Dublin

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Ok guys, dirty Dublin is the city in which I lived for more than one year, and that's still to be continued. I know it's full of difects, maybe it's got more faults than virtues, but it's Dublin, and there's a lot to know about it.

The most common thing that you can hear about this city is that Dublin is NOT Ireland. That's true. Most of you may ask why. Well, think that 15% of the people leaving here are not Irish (though Ireland has a pretty high foreigners percentage, 11%) even if when you walk in the street this may not be the sensation you perceive (you have more the sensation of being in a real melting pot). But that's only statistics. The lifestyle of Dublin is now a mix of Irish and Western tradition. Or better, Dublin is the degeneration of Irish tradition due to the encounter with the most spread Western lifestyle. Which means: if Irish people traditionally drink a lot only to forget in the evening how harsh has been the day, Dubliners drink alcohol only to trasgress, only for drunkness' sake, only because nowadays you can have fun only if you are drunk. Whatever is your point of view on this topic, Dublin city center is today the right place to be if you want to wander from pub to pub, from disco to disco, if you want to have the time of your life.

This does not mean that all of Dublin limits to this. There's a lot of places in Dublin I've liked to visit, much quieter and more interesting places than discopubs or Temple Bar Square. There's edges of tranquility in Dublin that, I think, most people don't know. Not as famous as the Guinness Storehouse, places like the Grand Canal, St. Anne's Park, Christ Church Cathedral remain hidden from the visitor's eyes, who does not know that he's missing to see the best part of the city. But maybe these are just places that we, inhabitants, know. I remember a scene in “L'auberge espagnol”: the protagonist, a parisian, says something like “I discovered myself wandering in the streets that no parisian would ever walk along”. It's the same: there's places no Dubliner would ever go to, as there's places no tourist will ever know about.

Mizen Head

I woke up on the back seat of the car. It was the second night I slept in it. The night before I tried to find a hostel in those little towns of that God forgotten part of Ireland, but no hostel listed in the guidebook answered the phone, which meant that they were no more existing or, if still existing, closed at night. I couldn't afford a hotel, so my back prepared to twirl all night in a room as large as me.

I spent the morning in trying to get some wet napkins and, above all, using them to take some kind of shower, and fortunately I found a public bathroom after a while where of course it was impossible to use water but at least I could strip without lap-dancing as it would happen in the car under the sleeping bag to avoid public shows.

Refreshed (I can't say washed) I looked through my map while my foggy morning brain was trying to recollect the route I had planned for the day. I wanted to quickly visit Mizen Head first, and then head for the Beara peninsula: I read in the guidebook that Mizen Head is the southest point of the Irish island, and of course I wanted to reach it, and that I could have rock climbed outdoors in the Beara peninsula, which would have been my first time. It was however already 11.30, and I had to start my journey back no later that 4 p.m. to be on time in Dublin. So I said to myself “Let's visit the southest part of Ireland first, looks like being the arrival of some sort of competition. With the time left I'll decide what to do”. And off I went.

I was driving from Skibbereen towards Mizen Head, and the landscape was gorgeous: I was in my car waving through the green Irish hills, with no horizon in front of me as my direction was the seaside and the slopes seemed to lower as I was approaching the ocean. After every bend there were still hills at the sides, but also an empty space opening towards the sky at the end of my field of view.

After an hour or so I reached its parking lot and I stopped to observe the big elica of an old unlucky ship sunk not far from there. I was too tired and loath to look at the museum, so I just bought my ticket to pass the gates and walk up and down the cliffs to reach the lighthouse.

If I judged the trip from the lighthouse I would be disappointed: the only old thing to see there is a lamp, which is the nearest place to the southest point of the island. Well, there's also a girl sitting there all day long which is not only a watcher but also a guide, but I was too afraid of being asked a quite high price for a slice of knowledge, so I didn't ask her anything. I want to judge the trip from everything else around me though. The summer had been shit that year, especially in Dublin, but I was told that usually in the South the weather is better than in the capital. That day I was graced: when I reached the head it was a lovely, even if damned windy, day and I could stand on the southest part of Ireland looking into the blue, either I wanted to look at the sea or at the sky. I saw the sea under my feet, waves crushing against the descending cliffs, I could look into the open ocean or north, where other peninsulas stretched their fingers towards far America like the Irish people leaving the Country decades before. Green and grey melted on those hilly pieces of land that I was trying to observe blinded by the brightness of the sunlight. I spent some minutes there, fascinated by the beautiful day. After a while I went back to my car, which I found incredibly hot that day. My aim, as I said, was to go to the Beara peninsula and check if the guidebook was right and I could get to climb, so I started driving back on the narrow road that led me there. But, I don't remember if accidentally or after a meditated conclusion of shortening the trip in order to be the less possible stressed, I lost my way among those narrow roads, more or less when I parked the first time to take a picture of the bays that winded between the green hills, much more visible now that I was driving in that direction than when I arrived. I went on and on in those streets, with the sea at my very side, up and down the hills and through green plains. After a bend I saw a little beach, the same one that I glimpsed in the morning, and I took the street on the right at the crossroads to not lose the view of the blue. After other hilly bends, there comes another little beach, at the bottom of a bay surrounded by green hills no taller than needed. And that was paradise. I couldn't resist. I parked in a hollow of the road and reached the beach on foot. I had no swimming suit with me, I didn't plan to go for a seaside trip, so I simply took off my shirt (my green bra was absolutely mistakable with a swimming suit, and surely much more fashionable than all Irish swimming suits around me) and rolled up my cotton trousers to enjoy at least a bit of the unusual warm weather I found in that corner of Ireland.

I tasted the ocean water: my toe nearly froze. I didn't regret not having a swimming suit: it would have been useless. I went back on the beach and took possession of a low rock as big as me emerging from the sand, the right size to lay on it. I enjoyed the next two hours: sleeping and relaxing in the sun, how much did I miss it! But time went by and I had to start thinking about the 4 hours return trip that were waiting for me on the road back to Dublin. I had to give back the car at 8pm and it was already 4, I still had to redress, walk back to the car and farewell the place.

I started to collect my stuff and went in the direction of the parking spot I found, but I didn't want to go along the main street, beside the cars already mashed to fit the road. So I started to climb a cliff and went along it, delighted by the sapphire watercolor and crystal seafoam splinters which crashed onto the rocks. After a while the cliff was no more walkable, and I was forced to step over a wall onto the asphalt. And there I turned around and was blessed: the summer day melted the green of the hills on the blue of the sea, and land and water became one soul caressing my eyes. The pale sand was just a spot dividing all this from the green waves of the inland. I stopped to take some pictures and couldn't help spending a few minutes on that wall along the street. It was enchanting.

The enchantment couldn't last, as a curse was pending on me: didn't I return the car on time, would I have been fined. It was so real that tore me apart abruptly from that blessed bend and led me to the car, which I luckily and unusually found as a huge piece of boiling iron. I had to linger there for some minutes to keep the windows open and let the sea breeze change the equatorial climate of the cabin into a North European summer. I took the chance to impress the camera roll with memories of the bay laying on the other side of the bend, wider than the little treasure I found and less melodic, but perfect to slowly put me back into the usual world.

I started driving slowly despite my delay, and tried as long as I could to keep the sparkling blue at my side, but the moment came when I was slurped by the waves of the Irish green sea on the road that took me back to Dublin.

Sorry, no digital photos of this place! (... yet...)