Godspeed hairdryer, godspeed.

I'm writing this quickly. And thankfully, I don't dwell well on change. We're off to Galway in a few hours... the fourth or fifth last hurrah of Ireland. I'm eating a big bowl of spaghetti for breakfast, soakage. A bell is tolling midday through our balcony window; it's a beautiful day outside, mild and sunny. And those beautifully heavy Irish clouds I'll definitely be missing in the next 10 days are hanging low over the green hills in the distance. No, really.

Hard to believe that this time next week we'll be in Amsterdam. Hard to believe that this short, full era is coming to a close.

When I say full, I mean it in the literal sense.

We kissed Arklow goodbye last Sunday night in a final drunken hurrah. We left Sally O'Briens with our friend Toss at half one in the morning and headed to the chipper Tradewinds. You know, the routine. Chicken nuggets and chips with a garlic dip. Toss is the barman at our local pub Maisy Kelly's. Yes, the barman. We go there, that often. Or... we did. But yeah, Arklow's kiss goodbye was a long one. In all fairness it started the preceding Thursday night with a pub crawl. Arklow is a small town with a lotta pubs... lotta really scary pubs that we never had the courage to drink in before. Arklow is rough out. Ah but sure, we said, we're leaving, feck it. We said we'd get a pint of Heineken in every pub that we'd never been to, in this particular order: The Bridge Hotel, nice knicnacks, a bit of an older crowd; The Brookhouse, where even Dermot squeaked with fear while ordering a pint; The Mary B, redheaded tinkers anyone? Swiftest pint ever; Kitty O'Shea's in the middle of town, okay, we've been there loads of times before but it was too long a distance to the next unknown pub, we'd stop for two pints, refresh ourselves from the walk; John Joes, a massive pub full of character, but I think I was the only female custom in 100 years... We made it to Maisy Kelly's anyway, our Arklow local, where Toss poured the usual, two pints of the finest (ahem, Guinness). We don't really remember the rest of Thursday night, must've been the residue of free pints of Heineken from the night before, Wednesday at the Old Ship where the barman there talked our heads off... yes, Wednesday night. Forgot about that til now... Anyway, what was I saying? The last weekend in Arklow was a drunken haze, very apt. A just summary for the last year and a half. And the icing on the cake was last night, our last order at The Taj, the best Indian food restaurant ever. He got the chicken tikka, I got the chicken balti, we both got one naan bread, we split a portion of the pilau rice, and don't forget the popodom with the chutneys, mango, yes, mango, which we both devoured. We picked up the Indian food instead of getting it delivered. We told the people there that we were moving and thanks for everything. He shook our hands. The guy at our local take-out shook our hands.

What's that Joni Mitchell song? Christ, even the mere suggestion of that song is a cliché. But in a way it's an obligatory reflection. I try to be present and appreciate what I got when I got it, but when it gets to being gone it's still hard. This is the end of a short era. Burn hard, burn fast. Bye bye Ireland. Thanks for the memories. I will miss my hairdryer... amongst other things. I'm not packing it! My bag is heavy enough!

We come back from Galway to the apartment on Sunday, where we'll get the rest of our stuff then leave the keys on the table and head back to the Ballagh til Wednesday. Wednesday night we head to Dublin, a restaurant maybe Luigi Malone's, definitely a few pubs, then to the airport where we'll be sleeping. Our plane for Amsterdam departs at 6:00 am Thursday morning. Check in a 4 am...

I gotta get the hang of this blogging thing. The font is incorrect and the time it says I posted this thing is 3:15 am. Maybe in the next few weeks I'll be up to par. In the meantime, I'll see what I can do. I'm in a rush anyway!

I'm signing off a 13:32.

Stay tuned! Amsterdam here we come!

3 Weeks to Go

We'll, it's the inaugural post. And it's all a bit surreal.

Funny thing, I tried to name this blog site feckwork.blogspot.com but it was already taken... The recession hasn't hit the Irish anyway!

This will be our internet home for approximately the next 6 months. We're going to try our damnedest to update this site, taking into account that we'll be all over the place and we want to share our stories and pictures and the *cough* bragging rights *cough*. We're so excited.

We've stopped working, we've been approved for our loan, we've notified our landlord, started packing, ...set up the travel blog. Not much else to do now but say our farewells to Arklow and get on the plane.

We depart Dublin for Amsterdam on September 4th at 6:00 in the morning. Granted that we actually leave Amsterdam, haha, we'll be heading to the following places below via Eurorail, taking into account that we need/want to keep the train journeys short, sweet, and inexpensive.

Western Europe
The Netherlands
Amsterdam
Haarlem

Belgium
Antwerp
Bruges

Germany
Cologne
Heidleberg/Rhine Valley
Munich

Switzerland
Interlaken/Gimmelwald & the Berner Oberland

Austria
Salzburg
Vienna

Eastern Europe
Slovenia
We'll see!!!??!?

Croatia
Zagreb
Dubrovnik

Romania
Bucharest

Hungary
Budapest

Slovakia
Bratislava

Czech Republic
Prague

Poland
Krakow
Warsaw

We'll then head back to Germany for a third time to Berlin for a few days then we'll fly to New Zealand. I am dreaming of tracing every foot step of Peter Jackson and his crew. Lord of the Rings are my favorite movies ever and I can't wait to get my inner geek on. Dermot will be bungee jumping while I'm climbing up to Edoras. We'll be in New Zealand for three months (should be enough time, should be...) living and working. Then we'll fly to Australia for a month. Then back to Ireland.

The watches on our wrists will be primarily for catching the train on time. We might spend a week in Prague if we're feeling the city and we may hate Cologne and leave before night fall. We're just gonna roll with it. Such is the life, right? The only real 'clock' of the trip is that we want to spend 3 months in New Zealand (all that the American tourist of this faction is granted) with the hope that we'll be back in Ireland for a last Paddy's Day hurragh with our friends and family here on March 17th, 2009. September 08 to March 09. Let's see how much we can fit in.

Then we're home to Newtown, Pennsylvania indefinitely.

That's the plan anyway.

We're looking forward to seeing the world with just a shirt on our back and the skin of our teeth. It'll be a real change from the last two very decadent years.

We've been so fortunate in the past two years and the fact that we're getting the opportunity to do this is just beyond words. What are greater synonyms for extraordinarily lucky?

So I'll try my best to find them, the best words, and keep you all posted.

~Abby