Nine years ago, Manon Gilbart, a university student in Mons in Wallonia, Belgium, used to go to the O’Pub. One day Eoin O’Brien from Shannon in Co Clare, working there, accidentally spilled hot chocolate on her and a pal. They soon became friends, and later she worked there herself.
When she was looking at journalism masters, O’Brien suggested University of Limerick. “He said it’s actually close enough to Shannon. We could see each other. It was kind of like a full circle moment. I always had a soft spot for Ireland and had a few Irish friends, mostly in Dublin. But Eoin has been the constant.” They are still best friends. Now, he’s about to move to Australia. “I know, how rude of him,” she says, laughing.
She was attracted to Irish journalism programmes because of “how hands-on they are, way more practical than back home”. She started in UL in 2021, got a job afterwards covering holiday leave at the Limerick Post, then moved to the Limerick Leader, as multimedia journalist. She’s moving again shortly, to the Irish Examiner as a digital news journalist.
Gilbart has wanted to be a journalist since she was little. “Two years in, I still love it as much as I did when I started. I love talking to people, and the storytelling element.” She didn’t know much about Limerick beforehand, but “now, I have come to love the Treaty City. I have this sense of pride, like when someone talks badly of where you’re from, you think, I can talk badly of it, but you can’t do that.” She quickly adds, “I would never talk badly myself about Limerick, by the way, because I absolutely love it! I find it so charming. In Limerick people are especially lovely. They’re very engaging. They have your back.”
She mentions a favourite place, “an old man’s pub, on Liddy Street”. Soon after she arrived, after walking from campus to the city centre one warm day, she was thirsty. “I walked into this pub called Timmy Martin’s. I was by myself, just having a pint and crisps, and the bartender Tadhg came out to chat to me. He was my first interaction with a Limerick person. What felt very special to me is, a week later I went back to that same spot, with a friend, and he remembered my name. It’s my home away from home. Whenever if I go in there on a date, Tadhg and his dad, Timmy, the owner, they always have my back. They’re like, you mind yourself, or if my date goes to the bathroom, they’re, is he okay? What do we think? Which I think is so dotey.”
Every day I learn new words here. My absolute favourite expression is ‘the cheek of them’
The Irish dating scene can be tricky, says Gilbart. “I feel, whenever I like someone and start seeing them, they’re moving to Australia soon. Everyone is freaking moving to Australia all the time. It doesn’t help with dating, because I think people might not be looking for anything long-term because they’re moving abroad, or because rent is so expensive in Ireland and the housing crisis, they don’t want to settle here, or perhaps they want to settle here, but feel like they can’t.” This ties in with the hook-up culture, she says, because people don’t plan to settle. Her Irish friends remark on it, too. “They’re like, I’ve been on a date with this guy, and absolutely adore him. After a few days, they’re, Oh, he’s moving to Sydney or Perth.”
Another difference with dating in Belgium is “back home, people would be a bit more straightforward, I suppose. There’s this bluntness that might not always be here.” Does she means the Irish tendency to talk around a subject? “It’s like a sweet-talking element here.”
Irish and Belgian people are similarly friendly, she says. “You can strike up a conversation with almost anyone, even if it’s just about the weather. But I think I’ve had more conversations with strangers here than back home.”
All the same, “I still get thrown off with the very quick ‘Hi, how are you?’ I can’t help but reply ‘Good, how are you?’, when the other person is already in another room. It’s like a very quick way to say hello.
People here assume she’s French. “No, no, I’m Belgian. Because we have a bit of friendly rivalry, quite similar to that rivalry between Ireland and UK.”
French is her mother tongue, but her goal was to be able to write in English as well as in French. “I’m at a point now where I think in English. I don’t think in French any more. So when I go back home, I find it a bit tricky, because I’m kind of losing all my words.”
Here, sometimes buses just don’t show up at all ... And train services between cities are infrequent. There should be more direct links
“Every day I learn new words here. My absolute favourite expression is ‘the cheek of them’. My flatmate on campus used to tell us about her horrible dates, and she’d be, ‘Oh, the cheek of him!’ The audacity.
“Initially, especially in college, it was a bit difficult to make friends, and maybe there was a bit of a wedge between the Irish and the international students. That was my experience with it anyway. Even if you were making friends, I feel it was on a surface level not deep, meaningful connections. It did feel it could be a bit cliquey at times.”
All the same, and she recognises “the paradox, in a way”, because she was lucky enough to share campus accommodation with five Irish people, it helped build friendships. This was good, because colleges sometimes group international students together. “We’re still very close – but now everyone’s moving abroad to Canada, Australia.”
She lives in Limerick city now, with one flatmate, a Limerick friend; she pays nearly half her income on rent.
“I think I’ve been to three funerals in my whole life. I have yet to get to an Irish funeral. Here people go to the funeral of someone they might have met once, which I think is lovely. You’re making an arrangement to see friends and they’re saying, Sorry, I’m going to a funeral. And on RIP.ie, when they say it’s a celebration of life, rather than calling it a funeral, I quite like that. I’ve actually never been to an Irish wedding, or any wedding. I feel here, people are either always going to a wedding or a funeral.”
Irritations include the poor public transport between towns and cities and that “a lot of things seem Dublin-centric – which is such a shame. Back home in Belgium, I used to give out, about a train or bus being 15 or 25 minutes late. Here, sometimes buses just don’t show up at all ... And train services between cities are infrequent. There should be more direct links. Sometimes what should take an hour or two would be a six-hour journey. And I still have to find a way to go from Limerick to Donegal.”
She is an only child and gets home a couple of times a year. As family members age, or are sick, “it feels like a bit of a pinch on the heart. You feel guilty for not being there, but you know they understand this is what you’ve always wanted. I can’t quite picture what my future is going to look like. I’m not one to settle down. For now I’d love to stay in Ireland. I don’t know where I’ll be in five and 10 years. I suppose you can’t feel happy all the time, but I feel very content here, and I have amazing friends, so that helps.”
We would like to hear from people who have moved to Ireland. To get involved, email newtotheparish@irishtimes.com or tweet @newtotheparish
