Quinn Baumeister is from Bel Air, Md. and is a sophomore at Point Park University where she is studying Creative Writing. She is entering her third and potentially final year at Point Park and is excited to have the opportunity at college to travel while she can. She has been abroad once when she was younger and is excited to have this opportunity to explore the world some more. She is especially looking forward to Dublin and exploring the rich writing history in the city.

Pre-Trip Blog

I’m writing this as I finally relax and stretch my legs after a five hour car ride back home to Maryland. Next to me, all my suitcases and bags are sitting piled on my bedroom floor. I can’t even begin to settle or think about unpacking because I know in just a short amount of time, I’m going to be getting back in a car and spending another five hours driving back to Pittsburgh to leave the country. I haven’t traveled since I was eight years old, and even then I didn’t appreciate enough what an opportunity I had. I’m so excited for this trip, and I can’t wait to get out of my comfort zone. I know Iceland is going to take my breath away, and I have a feeling that Ireland, particularly Dublin, is going to feel (just a little bit) like coming home.

Day One: The Airport Is Prettier Than Me

Touching down in Iceland, I expected rich landscapes, beautiful horizons, gorgeous people and wildlife. I did not expect the airport to be so amazing. It felt so fresh and clean, especially after sitting in JFK for nine hours before taking off. I guess I really did set the bar low if the airport is one of the things I’m writing about.

Reykjavik is possibly one of the weirdest cities I’ve ever been to, and that’s the best part about it. It has so many amazing buildings and architecture, none of which seem to go together. From cozy Christmas cottages to Viking style houses, this town is so diverse in its design. And yet, it works so well. Nothing feels out of place, even as a foreigner looking around, everything feels so right, so comfortable. I haven’t talked to many locals, but just meandering around the city I feel welcome.

Something I didn’t expect from Reykjavik was the amount of artwork all around the city. We walked for about an hour and a half, and nearly every block we were stopping to take pictures of murals and artwork. I’m not sure how much of it is graffiti or commissioned, as there are so many different variations and subject matter, and on many different buildings. Some were on sheds in people’s yard, there were murals on apartment building walls, around public courtyards, and even parking garages were painted. Maybe we did talk about the street artwork in Iceland and it was overshadowed by my expectations for Belfast, but I think not expecting the sheer amount of art that’s around made it exciting to just wander and get lost for a little bit, and I’m so excited to keep doing so for the next few days.

Day Two: Iceland Has No Bad Angles

I have never been an outdoors person. My friends have had to drag me out to camp, quite literally kicking and screaming, and even then I refuse to sleep in a tent. I’m a city girl through and through. But if I were condemned to wander the Iceland countryside, I think I could make a good life. Everywhere you look, it’s gorgeous. I had to actually delete three apps on my phone just to open up storage on my phone so I could keep taking pictures.

Every place we visited was incredible. The þingvellir National Park was awesome because you learn in school about the tectonic plates, but they seem so far removed and foreign. But to stand there and literally be able to see and touch the rocks that make up the plates really puts all of that into perspective. Seeing Strokur was really cool. When I was in middle school I did an assignment on Yellowstone and the geysers there and I have always wanted to see them. I still haven’t made it to Yellowstone, but it has a lot to live up to. But Gullfoss was by far my favorite place from today. I grew up right next to a national park with some waterfalls, and one of the highlights of my trip to Ithaca, NY was going to all the waterfalls up there. I love waterfalls, and none I have ever seen can compare to Gullfoss. If I wasn’t starving, I probably could have stood there in the spray and watched the fall the entire time we were there.

The best thing from today, even surpassing the nature, was the rainbow. I had never seen a rainbow that clear, that vibrant. It felt so surreal, to stand there and look at a natural phenomenon that, in our everyday lives, means so much to me and my friends. I’ll never forget that.

Day Three: I Want To Work At The Grapevine

When I first considered taking this course, one of the reasons I was hesitant initially was because I wasn’t a communications major. I didn’t know how this media focused class would be either interesting or beneficial to me as a creative writing major. But after today, all doubts and reservations are gone.

Promote Iceland was awesome because I knew that tourism was a big deal, but I didn’t know how big tourism was. I hadn’t watched many of the videos for Inspired by Iceland before, and watching them was really fun.  Especially seeing the impact all those videos and campaigns had on the tourism in Iceland. I don’t think I’ve ever seen percentages about 100 used seriously before. And it’s pretty obvious just walking around Reykjavik. Every corner has a tourist shop or souvenir trinkets. It’s like Ocean City with less flag bikinis. I really can’t wait to come back and experience Iceland a lot more, talk to some locals and explore farther than my comfort zone.

The Grapevine was exactly what I expected and like nothing I could have ever imagined. I loved reading some of the articles, and this was one of the visits I was most excited for. Everyone was so genuine and laid back, it was very Iceland. I’m definitely looking up internship opportunities with them.

I’m sad to leave Iceland, but I know I will be back. Eventually. Hopefully with more time. And more sleep. And a lot more money.

Day Four: The Longest (Best) Day Of My Life

Posting this a bit late because when I came back to my room from dinner I literally just passed out. I had decided to power through and didn’t sleep before the 6 AM flight out of Iceland so I spent most of my first day in Ireland very tired.

It was still an amazing first day though. Literally five minutes off the bus I was sitting in an Irish Pub eating fish and chips. I’ve worked in an Irish pub for years, the restaurant practically becoming a second home, and to be sitting in Ireland in the real thing was incredible. Pubs are my favorite form of restaurant, and I definitely in the right place for that.

Walking around the city for a little while, I just felt at ease. Reykjavik was amazing, but it didn’t really give off the city vibe like Dublin, and while that’s not a bad thing, it’s something I love Dublin for. I can’t wait to explore more.

My favorite moment from yesterday was just wandering and browsing the name shops. My family is incredibly Irish, and looking around I could literally find crests and souvenirs with both my grandmother’s maiden names, my name, my middle name, my brother’s name, and my great-grandmother’s maiden name. I snuck a pic of one to my mother and told her, and now I’ve been tasked to go and buy mugs and keychains with the names for my entire extended family.

Day Five: Dublin Is My New Home

Today has been my favorite of the trip so far. Both of the media visits were awesome today. The lecture at DCU was very informative and well put together. I was expecting to be bored but I wasn’t. And Harmonia made me want to look into publishing again, which has always been a goal of mine, one I’ve kind of allowed to fall to the back of my mind for the last few years.

My favorite part about today though was our free time. I was able to just wander around the city and get a little lost. While I loved Iceland and it took my breath away, Iceland always felt like a vacation. It was a place to visit and experience a few times in a life time. But Dublin feels like a destination for me, and not just a stop on the way. I feel like I could live here and never get tired of this city. It has the city vibe I love, kind of like Boston or Philly where there are major historical buildings surrounded by a dynamic and growing city. And it’s even crazier and more surreal when you remember that some of those historical buildings and sites are older our entire country. It definitely puts a lot of things in perspective.

Tomorrow and Saturday I plan to go to some museums and other touristy things, but tonight I just felt like another face in the crowd. I hope to come back and stay in Dublin for a more extended time. It’s a city I connect with, and one that I hope one day I will be able to call home, at least for a little bit.

Day Six: We Told Irishmen About Hot Dog Launchers And Now They Want To Move To The US

Today was pretty incredible. The media visits with Heneghan PR and the Photographers Association were interesting and fun, even though I don’t know anything about both PR and photography. I finally found time to get Starbucks like the white girl I am.

The Book of Kells was incredible. When I was doing research for Irish literary history, it came up multiple times because of the poems the monks would write in the margins. And to be there and see it, to look at the art and words up close. Then above it, the legacy of literature housed in the Trinity Library. It was an incredible moment to walk through that doorway and suddenly be overwhelmed by the smell of old books and endless and upon endless shelves. I nearly cried, it was so amazing.

But the best part of the day, was definitely the Literary Pub Crawl. It was the first thing I wanted to do when researching things in Dublin, and I had a lot of expectations, and it did not disappoint. Finbarr and Kevin were incredibly funny and extremely nice. They were the best hosts to take us around the pubs, and even afterwards were fun to hang with and talk about how messed up America is. Their faces when we explained what a hot dog launcher was a moment I’m never going to forget. I think the Pub Crawl does a nice job of really bringing the literary history of the city to life in a way no one expects. Dublin itself is a city that takes such pride in its authors, and its clear the respect to the text everyone has. I wish there were more places that did the same.

Day Seven: I May Or May Not Have Gotten A Tattoo

This day was, in a word, emotional. I was able to go to the Dublin’s Writer’s Museum. It was only a few rooms, but there was so much information in those rooms, I could have spent three hours there just reading everything. And that’s before looking at the artifacts. I like to think that I have an above average knowledge of literary history, particularly Brit Lit because I spent so long with it, but I learned so much in just the first room of that museum. It really puts into perspective how many great writers came from this tiny island in this big world. It makes you feel incredibly small.

Also did something rather impulsive. On the first day in Dublin, I saw a tattoo studio about a block away from the hotel, and I threw around the idea of getting one, continuing my tradition of getting a tattoo in my favorite cities. But I decided I wouldn’t just because it wouldn’t be practical on a trip like this. But today, I was walking around and I looked at that studio and kind of went “why not?” And I don’t regret it. It was a simple design, all the artists were very nice, and they did an amazing job for a great price. It’s my fifth tattoo, but easily the most weighty one I’ve gotten. The design is a single heart beat monitor pulse wrapped around the ankle. I got it for my grandmother, who died two years ago. It’s simple and sweet, like her, and I’ve wanted to get something to remember her by for a long time. While it was impulsive, I don’t regret it in the slightest.

Day Eight: Leaving Dublin