The (Surprisingly Smooth) Rocky Road to Dublin

With a much shorter turnaround time than you or I ever hoped to expect, I present the third cold, gray story of the last two weeks. Essay’s done and turned in, and before I settle into the next one I thought I’d take a word-vomit break.

One of my government classes (Irish Politics for Visiting Government Students, great class, five stars, highly recommend it) organized a field trip to Leinster House, the seat of Irish Parliament, to be followed by a sit-down question-and-answer session with a number of members of the Oireachtas. By this I do not mean an Irish dancing Oireachtas, a few of which I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing- rather, I will provide a quick glossary of political terms as Gaeilge for your edification:

Dáil Éireann- or just the Dáil. Pronounced just like “doll.” This is the lower house of parliament, i.e. the House of Representatives

Seanad Éireann- or just the Seanad, pronounced “shawnud.” It’s the upper house, the senate.

TD/Teachta Dála- pronounced “tawkta dolla.” It puts me (unfortunately) in mind of the colloquial phrase “dolla dolla bills,” and refers to a Member of Parliament. What a bright young academic I have become.

Taoiseach- The head of Irish government, the Prime Minister. Pronounced “tea-shuck”

Tánaiste- The Deputy Prime Minister, pronounced “tawnushta”

Oireachtas- The bicameral Parliament, consisting of the Seanad and Dáil. Pronounced (for those of us not well-versed in Irish dance lingo) “Orawktus.”

Now that you’ve a bunch of Irish words boiling about in your mind, allow me to return to the field trip. Keep your newfound vocabulary, though, as there will be a quiz!

Our professor was awesome enough to procure for the class both a time to sit in on the proceedings of the Dáil (which is the ________ house) and an opportunity to ask questions of the TDs in attendance. However, the only time available to do this was smack in the middle of the week- Wednesday afternoon, from 15:00 onwards. While this gave us plenty of time to make our way from Cork to Dublin by public transit, the trip would be a four-hour bus ride, three hours of political banter, and then four hours back. I was loathe to go all the way to Ireland’s capital city without taking the opportunity to have a look around. So, as per my usual, I hatched a plan. None of my wonderful classmates were particularly comfortable following me into the jaws of adventure, so I was to go it alone.

My plan was simple and altogether mundane, so I don’t know what the fuss was about on the part of the classmates. I decided to take a train to Dublin early Wednesday morning, wander about, taking in the sights until the meet-up at Leinster House, spend the night in the city, and then do some more sightseeing the next morning before hopping a noon train back to the South in time for my later classes Thursday. It was just about 27 hours in total, so nothing particularly big. I think the catch was that I was planning to couchsurf for the night. Have you heard of couchsurfing? It’s quite the wonderful organization, and is at its most basic level a website that lets travelers contact each other in order to have a free place to stay for the night. Hosts can also show their visitors around the cities or towns they live in. There’s usually some sort of cool exchange of knowledge that takes place, like cooking in exchange for guitar lessons or practice speaking a different language. Since Dublin’s hostels were already jacking up their prices to reflect St. Patrick’s day demand, I decided to give surfing a whirl.

I woke up far, far too early on Wednesday morning and slogged through forty-mile-per-hour/twenty-five-kilometer-per-hour winds replete with gusts of rain and off-course seagulls to reach Kent station on the East side of Cork. I grabbed a window seat on the train and cracked open my Postnationalism notes for the duration of the three-hour ride through misty fields and foggy glens and rainy towns with names like Portlaoise and Mallow. At last Dublin’s fair city came into sight, harsh industrial lines on the outskirts softened by the drizzle.

James Joyce, my erstwhile least favorite author and current favorite author, had a lifelong obsession with his dear, dirty Dublin. Walking from Heuston station to the city center, it became clear why. Dublin has all the history and myth of London but with ragged edges and maybe a bullet hole or two for punctuation. As I strolled along the quays of the Liffey (not quite so fair as the Lee, but a great river nonetheless), familiar names of revolutionaries and saints greeted me from every signpost and old pillared buildings caused me to wonder what all they’d seen. I was attracted by some excellent promotional billboards pointing me towards the National Museum at Collins Barracks so I took a detour through deserted weekday streets and found myself quite suddenly here: 

But it was definitely not this sunny. It was, in fact, too rainy to take a picture for fear of damaging my camera.

Favourite revolutionary? Maybe. Why don't you check this extremely trustworthy source and decide for yourself?

Collins Barracks houses the decorative arts and history divisions of Ireland's National Museum, and it was quite serendipitous that I literally stumbled upon it. Naturally, I gravitated towards the military history wing. I spent a good few hours wandering its four deserted stories of tommy guns, longboats, and battlefield dioramas in complete awe. This place had the coat Michael Collins was wearing when he was shot. I was in awe.

Eventually I made tracks for the heart of Dublin city and on the way popped by Saint Patrick's cathedral (but couldn't take the tour because they don't take card for admission) and the Iveagh gardens as well as a number of other significant gardens, greens, and churches. The weather was crummy, but who doesn't want to see Dublin in the rain? 

I stopped for lunch (jam scone!) at a three-seater cafe on the inner fringe of outskirts of the South Side and chatted with the waitress in French, which made me feel accomplished. The only other patron, a wizened Cork man, asked me where I was from (if I had a nickel for every time an Irish person inquired as to my place of origin I would be well provided for; if I had a dime for every time I had to explain the concept of Idaho, I would be fabulously wealthy and probably tanning in Lake Como at the moment, not writing this blog) and surprisingly knew where Boise, Idaho is. He had in fact been there. 'Tis a small world, so it is like. 

Again, it was definitely not this clement, but I was too busy inching through metal detectors to get a picture. 

My next stop was Leinster House itself, where I met up with my class and we waited in a plate-glass vestibule for a good long while before we were cleared for entrance. We marched through the gorgeous political halls to the Dáil chambers, where we sat in the balcony and watched the few pertinent members of the Dáil (called _______s, abbreviated to TDs) debate the implementation of a new funding scheme for the Garda (the Irish police force). It became very heated at one point and cross-partisans accusations of disrespect and breach of confidentiality flew around the room like... like agitated bats. We'll go with that.

The visitor-handlers at Leinster House were very kind and shepherded us next to a tour of the main premises. A security guard with a truly gnarly lip scar lectured us on the history of the building as we passed under portraits of every past head of state (called, in Irish, the ________) from Eamon De Valera to the blank space where the portrait of Brian Cowan, the most recently-replaced Taoiseach, will hang upon its completion. It was extremely grand.    

Definitely did not take this one either

After walking the many plastered, pillared, portraited halls between party offices and chambers, the class made its way to a discussion room with strangely cheery pastel cushions for us to sit on. A series of Parliamentarians from both houses (you've already answered for the Lower house, what's that upper one called? ________) cycled through between their committee meetings, constituency time, and a score of other dreadfully important TD things. I respect Irish representatives extremely, largely because they must devote every waking moment to government during the meeting times of the Dáil and Seanad. One representative described a typical day during this season to us, and it sounds particularly gruelling as Irish representatives are expected to simultaneously take care of the individual needs of their constituency (literally; TDs publish their home addresses, phone numbers, and have frequent open-door sessions when voters can bring their issues straight to the representative) and make the decisions that influence not only their district but every town, city, county, and province in Ireland. It's an extremely personal brand of politics, but leaves little room for national decision-making. 

I will spare you the gory details of Q&A with the TDs for, though interesting, this is not a blog about political theory. Rather I will speed on by to that evening and make mention that some of the TDs were hoots and a half. Irish politics have nothing if not character. 

No prizes for guessing who did NOT take this picture

I trotted on down to Trinity College afterwards, seeing Saint Stephen's Green and a goodly handful of stately government buildings on my way. I met up with my couchsurfing host on campus and got to see even more in the way of significant Dublin sights on the way to fetch dinner and later visit Temple Bar- which is, by the way, an area of Dublin, not a bar. I suppose there is a bar called Temple Bar in Temple Bar, but I did not go to it. It is said to be painfully touristy. Anyway, the highlight was the Bank of Ireland building which, prior to Independence and the purchase of Leinster House for the Free State in 1921, served at the home of the Irish Parliament. This impressive Palladian building was the first purpose-built bicameral Parliament house. In the entire world. That is extremely impressive. Keep in mind that it is now the Bank of Ireland building because its Parliament was that of the Kingdom of Ireland, aka that of an entity dependent on the British crown. As demonstrated by Cobh, the Irish are not enthused about using remnants of their colonial past. 

The next morning I got an exceptional tour of Trinity college from my host and, before hopping the tram for Heuston station, took a walk down O'Connell street to see Ireland's very own docked tall ship, the Jeanie Johnston. The poor Irish state hasn't the resources to sail her anymore, but she's been fitted out as a replica famine ship. I didn't have time for the full tour, but next time I'm in town it's at the top of my list! 

But let's talk about Trinity real fast. If you'll pardon my French, hot damn. The campus is incredibly gorgeous. While the Book of Kells had been shuttled away for maintenance when we went through the Kells exhibit, I got to see a replica of it in HERE:

This is the long hall in the upper story of Trinity's old library. It about turned me catatonic. There are sliding ladders. It is widely considered to be the most beautiful/amazing library in the whole of the world. I was properly awed by its double-decker bookshelves filled with books, folios, quartos, and other fascinating old document types with exotics names, some older than the United States, most older than the state of Idaho. The rest of the campus is equally breathtaking. 

I tried to photograph the campanile and campus but it was an epic fail. This is why I have not posted another picture I've taken before now.

...but I did take this one of the Jeanie Johnston.

I took the train home and made it back to Cork in time for class, which is just about as much as a girl could ask for. Dublin was a gorgeous city despite the drizzle and I'm hoping to return sometime to catch all the things I didn't this time around!

Now I have an Irish Language final to study for. Farewell. Quiz answers shall be provided in my next post!