Thoughts after One Month

One month ago I stumbled off the bus from the airport outside of Trinity College, having to schlep my two heavy bags all the way across Dame street to my hostel. I was jet-lagged and exhausted, overwhelmed by what I had just done (arrived, to stay, in a new country, alone) and filled with worry about finding a job and apartment (in the short term) and liking the city and whether I made the right decision (in the long term). That first day I went to St. Stephen’s Green, saw Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, ate a whole pizza myself and ended the day listening to the lilting accents of Dubliners as I quietly sipped my Guinness. Looking back, the first week was probably the worst over all, what with a lot of confusion and dread and not getting the spot in the house I wanted. I cried a bit in public parks.

But look at us a month later. With an apartment in a lovely village that is both walking distance from city centre and four Luas stops away from the mall in which I found a job, things worked out pretty nicely. Of course, appliances sometimes don’t work. A couple times this week I came home from a long shift at Starbag to my French room mate Cyril informing me that the shower was clogged, or actually, more like asking me if I knew what was wrong with it. After eight hours of unclogging sinks of Splenda packets and bloated fruitcake cranberries that NOBODY SEEMS TO EAT can you guess who was not in the mood to deal with any more drains? But because of him getting on Tim’s back when I didn’t care enough we’ve gotten some stuff around here fixed.
And I’m still getting used to the job. Today started out well with them teaching me till while there were not many customers. But as things picked up in the later afternoon, I found myself sharing the bar with one of my shift supervisors who I must say definitely has that Irish sense of humour. When we completely missed a young woman’s frappuccino, and then when I finally made it but made it incorrectly, he says to me, “There’s a difference between missing a drink and idiocy. Come on!” And smiled. Then I think he made a couple jokes to other people about the “supposed store” I used to work out.

I wanted to tell him, “Y’know, it’s very difficult moving to a new country. And it’s difficult being on your own. And it’s difficult getting used to a new store in a new country, and all new people who have their routines already set, which your own experiences might not gel with right away... I think, all things considered, I’m doing pretty well...” And that is probably when I’d tear up a bit. (Yes, I envisaged spontaneously tearing up in my run-through). But instead, when I had a chance, I discussed it with my other supervisor and she agreed with me that it was “just an Irish thing” and to not take it seriously and that I was doing a great job. And then things slowed down a bit, but when they picked up again at the end of the day and I made a couple mistakes calling drinks (either people were changing their orders, or I couldn’t understand their accents, or both), but that first shift supervisor was much easier on me. Then we all bonded while frantically cleaning before close. The best part of the day was finally getting to chat with customers and remember that I am in an actual foreign country with interesting people. And people always seem to become friendlier when you just simply ask them “And how was your day?”

Okay, just a couple thoughts about Dublin, and then I should go to bed. I went to this quaint little museum on Merrion Square (the Georgian neighbourhood that Oscar Wilde grew up in) which is a house they’ve restored to how it appeared circa 1800. When you’re inside being taken through the cook’s quarter’s in the basement, the elegant if small dining and sitting rooms with Neoclassical fixtures, and then the cosy nursery in the attic (I remember reading an article about a British designer who said that, if you’re looking for traditional British comfort, turn to the children’s quarters rather than the cold grown ups’), you can begin to picture yourself in Old Dublin. During my tour I tried to do this despite the presence of the fellow tourists, a group of middle-age women from Oklahoma who were characteristically friendly but attempted to relate everything we saw to their modern day lives (“More stairs?! Can you imagine how many times they had to walk up and down these? No wonder they didn’t need to worry about their weight!”)

I’m not a big Joyce devotee, but, despite the fact that many old buildings and whole streets survive in Dublin, it is easy to feel as though you’d like to just glimpse Old Dublin. The rainy, stony city with cobbled streets, in which all the houses looked the same and the only restaurants were pubs and the only public buildings were churches. It’s very romantic to think about. Dublin is a city that was shaped by booms and busts almost throughout its whole history (the grand Georgian period of the late 18th and early 19th century fizzled out when England dissolved the Irish parliament and many of the aristocracy up and left for London). Now I have arrived as yet another boom turns to bust, and no one really knows where it will lead. They say new building had essentially stopped. How much longer will people want four euro cups of coffee? Of course, realistically, I am hopelessly postmodern and I would not want to live in the Dublin of the 19th century. The things that are jarring against the old grey buildings are the very things that make this city liveable for someone like myself: Indian restaurants, vintage T-shirt shops and gay bars. These things are now just as ‘Dublin’, if not authentically more so, than Leopold Bloom, Molly Malone and fish and chips. And I guess, the longer I stay here (and I’m really considering staying the whole year), the more influence the city will have on me, and me on it.