Peoplewatching on Flixbus

Sometimes when I visit Belgium for the weekend and want to return to the Netherlands, I book a Flixbus from Brussels to Amsterdam. It takes just under 3 hours, about the same as a train, and is often much cheaper, and basically, it does the trick.

The buses leave from Brussel Noord station. This sounds simple enough, but in fact it's a big station with many exits and the buses actually leave from a street a few blocks away. (My main tip: leave yourself plenty of time to get there. It's all pretty easy once you get the hang of it, but the first few times can be confusing.)

Anyway, taking my own advice, I often arrive around an hour to 45 minutes early, just to be on the safe side.

And, in a way, it's kinda fascinating. I've seen:

• Low-cost buses departing to all parts of Europe - to Amsterdam, to Bilbao, to Genoa (via Luxembourg, Strasbourg, Saarbrucken and Aosta) and Warsaw (via many German cities on the way).
  
  
• With each bus pulling in, a small flurry of activity: where is it going, is it to X place or Y place, stopping at X? The Flixbus staff ask 'where are you going?' and greet regular passengers.
  
  
• A real mix of people:
• A middle-aged man with a suitcase, he looks like a businessman
• A couple, probably in their 30s, the man holding all their luggage
  
• A young man with his elderly grandfather, holding an old-fashioned suitcase
• People loading their luggage - sometimes simple plastic shopping bags filled with stuff
• A woman with bright red hair, wearing a large white fluffy hat with a bright red bow
• A couple, and a mother-in-law
• A lanky young Dutch guy returning after an EU event, phoning his mother to say how it went
• A woman bringing a fried chicken takeaway on board
• Sometimes whole families come along to travel themselves or to wave someone off.

I often wonder who everyone is, why they are going where they are going, why on a bus. Maybe some are young migrants, returning home via a cheap way, possibly the only way their low wages allow. Maybe they are scared of flying? An irony being that, all the while, huge planes are landing into Brussels Airport, low on their descent.

So many different stories, in just one hour. And, in my experience, when on board, everyone goes quiet, looking at their phones or falling asleep. Something we all have in common.

Exploring the 1901 and 1911 census of Ireland

I recently came across the Irish Surnames Map by Barry Griffin. This website uses census data from the 1901 and 1911 censuses of Ireland and maps them across the island - showing where surnames and forenames are most located. Lots of interesting things to discover!

On that website, I learned there were only 6 people named Adrian living in Ireland in 1901. Not very many, but I suppose the name became more popular in the 20th century. 

Exploring that website led me on to the actual census data websites, run by the National Archives of Ireland. This site includes the 1901 and 1911 census records, and you can search it right down to the individual or household level. I think I found records of my great-great-grandmother and great-grandfather and saw their handwriting (my surname is one of the most common, as were their forenames, so I'm not 100% sure).

You can also search the data by origin. Within Ireland, that means which county they are from. Outside Ireland, it means country. 

Ireland is now a very multinational and multicultural country. There's often some kind of belief that this is all new, but these records show that people from outside Ireland have lived here for more than a century.

I find all manner of interesting records. Here are some highlights.

• In 1911, 365 people were listed as being from Italy, just a small increase from the 243 in 1901. The most common surname was Forte. They have a variety of occupations, with those relating to ice-cream the most common, as well as scholars, various shop professions and organ grinders.
  
  
• In both years, there are around 3,900 whose country is listed as Russia. The majority of these have names that are Jewish. More than 2,000 live in Dublin, with others in various other counties, including one person, Joseph Fine, living in Leitrim.
  
  
• 18-year-old Carlos Cornelia Nissen was listed as being from 'Buenous Ayres South America'. In 1911, he was living with his aunt Mary Sheehan in Cappamore and working as a postman. In fact, on both censuses, there were around 100 people listed as being from Buenos Aires (using a variety of spellings). For example, one family in Wexford have two children who were listed as being from 'Buenos Ayres'.
  
  
• A Dutch classics and languages teacher living in Dublin. He was 52 and living with his wife, who was from Tyrone. I wonder how they met?
  
  
• In Loughrea, County Galway, a convent of Carmelite Nuns included 23-year-old Diavolinda Ferreira, who was from Portugal.
  
  
• A Greek electrical engineer living in Belfast: 29-year-old Panagos Koconis was from the island of Patmos and married to Catherine from Greenock in Scotland. Their son Emmanuel was one year old.
  
  
• A 34-year-old German masseuse named Sinon in Blarney, Country Cork who was staying or working or living (census record isn't clear) at a 'hydrophatic establishment'. This establishment may well be the Saint Anne's Hydro and Turkish Baths, which were a popular spa resort in the area in the 1900s. The venue records about 90 different guests there on the night of the 1901 Census. The spa now seems to be mostly long gone (but what remains is a protected structure) but a recent article implies there is a plan to redevelop it.
  
  
• Spanish Salvador Gomez was 18 years old and studying dentistry, and his compatriot Anthony Russo was 22 and studying medicine. In 1911, both were boarding with Sarah McSwiney from Kerry in Dublin, along with two others.
  
  
• August Pedro Piloto is 24 and a farm servant. He is living in Loughgall, a small village in Armagh, and described as being from 'E Africa'. 
  
  
• Alvino Luja is 26 years old, a teacher of French and German from Luxembourg. In 1911, she was living in Dublin at a school, Dominican College Sion Hill. It is one of the oldest girls' secondary schools in Ireland, founded in 1836.

These are just 10 examples from the thousands, if not millions, of interesting stories found in the 1901 and 1911 census. Anyone can explore these census records online via the National Archives of Ireland.

Ireland's census history is patchy. After 1901 and 1911, the next scheduled census was 1921, but this was cancelled due to war. A census was held in 1926, the first after Irish independence. Now, 100 years later, the records from the 1926 census will be released in April of this year.