(no subject)
this is just a part of just how amazing and like yay life is beautiful and like yay being in historic-ness ireland was: ...maybe its just cause i was there and maybe i just like creepy shit
across the liffey river, away from all of the touristy streets of dublin, in the poor part of the city, resides the quaint st. michan's church. with its sunday mass attendance at a strong 9 people who will soon die, equipt with typical little old irish man tour guide, you would never expect to find what lies a mere few feet below. 900 years ago, before the church, a crypt was built. but its the best crypt in the world!!!!! obviously, the crypt contains the remains of lots of old dead people. families could buy a room for generations to come to 'their final rest' in. their coffins got stacked upon one another, and its illegal to open these coffins, so the miracle of the crypt went unnoticed for hundreds of years. eventually the weight of the dead caused the lower coffins to break open, and hundreds and hundreds of years old bones fell out. normally, they'd have long ago decayed into dust. buttttt thousands of years ago, on the same grounds, there was an oak forest. this changed the soil of the crypt, and a combination of methane gas emitted from the soil, and the ability of the certain stone to lock out moisture, forms a strange little miracle. every single body that is in this crypt is in tact. down to the pinky toe nail. the joints still work! natural, miracle, mummification. it also creates a creepy dry and warm air in the crypt itself. and i did more than descend into the crypt. a total of 4 coffins from families who no longer use the crypt were opened from the weight, so the crypt/museum was able to display them. as any normal museum, despite the fact that this was a 900 year old container of dead bodies, there was a barrier from the room containing these 4 bodies, all still in their coffins, so we could see-but-not-disturb them. there was a nun who lived to be 100, a male body with no feet and one hand, and an anonymous female. these were like 400 years old. the nun had a full set of finger and toe nails. jesus christ, how does that happen? there was also an 800 year old body. a 6'5'' (for 800 years ago!) crusader. if you "shake hands" or just touch the hand of the body of a crusader, you become lucky. they used to allow that to happen, but a finger broke. so mmm guess what our tour guide lets us do??? i was in the same tiny, crypt room as these gross yet amazing mummies, and i touched the hand of an 800 year old crusader in a 900 year old crypt on the site of an ancient oak forest in ireland, and am now 'lucky'...
ah, life! :)
granted, this could be summarized in 'i touched a dead guy' but the wordy explanation makes it sooo much cooler (to me at least)