Imaginosity and Remnants of the Celtic Tiger

Ok, Opa Dykstra, here are some more posts for you. Sorry for the delay. =)

Yesterday we decided to take a trip out to the Children's Museum for Norah. I've heard a lot about this place from other parents so we decided to make the trek.

 Leaving Blackrock - upstairs on the double decker Dublin Bus. This is Norah's favorite seat.

 Imaginosity! Dublin's Children's Museum (Much like the Seattle Children's museum with the tiny grocery store, miniature doctor's office, post office, etc.)

 Wayne really liked this wall. Each of the gears are magnetic and you can move them around.

 Told you he really liked it.

 Holllld on! Vrrrrooooom!

 Gettin ' some fruit.

 This kid was so funny! Look at his cart! I think maybe he was playing "Supermarket Sweep" - remember that show? It was awful but if he was playing, he'd win.

 The Mini-Diner

 This place was cute, but sadly, our overwhelming feeling after being here was wanting to wash our hands. This is not the ideal environment for a germo-phobe. I'm a little embarrassed to say that I used sanitizing wipes on my hands twice while in the museum before using hand sanitizer before we left. Maybe it's because we just had the flu but we were just a little grossed out by the amount of stuff each kid was touching and licking and sneezing on and we mostly just wanted to leave. It's awful, I know. Norah had a grand old time though and fully burst into tears when we had to leave. (which doesn't happen often so you know it was fun)

Let me give a little background though, on the surrounding environment and why we may have felt this way. First, this is in an area called the Sandyford Industrial Estate. This is the most shocking and striking visual representation of the "Celtic Tiger" boom that we've seen yet. If you speak with any local, at least once during your conversation, you will hear the term "Celtic Tiger". It is still very much in the vernacular and the Sandyford Industrial Estate is a huge example of where things went very wrong.  Essentially the time of the Celtic Tiger was the huge economic boom in Ireland where everyone thought money was going to continue to flow from the skies and that there would never be the "bust" (that must inevitably follow any boom). Well, the Bust came and its aftermath is not pretty.
It was honestly very eery to be in this square where the Children's museum is. Surrounding it, on all sides, are these huge complexes, each about 10 stories high and 3 out of 4 of these huge complexes are completely empty. Or, like this one, halted mid-production, probably 5 or more years ago.
You can see the huge 'tarp' covering the outside has pictures of "future residents" on it. Below I've zoomed in on one of them.

 Here's a man, enjoying the view from his balcony in his plush new apartment. Not quite. The covering is also completely torn and bleached by the sun, contributing to the eery feeling.

 If anyone has read the book "Oryx and Crake" by Margaret Atwood (one of my favorite books), this square felt like a scene in that book. It's like a ghost-town filled with the squashed dreams of the contractors and builders and architects who must have thought this would be their biggest project.

 To the left of the above building (this is looking out from the Children's museum) is this apartment complex. It's about 8 stories high, with something like 20 or 30 apartments - alllll empty. You can see it's been sitting empty for years. I could see in the windows to each unit, complete with full kitchens, stoves, cupboards, and....dust. It's so sad. And it's just so eery to see multiple HUGE complexes sitting completely empty just wasting away. Whoever built these had to just walk away, and presumably, no one even owns them.

So, given that the Children's Museum, (a place that's supposed to be cheerful and hopeful), is surrounded on four sides by these empty, desolate carcasses, you might be able to imagine why it wasn't as magical as we had hoped.

 And once you're out of that square, across the street you see this HUGE high rise - also completely abandoned, mid-build. And notice the sign - it still reads "High Profile"-something or other and "units from 186" (presumably 186,000 EURO). Well, something tells me they're not selling....

Looks like they only made it up about 7 floors with the staircases before walking away.

 Here are the banners on the wall surrounding this huge complex - pictures of happy shoppers walking with their new purchases, below their "High Profile" apartments. So sad.

Oh wait, you turn the corner down another road and the empty buildings continue for another 3 blocks. I can't possibly convey the scale of this area. It just goes and goes and it's all empty. As Wayne said to me, "Please don't ever make me come back to this place". Poor guy. Despite this, it was still a lovely afternoon and Norah had a great time so that's all that matters. And I got to see a real live ghost-town in the form of fancy high-rise Dublin apartments. I find it sad and fascinating - what we humans get ourselves into when we run into too much money with not enough foresight.

We then took the LUAS train up to the Dundrum Town Centre (similar to Bellevue Square Mall) and had pizza at a great place. When you end any day with pizza, it's a good day.