I travelled far and I burned all the bridges
Marcel | November 11, 2009- Or an ode to Dublin
So, here I am now in a dirty old town that I reached while the Celtic Tiger was already preparing to go into his final hibernation. And fell in love with it, though I could not tell you when exactly it happened and why. Maybe because of the fact that things are not perfect here (busses never on time, railway-bridges collapsing, city development postponed – but then who needs perfection anyway?), maybe because the Irish are such welcoming people (in spite of the knackers who tried to rob me twice and threatened me with physical violence even more often), or maybe because (again, in spite of the recession) Dublin still is a city filled with loads of interesting people from all over the world. And mixed with the very own ways of the Irish, it’s like the whole of Europe meeting in a pub on a Friday evening. You never know if you’ll be drunk at 10 and go home or stay all night listening to a band from Senegal and conversing until the wee hours with a random acquaintance. Who might well be Quentin Tarantino.
This praise may be influenced by the fact that I still have a quite well-paid job amidst global downturn, and that I come from a town of the same size (and grew up in an ever smaller one). But Dublin still rivals Berlin for the density of pubs and bars, our bands are world class and I do prefer to be around in a town where you can reach everything by foot and meet interesting people over and over again. And I prefer to be around in a town where new and existing places open (and sadly close) every month.
Living abroad has really “broadened my horizonâ€, so to say. I am interested in whatever Mr. Cowen has to say, and do not think that NAMA is such a good idea (it is the taxpayers and so also my money fronting up for it), I am able to distinguish why a country with 4 million people has other problems than one with 80 millions. And yet still I view the happenings in my home country from a different perspective. And with the help of the internet and postal vote I can still try to influence whatever’s going on in Germany. But after every stay with my family I’m glad to return to the shores of the Emerald Isle. Because here all the “German†things that would have driven me mad long ago do not bother me that much.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of those people with a master in economics who takes on a new job and new country every 6 months and lives in a hotel without caring for anything else besides the price of the drink at the bar (though I am very interested in the prize of a pint). I am also not one of those stereotype German expat-types looking for a cottage in the woods, complete with attached flock of sheep. But I love my dirty old town and being in the thick of things. And hope to stay here for some time.
And even though I pretend not to be one of the Germans getting teary-eyed when watching a good session, here’s Damien Dempsey with the Rocky Road To Dublin for you. Next one’s on me.
PS: Images are by jackace and darkmavis – there are more on the brilliant Dublinblog-flickr-photostream.
As an ex pat … from Dublin living abroad now … you hit the nail on the head as to why I still love Dublin and miss it dearly.
Your first paragraph in essence lists much of what’s wrong with Ireland. We’d wedded to this idealised romanticised quaint notion of irishness that implies imperfection is attractive and somehow better than perfection. Perfection is impossible to achieve but the idea that we shouldn’t bother to strive for it is at best misguided and at worst is the root cause of much of the problems this country faces today.
I am Irish, born and bred in Dublin, and while I love Dublin and Ireland I abhor the attitude you espouse. I abhor the fact that the roads I cycle on are substandard, that the rubbish, leaves and other junk are left unswept for months leading to punctures and dangerous lakes of water and mud on the roads. I abhor the fact that we don’t have sufficiently strong laws to ensure that wrongdoers are adequately punished and that real justice is denied many victims of crime and abuse. I abhor the fact that our politicians are not adequately answerable to the electorate. I abhor the state our educational system is in. For example, many beginning third level students still are unable to correctly add two fractions or perform other basic operations.
In this country it is extremely rare we get anything right first time round and it’s often decades and multiple attempts later that we finally get something acceptable. For example, we are now producing state construction projects such as roads on time and budget, sometimes even ahead of time. Only took us about 40 years. In between we had deeply flawed systems of tendering and tracking such projects. Our laws are a joke. Many criminals go unpunished especially so-called white collar criminals.
The housing estate I live in is controlled by a management company which leaves the residents with very little say in the running of their own homes and neighbourhood. It was designed and built with apparently no oversight by the local authority. There are no less than 4 dangerous junctions in the estate, each of which is an accident waiting to happen. In each case it would have been a perfectly simple task to modify the junctions so that they are safe.
In this country the phrase “best practice†is a dirty word. Just outside our estate is a roundabout which was built off-centre in the junction!! In any other developed country in the world the people responsible would be regarded as incompetent. But not here in Ireland. Here everyone just shrugs and carries on. The asinine drivers in this country used to drive around the wrong side of the roundabout because it was wider and shorter! It took the death of someone to eventually get the local council to put bollards in to prevent people cutting across the roundabout the wrong way. A completely unnecessary death and an expense that could have been avoided if the roundabout had been built properly in the first place.
I say, enough with the ‘Ah shur it’ll do’ attitude. Let’s say instead “Enough is enough! Let’s start doing things right for a change!”
@Paul
Do yourself a big favour and spend some time living in another country.
I bet you’ll quickly realise that the same issues happen everywhere.
i am living in my country and dreaming of living somewhere else. i travel everyday, through photos, in different places, more often to provence, london, dublin and barcelona. i read about people who live abroad, away from the place they were born and raised,and i think about how it would be like for me to do that. i conclude everytime that i could do it, in france, uk, spain or roi, without being jobless, homeless and sad. but… everytime i travel, after about 5 hours, i think about going home. even if i like the place, the people, the food. i am mature enough to take this up and mobilise myself to stay for a holiday, but i dream about coming home. i live in a great city of an amazing country, yet troubled and corrupted like any other. i have bucharest in my blood, and it tears me apart to be away from it. although, in my mind, i can live anywhere. today, i am in dublin. i love the title of this post, marcel. to me, it expresses so much freedom that i couldn’t explain in words
Great post Marcel.
[...] As everywhere around the world, Dublin also had its worries over the Swine Flu epidemic in November. And while RTE reported that more Irish people than ever are planning to emigrate to Australia and Canada, I felt it my duty as citizen to express my love for this dirty old town. [...]
Hey, this is a perfect post Marcel. I love the title – the words – explain – light- and atmosphere. I can smell it. From Cologne, dirk