Happy St Patrick's!

Let's jump a bit to March 2012, St Patricks Day. In order not to confuse the few of you lovely people caring enough to read my blog I will make clear that there is a five-month-gap between the last blog entry and this one. For those who find alteration in chronological sequences of events disturbing I will try to keep a smooth linear relationship between events and time progression, and be sure to alert you if there is a small corruption in the system. For the majority of you, however, will not give a rat's ass about such things and that is fine too.

So this weekend is St Patrick's Weekend, where hundreds and thousands from all parts of the world flocked to Dublin to drink and be merry, to buy Irish souvenirs and help the economy, to listen and imitate the Irish accent, and to stand at the front row and watch the parade wearing massive green leprechaun hats in order to obstruct the view of others standing behind them.

Oh the greenery!

I heard that people will already be drunk by 10am on St Patrick's Day. As fun as that sounds, it does tend to make the city a wee bit messy. As soon as I set foot on the streets from my apartment around 11 in the morning I passed a policeman shouting at a drunken man, "Are ye f**king pissing there? Stop pissing!" with the man responding with "I can't f**king stop now, can I?" and the policeman yelling, "Ye f**king disgrace!" I have never seen so many people tinkle the walls in broad daylight since the six-hour-bus drive to an ad-lib camping area in primary school.

St Patricks means a lot more to the Irish than shamrock face paints and guilt-free alcohol - it is a celebration of Ireland and everything Irish. (Have no idea where the saint comes in here.) Dublin, proud to be designtaed as the European City of Science for 2012, used this theme for their parade this year. Different Irish counties (Galway, Dublin, Waterford, Donegal, Wexford) each represented different areas of science (electicity, climatology, human biology etc) in their utmost creativity. I will leave you to decide which county was responsible for which science.

Wexford

Waterford

Galway

Dublin

And one of the twelve marching bands... (apologies for the poor camera work, hard to know what camera is doing when it is raised eight inches above my head :P)

The Irish Craft Beer Festival is where you can try different types of exclusively Irish beer accompanied by less exclusive Irish live music and even less exclusive Irish food. But the atmosphere is great and plenty of beer and food to make you stick around for the afternoon.

Chocolate stout (brewed by Porterhouse) - smells like chocolate with a chocolately aftertaste. Amazing.

This weekend was also an excuse to line up bland roads with lively, colourful things like funfair rides and green lighting.

Illuminated shops

I've never seen Dublin so crowded during my time here since Christmas Eve. When 500,000 people flock to a small city in one weekend, things get pretty intense - even as I write I am hearing many an excited scream and jovial bellows. However, you do need a pretty leathery system in order to keep up with St Patricks in Dublin (and in all other countries celebrating it, I assume). So if you're like me and gets a tad sleepy after a pint or two, arrange small breaks like updating your blog before heading out again.