Dublin Update

Hello all,

I have now spent two continual weeks in Dublin and I have acclimatised well to its pace. I have found a place to stay in Phibsboro, on the north side of the city.

Apparently the north is the dodgier side, but like every place that is close to any city centre, its been bought out and cleaned up. Head towards the docks though and you can still find the dodgy housing commissions with feral kids running around on the streets. When I first moved into the neighbourhood I was impressed that there was a castle in the area. It was nearly a week before I realised that the "castle" that I see on my way home is the infamous Mountjoy Prison.

Don't worry, I'm on the right side of the tracks.

So here I am in Ireland, but up until I started working part time this week, I have been associating mostly with English as a second language residents.

Dublin has a large population of people living here learning English. My house is made up of Spanish, French and Italian people, all here to learn the language. They were having trouble understanding the Irish accent, now I have presented them with a whole new difficulty of Australian.

I have been hanging out with these other students I met in Killarney. We all went to midnight screening of the rocky horror picture show with them the other night. Before the show we warmed up with a massive water fight in some poor persons apartment. I was handed a gun upon entry and we just ran amok for an hour until we were all drenched. It's not something that I would think of doing before heading out into a mild Dublin night, but it was fun. As it turns out, the water guns were required for the show. I can't believe that I am thirty and I have never seen rocky horror before. This fact gave the the honour of having "virgin" marked on my forehead upon arrival, and more drenching in the cinema.


IRISH PUBS

Once you go to a pub in Ireland, you will never be able to look at those disneyland style Irish theme pubs that are sprinkled around the world in the same way again. Those old Australian pubs for example that are refurbished to recreate the Irish experience lack one vital ingredient. Atmosphere. No matter how many fiddles and sacks of potatoes they tack to the wall, it's just not the same.

These places are some of the loudest and debauched places around, but despite this, a pub needs a licence for dancing. I went to one place where they played traditional Irish music, and some people got up and danced. They were quickly seated by the bouncers, and then the band pleaded with the crowd not to dance as the pub doesn't have a dancing licence???


IRISH CAFES

Fortunately there are a plethora of cafes here. After my first day here I realised that I had got here before starbucks did. I cannot believe it. Even Manchester has a starbucks. Not that I not enjoy a starbucks brew, but hey just one per neighbourhood would be suffice.

As a result there are scores of funky grungy cafes, though they are not open late enough. Cafes are crucial for the gentleman of leisure, and I am making the most of these days before the necessity of full time work kicks in. My favourites are the winding stair cafe, which is located above a new and second hand bookstore by the Liffey river. My other favourite is cafe Irie, located in the temple bar area. This cafe shares a building with a tattoo shop. There is not enough tattoo shops with cafes.


LANGUAGE

English and Gaelic are the official languages here. Many signs are written in both. Sometimes signs are written only in Gaelic. They are to be found on historic buildings, and they usually go "gaelic gaelic blah blah 1916 gaelic gaelic blah". These ones always have 1916 in them so I presume they are dissing the Brits when they only write in Gaelic.

The first time I came to a Gaelic sign that mattered was at the toilet in a pub. Here's a test for you. You're at two doors which are marked:

MNA           FIR

Which one do you enter. There was no picture to help my decision, and no one coming in or out, so I deduced that MNA is a dyslexic version of MAN, and I think I saw FIR and thought fur. WOMAN.

Enter MNA door. Wrong..ahhh girls toilet.

I'm still getting my head around the accents. Like Britain there are many regional variations, but I can't pick it yet. The closest I have come so far is:

Dublin accent - understandable

Non Dublin accent - unintelligible

It is such a friendly sounding accent and it often makes me smile. Here are some words:

Coke sounds like Kook, and my favourite

Third sounds like Turd. It's always a great beavis and butthead moment whenever I hear that.


RELIGION

The Catholic faith is still very prominent among the older Irish. On a bus you will see a flurry of hands making a cross whenever you drive past a religous monument. Even in my house there is a holy water dish by the door with a picture of some holy geezer above it. If I wanted to fill it there is a barrel of the holy liquid on tap outside the church on the corner. I know where to go to fill up my water guns if I want to go vampire slaying.


ADDENDUM TO LIMERICK

It seems that some people have taken exception to the poo pooing that I dished out to Limerick. I must say that I am not usually in the business on canning a place. After all, one mans toilet is another mans Shangri La, and I usually find good in most things. It needs to be noted though that I am often untethered from reality, and my mind wanders. Unbeknownst to myself, I had high expectations of the place. Just the name itself makes you think, what must it be like? In my minds eye I had subconsciously thought of a magical city where at the city gates Leprechauns patrolled the draw bridges, and to obtain entry one must recite a limerick to the chief limerick Leprechaun. I had even prepared one for the occasion, and had it printed on a scroll of banana leaf parchment with faux ivory handles.

Of course, there was no draw bridge, or leprechauns...nothing but a toilet. Ahh reality...what a concept. I wonder if there is a place in Japan called Haiku?

James