Week 7 – Thursday to Sunday + Monday

Week 7 – Thursday to Monday
Dublin – Berlin – Howth
Thursday we toured the W B Yeats museum. Yeats was a 20th century Irish poet who won a Nobel prize for literature early in life and did his best work after that award. He was always reinventing himself and was later a writer and a playwright. He was a very fascinating guy that I knew little about him until this day. Afterwards our professor bought everyone a drink at the Shelbourne Hotel, a famous place in Irish history that sits on St Stephens Green. From a history standpoint the Shelbourne is where the British troops set themselves up on the roof to engage the rebels who were dug in on St Stephens Green in the 2016 Easter Rising. It was also famously the site of the signing of the Republic’s constitution, in the aptly named Constitution Room. Lots of history here!
On to Berlin at 4:30 AM on Friday morning. Yuk! We took the train into the city and then listened to the orientation where they caution you to stay together and watch out for the pickpockets and thieves of other types. I know why they do this shit from a liability standpoint, but it is a real bummer way to start an adventure in a new city. Then a young American guy named Nick (met him one on one over lunch the next day and he is a solid guy), who had been in Berlin for 4 weeks studying already, spoke. Nick told us the Germans don’t like American’s so we should not try to get into the best clubs (where the lines start forming at 1:30 AM and people start getting in a 3:00 AM) because they likely won’t let you in so it is a waste of time. I start thinking ‘this is a city that does not like me and wants to rob me’! Not a good start! By the way no one who has read this blog will be surprised to learn that right after this talk I went 3 blocks to my riverfront hotel, the Melia. I still can’t do hostels! By the way Berlin is really cheap and this hotel was only 103 euro a night. I had a good but very tame weekend. I saw the Berlin Wall (what little is left of it), the Holocaust Memorial, and many other beautiful Berlin buildings. Much of Berlin was destroyed in the WW ll Allied bombing raids but they have rebuilt a lot of it to the original specs (like the pictured Presidential Palace under construction now). Parts of historic Berlin are beautiful but much of the city is sterile and the buildings are boxy and uninteresting. Going out at night to clubs that start at 3 AM also did not appeal to me or many of our people. So I saw the sights of Berlin – the wall, checkpoint Charlie, the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, etc. Berlin also has a lot of ‘troubling areas’, an unemployment rate of about 10%, and the economy today is government and tourism. In the end I saw some things I liked, but I am not a fan.
Monday, back in Ireland, a bunch of us went by train to the seaside town of Howth. Some hiked with me about 6 miles at increasing heights along the coast from the ocean to the nearby peaks. When we rounded the corner at the summit and saw the Dublin Harbour, the steep climb was worth it completely. More so when we had 99’s (ice cream cone with a chocolate wafer in it), and a Guinness afterwards! On our return to Connelly Station by train an Irish lady with her husband approached me from afar with the usual funny pleasantries such as ‘are you from Boston, I’ve been to Boston you know’. She then said ‘you are not voting for Trump are you’ and she then stated that ‘the world would laugh at America if Trump was President’. I thought to myself that a country the size of Ireland needs to worry about what the world thinks but the USA can tell them all to go ‘fook’ themselves and should the people elect Donald or Hilary, so be it. I said none of this to the nice Irish lady, I just smiled at her.
Take a slash = take a piss
trolley bag = rolling suitcase
overhead locker = airplane storage bin
Picture: on top is Dublin Harbor from the cliffs outside Howth; Next is the German Palace under construction designed to look like the one destroyed in the war by Allied bombing; Howth cliff view with the backyard of a beach house in the foreground; Berlin TV tower visible from all over the city; another Howth cliff view; a section of the Berlin Wall; The Constitution Room at the Shelbourne Hotel in Dubin where the Republic’s constitution was signed.