This blogging is harder than I thought.  I'm going to do my best to keep the discipline of weekly posts but skipping last week it was easy to think about just letting this fall by the wayside.  I've reminded myself that I'm doing it for myself as a chronicle of our time here and that I will regret it if I don't have that at the end (for my memoir, of course).

Our lives here in Ireland have fallen into a routine.  It's not that it has become boring, but that excitement of every day bringing some completely new challenge or wonder or sight has passed.  Some of the initial challenges still remain to be completely sorted out.  Banking is still a problem.  Our bank in the US, Capitol One, has changed "policies" yet again on how they will, or more accurately will not, handle international transfers when you are not in the lobby to do it.  At first they said they didn't do it, then they said they did do it and we should send a letter.  We did the letter thing, which they just ignored until Alan contacted them, when they again said they didn't do it.  Four or five interactions later, they said they did do it but now the Bank of Ireland had to initiate it.  BOI has already told us they can't do it because, as we and they pointed out to Capitol One, that cuts us -- THE OWNERS OF THE MONEY -- out of the transaction.  Anyway, it's not as big a problem as it had been because we can now use PayPal, but the fee is higher and the amount of each transaction is lower.  We still might have to go back to the US in the upcoming months to get ourselves into a bank that has a clue.  Sorry for the rant, but someone told us this would be the hardest part of this move and we just didn't believe her.  Was she ever right. 

I missed blogging last week because we went to Belgium (Bruges) and The Hague (Holland) for a trip from May 22 to 28.  We flew into Amsterdam and took the train to Bruges, a three hour trip.  It was clear it was a commuter train and it was rush hour when we got on, so we quickly learned the down side of a second class ticket and didn't sit together for most of the time.  Not a tragedy, but as those of you who commute long distances by train know, the evening commute can be a tired, irritable one and our fellow passengers weren't in the mood for tourists!  Anyway, that was only a tiny glitch.  We came back first class.

Bruges is an amazing place, I would definitely recommend it to anyone.  The city is a medieval wonder, cobblestone streets, huge red brick buildings, busy central squares, virtually no car traffic and a zillion tourists that, like us, seem to think there's no recession.  The Hague was also nice but if we had it to do over, I would have done that first during mid-week rather than the weekend because Bruges is a tourist town and The Hague is all business.  I would have liked to have toured the international criminal court there, but of course it was closed.  Still, the city center had its charms and we visited a wonderful museum there the Gemeentemuseum (municipal museum).  It was a really great Art Deco building, purpose built, but not anything you'd expect to see as an art palace.  I would definitely recommend it.  Based on what I saw on the train and in both Bruges and The Hague, this is a very rich region.  Still, the recession in Europe is on everyone's mind. 

Yesterday was the vote in Ireland on the European Austerity Treaty, it has another official name, but that's what everyone calls it.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, I am eligible to vote because I'm recognized as an Irish citizen through my parents' birth.  I registered several weeks ago and did so yesterday.  Turnout was low and the counting is expected to be done today.  After much research and consideration, I decided to vote 'yes'.  Ireland is the only country in the EU to use the vote as a means of ratifying the treaty that was negotiated last year.  I have observed that they are very democratic here and, even though the powers that be would like to just rule, the Irish public won't stand for it.  A positive outgrowth of the difficult history in my view. The treaty was initially negotiated when the conservatives were in power in France.  Then, it mostly covered austerity measures, with a heavy dose of "no new taxes".  Now, with the election in France where they booted out the right wing Sarkosy and elected the left wing Hollande there's more talk of an approach that is balanced between growth and austerity.  An interesting concept.  Anyway, I voted yes because I think it's important to for all of Europe to work together and I am more confident that a Hollande/Merkle mix it won't be as one-sided as a Sarkosy/Merkle approach would have been.  Pretty much everyone agrees that France and Germany are calling the shots now.  Interestingly enough, there was a recent survey about attitudes toward Germany and throughout Europe, they seem to be held in high regard. It's great that they are using their considerable power, intelligence and wealth in the economic rather than the military realm.  

The coming month is going to be a busy one for me.  I'm finishing the writing on a book, the second in a series about why people join associations, working on a compensation survey, and preparing for a speaking gig in Liverpool on the book topic.  When I started writing this morning I thought I had nothing to say, now it's turned into a too-long post!  I'm a re-energized blogger, and off to yoga.  Till next week...