People we meet are the most memorable part of travel

In the 1993 movie “Six Degrees of Separation” the character Ouise (Louise) Kittredge, played by Stockard Channing, gave us this bon mot about how all people on this planet are related to one another, by blood, accident or coincidence. “I read somewhere that everybody on this planet is separated by only six other people,” she said. “Six degrees of separation between us and everyone else on this planet. The President of the United States, a gondolier in Venice, just fill in the names. I find it extremely comforting that we’re so close.”

Stew and I found that particularly true during our recent two weeks in Ireland, a small country with a rich history of both migration and immigration, and a people that have to be among the friendliest and chattiest we’ve run into in our travels, along with the Dutch and Icelanders. If you’re standing looking lost at a Dublin street corner, it won’t be long before someone offers to help and even start a conversation.

We set off from Dublin on a driving tour of the country, initially a nerve-racking experience because in Ireland traffic moves on the left and until you get used to that detail, the roads and intersections appear to be all in the wrong place. We drove across directly west to Galway, and from there to the waterfront village of Rossaveel to board the ferry for a forty-minute crossing to Inis Mór, the largest of the three Aran Islands, approximately 29 miles from the mainland. Isolated by geography, the Aran Islands remain a bastion of traditional Irish culture, most notably the Irish language which is still taught in the islands’ schools and spoken by the locals.

Our eight- or nine-hour visit turned out to be one of the most interesting stops in our trip. Inis Mór is rocky and relatively barren—it reminded us of Iceland without the volcanoes—though the frequent rains keep the landscape green enough to graze sheep and other livestock which helps sustain the livelihood of the approximately one-thousand residents. During a stop in the island’s center, a cluster of thatched-roof buildings, one an ice cream shop, another a restaurant and then a gift shop selling souvenirs, where Stew found a beautiful wristwatch, its case made of wood from Irish whiskey casks.

And during the transaction we met Niamh Concannon, a woman in her thirties who when she heard we came from Mexico launched into a story at first too far fetched to believe, that linked Mexico with the Aran Islands. In 1865, her great-grandfather Máirtin and his brother Séamus (Irish for James)migrated to California’s Livermore Valley and set up a winery, that is still a thriving concern https://www.concannonvineyard.com/timeline/. Séamus spent some time in Europe learning about viticulture in Bordeaux, but after spending 10 years in California, Máirtin moved to Mexico, specifically Celaya, a town about 30 miles from San Miguel.

The trail grows a bit blurry at this point. Máirtin reportedly began a trash collection company in Mexico City, worked at a rubber stamp plant, according to Niamh, and then started his own winery in Guanajuato. Whatever the exact details, Máirtin apparently did very well at his various endeavors in Mexico, and in 1895 returned to Inis Mór with a wad of money in his pocket, bought a big piece of land and some cattle, and set himself up as a farmer.

He also built himself a big house we saw on the way back to the ferry, whose design Niamh suspects may be related the haciendas in Mexico; the blockish two-story structure certainly doesn’t look like any other in Inis Mór.

The Concannon story was the first of several degrees-of-separation coincidences we found in Ireland. In another of our wandering drives we met Helen Moriarty, the proprietor of the eponymous bed-and-breakfast and cafe in Bunaw, a blink of a town about 13 miles southwest of Kenmare, where our hotel was. We ordered two coffees and doughnuts, and shortly after they arrived, Helen came to our table and introduced herself. Her face lit up when we said we were from Chicago and with good reason: She seemed to know a lot of about Chicago, including the names of Richard J. and Richard M. Daley the father-and-son team of Chicago mayors, and also Bill Daley, the far less known—and some say by far the smartest puppy in the Daley litter—who served as U.S. Secretary of Commerce under Bill Clinton and Chief of Staff under Barack Obama, details Helen also identified correctly. Give Helen, who was well into her 60s, an “A” in Chicago politics, though I forgot to ask how she learned all that trivia, as we hurried to get back to the hotel.

Several days, and about 1,200 miles of driving later, we headed back to Dublin, with a brief stop in the beautiful waterfront town of Waterford, the oldest town in Ireland, founded in 914 A.D. by Vikings, and still famous for its crystal, from wine glasses to decorative objects and trophies. We toured the factory and were assured that Waterford crystal, except for colored crystal which is made in Slovenia, is still very much an Irish product, though the company now is owned by Fiskars, a multinational Finnish conglomerate. We pawed some items in the showroom but promptly put them back when we checked prices. Weather in Waterford turned seriously Irish, clammy with non-stop drizzle.

After all the driving around, we had only two days to spend in Dublin, not nearly enough time to spend at one of the most beautiful European cities we’ve visited. Exhaustion also caught up with us, and we only had time to visit Trinity College and its famous library, which includes the Book of Kells; the Migration Museum and enjoy a couple of nice dinners.

We stayed at The Merrion, a fancy hotel and were impressed by the large number of foreign-born staff: From Portugal, Brazil, Turkey, Spain, Italy, Sardinia, the Netherlands, Ukraine and those are just the ones I remember. Some of them were students, others permanent immigrants. I was struck by a tall, thin, young guy, who was the maitre d’ at one of the hotel’s restaurants. I mentioned I have a cousin in Kyiv, who left Cuba during the early days of the revolution, and that I had left in 1962. Our chat inevitably led to the barbaric invasion of Ukraine by Russia. He said he, and another very shy, soft-spoken young waitress, both came from Kherson, a town in the south that I remember had been devastated by the flood caused when Russian blew up a dam on the Dnieper River. Indeed, his home had been destroyed and that’s why he had to migrate to Ireland. I wished him luck and that the war and destruction of Ukraine ends soon. He shook my hand very soberly as his eyes teared.

A far more cheerful fellow was a lanky guy with a mop of flaming red hair and bright blue eyes, who with a big smile assured me that unlike most of his co-workers, he was “one hundred percent Irish.” Well, not quite. It turns out his mother was an American who migrated to Ireland from Broadview, a near suburb of Chicago.

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Parting shots

For more photos click on https://www.flickr.com/photos/199452816@N08/albums/72177720321359450/