Vignettes

Brief moments from 11 years in the European Union

"Lads, where's the golf club?"...
  — Kilkenny, Ireland, 2006

I passed by a woman letting air out of a tire. She said her ex-boyfriend had promised to buy her a white Mercedes for her birthday. Then they broke up and he bought it for himself instead.

  — Nijmegen The Netherlands, 2004

"Ma, are we in Youghal? (pronounced yo'll.)"

"No, honey, this is killeagh (pronounced killa.)"

"Wha?"

  — On Bus Eireann in County Cork, Ireland, 2009

She turned the hard side of her face to me....

"It could be worse; you could drop dead and not know it."

  — A Hungarian-born Australian on a Romanian train, summer of 2009.