DUBLIN — You really should pre-order a taxi if you’re not going to pay with Euros, Paul tells me, but since “they don’t tell you a thing†in the airport waiting line, he’ll let it slide. He’s already had one of those days, but he’ll drive me into Dublin and tell me a few things about the place where Nebraska is soon to play an American football game.
Naturally, because I’ve never been in a car where the steering wheel is on the right side, I initially sit directly behind him as he gives what’s surely his 12,000th quick lesson in Irish charm and history. He has the accent. He has the attitude, explaining the atrocities done to Irish leaders in their fight for independence. And he has the line of this trip, unlikely to be surpassed.
“It’s a privilege to live in Ireland, but it’s by the grace of God that you’re a Dub,†Paul says.
Why’s that, I ask as Paul avoids a jam-packed toll tunnel for a quicker road.
“What’s not to like?†he asked. At that moment, on some highway into the city centre, 30 minutes into my stay, that was hard to answer.
One day later, easy as ordering a pint of Guinness.
What’s a day like walking in central Dublin? Old-meets-cool. Cool weather. Cool vibe.
“New,†feels wrong; new is glass and metal climbing into the sky. To stand at one of the highest spots in the city, the Guinness Storehouse bar, is to see very little glass and metal; Dublin, clearly, is a city still wrestling with how 21st century it wants to look. Spires of old churches/museums break into the skyline. So do smokestacks near Dublin Port. Aviva Stadium — known by locals, Paul said, as “The Bedpan†for the shape of its outer shell — rises up in the distance. It’s one of the few modern-looking structures.
Dublin is more a series of brick-and-mortar wedges where people live, eat, work and walk, separated by streets sometimes no wider than your living room. For a two-bedroom apartment, another taxi driver tells me, rent is 2,500 Euro — roughly the same in American dollars — making it one of the more expensive cities in the world. Dublin is dark-green mailboxes, light-green exit signs that look like a person sprinting after a loose dog, paying by Euro, TV weather reports for a whole country, shops with a lot more Coke than Pepsi or Mountain Dew, toilets that seem … higher off the ground …, old, weathered statues and the soundtrack of seagulls who perch on the heads of those statues.
It’s Guinness beer and drink menus half-lined with whiskey options. It's what Husker fan Al Pfeiffer calls a city full of "receptive" people. Warm. Friendly. Not overbearing.
"They're open to the tourism, but they're not out trying to grab the tourism," said Pfeiffer, who lives in Waverly.
Dublin is the absence of pickup trucks that jam every parking lot in Nebraska. It’s double-decker buses — split between those for tours and those that run late into the night — zipping everywhere, and, yes, zip is the right word.
Between and around those buses curl the “luas†— Ireland’s word for “speed†and also the light-rail system that twists and turns around most streets until after midnight. These trams are tame — if they moved with the impatience of the bus drivers, a lot more people would get hit — but they snake everywhere; about half the time you glance down, and you’re standing on tracks.
For the trams, they even had to move Molly Malone. She’s a statue tucked away from the biggest ones on O’Connell Street, she’s also a song.
In Dublin's fair city
Where the girls are so pretty
I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone
As she wheeled her wheelbarrow
Through streets broad and narrow
Crying, "Cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh!"
Dublin is stone buildings sometimes older in years than they are tall in feet — the tallest is 279 feet, or 44% the height of the First National Bank Tower in Omaha — retrofitted to house every hotel, retail store and bar imaginable. Caffe Nero — based out of London — is ubiquitous. So is Tesco and Tesco Express, which Paul described “like our WalMart.†There are even a few newsstands, God bless ‘em.
The air smells vaguely of sea but more of various scents exhaled from various lungs. But I think that’s pretty common most places these days.
It wafts most at St. Stephen’s Green, just up the street from where the Nebraska football team ate dinner Tuesday evening. Stephen’s Green is a park dating back almost 400 years, with two ponds and patches of open, short grass where Dubliners eat, drink, smoke, play cards, argue and roam. The seagulls dine here on whatever you’re willing to feed them. Apparently, it’s a lot; they’re fat.
From there, you think you’re close to Trinity College — and you are — but I rambled instead through an entertainment district — Riverdance is in its 25th year and producing nightly shows — down streets and streets of restaurants, reaching The Temple Bar and its surrounding district. Tight streets get even tighter, louder, lovelier. Live music belts out of these spots and others; sometimes, the performers, like in any big city, work the crowd on the street, including a band on O’Connell Street, near the River Liffey, covering The Clash.
“Well, come on and let me know
Should I stay or should I go?â€
Let’s stay a few more days. The people here seem to like their own gritty vibe — which perhaps comes with a chip on the shoulder, too. Dublin at sunset turns to Dublin at night, Tuesday into Wednesday morning, when it began to rain, a car alarm wailed and drunk voices echoes off the stones. So did the squawks of seagulls, the soundtrack of a city.