Dublin, as a native, can be depressing. It rains. Our public transport is less than reliable. We’re always here. Everything is familiar. Everything seems to be getting more and more expensive, our friends are gone abroad and everyone seems to be living a much more adventurous life. This year, I’m checking in from Dublin. I’m in that weird interim place of early-twenties. I’ve just graduated and it seems like everyone around me has these insane plans: graduate and J1 visas for the USA, inter-railing, travelling the world, biding their time until September to start back studying for undergraduate, or embarking on a post-graduate in a different college. Then there’s me.
I’ve applied for countless jobs and yet this summer it seems like floundering is all I can do until I return, once again, to Trinity to start an M.Phil. I studied Irish Studies, and while there is (mystically) an Erasmus programme, we weren’t really told about it. Due to my lack of employment, I’ve never inter-railed, or gone on a J1 or been anywhere for any prolonged period of time. This year, I was so excited to get away from Dublin that right after my last exam I set off to Hamburg to see one of my best friends. It rained the whole three days I was there, but it was a great trip.
While I was writing my dissertation and studying for my final exams, I felt like I was going to never get out of Dublin. Or Ireland. I’m not in the right financial position to go abroad or move outside Dublin for a postgraduate. The claustrophobia was heightened by final year being spent going on anti-biotic after anti-biotic; I was left with little or no energy to do anything but sleep, eat and study. It was a perpetual banal cycle of suburb to city to library to city to suburb.
When I got back from a rain-soaked Hamburg, I decided to make the best of what I had and do all the things in Dublin that a tourist would do. Granted, Trinity was not on that list. Or, you know, going on a shopping-spree in Carrolls. I’m not one for Irish souvenirs.
Each year I take a walk around campus after exams to remember how nice Trinity actually is when you’re not forced into the BLU complex for 12 hours a day. This summer is just that, only for all of Dublin. But, being a tourist in Dublin as a Dubliner can also be kind of tedious. I still have to get the same bus into town that goes along the same bus route as when I’m in college, and join queues compiled of teenage language exchange students and when the bus is late I don’t view it with a “the Irish are so laid back” attitude but a “how hard is it to get a bus to go on schedule” one.
If I compared this summer’s productivity’s to last year’s I feel like I’m wasting my summer. But as student of Irish history and culture, I’m not. This is something I should have done years ago. So far I’ve been on a cruise along the River Liffey, strolled along the quays and seen the graffiti on Windmill Lane. (Although I think the street art around the corner on the quay is better). I’ve been to the Guinness Storehouse, up to the Hellfire Club and to Rathfarnham Castle. At the Castle we admitted to being Dubs to the tour guide who replied in a strong English accent, “That’s always the way, you never explore what’s under your nose.” I’ve found the deer in Phoenix Park and had countless walks along the quays during sunset. The Little Museum of Dublin has been a highlight – it is quite possibly the quirkiest place with the most interesting collection of social and cultural history artefacts I’ve ever found.
I’ve done a lot of research about this – and there is a never ending supply of things to do in Dublin for little or no money: Dun Laoghaire and Howth walks, the OPW cultural sites like Kilmainham Gaol, National Museums. Not to mention all the little festivals that pop up in Dublin during the summer: Bloom, World Street Performance Championships, 10 Days in Dublin, the Vodafone Comedy Festival, Marley Park. The list goes on.
Being a tourist in your locality in also kind of awesome
But here’s another thing about being a Dubliner in sunny Dublin – it’s too hot. We’re not equipped for long term good weather. And when we got the rain the past few days we hated it, too. We’re perpetual moaners and groaners. It’s one or the other, never in between.
Dublin is a place many want to go to and many want to leave, but after a little investigation; there’s so much more left for me to discover. Even if I moan about it.
