Ceilí-ing Dublin

So I didn't end up going to hear Handel's Messiah last night as I had originally planned, but it was a good tradeoff. Sorcha, who I'd met at the swing dance, told me about the Rathmines Festival and invited me to the ceilí that was happening last night at St. Mary's College. So I went to that and had a very nice time dancing and talking with her and other new dancing friends, and listening to good music. Really, I think this whole going to dances thing is just the best way to enjoy being in a foreign city.

The band included a fiddle, button accordion, flute, concertina, and guitar. The concertina player sang a couple of songs as well, in between dances and just accompanied by the guitar. The first one she sang was actually Erin's Shore, in Irish, and it was really hard not to waltz to it. But the songs were more for listening and resting there, and no one was dancing. Lovely to listen to, though. And the band sounded great on the dance tunes, as well. I would have liked to have just sat and listened and picked up some new tunes, but I was rather distracted trying to figure out the dances.

As for the dances themselves, well, it was a bit silly. Hardly anybody knew what they were doing (and the teacher was just barely hanging in there himself sometimes), and the dances were "taught" by doing a quick demo set of dubious accuracy and then throwing everyone into it at once whether they had been paying attention or not. Luckily, chaos can be fun if everyone is enthusiastic about it. Also, most of the evening consisted of doing the same three dances over and over and over again, so we got a bit better as we went along. The dances were a two-hand reel (whose name I've forgotten), The Walls of Limerick (structured like a contra -- couples of couples and progressing down the line), and The Siege of Ennis (a 4-opposite-4 dance, like a double contra).

Now the really funny thing was that I was paying very close attention and trying to learn the patterns as quickly and accurately as I could. Not only because I was new to ceilí dancing, but because it didn't look like I could depend on watching other people as I went along. The result was that by the end of the evening, I was helping do the demo sets, and I also got put in the front of the line for the two-hand reel because none of the actual Irish people trusted themselves to remember how it went. (I fooled them though and screwed it up by mistakenly starting with the wrong part.) I don't have the footwork or style or anything right at all, but I can remember patterns. Anyway, that was pretty amusing.

Besides our main three, we had a couple other one-off dances. The only one I can remember specifically was Shoe the Donkey (or possibly "Shoo," but I'm guessing "Shoe" because of the stomping involved). It was almost like a schottischy sort of waltz. In promenade position you do a hop-stomp-stomp, with the hop on the 3 as a pickup, four times, turning around to face backwards on the fourth time. Repeat all that four times, then just waltz around until the beginning of the tune comes around again.

Non-dance-wise, I learned all sorts of interesting things from Fiona and Niamh about Irish sports, the national anthem, and numbers (which have different words depending on what you're counting). Fascinating stuff, of which I have probably already forgotten a lot. Delightful evening overall.

Swinging Dublin

I had a very nice time at the Dublin swing dance last night. It was at the Camden Ballroom, which sounds rather grander than a little bitty dance floor in a restaurant/bar beneath a hotel. But it was a fine venue for the crowd size we had, and it seemed to be closed last night, since there were no regular customers there, only dancers. So that was kind of neat.

The evening started with an absolute basic East Coast Swing lesson, which I attended as much to have an easy way to meet people as for any other reason. The fact that I more or less know what I'm doing and that I also am always happy to dance with beginners helped a lot in terms of meeting people and feeling comfortable and welcome there. Some more experienced dancers arrived later in the evening as well. The overall skill level wasn't quite up to the level of lots of places in California, but everyone was perfectly good enough and enthusiastic enough to have fun, which is all I needed to enjoy it.

The partner-asking dynamic was kind of interesting. The gender imbalance didn't affect it much, since so many people were usually sitting out at any given time. These people would usually be off at a table or a bar and thus not very accessible to a stranger who might want to ask them to dance. Far fewer people actually standing near the dance floor looking available. But I still managed to get plenty of dances in, both asking and asked. I also had some nice conversations with some people, including one who turned out to be a co-worker, and another dancer with an invisible syllable in her name (Irish is fascinating that way).

Speaking of names, I started paying attention to my own name more than usual last night, since I was introducing myself to so many people. Sadly, I often say my name in a very flat, American-sounding, "Gram" kind of way. But over the course of the evening I found myself starting to give it more of the proper, British, triphthong treatment it deserves. I think there may have been some subconscious training going on, because maybe people understood it better in a noisy environment when I pronounced it that way, or because people kept repeating back to me it in an Irish accent. So it sounds silly, but I should really resolve to pay more attention to my own name. :-)

Overall, it was a lovely evening. Fun to be out dancing and making new friends. I'm looking forward to going back next week, and maybe even the week after, on the night before I fly home.

Dublin, Part II

Sunday was my first full day in Dublin and I spent a great deal of it on foot again and getting to know my way around. I was up early enough that O'Connell street was mostly devoid of people, which I'm sure is not its usual state. By the time I made my way back this side of the Liffey, though, things were waking up more.

I went by Dublin Castle, though I didn't go in for a tour (still too early). Nearby is a delightful little snake-themed garden. It's mostly a large circular lawn with narrow brick snakes forming paths that twist around in Celtic knot-work. There are other little sculptures and things around the edges as well, hidden behind the shrubberies.

I took a tour of Trinity college and was amused by their two bells. One is an everyday bell, but the Great Bell is rung only for examinations and funerals. One hopes that isn't because the two events are related. Trinity is also the home of the Book of Kells, but unfortunately we weren't allowed to take pictures of it, or of the rest of the illuminated manuscript exhibit. (Though I did sneak one photo of the Ogham script display, so I could learn the code.) Even more disappointingly in the can't-photograph category was the Long Room. This is the library that houses the 200,000 oldest of the college's books. It's 65m long and has bookcases reaching all the way up to its towering ceiling. Enough to strike awe and reverence into the heart of any book lover. The tricky thing about this library comes when you want to find a particular book (not that we tourists were allowed near them, of course). For reasons, I presume, of space efficiency, all the books are organized by height. Tall books are on the tall shelves near the floor, and everything shrinks as you go up.

In the afternoon I went to the National Museum, which was mostly interesting for the ancient dead people they've dug out of bogs from a couple thousand years ago. I also went to the National Gallery (both of these are right near my hotel) but failed to be very impressed. Of course, I was also kind of tired by then, which probably affected it.

After dinner and a bit of a rest, I headed out with my mandolin to find my first pub session. The Cobblestone had been recommended to me as the best place to go, so I landed there around 9:30. The musicians there let me play with them but, while I don't think any of them were trying to be outright rude, I did feel distinctly ignored. The piper pretty much ran the session, started all the tunes, and nobody did anything without him. He would also spend several minutes in between each set just tuning and adjusting his pipes and reeds, during which time nobody seemed to want to speak to me. The most I got out of anybody was when the bodhran player suggested somewhere else I could go play, "where they're more open to newcomers." I think he was trying to be nice, but the implication was very much that I was in the wrong place. So I felt pretty bad about that. Especially since I felt I was doing the session justice, musically. The other musicians were all good, but not stellar, and I don't think I was dragging anything down. So anyway, not sure what I'm going to do next in the music department. I don't actually want to try the pub that was suggested to me, since someone at work said it was more of a tourist pit and not recommended. So we'll see what else I can find.

There's a TV in my room and the other night I found an Irish language channel, with English subtitles, so I watched that for a while. I know a few words in Irish, so it was fun to try to catch them going by, and also to try to pick up a few more. I saw one talk show discussing someone who had been a great linguist and proponent of the Irish language, which was rather interesting historically. After that was a sitcom about an undertaker. Apparently he wasn't prepared to handle both a cremation and a funeral on the same day. Ah, the hilarity.

Work has been good so far. I like the office and I like the people, though it's also weird being on an almost non-overlapping schedule with the people back in California.

Coming up, I'm planning on going swing dancing tomorrow night, and I'd like to hear Handel's Messiah in Christ Church Cathedral. Oh, and I probably won't actually be going to Galway during my time off after next week, as I had planned. Cryptosporidium in the water doesn't sound like much fun.

Arrival in Dublin

My flights and everything went very smoothly, minus some little things like being able to get a good night's sleep (that's on tonight's agenda, though). My first view of Ireland was all clouds, as we flew over it to my stop in Heathrow, but once I actually landed in Dublin, the weather was lovely and sunny.

I'm staying at the O'Callaghan Davenport hotel, which is rather nicer than anywhere I'd stay on my own if I didn't have a company paying for it. I'm on the third floor, for large values of three (since they start counting at zero over here). It's a lovely room, though I'm not sure why I need two desks, or a phone next to the toilet, or this weird "Man by Carmen" thing in the closet. And this is just a "junior suite." Who knows how many things I wouldn't know what to do with if I had gotten a full grown one. But it does have a bed and a shower, which are the things I'm most interested in just now.

I mostly just strolled around this afternoon, getting my bearings. I'm less than a mile from the office, and it's an easy walk, so I'm all ready for Monday morning. The hotel is very close to a couple lovely parks: Merrion Square and St. Stephen's -- that is, James Joyce's -- Green. Both full of happy Saturday afternoon people, Dubliners and otherwise. I also walked up the pedestrian mall at Grafton Street, went by Christ Church Cathedral, and zigzagged over various bridges across the Liffey.

Relevant Tunes:

• The Rocky Road to Dublin
• Banks of the Liffey
• The Merry Sisters of Fate

Tune Titles I Should Use:

• Fishamble Street (or, The Ambling Fish)
• The Fire Hose Reel (a sign I saw on a wall in the airport, where they kept the fire hose)

Flight-Day the 13th

I'm off to catch a train to another train to a plane to an island to another plane to another island. Tomorrow I will be in Dublin!

I'm hoping all the usual travelers at the airport will be scared off by today's date, so I'll have a nice, breezy time of it all, with no crowds. On the other hand, it is a Friday, so maybe not.

It's a pity I don't play something small like a flute or a harmonica. The mandolin isn't huge, but flights through the UK (I'm transferring in Heathrow) only give you one carry-on these days. So that'll be my mandolin, and I'll be cramming a fair amount of stuff into the pockets of my cargo pants. Luckily there's no limits on pockets.