Dublin has the best bookstores I’ve ever seen. They’re like the London specialty ones, but cheaper. In this town, the section for books by local writers holds vast swathes of the English-language corpus. And these stores litter the city, interspersed by traditional cafés like Bewley’s where people really sit and read for hoursAnd I thought Ireland was all about the pubs..

All this literary splendor is lost on summer’s most ubiquitous Dubliners — schoolkids from Italy and Spain, sent by la mama to learn English in a Catholic country, lest they be corrupted by Protestantism and notions of divorce. From what I can tell, their exposure to English amounts to the daily ordering of a Big Mac Menu from the McDonalds on Grafton Street, where these hormonal hordes congregate for lunch.

But they cannot avoid exposure to some of the greatest Irish fiction, because it is found on Dublin bus timetables. These have no connection whatsoever to actual bus appearances. When buses do appear, they arrive in clots, and then they are frequently half full by New York standards, which means the driver decides no more passengers could fit, so he guns it past the busstop. Even if his bus is empty, he might still decide to drive by you if you fail to hail sufficiently eagerly. Should you be fortunate enough to actually catch a bus, don’t try to get off via the back door, they don’t actually work. If you do something New Yorkish like yelling “back door!” when they refuse to open, or perhaps try to follow the instructions (“Push to open,” no mention of emergencies), you will be reprimanded by the driver.

I also discovered today that Dublin barbers are very good. Here they actually seem to know what to do with a bald pate in need of mowing. In Stockholm, barbers study my head quizzically, then peck at it haltingly with miniature tools, as if short hair requires small measures. In Dublin, it is shorn with confidence.