Ballymore features in Argentina's largest newspaper

Ballymore got a mention in Argentina’s largest newspaper yesterday – Clarín. The item - translated below – is by the noted Argentine sports journalist, Mariano Ryan, who is moved over his niece Feli’s visit to the land of their ancestors.

FROM THE IRISH LANDS, WITH KIND OF NOSTALGIA

By Mariano Ryan

She left last December with two friends. But her case is not like that of the many young people who daily use Ezeiza airport as their escape route. She, 24 years old, plans to return. All her family is waiting for her here, her family bonds, her physical therapy studies, her dog Zoila.

She went with the idea of working in the winter season in Andorra. But in the heart of Pyrenees, she found only cold, incredible landscapes and no job. So she made the decision: she would travel around Europe as much as she could with her savings from Argentina, her backpack full of dreams and the ambition to take advantage of everything on her way. With the expectation of being amazed before each museum, each park, each person who crossed her way, each story she encounters, Feli has been three months travelling by trains, staying in hostels, skipping some meals, undertaking long walks and wearing out her running- shoes.

Latterly, she is between Ballymore and Mullingar, in the centre of the “Emerald Isle”, welcomed as a close friend whom they have known all her life by distant cousins.

She is in the heart of Ireland. The reason is because of her mother´s family: they left from there towards the end of the 19th century with the vision of enjoying a better life on the other side of the ocean after the famine which had affected so many Irish people. They arrived with the sole purpose of settling down in the countryside to grow crops and breed cattle. And they stayed.

Almost a century and a half later, Feli´s uncle insists she must visit Dublin on March 17th, Saint Patrick´s Day, when the Irish capital turns green to celebrate one of its most famous Irish men (although, it has to be admitted, he was actually born in Britannia, a Roman province covering what today is the centre and south of England and Wales).

She could celebrate the day in Buenos Aires. But she knows it wouldn´t be the same.