Can You Hear Me Now

Note. The underlying article can be found here: https://ajprokop.com/2026/09/14/irish-travelogue/

Pip: There is exactly one post on the docket today, and it is a time capsule — a travel journal from 1997 that survived several computer deaths and one very determined blogger.

Mara: Andrew Prokop found a long-lost journal from a work trip to Galway, Ireland, and published it here. We are spending the whole episode in it — the roads, the food, the fog, and what it feels like to read your younger self.

Pip: Let’s start with the travelogue itself.

Galway, 1997: A Journal Recovered

Mara: The framing here is worth sitting with before we get into the journal entries. This is a recovered document — most of the exotic-trip journals were lost across computer migrations, and this one barely made it.

Pip: The prelude sets the stakes plainly: “Reading my words again all these years, I find that they have become less of a travelogue and more of a reflection of a much younger me. That’s more important than place-names, anyway, and why they are worth preserving.”

Mara: So the journal is doing two things at once — it’s a record of Galway in late autumn 1997, and it’s an accidental self-portrait. The editing philosophy follows from that: spelling fixed, convoluted sentences smoothed, but the half-sentences and raw feeling left intact.

Pip: Which is the right call, because the raw feeling is where the thing lives. The Monday entry lands after a punishing travel day and immediately goes warm — a chef who comes out of the kitchen to ask if there is anything not on the menu, homemade brown bread, a vegetarian filo dish with no name.

Mara: The Wednesday entry captures the texture of Galway’s streets well. Ancient stone buildings housing CD shops blaring rap music. A building that probably once held a blacksmith now selling mobile phones. Old and new pressed right up against each other with no ceremony.

Pip: And the roads with no street signs, because the signs are on the sides of buildings — a detail that is either charming or maddening depending on how lost you are.

Mara: Saturday is the centerpiece of the journal. After days of hesitation, a car is rented and the Connemara region is driven in full. The route is traced in the post — Galway to Maam Cross, Maam Cross to Maam, Maam to Leenane, on through Moyard, Clifton, Toombeola, Kilkieran, Screeb, and back.

Pip: And the fog clears at the top of a ridge and the world opens up. That moment earns its exclamation point.

Mara: Aughnanure Castle, built around 1500, with a working moat. Kylemore Abbey appearing suddenly alongside its lake. A chip-versus-crisp negotiation in Ballyconneely that goes exactly as you would expect.

Pip: The Sunday entry pulls back to the city — rain, wind, a walk to the Spanish Arch and the Cathedral and the Church of St. Nicholas, a soaked stray dog as a brief companion, and then an Indian restaurant with a fireplace where a bowl of biryani and chana masala becomes one of the best meals of the trip.

Mara: The closing days carry the emotional weight. By Tuesday he is ready to go home — not because Ireland failed, but because it succeeded and the family is missed. The drive to Shannon passes through what looks like an American suburb, and the contrast makes the previous ten days feel more precious.

Pip: The postlude adds a quiet coda: later trips to Ireland happened, those journals are lost too, and somewhere along the way the Irish banjo entered the picture.

Mara: The post ends with a short poem — rain on stone walls, the Galway weather proverb, and a sign-off in Irish: go raibh maith agat as léamh. Thank you for reading.

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Pip: A 1997 business trip, a lost journal, a sheep-consumed island, and one very good bowl of porridge.

Mara: The real find is what survives the years — not the place-names, but the feeling of being young and far from home and paying attention.

Pip: More from the archive next time.