Lazy days

Sundays are good days in Dublin. Because the city in many ways is built on good-humoured, hospitable pubs, sociability and friendly banter over the thousands of Guinnesses poured every day of the week, it draws the crowds from the solitary comforts of their carpet-floored residences and out in the socially unique atmosphere that Dublin really does best. This means in particular that Friday and Saturday nights unavoidably will involve heavy inebriation in the many pubs adorning the streets, and thus the general Sunday feeling in the city is one of slow-moving, self-pitying citizens searching cures and care for their aching heads and unsettled undertakings. And as any good host will do, Dublin does not only cater for the nights out, but also in a truly outstanding way for the days after.

Food is an important part of Sundays, and Sunday food is where Dublin finally gets a chance to show off its Irish culinary skills. Should lazy lunches back at the scene of drunken crimes be your cup of tea, a number of proper Irish soakage meals can be found in the comforting surroundings of your favourite pub. There is no better way to get rid of that hungover feeling than over eggs, beans, sausages, black and white pudding, mushrooms, tomatoes, fries, toast and tea, huddling in the warm corner with the massivity of the Sunday papers. Dinner that provide you with that all-important comfort on a Sunday is also a staple here. Bangers and mash, Irish Stews or meat and potatoes in any other form is a fantastic way to feed your stomach and your well-being. If I should pick any one place to put your best effort, the bangers in the Brazen Head hold a particular high position, and they go really well with a new pint of Guinness. Sundays also seem to provide the perfect weather in Dublin; grey and dull, with no annoying sun glares to pierce that headache, and the perfect excuse to stay just a little bit longer in the pub...

After breakfast/brunch/lunch/dinner, depending on how long you stay, there's a number of tempting activities to consider. I usually take a stroll through one of my favourite museums, of which Dublin has a nice handful - while not the extravagant selections of Paris, London or Rome, there's a good show of bite-size museums with ever-changing exhibitions, and excellent activities to keep you culturally and knowledgeably entertained. Yesterday I visited the newly opened Science Gallery, which really is a beautiful little space, with amazing installations fusing science with art in a stunning way. Today I was in the mood for some historical quirks, and visited a couple of the set-ups in the National Museum of History and Archaeology. Life and Death in Ancient Rome, Medieval Ireland, Viking History and Ancient Egypt are just some of what is on show at the moment, and while it is all just excerpts from the vast information available, it is highly recommended. Last Sunday I popped by the Polish exhibition at the National Gallery, which has some really good art in a mixed selection of Irish and international paintings, drawings, sculptures and other materials (J. M. W. Turner's watercolours is on every January, it's fab!), so that's another opportunity around the area round Merrion Square and Dawson and Kildare Street.

If museums is a bit too in-putty for a really heavy hangover, there's always plenty of chances to just walk it all off. I went for a city-centre stroll today, which I always love. Walking across the bridges of the Liffey in the hour before the sun sets, with the dark waters running calmly through the city and the beautiful light adorning the north side facades and gleaming in the Spire, you cannot help but feel totally in love with Dublin. The wonderful city atmosphere busts and crackles out of all the buildings, pubs, parks and churches, on every street corner and down every lane. Navigating down bustling shopping streets or calmer Georgian areas, touring through Rathmines or strolling in D4, walking up O'Connell Street with the magnificent Spire, undoubtedly the world's most beautiful needle, promenading in Iveagh Gardens or heading towards Phoenix Park, you will really get a feel for this city and its countless attractions. It is all so immensely Dublin-esque and so fantastically charming that you fall head over heals for it, and if you let it, the city will make you and keep you as happy as you could ever want.

And if the city itself is too much or too little one day, there's always the DART, all ready to take you out to gorgeous Howth and its marina, down to Bray or Greystones for a coast walk and some park-type amusement, into Dalkey for a village experience, from the port town experience in Dun Laoghaire to the castles of Malahide or the beaches of Sandycove. A quick train ride, and you've got all you want of one-day adventures, whether it be walking, history, fine dining or just a laugh on the beach.

Other perfect Sunday initiatives include Afternoon tea in the Shelbourne Hotel, recommended for days when your posh side is more prominent than your shabby hangover side; bringing a book, an umbrella and a big steaming cup of something hot to drink to Iveagh Gardens, the War Memorial Gardens or Merrion Square, or taking your friends, dog, petanque or frisbee and have a go at some friendly playing; doing the 50s diner thing in Eddie Rocket's; sipping tea and eating amazing scones in Bewley's, or upstairs in the secret hotel café that I'm not telling anyone about in fear that it might get crowded and lose the cosy living room charm!; playing kick-around or pretend-rugby in Phoenix Park, or, if you're less sporty but still like the scene, just going for a walk with the deer there; enjoying the old-fashioned movie theatre feel in the Savoy, or going for a narrow, stylish avant-garde film in the IFI; convincing friends with cars to take you for a spin to Glendalough or the Dublin/Wicklow "mountains", or to the amazingly beautiful Powerscourt Gardens, where there are good trees to be climbed and funny tourists to snigger secretly at; or, if it all becomes too much: staying in with a giant cup of tea and just enjoying the art of lazy Sundays in front of the many charming programmes about sticks and stones in Irish on TG4. Blissssss.

A little bit of this life

While I won't post millions of photos on this blog, I've lately played around with my favourite picture tool and made a small collage of some of the many good moments in Dublin the last few months.

So here's a tiny glance at a bit of the life and times of a Dubliner in the making:

I've got the power

The last two days the Irish weather has really lived up to its reputation as "four seasons in one day". From shining and warming sun, to snow, wind that holds several marks on a lot of scales, hail and fog, things seem to change every time you look out the window. Going to bed last night, our brick house was shook to its foundations by a very aggressive wind cutting the corners and puffing down the chimney to our non-functioning fireplace. Some of my work mates reported on lack of sleep caused by hail storms and general weather harshness, but true Vikings won't let a bit of rough weather keep them from their much needed beauty sleep. I slept like a log in a bog in the fog. But you can imagine I wasn't particularly pleased when I was awoken this morning at 6 o'clock by an insistent beeping sound from the hallway. Drowsy and with no night vision to speak of, I stumbled out of bed to find that turning on the light did not aid my lack of vision, as the power was clearly gone out in the flat. Grr.

Aided only by the faint light from my mobile phone, I found and managed to put on a new pair of contact lenses, and set out to find the source of the rather annoying beeps. In the hall a red light was blinking - clearly our alarm had gone off. Now, since I've been here I've never turned on our alarm, never known how to activate it, not to mention never having been told any code to turn it off. We have a burglar alarm in the flat. Nice. It is probably useful to have such a thing if the dodgy characters that roam the streets around Fitzwilliam Square at night looking for late evening workers, decide to try their luck at other illegal activities that strip people of their safety, freedom and other valuables. That has never happened, however, and I was surprised to find the alarm going off while our door and other entrances was clearly untouched. What's more - no one had turned the damn thing on, so why was it beeping?

My lovely flatmate Tanya, who, bless her sleeping heart, could snooze through a foreign invasion or fire or worse, was not stirred by the alarm - but rather by a very insisting door knocking from her slightly baffled Norwegian, who could not for the life of me figure out how to handle this unsuspected situation of no power and a lot more alarm than I usually preferred. So, with her aid, as well as her reassurance that neither of us had in fact activated the alarm in any way, we went about to try to stop the noise before alarm centralists or the likes would come running. No mention of any codes in any papers we had, which we searched frantically with flashlights (one of my absolute favourite inventions, by the way - I can imagine the joy of this supposed God when he created light; I am still thrilled every time I turn on a flashlight in the pitch dark and there is, sure enough, light!), and no way to turn the power off the alarm, as there was no power to be turning off. All was pitch dark as far as we could see from our window too - but granting that it was 6 in the morning, and not a lot of people would be expected to have a lot of lights on at home, we still weren't sure if it was a local power issue, or something affecting more of the neighbourhood. And this wasn't even our main worry, as the both of us would rather just fall back into bed, something that was very little tempting with the constant beeping from the alarm box just outside my room.

The solution to our problems eventually came from the one technique that rarely fails when you're stuck in a rut, however: staring at the wall. No, I am pointing no fingers or accusing anyone of being less than average intelligent, but what we did find by just staring blindly at the alarm, trying to think what to do, was actually the code to the alarm written ON THE WALL below the alarm. Now, that's what I call smart thinking... We tried the numbers that looked inconspicuous in themselves, written innocently under the alarm box, and sure enough the whole thing went quiet and happy. With no resolution to the power situation, we figured there was not much to do about that until morning anyway, so with newfound quiet I returned to my bed with one question: who is so stupid as to write the alarm code right under the alarm? Probably the same kind of people who write their PIN code ON their credit cards, just in case... Hello, burglars, welcome in; here's how to turn off this annoying device designed to alert people of your presence. (One of the many myths about the Irish are that they are a bit thick and slow at times. While avoiding to draw any general conclusions, I'll just say that this did not exactly contribute to prove that particular myth wrong.)

The end of the story is that I woke up again a short while later, when my own alarm clock went off (which I had set myself, something that didn't really make it less annoying, but at least I knew what it was and why it went off!), with my room bathed in light, as I had clearly turned everything on when testing if the power was really out e-v-e-r-y-w-h-e-r-e in the flat. Happy days, then; power had been given back to me. Tanya, however, poor thing, had taken a shower by flashlight, as it had only just come back five minutes before I woke up...

But now, to all you creepy criminals who probably assume that it's safe to break in to the Shire because you know how to disable the alarm - how wrong you are in your presumptions! Being the smart, sassy and empowered women (technically!) that we are, Tanya and myself have removed every trace of the writing on the wall, hidden the code in a safe place - and now we even know how to use our alarm! So at least one good thing came out of the whole incident - we've now got the power (sic!)...

Ireland - the technological state (of things)

Small things excite me. New curtains in the Shire; taking consumer messages on household products literally; rocks... All very small in the larger scheme of things, but still greatly exciting and fun. As is shopping in Tesco. Now, Tesco does not only hold a beacon on advanced goods selection that would be hard to find equal to in provincial Norway, but it's also a great source of entertainment to pay for your purchases. Being a Googler, well fed on free lunches and a surplus of snacks and sweets, I don't go grocery shopping a lot. No need to buy dinner when you've had a three course meal for lunch, with choices like Moroccan or Indian, sushi and paninis, salads, cakes and Ben & Jerry's for dessert (sorry, bragging easily gets the better of me when I talk about the food at Google, which I tend to do a lot). So the one bi-weekly trip to the exotic aisles of Tesco is a big deal. Especially when you get to pick, scan and pay for your own items. Yes, I love it.

Never having worked in a shop or anywhere near bar codes (except the symbols on my local bar chart), I find scanning items myself great fun. Tesco have self service machines that let you bring your shopping cart up to the fantastically advanced, but easy to use, automated wonder-o-mat, scan each item yourself, with a cheerful Ping! after each item, scan your Club Card, pay with cash, card, coupons or a selection of other options that I never really looked into, and then it gives you the correct change, your receipt and even a heartfelt goodbye. You never even have to come in contact with the hard-worked and smiling staff if you don't want to, leaving them time to be busy arranging the multitudes of flour types and ready-meals in diligent shelf order. And

I may sound ironic, but I'm not. I think it is so much fun, and so efficient when nothing goes wrong - which it rarely does, although I struggled with the bag system in the beginning, and although buying loose weight fruit and vegetables can be a challenge the first time you do it. There are still cashier counters for those who prefer them, and staff helping you out if you look a slight bit more perplexed than normal. Self-service in Tesco - I'm loving it. It saves time, lines, staff and provides endless amount of entertainment. I'm almost considering shopping more often...

But this advanced technological marvel (OK, I might over-estimate it, but still!) makes me wonder how other electronic business that seems to be a piece of cake in other countries, can be so under-developed in the land of the Irish, the bar codes and the self-service counters. Online banking for instance! Or ordering broadband at home, cable TV - or electricity! The national providers of useful household technology, take heed - the solution to your rather lacking services might just be a shopping trip away. More on that to come...

On the Art of Travel

One of the many advantages, apart from the marvellous city itself, a provincial Norwegian like myself will find living in Dublin, is the easy and cheap communication with the world around you. If you in Norway do not have an address in the immediate vicinity to the hotchpotch capital and its surrounding airports, flying anywhere in Europe that cheap airline Norwegian do not cater for with direct flights can be a bit of a hassle and a rather large strain on your student wallet. Not so in Dublin. With newfound love for much despised Ryanair, I have in the last month strolled through the magnificent streets of Rome on a very spur-of-the-moment getaway, as well as meeting friends in London for a flight that cost me less than ordering Chinese food to the Shire.

Now, carbon footprints be damned for a little while - I never use motorised transport in Dublin anyway, so I figure I have a bit to go on in the balance of things (oh, and it should really be the carbon dioxide footprint that worries most in any case!) - for now I am marvelled by the possibility to go see the best of Europe in a heartbeat. Last weekend I spent some wonderfully relaxed days in lovely London, entertained by buzzing electrocuting of my friends and chilling out with house beer en masse. Good fun, or great craic, as I'd proudly exclaim, embracing my adopted motherland and her fondly ridiculed expressions and euphemisms.

And it struck my that I have adopted much of the Irishness abounding over the last few months. With pride I received several comments on the Irish accent that adorned some of my words, and while some of my (Norwegian!) friends wouldn't let on that I speak English in any degree of a native Dubliner (which I admit to in the whole, while I do believe the Irish affinity can be traced here and there), I realised I had picked up quite a few Irish quirks. And it got me thinking about the notion of belonging. Coming to Dublin in August last, it didn't take long to feel at home here, in spite of the many oddities, which I will return to in comments later in this blog. When people at work or back home in Norway ask me when I will move back, I can say, in all honesty, that I don't plan any such thing. Ireland may not be my place of birth, but the Isles here make me feel just as home and just as belonging here as any place I've lived before has.

My travel companion on the flight over to the English had some wise input on this. Quoting another favourite of mine, Alain de Botton says in 'The Art of Travel' (highly recommended!) that Gustave Flaubert "proposed a new way of ascribing nationality: not according to the country one was born in or to which one's family belonged, but according to the places to which one was attracted". For me, this makes a lot of sense. The powerful feeling of coming home when I sat on the Aircoach from Dublin Airport upon return from Rome, as well as the naturalness of walking around the streets of the city, claiming that this really is my city (undisputed as of yet, although I am sure many would disagree - well, goan, will ya?!), and my insistent usurpation of Irish literature, language, culture and music all comes together to say that Ireland might as well be my nation of choice, and I may be Irish as much as I am Norwegian, although it may, and will, take me ages to get a satisfactory degree of understanding of it all. But who says you need to? I don't understand all of Norway, our history or the many things that define Norwegianism either, but still I am Norwegian by power of having been born there. So, in accordance with my good friend Flaubert, I choose to be Irish as well.

"My native country is for me the country that I love, that is, the one that makes me dream, that makes me feel well" says Flaubert. Is Éireannach mé, agus is as an Ioruaidh dom...

An chara

Arriving in a new country usually entails changes, opportunities, new challenges and exciting possibilities. As a linguistic enthousiast I embrace the chance to pick up useful phrases (as well as sharing the many truly important Norwegian ones with the locals, such as "Du bretter grådig fine servietter" - which now has an international sign language symbol as well, and the rough translation of "Slitan med ny frisyre" to "Happy haircut!") All in the interest of broadening my knowledge and improving skills... So when I found myself in Ireland, already sufficiently capable of communicating in English, the natural step forward was to throw myself into the local and historical culture - so I signed up for Irish lessons.

First class last week was a useful introduction to the concept of learning by hearing rather than writing, which is hard for me to do, but almost mandatory when trying to decipher the mysteries of Irish. So we conversed on the subject of what we would like to drink (Cad ba mhaith leat?) and what our names are. (Disappointingly, Hilde does not seem to have an Irish equivalent. Yet.) Exciting? Maybe not. But fantastically beautiful! The challenge is now to employ as many Irish words seemingly naturally into English conversations as possible - we might all be in for a fun few months, an kwera!

So now I'm off to my second class, I expect thrilling challenges! Go raibh mhaith agat for your attention, I will be back! Slán go fóill...

Living in the land of delays

In keeping with the Irish way of life, which is slightly slower and slightly less on time than most Europeans would be used to, the delay of my continuously updated blog has been one of significance. Counting the days back to my arrival, I find that I should have had about 50 posts in this blog since I came to Dublin. I have 1 (this one). I might have to reconsider my goals!

But here's to a new start, here's to Dublin, who finished their millennium monument in 2003, here's to updates and insights into the Irish culture, starting today (or, since this post does not really offer any reflections on anything, I'd say starting soon...but that seems to be out of keeping with the intentions. Oh, well)