After a 10-hour overnight bus and ferry ride (not much opportunity for sleep but 12 is cheap, even with American notions) I arrived in Dublin where I’m staying in the heart of the famous (and notoriously overpriced) Temple Bar area. Exhausted and nervous, I wandered into the hostel around 6:30 a.m. and was kindly informed of the 2:30 p.m. check-in time.The guy let me store my pack in the closet, though, and showed me to the hostel’s common room where I found one DVD on the counter. Serendipitously, it was the one movie I associate with this city – one of the reasons I am here – the indie film “Once,” that was shot in Dublin over a period of 17 days and made an improbable Oscar run last year, winning best original song. Not a bad start.
When I finally made it to my new abode, the top half of a green steel bunk bed with red sheets and a stone pillow, I laid down for a nap and just as I closed my eyes my first roommate walked in. Long blond hair flowed out from under a gray fedora, about my age, and clean shaven, he looked at me with blue eyes and reached up for a handshake. His name is Jiri (the ‘j’ is pronounced like a ‘y’, but he says I can call him Michael) from Finland. He’s just landed and is going out for a pint of Guinness at the Temple Bar next door, from which the area takes its name, and wants me to join.
I’d saved myself for this moment. Not the meeting a dreamy Scandinavian guy moment, but the fresh pint of Guinness in its birthplace moment. I turned her down in London and again in Manchester, but now it was finally time to dance with the blonde in black skirt.
The first sip was divine. When properly poured (which takes no less than three minutes) you get a bit of frothy foam each time to complement the rich, almost creamy dark beer. “It’s good for you,” advertisements declare, and I can’t argue.
Over that first pint Jiri and I each explained how we’d come to be sitting at this bar in the particular city at this particular time. His story was fascinating, short and sweet. “I read ‘Ulysses’ and knew I had to come,” he explained. The words of James Joyce inspired him to see the place that inspired the author to write. Unbeknownst to me at the time, Jiri would become my travel companion in Dublin and West Ireland, and the words Joyce wrote would be with me along the way.
Michael and I spend our nights trying out different pubs and meeting strangers over cigarettes and pints, like the couple we met at Temple Bar, Gerry from Glasgow and Melissa from Canada, who told us their love story (which hinges on a drunk dial Gerry made four years after meeting Melissa on vacation in Barcelona). Or Roy, an enthusiastic Irishman who sang us a ballad and told us about his plans to go to New York City for St. Patrick’s Day.
Guilford is well represented in Dublin by Miss Carly Mills, who’s studying here for the semester. The other night we cooked dinner in her apartment and hung out with her new friends (including some Americans from North Carolina) drinking beer and playing guitar and sharing secrets.
We exchanged stories of American adolescence and asked Michael questions about his life in Finland. He told us about his summer home in his mother’s native Lapland (where the sun doesn’t set for a whole week every year), about the 12 months he spent in the army after high school (required of every male citizen), about racing naked through downtown Helsinki (on a drunken bet), and about the countless times he’s had sex in public (bars, clubs, buses, etc.). Later he would proudly drop his pants in the kitchen to show us his Prince Albert piercing. In America this guy would be a legend! “You’re very interesting, Michael,” Carly said at one point. “No,” he replied, “I’m just Finnish.”
Like a fresh pint of cold Guinness, life in Dublin is the perfect blend of relaxed intensity, rich with the intertwining paths of so many people crossing crowded streets and filling with the heritage and history and hospitality of the infinite pubs. But it’s not overwhelming like London; there’s a pervading sense of comfort, an unspoken permission to walk at your own pace, sing as loud as you want, talk with everyone about anything, sit in a pub all night and nurse that pint of Guinness until last call comes around.
Right now I’m sitting in Carly’s room listening to Guilford alum Will McKindley-Ward’s Ireland-inspired folk album. I feel good; we all do. Outside the usually overcast Dublin sky has cleared and late morning sunshine casts a warm light on the weathered brick of nearby buildings. Behind them I can see windows, rooftops, chimneys, clouds. I wonder how peaceful Guilford must be at this very moment, everyone sleeping, dreaming about this very sunshine that will eventually cast shadows on the quad and warm the bricks of Archdale and Founders.
We are together, you and I, right now as I write this and right now as you read it, so many impossible miles away, but under the same sky and knowing the same richness of life, the goodness that can’t be escaped and exists everywhere. I found it here in Dublin on a Friday morning and I’m sure I’ll find it in other places all over the world, and I know that it’s always at Guilford, waiting my return. Go find it! And cherish it and tell me about it and save it for me. Life is great!
Michael and I are going to Galway at some point, but there’s no rush. We’ll lounge around here for a while, find a bite to eat, stop by a pub for a farewell drink and then get on the bus to another Irish adventure, more friendly conversations, more aimless walks, more warm pubs, and – of course – plenty more pints of cold Guinness.