Dublin our fun

My intention was to write one really long entry detailing the trip to Dublin. But then I sat down on Sunday and started to list everything I wanted to write about and realized that it would be impossible. The past four days have been incredible. By itself, it would have been worthy of being a summer vacation in itself. What I plan to do is play catch up during the next week. You can look forward to reading about tourist events in Dublin, the nightlife in Dublin, the trip to Belfast and the excursion to find my roots in Ireland. We’ll start with the first two days in Dublin.


After sprinting out of class on Thursday, we rushed back to our apartments and packed for a 3.5-day weekend. We took a train to Dublin. The train ride gave me the first major view of the countryside of the trip. It would have been great except for massive hedges every 100 yards or so.

The first spot on everyone’s list was the Guinness factory. I don’t know if you know this, but Guinness is brewed in Ireland and old. The tour was self-guided but included several neat aspects. It is hard in words to describe it here and do it justice (as our most of the tours I go on) but we’ll give it an overview.

The bottom floor consisted of an overview of the ingredients of the beverage. Barley, Hops, Water and something else. Left a great impression, I know. It also gave a history of the company and how they signed a 9,000-year lease on the property. They have almost put 250 years. As law students, we studied the contract and verified that it is binding. Other floors covered the various types of brews, advertising and transportation among others.

The top floor featured a bar with a 360-degree view of Dublin, perhaps the best in the city. With the price of admission, we also received a free drink at the bar. Naturally, I ordered a Guinness. When serving it they made a cool shamrock with the nozzle in the foam. It would have been easy to not want to destroy the artwork, but I took a drink. My initial reaction: Ugh. Now, I cannot say I am an expert beer taster, but the Guinness was foul. The best way I can describe it is like a bitter, bitter coffee. And I don’t really care for coffee. Bluntly, the beer did not sit well with my taste buds. Not wanting to be so judgmental on the first try, I gave it another shot a few minutes late. Yup, still didn't care much for it. My friends were more than willing to help finish the rest of the pint. That’s the story of my first (and last) Guinness.

The first sight of Friday morning was the Four Courts, which would be equivalent to the Supreme Court in the USA. We got an overview of the courts (most of which we covered in the first week of our criminal justice class, but we did pick a few interesting bits such as the wigs worn in court came into fashion in Europe after syphilis (which caused the hair to fall out) was brought back from the new world and each judge has a stick man that leads him around and beats people up with the stick if someone gets in the way.

After the overview of the court proceedings, we watched the closing arguments for the defense for the Special Criminal Court. Here’s the summary, a woman contacted a guy via the e-mail address hitmanforhire@yahoo.com to murder her husband and son. The guy came to Ireland and was nabbed. We witnessed the lawyer for the hitman for hire make his closing speech. It lasted for almost an hour. We were up in the balcony so it was hard to see everything going on and the barrister wasn’t miked so we couldn’t hear everything clearly. He did raise his voice at one point and that caught our attention. But mostly he was saying how the client should get off because he was a patsy and if he was brought up on conspiracy problems, then a bunch of other people should as well. Read about it more on www.irishindependant.com.

The afternoon started with a long hike to the old Dublin prison. This opened up around 1798 or thereabouts. Here we heard a lot about the history of the prison, which mainly revolved around the various uprisings and revolutions. The first of which started shortly after the prison ended. Most of the cells the political prisoners were in had labeled. We saw where the prisoners were executed and heard the stories of their struggle for self-rule. There is so much more to tell here, but I don’t feel I can do it justice. Let’s just say the history buff in my enjoyed the tour quite much.

One of the funniest moments of the trip happened when we hopped in a cab from the jail to go to the James Joyce Center (Centre) and the cab driver’s name was Patrick Duffy. (Hi, I’m television’s Patrick Duffy.) This became a running joke. On top of his name, he would hum to himself throughout the trip, but it wouldn’t be coherent stuff. He would just give out a “Haaauuummmmmmm.” Crazy, yet awesome stuff.

The James Joyce Center was the final stop of the day before we had a group dinner for the Fourth. A lot of the memorabilia focused on his magnum opus, Ulysses. It contained several interesting videos about his life and influences and the controversy around Ulysses. I knew of Joyce’s importance (Nathan and I rode on a ferry to Dublin on our last European trip called the James Joyce) I had not read the book. I purchased a copy in the gift shop and hope to finish it in the next 10 years. I doubt I will have much desire to read such a dense piece of work (it has been rated the hardest book in the English language to read) during law school, so I’ll give myself a nice comfy window.

That’s it for the first two days. I’m riding the train back to Limerick now and can’t wait to go to bed tonight. So many good times and so little sleep. At least this is a good prep for Workshop. Look for a Dublin nightly (I have lots of great videos I need to put on YouTube)/Belfast entry tomorrow.

I don't like to end on a somber point, but during our trip, we learned that a Kansas law student was killed last week. Most of the KU students here knew here and it was a shock to the system. It is difficult to comprehend something so tragic here when it doesn’t seem real yet. Please keep the family of the student, Jana, and all of the KU people in your thoughts and prayers.

Cheers,

LJLA