Joerg's Ramblings – Page 48 – A Foreigner in Ireland

Spring does NOT start in February!

01 February 2016Written by Joerg Steegmueller

Badly educated event organisers and media outlets will tell you about the “Start of Spring” this week, but don’t fall for that! Together with your primary school teachers they are just badly educated. ;-) Met Eireann points out year after year that Spring starts in Ireland on 01 March and NOT on 01 February. But the misinformation is is persistent. Met Eireann is using the meteorological start of spring and that is definitely not in February but in March as you can read here.

In the rest of Europe, Spring starts – based on the astronomical calendar – even later, on 21 March. Only Ireland is different in whole Europe and how did that happen? Well, the “mistake” in Ireland goes back to the ancient celts, who ignored meteorology and astronomy and had a completely different way of looking at things. The year for example started on 01 November and the day started and ended at sunset. So they were not really wrong, but they used different definitions.

If your day still starts at sunset and your year starts on 01 November, then it’s perfectly fine to start Spring on 01 February in your world. But if you have modernised your views and start your year on 01 January and start the day at midnight, then it is time to update your view of the seasons as well! ;-)

General, Irish, Odd, Society 01 February, Met Eireann, Spring, Start of Spring, WInter

Together we are strong? Not the touristic sites in Dublin!!

30 January 2016Written by Joerg Steegmueller

At some point in life we learned that if we form strong alliances and work in a team, we are stronger than if we fight against each other. And we also should have learned by now that hostility against people that grew up or live somewhere else than we do, is not cool at all.

So, who was the smart cookie, that came up with this amazingly clever idea to create “Dublin Northside Attractions” as a separate tourist entity with their own website at www.dublindna.ie? As tiny as Dublin is and as close as Northside and Southside are, it is totally nonsensical, bordering on idiotic, to artificially create further a divide than we need to. I am not convinced that Failte Ireland or Dublin Tourism had that idea, but they are certainly endorsing it according to the website.

So, the Northside Attractions seem to think they are something better OR they think they are inferior. (These are typically the drivers for the creation of gangs! And there is no organisation or website for “Dublin Southside Attractions” at the moment.) We don’t know why, though.

But if you start your own gang, there is one important element to consider: You have to be ruthless and rigorous in the application of the rules, otherwise your inverse-discrimination doesn’t work.

And that is where the next idiocy comes in: One outsider attraction that was accepted in the “Dublin Northside Attractions” gang is the Guinness Storehouse in the Liberties! Northside? Not at all!

So why did they break their own rules and accept a Southside attraction in their midst? Well, because it is the most popular attraction in Dublin and gangs always want the popular kid in their own gang, not in the enemy gang.

Narrow-minded nonsense!

Dublin, Events, Tourism Dublin DNA, Dublin Northside Attractions, Dublin Tourism, Failte Ireland, Visit Dublin

This 1916 thing!

23 January 2016Written by Joerg Steegmueller

So, it is 2016 and all you read and hear in news and newspapers about is 1916. Dublin City, Dun Laoghaire, the libraries, RTE, all newspapers and radio and TV stations are constantly referring to it and if it wasn’t for the speculations about the date for the next general elections, they would probably probably give it even more airtime and print centimetres. …and even the Dublin Event Guide (for Free Events) is filled with (free!) events that make a big story about this year a long long time ago.

So what is this 1916 thing?

If you had hoped you will get through 2016 without having to think about it, I have no good news for you. Actually, my recommendation is that you do read a little about it and maybe go to one or two (or more of the talks) so that you understand what and why people make such a big issue about it.

The event is big in Irish History and if you are not from Ireland, you might be surprised when you find out that it was a total failure and still it is such a big thing 100 years later. It was an attempt to get rid of the British occupiers, but it was badly planned and had no much support in the normal Irish population and after a few days of fighting and a LOT of deaths on both sides, the Irish fighters surrendered.

So we are celebrating this failure in 2016? No, not exactly! We are commemorating! (A small difference.) And the importance of the event comes from what came from it not what it was in 1916. Put in simple terms, you could say that it was the start of what resulted in Ireland’s Independence from Britain. So without the failure in 1916, Ireland possibly would have never (or much later) become a Republic.

The fuzz that is made about 1916 this year might appear to be unproportionally big and you could think that more fuzz should be made about the SUCCESSFUL steps to independence, but when people die for an idea, then this often leads to a certain heroification and that will be a more or less strong component of this year’s commemorations.

By the way: Not everyone agrees fully with that heroification and you might find some talks that look at the role of the leaders of the Rising in a slightly more critical way.

So, inform yourself about this piece of history of the country you live in, so that you can form your own informed opinion about the events this year.

A good starting point for finding out more is via this Google driven tour

Dublin, Events, Politics, Society 1916, Rising

Festival Sponsorship not the way it should be?

15 January 2016Written by Joerg Steegmueller

Junior Minister Michael Ring (Tourism & Sport) has announced which festivals will get funding from Failte Ireland this year and there are some oddities among them. In total 23 national festivals and events are getting 1.8mio in 2016, but some should get (a lot) less and others should get more. Have a look at the list here, before you continue reading so that you can form your own opinion first.

One single festival takes the majority of money and really just leaves crumbs for the rest: The St. Patrick’s Festival sucks up a whole 1 mio and I really don’t think it is worth that amount. While the parade has significantly improved from the parades 10 or 20 years ago, it has come to a standstill for many years now. There is no more improvement and year after year, the same formula with just slight alterations will be applied. The festival route is still too short for the amount of people that would like to see something and are left bitterly disappointed and the festival would definitely benefit from an overhaul. Sure, there are still up to approximately 300,000 people on the streets for it (don’t believe the 500k lie!!) but in terms of cultural value, the St. Patrick’s Day Festival is definitely not the top event!

And a little further down the list, there are these four:
Ireland BikeFest EUR 30,000
Bloomsday EUR 25,000
City Spectacular EUR 25,000
Rock n Roll, Dublin Half Marathon EUR 20,000

The Bikefest hasn’t really impressed in recent years and 30k seems relatively high for that, where the Bloomsday uses up 25k is difficult to see and that the 100% commercial Rock ‘n’ Roll Half Marathon gets ANY funding is extremely surprising. But the City Spectacular on the other hand, which is one of the, if not THE best event in Dublin only gets 25k!? That’s odd!! They deserve a LOT more!

Dublin, Events, Politics, Society Bikefest, Bloomsday, Failte Ireland, Festivals in Dublin, Sponsorship. City Spectacular, St. Patrick's Festival

College Green and the traffic

02 January 2016Written by Joerg Steegmueller

Whoever thinks that Dublin City a) has a clue what they are doing regarding traffic measures or b) thinks they are doing a good job, really needs to wake up!

The public transport in our beloved Dublin is horrendously poor and the prices are much too high. The attempts to ban cars from the city are in principal not a bad idea, but because it all happens totally disjointed while ignoring some of Dublin’s geographical particularities and without improving the poor Public Transport, things are not looking good. The LUAS improved things a little, but plan to build two isolated lines should have appeared odd many many years ago. Now the cross-city LUAS is being added and it just points out the incapabilities of the people running the city.

Last week then, the current Dublin City “Manager” Owen Keegan, who was the Director of Traffic (!!) for many years in Dublin, said that he has no clue what to do with the buses that used the route along College Green once the LUAS tracks are installed. Dublin Bus wants to use the route again (that’s where the passengers are), Dublin City Management wants to ban all cars from College Green and if you ban cars, then I think ALL traffic (including buses and taxis) should be banned from an area. Either pedestrianise it or not!! Imagine they had allowed taxis and buses to continue driving in Grafton Street and Henry Street when they pedestrianised these streets!?

And you wonder what will happen to the buses on College Green? Who knows! If the Dublin City Manager and former Director of Traffic has no clue, things are looking bad!

www.newstalk.com/Some-bus-routes-may-be-banned-from-Dublins-College-Green-due-to-new-Luas-line

Dublin, Dublin City Council, Traffic College Green, cross-city, LUAS, Owen Keegan