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Welcome to the home of the official Vegemite Ambassador travel blog. A chronicle of mildly amusing journeys.

Friday, February 22, 2008

"Top of the blog to ya ... "



Once more these hallowed cyber-halls are graced with prose detailing action and misadventure! This time the tale tells of a trip to a town of Dubh Lin in a land of Eire.

Say the word Ireland and immediately images of clovers, dancing jigs and leprechauns come to mind. Of course I won't even begin to dispute those images - they're all true. However drunkeness seems to be the true common unifying element of the Irish life. Never before have I seen so many people completely inebriated by alcohol getting off a plane. People stumbling everywhere, carrying each other, one guy being sick in the toilet - and it was only a 45 minute flight!

Going back to the previous points, if there is one harsh truth the Irish have embraced as a necessary evil of drinking it's the "better out than in" principle. Dublin is laced with more random acts of regurgitation on the city footpaths, gardens, roads than any other city in the world I think - and it all seems perfectly normal! Funnily enough Dublin is actually called Baile Átha Cliath in Irish - meaning Town of the Hurdled Ford. Ford's are very popular cars here and the operative word there is hurdled. Surely not quite the original meaning but still partially poignant to this day.

Only after a few hours you become immediately infected by the Irish way and find yourself heading inexorably for a pub. And for some reason, regardless of what you actually would like to order you somehow always end up ordering pints of Guiness at the last moment. Before you know it you are filled with Irish cheer and warmth to ready you for whatever comes.

Dublin houses the impressive Trinity College - a very charming academic institution that dates way back with alumni list that includes none other than Bram Stoker, who while in Ireland, went on to write the Romanian legend of Dracula. Whilst enjoying a leisurely stroll through the campus, there were some young lads practicing drills for Gaelic Football. In case you don't know, Gaelic Football is probably the closest thing in the world to Australian Rules Football back at home. Only they use a round ball, a different field and they don't play with a lager and meat pie in one hand like our lads do.

The weather was quite nice (two digits IS nice), so a trip to the sea side was in order. Quaint little houses awaited us nestled at the base of cliffs, cute lighthouses and a resident seal who poked out of the harbour to show his belly full of Guiness. All and all t'was a lovely day and that night we all decided to stop for a cup of tea, however we were lured into a bar and somehow ended up drinking Guiness again. Hmmm. We were all becoming more and more Irish by the second.

Later that night I realised that the city, if not the whole country, was in the grip of some evil conspiracy. That everywhere you turn you are being coerced into drinking Guiness. Logically the only way to find out if this theory was true was to head straight to the source the next day - the Guiness brewery. From the outside it had big branded gates that drew parallels to a certain Mr Wonka's chocolate factory and there were rumours of a giant 'Guiness pipe' which went under the sea to England. The plot thickened.

The tour inevitably leads to a sampling section. Essentially you had to ask yourself "would Arthur Guiness be happy with the Guiness your sampling?". That was a very difficult question that required LOTS of sampling to come to a clear and decisive answer. Sadly, the more sampling partaken, the less decisive the results and the more the shnozberries tasted like shnozberries.

Comfortingly enough the brewery did have a elevator running up all 7 floors through the centre of the building and although it didn't burst OUT of the roof into the clouds driven by a slightly crazed Gene Wilder, it did emerge at a glass walled bar on the roof where yet more "Irish wine" was being poured profusely. The Guiness Factory had defeated me, I came seeking answers to conspiracy theories but all that was found was drunkeness.

It was a great tour but I do remember a local explaining with some authority that "it's a luhvely place, bet it's the warest feckin pint o' the black stooff you'll uhver feckin hafe'.

Say it as you read it and you should be speaking Irish tongue in no time ... to be sure, to be sure.