Have you ever felt, when travelling to another country that everything is sensed in a new way, everything you see, hear, smell and taste are new and sharp and you’re feeling totally generated and curious and open about how people live in this country? Have you ever travelled to a new country to do a seminar or training? Did you notice that you’re actually moving out of your comfort zone but also from the conditions that bring you down and you’re going to a direction of freshness and evolving exploration? How will this be, when you will have had already tapped into the space of creativity and inspiration?
I wrote this in Dublin, while on a 6 day in October and 5 in November for the NLP Master Practitioner training with Owen Fitzpatrick and Brian Colbert of the Irish institute of NLP. Travelling all this way from my country for a workshop makes sense when it has do to with the life changing experience of NLP brought in a wonderful way by these two people who are top in their league, and also for me wanting to travel to Dublin again, after having just a taste, on a weekend visit a decade ago.
My free time was afternoons and a morning after or before the course. So I’m not out there for some kind of a project on which I did research and prepared myself, I’m just playing around with my camera, reflecting my experiences and moods of these days.
I fly in the airport, take the bus to the city, and my feeling is that I’m in a provincial place rather than a capital city. I’m entering downtown along the bank of a velvet river under a silvery shiny light. No traffic jams, no massive concrete buildings and at the same time, the atmosphere of a metropolis. I see the grand boulevard, which is epic in an abstract way and I picture Dublin as a big takeoff runway. I see those doors on the sides of the river frome where music, voices and light comes out as the warmth from the fireplace and I think of this city like a small place where everybody knows each other.
In the coming days I’m experiencing not only the joy of been a pedestrian but also how this city creates of openness in peoples interactions. One thing that strucks me is how polite people are. Somebody gets in the way or bumps me, says sorry. I get in the way or bump someone, they say sorry. And I’m thinking, it’s probably a sign of how people respect other’s space. But at the same time this polite condition is a way to keep others out of one’s space. Where ever it’s coming from, there is a strong sense of respect of space, public and private.
Dublin doesn’t look like a city in economic crisis, and if it does, certainly not like my city do. I see closed shops and homeless, surely not as in Athens. And it’s not only this. People are not afraid to look you in the eyes. People are not edgy here. I’ve been in cities, including mine, where there is sometimes a tangible atmosphere of i.e. rush or isolation, anger or fear. Here people go about pretty relaxed and available for communication. I guess it’s in their culture and how the psychogeography have shaped it. But I don’t think it’s a product of the crisis period, I believe it shows a deep principle on which the Irish dealt with the situation.
situation. It’s wonderful to go out with company in Dublin. And since it’s a multicultural city you can surrealistically have a company of Portuguese and Brasilian- who have immigrated here- Vietnamese/American and Greek, making noise in a home brewery pub. I’m also enjoying walking in the city with my new Brasilian friend, Jose or to be invited in his place where his girlfriend Lisa makes delicious southern home cooking. Really feels like home to meet Lisa and Jose, as well as everybody else I met, Irish, immigrants or travelers, to be invited, to listen to what they believe and dream about life and how this takes substance in this city. But it’s also great to go out alone. It’s not only that I get the opportunity to explore the downtown, visit places, meet all people. After a full day of learning and experiencing in the course, it helps me digest and put my thoughts together. There comes a moment when my feet hurt and I feel I have to sleep to wake up early next morning but my heart doesn’t want to stop walking.
I am surprised to see that the famous road of central night life is called Temple Bar. I’m tempted to think that the Irish have evolved boozing to religious levels but the truth is that all these noisy pubs and clubs, the fancy hostels and Victorian style hotels, the traditional sweet shops and the barber shops with graffiti of razors and skulls, used to be warehouse on the bar, thank of the river. And Temple was the name of the man who built the place up, in the time when sail ships would curtain Dublin’s delta horizon.
On that man’s street I’m walking on my last Saturday night out, the night before the last day of the course. I’ve been in and out of places, I’ve listened to traditional, to rock music, to street jams and I’m still walking like something’s missing yet. And then, like when the baker puts the bread in the oven and the smell starts to swing out on the streets, the sound of disco music, with strong bass as it’s coming from a basement, comes to seduce my ears. I look around and I spot a few window openings on the base of a building, revealing just the tiny bit that’s enough to make me more curious and drawn to this place. I walk through the door to the ground level of the building and instead of a disco I find myself in the lobby of a hotel that could well be the setting for filming a historic novel. There is even a black porter, who gives me directions, so I cross the building to the side of the river and there on the left is the opening to this underground playground. Don’t ask me what the name is, I even forgot my name that night. I go down the stairs into a small but beautiful room with a bar and as I walk in and through it I discover room after room, one or two more bars, an underground yard and at last, a dance floor. Not a big one but very warm and careless. Beautiful people, nice disco music, sometimes cheesy but so cheesy that it creates a strange harmony with the old times decoration, tapestry and black and white photos on the wall. The whole atmosphere is like home, in the way that no one needs to act here, there’s no need for some special music or setting to relax and have fun. It just feels the right place and right time (after a few moments of hesitating thoughts of me been a stranger, knowing nobody), I go deep into it.
I had worked and walked so much the previous days, so all this energy that is coming out of me on the dance floor, it’s just me letting go myself. Then things happen, like this girl who came to me to give a compliment on my spectacular, as she put it, beard. Now that I think about it, I also think of it as a ritual dance that bonded my connection with the city and its people. We trust each other now as friends.
