Dublin

I'm trying to get myself psyched up for this. I mean, I leave in a month and a week and it still doesn't even feel real. So, I've been doing research on Ireland and Dublin, and Europe in general, and that's always exciting anyway. It still doesn't feel real though. I can't really believe that I'm going to be gone that long. I keep thinking about what it's going to be like to come back too. My room isn't going to be clean no matter how much I like to talk about it--it's just wishful thinking. I don't know if I'd want to come home to a pristine room though. It'd be fake. But anyway, this makes things exciting at least.

First of all, for my literary side, there's Oscar Wilde's house. I love Oscar Wilde. Dorian Gray is somewhere on my favorite book list. And there's this crazy statue across the street. He's a badass.
There is also a statue of James Joyce. Right now I'm reading Dubliners because I don't want to be seen reading it while I'm there and look like a total tourist or something. He also wrote Ulysses. That one is super long.

Now, a little less sophisticated, but very cool, is the Stag's Head bar. It's one of the oldest bars in Dublin and it looks exactly like what I think of when I think of Irish pubs. There are the high bar stools and the low round tables and the perfect dingy-clean lighting. And it's in the Temple Bar neighborhood, so after--or maybe before--checking this place out I can go see what all the other tourists go to see.

The Irish Museum of Modern Art is absolutely next. The building itself looks like a hospital or a boarding school or maybe even a prison. It's gray and imposing. I'm sure on the inside there are tons of crazy cool things. It's modern art so it's probably more crazy than cool, but thought provoking. That's the whole point of modern art I guess.
BUT! I want to go to the Hugh Lane Gallery which is part of the Dublin City Gallery because they have this:

THAT is the studio of Francis Bacon. It was originally in London, but when he died they transplanted everything--the floor, walls, ceiling, everything--to this place in Dublin because he was born there. I think it's so cool. It's just so chaotic it's perfect. I don't even really like Bacon's work--it freaks me out actually. But this seems like a work of art in itself.

Here's this damn picture again. It's the Old Library at Trinity College. This is where they keep the book of Kells. I know what that is now too. It is a copy of the gospels from the 8th century. It was copied in Scotland and then the Irish monks brought it to the monastery at Kells to protect it from Viking raids. That's so cool! And this library is just amazing to me.


Alright on the left there is Marsh's Library. It was the first library that was opened to the public. And this cute little one pushed between two buildings is the Chester Beatty library. It has the oldest surviving copy of Romans and all kinds of cool books--some written on palm leaves and folded like an accordion and another carved out of jade. Sounds like something I would love.

This ends the libraries. I promise.

There's also the Guiness Storehouse...of course.

Now, I know it seems like I just want to see a bunch of books in Dublin, but it is a literary city. Everything I've read about the city talks about how scholarly it is and all the authors that were born there. So, it's not just me leaving other things out.

There are a million other things though: Ha'penny Bridge, St. Stephen's Green, St. George's Arcade, Powerscourt Townhouse, Sheridan's Cheesemongers, Michelle Darmody's Cake Cafe, St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin castle, and a ton of things I don't even know about yet.

Top 5 Europe

If I get to all these, it'll all be worth it

1. Istanbul

Check out that Hagia Sophia. That Blue Mosque. That Maiden's Tower. That Great Bazaar. It's Constantinople. The capital of the Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman empires. It's only been "Istanbul" since 1930. I want to eat Kebabs and smoke a water pipe. I want to take a ferry over to the Asian continent and see what that's like. I really don't know how long it will take to get there. I mean, I'm willing to spend a week on a train to get there, but if I can afford to fly that will be ideal. I do like the idea of taking a train across Europe though...

2.Prague

First of all, Amadeus was filmed there. But then there's Prague Castle, the Astronomical clock that everyone talks about, Charles Bridge, the Vtlava River that runs through the whole city. The Prague Opera House! That's the one with the statues of composers at the top. The Estates Theater where Don Giovanni was premiered. Dvorak and Kafka are buried there. It was capital of the Holy Roman Empire. There's also this hunger wall that I think is really cool. It was built in 1360 during a famine. It was built just to give people jobs. I don't know what it surrounds, if it surrounds anything. But anyway, there's a zoo and Wenceslas square, and the "Old New Synagogue." The music department chair, who was also my high brass teacher fall quarter, loves Prague. If you bring it up he'll go on and on about it, and he has all these pictures in his office, and it looks like a beautiful and dense city. And you know, the Euro Rail will take me all the way there from Dublin. Across the water somehow and everything.

3. Toledo, Spain

I really think this city is beautiful. I don't think I would care if there wasn't much history--I just want to walk around there. But there IS history and cool stuff. It was the capital of Visigoth Spain, a place where the coexistence of Jews, Christians, and Muslims was just fine. Alfonso (remember him from World?) conquered it for the Christians sometime, but it's cool because they didn't destroy the Muslim libraries. The Muslims were way ahead with the books and medicine and all that so it was more like a spread the love and knowledge time instead of a beat down from the Christians.

There is all kinds of architecture there too. Synagogues, Mosques, Cathedrals. Gothic, and Mudejar stuff. There's the Gothic Cathedral with a million different doors all named. There's the Door of Hell. Creepy. There's a castle. Those are always cool if you can get in them.

If nothing else, El Greco was born there.

4. Berlin, Germany

I don't know why I'm kind of scared to go here. Probably because of the Nazis. My grandpa will randomly talk about places he went when he was in the army. One time we were in Seattle, probably going to a concert, and he started talking to me about when he was in Germany. He was some kind of guard in Berlin, and he was talking about the people and the food he liked to eat--they had these sandwiches he told me to try when I went there--and he brings up Kennedy. He was there at the Ich bin ein Berliner speech. That kind of blew my mind. We had just watched some video in APUSH with that in it and why it was a big deal. He told me about how there was someone translating what Kennedy said and he liked listening to the German even though he didn't understand it. He went on to talk about the wall and seeing someone get shot trying to cross it. But he liked the city.
So anyway, this is another pretty beaten up city. They have a million museums and part of the wall is still there, preserved. There's a memorial for the "murdered Jews of Europe." I think it's interesting that there are a bunch of cathedrals and synagogues when Berlin is called the "atheist capital of Europe." I'm not really surprised that most of the people there don't affiliate with a religion. They are probably pretty disillusioned.
Maybe I should be a history major instead. Way more interesting than music.

5. Rome

Everyone knows about the Colosseum, the Pantheon, the Trevi fountain, and the Sistine Chapel. Well, I want to see those too. And all the oher monuments and museums and touristy things. I know people always trivialize the tourist things. You know, don't do what everyone else does. You're going to wait in lines for hours to do things that only foreigners do? Don't you want to do what the locals do? Don't you want to try and fit in instead of sticking out like an idiot with your map and baseball cap? Well, I want to do the tourist things and I want to do the real things. I feel like tourist sites are tourists sites for a reason. Especially the historic things. I don't care that everyone who ever goes to Rome goes to the Colosseum. I'm not going to let it's popularity make me not want to go, or pretend to not care about going. That doesn't make sense to me. Anyway, I'm just saying I don't think there's anything wrong with being a tourist.
I feel like I don't need to say much about Rome. Who wouldn't want to go there? Italian food, 3000 years of history, all kinds of architecture. I just want to walk around there aimlessly for days.