Dublin Revisited

Hello again!

Missed me? I hope so. I haven't posted anything in a long while, mostly--okay, entirely--because I've been stuck on writing the post about Edinburgh, and my OCD won't let me post anything out of order. But as you can see, that's now been fixed. Hooray!

So. Today is the first day of September, if you can believe it. September! What happened to the summer? I seem to recall something about cow bells and cream tea, but beyond that...

(I have a theory about the "time flies" phenomenon in memory. Ask me someday when you get tired of living.)

I'm on yet another train, looking about the window at...well, an embankment covered in blackberry bushes, so I could be just about anywhere, but I'm not; I'm heading across the middle of Ireland from Dublin to Galway. Galway is the second-to-last stop on this long venture of mine before the pull of Germany becomes inescapable. I'm also hoping to buy a new claddagh here, as my last one is fairly thoroughly dead.

I arrived in Dublin two days ago and managed to find Heather with a minimum of trouble. I went out to dinner with her and her friend Anya (that name may not be right, sorry) at a Mexican restaurant, then we headed back to Heather's house. I met her family, who are very lovely and welcoming people, and their utterly adorable puppy (AHHHH PUPPY SQUEEEEE!). Heather and I stayed up watching telly and chatting for a while, making plans for our day of sightseeing.

We headed into town the next day and got one of those open-top tour buses around the city. It's something of a comeuppance for me; I always see those things go by and laugh at the tourists, and there I was, avoiding eye contact with the people on the sidewalk laughing at me. Somewhat surprisingly, the bus was rather convenient; I mean, clearly people use them for a reason. They do connect all of the important tourist sights, provide commentary, and make sure you don't get lost.

Our first stop off was Trinity College. Oh, let me explain something first:

This is not my first time in Dublin. Two Februarys ago, I was in Germany and my friend Jewell and I decided that, since it had been over a month since our last epic adventure, we were overdue for another. We called up the Ryanair website and hey, they had a special fare round-trip to Dublin! So, Dublin it was. We had a fantastic time, despite almost everything with our accommodations going wrong, and I totally fell in love with the city of Dublin. Ask me sometime about Andrew and Diego and the burnt pizza and being drunk on fail if you want to hear the whole story.

Anyway, Jewell and I had come to Trinity two years before, but the Book of Kells had been off display for restoration. Despite the steep admission price, I couldn't pass up a second chance to see it, so I left Heather outside and went in. It was totally worth it, not least because I know an (admittedly tiny) bit more about the subject now that I've taken some book arts classes, so the bookbinding displays were even better than last time. And the book is simply astounding--gorgeous penmanship, with some letters enlarged and embellished with stylized drawings of men and beasts, their limbs wound into Celtic knots and their faces suitably bemused. The illuminated pages are simply breathtaking, not only in the richness of color, fineness of detail, and exquisiteness of design, but simply in the knowledge that just as you lean over those velum pages in awe, an artist leaned over them hundreds of years ago, painstakingly planning every line. The book is a window into the creativity, dedication, and genius of people long gone. Plus, it's just gorgeous.

The exhibit leads up from the book's display room to the Long Room of the old library. I've talked about this with my friends before, but they really should bottle and sell the smell of that room, because it's one of the best smells in the world: the soft mustiness of old books and leather, the sweetness of wood and the golden warmth of sunlight. Like the main room in the Rylands Library, the Long Room is a vaulted two-story space packed with old books and display cases and busts of famous thinkers. You feel older and wiser just standing in a room like that and breathing. Except for the other visitors, everything in there is perfect--that fantastic smell, the glow of the sun dimmed to protect the books, the dark brown wood, green and red and brown leather with glints of dusky gold on the spines of innumerable volumes.

I don't know how I tore myself away, but I met up with Heather again and we got back on the bus to Temple Bar, where we stopped for lunch at the Elephant and Castle. If you're in Dublin, it's worth going just to try the chicken wings. We grabbed some ice cream and got back on the bus, this time to St. Patrick's Cathedral, where we wandered in the cool dimness, admiring the stained glass windows and the tattered flags of battalions honored in the cathedral. I particularly enjoyed reading the memorial plaques on the walls; it's easy to pass these by, but some of them tell amazing stories of valor and love. One told the story of a young officer--a lieutenant, I think--and his eleven or so men, who had held back the advances of the enemy to protect their retreating army and had all fallen.

From the cathedral, we headed to our final stop: Kilmainham Gaol. Much of the Dublin tour revolves around the Easter Rising of 1916, the fifth and final rebellion against British rule in Ireland, which eventually turned the tide of public opinion against the British and led to the War for Independence, followed shortly by the Irish Civil War. Some of the statues on the main boulevard, O'Connell Street, have bullet holes in them, as does the post office, which was right in the center of the fighting. Anyway, after six days the leaders of the uprising surrendered and were taken to this jail, where they were held awaiting execution. Their treatment and execution, not their uprising, was what eventually inspired the Irish to revolt. We visited the cells of the leaders, where they sat and waited for dawn to break: innocuous little rooms, whitewashed and featureless. In these rooms the men wrote their last letters and said final goodbyes to their families. It's strange to be standing in a place like that, that seems so clean and guileless, that has been the spot of so much anguish.

After we left the jail, Heather and I returned to her house, since she had a date to go to a concert that night. I had dinner with her family and considered going out to a movie, but eventually decided against it in favor of planning the last few days of the trip and getting to bed early. I also got to talk with Heather's family, who are very wonderful people, and got a good night's sleep.

I left quietly this morning and took the bus into town, got some breakfast, and got on the train, where I find myself now. I have to say that I'm really touched by Heather's family, who took me in, basically as a complete stranger, and gave me my own bed, fed me, and took great care of me. I had a lovely time with Heather as well, being tourists together in her hometown.

Now I'm on my own again, although not for long. I have two nights in Galway, two nights in Dingle, and then a flight to Frankfurt Hahn and a bus to Cologne, where the orientation will start. It's less that a week away now...