The journey back

I had to get up at 4am to catch the train, which left at 5.15. The night porter at the guesthouse made me a cup of tea which I drank on my own, sitting in the shabby-genteel guesthouse lounge. Outside in the dark the driver was waiting for me - he had got up early to drive me to the station even though I said I could walk (I felt obliged to give him a good tip, which was possibly his main motivation).

I have noticed that in some locations a certain physiognomy among the local population can be identified. For instance, I have observed the prevalence of a certain shade of violet-blue eye-colour among the inhabitants of Bishops Stortford, or cleft chins along the Suffolk coast near Felixstowe. Possibly this is all my mistaken imagination, but once you start to notice peculiarities you see them everywhere.

Anyway, on the journey back from “the west” it seemed that the country was inhabited by variations of Colin Farrell getting on and off the train. At one point there were five Colin Farrells in the train carriage. By saying they looked like Colin Farrell I am also saying they looked completely ordinary.

I arrived in the capital city about 8.30. The sky was overcast and threatened rain. The air was cool to cold.

Because I was short of Euros (the tip to the driver had been very generous) and because I had a couple of hours before I needed to be at the port, I decided to walk through the city from one terminus to the other.



Above: the terminus I arrived at - a neoclassical building designed by Sancton Wood. At the front of the station a cold wind was blowing that nearly made me catch a tram. You can see people queuing for trams on the left of the picture.



Above: most of the way I walked along the river. Occasionally spots of rain fell, one or two every minute or so. The river is lined with Georgian buildings that give this part of the city a resemblance to the Nevsky Prospect (seen from one of the canals).



Above: the central law courts designed by the architect James Gandon. The building you see today is a restoration as the original was destroyed during civil disturbances in 1922. This was a disaster from a historian’s point of view as the building contained the new state’s public record office. A thousand years worth of historical records went up in smoke. The burning of the public record office remains controversial to this day, with many accusing the insurgents of deliberately destroying the records (which contained almost all of the state’s genealogical archives and Anglican parish registers) in an act of ethnic and cultural cleansing. The insurgents have denied the accusation.



Above: hostel on the opposite river bank to the law courts. Notice the two figures outside, who were talking in an eastern European language. Seeing this hostel reminded me of The Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel, an ancient epic poem (I have read it about once a year for the past ten years or so).



Above: I remember this pub from my visit years ago.



Above: behind the Georgian frontages you can see building work everywhere, evidence of the tremendous economic growth there has been recently.



Above: and then I saw the Ormond Quay Hotel where I stayed on my previous visit (years and years ago, when I was a teenager). It looked a lot smarter than I remembered it - then it needed a refurbishment, smelt of damp inside, and had piles of chairs in front of the nearest fire exit to my room. That visit I made a special study of the Boyne Valley culture (stone age mounds, passage graves, high crosses, round towers, crannogs, sweat houses etc).



Above: Christchurch cathedral, on a hill overlooking the river. Dating from 1038. Although an Anglican cathedral, this building is claimed by the Roman Catholic church as their rightful property, leading to accusations of nascent religious cleansing of the city’s ecclesiastical history.



Above: the former parliament building of the colonial administration (up to 1800). It is now the state bank. It is impossible to take a good photograph of this building, which is one of the finest in the city.



Above: also associated with the colonial administration is the “castle”. Originally a medieval castle in the traditional style, it has been rebuilt many times and mostly now dates from the 18th century. Despite its associations with the “murder machine” policies of the colonial administration the castle has remained the ceremonial centre of the successor state. When I walked up there the place was deserted (this was about 10 o’clock in the morning). I walked through to the Upper Castle Yard where rows of windows were veiled by dirty net curtains. This is how I imagine Kafka’s castle to look.



Above: statue of Justice above one of the castle gates. In wet weather the scales would fill with water and become lopsided, leading people to say that British justice in the territory was biased. The emptiness of the courtyards was unsettling.



Above: Looking from the river down along the main street in the city. Behind the yellow bus you can see part of the general post office, scene of an insurrection in 1916 and subsequently becoming a sort of feldherrenhalle for nationalists. The spire you can see is a sculpture that was put up to mark the millennium - it is on the site of the former Nelson’s Pillar which was blown up in 1966 (leading to the inevitable accusation of cultural cleansing or removal of imperialist symbols, depending on your point of view - so frequent are the accusations of cultural, religious and ethnic cleansing that you would think this country was part of the former Yugoslavia rather than western Europe).



Above: the Customs House. Designed by James Gandon, built in 1781, and easily the most beautiful building in the city. It is right by the terminus where I caught a train to the port (going along the shore, the sea was so rough that spray washed through when the doors opened at the intermediary stations).

More on The Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1100derga.html