Galway International Airport, Republic of Ireland, some time ago.
A single story rectangular brick building, a single straight conveyor belt no loner than five meters that goes through a square hole in the wall and doubles as both check-in and baggage claim area.
Through the plastic strips marking the boundary between the building and the runway area you can see a farm tractor with a small trailer, the baggage shuttle to and from the plane.
The driver might also man the control tower, for all you know. In front of the building is the parking area and a single sign Arrivals/Departures.
The passenger planes to and from Dublin, on the other side of the island, are small propeller planes, the kind with the best passenger to flight attendant ratio ever: 15 to 1 or so.
To the blogster, Galway International Airport is one of the symbols of how this small country on the edge of the Atlantic sees itself in the modern world. Everything you need is there, just smaller, not fancy, somewhat tongue in cheek.
Dublin, on the other hand, is where they play at Celtic Tiger, where the houses are modern, where those who were successful in the U.S. flaunt their money, where those who grabbed the first major European headquarters of an American software giant from under the nose of Switzerland live very comfortably, and where you catch a plane to Heathrow Airport in London.
At Heathrow, the gates to Dublin are an awfully long walk away from the security check area. So far away through many doors and narrow corridors that the blogster thought more than once, well, maybe some airport planers sought revenge for Ireland kicking out the British after the Easter Rising. Might as well make them walk to Dublin.
It took the blogster no more than a week before nicknaming the Irish "Italians of the North". Don't let the free flowing beer and the Gaelic (after lots of beer) fool you. Get to know them a bit, and the nickname should become understandable. Oh, and it is meant as a compliment.
The Romans did not realize this, to them the place was so unattractive that they called it Hibernia and stayed away.
Maybe you'll run into an academic who will explain that Bono, the front man of U2, is not really Irish because his ancestors came as leaders of the invading English a few centuries ago. Or you might share a beer, even if you don't like beer, with an earnest young man who explains that the infamous potato famine that killed so many Irish in the West and drove so many to emigrate was accompanied by booming exports of wheat in the East.
Or you might share a beer with a short, wiry, smiling man who single handedly prevented an Israeli tank column from crossing a bridge into Southern Lebanon when he was with the Irish UN peacekeepers in Lebanon. I just stood in the middle of the bridge, I just could not let them through.
After your first day in Ireland, there is a chance that you have gone through all four seasons in what is considered a normal year elsewhere.
The ruthlessness of the Catholic church in Ireland, even more extreme than in many other countries, may have been in part an inadvertent acknowledgement of the Irish attitude towards authority. Like in Italy, authority is subject to almost daily renegotiation.
If the outcome of the Irish vote on same sex marriage is indeed the Yes it appears to be according to early tallies, attribute this in part to a keen sense of "live and let live if there is no harm in it".
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