You get used to daft questions when you’re a tour guide. After a few years, you stop flinching. People are lost, they’re tired, they’re full of jet lag and bad Guinness. You give them a bit of grace.
But some questions stick. Not because they’re stupid — although, to be clear, some are — but because they hit you sideways. Make you pause mid-sentence and wonder what planet you’re actually on.
Here are a few that still live in my head.
“Where do you keep the leprechauns at night?”
Asked by a man in his 40s. Not a child. Not joking. Genuinely looking around the grounds of Dublin Castle like there might be a stable or a shed full of tiny blokes in hats. I said, “Same place you keep your common sense.” His wife laughed. He didn’t.
“Do you accept Euros here?”
In Dublin. In Ireland. A woman asked me this while holding a €10 note. I said yes, just about. Then she asked if it worked in the shops too. I said I’d never had a problem. She looked unsure.
“Is the Spire real or a hologram?”
This was during fog. I could almost forgive it. But not quite.
“Is this the castle?”
Asked while standing inside the castle courtyard, next to a sign that said “Welcome to Dublin Castle.” I just said yes.
“Do you speak Celtic?”
I said no. But I did offer to point them in the direction of someone who speaks fluent Made-Up.
“Where’s the famine graveyard?”
I told them there isn’t one big one. That most famine victims were buried in mass graves across the country, often unmarked. They said, “Oh. That’s disappointing.” I said, “Not for them.”
And then, there was the one that caught me off guard.
It was a small group, mostly Canadians. We were up near the General Post Office. I was halfway through the Easter Rising bit. Usual stuff — Pearse, Connolly, bullet holes in the pillars, all that.
This girl, maybe 19 or 20, soft voice, polite the whole tour, raised her hand and said, “Do you still feel like your city remembers?”
I asked what she meant.
She said, “Like, do people actually care about this now? Or is it just something guides have to say?”
It hit me like a quiet slap. Not because it was clever or deep. Just because it was honest. And it wasn’t loaded with expectation.
I said, “Some do. Most don’t think about it. But it’s still here, whether they notice or not.”
She nodded. Didn’t ask anything else.
And that was it.
Sometimes the daft ones are just background noise. But now and then, someone asks something that reminds you the city’s not just a backdrop. It’s still alive under all the flyers and fake céilís and overpriced sandwiches.
You remember why you started doing this in the first place.
And then someone asks where Bono lives and the moment passes.
