Month: July 2025

Most of our penultimate month in Regensburg was spent outside of the city. At my request, we flew over to Ireland, chiefly to see a favourite band of mine: the Waterboys. Yes, I could probably see them somewhere else (it turns out they will be in Toronto in September) but there’s a certain allure to seeing a band play their hometown (of sorts; singer Mike Scott lives there now and the band’s best years were based there; I don’t think any of the rest of the current bandmembers are even Irish) and it gave us an excuse to go to Ireland. We spent most of our time in Dublin, which, frankly, was uninspiring. I enjoyed seeing Trinity College and the Chester-Beatty papyri, watching a few traditional performers at the Temple Bar district, and grabbing a slice of Victoria Sponge at Marks and Spencer, but otherwise Dublin seemed very much like any other large city. Far more interesting were Belfast, where we took a Cab Tour to see sites connected to the Troubles and a bus to the Giant’s Causeway, and our two bus tours to the Cliffs of Moher and Galway, and to Kilkenny and Glendalough (which included a stop at a sheep farm to watch sheep dog training and cuddle some lambs). The bottom line: we enjoyed our time outside of Dublin much more than Dublin itself.

Our second stop was a visit to Bratislava to visit my friend and sometime collaborator Slavomír Céplö . Slavomír and I actually …