Dublin

                       

Recently, Pat and I hung out in Dublin for 10 days or so.  I never thought I would go to Ireland, but a friend of ours is working there for two and a half years and the opportunity presented itself, so off we went.  Our friend has been going to Ireland for decades, speaks fluent Irish, and is as close to a native guide as an American can get.  I thought you might find the tales of a rube in Dublin interesting, so here goes.

The first thing that struck me about Dublin is its history.  Dublin turned 1000 in 1988.  To put that into perspective, when Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492, Dublin was just over 500 years old.  Living in Minneapolis, where buildings are torn down when they turn 40 years old, the narrow streets and very old buildings of Dublin lend the city an aura history and permanence.  America is the land of natural splendor.  Europe features architectural, historical, and cultural magnificence.

Dublin features Georgian buildings galore.   The buildings, usually four stories and a basement, were built between 1714 and 1830.  Rows of the stately buildings decorate the city to this day.  In the 1920’s and during the worldwide depression that began in the 20’s many of the buildings became decrepit as their wealthy owners fell on hard times.  There was no real love for the buildings in Ireland, at that time, because they symbolized English rule (which ended in 1922) and many of them fell into disrepair and were deserted.   However, many survived and were repurposed.

The Georgians were pressured again during the Irish economy’s boom years in the 1990s and early 2000s.  Developers looked to tear down the old buildings and put up condominiums, townhouses and strip malls.  This time, the city, along with coalitions of students and conservationists were able to get a strict preservation law passed that made it very difficult to knock down the Georgians.  So today, Dublin has preserved more examples of Georgian architecture than just about any European city.

                

If none of this is old enough for you, wait, we are getting to the real old stuff.  For example, Pat and I were wandering around Trinity College (founded in 1592) and we happened into the lobby of the Geology Building.  There was a fully assembled skeleton of a blumenbuch.  The blumenbuch was a giant Irish deer that went extinct about 11,000 years ago.  So you are as likely to see a blumenbuch today as a rational Republican.  Actually, I can’t verify this, but I think there was an ancient restaurant in Australia where you got a bloomenonion with every order of blumenbuch.

Buchen A, What the hell is that?

  

Ireland struggled with the English over their independence for 600 years.  Naturally, many remnants of that fight are still very close to the surface of Ireland’s psyche.  Traditional music recants many a sad and/or heroic event.  When you hear this music live and realize the fight went on till 1922, you can understand its resonance with the population.  You can still see the bullet holes in the columns in front of the General Post Office (the”GPO”) where the Easter Rebellion broke out on Easter Sunday in 1916.  We toured the Kilmainham Gaol, where leaders of 5 Irish rebellions were jailed between 1798 and 1916.  Thirteen of the Easter Rebellion leaders were detained and ultimately executed at the gaol.  It’s not that the British weren’t sympathetic jailers.  One of the Irish leaders was seriously wounded in the fighting and could not stand up to face a firing squad.  So the ever-accommodating authorities tied him to a chair and then shot him.  Another one of the leaders was given ten minutes to see his new bride in a semi private meeting and then taken out later that day and shot.  So, feelings run deep.

During the Potato Famine in the mid 1800s, the prison housed many children who were jailed for stealing bread or coal.  Things got so desperate, that as bad as it was in the prison, starving outside of it was worse, and people tried to get jailed for the meager rations that were supplied to the prisoners.

It’s hard to imagine that this is all very recent history in Dublin.  Of course, you can go visit Saint Patrick’s Cathedral if you want to go back to the date of its establishment in 1192.  Interestingly enough, there are no Catholic cathedrals in Dublin.  Some of the more prominent ones switched denominations back and forth depending on whether the King or Queen was killing Catholics or Protestants at any particular time, but they are all Anglican now.

Pat and I toured Saint Patrick’s and I noted a difference from the Catholic Cathedrals in Europe, North, and South America, I have visited.  The Catholic Cathedral’s statues are, by and large, of various popes and saints along with Mary and Jesus.  Saint Patrick’s was full of statues of politicians, judges, military officers, lawyers and other members of the ruling class.  The statutes were accompanied with plaques that explained what great people they were and who put up the money to have the statue placed in the Cathedral.  It triggered in me the same reaction, that all of these magnificent churches do, whatever their denomination.  I always wonder how much poverty could have been alleviated and I wonder how Jesus would react to such splendor erected in his name.  I always have to push such thoughts aside and just marvel at the beauty and breathtaking majesty man was able to create so long ago.

Jonathan Swift was the Dean of the Cathedral from 1713 to 1745 and is buried there.  He was a champion of the poor of Dublin as well as the author of “Gulliver’s Travels” and “A Modest Proposal”.  You probably remember “A Modest Proposal” from some English class you were forced to take in high school.  It was always held up as an example of satire as Swift proposed the cooking and eating of poor Irish babies as a means of reducing the number of poor and as an excellent source of protein.

If you are going to Ireland for the weather, I suggest you think again.  The temperatures were in the fifties and low sixties.  If you don’t like the weather, wait an hour and it will change.  Rain, sun, cloudy, windy can all happen, not just in one day, but more than once in any given day. Ireland is much further north than you might think, but the water that surrounds it moderates its temperatures.  Fortunately, the ingenious Irish, knowing that the weather could turn to crap at any moment, established an amazing array of pubs suitable for ducking into at the first sign of foul weather.  Our first night in Dublin, I was battling staying awake to minimize jet lag, when I came across a list of the ten best pubs in Dublin. Nancy, our host, asked me to read them to her and she said she had her own list of best ten pubs, doubling the establishments that would need to be examined.  We didn’t get to them all, but we did make it to quite a few.

In Dublin, there just doesn’t seem to be any new pubs.  When you enter, there is a well-worn sense of permanence that ties you to the generations who have gathered here before you.  We actually went to a pub called the Brasen Head that has seen a pub on that site since 1198.  That’s a lot of pints down the gullet.  We also went to the smallest Pub in Dublin, which was about the size of Paris Hilton’s shoe closet.  I distinguished myself there by being the first and only person to have to ask directions to the men’s room.

Many of the pubs feature music.  There are regularly scheduled shows and then there are, what they call 'sessions,' where musicians bring their instruments and jam.  It was in search of one of these 'sessions' that brought us to the Cobblestone one afternoon after we had toured the Jameson Distillery (any pattern you might think you are discerning here is illusionary).

The music was in the front of the bar.  There were nine or ten musicians participating, but the seating was very limited.  We ended up going to the back of the bar and sitting at a table next to a friend of Nancy’s.  Fergus was a traditional Irish singer and trade unionist and he and his friends were enjoying a few pints of Guinness.  In fact, they were enjoying them enough that they were drinking two pints for every one I put away.

As the afternoon turned to evening, the pub got crowded.  I went up to the bar to order another round, when I saw a guy about six foot three and wearing a blue and yellow afro wig standing by the bar.  He had a Swedish flag wrapped around his shoulders like a cape and had the greatest baby face you might ever want to see.   I brought our drinks back to our table and told Nancy and Pat about the weird character at the bar.

The night before, the Swedish soccer team had come to Dublin to play the Irish National Team and had effectively knocked the Irish out of World Cup.  I wasn’t sure if this guy was on a suicide mission or what, but it seemed a little risky going around the pubs in that garb the night after the Irish had lost.

Through a series of somewhat hazy circumstances, Andreas, the guy in the wig and cape, and his traveling companion, Pela, ended up sitting with us at our table.  It was then that I witnessed the Irish’s attitude about their sports, which they truly love.  People came over to the freakish pair and after some good-natured banter congratulated them on their team’s victory.  This consistently happened throughout the evening.  The Swedes told us they loved Dublin’s pubs, the people’s attitude, and the reception they were receiving.

Pela and I were sitting next to each other, and during the course of our conversation he told me he was a long time fan of American blues music.  He said he had been listening to blues records for thirty years but had never seen any of his musical heroes perform live.  When I told him that I had seen the likes of Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, Buddy Guy and scores of other bluesmen numerous times he really came alive.  Meanwhile, Andreas told Nancy and Pat he was a big fan of American sports.  They told him I was the guy he wanted to talk with, so he got up and told Pela to move because he was going to talk sports with me.  When he heard that I had seen many of America’s sports heroes play, he reacted like Pela had when we were talking about the blues.

In separate conversations, both Pela and Andreas asked we what was up with the U.S.’s health care system.  They wondered how we, as a nation, could treat health care as a commodity and not a human right.  For me, it was one of those inexplicable questions, as I totally agreed with their premise.  These two guys from Sweden, who held generally favorable views of the U.S.A., just couldn’t wrap their heads around such a seemly illogical and cruel system.

The art of conversation has flourished in Ireland.  Cab drivers will wait for you to open the conversation and then give you a history lesson or a tutorial on Irish sporting life.  The people have a wonderful sense of humor.  For example they have nicked named the various public statues around town.  A statue of Molly Malone, the famous fish monger and rumored to have practiced a profession much older than fish sales in the evenings, is called, “The Tart with a Cart,” or “The Trollop with the Scallops,” or the “Dish with the Fish.”  In 2003, the Spire of Dublin was built on O’Connell Street just about a block from the Liffey River, which divides north and south Dublin.  The spire was almost immediately renamed, “The Stiffy on the Liffey,” or  “The Erection at the Intersection.”  Oscar Wilde and James Joyce’s statutes also have colorful monikers.  Generally speaking, we found the Irish to be friendly, engaging people with finely developed, self-deprecating, senses of humor.

The Stiffy on the Liffey.

No comment.

The Tart with the Cart.

The Irish love their sports.  They are into hurling, Gaelic football, rugby, soccer, and cricket.  There was American football on the TV in a couple of the pubs, but it was being ignored on a massive scale.  There are two major sports venues in Dublin.  One holds about 50 thousand and the other has an 83 thousand capacity.  The All Irish Hurling Championship game and the All Ireland Gaelic Football Championship games were played while we were in Dublin.  They both drew crowds of 83 thousand as well as a nationwide television audience.

Hurling is billed as the world’s fastest land game.  It is played with a horsehair ball covered in leather about the size of a baseball and a stick that looks like a shorter, thicker hockey stick.  There are 15 men on a team and you score by hitting the ball into a goal similar to a soccer goal for three points or scoring one point by hitting the ball between the uprights that extend up from the edges of the goal.  So imagine 30 men running around swinging sticks in crowds and driving the ball upwards of a hundred miles per hour toward the goal.  I imagine you have seen hockey goalies that look like the Michelin Man when they have donned all of their equipment and padding.  In hurling the goalie, or the “human sacrifice” as I like to call him, only has a stick to try and stop an opponent’s shot.  To the untrained eye it looks a bit insane.  The Championship Game ended in a tie and another game was going to be played in two weeks to determine the champions.

In the intervening week the All Ireland Gaelic Football Championship game was played.  The Gaelic Football League is made up of about 15 teams that represent various Irish counties.  The players don’t get paid and have to reside in the county their team represents.  The Championship game tickets are sold on a general admission basis so it is first come first serve with respect to the seating in the 83 thousand seat facility.  I just can’t imagine this in America.  I was told that fans from the two competing teams are mixed throughout the stadium and while there is some good-natured joking and ribbing that goes on, it remains peaceful and civilized.  Contrast that to England and other places where wearing the wrong team’s colors in the wrong neighborhood will get you beat half to death.  But the Irish keep their sports in perspective.  We saw that when we spent the evening at the Cobblestone with those two lovable doofs from Sweden.

Dublin honors its literary history.  They are rightly proud of the world-class writers that been produced on Irish sod.  It is not uncommon to see plaques with quotes from James Joyce or George Bernard Shaw placed about town.  There is a writer’s museum and various statues of the likes of Oscar Wilde and other literary heroes. Pat and I visited a museum dedicated to the life and writing of James Joyce.  I don’t know of an American city that has established museums to honor their writers, but there must be one somewhere.

On the roof of the James Joyce Museum

In keeping with the literary tradition, there appear to be many independent bookstores.  We only got into a couple, but the ones I saw were there for serious readers.  We ducked into one to get out of the rain one day, and frankly, I could have stayed right there for quite some time if I had been alone and it had been up to me.

As I think about it Dublin, it is a city after my own heart.  Pubs, history, sports, literature, humor, music, theatre, and more pubs are right up my alley.  On our last night in Dublin, we went to see a production of “A Street Car Named Desire” at the Gate Theatre.  I have seen about four “Street Car” productions and this one was probably the best.  I was curious as to how they were going to handle the Louisiana accents, but they did it so well you forgot these were Irish actors on stage. After the play, I was waiting for Pat and Nancy in the lobby when I looked at a picture hanging of the wall.  It was a picture of the Gate’s production of Sean O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock and the caption said Joe Dowling, the current Director of Minneapolis’ Guthrie Theatre, had directed it.  'Tis a small world.

To sum it up, Pat and I had a great time and I want to thank Nancy for being such a great host and having her own list of the top ten pubs in Dublin.  How can you not like a city where so many things are lovely, grand, or brilliant?