On the very same day we visited Cliffs of Moher we hit the Burren to see some of its ancient monuments - the most known Irish dolmen at Poulnabrone. I must admit, the dolmen and its surroundings are very scenic place. It is amazing that Burren is so rich in Neolithic and Iron age sites like dolmens, cairns and ringforts.
Poulnabrone Dolmen
We stopped for a while at the drystone Iron age ringfort. All Iron age ring forts are very interesting to me, due to relatively similar topic of my master thesis that concerns Atlantic Scotland round houses - especially Broch Towers.
Ring fort close to the Poulnabrone - an Irish example… and…
a complexed roundhouse example - Broch Tower at Gurness, Orkney, Scotland (I took this photo about 8 years ago)
Not so long ago – in fact just a couple of days ago – I described growing tendency of moving families, including pets, to Ireland or UK by Polish emigrants. People decide to stay for a long period and they don’t want to being alone and for sure they don’t want be parted with their wives, husbands, children and even pets. It is quite obvious that there is impossible to keep and carry on family life while one is in Ireland and other is in Poland or somewhere else (England, Italy).
Leading Polish newspaper – Gazeta Wyborcza – noticed growing percentage of divorces due to long term separation and marriage breakdown. In the far south-eastern region of Poland (Podkarpacie) separation because of emigration one of the couple taken about 30 per cent of marriages to get divorced. Sometimes husband lives in Ireland and his wife lives in England, and they come to Poland only for divorce case.
In that region of Poland it is becoming the dominant reason of divorces instead of domestic violence and alcoholism. In the overall percentage of whole Poland those cases are still not so frequent, but they are expected to became very common in the next 12 months.
It is impossible to have family life and to keep marriage alive being 1000 km away for a couple of years or so. Married couple can’t share problems, worries and happiness of daily life, and it is sure that most of us can’t stay alone for a long time, that is why people start new relationships if they wives, husbands or just girlfriends or boyfriends are in Poland or in Ireland.
I am the man who is almost always away due to my occupation and activities (archaeologist and musician), and I can see that many of my friends or archaeologists I know divorced at least once.
Many foreigners in Ireland claim that their stay on the island is only temporary. They left their homes, wives, children and pets in their countries. The situation is slowly changing. The number of people who decided to stay for a long term is growing. The one clear symptom of that is moving their homes to Ireland. It is quite easy and obvious to come over with wife and children, but if someone decide to pay a lot of money (relatively of course) and time to bring over his dog or cat it seems that he is going to stay for a long period.
Bringing pet to Ireland is not an easy and quick thing. Animal has to have a special passport and special chip under the skin, and of course it has to be vaccinated. The process takes about 6 months and it is relatively expensive (a few hundred Euro).
Polish people are not the Travelers. We need to have a real, stationary home, a place we can come back to and we don’t like to move it a lot. Bringing pets, sometimes furniture from the old home in Poland means that some of our compatriots (I haven’t find out how many) decide to settle down in Ireland and not to be only a temporary foreign emigrants.
Today’s issue of Polish leading newspaper - Gazeta Wyborcza - devoted some attention to that question.
Today in Poland we have 25th anniversary of martial law established by communistic regime. During the first night of martial law – December the 13th 1981, all Polish dissidents were sent to detention camps. Communistic army and police forces suppress democratic demonstrations and riots in the streets, factories and mines. There was dozen or so casualties among civilian protesters.
During the martial law cinemas, theaters were closed, walking on a street in a bigger group could be taken as a illegal gathering or demonstration, phone calls were officially bugged, there was a curfew after dark and Poland suffered the beginning of the biggest economical crisis.
What does Ireland have to do with that part of contemporary Polish history? There is one little thing - a U2 song “New years day” (from the album Under the blood red sky). That song is dedicated to Lech Walensa - the most known Polish dissident (and the first elected president of independent Poland) who was imprisoned at the beginning of the martial law – and to the Solidarity movement.
U2 is very popular in Poland, and every year on the martial law anniversary, “New years day” is played very often during those days.
During the last weekend of October me and some of my friends took a trip to Cliffs of Moher and Burren. Cliffs are one of the most recognizable places in Ireland and most touristic too, so the place was very crowdy. As a mater of fact Cliffs are remarkable due to the beauty of the vertical over 200 meters abyss, the forms of the rocks and the wonderful view of the Atlantic Ocean.
Being one of the most known tourist attractions Cliffs are often visited by Polish people, both that are living and working in Ireland and by regular tourists from Poland, thus when we arrived we met a couple of hundreds of our compatriots. It was strange somehow (but not in a bad way) listening only to Polish lingo in such exotic place.
For Polish visitors the name of the Cliffs is funny in some way, and it needs to be explained.
In Poland Polish Catholic Church is very strong and it is very into politics, moreover it is often against the official position of Vatican. The most arrogant, political, ultra nationalistic and antisemitic part of the Polish Catholic Church is focused in a nationwide and worldwide Polish Catholic Radio Station – Radio Maryja (Radio Marry). All the programs all full of hate and anger, and completely against every idea or people that represents completely or even a little different point of view. In the most ridiculous programs they even deny the holocaust and concentration camps in which hundred thousands of Poles lost their lives. Radio is completely against a freedom of mind and speech and art, against European Union and against any kind of liberal point of view. For the monks and priests and politics that appear in the programs people in such kind are not Poles at all, but Jews, Masons and traitors. This Radio is very popular among the eldery people. Most of the old women, that admire Radio Maryja and its director Father Tadeusz Rydzyk, wear moher berets and so they are called as a moher berets army. That’s why almost every Polish person smiles when they recall the name of the cliffs.
Here is a short example how the moher army looks, and how the old ladies, the admirers and listeners of Father Tadeusz Rydzyk behave in front of the camera of the one of the biggest Polish TV channels.
Moher Army at Youtube
Recent Comments