Europe, no longer frozen in time

There's so much dreary jingoistic writing in the Times travel section that the exceptions leap out at you. Here's Dan Barry, whose thoughtful article is only slightly undermined by its American-centric headline, Does the ‘Real’ Ireland Still Exist? .

It's one of the few articles in the Times as a whole that acknowledges our antiquated notions of what a Frenchman looks like, what makes a German dish, who lives in an Irish city, only works if you ignore the impact of economic and demographic changes over the last few decades.

(Now if only the Times could start publishing articles like this about non-Western countries!)

Yes, you can find a thatched cottage here and there, if you try. Yes, you may even encounter a white clot of sheep blocking your rented car’s path, raising from musty memory some postcard caption about Irish Rush Hour. But to wander about, looking to bag with a digital camera some approximation of a time-faded Irish postcard, is to miss the complexities of a country that is thoroughly enjoying its wealth and adapting to its European Union membership while at the same time trying to preserve its dreamlike landscape and proud cultural heritage.

You may indeed hear a young Irish woman suddenly break into song in Kinvara. But you may also walk around the corner and be served dinner by a young man with an Eastern European accent instead of a brogue. Travel 10 miles up the road to Gort and you might wade into a celebration of Brazilian culture, staged by a transplanted community that is now an integral part of that old market town.

There you have it: delightful, post-millennial Ireland. ...

A change in infrastructure is one thing; a change in culture is quite another. And nowhere is this change more strongly felt than in Gort, about 40 miles northeast of the cliffs and just a dozen miles from Kinvara. My mother grew up on a farm near there, and I’ve been visiting Gort since the 1970s. I have watched it gradually grow from an aged and insular town to a bedroom community for Galway City, some 20 miles away. Farms I remember are now Levittown-like subdivisions.

The real change, though, is in Gort’s new and sizable Brazilian community, attracted in part by job opportunities at a local meat-processing plant. The impact has been extraordinary: Brazilian music nights in one of the pubs, Brazilian necessities — from maracuja to mandioca — in the shops, and a Sunday Mass said in Portuguese. There has been the usual awkwardness in this marriage of two distinct cultures, but for the most part the newcomers have been warmly accepted; for example, when carbon monoxide from a faulty oil burner killed two Brazilian men nearly three years ago, townspeople banded together to raise money to help the families.

And every June, Gort serves as host to a traditional Brazilian festival called the Quadrilha. The town center comes alive with folk dances and passionate sambas that could never be confused with an Irish step dance, while the air fills with the aroma of Brazilian cuisine that could never be confused with brown bread and tea.

I do wish Barry had made some acknowledgement that the 'Brazilians' are in many cases by birth now Irish; and I'm sure the 'usual awkwardness' glosses over some pretty ugly patterns; but at least he's trying.