The schedule for the week was set, on Wednesday the 25th of February 1998, it was going to be my turn to cook dinner for us, myself and the five students I shared a house with in the Newcastle area of Galway, only a stone's throw from the University. Meat lasagne was my dish of choice.
Even though the six of us were not all studying the same courses and had somewhat different groups of friends, somehow we synced up amazingly well when it came to our dinner schedule. For the entire third year of college, almost without fail, we would all meet for dinner at the same time every evening on regular college days and one of us would cook.
I was prepped and ready to go for my meat lasagna dish that week, that was … until one of my housemates duly informed me that the 25th of February was Ash Wednesday and so we could not have a dish with meat. Now, I cannot claim a broad awareness of religious traditions as one of my strong suits*, but I was happy to oblige and change the menu to vegetarian lasagne, no bother at all! So off I went to the shops to buy a bag of vegetables and replace the ground meat - dinner saved!
On the morning of Ash Wednesday, I woke up as usual and made my way downstairs for breakfast. A lovely smell of cooking filled the house. Surely it couldn’t be rashers and sausages, it was Ash Wednesday after all! Maybe just eggs and mushrooms, some baked beans maybe? As I peeked over the shoulder of one of my housemates, a tall fella with mad curly hair, I spotted a big pile of minced meat in the frying pan!! ‘What are you cooking?’ I asked a bit baffled, ‘I thought it was Ash Wednesday and you are not supposed to eat meat!’ This was the same housemate who had pointed out to me that I should not be cooking meat for dinner that day… He looked at me a bit embarrassed and admitted that he had completely forgotten it was Ash Wednesday. He ate the pile of meat anyway and after breakfast, he and some of the other lads in the house went off to mass and came back with their foreheads marked with ash crosses. We still had vegetarian lasagne for dinner.
I love this story 😂!
The period of lent in that particular year culminated with the Good Friday agreement on April 10th, 1998. And while it was of course a major topic of the day and I registered it, I did not truly understand its significance. My awareness of Irish history was also not a strong suit, though that has changed since then.
Why was I in Galway studying in the first place? The place was not exactly buzzing with students from Germany in the late 90s. There were some Erasmus exchange students, sure, but I was the only full-time student in my circle of friends who was not Irish.
Together with several other foreign pupils, I had attended a boarding school in Dublin for 5th and 6th form and completed the Leaving Cert, but while most of the other foreigners went back to their home countries to go to university, I decided to stay. It may have had a little to do with a boy from Galway, whom I had met during 6th form while still at boarding school, but that wasn’t the whole story. Ireland intrigued me. I had lived in a boarding school for two years and what I had learned about the rest of Ireland was fairly limited. I wanted to experience more! I imagined being asked what it was like to live in Ireland years down the road and not being able to answer the question because what do you really know of a place if you have just spent most of your time confined to a boarding school? So off I went to study in Galway.
When I started in 1995, it was still the University College Galway (UCG), and by the time I graduated in 1998 it had become the National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG). Since September 1st of this year, it is now known as the University of Galway. Back in 1997 the University had a total of about 7,500 students, since then its student body has grown to around 18,000. The University has expanded tremendously since the 90s, though some things in student life have maybe not changed too much. We socialized at house parties and in pubs, we went clubbing and sometimes stayed long enough to sing along to the Irish national anthem at the end of the night. Thursday night was the night to go out because after lectures on Friday most Irish students would hop on a bus and go home. Home to wash the laundry, home to stock up on food for the week, and maybe pick up a dish that Mam cooked for all the housemates so you didn’t have to do the cooking yourself. Needless to say, the attendance of Friday morning lectures was often sparse, hungover, and sleepy.
None of my friends in college had cars back then, we all traveled long distances by bus, we carried our shopping home on foot, rain or shine, or maybe sometimes we had it delivered. I loved walking along the Corrib River to my digs in Corrib Village for the first couple of years. I enjoyed the mystery of the old ruins along the river, Terryland Castle & Menlo Castle. I loved listening to Jazz in the King’s Head on a Sunday morning. Guinness became my drink of choice and to this day, it is the only beer I actually enjoy drinking.
During a visit to Ireland in October last year (2021) I had hoped to walk through the campus and up to Corrib Village with my daughter and husband, but unfortunately, the traffic was so bad on that Saturday afternoon, and our time was too short, that we had to abandon the idea. We did however get to meet up with one of my former lecturers from the University who invited us for lunch in McSwiggans and his American-born wife briefly stopped by as well. It was lovely to see them. The meet-up with him and a few other friends during that trip brought home to me what I love about the Irish people. Somehow years can pass and you have barely talked and yet when you meet again it seems like you just had a cuppa or a pint together the other day.
Our trip in October 2021, was far too short and there are so many more friends I would love to catch up with. But, I believe, the time will come and I look forward to it! Be it over a pint of Guinness, a cup of tea, or an accidental pile of minced meat on Ash Wednesday!
*Years later after wishing my neighbors in a small Massachusetts town a Happy Christmas, I was firmly and unequivocally reminded that they were Jewish and did not celebrate Christmas 😬.