each of which shows a slightly different time, earning it the nickname “the four-faced liar.” The clock also bears an inscription that reads, “Passenger measure your time for time is a measure of your being.”

The golden fish weathervane that tops the tower is also interesting. Nicknamed “de goldie fish,” it is a salmon with three layers of meaning: the salmon industry was once very important in Cork, the fish is an early Christian symbol, and the salmon of knowledge is a big player in the Fenian Cycle of Irish mythology.

But back to the bells: Once I paid the 5-euro entrance fee and walked up the first set of stairs, I discovered that any visitor can play the bells, any time!!

A music stand was conveniently placed near the bells and had the “sheet music” for several songs, including “Hey Jude” and “Frère Jacques.” I played “Hey Jude” with modest success.

After climbing several more flights of stairs, I was rewarded to beautiful views on all sides.

As I gazed from the top of the bell tower, I wondered what the tallest buildings in Ireland were. Google told me that this 17-storey and 71-metre-tall building, The Elysian, is the tallest in all of the Republic of Ireland:

When I tried to find out more about The Elysian, Wikipedia told me it was a Celtic Tiger-era building completed in 2008. I had not know this before, but apparently the Irish economy grew so much between the mid-1990s and late-2000s (9.4% average growth between 1995 and 2000) that it was compared to the East Asian Tigers – Singapore, South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan – whose economies grew rapidly in the early 1960s and late 1990s.

But that fun fact can’t compare to how CRAZY it is that the tallest building in Ireland has only 17 floors above ground, and that it’s not even in Dublin! The fancy term for a country like this is a “low occupier of skyscrapers and tall buildings.”

Here are some more fun facts about Cork:

(1) I mentioned before that Cork is built on a marsh, and that the city centre is an island between the north and south branches of the River Lee. Not surprisingly, some of the streets that run through Cork city centre were once smaller channels of the river. However, with the help of culverts, streets were built over the water itself. The other night, I noticed the river had risen higher than I ever thought it would, and I was mildly terrified.

Luckily, the next morning the river had lowered. This is a different bridge, but you get the idea:

 

 

(2) One of the streets that used to be a river channel is Cornmarket Street, which I learned when I saw an advert for a play called Shawlies.  At first I thought “Shawlies” was an obscure, complex term for some mysterious thing, but then I learned it was merely the nickname of working-class women who wore black shawls and sold goods on Cornmarket Street to support their families back in the 1900s and up through the 1970s, when it wasn’t so common for women to participate in business. I haven’t seen the play yet, but I have seen another production, “The Nightingale and the Rose,” at the same theatre where “Shawlies” is showing, The Everyman.

(3) I will briefly talk about “The Nightingale and the Rose” because a) it is a modern opera, I love opera, and the world needs to support more new operas b) it is based on the story of the same name by the Irish writer Oscar Wilde, and I am trying to expose myself to more work by Irish writers, and c) it is a good example of some of the things I was talking about in my previous post: how I can walk everywhere, and how my money goes farther. This past Wednesday a friend recommended the opera to me, and on a whim I bought a 17-euro ticket for that very night. The Everyman theatre was a 12-minute walk from my flat, and it was beautiful:

Now, to be fair, there is a proper Cork Opera House in the city, and I’m sure productions there are more expensive. “The Nightingale and the Rose” is not a famous opera (this was its world debut), and it was barely over an hour long. BUT it was beautiful, and I hope it makes it out of Ireland so more of the world can see it! I don’t care how representative or not it is of theatre prices in the city – it combined my love of opera and literature, and it was so accessible in terms of money and distance from my flat.

(4) The last fun thing I’ll share about Cork right now is that almost everything is called a quay (pronounced “key”), which is another term for wharf. People say things like: let’s go to the cafe on Pope’s Quay; the Merchant’s Quay shopping centre; the Tesco (grocery store) on Lavvit’s Quay; etc. Even Cornmarket Street, where the Shawlies used to sell goods, is better known as Coal Quay. With so much of Cork having been built over river channels, it makes sense that places that were once proper quays are now streets with modern cafes, shops, etc. While it’s fun to know this part of Cork’s history, it – along with the sight of the river lapping the bottoms of bridges – is a bit scary! Just another reason for me to be grateful, as I mentioned before, that I live on a hill.

And finally, here are some interesting facts not about Cork, but about Ireland and the question of borders. This is especially pertinent as Brexit looms near and I learn more about the intricacies of the EU, the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, the Schengen Area, etc:

(1) Globalisation churns ahead, and many immigrants live in Cork and other places in the Republic of Ireland (including myself, for the moment!). Last weekend my flatmate’s friend, who is Indian, visited from Dublin, and he complained that Ireland is not “proper Europe” (i.e., that it’s not on the continent). At first I kind of judged him for this opinion – Ireland IS in Europe, it’s beautiful in it’s own way, and it’s so easy to fly to the continent from here – but the next day he told me about the inconveniences of having an Indian passport. For almost every country in the world, he has to jump through bureaucratic hoops to get a visa to visit it, even if the visit lasts a day!!! But if he was in grad school not in Ireland but in a European country on the continent that was (like most on the continent) in the Schengen Area, he could travel freely between all Schengen Area countries without applying for a visa each time. I immediately regretted judging him. I had always known an American passport was a privilege, but I had never before faced such a stark example of it.

(2) The only reason I knew about the Schengen Area before this conversation was because of a class on the European Union I took when I studied abroad in Seville, Spain. The EU has 28 countries – 27 once the UK follows through with Brexit – and 26 of those 28 are part of the Schengen Area, which does not have passport and border controls at the countries’ mutual borders. The two opt-outs are, you guessed it, Ireland the UK. As far as I understand it, the Republic of Ireland is not in the Schengen Area not because it is an island, but because the UK chose to opt-out first, and Ireland followed suit to preserve freedom of travel with Northern Ireland, which shares an island with the Republic of Ireland but which is part of the UK.

In fact, this border between the Republic and Northern Ireland is the main cause of the current difficulties in Brexit negotiations. Just another reason I’m no fan of Brexit.

(3) Speaking of Northern Ireland, the last fun fact I will share is that just a couple days ago, the Man Booker Prize for literature was awarded for the first time to a writer from Northern Ireland. Anna Burns won the prize for her novel Milkman, which deals with The Troubles, a three-decade conflict in Northern Ireland in which largely-Protestant unionists wanted to remain part of the UK and largely-Catholic nationalists/republicans wanted to join a united Ireland. I haven’t yet read Milkman or anything else by Anna Burns, but I want to as part of my quest to read more Irish writers (I’m including Northern Ireland here).

History is all around us. Sometimes it’s fun or quirky, as with the Shandon Bells, and sometimes it’s a bit scary, as with reminders that many Cork streets were once river channels, and sometimes it’s heartbreaking, as with border controls, The Troubles, etc. But in all these cases and more, I hope to keep learning throughout my time here.

Cheers!