Shane Hegarty's encyclopaedia of modern Ireland
They look slightly lost. They usually are. They clutter paths, holding their giant green hats in one hand while the other tries to steady a map as it whips about in the gale. It is typically one of those free maps that features more ads than geography. They can't find their way to the National Museum of Ireland, but they know that several enormous Eddie Rocket's dominate the landscape.
In the cities they wander around looking for their bus, looking for a tour bus or just trying to avoid being hit by a bus. They wait patiently for the green man at pedestrian crossings, watching in bemused despair as Irish parents drag their kids across the road in some crazy game of chicken with a juggernaut.
In the countryside they crawl along the motorways and boreens in search not just of their destinations but also of signposts for their destinations. When they find one they marvel at how the same town can be signposted as being in two completely different directions. At how a town can be five kilometres away and then, two kilometres further up the road, is suddenly six kilometres away.
In the pubs they are the ones tapping their feet and applauding the session musicians, while the locals grumble about the noise and ask the barman to up the volume on Sky Sports. Between bouts of complaining that a declining tourist trade will ruin business, publicans whinge about how it can be possible for four Germans to sit over a glass of Guinness for two hours.
But the tourist industry is in decline. At least that's what they've been telling us for pretty much the entire time that it has been booming. This time, we're told, tourists really aren't coming as much as they used to.
And is it any wonder, given that we spend so much time telling them how rubbish Ireland is? You wouldn't want to come here for your holidays, we tell them repeatedly. The weather's miserable, isn't it? Everything's a shocking rip-off. Most expensive country on the planet, apparently. And violent. Have you been racially abused yet? The roads are dreadful. We're a very ugly race, aren't we?
We beat ourselves up over a perceived lack of fáilte, but we are still always willing to help a couple of tourists, especially when we see them wandering the big cities, with bum bags sagging from their bellies and their cameras draped from their necks, while gangs of dodgy-looking kids execute pincer movements. It's always nice to show some hospitality, although you wonder if the Germans have a polysyllabic word that sums up the guilt that you feel when, having offered a couple of lost tourists directions, you later realise that you sent them to the wrong place altogether.