Juggling in Dublin!

I went to the 8th annual Dublin Juggling Festival last weekend to kick off my stay in Ireland.  The most outstanding feature of this festival was, hands-down, the people.  The Irish jugglers were so friendly, genial, and really made me feel welcome.  I arrived in Dublin on the Tuesday before the festival, and attended each juggling club during the week.  There are 5 juggling clubs in Dublin!!!  I almost considered staying in the capital, but the city itself didn’t really capture my fancy.  Dublin is huge, spread-out, and everything looks the same.  It sounds a bit silly, but I would recommend skipping Dublin and head out to the smaller towns in order to experience Ireland.  Dublin mostly consists of shop, after pub, after shop, after pub, after shop…  However, I did some really enjoyable things like going to the National Gallery, Natural History Museum, monument hunting, park roving, coffee shop grazing, and…….OH.  I went to the MOST fabulous vegetarian cafe that I have ever been to.  It’s called Cornucopia on Wicklow Street in the Temple Bar district.  That cafe is reason enough to hit up Dublin.  Therefore, I take back my previous suggestion and insist on a visit to Cornucopia before leaving Ireland!

Back to the juggling….  It was nice to meet all the jugglers at the local club meetings before the festival because I felt like I had a starting point to talk to people.  There was a public fire show in the Temple Bar district (sort of the vibrant, cultural quarter)  on Friday night.  On Saturday the festival was held in a community centre not far from my hostel.  Some of the highlights included an 8 foot unicycle, a gymnastics mat maze, lots and lots of balloon modeling, and a secret renegade show!  At 7 o’clock we all met in front of the gym and buses were hired to take us to a secret location for the mystery renegade show.  It turned out to be a small town about 1/2 hr away where we could have the pub to ourselves for the night.  Basically, people would juggle on the dance floor, there would be about 45 minutes of renegade acts, and then people could juggle again.  I kind of remember the show disintegrating into chaos and eventually everyone was just milling about.  Somebody made a huge fire ball that we all watched get swung around in the car park…

All in all, the festival seemed thrown together in a hurry (there wasn’t even a website advertising the event!), but the fantastic Irish ways more than made up for lack of structure.  I met a great club juggler who rocked at shoulder rolls and reverse-back crosses, and I also met up with a fun  girl I had met at the Scottish juggling convention, and she had lived in High Street Hostel for a few weeks.  Her and her friends invited me out to their farm in south-east Ireland for St. Paddy’s Day, so I hope I can coordinate that in time for the weekend!

I was able to catch a ride to Galway with a juggler, and now I am exploring the juggling scene here.  I went to my first club meeting last night, and there is another one tonight.  I was a bit late last night, but I there are club passers here which I am excited about!  I tried something new – bouncing a ball on my head while passing clubs with somebody.  We juggled 5 clubs and bounced the ball between us, where the 6th club would go.

Oh, Ireland, this will be a fun couple of weeks until the BJC!