Cobh Broken Down Trains

Yesterday I attempted to go to Cobh with one of my housemates. Cobh is about a 25 minute train ride from Cork, so we walked to the train station and bought tickets for the commuter train to Cobh. It was the second time I've ever been to the Cork train station. I have yet to successfully leave said train station actually in a train.

First, the train scheduled to leave for Cobh was running late, so the boarding and departure was about 10 minutes after it was scheduled. We all got onto the platform at track 1, right next to an empty train on track 2. After about a 5 minute wait somebody thought to announce that the train to Cobh was actually the one on track 2 right behind us, which had been there the entire time we were there. We all turned around and boarded that train and waited for what we assumed would be a minute or two so everyone could get on and then we would depart. We were, of course, mistaken. The doors closed, we sat there for about 2 minutes, and then a muffled voice announced over the PA "mumble mumble train mumble mumble service to mumble bus service mumble".

People began to trickle out of the train and it became clear due to some individuals who either possessed incredible hearing or the ability to speak airport announcement translated the message to "Train broke down, we're trying to get you a bus to wherever you need to go". By the time we returned to the terminal it was about 5 minutes before the train was scheduled to arrive in Cobh. By this point we figured that it was late enough that it wasn't worth the hassle of getting a bus, so we got a refund and walked back to our townhouse.
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On Friday we went to Belfast Cork Airport and back

On Friday I learned a useful lesson; If you are younger than 23, it is pretty much impossible to rent a car in Ireland (or at least Cork). As I said a few days ago, the plan for the weekend was to rent a car and drive up to Belfast and sort of tour Northern Ireland for a few days. This effort, as you may have already guessed, ended in utter failure because 21 year olds are not really able to rent cars here in Cork and having a car was pretty central to our plans. On the positive side we got to go to ORK (yes, I will use any possible excuse to type the abbreviation for Cork Airport) and the weather was pretty nice.

So that didn't really work, and the revised plan is to go to Cobh tomorrow and then Waterford on Monday (horray for bank holidays). Hopefully this plan will work out a little better. Fortunately no car rentals are involved.
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Soccer match + Pictures

Cork City FC 5, Cobh Ramblers 0. The match was at Cork City's home stadium, Turner's Cross. It was about a half hour walk from my townhouse. It was quite an experience. Cobh (pronounced cove) is about 20 miles from the City of Cork, making this a derby of sorts. I went with the Irish guy who lives in the townhouse with me. I enjoyed it immensely. Its much much different from watching soccer in America, but mostly in ways that are difficult to explain. Oh, and we got front row seats, which was sorta cool.

That picture is of the 4th goal, which was actually scored by a guy who isn't in the picture. Cork were wearing green, Cobh that sort of maroon.

As we were walking to the match, the closer we got to the stadium the larger and larger the crowds who were joining us became. It was a fascinating and awesome sort of enlarging stream of fans who simply walked to the stadium or parked far away and walked, converging on a single place by walking down ordinary streets. The stadium didn't have a parking lot, so this was the only way for people to get there. There was a pub right next to the gates, and the stadium is surrounded on all 4 sides by streets so that it turns out that all the gates are literally right on the sidewalk. When we got inside we went into the stands and sat in the front row of the Curragh Road End (apparently also known as "The Shed"), nearly directly behind the goal. Off to our left there was a large group of committed supporters waving flags, holding scarves, and standing for most of the match. There was another such group over at the far left corner (from my perspective) in the Donie Forde Stand as well as a bunch of away fans in the far right corner in the Derrynane Road Stand.
vocal Cork fans with flags in the Donie Forde Stand.

Cobh free kick behind which you can see the Donie Forde again.

The fans sang or chanted in some sort of semi-organized way pretty much throughout the game. One of my favorites was about a 5 minute stretch when they yelled in unison "hey!" when any Cork player got the ball and "boo" whenever any Cobh player touched the ball, which became rather amusing after the first 10 or 11 yells or boos. The stadium itself wasn't particularly nice but it did have a sort of character and charm to it that made it a pretty awesome place to watch a match.

Only 15 euro for a ticket and then 3 euro more for a program. Not too bad, overall. As we were walking back from the match it occurred to me that since I'm here in August I might be able to fly over to England and catch an English Premier League match on opening day. That'd be cool.
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