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Chris, who revived his nerd braces for his last days in Ireland, left on Tuesday. Of all farewells, this one was the easiest. I’ll see him at the latest in some months in Bamberg, where we both study in the same department. Thanks for great nine months, Chris!

The day after, my brother, who could not come over during the easter break due to exams, arrived. The two of us spent a few nice days in and around Dublin. Here is a selection of photos that he took:

On the 8th, almost exactly nine months after my departure from Germany, we took the plane to Hamburg and subsequently the car to the house of our parents in Alfeld.

It’s over now. The Irish chapter of my life has ended and I have learned a lot. Not only about Ireland and Germany, the English language or other cultures, but also about myself. I got to know a lot incredible people and made friends, whom I miss already. I hope these friendships will prevail despite spatial separations.

It was nice to meet you, Ireland. Germany, it is nice to see you again.

Saturday morning at an ungodly hour Daniel, Isma and Chris left for the surfing trip. Now it was all equal: two girls versus two guys. Oh, and they really gave us a really hard time convincing them to hurry up in order to go to city centre and catch the DART to Howth before midnight.

Fair enough, I’m exaggerating. Anyway, we finally arrived in Howth sometime in the afternoon and walked along the pier, said hello to the fat seals and took the cliff walk. Somehow I’ve got the feeling that this is almost an obligatory trip – everyone seems to go to Howth with his guests. I can just say that it is absolutely worth it time and again. Especially on a really nice and sunny day. Sadly, we had to leave rather early because Caro and Kathleen returned to Swansea in the evening, but not before recharging our batteries in the Abbey Tavern.

After we had said bye-bye at the bus stop, Michi and I went to eat yummy burgers, started to make plans for Sunday that heavily depended on the weather and went to The Mezz in order to listen to some live rock music.

After what felt like hours of waiting the band finally started to play. But they did not play any rock, they played funky music. Moreover, they we’re a really motley crew: a pale old guy in a jacket playing the trombone, a drummer who could have come straight from the seventies („Look at dem threads“), the bearded guy on the bass guitar nodded like a pigeon, the keyboard and sax guy looked a bit like a German TV presenter and the guitarist, unlike any other guitar playing male in the world, was sitting shy in a corner of the stage. And then there was this other guy who was dressed in a retro Adidas jacket and wore some rasta hat. He totally failed at playing Mr Cool and we just thought „what a jackass“. Well, until he started to sing with an awesome voice. Each song his stage-acting got better and better and when we left we just thought „what a brilliant gig!“

Sunday morning Michi and I wanted to enjoy a full Irish breakfast a.k.a. artery killer in Bewley’s in Grafton Street. The switch to daylight saving time stole us one precious hour and upsetted our plan as we were way too late and could not find a place that still served breakfast.

So we decided to skip it and have lunch instead. While we waited for our meal in the Citi Bar, a blonde in her thirties accompanied by a half-emptied pint of Bulmers came to our table. We could smell from quite some distance that she was absolutely drunk, but being the nice, polite guys that we are we joined the conversation she maintained with herself. Difficult, because she was unable to finish a single sentence. „Aaanywayy“ she frequently said in the middle of a sentence before verbalising another one of her woozy thoughts. Occasionally she looked at her reflection in the mirror and failed at removing a streak of hair from her face. In the middle of the „conversation“ that, by the way, included asking us if we were a gay couple she announced to all the other guests that we are German and left the room.

In order to make the most of the great weather, we took the DART to Bray. Originally we wanted to walk along the cliffs to Greystones, but sadly it was closed to the public due to falling rocks and ongoing construction works. Plan B: climb Bray Head and walk through the hills. Although I am pretty sure that we did not walk the same path as Flo and I did last December, we ended up at the very same bus stop somewhere in between the two towns. I can’t explain it. And, of course, it started to rain cats and dogs. So we took the bus back to Dublin and had a nice dinner with the boys who had just returned from their surfing trip. Somehow I’ve got the feeling that the powers that be do not approve my wish to walk from Bray to Greystones…

„Aaanywayy“, Caro, Kathleen, Michi thanks for coming over to visit me – it was great! I hope I’ll be able to see you in Swansea soon.

Thursday Heleen and I went to Howth. Unfortunately, it didn’t really start that well. Diesen Beitrag weiterlesen »

Sunday afternoon, I met Chris, Tom, Stefan and Lukas/Klaus in the Luas to Connolly station, where we took the DART train („bring your own oxygen!“) to Howth, an old fishing village located on a small peninsula north of Dublin. The 380 cents for a return ticket turned out to be a good investment. Diesen Beitrag weiterlesen »