"Whatcha lookin' for?" a group of grade school girls asked me as I scoured a hillside on the outskirts of Dublin.

"Searching for four-leafed clovers," I told them.

"They don't exist, do they?"

"Sure they do, and they bring you good luck if you can find one." After a minute, they lost interest, and began to walk off. I called back to them, "A pound to anyone who can find one."

"A whole pound!" and the search was on. Four little girls and an American were searching the Irish hillside for a bit o' luck.

It would be easy enough to spend some time in Ireland and come back with a story of sheepherders living pastoral lives amongst emerald fields, or red-haired lasses tending sheep beside thatched-roof houses. These scenes are all found easily enough, but would convey a contrived, incomplete image of Ireland today.

I spent ten days driving throughout Ireland with Chris, my good friend who was returning for the holidays to visit his family and friends. Almost everything in the homes I visited, aside from the mammoth 10-gallon flush toilets, could be found in any part of the U.S. The green fields and pastoral settings alongside rural roads so often photographed reminded me very much of my own home in western Maryland. Yet beneath postcard imagery and surface similarities to life Stateside, a truly unique Irish life thrives, one that defies stereotypes.

South West Ireland
The best place to find the idyllic settings romanticized in National Geographic is in the west. In County Kerry , on the southern Atlantic coast, are a string of peninsulas jutting into the Atlantic. The most famous coastal road along these promontories is named the Ring of Kerry . The narrow road (tour busses travel counter clockwise, so be sure not to) wraps around Ireland's highest peaks and alongside the open sea in a loop around the peninsula. It is here and places like it that are considered to be the heart of the Irish way of life. Numbers of English have settled along the rugged Atlantic coast in search of some alternative to the cities in the east. In spite of this, the area has a decidedly unsentimental quality. While sheep do indeed perpetually graze on the hillsides, farmers here whitewash the rocks to fool government inspectors who count sheep to determine the size of the subsidy.

I was surprised to find this lack of sentimentality. Before I left for Ireland , Chris lent me a parody on Irish life called The Poor Mouth. The story portrayed the Irish as taking a certain cultural pride in the despair of their impoverished conditions. The more destitute one's life, the more hopeless, the greater one's Irishness. I looked for poor mouths everywhere, but as is often joked, "the likes of these are not to be seen again." The past five years have been witness to extraordinary economic growth of the sort that changes a pessimistic people into the greatest of optimists, complete with Internet connections and cell phones. Perhaps this is why young, educated people are, for the first time in Ireland's history, deciding to remain in Ireland to find opportunities. As a result, Ireland is now the second largest exporter of software in the world. Martina and Aacuteine are examples of this new optimism in Ireland. They live in a two story duplex in Limerick city. Both go to lengths explaining that the church no longer holds dominion over Ireland's young people. Martina, though, goes to church weekly. She spoke venomously about the Bishop who left the country after the RTE (Irish TV station) broke the news about the child he fathered. Aacuteine was even more extreme, speaking of divorce (recently legalized) and abortion (illegal) as if inevitable in a modern society, much like TV and Pop Tarts. I met young, educated people like them throughout the country. Almost all have been abroad and most to the U.S.

The North West
In County Clare , also along the west coast, lies a vast expanse of open limestone hills called the Burren . The area stretches from the Cliffs of Moher up to the Aran Islands and inland to County Galway. The limestone is dissolved by rain so that the solid rock becomes more like a stone sponge. The Burren is aptly named, for no large plant-life can be supported in a land where water can only accumulate for a few hours at the porous surface. We drove along a one-lane road weaving through a rumpled, roughly textured hillside that is agreeably short on tourist amenities. The land supplies no shortage of stones that form one of the many gray stone walls crisscrossing the hills. The area is famous for caves, and we visited one called Aillwee . Though the guided tour left me listless, the one pound parking fee is well worth the chance to climb the surrounding hills. Hiking is treacherous for brown grass obscures the holes that are just about the same size as a foot and can be as deep as a leg. The summit of the hill provided a fine vantage point to view pastures in the valley and the Atlantic Ocean in the distance.

As we headed south to Limerick from the caves, we stopped to look at one of the ancient dolmens . Druids had balanced great stone slabs on smaller slabs to form a stone table over 5000 years ago. We pulled off the side of the road at one of the small plaques advertising one of these standing stones, and we all posed for snapshots in front of it. My attention however, was quickly drawn to more modern evidence of man. In a field adjacent to the dolmen, stood hundreds of smaller dolmens, all built by passerbies like us. I also picked up some scattered rocks, and carefully balanced one on a foundation of two others, emulating the ancients. Perhaps that's one reason many tourists seek solace in Ireland, trying to find balance in an anachronistic land of stone cottages and thatched roofs.

Dublin
The kids of Dublin will have none of such foolishness. They scamper about city streets as if it was their town. They show particular disdain to the tourist. While walking past one kid who was running along the tops of benches in St. Stephen's Green, he sneered "What are you looking at?" I met a pack of these unsupervised troublemakers with a McDonald's drinking straw each, shooting bits of paper at a store window. After chatting with them for a while, I walked off. They followed and proceeded to train their aim on me. I calmly walked along the busy streets of downtown Dublin with spitballs whizzing by me.

I escaped into a shopping mall and exited into the Temple Bar district . A favorite nightspot for tourists, it's popular enough for locals to eat Guinness stew or shop during the day, but not at night for drinking - there are too many British stag parties.

The deftness of bartenders at pulling pints is a sight to see. I talked with a fellow about the skill involved in pouring Guinness. Every pint should be poured one half inch from the top. A thick head, so one can touch a finger to it and leave an indentation. As you drink, the head should leave rings on the glass on the way down. "The quality of the Guinness decreases exponentially with distance from the Guinness factory" he joked. "I couldn't drink the stuff in Limerick." There are over 1000 pubs in Dublin alone, one for every thousand people or so. "Dublin is under-pubbed," he panned, "the rest of Ireland has five times that density.

Not that all Irish are Guinness drinkers. Murphy's is a popular stout in the southern County Cork, and relies on provincial allegiance to compete with its more popular cousin. Billboards with truisms like "Like the Murphy's, I'm not bitter" are seen throughout the county.

To the South
The road from Dublin to County Cork has been recently improved with European Union (EU) funds. In spite of the upgrade, the road is still not without character. The highway doesn't bypass small villages but rather gives drivers a tour through them. Pubs with names like "Thirsty Nellie" and "Final Furlong" beckon the locals and passerbies alike. Signs for bed and breakfasts are posted at nearly every side road.

We stayed for a few days with Chris's family in a small Cork village named Mallow. It is here that I met John and John, two caretakers at the Mallow spa house. Big John is gregarious: speaking with a soft Cork accent. He was Laurel to his partner's Hardy. Like many Irish, he worked abroad for several years. In his case, it was in London with British Rail. Also like many Irish, he has relatives living in America. In his case, they are working for the NYPD. I mentioned the recent upturn in Ireland's economy. He agreed it was fine but questioned how long it will last. "Hold on to your George Washingtons" he advised.

The Mallow Parish morning weekday service lets out at 8:15 am. Parishioners dressed in fine clothes of the workplace high-step it out the door, quickly splashing their finger into a marble bath of holy water. Despite holding to some traditions, some things seem quite out of place. Prayer candles have been replaced with electric lights that flicker with a coin and the pressing of a button. Other traditions are more firmly held to. I walked into a bakery at quarter of nine, hoping for scrapple and a cup of coffee. I was politely told to come back at nine, the opening time. When I returned at the proper time, the bakery was bustling with activity. The coffee I ordered is dabbed with a spoonful of solid cream. Ladies behind the counter served up stout slices of bacon and sausage.

Outside, it had begun to rain. The weather in Ireland is unpredictable; fair skies can turn to rain in minutes, and then back to clear skies. More often than not, it seems the rainy skies are more common. Like the Eskimos who have many ways to say the word "snow," the Irish use precise terms for rain. Drizzle (good for spuds) is most common, though I've heard, misting, pouring, showering, lashing, and finally, desperate.

The North
There is a mystique to Belfastfor outsiders, shaped and clouded by letters like the UDA and the IRA. It is here where police carry guns and drive in armored cars. Soldiers never travel by road and colors painted on the curb marks the allegiance of a community. Belfast's hospitals contain the best reconstructive surgeons in the world. The running joke was that if you see cows and sheep in the same field, that it's an experiment in integration. If it works with the animals, they will try it with the Catholics and the Protestants. Of course, the rolling hills of the northern countryside look like any that can be found in the South.

We stayed in the home of a classmate of my friend. He lives in a Protestant section of town, amidst unionist murals commemorating the UDA with paintings of black masked terrorists and spray painted graffiti. One night we hailed a black stretch cab to dinner at a restored Irish pub with stained-glass windows and photos of old sports stars. Chris' friend asked the driver if this cab has bulletproof glass to protect the American on board. "No need," said the driver, "you're in God's country now. Save the bulletproof glass for America."

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