Comments on: Dublin Trip - May 2008

By: Hubbers

Hubbers — Mon, 12 May 2008 16:27:23 +0000

As a Kiwi they Irish don’t ask if we are Irish even though thousands of Irish settled in NZ. They ask about the All Blacks and what we think of the current Irish side.

By: Hubbers

Hubbers — Mon, 12 May 2008 16:26:03 +0000

Yeah the USA/Ireland things is huge because hundreds of thousands of Irish emigrated to the USA to escape grinding poverty and famine.

The even have the Ulster American Folk Park up North to show what life was like on both sides of the journey.

By: andrea

andrea — Mon, 12 May 2008 13:41:50 +0000

Also: a lot of the Irish people we talked to asked us if we had any Irish heritage. So I wonder how much of that is that Americans start talking about it, or that the Irish ask us about it. Or it could be that I look stereotypically Irish (even though I’m not Irish at all).

By: andrea

andrea — Mon, 12 May 2008 13:38:06 +0000

Nice! I wish I’d gotten my trip photos and refections up in such a timely fashion.

I must have taken my version of that photo from much farther back because I’m not particularly tall.

Everything looks so much greener and more lush than when I was there a month ago. I wish the plane tickets in May hadn’t been so much more expensive than the ones in April.

By: Erik R.

Erik R. — Sun, 11 May 2008 21:18:53 +0000

I just remembered an anecdote I forgot to include in this post. We had conversations with two different Irish residents. The first was a Spanish woman from Madrid, named Ana, who had lived in Dublin for seven years. The second was with an Irish man, named Macho (really), who was staying at a B&B near our hotel. I asked him where he was from, and he said Dublin. To the obvious, when why are you in a B&B question, he explained that his landlord had evicted him, but that he’d get a house as soon as he could.

Anyway, my point is this. Both of these people, upon learning that I am American, said, “Do you have any Irish heritage? All the Americans I’ve ever met in Dublin immediately leap into a discussion of their Irish heritage.” How odd. I knew that Americans with Irish ancestors tend to be particularly proud of that fact, but I’d never thought about what the native Dubliners must think about it.

Just interesting, that’s all.