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DUBLIN, Ireland, May 30, 2003 / FW/ --- An older busker sat playing an accordion.

Inside the lid of his instrument box it said, "Without music there is no life."

In contrast to his brown felt hat, Reebok sweat pants and white running shoes was a boutique advertising designer names such as Cerruti, Armani, Versace and St. John.

The chalk-white female mannequins had a sculptural elegance, and like the little girls at Marks and Spencers had wild-molded hair styles.

They looked as if they could be characters from a futuristic movie.

I started imagining it as a purely black and white world different from Blade Runner, Artificial Intelligence or Matrix.

I took a break at one of the many bookstores and found something to read on the road; Nobody's Perfect, Billy Wilder, a Personal Biography by Charlotte Chandler.

What an amazing filmography: Ninotchka (1939), Double Indemnity (1944), The Lost Weekend (1945), Sunset Blvd. (1950), Sabrina (1954), The Seven Year Itch (1955), Love in the Afternoon (1957), Some Like It Hot (1959), and The Apartment (1960) to name a few.

There were never ending rows of the classics, biographies, the latest fiction and politically hot topics.

I could have literally bought a ton of books for there is a treasure trove in Dublin where there is a love of the written word.

Some of their well known writers are Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, Jonathan Swift, James Joyce, George Bernard Shaw, W.B. Yeats and Samuel Beckett.

The passion for plays continues every fall when the Dublin Theatre Festival is held premiering works by Irish and international playwrights.

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