The Black Lung is Carrying the Banner, Part 2: Visiting a pen pal in a foreign country fulfils at least one big childhood dream (still need to learn to play the harp and go to the moon, but it's a start)

Tuesday morning was a nice, relaxing sleeping in morning. We had an activity planned, but not until 11:30, so we could be pretty chill. We slept in and had a nice, leisurely breakfast at a cafe (overnight oats are yummy, and they make you feel like a hipster). It started raining a little bit during breakfast, but not enough to drive us inside. Then our activity of the morning was at the National Print Museum! This is the only thing we had planned that wasn't centrally located in Dublin, so it's a good thing the buses are so reliable. We also passed the Google Dublin campus, which was fun. Google is the librarian's secret weapon, after all.

I know I look like a dork, but it's because I'm eating overnight oats and protecting myself from rain. You try to maintain cuteness while doing that!

  

Google! Right there! On the street!

We showed up early for our tour, which was a good thing, because this museum was pretty randomly in a business complex, and it was tricky to find. We did find it eventually though, and it turns out it's attached to a great cafe, which will be important later. Since we had signed up for a tour ahead of time, a snack from the cafe was included, which was exciting. While we were waiting for the tour time, a couple of families came in and payed to join us, so it wasn't just the two of us doing the tour. They didn't get the treats though!

The tour took us from the invention of the printing press all the way through about the 1980s, when computer printing finally became practical enough to be the standard. Leah and I made many quiet Newsies jokes and sang many songs from the soundtrack for the rest of our trip. The museum has a replica of the Gutenberg press and originals of many other types of printing presses. We learned where upper case and lower case comes from (the capital letters were stored in the upper drawer, small letters in the lower drawers). We got to practice hand-setting type, inking up the roller, and then making our own wanted poster to take home! I'm not sure of the inflation rate, but I think we are pretty expensive! We also learned about later versions of printing presses, including one that would pour molten metal into molds as you typed which would form lines of type without you having to hand set it. That was pretty neat. After the paper or whatever was printed, the metal would all be melted down and reused. We learned a lot about apprenticeships too. They were multi year, and you had to take a big test at the end. If you made too many mistakes, you were kicked out, and since it was often a family business, you might be kicked out of the family! And then have no job skills! It was pretty harsh. It was also a men and boys only job for hundreds of years. When women were finally admitted was when the process became more mechanical and the machines were easier for people with smaller hands to operate. They would also hire little girls to basically unjam the machines with their little baby hands. Good news for them though, if they survived to adulthood with all of their fingers, they had a job waiting for them in print!

 

Working on my handsetting.

It's always nice to be wanted.

This printing press was from America! Notice the eagle counterweight on top, which makes it super easy to use, even for a noodle-arm like me.

 

This one is not meant for the noodles. I had to push with basically my whole body weight to get it to move.

 

Here's where my memory fails me somewhat-I know our guide told us about why printing was such a big deal in Ireland. But I can't really remember why! I think it was something about laws or tax rules or some such that made people send things to Ireland to be printed that would be too expensive or hard to get done elsewhere. But I'm not totally sure. Whatever the reason, they had a robust industry. There was also a giant tapestry that we somehow failed to get a picture of that celebrated a great victory for the printing union (Newsies?? Is that you again?). Their victory-being able to take a lunch break in the middle of their 14 hour work day! Still no weekends or holidays, but at least they got lunch. I feel like a real goober every time I complain about my job now. One of the coolest things they have is an original copy of the Proclamation of 1916, which is like their Declaration of Independence. Only about 30 original copies remain in the world.

This is one of the final proclamations printed. The British government had actually confiscated a bunch of typeset from Irish printing presses at this time, so the typesetters really had to improvise, using the wrong letters sometimes, or making the right ones by using wax. Since this is one of the final ones, there are more flaws than in earlier versions, because the wax was breaking down.

 

After the tour we got to go to the cafe for a dessert and a drink. We also decided to order lunch, because everything looked good and was cheap. This may have been the most delicious food I ate on the whole vacation. It was amazing! It was soup and a sandwich, which are already two of my favs, and these were exceptional. And the dessert we both chose was Brazilian carrot cake, and it's so good. It doesn't have the spices we associate with carrot cake here, and the frosting is chocolate. I want to try to make it. So tasty. I would go back to that cafe all the time if it was in Baltimore. Update-I tried to make it, and it was not as good, but I think I learned a lot from my mistakes!

While we were eating lunch, it started to rain crazy hard. And right after I said we had good weather for our trip, too. I lied a bit. This was a hard rain! But after it subsided, we headed out into Dublin again. We went past Oscar Wilde's house and the weird statue of him in the park across the street. Then we got onto the Hop-on, Hop-off bus. This is a bus that drives around to various important landmarks with the driver giving background and fun facts. You can then hop-off and see some stuff, then hop back on another bus. You can see the whole city this way, basically. We had wanted to sit on the upper deck of the bus, in the open air part, but it kept raining and ruining our plans. We did sit up top though! At some point during this trip, we got off and went into the National Library to see an exhibit about Irish involvement in WWI. This was obviously very controversial because it was about the same time as the Proclamation and revolution which was brutally put down. So a lot of people were not happy about having to fight in a war for the British, who were always so mean to them. It was very interesting, and I have a well documented interest in the history of WWI, so I enjoyed it.

 

 Listen to that rain! It was intense.

I'm not sure what Oscar Wilde is doing there behind me, but his jacket is great.

 

That might not be totally right-I can't remember us getting off the bus or back on the bus! But we definitely went there at some point. We also ended up riding the hop-on, hop-off all the way to the end of the line. A lot of the things that we passed seemed interesting, but many of them were out in the rain, which we were trying to avoid, and some of them cost $$ and advance tickets. But we still learned and had fun. True fact-more people got off the bus at the Guinness Storehouse than anywhere else, except when they made us all get off at the end. When we got to the end, we wandered around near the River Liffey for a while and then decided to go to the Leprechaun Museum!

The Leprechaun Museum is misnamed in basically every way. It's not really a museum, and it's totally not about leprechauns. It would be way more accurate to say that it's a folktale storytelling experience (which is more up my alley anyway) that is named The Leprechaun Museum as a way to draw in tourists. According to our guide, the modern idea of leprechauns stems from American pop culture, like Darby O'Gill and the Little People and Lucky Charms. Traditional leprechauns actually wore red and were not very popular or important in Irish folklore. But tourist dollars are very important, so the museum has embraced the idea of the leprechaun at least a little bit. The tour starts in a room that is actually museum like-stories, books, pop culture stuff, all related to Irish folklore and leprechauns. Then we went through to some pretty fun rooms that were decorated to look like forests and old wells and stuff like that, and in each room, our guide told us a story. Since only adults were in our group, he told a few that were extremely grim. He was an excellent storyteller. The one bummer thing about the Leprechaun Museum is that the tour is very short, only about 50 minutes. I could have listened to him for hours.

 This giant book actually hides the entrance to the bathrooms (called toilets in Ireland)

 

I myself am a wee leprechaun!

Once we left the Leprechaun Museum, we ended up going home. I was feeling kind of gross because of general travel stuff, and Leah was still sick, so we bought some chips (crisps) at a corner store and hung out in our room for the rest of the evening. I got to talk to my mom and dad over Facebook Messenger for her birthday, which was neat. I even held my phone out the window so they could see how close we were to St. Patrick's Cathedral. And then we went to bed early because we had an early morning the next day.

The next morning, we were putting to the test the other thing I learned about Dublin the first time around-going to see the Book of Kells when there are large crowds is a terrible idea! We bought advance tickets for the first time slot at 8:30 in the morning. And friends, I am here to tell you that this is the way to go! There were way fewer people than when I went with my friend Niki, and no one even tried to push me. It was great. I recommend it highly if you are going to go, and you should. Plus, the long library at Trinity College is very neat.

Trinity College early in the morning.

 

This is my dream library. I'm going to need a very big house. 

 

Look, we were both there! 

 

After we left the long library and looked at stuff we weren't going to buy for way too long in the gift shop, we finally got to meet my pen pal!!! The history of our print friendship has been chronicled on Forever Young Adult, the website that brought us together. You should read it! Meredith (yes, we are both Merediths) moved to Ireland several years ago from Boston to pursue an advanced degree in Media studies, which frankly sounds super fun. Someone pay me to watch TV please! Meredith, if you're reading this, I know that your job is hard and you don't get paid to watch TV any more than I get paid to read books. She is almost done and will hopefully get to stay in Ireland even once she's not technically a student anymore. Fingers crossed!

Meredith lives about an hour by train away from Dublin, so she very kindly rode in to meet us. We were both a little bit nervous about not recognizing each other, but we got it figured out almost immediately. We went to the Chester Beatty Library (one of her suggestions of awesome things to see while in Dublin). And since she was with us, we didn't need to GPS everywhere! She knew where things were! This was very impressive to me. After all, it's about an hour by train to Washington DC, and I still have to look at maps when I go there.  Fun facts about Chester Beatty-he was a super rich American mining magnate! He was also an avid collector, even since he was a kid, and he actually collected stuff that was worth money. Like stamps and minerals when he was younger, and all the stuff in his library when he was older. Makes my collection of toy gorillas seem kind of lame. But they're not. They're awesome.

Anyhow, Chester Beatty relocated to London after his first wife died, and then to Dublin when he was in his 70s because he thought Britain was being lame. He and his second wife had travelled the world and collected huge amounts of religious artifacts that he left to the Irish people when he died because he just loved Ireland so much. It's a great museum. The sheer range of old books, manuscripts, papyri, and works of art is incredible. If you go to Dublin, I recommend it! It's also on the grounds of the Dublin Castle, which we did not go to, but it was fun to look at it.

Dublin Castle! And me.

The Merediths, together at last!

 

After the museum, we went to lunch at Boxty, a restaurant that celebrates the delicious potato in boxty form (a potato pancake). Meredith said she goes there with visitors to Ireland a lot because it's delicious, and this was true. What I wouldn't give for some boxty fries right this second. And then it was time to say goodbye. Only about 4 hours together after 8 years of pen pal friendship, but those were 4 wonderful hours. Meredith walked with us back to our Airbnb so we could get our bags, then she had to go catch her train home and we had to go get our rental car. Take it from me though, if you can get a pen pal, then that pen pal moves to Ireland, you should totally hang out with them, even if only for a few hours. Worth it!

Waiting for the bus in front of St. Patrick's Cathedral. Soon, we will be car drivers.

 

Next time, on The Black Lung: the Black Lung starts her tour of Irish castles, and it's a lot.