Well, here we are at the end of day two of Dublin. For those keeping track at home, I was only supposed to be here for one day in the city, but the inevitable problems that seem to show up in even the best laid travel plans seem to have caught up to me yet again.
To put it short, rail travel in the UK is just not up to the standard I would have expected. In fact, I won't sugar coat it, it's absolutely wretched. I guess I was pretty spoiled living on mainland Europe for so long (especially in Germany, where EVERYONE gets around with the train), but even for such a tiny couple of islands, Scotland, England, and Ireland seem to just not have it together in terms of getting you where you need to go. After sorting through a big list of travel options to get from Dublin to London--aka banging my head against the keyboard and weighing one crappy option against another--I have to leave a day earlier than I intended and take a bus at 3:30 in the morning tomorrow just so I can make my ferry over to England in time. Fifteen hour day total tomorrow, and just to get from the western coast of England to London (near the eastern coast) is going to take five hours. The distance is comparable to going between Hamburg and Berlin, which takes about an hour and a half by comparison. I considered getting a cheap airline ticket instead and sacrificing a day of travel on my Interrail pass, but my card wasn't working for some reason when I tried to hit the payment button.
Which actually serves as a nice segue to my other problem: my debit card has split almost in half. And not along the middle either, where the problem would have been reasonably easy to fix, but right along the magnetic strip. Old card + brittle plastic + it being in my wallet for so long + me sitting on my wallet a lot = breakage. This presents certain problems for withdrawing money over here, which also causes difficulties when it comes to eating, paying for accommodation, and generally surviving for the next five weeks. I'll spare you the long list of things I went through for two and a half hours trying to get this fixed, which at one point included a money transfer to my German bank account, involving a signature notarization from an Irish lawyer which would have cost 60 Euros, but ultimately I tried taping it back together in a last ditch effort, which actually worked. Treating it with the utmost care until I get back home and praying it works out.
But anyway, enough with the negative aspects of everything! I've actually really enjoyed my time in Dublin so far, and the travel problems also had the hidden benefit of giving me an extra day in the city, here's some of the stuff I've seen and done:
-Spent a lot of time walking around the first day and seeing the sights. Headed into the Dublin Writers Museum first thing on Thursday, which was really cool. Lots of original manuscripts and portraits and different things from a bunch of Irish writers who lived in the city. Great geek material for English majors.
-Saw the General Post Office, from which the 1916 Rebellion was staged (really, really big revolt against England in Ireland).
-Went to the Irish National Museum and Art Gallery today, very cool stuff for sure. Plus the big national museums in the UK are all government sponsored and free.
-Had a few good coffees in a couple cafes and, of course, a number of Guinnesses. People have told me they taste different in Ireland for years, and I was always a little skeptical, but it is, in fact, true. They're less watery, much creamier, definitely a ton better.
-Got myself formally outfitted for the Camino (starting down the trail in four days officially! ah!). I was leaving the rest of my purchases to make in Dublin, and now I'm 100% equipped.
-Finally, saw a play at the Abbey Theatre last night. The Abbey is pretty much the birthplace of modern Irish drama, and I had taken a seminar on Irish Drama in my senior year at IC, so of course I had to go see the place. As luck would have it, they were actually putting on one of the plays we read in that class: Translations by Brian Friel, also one of my favorites. The tickets really weren't that bad at all, so I figured I couldn't turn it down. The production definitely didn't disappoint. The play is all about a British army survey team who comes to Ireland in the late 1800's to make a new map of the country and "standardize" (aka anglicize) all of the Irish place names. It has lots to do with language and culture and history and heritage and a lot with British imperialism in Ireland, really interesting stuff.
So I'll be in trains and ferries (again) all day tomorrow. Picked up a copy of A Game of Thrones for new reading material, which clocks in at almost a thousand pages, so we'll see how far I get through that. I'll be very thankful to just be down in Spain in a few days and get to leave all of the craziness with these awful train schedules behind. Nothing but boots and trails will be a nice switch.
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