I returned from Dublin this morning after rising at 5:30AM to catch an 8:10AM flight. We arrived in England in the midst of a perfect grey, cloudy England day--much to my dismay.
Meghan Blickman, Lauren Deitz, Chad Frazier and I arrived in Dublin Thursday evening. We had been traveling for eight or nine hours (a half-hour bus ride into Norwich from UEA, a two hour train ride to London Stansted airport, three hours to kill in the airport, an hour-and-a-half flight and an hour bus ride into the Dublin city centre) and were exhausted by the time we reached the Marlborough Hostel, where we would be staying for the next four nights.
After checking in and dropping our backpacks off in our room (we were all traveling as light as possible) we set off to find a bite to eat. We ended up eating in a cheap restaurant called The Kingfisher, where I had a cheeseburger. After dinner we wandered the streets of Dublin to see what the city was like, but not knowing where we were ended up not wandering towards the city center, and didn't see much of interest. We returned to the hostel and were asleep by 10:30.
The next morning, Friday, we headed to the Dublin Writers Museum. The Dublin Writers Museum is in a small building on Parnell Square. On one floor they have biographies of different Irish writers and artifacts that belonged to them, including first editions of books by James Joyce, Oscar Wilde and Samuel Beckett. There were pipes, typewriters and typescripts. It was wonderful to read about the different authors and to see things that belonged to the writers themselves.
After the Writers Museum we found a bite to eat at a nearby sandwich place, then headed to the bus stop to catch the bus to the Guinness Storehouse ("Store" refers to the process of fermenting the beer, which is where the Storehouse comes from. It's not where the beer is stored). There are seven floors in the storehouse that educate about how Guinness is made, its history, the life of Arthur Guinness, the man who founded the company, the history of Guinness advertisements, and a bar with a 360 degree view of Dublin at the top. At the bus stop we encountered two of the more fascinating individuals I've ever come across. We were approached by a young man about my height who asked us how to read the bus schedule. I explained it to him, and then he looked at us and said, "You're not Irish? Are you tourists, too?" to which we responded yes, and told him we were from the states. He exclaimed excitedly, "Oh! We are from Slovenia!"
WHERE?!?!
I was sure I had heard the word before, but couldn't be asked to find it on a map to save my life. The rest of the conversation is slightly hazy, for I was somewhat overwhelmed by the guy's excitement. He asked where we were all from, and when I told him I was from New York he said, "Oh! Give us some of that New York accent!" I told him I didn't have an accent, to which he responded, "THERE IT IS!" He told us he watched a lot of television (his companion, who had never been out of Slovenia before, told us he watched too much t.v.), and said he wanted to go to Anthony Bourdain's restaurant in New York. In reference to New York, he also said (in his own New York accent) something about Anthony Soprano.
It turned out the two were visiting a "dodgy" friend who was living in a "dodgy" part of Dublin near the Guinness Storehouse. The more talkative of the two was a tour guide in Slovenia who had just recently acquired a license to give tours (apparently he had been giving tours illegally up until then). They constantly made comments about "typical Irish girls" or "typical Irish kids," much to our amusement.
We boarded the bus and sat in the back. We weren't sure where to get off, and as we stood up to disembark, a small Irish schoolboy told us it wasn't our stop. Meghan asked him his name (we believe it was Thomas, but we weren't sure) and how old he was. He was 12. A few minutes later, as the bus pulled to a stop, he said, "I get off here, you get off at the next stop." We thanked him profusely.
When we got off the bus we were beside a big black gate with the word "Guinness" in gold letters across it. Across the street was another factory-looking building, and we began snapping photos. An elderly man with a wool hat and a cane who had gotten off the bus with us got our attention. He gestured to the building across the street.
"That was the steam power plant that powered the factory, but it's not in use any more," he said. Then, he gestured to the black gates. "I worked in the factory for forty-five years, and only once did I see these gates open."
"When?" we asked.
"There was a big load going through the main gate down there, and it was so big it knocked the top off the arch off, so they used these gates while the others were being repaired."
Without saying goodbye or acknowledging our thanks, he hobbled away.
In no more than twenty minutes, we had been approached by four very different people. For me, this was exactly what traveling was supposed to be like. Meeting strange people from places you would never expect, places you'd never heard of. Getting directions from a twelve-year-old. Hearing a story from an old Irish man.
Which brings me to the issue of the Irish accent. At customs in the Dublin airport, I handed the immigration officer my passport, and he said something to me which sounded something like "Hurraarra."
"I'm sorry?" I said.
"I sed, 'Hawarye'?" he responded. Oh. "How are you." Of course.
"Oh, I'm fine, how are you?" I said, rather flustered. It did not look like I was off to a good start. But in a matter of hours, the accent was sounding less foreign and intimidating, and I realized how absolutely beautiful it is. I had never thought of the Irish accent as beautiful. I imagined it reflected the gruff, rough-and-tumble look of the stereotypical Irishman, but as I listened to the man at reception in our hostel and our waitress at the restaurant we ate at speak, I realized how melodic and rhythmic the Irish accent is. There intonations are musical and the flow very pleasant. For the rest of the weekend, I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the Irish speak, even just as I passed two people talking on the street.
The Guinness Storehouse was fun, although for me the highlight was definitely getting to the top and being able to see all of Dublin. Dublin is quite a small city, a fact we noticed as we explored on other days. After just a weekend, all four us felt we had a good feel for the city. There are also more busses than I've ever seen in my entire life in that city. I think it's a combination of dense population but small area--so there enough busses to support Dublin's population, but it seems like there are more busses than anywhere in the world because the city itself is so small.
After the Storehouse, we hopped on the bus and headed back towards the hostel. For dinner we found an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet (which was decent and cheap...and also all-you-can-eat. that was the deal breaker). After dinner we returned to the hostel and gathered ourselves and took a bit of a rest. We decided to go on a "Backpacker's pub crawl" which met at the gates of Trinity College at 8PM. I was somewhat hesitant, but thought I would give it a shot. We met the guide at the gates. There were other Americans there who were studying abroad in England and in Ireland for the weekend, there was a man from Barcelona who had been living in Dublin for a month and was now looking for a job, three students, one from Germany, one from France, one from Norway (if I remember correctly), a couple from Australia, a guy from Cincinnati and a tattoo artist from Denver who said she was in Dublin for a tattoo convention. Our guide was a 24 year-old native Dubliner with long red hair and bad teeth. He took us to four pubs: The Long Stone, Chaplain's (so-called because there used to be a secret passage to a theatre on the other side of the block), Cassidy's (a pub I thoroughly enjoyed), and I can't remember the name of the fourth. After the pubs we had free admission to a club where we danced for awhile, then headed back to the hostel and passed out.
On Saturday we woke up and took a walking tour of Dublin. Sights included Trinity College, the old parliament building which is now the Bank of Ireland, Dublin Castle, City Hall, Christ Church Cathedral and an area called Temple Bar. As we walked towards Temple Bar we passed a café and who was sitting inside but our good Slovenian friends from the day before. I never thought I would ever see them again. I waved, and continued walking as I we were still with the tour.
After the tour we found a bite to eat at a chain called Abrakebabra where I had a lamb pita. It was pretty delicious. We then went to explore Christ Church Cathedral. It was much smaller than the other cathedrals we've encountered so far, but still beautiful. We then walked back across the city (in the rain) and found a small coffee shop where we had coffee and talked about books. It was probably too pretentious for our own good, but it was fun anyway, and good to have a warm drink despite being soaked to the bone.
That night, we decided to have dinner at a pub, then go find somewhere playing live music. It took many tries--most pubs were almost too crowded to even get in the door--but we finally found one that was nearly empty with a man sitting at the front with his guitar covering songs by the Beatles, the Doors and a whole host of other artists.
On Sunday we visited Kilmainham Gaol, a prison on the outskirts of Dublin where reformers first implemented a system to place criminals in individual cells instead of putting them in rooms together--men, women and children alike. During the famine in 1845-50, the prison had something like 160 cells for 9,000 prisoners. Reformers needed to find a way to make prison not desirable, so they finally began placing prisoners in their own cells and monitoring them. There had to be a balance between pleasure and pain so that prisoners would have incentive not to get put back into prison. They also had to make sure that during the famine prisoners received as little food as boys in schools, because for some time, prisoners would get 4oz more food than students, which at the time made prison more desirable than not. Irish revolutionaries were also held in Kilmainham and executed there. We stood in the courtyard where they had been executed by a firing squad. It was very eery, and rather uncomfortable, but definitely worth the 2.50 euro the tour cost.
After Kilmainham Gaol we went back towards the city center and ate some lunch at a café, had some coffee and got our blood sugar back up as we were all starting to fade. We then walked towards the Dublin National Gallery, but on the way I came across a men's store which had stacks upon stacks of beautiful wool hats, so naturally I had to buy one. The man who sold me the hat was a short, sturdy, well-dressed Irishman with gold chains on his right wrist. I told him my father had told me I had to buy a hat in Ireland, and the salesmen laughed and said, "Well, ye came to the right place."
In the National Gallery we wandered rooms of landscape paintings and portraits for as long as we could handle, and then headed back to the hostel before dinner at a decent and well-priced Italian restaurant. Seeing as it was our last night in Dublin, we decided to head to a pub and have one last drink. We returned to Chaplain's, which was empty, but perfect. There was a party of four in the corner, a man and his date, the bartender, and two men at the bar. We ordered our drinks and took a seat. We talked for about an hour-and-a-half about our lives, our backgrounds, and went anywhere our conversation took us. Half an hour before closing, the bartender came over and asked us if we wanted another drink, we all said yes, but Deitz was rather indecisive, so the bartender said in a loud whisper, putting his fingertips together in front of his chest, "Go on, live the dream!" So we did. And when it came to paying, Chad just had a 50 euro note, so he said he would pay, which caused the bartender to say, "Why sit around when you can buy around?" It was the perfect ending to a fantastic weekend. I loved watching the three men at the bar--which became four when another man walked in and took a seat. The second he walked in, the bartender greeted him, picked up a pint glass, spun it on the palm of his hand and began pulling the man a drink. It was wonderful to watch. Who knew how long these four men had been sitting down in an empty pub, enjoying a drink, a football match and some good conversation. I felt like I was observing a true cultural artifact, something I hope never fades from existence.
This trip was exactly what I needed, and exactly what I hoped it would be. It was great to get away from campus for a weekend, and we did so much and had such a wonderful experience. I was disappointed we didn't have a chance to make it into the countryside, but I will definitely make another trip to Ireland to see whatever I missed before the academic year is over. What a wonderful country. Friendly people, beautiful accents, beautiful sights, great Guinness.
Here are the links to my pictures of Dublin:
***
This Friday, Dwight and I will hop on a plane to head to Bologna Italy for the weekend. I will meet Gina there, and it will be a grand ol' time. I can't wait. I'm very excited to travel as much as I can, and am really looking forward to my month off in the spring to get some good traveling in. I'm trying to plan a trip to Toulouse, France next weekend (the weekend of the 21st) to see Alie Collins...and France. Hopefully that will work out.
NaNoWriMo is not going well. I only have about 1,500 words, when I should have 16,000 or so, so I think it is fair to say I will not reach 50,000 words by the end of the month. However I did have an idea I'm happy with for a novel, so I'm going to start working on it, setting a goal for myself every day or every other day in terms of how much I want to write, and just churning out as much as I can.
Hope all is well with everyone back home and in the far reaches of this beautiful world. Home in a month for Christmas and New Year's! Much love to the fam and all my friends. Cheers!
-ZMG
