Friday, October 1, 2010

Wine, Cheese, and Song

I haven't updated in a while because there hasn't been a whole heck of a lot going on that's out of the ordinary. I go to Trinity from 10-5 to work on my book most days, and yesterday I gave myself a bit of a day off since I had to go to UCD for my class in the afternoon anyway. It turns out that we have a reading week at the end of October; if I had known that, I would have scheduled my Oxford trip for then.

Last night I biked out to judo only to find that the gym won't give us the Thursday time slot (which we had reserved). So now judo is tonight from 7-9, which means I'll have to eat a late dinner. I hate these meal plans. Once I found out it was cancelled I called up my friends who were down at a wine and cheese party at Trinity put on by the music society (they have "societies" here, not "clubs"). So I hopped on the bus that was right outside, not thinking that I could just bike into town since I was halfway there already, and got to Trinity in about 10 minutes.

It was so cool. Of course it was chock-full of undergrad hipster Europeans (think Montreal Plateau types, but cleaner), and it was in some sitting room or common room in one of the front buildings, that no one seemed to know what this room was for. It had 20ft ceilings, a large fireplace, old-fashioned couches, and huge windows. Think Gryffindor common room, but smaller, and stuffed with people. So for 3 euro you got 2 glasses of wine and a plate with six pieces of cheese labelled 1 to 6, and every few minutes someone would read off a description of one of the cheeses ("Now we're going to taste cheese number three. This cheese has a slight aroma of decay and burnt mushrooms, and is considered a delicacy that is only manufactured in southern France" etc etc). Some of them were pretty hilarious. And then in between these descriptions, a group of students were singing madrigals. Just for fun. It was hard to hear them over the rest of the people in the room.

When you think of being a student in Europe, you think of that. My friends, I have now experienced such an evening for myself. It was a bit surreal, and lots of fun.

Of course, then I realized that I had no idea where to catch the bus back to the judo club to pick up my bike. So I walked along the same street that it had come in on, which apparently was very much the wrong way. I ended up hoofing it back to Rathmines, which took a good half-hour going at a pretty fast clip, and then biked home from there. I left Trinity at 9:35 and got home at exactly 10:30. And now my legs feel like noodles.

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