Dublin
Hey Everyone,
Well I went to Dublin in the middle of April (sorry for the late posting!). We left on Friday night, and ended up getting to our hostel around 1am. The hostel wasn’t bad, we had a ten person room but it was clean and airy. When we got there our roommates weren’t home…We were a little worried that we would have to meet them in the middle of the night when they came in loud and drunk, but they were actually really quite so we didn’t have to talk to them until the next morning. Anyway in the morning we found out that we were living with seven British guys who had come to Dublin for a Bachelor party, which they called a “stag� party. It seemed much more embarrassing than any bachelor party that I had heard of in the U.S. They made the groom dress up in a Pocahontas costume, belly shirt, skirt, and wig included. Then he wasn’t allowed to buy drinks with his own money, instead he had to ask people on the street for money until he found enough to buy drinks. Then he had to keep asking until he had enough to get them all into a club for the night. Apparently he was quite good at this because he ended up with over 100 dollars that night. We suggested that he continue it as a part time job. They were actually good roommates because they slept in so we could get up early and have the bathroom to ourselves, and then when we came home they had usually left for the night already so we again had the room to ourselves. It was quite funny however.
Anyway about Dublin… The first day we got up and had breakfast at this place around the corner. I had a white chocolate mocha which tasted like Starbucks for the first time that I have been in Europe. They also had really good blueberry scones! Then we walked around the city and headed down to Trinity College. The grounds are very pretty. In addition to the old buildings there were really cool old and twisty trees, and everything was in bloom. We saw flower beds and blossoming trees everywhere! Then we came upon a cricket field and saw a bunch of guys in their white outfits and funny hats warming up for a game. The book of Kells is there, which is apparently an old scripture that was made by monks a long time ago, lost and found again. The interesting thing about it is that hidden in the elaborate drawings and letters are little faces of demons and devils. Apparently these monks didn’t like being forced to work on this book for years and years and decided to play their own little tricks.
Walking through a city is always a fun way to see it, and Dublin is very different from Barcelona. First of all it is much smaller, only 1.2 million to Barcelona’s 4.5. But the buildings are also shorter. That was one of the things that struck me the most, how short all of the buildings were compared to those in Barcelona (and even those are much shorter than the ones in Chicago). It is true that it rains in Dublin…it was on and off for most of the weekend, which wasn’t as bad as it seems because in between the rain was a lot of sun. It was definitely colder in Dublin than in Barcelona however, and it was nice to get back to the warmth on Monday.
We walked around and explored the city for the whole day and then at night we went to a pub to have some cider. One of the best parts of the night was that a guy just started playing his guitar and singing in the pub randomly (although apparently this isn’t so random for Dublin). He was singing American songs, so we knew most of them, but it also added to the atmosphere and made you want to sit there all night. Pubs however, close much earlier than the bars in Barcelona and we were back home before midnight ready to rest up for our tour around the Irish country side the next day.
Well the first day in Dublin we had looked around for a tour to take because we wanted to get out into the “rolling green hills� of Ireland and maybe see some old ruins. We ended up with a cool and funny tour guide that told us so much about the history of Ireland that we had to write it all down afterwards to make sure that we could remember it later. Throughout the day we stopped at five different places and learned the story behind each one.
The first was called Fourknocks and is an old old old (5,000 years to give a ball park figure) temple. If anyone was wondering 5,000 years ago happens to also be 1,000 years before the pyramids were built in Egypt. From the outside the temple looks like a small hill with grass growing over it. It is obviously man made because it is perfectly round, but the only exposed stone can be found in the doorway. Now 5,000 years ago in Ireland the Celtic farmers had many gods, all of them stemming from their connection with nature. So they had a god of the river, and one of the earth, and one of the trees, but the most powerful of all of these was the Sun god. These people believed that one day the sun might disappear if they did not make sure to tell it how much that they loved it. This is why they built the tombs for the sun god (tombs because they burned the ashes of important dead people inside as an offering). We actually got to go inside of it which was really cool. There are designs all over the stones that were made using a tattoo technique. Instead of carving out of the stone tiny holes were poked into the stone in order to make patterns. The other fascinating thing about the tomb was that the first known carving of a human face is inside of it. Carved on a rock are the rough outline of two eyes, a nose and a mouth. However the image has been damaged some because the locals believe that this stone was good luck. So whenever they have bad luck they come up to the tomb and take a rubbing of the face in chalk then they hang it on the wall of their house. When the chalk dries up and falls off the bad luck is gone!
The next stop was to an old monastery with huge Celtic crosses. Well the Celtic cross is a normal cross with a circle around the top half of it. This is because when the Christians first tried to convert the Celts they had a few problems… The priests came in and said all of your gods are dead, here is my god he is peaceful and will love you all. Well the Celts who were warriors found this very lame, and didn’t want a God that wouldn’t fight. So they killed the Priests and solved the problem for a while. Eventually the Priests got a little smarter and created new stories. They told the people that their god had beat all of the other gods, so the other ones still existed, but the Christian one was the best. Apparently this worked (sort of) and this hybrid religion developed that involved God and a bunch of lesser gods. But anyway the circle in the cross represents the most important Celtic god, the sun. And it kind of just stuck even after they got rid of the hybrid religion. So we saw these huge crosses, 10 feet tall carved out of stone. And there were pictures all over them to teach the peasants the story of the bible. One of the funny things is that, to teach the stories of the bible the priests needed to talk about things that the Celts had never heard of, like Arabs, deserts, and camels. Well this wouldn’t make any sense to these people who lived in this cold rainy place, so they changed them up a bit. They had also never heard about Romans, because the Romans never made it to Ireland during their empire. So anyway the Romans who were the bad guys in these stories were pictured as Vikings on this cross because the people knew that Vikings were bad. And Jesus is in Celtic armor to show that he was a good guy. It was pretty interesting because it shows the ridiculousness of these Christians who tried to teach the whole world about their god. It was actually quite interesting because it makes you realize that at one point someone had to tell these people what to believe and because the Celts were such a storytelling culture they ate it all up. The Celts never had a written language, by the way, which really confused the priests.
So the next place we stopped at was the first real catholic monastery built in Ireland. Meaning that it was the first one commissioned by the pope that was supposed to follow strict Christian religion instead of the mash up between Christianity and the Celtic gods. It was a huge stone building, done in the style of those in France and Italy at the time. But it was ridiculous in Ireland, which had no roads at the time (a by-product of the Romans never invading) and was completely covered in trees. So this one building in the middle of this wildness was very odd. Apparently this was a good thing though, because the other monasteries which were mixed religion had become corrupt. The tribe leaders had made their family members the head of the monasteries, so these people who weren’t even religious were working there, and convincing the peasants that if they gave all their money to the church then they would go to heaven. But this monastery is barely there because when the English had control of Ireland one of the kings thought it would be a good idea to destroy all the catholic churches to prove the supremacy of the Church of England…it’s so sad how history destroys other history.
After seeing the monastery we went to lunch at a local pub. The food was really good, and we joked that it was like thanksgiving dinner in Ireland because of the turkey, gravy, stuffing and mashed potatoes. Then we continued on to the hill of Slane, where St. Patrick became famous… Now St. Patrick was not actually Irish, he was British. And at one point (before he was anything special) he was kidnapped from his costal home by a Celtic pirate ship and forced into slavery in Ireland. Well he was pretty smart, so what he did was learn the culture, the language, everything perfectly. After about seven years of slavery he finally found his chance to escape, he made a run for it and pretended that he was just a normal Irish guy, and not a British escaped slave at all. Apparently this worked and he made his way to a ship on the coast, and eventually back to England. Once he was back he started hearing the voice of God in his head (as the story goes) and God told him that he had to return to Ireland, because he had been chosen to bring Christianity to the Celts.
Well Patrick wasn’t too happy about this because he knew that if he returned and was caught he could be put back into slavery, but when God is talking in your head you don’t have too many choices. Upon arriving in Ireland Patrick knew that he needed a good plan to spread Christianity. He was by no means the first priest there trying to spread the religion, but no one had been really successful so far. This was partly due to the fact that there was no established communication or transportation system throughout the country. But Patrick was smart and he found the perfect opportunity during the midsummer’s night festival. During this festival each year the Celtic king re-asserts his authority. First during the day there are huge parties and bonfires on each hill, attended by the local people and people who have traveled from villages to listen and tell the story back to their tribes when they get home. After all the fires go out the king lights his fire on the top of the hill of Tara, which shows that he is the most important. Well Patrick decided that he would make his own fire on the top of the hill of Slane and that right before the king lit his fire Patrick would light his own. Well he did this, and the entire army came to see who would dare to offend the king this way. Patrick then made a big show running at the army with no weapons saying that he could defeat everyone because he had the power of his God behind him, and the Celts were apparently scared and believed him. So then all of the story tellers went back to every village in the country and told this story, this way when the priests got there the idea was not so unwelcome as it had been before.
Another interesting tid-bit about Patrick is that he first used the shamrock. He was visiting a village (after the hill incident) and they were not happy with him because he was trying to explain the idea about the holy trinity. And the Chief said how can three things also be one? This doesn’t make sense. So Patrick found a clover and showed him that there were three leaves that made one plant and then everyone understood. So for a while the shamrock was used as a sign of Christianity in Ireland, and now it is just a country symbol.
Well at the hill of Slane there is a graveyard, a statue of Patrick, and ruins of an old building that were pretty cool. It was also a hill (obviously) so I could see all around at the countryside and the sheep! After the Hill of Slane we went on to the Hill of Tara, which is the hill where the Celtic kings used to live.
Now there isn’t much on top of the hill, because the Celts built only in wood, and wood doesn’t last very long. However there are some more mounds. There is a long trench that used to hold a meeting house, where everyone who was anyone would go to at some time or another. There was also a mound that was once used as a prison by a prince who had 500 children. This is apparently not an exaggeration, because some scientists have traced his genes to 1/8 of the current population of Ireland! There are also “forts�, but not the kind you would think of because none of the wood was left. Instead there were only moats (basically) with flat spaces in the middle. However these moats were never filled with water, instead the enemy would run into them to attack the fort, and wouldn’t be able to get out on either side, so those inside the fort would be able to kill them all before they escaped. An interesting thing to note about the Celts is that they were not a race that deprived women of their rights. Women were allowed to divorce their husbands, and they were allowed to own property, and become priests.
Tara was our last stop for the day, but not our last story from our tour guide. He just happens to know a lot about a lot, so we asked if he knew why the British drove on the other side of the road. He didn’t know, but he did tell us an interesting thing about the English language. At one point England was under control of the French, so England had a king but he was under the French king as far as power goes. Well the English wanted to separate themselves from the French, and in order to do this they decided to create their own language. At the time the nobles all spoke French, and the commoners spoke different dialects based on old Anglo Saxon languages but “English� as we now know it didn’t exist. So they got a group of people together and created a language based upon an Anglo Saxon language, but infused with a lot of French words (which is obvious if anyone has ever tried to learn French or Spanish because a lot of the words are similar). Then the English leaders had all the playwrights of the time (including Shakespeare) write in this new language so that the commoners would learn it and begin to speak it. This is why Shakespeare made up so many words (some people think up to 1/3 of the language was his creation, but some people also think that he was more than one person) because the words just didn’t exist before he started writing. The people who went to the plays were given a glossary as they went in, so they could look up words that they didn’t know. And eventually it caught on!
That night we ate in again, and went to another neighborhood pub. The next morning we got up and walked through the city some more, making our way towards the Guinness Brewery. Which isn’t actually where they make the beer now, but it used to be for a century or so. Now it is this really cool building that is a museum for the company. It was pretty interesting, it walked you through how the beer is made and is really hi-tech and modern looking. One of the coolest rooms was full of all of their advertisements, which are funny so it was cool to see they all in one place. My favorite part though was this wall of bottles of all different colors and shapes, that the company has used over the years. The top floor of the building is about eight stories up, and is a bar with solid glass walls. It was great, because you can see the entire city from up there. The glass had labels for the famous buildings and landmarks that can be seen from the top, which was a great idea. Unfortunately all three of us decided that Guinness is not the type of beer that we like to drink… but it was a cool tour anyway.
After eating lunch it was time to head back to the airport. Our cab driver on the way had a few interesting things to say. We had noticed that there were girls wearing school uniforms everywhere (hideous pleated skirts past their knees) and we asked him if all the schools in Dublin had uniforms. He said that they used to, but then the people got to poor to pay for them, and now that the economic stability of the country is picking back up they are starting to do it again. He also mentioned that in school they are all taught the Irish language, but that it is dying out because no one actually uses it (except a few “cities� in the North and West of Ireland). An interesting thing about Gaelic, is that it uses a different alphabet, so the words look really odd. Some of the letters are the same, but they got rid of a lot of our letters, and only replaced a few. That is why Celt is pronounced like Kelt, because the Gaelic language doesn’t have the letter k.
I have a little bit left to tell… Last days of Barcelona and Greece on the way…
Kelsey