International Creep Magnet? – June 26th

So, we arrived in Dublin yesterday evening and had a wonderful time dragging our luggage to our hotel and getting lost a few times. Thank god the Irish are even nicer than the English. We finally made it to our lodging, which is technically student dorms…well, let’s not talk about how much fun it was to drag our luggage up to the third floor. But hey, at least it’s not the 6th like we originally thought.

After getting to our room, we died. Basically, died. For a little while. Took showers and whatnot. We finally decided to grace the great city of Dublin with our presence, and headed out to the Temple Bar area, a part of town full of bars and restaurants and people on the streets playing music and all sorts of fun. We stopped and had some pizza for dinner, and I had my first beer of the trip – I chose Heineken. Great. Started talking with the Norwegian guys next to us a bit – their accents were so great..so unfair.

Btw, I’m having a hen party. It’s a bachelorette party, but better because it’s in England and/or Ireland. And girls where matching t-shirts (or corsets and lace if you’re really lucky…) and it just looks like the most fun ever.

Anyway, after our pizza we strolled through the Temple Bar area and along the river a bit. We then made our way into the Temple Bar itself – the most famous bar in Dublin – where…yes, this is completely true….Sweet Home Alabama started playing as soon as we walked through the door. Clearly, this was a sign.

I later found out that the “maximum number” of people allowed in Temple Bar is 600 people. This bar is probably the size of a bar in Tuscaloosa, maybe one and a half…it’s not big. But there were probably more than 600 people there. No joke. You can barely move. Ordering a beer requires a great deal of strategizing. It was crowded. And really interesting. It’s a big tourist place, so obviously there’s people from all over there.

This guy starts talking to us…Max the German…he’s really nice. He and Anna totally have apparently everything in common and start talking. He’s here with his football team, so he introduces us to like half of them. This is amusing, to say the least. So…Anna and him start talking and stuff and I’m just kind of hanging out, sort of talking, whatever. This is where I realized a very sad thing.

I am, in fact, an international creep magnet.

I thought, that perhaps, it was just confined to the US, and I even thought it was starting to fade a bit. Oh, but no.

Let’s see, I’m quite sure I got hit on by a creepy representative of every country in the Western world. Yes. My favorites of the evening were definitely Cedric, the French guy, who was very upset that I had been to Paris before…because he wanted to be my first French guy. I’m not sure exactly what he meant by that, but I have a few guesses….creepy. Also, he possibly licked my hand.

My other favorite was a guy from Dublin. Clearly this guy hangs out at Temple Bar to hit on foreign girls. He’s a “big tennis player” apparently. He was fun to talk to though. He spent time in Fairhope, AL. How unfortunate. His friend plays tennis for LSU. Also unfortunate.

They asked me why people in Alabama are so racist. What exactly do you say to that? Awkward.

Anyway, we hung out in Temple Bar for several hours, then finally headed home before it got too late and creepy outside.

All in all, an awesome night in what seems like an awesome city so far.