Dublin disappointment

I’m finding that I can’t trust my initial impression of a place. Dublin is a good example of that. 

Being Irish felt like a big thing all my life, I had big expectations coming here. Initially I was disappointed and kinda mad about Dublin. 

I remember after seeing the central part thinking: Really this is it? A crowded tourist place with nothing Irish about it? What did I expect? Not leprechauns, fairies and shamrocks that’s for sure. I expected music. Irish music. 

Every city has buskers especially in tourist areas. I expected them to be playing Irish music here. They weren’t. They played American rock mostly. WTF? 

Of course the music here is in the pubs. Neither of us are drinkers, so we havent gone into any pubs. Silly, I know. I’ll remedy that shortly.

It wasn’t long before I started looking into the history

of Ireland. Of Dublin. I really only had very broad knowledge about the country. Knew it was divided. New about the troubles. Had formed a tourist impression of the rest of it. It was a sort of background place in my life but I never really looked into it. That changed here. I read up on the history. 

History makes a people. History has made Ireland. Ireland has only been independent of English rule since 1921. Even then, they were part of the UK until 1949. Prior to that, the monarchy and UK government had a part in external affairs . That ended in 1949 when they became the Republic of Ireland. 

So it has only been 73 years since Ireland has been completely independent. The history of English rule has greatly influenced the country. They were treated like shit a lot of the time. That and the struggle for independence probably has shaped the Irish character.

 Put that in the middle of a beautiful island with a unique culture of music, literature and humor and you have Ireland. It’s magic.

the Temple Bar is in the Temple Bar

 Who hasn’t seen pictures of the Temple Bar in Dublin? It’s THE place to have your picture taken. Actually, there are two Temple Bars in Dublin.

THE Temple bar lies within the area of Dublin known as Temple Bar. A bit confusing. It is known as the cultural center of Dublin. It’s definitely a tourist hot spot. 

The area was outside the walled city of Dublin sort of like a suburb. The city itself was controlled by the English king, so the area outside was often attacked by native Irish and became rundown in the 14th century.

In the 17th century wealthy Englishmen built houses there near the river. The street along the river became known as Temple Bar, probably named after Sir William Temple, who came to Ireland as part of the military. He built a house in the area. He and his family were prominent. Either this is the story or it was named after the Temple Bar district in London. You decide.

In the 18-20th century it deteriorated becoming an area of crime and prostitution. In the 1970-80s, a company wanted to

tear a lot of it down and build a bus terminal. While this was being planned, artists moved into low rent buildings. The bus depot idea was dropped after protest about it. Plans were made to make it a culture area.

The Temple Bar itself dates to 1840. It has had many owners over the years . It wasn’t named the Temple Bar until 1992 when the current owners bought it. 

It is now one of the most identifiable places in Dublin. The thing is, most Dubliners would never go there deeming it overpriced and a tourist trap. 

This hotel is haunted by crying babies

 Where I’m staying is a very interesting place.  Part of the hotel used to be an infants hospital. That building was incorporated into the new hotel. It is now used for rooms.

In 1919 Sinn Fein, a political party instrumental in establishing the Irish Free State, set up a womens committee. They, along with two women doctors set up St. Ultans Infants Hospital. That building is now part of the hotel.

 Interestingly, their first concern was treating women  and infants who contracted venereal diseases from returning soldiers from world war 1. That was the basis of them wanting to focus on women and infant care. It was a big problem. They did lots of education.

One of the doctors, Katherine Lynn,  worked with the rebels during the fight to free Ireland from English rule. She was jailed afterwards.

They wanted the hospital to be a “university for mothers”. They started educational “babies clubs” for mother to decrease infant mortality. They encouraged breastfeeding.

By the the late 1930’s, the hospital had 35 beds. They became leaders in TB research. They pointed out the connection between poverty and disease. 

Most of all they were a women established hospital dedicated to the needs of women and children. It changed Ireland and Irish medicine.

How did I discover all this? I noticed this unusual part of the hotel and asked someone at the desk about it. Then I looked it up on the internet and learned the story. 

Below is what it looked like way back then. The hospital name is in Irish. There’s a picture of it as part of the hotel. Last is some of the nurses and babies.

Dublin where for art thou?

 One thing I have noted about the big cities is that there is the tourist version and the real version. I suppose that makes sense. Over here it’s so much more obvious.   

London was a big busy mix of tourists and locals. Just overwhelmingly crowded everywhere you went. It’s obvious there were a lot of tourists but there were a lot of londoners too. London is so diverse, every other person spoke a different language. London was very distinct with its own history and culture.

Edinburgh is another big tourist city. Oriented toward tourists. However it still maintained a real sense of Scottish culture with the bagpipes and kilts and overall feel of it. The castle, the port, the atmosphere. 

Dublin is an interesting city. It is overwhelming oriented toward the tourist and thousands of them flock here. It’s very crowded. Dublin has decided that people come here for the pubs. There are so, so

many of them. They overwhelm the city. 

There is music in a lot of them. There is an area of central Dublin called temple bar (not the bar this is the name of the area). It has THE temple bar in it, but it has a lot of other bars in it too. It is an overwhelmingly tourist area. Thousands of people fill the streets in the evenings. 

Is what makes Dublin Irish all the pubs? It feels like you have to search out other Irish culture in Dublin. It doesn’t feel like a lot of it is emphasized. You could easily come here and spend a lot time in pubs and think that’s Dublin.

Dublin is a lot more than that. I’m finding you have to go away from the pubs to find it.

Seagulls are not my friend

 Seagulls here are not my friend. I noticed the further north you go, the bigger the seagull, the louder the seagull.

I have always like seagulls. Pretty and graceful as they glide through the sky. Where I live they are not that loud. Just a fun thing to look at. 

Here they are LARGE. I swear they are as big as an eagle. They are very loud. They will sit on top of buildings and squawk and it will echo down the street. When two of them are doing it, forget it…

They are really noticeable in cities on water which makes sense. They circle around, 30 at a time over an area. They will walk right up to you just like a pigeon. 

Why the interest in seagulls you ask? I’m getting to it. 

Let me set the scene: it’s a beautiful day in Dublin. We are sitting by a pond in St Stephens Green park. There are seagulls, ducks all around. They walk around. They swim in the pond. They soar overhead. It’s an idyllic scene. Or at least it was.

We get ready to go. I stand up and I feel water on my hand. I move my purse a little bit and there it is! One of the bastards has managed to shit between my shirt and purse. I never knew it happened. I didn’t see it happen. It was not obvious. Somehow they went perfectly in the place between my shirt and purse. The perfect placement was amazing. 

I went somewhere and cleaned it off. Gross. I’m lucky. It could have been on my head. Not so much a fan of seagulls anymore. 

I met Mary in the park

 So today I met Mary at the park. She was probably 80. Dubliner all her life.  I was sitting in Iveagh gardens park and so was she. I had come there for the fountains. They weren’t on. 

I went over to ask her were they ever on? She told me they were on until noon. That started the conversation. I learned a lot from Mary (like you always do from older people). 

She told me this park (which is sort of a secret park popular with Dubliners) was the front yard of the Guinness family of beer fame. St Patrick’s Greene park down the way was the back part. Their old house is the Irish Ministery of foreign affairs. 

She said that when the place was too “common”, they moved to the coast and donated all of it to the city. We’re talking a huge swathe of land here.

She asked me what part of the US I was from. When told her where, she said her brother lived in Milwaukee and she had visited him in the 1960s. She loved the city. 

She had two brother who went to the US. One lived in Massachusetts and been “Irishman of the year”. Quite successful, that one. She had been to the US a few times.

I told her I had been to Belfast and she was disgusted with what has gone on there.  “It’s not about religion, it’s about politics”. London keeping control in other words.

Older people love to talk. I found that out as a nurse. You can learn so much about them in a short time. What you learn is usually really interesting.

That’s the fountain in Iveagh park.

Are you lace curtain or shanty Irish?

There seem to be a lot of lace curtains in Ireland these days. I’m not kidding. Walk through a neighborhood and you’ll see them. 

Lotsa high fallutin’ people round here as my mom would say. You don’t even have to ask because these are the lace curtain Irish. 

Me, I grew up shanty Irish back in the U.S. My mom would say sometimes we were showin’ we were shanty Irish. 

Everyone who came to America started out shanty Irish. They were poor and lived in shanties. Shanty defined: “a small crudely built shack”. The shanties took the form of tenements in New York.

Hopefully you would move up in life, make more money and become a lace curtain Irish. You would find yerself among the high mukkety muks of the world. Example of lace curtain Irish: the Kennedy. Definitely lace curtain. Even though patriarch Joe had a bit of a shady background.

So if you were Irish you were probably Catholic. Irish Catholics had big families. Sometimes twelve kids. Everybody was baptized. The girls dressed up what is essentially a child wedding dress for communion. The boys in a white suit. Then there was the confirmation. Nobody really understood that.

Confession. You go in a wooden booth where you can’t see the priest. You are a 6 year old kids thinking up sins to tell the priest. Then you would get a penance of three Hail Marys and four Our Fathers. What a strange deal it all was. 

Any self respecting Catholic parent would send their kids to Catholic school if they could. I went one year. 5th grade. St Lawrence school. Sister Rose Angela. The nuns still wore habits. We wore uniforms. 

The boys and girls played on one playground, the girls on another. What I mostly remembers is the fact that we were heathens(ha). We didn’t go to church every Sunday. What if the nuns at school found out? They never did. After the year, I went back to the unholy public school.