Ireland Part 2

Another major stopover for us in the city of Dublin was the national museum. We found some truly amazing commemorative artwork. The collection is called "Leabhar na hAiséirghe", or "Book of the Resurrection", by Irish Artist Art O'Murnaghan from 1924 to 1928 and 1937 to 1952. The collection commemorates those who had died in the 1916 Easter Rising and the War of Independence. Each of the 26 pages took up to a year to complete. What really struck me when we were at the museum was how little Irish history I knew... I had heard about the IRA and the war of independence, but I really couldn't tell you the details. So much of the special exhibit (which I show below) relied on an inherent knowledge of the struggle within the visitors, so I needed to do some extra reading to put it into context. Here's the wikipedia link for those of you who'd like to see a better summary than I could give at the moment. Needless to say, the Easter Rising was a significant insurrection attempt by Irish nationalists that was crushed by the British, but which spurred on the more intense conflict in 1919 which won Irish independence (minus Northern Ireland). 

Here are some of my favorites from the exhibit: 

   

Of course, we found the city had other art to offer as well-though more modern.  I absolutely loved this one, and recall taking a picture of it (on a construction wall I believe), but I can't quite recall where. May you all have nebulas in your brain. Neural nebulas...

And of course- more beer (for Michael) and an Irish coffee (for me! How could I resist, after trying my first one in San Francisco with Mom1 and Mom2?)

I felt this advice might apply in Wales too....

We climbed up onto the balcony to have a drink in this bar. It was right along the river and just as crowded as any other bar in the Temple Bar district. The banjo was appealing. :) We did some people watching for a while. 

I think I mentioned the WIND in the last post about Ireland! Yep, still there!

I liked these colorful doors. 

Other extras: Michael really liked the world war army bunk kit at the museum. I think if he could, most of his things would be from world war army surplus. 

The best way to sample Irish cuisine when you have only a few mealtimes in which to do it: pots! Yummy... I've gotten my friend Lei hooked on Irish soda bread now. The local supermarket bakes it sometimes. 

Dublin was awesome, but next time I go to Ireland I really, really want to travel around the countryside. I guess I'm going to have to rent a car or a horse or something. And bring more waterproofs. 

Man that Galway Girl left a trail of bodies...

February seemed like a good time to go to Ireland. And by a good time, I meant that the ticket was dirt cheap (I could pay more for a haircut than I paid for that plane ticket) and Michael was leaving Berlin in the next month or so to return to California. After booking a place to stay with an adorable, friendly, and really helpful Irish couple through Air BnB, we met up in Dublin for a three day weekend of Celtic narrative and wind. LOTs of wind.

Of course, being in Dublin, what kind of bibliophile would I be if I were to do anything but make a beeline for the Trinity College Library? And oh darn, this necessitated going past the Book of Kells first, which was really beautiful and rekindled by love of the art of book binding. I wish I could show you pictures, but the thing is really freaking old, and has been stolen a lot, so anything we can do to preserve it, including not taking pictures and keeping it in low light, is an understandable measure.

So yeah... the Trinity College Library. Michael was worried I was broken, or had a glitch or an aneurism.  IT WAS SO GODDAMN BEAUTIFUL.  I nearly cried.

Also: They were exhibiting a children's literature collection when we visited. The gorgeous art that accompanies children's literature around the world complemented the venue... I can't tell if the library made the art more powerful or vice versa. It felt like a fairy tale. 

Harry Potter... In IRISH.

Comics count!

 

 

The library also had a 15th century harp known as Brian Boru's Harp- legendarily owned by the High King of Ireland, Brian Boru, though this is likely untrue. There is no substantial evidence to indicate where this harp came from, but the legend carries weight, and you can see the image of this harp decorating money and other items as the national symbol of Ireland.

Looking back down the Long Room

We only left the Library once we had been driven out by hunger.

Wandering around we saw:

A Protest (I think to do with water rights... As Californians in Ireland, we found this pretty hilarious).

An Outdoor Book Market

an indoor knick knacks market



And a jam-packed-jamming Bar

I was SO excited to find this bar- we didn't stay long because it was intensely crowded, but it was exactly what I had hoped to find (and hoped to continue to find) in Temple Bar, Dublin. I adore traditional Irish music. We set off in the evening to find more of this sort of thing, but ended up hopping between several pubs in our search. Our most successful find was tucked away in a basement; a combination restaurant-bar-and-live-show joint where we found "Whiskey in the Jar" and of course, "Galway Girl". The audience was really enjoying the band. We had a nice side view from the bar by the stairs, which also meant we were right in the path of the stampeding university group apparently on a group-t-shirt-wearing-bar-hopping-can-i-get-laid-tonight tour.
When I say most successful, what I really mean is that they had violins. I love violins/fiddles in Irish music. This requirement however, doesn't mean there weren't other bars I loved–among others, we found a traditional irish music pub upstairs from the jam-packed-jamming Bar (they were a bit slow for what I was looking for. Give me ENERGY!), a two-level bar right on the river where we could watch the performers from a balcony, and the original temple bar, where, funnily enough, they were featuring American music rather than Irish.

End Part 1...

Berlin Part III: Alternative Art- The Berlin Wall and Bertolt Brecht

OK! STEP RIGHT UP! GRAB YOUR FALAFEL OR DUNYA KABOB! (I did)
Let's take a walk along the Berlin Wall, a Museum of Fine and Freakish Art painted on the skeleton of history:

Very famous

I like her face.

And then there's this guy.
Real Ad. No Joke.

We just had to stop at the theater where Bertolt Brecht, author of "Mother Courage and her Children", put on his plays- we would be letting our History of 20th Century Intellectualism course and our history degrees if we didn't.

Bertolt-Brecht-Platz

Don't know if you can read the sign in the circle on the building in the picture to the right, but it says Berliner Ensemble...

We spent most of Sunday visiting memorials in the Tiergarten... which itself had been pretty much entirely demolished to become a potato garden during the war...

The Reichstag

We saw the Reichstag, the German parliament- the field in front was the location of the very bloody battle of Berlin... Stalin had made the Reichstag a competition for his two armies, declaring eternal glory for whoever first got to the top. The Reichstag is capped by a huge glass dome which replaced the stone dome lost in the war. The repairs made to buildings in Berlin are patchwork: they put in a new glass dome but left many bullet holes in the walls. They also have weird taste. According to Michael, the German national fat chicken (it's an eagle, but its modern redesign has everyone thinking of a fat chicken now) hangs as a giant sculpture over the prime minister's head inside the Reichstag now.

The Soviet memorial is also in the Tiergarten.The memorial consists of a large inscribed wall, preceded by the imposing tombs of two unknown soldiers, and guarded by the first two tanks to enter Berlin, now converted into statues.  It seems strange to me to have a memorial to those who came in and conquered your city, but I think we can all agree WWII and the following Cold War period was a pretty weird time. There are some political issues with the memorial. The ranks of the Soviet army which followed the front line (but not the front line itself, which had seen waaay too much and therefore didn't want to cause further violence) looted and abused quite a lot of Berlin. 

We also visited the Composer's Memorial, featuring Mozart, Beethoven, and the guy who composed the German national anthem. The park was very pretty. 

And how better to finish a trip to Berlin than with some New Zealand style pie and a panicked rush through the airport because the notice said the flight was boarding when it wasn't?

But seriously- I highly recommend travel with a history buff who knows the city you're visiting. Things become so much more interesting. 

PIE