Sightseeing in Dublin

Today we joined the Dublin City Tour, which is a good way of exploring the history and culture of the city. The Tour lasts about 1 hour and 15 minutes, but you can hop on and off whenever you like. On our tour we passed the National Wax Museum, the Bank of Ireland, the Trinity College, Temple Bar, the National Museum of Modern Art, the Christ Church Cathedral and many other lovely spots.
When we passed the "Guinness Storehouse" we felt a strong urge to hop off and enter it.The Guinness Storehouse is the home of Guinness and

its history…(flashback…) It all began in 1759 when Arthur Guinness started brewing his famous porter which is now produced around the world at the rate of over 10 million glasses each day. No visit to Dublin is complete without enjoying a complementary pint of Guinness with the best view of the city. We took our chance and it was worth it! After so much ancient culture we wanted to see something more up to date and that is why we have entered the Irish Museum of Modern Art,

which is the leading Irish institution for the collection and presentation of modern and contemporary art. The Museum is housed in the magnificent 17th-century Royal Hospital building, whose ground include a formal garden, meadow and medieval burial grounds.
We had the chance to see sculptures from the American artist Martin Puryear and the Italian painter Francesco Clemente. There is also an impressive ongoing exhibition featuring video installations among other artworks. For example there is a video artwork by an Irish artist about light boats, which are boats which were caused to sink in order to show the depth of the water and warn other ships in remote sea areas around Ireland.
Those two examples just give an impression of the enormous variety of Dublin's sights and cultural heritage.

Karsten Kneese, Andrea Hinsberger

Temple Bar - A living European Project

During the 1990s the European Union supported a project which had the aim to make the Temple Bar District become what it is today: full of life and colors, a place to meet people of all cultures and ages - a truly European space.
Before the project started Temple Bar was almost an "ugly scar in Dublin's face", but nowadays it is one of the loveliest spots one can imagine, visited by millions of tourists and known all over the world.

Our group has seen both faces of Temple Bar District - from dusk till dawn. In the daylight Temple Bar is quite a calm place for visiting exhibitions in the "Art House" or watching alternative movies in the " Irish Film Institute". But when daylight starts to fade it seems to turn into a totally different world. Your eyes can not find a place to rest because of the incredible variety of things that would be worth to spent at least a night with.
We joined a crowd of people gathering in the street watching an African limbo dancer. As a contrast to that we also spent some hours in a bar listening to traditional Irish live music and dancing with the locals. Starving as we were we split up into smaller groups and entered the traditional fish and chips shop "Beshop's", an Italian restaurant and a Kebab house, keeping in mind that even food should be international as it could be.
A wonderful experience, Temple Bar seems to "celebrate" internationality during the day and during the night.

Andrea Hinsberger & Karsten Kneese