Travel Blog

Back in the early 90’s, I experienced for the first time what it was like to come under the muzzle of  a snub nosed semiautomatic machine gun. Fortunately I was not fully awake to really appreciate the significance of this even until a few hours afterwords. The reason we decided to tell this story here on this blog is that it occurred in Dublin Ireland. It was triggered by a new threat by Irish terrorists at that time.This is about Airport Security in Dublin.

We were entering the airport early in the morning to catch an early flight to England and got a rude awakening! My Family were still half asleep and really not expecting too much in the way of security.

Here is the story and how it affected us, as well as prepared us for the next time it happened which was after 911 in America!

Airport Security in Dublin

We were in Dublin Ireland for a week attending an international Karate tournament. There were about 35 countries attending so it was really a big affair. When we finished with the tournament we had decided to go to the UK. We planned to visit some friends for a few days before returning home. This meant that we left a day early and took a taxi to the airport from our hotel.

By the way we thoroughly enjoyed our stay in Dublin. The people were friendly and of course there are lots to see and do while you are in that beautiful city. We got up around 4am in the morning, packed our bags and checked out of the hotel. There was little traffic on the way to the airport. The taxi dropped us off at one of the doors to the main terminal building. We proceeded to enter through the doors on the way to our check in counter.

Imagine our surprise when we opened the doors. We walked through into the building, only too be immediately greeted by four soldiers dressed in fatigues with sub machine guns pointed at us! We stopped dead in our tracks. We had never seen or experienced anything like this.  They yelled at us to get our papers out including passport and travel documents which we did.

There was no problem once we showed them these documents. However it is pretty scary when you this is your first time in this kind of situation. Apparently the airport had received a threat and they were taking no chances what so ever. But it did not end there!

Checking in for our Flight

We checked in for our flight and then headed towards the gate. Again there were soldiers standing there . We had to take our coats off and everything run through the x-ray machine and our documents re-checked. Pretty standard stuff today, but not back then. The same thing occurred at the gate as well before we got on the plane and who knows how many times we were checked online and from concealed areas as well. All I can say is thankfully they were doing this, even though it was a bit unnerving at the time.

Most people reading this are probably saying what is the big deal. Today we have all of that and certainly right after 911, there were soldiers all over the place at the airports and other public venue’s. Back then it was highly unusual for North Americans, although Europe was certainly more used to this sort of situation.

Next Story about Ireland

Our next story about Ireland is going to be about road side check points in Belfast and how a friend of mine felt very scared for his life along with his wife and children while living in Belfast, Northern Ireland!  If you have similar stories or would just like to make a comment, please feel free to do so. We accept all constructive well written comments that will be of interest to our readers. We will even accept links to the better ones that are left on this blog.

For more posts about Ireland, click here.

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