Dublin – My Bittersweet Symphonie

Just got back from town with my co-worker Andreina and her husband Simon. We had such a great time drinking a beer at the Market Bar and then having Tapas and Sangria at Havana. That place where Havana is (all the way south from George Street) is amazing and full of NORMAL people (well as normal as they get around here ;-))! Well, I had to catch the latest bus back up north where I live unfortunately… The thing is, everytime I have a nice night out in Dublin I really think that I could have had an amazing time in this city had I just lived closer to the city centre. Yeah some days it’s smelly but you’ve got all the pubs and bars. Of course had I had a group of people that knew their way around here to go out with, too, probably would have made a huge difference. Dang. It’s days like that when I curse at my office for being so boring and never going out after work on the weekends (and we’re all around the same ages more or less). Everybody just lives in their own kind of bubble. Roommates aren’t better cause they’re working weird shifts. Just saw my one roommate go out with her sister and another girl when I got back but no invitation along. Bummer. Well, actually might be safer to stay in tonight. There’s a helicopter circling over head and a police car with 4 guardi stopped some drunk guys that were walking on the sidewalk in front of me on my way home and they got them the pet down. Yeah, looks like it’s just another night in the ghetto.

Anyways, the whole point of this entry is that I’m sure I could have befriended Dublin much more, had I been in a different area and had a group of people who could have taken me to all the cool places that only locals know off. Bummer. Makes me feel really bad or almost regret (though I couldn’t really have done it any different) how it all went and how I’m not a big fan of Dublin even though it does have its fun parts. But hey, it’s been hiding them from me pretty well.

Oh and to my defence, another typical Dublin story that comes back to mind, just as I start to feel bad about not liking the town that much: When I walked to the bus stop this evening to get to town there was this guy leaning over on the side walk and he was just puking like a mad man. Sooo nasty! And it was 7pm.
On the bus back to my borough this guy sits down next to me. At one point he takes out his cell phone and starts talking: “Ja hi, naja mir geht’s ganz gut nur langweilig ist mir. Die Stadt gefรคllt mir nicht so. Total dreckig hier und so” I was like huh?! Well he was still on the phone when I had to get off the bus otherwise I would have totally said something like “I know how you feel” in German to him. But I just made him get up so I could get out of the bench and then said “danke” and just smiled at him. Should have seen his face! ๐Ÿ˜€

Ah well, good night world!

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Elections

Election Poster in DublinFor the past few weeks there’ve been loads of posters on the streets showing heads of different Irish politicians. Obviously elections were coming up! From what I’ve seen, PR for the politicians is by far not as mad as in the US nor Germany. I think people were still more bummed about Liverpool losing that soccer (ok, football…) match than they were excited about the elections yesterday. I did actually see one cutie politician campaigning in a shopping centre and by his looks alone I would have voted for him but well I’m not Irish. ๐Ÿ˜‰ So girls, check him out.
Anyways, this article on yahoo was pretty interesting as it explained some of the backgrounds and the preliminary results of yesterday’s election:

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Last Minute Dublin

Well my days here in Dublin are numbered so when my company sent me to the city centre to do some field research yesterday of course I used the opportunity to check off some of the touristy things from the list. So once I was done with my research, I headed to the National Museum and toured that in half an hour. Well, I had been meaning to check out the Tara Brooch and since there’s no admission fee I did that. Cute museum, of course totally lame after seeing the British Museum earlier this month. The guards/guides were super friendly though and this one guy showed me where that brooch was and told me the hole story about it. Irish kindness. I actually bought a book at their store because I’d been meaning to get one on world history that’s short and with loads of pictures to read up on that since I feel like I know shit about history and this one looked quite good.
Looked at the parliament building from the outside and took a peek at the National Library and then even had time to walk around most of the National Gallery. Not a big fan of religious paintings or the ones with huge people and fat women in them but they did have a Picasso and a Monet and a couple of other nice paintings and hey it was for free. ๐Ÿ˜‰
I then wandered off to Merrion Square to take a photo of Oscar Wilde’s statue, which looked quite cool. Also managed to buy a bodhran (Irish drum) stick for Juliane’s friend as she had asked me to and to get some groceries at the Asian Market. I had figured that the streets were packed anyways and heading home would take just as long as just staying in town a bit more and taking a later bus. So I did that, picked up a cheese pizza at ALDI and then was wrecked. Exhausting!
So happy that it’s Thursday already. One more day until the weekend! Yay! I rented a car for Sunday and will head up to Northern Ireland to look at the Giant’s Causeway – the only thing that’s still on my “want to see list”. That’s gonna be the 4th country I’ll be in this month…. Wow. ๐Ÿ™‚

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Keeping Busy

Don’t feel like blogging right now but let’s see what comes out of it anyways ๐Ÿ˜‰
Just a small recap about the weekend and other things interesting enough to be worth writing down.
Friday after work I picked up my friend Anke from the airport and we spent a nice night chatting. Felt like a girly sleep-over. ๐Ÿ™‚ Of course Saturday we did touristy things. I made her look at the Book of Kells with me but it was much better than I had anticipated. Well made presentation of how they created the book and then of course the old library of Trinity College was really impressive. Reminded me of Harry Potter.
Afterwards we grabbed some lunch and coffee from Starbucks. Well, we had wanted to go to the park and eat it on a bench but it started raining (this is Ireland afterall) so we settled for standing in front of a pub with a smoking awning. Later we continued our tourist tour and walked along the regular places like the castle, Ha’Penny Bridge, Christ Church Cathedral… until we had dinner at Shan Indian Restaurant. The Chicken Tikka Masala and especially the Channa Masala (chickpeas) was gorgeous and of course we had to have a Mango Lassi, too. Yum! I much prefer this Britainized food to most authentic Indian. Or was that authentic, too and just from a different region?! Who knows!
Sunday we went shopping at Dundrum Town Centre, one of Europe’s best malls aparently. The tram ride there was fun and my was that mall nice! Great stores and both Anke and I got some tops and a belt. Clothes are the only thing that’s not super expensive here really. We actually spent about 3 or 4 hours there and after sitting down at Starbucks (again!) we headed back to the city centre, got some souvenirs and then went home.
Had a lovely dinner of penne with tomatoes and bell pepper after I had nearly gotten a heart attack because I thought we had loads of food for dinner but didn’t. Well thankfully Anke was fine with just pasta and veggies without sauce. We then just hung out on the sofa, watched Pride and Prejudiceand drank our cider/shandy. Great weekend!

The week has been fine so far. I got a new project at work that I was working on late today. Was sitting around much of the afternoon but then of course had to do that around 4:30 then and wound up staying there with my boss until 6:30. Ah not too bad but I don’t like working over-time when you were free all afternoon really.

Tomorrow is only half a day for me (hopefully) and then I’ll pack my suitcase and Thursday at the crack of dawn I’ll fly home for 4 days. Yay! Not looking forward to riding the train up to my home town from Frankfurt as I’m sure it’ll be packed. I couldn’t even get a reservation when I booked my ticket for it. :-/

One of my professors finally emailed me about grading my thesis. Yay! I think I might have the other one’s email about that somewhere in my outlook from last year so hopefully they’ll accept that, too, and don’t want a recent one…. I set back the counter to August 15th because of that whole email issue but either way I want to hand it in end June/beginning July depending on when I’m allowed to (you have to be signed up for it for at least 6 weeks).

Ah well, for not feeling like blogging I don’t think it turned out too bad now, did it? My nail polish on my toenails is dry now so I’ll hop into my bed and read The Devil Wears Prada.for a bit. Really enjoying that book.
Smoochie my dears! :-*

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