Old Books and Red Leaves in Dublin
Last autumn I spent a few days in Dublin to visit the re:publica conference together with two colleagues. With us travelled two bags full of electricity and wooden panels for an installation against populism. You can read more about our installation on our company website.
Luckily after the conference we had some spare time left to explore the city and I was curious to see how much has changed since the last time I visited.
The weather was as good as we could hope for and Dublin looked pretty in autumn colors.
Our airbnb apartment was located in the middle of Temple Bar, the nightlife and pub district of Dublin. Ironically my two colleagues don’t drink any alcohol but we didn’t miss the opportunity to spend some time in the pubs and soak up the nightlife.
When I visited Dublin three years ago the queue in front of Trinity College was simply too much and we decided to skip the old library. This time luck was on our side and and we made it inside the old library and saw its famous long room.
I’ve seen photos of the inside of the old library before but the amount of books still left me speechless. The place felt rather like a fantastic movie setting than a real place to study books.
Apart from the long room, the library is required by law to keep at least one copy of every book published in Great Britain which means it contains 6 million books and counting.
After visiting Trinity College we spent some time in the National Gallery of Ireland and admired the art on display and the architecture of the gallery. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the entry is free.
We spent the rest of the day roaming the city and thanks to my colleague’s tracking I have a pretty good idea where we spent our time in retrospective.