I'm not in Kansas anymore

Note: I'd probably have just as many moments like this if I was in Kansas, but you understand the sentiment.

Today, I finally found some peanut butter in a grocery store. At home you hardly need too look: there's six dozen varieties and twenty different brands, from the all-natural, no-sugar-added, no-salt-added organic type to the good ol' Skippy. Here in Ireland? I believe that there were two different brands, each with the choice of chunky or smooth. There were about two shelves worth of Nutella and some strange chocolate spreads which, on the one hand sounded appealing, until I really thought about it: what do you do with it? That would be like smearing some Hershey's syrup on bread, which isn't my favorite.

There've been other moments like that - the first day I worked, got off the bus around 5:30, and everything was fairly close to closing. America may be 24/7 but Ireland certainly isn't (my personal jury on this is still in debate). 'Customer service' is markedly different here, too. Not once has anyone asked me if I needed help in a shop: personally I sort of like that.

But today was a big one. In addition to my flatmate telling me he's popping down to Portugal for a conference or some such next week (since Portugal is not, in fact, a eight-hour flight away), I flipped on the TV for a few minutes. First there was the news in Gaelic on one station - at least, I assume it was the news and I assume it was Gaelic, but for all I know it might have been Scandinavian. Anyway, I found the news in a language which I have a functional knowledge of, and one of the main stories was a murder. News reports of murder are not altogether foreign to me, because I grew up right next door to the murder capital of the country. So while it's very tragic, that wouldn't be enough to make me do a double-take.

What did was this:

Michael McIIveen died in hospital last night after being assaulted by a loyalist gang in Ballymena on Sunday.

Emphasis mine.

It took me a few minutes, and then when I sat down at my computer I had to look it up, just to be sure. Yup, right there on Wikipedia and a hundred other sites: Loyalist as in, supporting union between Northern Ireland and Britain. As in Catholic-vs-Protestant, pipe-bombs in McDonalds', throwing rocks at school-children, started-with-the-Easter-Rebellion-in-1916 Loyalists. (Yes, I know that the issue was alive and well long before 1916).

For some reason I have immensely little perspective on this as a contemporary issue rather than a historical one. I know the basics of the history and am trying to learn more, but all I really know so far is a that there were some military struggles in the early 1900's, the Republic of Ireland was created, then in the 80's there was a lot of trouble. I'd been under the impression that it simply wasn't an issue anymore and I think to a certain extent that's true. But I definitely wouldn't just engage a random stranger in a discussion on the topic, not without knowing where they stood on the issue first.

It really is a different world out here.