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As promised, here is the 2nd part of “10 weirdest things I’ve seen in… Dublin”. You can see the first 5 items of the list in part 1.

Part 1: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and now…

6. Weddings and the 6 Nations Rugby Tournament fill Dublin’s weekends with curious images

A stroll down Grafton Street, almost any weekend of the year, will bring you face to face with one of three groups of people:

1. A group of 5+ Irish/Scottish/English women celebrating a Hen party (easily discernible by the rabbit ears/pink tops).
2. A group of 5+ men who are in town to watch a 6 Nations Rugby match (besides having their nation’s colours painted on their faces, the French and Italians are easy to recognize because of their language; now to distinguish the others, watch out for the number of kilts: among the English supporters, there will be none; among the Irish one or two, tops; among the Scottish, loads and among the Welsh loads too, but, additionally… the majority will have reddish curly hair).
3. A group of 5+ Irish/Scottish/English men celebrating a Stag party (easily discernible by… looking exactly like 6 Nations supporters, when no rugby matches are taking place).

7. Spring starts on the 1st of February

Yup. And summer on the 1st of May, autumn on the 1st of August (August!!) and winter on the 1st of November. You can read an explanation of this in the Semantic Bits blog, but I still found it weird. And sometimes a bit uncomfortable… for if it was spring, one could surely turn the heaters off, whatever temperature was outside notwithstanding, could one not? Brrrr…

8. If they ignore the calendar conventions, why not the weather itself?

And there you had them: tons of Irish men walking around in t-shirts and tons of Smurfettes, I mean, Irish women, walking around in barely-longer-than-knickers skirts and no tights… in spite of the 2C temperature. Then again, I do understand that if they had to wait for warm days to wear sleeveless clothes, they would never expose their skins to the sun… I mean clouds…

9. Dublin language translation: Are you ok? = may I help you?

At shops, when browsing around, you will always be addressed with “Are you ok?” by shop attendants. First 100 times you’ll think “wow, I must look horrible if he/she felt compelled to ask me that!”, and then you’ll remember that what they really mean is “may I help you?” and your automatic answer “yes, thank you” could be interpreted as that you do need help, although you didn’t really need any, and then you’ll add “well, not really, I was just browsing” and… your browsing will finish, for you’ll leave the shop red and under the puzzled look of the shop attendant.

10. Irish pride themselves of being laid-back… and they are really laid-back!

I lived like 30 minutes by bus away from the city center (Dublin 18, i.e. south-side). 30 minutes when there was no traffic and no bus delays. I already knew both the Irish were laid-back and that buses sometimes could be 20 minutes late. One morning I was waiting for the 8:10 morning bus to the city center when it started to rain quite heavily. In my bus stop there was no cover so I was just “happy” I was wearing my rain coat (aka my second skin). At half eight I knew I would just have to accept the first bus was not coming and I’d have to hope the 8:40 one did come on time. There were a couple other people waiting with me from the start. At 9 am I wondered if it wouldn’t make more sense to work from home that day, but nobody was leaving the now crowded bus-stop, so maybe they knew something I didn’t. At 9:30 a bus showed up. As everybody got on the bus I noticed that I was the only one with smoke coming out of my nostrils. The locals just got on the bus, smilingly said hello to the driver and went to their seats. No complains, no threats to file a report with the Bus company. Nothing… I wonder if the Irish live happier, longer lives than other Europeans…

The end.

So, what do you think of the 10 weirdest things in Dublin? Have you seen them in other places? Do you know a place where you saw 10 things even weirder than these? We are accepting contributions from anybody who’d like to share their list of weird things they’ve seen anywhere in the world. We can either invite you to olivetalks as a guest blogger (you will retain full credits, of course) or just let us know where have you posted the list and we will comment on it in olivetalks!

So, you’ve been informed. “10 weirdest things I’ve seen in… Tunja/Bogotá (Colombia)” coming soon!