Last Post – Photo Shooting with Vivien!

Time for a new Blog!

ENGLISH: Guys it’s time for a new blog, since I am running out of space on this one. So for all my new pictures (especially from Africa) please use the new one: https://thistimeafrica.wordpress.com/

DEUTSCH: Hey zusammen, es ist Zeit für einen neuen Blog da dieser hier kaum noch Speicherplatz bietet. Meine neuen Bilder (und besonders die aus Afrika) findet ihr ab sofort auf meinem neuen Blog unter: https://thistimeafrica.wordpress.com/ 

 

Welcome Tess, Berlin greets you with lots of sun (and fun :D)!

Weekend in Switzerland

Kilimanjaro Video

Great video that summarizes what I will attempt to do in August: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8a2eUwwM6E

Help me raise money for those in need! – http://www.justgiving.com/Nancy-Timm

Cold feet, runny nose and pure exhaustion 5895m up high – doesn’t sound convincing? I thought that myself when I heard about the Kilimanjaro Challenge organized by Accenture und VSO. But after reading more about that challenge and the good that comes with it, I signed up for a charity walk up the Kilimanjaro Challenge from August 26th – September 5th 2012 in order to raise money for people in need.

I need your support!

I can’t master that challenge alone, I need your support please. This trip is organized by Accenture and VSO which are specialized in sending professionals to developing countries. I will be joined by other Accenture colleagues from all over the world. This challenge consists of 2 parts:

1. I have to raise £2800 until June 5th for VSO
2. I have to somehow get to the top of that mountain

Unfortunately you can only support me with the first part – the collection of donations. I would be very grateful if you decide donate some money.  Every amount counts!

WHY should you support me?

Your donations will go directly to VSO who will fund voluntary supporters that sign up to go on projects to fight against Aids, famine and the lack of education. The donations will not be used to cover my expenses; these will be paid for by myself. I will also visit one of these projects in Kenya to see how the money I raised is used.

HOW can you support me?

You can support me by donating money that will directly go to the VSO charity. Donations can be made through my website: http://www.justgiving.com/Nancy-Timm.

To date I have raised a total of 370 Pounds. I have a long way ahead of me to reach the £2800. I hope that a lot of you will join me in this endeavor and I thank you very much in advance!

Links:
Donations: http://www.justgiving.com/Nancy-Timm
VSO: http://www.vso.org.uk/
Kilimanjaro Challenge 2012: http://treks.vso.org.uk/kili2012/

Vietnam (Saigon, Nha Trang, Hanoi)

Hong Kong

Snapshots from Roadtrip with my Girls

USA May 2011

Meine Wohnung in Berlin!

Cologne Carnival

Thanks for this amazing weekend girls. Can’t wait to do it again next year – but starting Thursday all the wa to Tuesday So get the training started!

Madrid

Graduation

Bali and Singapore

Let’s be sentimental…

One day to go and I will be leaving. Despite all the annoying stuff with the university, I did have an amazing year in Ireland. I really came to love the country and most of all the people. I visited a lot of places and had great adventures with a lot of friends. While I am going to miss everything, there are a few people I am going to miss the most…

Gillian

What a woman! I never met someone like her in my life and never want to miss that again. Sometimes I felt like a little student, just listening to all her wisdom. But I learned so much from her and so many things she said and did will help me become a better person. I am expecting her in Germany soon…

Isabell

One of the most fun and easy going people I ever met. It is always so much fun to hang out with her (except when she is stressed from university – then better not drive in front of her car ). I will really miss the trips to LIDL and the gossiping about anything. But while you are staying in Ireland, Skype will keep us very close. And whenever you go home, stop at my place!

Franziska

Even though we just started to hang out together in the end, it was a lot of fun I had with you. Being kicked out of the park for having a beer or just partying throughout the world cup! I will miss that but I am sure that you will come to Berlin or Düsseldorf at some point and we just take it from there…

A saying says to always leave with a crying and a laughing eye. I have that bittersweet taste right now, but it will be good. After all, we have Ryanair and 60 Euro Roundtrip flights from Berlin to Dublin!

Last weekend in Ireland!

Time is just running away so quickly. All of a sudden my last weekend in Ireland is already over. But at least – it was a great one.

On Friday I had my farewell and invited a lot of people. A few couldn’t make it because they were very busy with the end of the summer term and all the assignments. But that made me even happier when a few people from my class showed up, despite all the workload. The day before I made two big bowls of potato salad and had loads of sausages ready. Gil already warned me that a lof of my Irish guests wouldn’t eat anything, although I said that its a BBQ. She proved to be right, only all the Germans ended up eating. But at least they liked it – well, that’s what they said There was enough left for me, Isabell and Julio when we returned to my house at 4am to finish the rest of the sausages and the salads. Yummy midnight snack…

It was a great night with loads of friends!

On Saturday we just went out to a Pub and I made a funny discovery. I was talking to some Irish people about stuff we drink in Germany. We came across Banana juice and they said that this is just disgusting. That is so funny, considering that Banana juice is something very normal to most Germans and something so disliked by the Irish…

DONE!

I am so happy. After months of researching the banking crisis in Ireland and endless drafts… I am finally done and just got the bound version of my dissertation dropped off. I am so happy. From now on… FREEDOM! I am so looking forward to my goodbye party later and the last days in Ireland. Although I will be missing a lot of people very much…. Gillian gave me two presents yesterday and a very sweet card. That goodbye will be hard. But I expect her in Germany soon…

University Video

I had to give a short comment on why I chose my university and the video was posted on the schools’ website. AFter looking at the video I just though… What a terrible accent. Why did no one ever tell my how terrible it sounds??? Time to go back to Germany and speak German hehe

Nancy the monkey

In-between writing my thesis I really needed a break and still had some points on my Ireland-list. Therefore Gil, I and some of her friends went to Kerry for the weekend. Kerry is southwest and has a beautiful landscape.

We got there on Friday and drove around the Dingle Peninsula, also stopping in Dingle. This is where the Dolphin lives and boats always leave from Dingle out to the Atlantic to spot the Dolphin, who’s name is Fungi .

On saturday mostly all of us had the plan to climb up the highest mountain of Ireland – the Carrantuohill with a height of 1050 metres. The weather did not look very promising, with lots of rain and even more fog. But we were determined to climb that mountain. The easiest and fastest way to get up the mountain is via the Devil’s Ladder/ Staircase. And the name is really true. I was scared to death on that thing, just walking in the monkey position with the hands and feet on the ground. The Ladder is so steep and high that this alone is already a challenge – but don’t we like the whole package??? Here is a good video of the Ladder, which I didn’t make (how could I with both hands on the ground???) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6YHFKPJfHY&feature=related

While we were on the Ladder it started to rain and heavy wind came up. I really thought I am just going to fall down. On top of that, I don’t have proper gear as all the others so I was wearing my runners instead of climbing shows. (Gil has good hiking shoes but also wore runners out of sympathy – so cute ) So my runners were soaked in water and mudd and me feet were wet as s… We finally made it to the Summit and posed at the cross, but didn’t stay too long, because it was freezing. We met a nice old man – Dani – on the way who decided to become our tour guide and show us a better way down than that staircase (and I swear that I would have not gone down that thing!) Downhill was nearly worse than up, since it was very steep at some points and you basically saw where you will fall when you slip. And I slipped so often….

After 5,5 hours we were back at the cars and just wanted to get out of those shoes. After a quick shower we then drove around the Ring of Kerry and to Ladies View and enjoyed the landscape. It is so beautiful there, it’s crazy! Then we stuffed ourselves with some food and a beer and went to bed.

What a nice trip with such nice people!!!

When in Cork, do as the Cork people do….

Last weekend my classmate Olive invited the whole class to her house in Cork, but just the girls ended up going. I decided to just head down for one night and Moya picked me up on Saturday. We had a great craic there and went to see the city of Kinsale and went out in Cork city. It was a lot of fun and I learned some valuable things.

First

Sarah told me the pick up lines you need to know when you want to meet someone in Cork. (I am not interested in that at all, but thought it was very funny when she told us.) She told us that the following lines can be used:

1. Do you have a farm?
2. Does your farm have road frontage?
3. Is your land fertile?

Apparently these questions will indicate whether this guy is wealthy or not.

Second

SHIFT AND DRIFT. I have never heard of that before but the girls also told me that. Apparently a shift and drift is when you meet a guy on a night out, kiss him and never know his name or phone number. Two of the girls tried it out that night and we were just having a laugh watching them. I am not sure whether one of those pick up lined helped them with it…

Loads of things learned on that trip, but I surely do not intend to use the pick up lines EVER or try out a shift in drift. But the girls went by the saying… When in Rome, do as the Romans do!

…

Sarah brings the Sun!

Sarah came to visit me for the weekend and it was sooo much fun. The weather forecast didn’t look very good, but in the end it just rained for 10 minutes. But we didn’t care if its going to rain on sunday, since the whole day was planned with sitting in Pubs and watching the World Cup games. And Germany did so well… We won against England 4:1 and it was just amazing.

The day before we did the Viking Tour, which I planned on doing since a while. The tours are in these old car-boat-something combinations from WW2 and apparently ours was actually involved in the D-Day – well, who knows! The cool thing is that it drives you through the street and then drives into the water. So we got a tour on land and on sea

I have to recall one story the tour guide told us on the tour. When we were on the water we saw that big old ship just sitting there. A lot of very nice – and expansive – building were build around that area and the people from some of the apartments complaint about that rusty ship in front of their windows. But since it was only the one side of the water that complaints about it, the owner of the ship just redid this one side. The other side was left the way it looked before. So now there is a ship in the water where one side looks nice and new and the other is old and rusty. And just because the owner of the other side didn’t complain. I bet the ones that did complain were Germans . But I thought that this is so Irish. “We do what we have to do, but that’s it”. Such cool people!

Sarah was a very cool tourist. When I asked her what she wants me to show her, she said just some sights and then we do the cool stuff. That is shown in the amount of pictures we took . most of the time we were just having a good time, going out or chilling in the park. You are very welcome to come back Sarah

Cheers!

I noticed again some funny things about how the Irish drink. I already talked about it in my post “Typical Irish” but here are some other things.

1) I realized that the things people drink here are kind of reversed. While there are some things guys just would drink in Germany or girls wouldn’t necessarily drink (that much), here it is just one big pool of alcohol from which everyone drinks. The girls, at least the ones I know, like to drink vodka in huge quantities and as shots. While guys also drink stuff like Rose wine. As long as it serves the overall goal of “getting drunk” – which leads to pint #2.

2) People often meet at someones’ house to drink before they go out. That makes perfect sense since it’s just so expansive in Dublin and I must say that I really like that the Irish always go out afterwards (often we say that as well but then just stay at someones’ house since the mood is so nice). But they would not leave the house before they are totally drunk. Even if that means to take another few shots before heading to the taxi.

Crazy! Its a lot of fun to go out with them though. Just after a certain amount of time, especially when you are not drinking that much, you just can’t deal with all the drunkenness. Then when I am mostly leaving

ALicia Keys Photo

Finally here! he photo with me and Alicia Keys and my sister is in the picture as well – somehow hehe

Anniversary in Éire

Looking at my blog up until now, I realize that I have exactly 52 posts… meaning that for the past year I have posted on average once a week.

One year has just flown by so quickly. It was June 14th 2009 where I landed in Ireland, coming straight from the US. So many things happened, so many impressions and so many new friends. It has been an amazing year and I have 72 days left until I leave this country in August. I must say that Ireland is really a great country and I would encourage everyone to come here at some point! The weather is not as bad as everyone always says, but its not great either! But the nice people totally make up for it. And when you are sitting in front of a fireplace in one of the pubs, talking to a nice Irish, you don’t care about the rain outside.

My list of things to do and see is still not completely empty and I am looking forward to some more adventures! In the meantime, however, I a busy cheering for Germany in the world cup. A month of football craziness and my dissertation in between has just begun…

Going Nuts…

Being  back in Berlin for a few days was so nice. Met some friends and family and had some old ones come back into my life – Jeany .

As soon as I was back in Dublin, I was also back to my data. This dissertation is seriously driving me crazy. I am sitting at home the whole day, talking to no one and just putting thousands of pages of data in Excel. This is terrible. And it doesn’t seem to stop anytime soon. No wonder I am already counting the days to my departure from Ireland and distracting myself with unnecessary stuff, like watching loads of wife swap, friends and the office!

I was then glad to spend the Saturday and Sunday with Sabrina, since I really had to get out! The weather was so great on Saturday, that we decided to go to the beach. We spontaneously bought a portable grill and had a nice barbecue by the beach. That was amazing! Bedsides the rather non-pretty polish girls in front of us, who were so into presenting their on-top weight and the fire we nearly started! On Sunday we wanted to go hiking in the mountains, but the rain totally interfered with our plan. So I went home early to do some more work. (That BTW is the official story. In reality I watched loads of movies the whole day! That’s what you do when its raining, right?)

I added some pics of our house, since Rebecca and I are planning to move out and are currently looking for some new roommates for Alex.

My sissi here again!

I was so looking forward to Steffi coming here again! And the list of things to do over that weekend was very long…

On Friday the big day came. Steffi and I got ready for Alicia Keys by taking a stroll through Dublin. Steffi then got a make up done, in case we manage to get her into the meet and greet, and her make up artist has been giving a make up to Alicia’s dancers in the past. We hoped that was a good sign but when we arrived at the concert we were proved wrong. Since I won the meet and greet and they had my name, they insisted on me going in. All my attempts to convince people to let my sister in failed. Poor Steffi was just crying cause of disappointment and it broke my heart. But we went through the strategies the day before, and we decided that in that case I would go in and get her an autograph. So it happened exactly that way. I then got to meet Alicia, while Steffi waited outside. Alicia was just great and so pretty. She talked with us and we then took a picture with her. I took the picture frame Steffi gave me and let Alicia sign it for her. Afterwards we enjoyed the concert and Steffi calmed down again. Some other day she will have that chance! The concert was brilliant.

The next two days we went to the west coast of Ireland. We took a very early bus and then changed into a tour bust to take us to the cliffs of Moher. The weather was brilliant, translating into a total of 3 ice-creams we ate . We also stopped at a cave and some castles on the way, before returning to Galway.

The tour guide was hillarious. He told us how dangerous the cliffs were and that some people always went too far – actually falling 210 meters into the ocean. So he told us to stay off the edge. But if we do decide to go for a fly, we should take a look to the right side and enjoy a very nice view of the Bay of Galway. Another time he talked about the Information center at the cliffs, which looks like the house of the Teletubbies. He also called the employees Teletubbies when they approached to Bus to collect money from us.

The next day we took a stroll through Galway, hating that all the stores don’t open before 1pm. So we took a bus to Salthill and relaxed by the beach. The sun was shining so nicely, that we were even able to walk in the water (a lot of Irish actually took a swim in it – way two cold for the two Germans). After some shopping we then returned home to Dublin!

End of Semester 2

I can’t believe how much time just flew. I am done with the second semester at Smurfit and witch exams FOREVER! That is such a great feeling! I will really miss seeing my class regularly. It was just the best class one can get! Now everyone will go separate ways during the summer…

To celebrate the end of the Semester, Paddy invited all of us for a big barbeque, with loads of burgers. The next day we had our International Dinner. This idea came up during one of our “Executive Insights” sessions, where we decided to have a dinner where everyone cooks something traditional. We therefore had:

• Starter: Potato Soup (Germany) – Nancy
• Starter: Tarts and Mediterranean finger food (Marks & Spence) – Julio
• Appetizer/ Main: Bananas (Costa Rica) – Julio
• Main: Indian Delicacy (India) – Ali
• Main: Irish Stew (Ireland) – David
• Main: Crunchy Sweet Potatoes and Meatballs (USA) – Laurie
• Desert: Tiramisu (Italy) – IsabellA

It was so nice. We all met a Laurie’s and her little girl Sofia and husband to be Carlo joined us and it was so yummy!

Yesterday I then went to see the musical “Whistle Down the Wind” with Isabell and it was amazing. We got the cheapest tickets and when we got there the guy told us that we were upgraded for free!

Side note: How lucky am I nowadays? Winning a meet and greet with Alicia Keys (for my sissy), being upgraded at the musical…. Maybe this is a good indicator for the green card lottery on July 1^st . Let’s see

OK enough distraction for now. I just got to know yesterday that I will have to have read the 23.546 pages of data until June 1^st for my dissertation (and that is exactly 13 days away) . Too bad that till then my sister is coming to Dublin and I am going home to Berlin. I have no idea how I will manage to do this, But it surely doesn’t become less when I keep on writing my blog and counting days….

UCD Ball

It was time for the end of the term – at least for all those undergrads . The UCD Ball took place on campus. Supposedly the biggest private party in Europe! But it wasn’t a fancy ball, but more a festival with bands playing all day. One of the acts were… and now hold you belly’s from laughing… the Vengaboys.

The weather was behaving well and me, Gillian, Rob and Isa had a great time. Just the way home was dreadful… I walked for nearly 45 minutes and fell pretty badly. So now my hands are bleeding and I look like Jesus around Easter years back…

Nina – new Irish inhabitant

Dublin welcomes a new inhabitant, at least for a few months. Nina, who I met in Hamburg three years ago, moved to Dublin last Wednesday and stayed with me for the first few days. But already on her first night did we find a new place for her, but she wasn’t able to move in until Sunday. So we had the whole weekend together.

After showing her around a little bit we went out with Isabell and Rob on Friday night. A girl I met at a barbeque was dancing in a burlesque show and invited us to come along. The show started way later that we expected and there was way too much singing for my taste . When it finally started with the burlesque part, I really enjoyed it. I was real fun to watch. I could have just been sitting there the whole night and watch people. There seems to be a whole burlesque scene in Dublin. I should have realized that when Suzan, the dancer, advised us to come in underwear (what we didn’t do ). Anyway, all these people did come fully dressed up and seemed to have a lot of fun with each other. Was better than watching wife swap (and I really love wife swap!!!).

The next night we went to Ireland’s highest Pub – Johnnie Fox – to celebrate Laurie’s birthday and engagement with Carlo. They came with her little daughter and I – again – was busy watching the whole night. They are so cute together and look so happy… I am so glad for her that she finally found someone that great after all she has been through!

What a great day! Tag Rubgy…

Tag Rubgy… hm what could that be! I will have to youtube that!

These were my first thoughts after I decided to join my class team for the tournament today. The rule was that there were always supposed to be 3 girls on the pitch at all time. The guys just introduced the other rules to us, but real practicing was just not practiced. Then we had the first game… Against Accounting, but I only called them the pink ladies, since they were all dressed in pink shirts. We lost….

The next two games were won by us, so we entered the quarter finals. There we won again and against all the expectations we had, we entered the semi finals – and had to face those ladies again. But got better with every game we played, but still lost by one point in the last minute!

Still…. it was just sooo much fun and the people are just so great! There is a tournament in the summer and we want to get to the finals then!

One more thing! We had to rent Tag Rugby shorts and just in the car did me and Isabell realize that I forgot to give mine back. Totally didn’t think about it. I was so busy feeling like an old lady, because every part in my body hurts after 5 hours of sports

Mamuschka in Dublin

Poor Mama Timm…

She was planning to arrive in Dublin on April 2^nd, and since she has such a nice daughter I couldn’t resists to play an April fools on her the day before. My sister then took it farther…. She wrote my mom a piece of paper, which she could hand to the bus driver, and this was supposed to say that the bus driver please signals her to leave the bus. Instead, Steffi wrote on it that my mom would like to be taken to Mars and if he could take her there. She knew that I and Isabell would pick up mom from the airport, but when mom saw the paper on the plane, she surely freaked out.

After arriving safely, we started into the weekend. Since it was Good Friday (the ONE day where you could really not buy any alcohol in Dublin), most stores were closed. We went for a walk in the harbor and had a coffee.

The weekend was supposed to be rainy, but it hardly rained after all. Therefore we could proceed with everything as planned…. We went shopping, ate great, went to the pubs at night and on Sunday went to the cliffs in Howth. It was beautiful and besides my mom needing to see everything, it was also good for me to be forced to take a weekend off and celebrate my new job….

Left my heart in DC

Two weeks just run by so quickly. The only reason why I realized that I was really there for a while was the weather. When I arrived there was still snow laying on the ground, because it was fairly cold. On my last day, however, I was walking around in a dress, enjoying the sun. My Irish friends, back home, even said that I got a little tan . It was a great time though.

It started off with a great bargain of three dresses for $25, went on to a one-day road trip to Philadelphia for a Philly Cheese steak and ended with a great time I had with my friends. A new friend added to the list is Inna, who I was able to spend some time with. Unfortunately loads of work for my dissertation had to be done, so most of the days I spend doing that.

Jote took off some days where we did some cool things, such as going to the Arlington Cemetery, old town Alexandria or just hanging out watching movies and eating Indian food. We went to the Shamrock festival, which was a big Irish festival for St. Paddy’s day. It was pissing rain and we got so wet! It was fun though. we has some beers, found some coupons (worth $20 in total) on the ground and had the double amount of beer. And we saw the Roots live! What a great day!!!

I feel, though, like something happened to me while I am living in Ireland, because everywhere I go now I see Irish people, names or habits. I even found an Irish Chipper in Alexandria, Virginia.

Well that is over now and I am back in Ireland, back in the old stress at university. But only five weeks of lectures to go and then I am done with lectures forever! I am wondering what weather phenomena will then remind me that time just flew by… Probably the summer that I am totally going to miss this year !

My flight back operated normally, although British Airways was in the midst of a big strike by the cabin crews. As a result, on my flight we were being served by pilots who volunteered to to so. I thought that was really cool of them…

Minä kaipaan sinua…

Access – Denied!

Wow that was quite a trip to the US this time. I took my flight from Dublin to London as planned, to then get to know that British Airways can’t issue me a boarding pass for my flight to Washington an hour later.

When you enter the US you have to fill out a questionnaire online and answer several security questions. They all have to be answered with “no”, otherwise travel is not authorized. I have no idea what happened, but I accidentally answered the following question with “yes”:

Do you have a communicable disease; physical or mental disorder; or are you a drug abuser or addict?

Probably no surprise that they wouldn’t let me in with these conditions.

Anyway, I was then in London and this guy from BA tried everything to still get me there. We did the online application again and then it said that I will have to wait 72 hours for the processing. Terrible, I was just thinking what I am going to do in London for 3 days, that I will have to get a new flight and where is my luggage??? Costa (the guy from BA) then called some people from homeland security and somehow they were able to give me permission to enter the states. However, my flight left and I was still at the counter. Costa then tried to get me on the flight that left 2 hours later, and he managed to get me on it – and I didn’t even have to pay a fee, although it was MY stupid mistake! I am soooo satisfied with BA now, that is for sure!

I then had to talk to a guy from homeland security before I boarded the plane, assuring him that I don’t suffer from any conditions stated in the question. In DC I then had to explain it again to the officers and they eventually let me enter the US to find Jote waiting for me with a rose

My luggage, however, remained in London till the next evening and I received a $50 voucher from BA for the delay of my luggage. I kind of felt bad taking this, after all BA had done for me this day…

Kil(l)kenny

Gillian was so great to take me, Isabell and Rob to her home in Kilkenny. We left right after university and immediately met her parents at home. We ate and then went to explore the nightlife of Kilkenny and Gillian’s sister Laura joined us for that. It was so cool! We went to three different Pubs, which were all so different! As a real tourist I tried Kilkenny beer and must say that I don’t like it . The coolest thing, however, happened when we went to bed. It was so freezing, because it is such a big house, so me and Isa were so afraid to change. But then, when we went into bed, I had a heating blanket turned on and Isa had a hot water bottle. So we were able to fall asleep all warm.

The next day we went into the city to visit Kilkenny castle. It’s a beautiful one and had so much Asian influence. We took so many funny pictures and hanging out with these 3 guys is just so much fun! Oh I need to mention that they are kind of weird though . There was a special exhibition in the castle, where you could go into a room, which was completely dark. All there was was a weird sculpture (a woman turning into a vacuum cleaner), a video on the same topic and this monotone sounds. I felt like I am gonna freak out any second, because it was just too weird in there. And then Rob says “I could see that being my living room”… And Gil and Isa agreed! To freaky for me and I had to leave

We went home again, made loads of mulled wine and chilled in the comfy theirs in the living room. We were all so tired and nobody really wanted to go out anymore. BUT it was Rob’s birthday the next day, so we had to get ourselves together!

The first pub we went to was so cool! First of all it looked like an old church, secondly we could draw our own beer and thirdly of all we got 3 free pints of Carlsberg for free – EACH. At midnight we had some baby Guinness (I just love that drink) and gave Rob his embarrassing shirt to wear for the night – 25 Today – and still hot!

We then went to THE club in Kilkenny and danced till we went home. We gave Rob the cake we made for him and all went to bed! When we got home, Rua (Gils little dog) was locked in the whole time. So he really needed to finish his business and decided to do so in our room. I saw that he was about to poop and Isa just took him to the sink. So that little guy had to poop there and the whole night there was this weird smell in our room…

The whole weekend was filled with “Nancy doesn’t like the country-side” jokes, but I must say that I really liked Kilkenny and the country-side. (Which doesn’t mean that I could ever live there!)

City-girl for Life!!!

Winter Chaos- the Irish Way

Europe is experiencing an incredibly hard winter this year, with the lowest temperature in Germany dropping to minus 30 degrees in the mountains. Ireland had its fair share of winter as well but nothing in comparison to what I have seen in Germany or the US. Unfortunately I haven’t been in Dublin when it was “so bad”, but I heard a lot of funny stories that I want to share here. Ireland, apparently, is not just to having snow and frozen streets and therefore wasn’t quite prepared for what was coming. All the UCD students received mails of the campus being closed for a few days and I thought; man it must be terrible over there. But then I was told that the snow wasn’t even 30cm high, they just ran out of salt to cover the streets. They didn’t want people to get injured, so they just closed down everything. They even advised people to not leave the house during weekend. Apparently the reason for this was that they wouldn’t have to put salt on the street during the weekend and save it for the week. Ireland, I think you should always have some salt in stock from now on . But I understand that snow is something rare here… that’s why I am living here hehe (I ha.. snow!)

A study free Friday

The first Friday in the new semester and I immediately didn’t do anything for school. What a promising start…

Instead Isabell, Anna Lena and I decided to go visit the prison in Dublin. So we went to Kilmainham Gaol and it was so interesting. We were told a lot about the history of the city that was connected to the prison. After that we went into Dublin to eat a bite and go shopping. The weather was so beautiful that we just had to take advantage of that and be outside (or inside the stores ).

Later we met up with Mark, Julio, Gillian and Rob and we all went out together. It was so much fun… And now back to studying

A real long winter break – Washington DC

That was a trip with perfect timing. Not just did I get to see all my loved ones again (after a 6 month break), but I was also able to attend my friend Sascha’s birthday as well as (most importantly!!!) the wedding of my friends Gene and Olga. It was so first wedding I ever attended and therefore so happy that it was such close friends that got married. I wish them all the best in the world!!!

Not that much more happened… I basically just relaxed, met up with friends, enjoyed my time with Jote, partied a lot and ate . We went to an Indian restaurant four times during these 2 weeks – that is a new record and I bet, solely based on that fact, Jote is glad that I am gone for a while . We did spend a nice evening in New York’s Greenwich Village, after he picked me up from there.

I was such a great time with him and why do goodbye’s just never get easier when one is as trained as I am?

A real long winter break – New York

I just love New York – even when its 500 degrees below zero (felt temperature). The worst thing coming on top is when Continental decides to just leave the suitcases in London. That is exactly what happened to me, but with the great outcome that I was able to buy myself a nice new coat for $150 – sponsored by Continental. Thank you! (They finally arrived on the morning of New Years).

My sister Steffi and I had a tough sightseeing program set up, which we nearly fulfilled. Who could know that the tickets for getting to the crown of the Statue of Liberty are sold out till February??? The biggest chunk on our list was the following:

“Go to Times Square around 2pm and freeze you a.. off until the ball drops at midnight!”

That was quite an experience that is cool to have, but doesn’t need replication. While we were standing there (BTW we had an excellent spot, right next to the stage and with a view at the ball) we met two funny guys from Oklahoma. We all took a picture and send it to a web address that was shown on one of the Times Square screens. A bit later our picture was up on one of those screens. That was so cool! We watched some performances, saw the ball drop and made our way home. We dressed and went out to a club on 5^th Avenue, where there was a rooftop (the whole club was on a skyscraper) and you could look at New York’s skyline at night. So beautiful.

Steffi and I also wanted to – again – enjoy a Musical at the Broadway and therefore got into the discount-ticket line at Times Square. After waiting for roughly 2 hours in the cold (I am so sick of waiting in line…) we got to the counter, realizing that the Broadway shows are still to expansive for us. So we settled for an off-Broadway show and had the seller read out the list with shows available. The only show that stuck to my mind was called “Naked Men Singing”, so we got tickets for that one. I thought we are in the US, where everything is censored and only afterwards did we see comments like “the name says it all” – so we got dressed up and went to the show. Sitting in the second row from the front we then SAW what the title implied. Eight naked men dancing right in front of our eyes. What an experience….

A real long winter break – Berlin

I hoped to have some relaxing days with my family in Berlin, but that didn’t quite work out as planned… I was so busy meeting with people, getting the presents together and eating great German food (missed for so long in Ireland). But it was great! I met a lot of friends that I haven’t seen in years, spend a lot of time with my family and just had a great time!

But as always… it has been over way to fast!

A real long winter break – Copenhagen

I went to Copenhagen to visit Christine, my old roomie from London. It was so great to see her again and I was so excited to explore Copenhagen. She showed me around a little bit, we met with some of her friends and went to some parties. One day was especially fun. Christine has to go see a friend and I was all by myself to explore the sights of Copenhagen – on her bike. It was minus something degrees and snowing, but I had so much fun riding her bike. It is so different from Dublin. In Copenhagen nearly everybody bikes and there are dedicated lanes for the bikers, whereas in Dublin you always have to share your bike line with the busses.

I went to Christiania, the self-proclaimed autonomous neighbourhood, and went around their Christmas market. It was so interesting to see how the people live there and it was so hard for me not to take any pictures (it is not allowed there). Afterwards I had some warm beer with Christmas spices (apparently a tradition from Poland) but by all means, I wasn’t able to drink it.

While then exploring the inner city of Copenhagen and making my way to find the little mermaid (which was pretty successful) I met Christine again.

I bet the Danish don’t like me anymore, since I shocked them with the following statements:

1. What do you mean? Hans Christian Andersen is not German? (I double checked and is in fact Danish and wrote lots of stories, in-between that the little mermaid.
2. Carlsberg beer is from Denmark? I thought its from Czech.

I just had such a great time with Christine and hope she will soon come visit me. Thanks for inviting me sweety!!!

But I will keep something in mind – when I want to try regional food, I shouldn’t just start that on the last day . I hardly stopped eating on that day, because Christine came up with more and more Danish things I had to try!!! But the Hot Dog with 3 different kinds of mustard was quite a feast!

How can such a small island add so much sports and so many words to this world?

Such a small island, only 6 Million people living there and they still manage to inlfate the world with new sports and words – amazing!

During today’s lunch break I came across some new (not really, but new to me ) words that I wanted to mention here:

1) Lads - This is just another expression for my friend. Also widely used is mate!

2) Legg it - This is used a lot and basically means “should we leave”. I am convinced this expression comes from the word leg (leaving –> physical activity with the legs ), but no evidence was found so far. I will catch that up again when I am done with my exams…

3) Knackered – That means tired, or as my group member Rory so nicely put it in the end of one Mail –> a knackered (for nancy that means tired!!) rory!

Wow, soon I will be able to come up with an Irish dictionary and not reallyy referring to the Gaelic Irish language. But I am learning a bit of that as well. –> Nollaig Shona (Merry Christmas in Gaelic).

I never really had a thing for sports, but the overwhelming number of differents kinds and the fact that everybody here seems to play (or at least played) something is crazy. And most of the sports are played outside. Funny enough, since it rains a lot in Ireland. But for sports they just have evrything…

Gaelic football

Hurling

Association football

Rugby union

Athletics

Australian rules football

Baseball

Basketball

Boxing

Cricket

Cycling

Gaelic handball

Golf

Greyhound racing

Equestrian

Extreme sports

Hockey

Ice hockey

Martial arts

Olympic Handball

Racquet sports

Road bowling

Rounders

Scuba diving

Softball

Snooker and pool

Target shooting

Triathlon

Tug of war

Wrestling

Water sports

A walk in the Mountains

I know, I was supposed to go into my study-bunker to never be seen again before my exams are over – but this clearly hardly works. Not just that I am getting better and better in distracting myself (already done with The Office season 2-3) not I keep being distracted as well. Yesterday Gillian asked me whether I would like to go for a walk with her dog. By then I didn’t know that she actually meant hiking up the mountains, so I agreed. Arriving at her house we collected all the warm and waterproof clothes needed and drove to the Wicklow Mountains. Our time management wasn’t so great, because we didn’t think that it gets dark so early nowadays and ended up in the dark. In the mountains, walking through rivers and forests, passing wild dears and sheep’s there is probably no surprise that I freaked out a little bit . We could barely see anymore and had to hurry up to get down the mountains while we could still see a little bit! But it was so much fun and nobody can say that I didn’t learn anything that day, just maybe nothing relevant for my exams !

BTW. Did I mention that the temperatures were slighly above 0 degrees (not that it gets any warmer on the mountain), but thanks God it wasn’t raining anymore when we started hiking.

Lost a life!

If somebody found a life, please mail it to me! I am missing one! Last three weeks are just crazy. Even my careful planning didn’t help much! I am at university from 9am until 8pm every day. And even my next weekend is completely planned for being at university and preparing assignments. Ahh… I am so looking forward to Christmas break. Just relaxing!

Ups and Downs

That was a nice weekend – dressing up, seeing everyone again and partying! Couldn’t be any better! Way too early on Saturday morning I had to wake up to catch my plane to Frankfurt to then get the train to Stuttgart. I was so great to see my family again, who was already waiting for me at the train station. When I saw my sister Steffi, I became so jealous. She just returned from Hawaii the day before and was so brown. It later turned out that everyone refused to be on a picture with her, since we were all looking so pale next to her . A speedy, last minute dressing up followed (after receiving such great presents from Steffi and the others), while being five of us in one small hotel room.  Steffi was so sweet – she even managed to bring one of those real-hawaiian flower necklaces back to Germany, which I wore then for half of the night! My hair wasn’t done to my satisfaction, but it was time to get going to the Forum where the party was going to be. We first received our certificates from our boss, to the all walk up the stairs to receive out Bachelor degrees. The head of HP’s board of directors was there to give a speech, which was pretty cool. The whole night was so much fun. I was dancing with my family and friends. My brother was the star of the night… We were dancing and all of a sudden he spun a wheel. The DJ saw that and Maiky went on stage to go on. So funny. And he never left me alone and wanted to say hello and introduce himself to all my friends. I am sure it was only because I have all these petty girlfriends who he wanted to meet My parents and brother left at some point and me and Steffi stayed a bit longer to spend more time with my friends. I want to raise my glass to Steffi at this point for staying up that late even though she had this jet-lag and hardly any sleep the night before!

The next day we went into Stuttgart to just stroll around little bit. The weather was so nice. It was so weird. The sun was shining so we went to get some ice-cream to enjoy it in the park. While sitting there, we were directly starting at the Christmas market being set up. That was awkward… Later we even made a stop at the beer garden, because the weather was just too nice and I wanted to have a cheaper beer than the ones in Dublin! Yummy!!! We then took some funny pictures before they dropped me at the train station and I started my 8 hours journey back to Dublin. It was sooooo long….

1. Train from Stuttgart City to train station outside the city
2. Train from Stuttgart to Karlsruhe
3. Train from Karlsruhe to Frankfurt
4. Bus from train station to the Terminal
5. Plane from Frankfurt to Dublin
6. Bus from the airport to my home

And there was waiting time at every stop. Just terrible!

And then the worst thing imaginable happened on Monday – I lost my wallet with all my money and cards in it. It happened when I came back from my grocery shopping! It was terrible. I immediately locked all my accounts and just came across how difficult this can be at some banks (if that doesn’t decrease my customer satisfaction, then I don’t know what does ). Fortunately my Jote was so kind to transfer some money I was able to pick up the next day. Otherwise I wouldn’t have had any penny… Keep and eye on your wallets people!!! So the last couple days haven’t just been filled with ups and downs on several planes, but also ups and downs in my mood (very happy in Germany with my family and very sad back in Ireland loosing my wallet)

Wicked

Now I didn’t have the chance to see my favorite Musical again, but only went to a Halloween ball from the Smurfit Society. It was a lot of fun and I was (again!) dressed as a witch. Only this time I have the nose that goes with it (wow that rimes ). I am so looking forward to tomorrow, where I will see everybody again in Stuttgart for my big graduation ball. Jippieh!!!

A Steak for Nancy!

Don’t I just have the coolest classmates….

A few days ago my friend Gillian told me that they bought a lot of meat at the local butcher. I told her that I haven’t eaten meat in month, since it’s so expansive here and I can’t affort it. So today she came to school and brought me a steak! Isn’t that sweet!

If I just knew how to prepare it now…. Google – help me!!!

A Guinness to the Irish

Wow it has been a while since my last entry. Life has become so busy, it incredible. But I scheduled half an hour with Nancy’s secretary to have some time to write again . No much has happened – really. I spend most of my day at University, being busy attending lectures, having group meetings or coffees. Even my weekends are filled with preparation for the next week. It’s crazy! But I dedicate this entry to the Irish people. Within the last few weeks I was really able to get to know the Irish, and to put it in their words – I just love them. I think they are great people that really care about friends. And they are soooo funny. There is not one day at school where I am not laughing. Here are some other observations I made as undercover pseudo Irish Nancy in action:

1) Language

I made some more observations than the ones I already made here

• You are very good – Instead of saying “oh no thanks a lot” they usually say “you are very good”.
• Your man – This one has a funny story to it. When my friends always talked about things that happened to them, they always referred to your man did this and your man did that. But when they talked it always sounded like human or something, so that I though that they are talking about one particular person. I was then amazed that they all seem to know this guy, but then they told me that they just mean one of their friends.
• Lad – I am pretty sure they use lad when they refer to a friend as well. But this needs some further investigation .
• Awesome is forbidden – My friend Gillian forbids me to use the word awesome in Ireland, because it is to American. So right now I am trying to find a good substitute that is neither too American nor to Irish, otherwise I always need to readjust myself when going to one of the two countries. Any suggestions are more than welcome!

2) The way they plan their weekends

The way the Irish plan their weekends is so funny. I talked to another friend of mine and asked him about his plans for the weekend. He said “I will go out on Friday and will then be hung over on Saturday. The same will be on Sunday.” I thought that was really funny that they plan the hang over as an activity into their weekends….

3) Typical names

• Orla
• Barragh
• Sinead (pronounced Schinee)
• Roisin (pronounced Roschin)
• Seamus (pronounced Schaemis)
• Deirdre
• Claragh
• Colm

They are all very pretty names, but you won’t know how to pronounce them unless somebody told you how. But they just love to do that anyway – writing words different and then pronounce them in a total different way. I think this comes from the Gaelic language, but I am not sure. One example is the harbor close to where I live. It’s called “Dun Longhair” but is pronounced “Don Lirie”. That can be very confusing! So make sure to practice pronunciation before you come to Ireland . But I am impressed by how consistent they are when it comes to the Gaelic language. Everywhere you go you’ll find things written down in English and Gaelic. I think this is pretty cool. But most of the people I talked to couldn’t speak Gaelic anymore, even though they had it in school for so many years (uh that reminds me that I still have that plan to improve my French, if I just had the time ).

That was clearly not a weekend you want to have every week!

I don’t even know where to start!!! I will just go chronologically then

Wednesday

I arrived in Germany on Wednesday for my finals and when I got home, I immediately had to start packing, since the girls were supposed to come around and I haven’t seen them in such a long time. When Ellen, Alena, Sarah and me finally sat around our chocolate fondue, we started to catch up on the last few month. So many things have happened…. While dipping our fruits into chocolate and enjoying a Guinness I brought over, we wanted to get ready for our big, final, oral exam (2 days later) by presenting our presentations to each other. We talked for soooo long and then I finally went to bed in my Stuttgart-bed for the third last night ever….

 

Thursday

Thursday was filled with errands to run (doctor, canceling bank accounts, etc.) and some more studying somewhere in between…. I went to bed that night and felt so bad for poor Sarah, who was hardly able to sleep because of all that excitement.

Friday

The big day was here! Today the three years of our Bachelor experience in Stuttgart will finally be over. Of course, I became sentimental. Looking back it was a great time, I experienced so much – so many new people, place and impressions. But that was just the beginning.

Sarah was first and when she was done, she came out of the room waiting for her grade. She was so white, that I expected her to fall down any second. I was so afraid that it didn’t go well and that I will have to find a lot of kind words…. But she ended up with an awesome grade! Jippieh!

Now it was my turn! I went inside and the atmosphere was great immediately. I gave my presentation and it went so well. I was able to answer nearly all of their questions and we were even laughing a lot. In contrast to Sarah, I came out with a really red face. I got an awesome grade as well and couldn’t believe that it was really over now! After Alena was done, Ellen joined us and we all opened a bottle of champagne to celebrate.

Well, but shortly after we were at home again – packing even more. Tomorrow in the morning we had to move all of our stuff back to Berlin. We quickly finished, Ellen and Michi came over and we all went to join the whole class (plus our 2 managers) at a bar in Stuttgart. After catching up with everybody we all split up and went out to different parties. Last night in Stuttgart!!!

Saturday

When Nancy and Sarah want to move, of course something needs to go wrong (that’s why we got the complete insurance package for the car ). But I didn’t expect it to be happening that soon.

We wanted to leave to go get the car, because Sarah and me were both afraid to drive it alone in the city. While closing the door, we realized that my keys were still in the keyhole. Great! We locked ourselves out again, and this 45 minutes before the new tenants are coming. Division of labor was done quickly – Sarah got the car and I had to break into our place again. I tried to ring on some peoples’ doors and finally found that one guy who opened and helped me out with some screwdrivers and an old knife. But the door wouldn’t open. I already saw myself sitting in front of the door, trying to open it while greeting the new tenants. I got frustrated but then all of a sudden it opened. I was so relieved. Ten minutes later Ellen and Michi (who kindly agreed to help up carry stuff to the car) came over.  Not very long after that Sarah came with the car (in ONE piece ) and we started bringing things to the car.

After a long and nerve-wracking procedure with the new tenants, we were finally able to start heading to Berlin where we arrived 6 hours later. It was so much fun to drive the truck on the Autobahn (if I can’t find a job, they are always looking for truck drivers!). Sarah dad was so proud that we made it and we quickly unloaded everything at her and my place. After a quick chat with my family, I went to bed to wake up a few hours later to catch the plane back to Dublin!

What a stressful weekend. I just realized the following week that this is really over now. I am not working for IBM anymore, I don’t have an apartment in Stuttgart anymore, I am a professional intruder now and I am not an undergrad student anymore. How can one person absorb all of that in one weekend??

Never break a habit!

You know when they say that it will be bad luck when you are breaking any established habits? Well, I kind of established some myself. Throughout the last 3 years, while doing my Bachelor’s degree in Germany, I had a few. One was, to always sleep on the stuff for the next days’ exam (with “sleeping on it” I mean putting my notes under my pillow so that all the information will flow to my brain ). Since tomorrow is my final exam (and I remained to be very successful in distracting myself from learning – e.g. writing blogs full of nonsense) I thought that I need to stick to my habit. Didn’t really work out, as you can see on the pictures attached…

Best birthday-weekend ever!

That was great! It always feels so good to have somebody here that you have known for so long. I really needed that.

Steffi got here and I picked her up from the bus stop. Of course – even though my directions were very clear – Steffi ended up at the wrong bus stop. I have to say though that it wasn’t her mistake, but that mean bus driver just let her out to early. Anyway… I found her and we went on to explore Blackrock and the coast, after a short stop at home.

My birthday morning! I knew she was preparing something, but I wasn’t prepared for THAT. When I came into the kitchen, I was placed on a chair and Steffi started singing. And then….. I got a German cheesecake that she brought all the way from Germany. I was so happy, because I have been wanted to eat some for such a long time. I also got some more presents from my parents and I was so happy. That is a way I could start off every day.

After my class in the morning we started our journey to Dublin. The plan was to go sightseeing and shopping. Unfortunately we didn’t think the sequencing all the way through and did the shopping BEFORE the sightseeing. Some new impressions of Dublin, a little less money in out wallets and two backs hurting like crazy (from carrying around the shopping bags the whole day) we ended up at home again. Sabi came over and we had dinner and, of course, a lot of cheesecake . We then drove back into the city to meet the others. We were a small group and went to a Pub in Temple Bar, where one guy entertained the whole Pub with his singing and his guitar. It was a lot of fun and I was so happy that everybody showed up!

The next day we decided to flee from all the shopping madness in the city (one sale after another) and go to Howth. This small fisher city is north of Dublin and we went there for a little walk along the cliffs. Steffi loved it and couldn’t stop taking pictures. It was so much fun! We had some ice-cream by the water and some chocolate cake on one of the cliffs (yes, I didn’t take my cheesecake with me ). On our way back we stopped in Dublin again, to have a drink at Church Pub (that old church that was turned into a pub/ club). While walking towards the bus, and buying a new Irish cup for me (check out the pic below!!!), Steffi realized that she took off her rings in the Pub. She ran back, but they were faster! Her comment was “I guess now it’s time for a new one”. When we finally found the bus that would take us home, we were so exhausted that we just fell into the seat and our beds.

Unfortunately Steffi had to leave me the next morning at 2:30am and I had to study the next day. THAT is what I call a terrible beginning of the day!

I must say – to Ireland’s defense – that it has been behaving more than well when Steffi was here. Not a single rain drop and the sun was shining all day long! Very well done Ireland! Steffi loved you!

Snapshots from work & Goodbye Party

I totally forgot…. I took some pictures during my time at IBM Dublin and at mine and Johanna’s goodbye party and always forgot to post them. Consider that done now

Freaking out!

Currently I have this really weird feeling of feeling so settled. I actually have to stay in Ireland for one whole year now – man I just realized that. Generally that is nothing bad, but for me this is something new. The last three years I never spend more than 4 month in the same place/ city/ country and now ONE WHOLE YEAR – in Ireland. I will grab a tea now and try to get my mind used to that situation and figure out which friends in Europe I can visit during this time, to have some change in the scene…

51 Things To Do Before You leave UCD

The rules were written in a handbook for the freshers ( I didn’t get one – I guess Grad’s are not fresh enough ) and they are just so hillarious that I have to share then here:

A BIG thanks to Agnès who actually sat down and tiped them for me, since I don’t have my own copy! Merci beaucoup!

Some of the points are not for young readers and they are all not serious!

1. Hate Trinity students for no real reason.
2. Hate Trinity students because they’re a shower of useless cravat-wearing, upper class, toffee-nosed, imbred, lisping, masturbating, self-obsessed bastards with no sense of fashion, sense of humour, sex appeal or any redeeming features whatsoever. Bastards.
3. Fall in love with the Ents officer.
4. Make friends with people who live on res if you’re living at home-free gaff!
5. Envy your mates who had the sense to take up a trade instead of three years of Arts.
6. Become an anarchist.
7. Run in a Students’ Union election.
8. Sell some mixed herbs to another student who thinks they’re something else.
9. Buy some mixed herbs from another student thinking they’re something else.
10. Go looking for the underground tunnels and realise they’re nowhere as interesting as everyone says.
11. Join a society because of the free stuff and promises and then never hear or see anything from them again.
12. Throw a snowball at UCD President Hugh Brady.
13. Walk through campus at 5am, utterly twisted.
14. Avoid going to the library for a whole year.
15. Get a load of alcohol confiscated by Pulse Security.
16. Discover where the other lakes are in UCD.
17. Make a new friend during the first week. Then never speak to them for the rest of your time in UCD.
18. Fall asleep in a lecture.
19. Pledge to start studying in October and end up cramming two hours before the exam.
20. Come into campus early enough in the morning to steal all the fresh milk delivered outside the Arts Café.
21. Get a book from the library, read two pages and think it’s a day’s work.
22. Go to a Dramsoc play and praise it regardless of its merit.
23. Lose your virginity.
24. Steal it back.
25. Steal a traffic cone while drunk.
26. Sheepishly put it back the next day after you may have caused a serious accident.
27. Sneak in the Fair City set, down the road in RTE.
28. Fantasise about telling Hugh Brady to fuck off when he gives you your degree but bottle it because your parents are there.
29. Come in with a thick Cork accent, leave with a D4 twang.
30. Use “but everyone experiments in college” as an excuse.
31. Start reading Ulysses.
32. Stop reading it after two pages and watch reality TV instead.
33. Abuse an L&H guest.
34. Bullshit your way through a tutorial.
35. Stay in every res accommodation in the first week. Belgrove, Merville, roebuck and slightly more elusive Glenomena.
36. Spend a whole day procrastinating on the couches in the Student Centre.
37. Say “fock” in the Quinn school. It makes you feel like you belong.
38. Spend a whole day in the bar (double points if it’s the day before an exam).
39. Swim in the lake (if you get caught we do not accept responsibility for any trouble/disease/embarrassing penis shrinkage that may occur).
40. Streak in a lecture theatre.
41. Try counting the number of pat Patterson jokes on the walls of the cubicles in UCD.
42. Add to the number of pat Patterson jokes on the walls of a toilet cubicle.
43. Get sleazed on by Paul Lyman.
44. Climb the water tower.
45. Climb the Art block;
46. Fail an exam.
47. Fall in love.
48. Fall out of love.
49. Fall into a bin.
50. Spend all your money playing pool in the Student bar.
51. GRADUATE.

Call me a Grad Student

My first day at university, how exciting! I can call myself an official Graduate Student at the Smurfit School of Business now! I met so many people and my new classmates. I was surprised that I will only have one 2 hour lecture every day, but was immediately told that the other time will be more than filled with group work and presentations. Still cool – nice student life.

The campus is great! These old red-brick buildings within that beautiful park!  I am looking forward to studyig here!

I was brought back to earth pretty soon, when we were told that the application process for most of the “good” companies will close by the end of October. I thought I will be done with all the application stuff for a few more month…

Notting Hill Carnival

Following the kind invitation of my friend Sam, I got on my way to good old London. As soon as I arrived there, I realized how much I miss the city. It was so great! I got to his place fairly early and we relaxed a bit before we were picked up by some of his friends to join the carnival trouble. Another friend of Sam – Antje (thaaaat is a name hard to pronounce for English speakers ) – was also staying at his place. We all joined the Carnival and it was so crowded. We had some jerk chicken (I thought it was just to funny to call some chicken jerk) and I had a fresh coconut. It didn’t taste much like the stuff I buy at the supermarket – this is how spoiled by artificial flavours I am. Antje and I couldn’t hold on as long as the guys and went home, since I was already up all day.

The next day we went to have some breakfast and then joined the carnival again. This time it was even more crowded and we got to see the actual parade. That was nice – all the colourful dancers. Although I could have lived without that one dancer who, all of a sudden, jumped at me. He started dancing and I couldn’t get out of his grip and had to dance with him. All the others were just laughing like crazy instead of helping me… After the parade me and Antje left the others – again – to go see our old roommate Peifen in Kensigton. The weather was, untypical for London, awesome and sunny so we were able to hang out on Peifen’s terrace. It was great to see her again! Later that night we only got some food and went back to Sam’s place. We had some cool conversations and gained some insights into a guys’ mind… (if that is even possible hehe).

I concluded my weekend trip to London with a little shopping trip to Oxford street, before my plane left that great city again!

A Miss and Irish dancing

I just got to know today that this one girl Ylenia, who came with us to Northern Ireland, was in-between the last 5 contestant’s of Canada’s next Topmodel and also participated in the Miss Universe competition. That is pretty cool and me and Sabi even have a picture with her:

In the evening we went to an Irish dancing class, which were offered for free at a hostel in the city. (Joern said that this shouldn’t be to hard- just drink 10 pints of Guinness and then try to walk ) I always wanted to dance that when I am in Ireland and it was fun. But I realized that it is not rhythmical enough for me and that the tapping of the shoes gets kind of annoying. But it was great to have done it. Our teacher was a real perfectionist and we learned one whole performance, were we had to dance in the circle and in line. We took some pictures and videos but most of them look so terrible, so that most of them can’t be shown . But some of them can be found here

• Irish Dancing Video #1
• Irish Dancing Video #2
• Irish Dancing Video #3

(P.S. I don’t know if you noticed, but we are all wearing green shirts (the irish colour) – and that was not a coincident )

History in Belfast

The hostel we stayed at wasn’t that bad, but fie of us shared the room. All the others, who stayed at B&B’s had breakfast included (as the name implies) but we didn’t. So we had to improvise and got some muesli from the supermarket, which we ate out of coffee cups in front of the supermarket. Very yummy!!!

Once everybody was in front of our hostel again, we started driving towards Belfast. We used a little detour so we could drive along the curvy but beautiful coast. We stopped several times to take pictures. At one stop all of a sudden Sabi was picked up by Jack for a picture. Because she didn’t expect that, she shock her feet and her shoe fell into the ocean. That was so funny, but poor Jack felt so bad and offered to buy her new one several time. Since we didn’t capture that on a picture, we had to re-do the whole scene and also threw the other shoe into the ocean.

The three cars then split up and the girls car (which was ours) already went to Belfast. We were told to not do a regular city tour in Belfast, but a black cab tour instead (although our cab turned out to be red ). Those tours are lead by locals who can show the sights but also give some better and personal insights into the whole conflict. I must say that I learned a lot on that tour and understand the Catholics-against-protestants-conflict way better now (but still don’t support it). Our guide Eaman (a catholic – yes we asked, but in a smart way. We asked where he lives and then he told us that he lives in the catholic community ). He showed us the two communities, which are so close to each other, and explained all the paintings on the walls of the houses. He told us how people were always killed and the role of the IRA and the UDA. I must say that it was very touching and I don’t understand why people could be so cruel. He then showed us the wall that was build in-between the two communities, to keep them apart from each other. We were legally allowed to write on it, just as so many people have done it before. Being from Berlin, Sabi and I wrote that it didn’t work in Berlin either. But it’s still so sad that again a wall needed to be build in order to try to bring some kind of peace to the people. Very sad….

We also stopped at the harbor where the Titanic was built and that was huge. It is incredible how big this ship must have been and still drown by an iceberg.

Filled with cookies and lots of new information and impressions we made our way back to Dublin.

Northern Ireland Coast-Tour

Wow what a weekend – it was awesome. I had the honor to go on a trip to Northern Ireland with 12 other people and it was so much fun.

We started with meeting up early Saturday morning and started driving towards the Northern coast of Northern Ireland with 3 cars. The way there was long (3 hours) and we were listening to all kind of music. We came across a band that is called “the Dubliners” and they have a song called Nancy Whiskey. It’s a funny one and you can find the link here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B12msT-dfBs

We had some kind of plan in mind and wanted to see the following three things:

• Dunluce Castle
• Giant’s Causeway
• Carrick-a-rede Rope Bridge

which are all very close to each other.

The Dunluce castle is a castle at the edge of a cliff which was the house of some lord I think . Anyway, what is so spectacular about the castle is that half of it fell into the Atlantic, down the cliffs. The tour guide said that the castle “collapsed into the sea in 1639, taking seven servants and that night’s dinner with it.” We started investigating the castle and found a little whole which needed some further investigation. So all 13 of us went down that whole (and going up and down was very slippery and steep – so not a very easy undertaking and ended down there. It was very dark but there was access to the sea and the waves were just breaking. O our way back some guys found their inner-monkey and started climbing up the stone walls, not thinking about how to get down again. Inside the castle we got a little lecture in old weapons, but most of the girls rather went on to take pictures J. The view was breathtaking!

After a little snack we went on to the Giant’s causeway. This is a stone formation that is very old and large and you get the chance to walk and climb (we all found our inner monkeys by then). There is a geological and a mythological explanation to it. But I like the Methodology so much more that I decided to copy it from my tour guide:

“The Irish giant, Finn McCool, built the Causeway so he could cross the sea to fight the Scottish Giant Benandonner. When he got there he found his rival asleep and seeing that the Scot was far bigger than he, fled back to Ireland. Soon, Finn’s wife heard the angry Benandonner come running across the Causeway, so she dressed Finn in a baby shawl and bonnet and put him in a crib. When the Scottish giant came hammering at Finn’s door, Mrs. McCool warned him not to wake the baby. Taking a glance in the cot, Benandonner decided that if this huge baby was Finn’s child, then McCool himself must be immense, and he fled in turn back to Scotland, ripping up the causeway as he went. All that remains are its ends – the Giant’s Causeway in Ireland and the island of Staffa in Scotland (which has similar rock formations)”

For everybody who is interested, the geological explanation talks about lava that dried in a certain way. Boring .

But the causeway is a great place to take a lot of pictures and there was even a Scottish playing the bagpipe.

Afterwards we went on to the bridge. I convinced the lady at the entrance that I was 16 (she knew I wasn’t, I just asked why they didn’t have any student rate and then she said that I need to be 16 for the children one – so I said I am J ). We had to wait a while until we were able to actually go on the bridge. I imagined the bridge being higher and longer, but it was still great. We got to a small island when the bridge was crossed, where we took even more pictures.

Then it was time to go to Ballycastle – our town for the night. We (the girls) had already reserved a hostel, but all the other needed to find a place to stay first. So we met up again 2 hours later to go eat somewhere. It was Christoph’s birthday so we stopped at a supermarket to get him a cake. In the restaurant the waitress was so nice to put on some birthday music and we surprised him with the cake. After the food we went downstairs into the Pub that was attached to the restaurant, where they had a little band playing. But we all didn’t stay very long because the day was really exhausting. We went back home in the rain and couldn’t call Johanna (the network didn’t let us make any calls), who was already up in the room. So we had to go look for small stones to throw against the window. It took a bid and we were quite wet afterwards due to the heavy rain, but we eventually go to go to sleep…

Run, Sabi and Nancy, Run

Probably not a big deal to most people reading that blog, but a big step for us! Me and Sabi went jogging for one whole hour(!!!) yesterday. We managed to go jogging quiet regularly lately and it felt so great. We are planning, among some other people from work, to participate in the Christmas fun run in Dublin this December. So we need to be able to jogg 10km and still look good for the final picture

Parking the Irish way

This morning, after spending the night at Adrienne and Sabi’s place watching a lot of Sex and the City the night before, we went to the parking lot. Next to Adriennes car was another car, which parked in a very unusual way. Here is a picture:

I don’t know whether it’s visible, but the car missed the wall in front of it but not the tree. So the whole left side of the car is damaged and it just slightly missed Adrienne’s car on the left. Good thing I got my drivers license in Germany!

But maybe this person just wanted to park very efficiently and leave some space behind it for another car. That would have been very nice but for a high price!

(I don’t want to say that the Irish can’t park – this also happens to Germans and others as well. But I know for sure that this person is Irish!)

What a “motivated” student I am!

I was planning on having a quiet weekend and get some of my learning stuff done. Well, that plan sounded better in theory…

On Friday I went out with Paul, Phillip and Co. We went to the club called “howl at the moon” in Dublin where we got in for free, because Mike is a member of the club or something (I didn’t really want to know the details as long as I could save some money off my student-budget). It was funny and watching the Irish girls is just so much fun. It really is a big difference going out in Germany and the rest of the world incl. Dublin, the US and the UK. But I will elaborate on these nice differences some other time.

On Saturday I finally found some time to sleep in and just took it easy the whole day. I went for a long run and was then picked up by Doreen. We went to Nadine for a quiet night with some salad and movies.

On Sunday I went to a farmers market with Paul, where we didn’t find a lot of good things to eat (although a German trailer was there which was called “Hanns Wurst”!). We decided that we would like to eat some hot dogs and meatballs from IKEA (which just recently opened in Dublin and ever since I really met people who have never been to an IKEA in their life. Wow, amazing how commercialized I am when this shocks me!!!). Anyway, we picked up Phillip and Mike and went to IKEA to eat and shop a little bit. I now officially have something living in my room and I never thought that this little shoebox I am living in is bog enough for that. I bought a plant! Let’s see how long this poor thing survives! But something more about IKEA. Since it is the first one in Dublin (I think even in Ireland) people are crazy about going there. Especially on a sunday around 2pm (exactly the time we got there) it is crowded like the Primark store on London’s High Street on a saturday. Anyway, in order to get into the store, people needed to park. And they took advantage of any measure, even parking on the lawn. It was just crazy!

Later that night I had a nice long Skype chat with Jote!!! That was great! I then swung myself on the bike and went to Adrienne’s place to go jogging. Her boyfriend came with us to motivate us to run the 5K – and we did. It felt so great. When I was ready to head home I realized that my head and reactions didn’t work together once again. I wanted to brake, but only had one hand on the brake – so I fell! It wasn’t too bad but I still have some visible reminders on my legs! You see, not a lot of doing from my side this weekend. Good thing work isn’t busy at all and I can catch up on my stuff there!

“Typical Irish”

One of the intentions of this blog was to write some interesting things about the irish culture, observed by a German . Just beforehand, I don’t want to male any generalizations by always saying the “Irish”, I only do that to make the writing easier (these legal people are just everywhere, so you need to be careful! hehe). Attached you can find a list of some of my recent observations:

1) Choice of words – The Irish just love to say some words in particular, at least that were the one I picked up as being said fairly often. Here is a list

• mental (as another expression for crazy or mad)
• fuck (for some Irish this is a real gap filler and is used very often)
• lovely (not said that much but I just love the way it sounds when they say it)
• Doing the dirt (when you are cheating on your boy-/ girlfriend)
• taking the piss (when you are messing with somebody)

2) Irish Transportation – Fortunately I was told to move close to work to not have to take the bus every morning. But I hear stories from other people. The transportation system, hm let’s put it this way: it not completely thought through. The main means of transportation is the bus. This one often doesn’t show up or all of a sudden three buses come right after one another that you start to think of whether the bus drivers had their break together. Then there are some trains, but not one that covers the whole city like in Berlin, London or NY, no here they just stop in the middle of the way. If you want to go from the east to the south, and refuse to wait for a bus, you can also take 2 trains. Both cost extra and some line just stop in the middle of the city and you then have to walk far to get a connection. Here  is a picture of that.

Some of my colleagues, who don’t live close and have to take the bus to get home from work, say that they sometimes wait up to 2 hours. What a waste of time. I, as already motioned, bought a bike to avoid taking the bus but that doesn’t make my way any easier. There are some bike lanes on the streets but thy do have their weaknesses. First, the car drivers don’t seem to think very highly of bike drivers and are not very careful when they see one. And second, these bike lanes often become bus lanes and you need to be careful to not being run over by one of Dublin’s double-deckers. What did I learn from all that? I am only driving on the sidewalks and the people don’t really like it.One other thing that is really inconvenient, especially when you are new to the city or an area, is that the stops don’t have any names and are not announced. So you really need some training in trying to figure out when to exit the bus, especially since a lot of things look very much alike!

Here is also a funny video about the transportation in Dublin which captures the whole situation very well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YmvevAvhyM

3) Roundabouts and Light systems – Driving a car is not just difficult because they just drive on the wrong side (just a joke), but also because there are so many things to look for. There are more roundabouts in Dublin (I think across Ireland) than I have ever seen before. I once asked a taxi driver why so and he told me that this was done to make the traffic flow more easily. I can’t say I have seen those positive effects that often yet, but I surely see a roundabout right in front of my window! The traffic lights are a pain as well. The nice “green wave” we have in Germany (when you start at one traffic light going a certain speed, the next ones will be green as well) just doesn’t exist here. No matter how fast/ slow you go, be certain that the next light will be red again!!!

4) Drinking behaviour - I was surprised and must say that the Guinness does taste good but that doesn’t imply that you need to drink it all the time and loads of it. I was really a bit shocked by the amounts and frequency people drink here. And I guess it’s normal for irish kids to hang out in Pubs even when they are still young. I once saw this one woman in a Pub at noon having a glass of wine and her 3 kids where just siiting there with her, painting their color books. And I was told that this is nothing uncommon… I talked to some people about Irish weddings, because I always complained that there are not that many rituals in German weddings. But it seems to quite a lot in comparison to an Irish one. I mean they are beautiful and everything, there are just no games or many rituals at all. People baically just want to get done with the ceremony and the standard speeches and then go over to the drinking. I once asked somebody whether they do any games and received a very shocked look and said no we don’t want to do that.

5) Prices – I wouldn’t consider that being typical Irish, but I have to grouch about it at some point. Everything is so expansive!!! It’s not normal. My new place will be a tiny room outside Dublin and I still pay 450 Euro. I could afford a whole Apartment in Berlin for that money! The there is a luxury tax which makes a can of beer cost 2 euro and more (in the supermarket) and everything containing wine is charged 3 euro on top. For me this results in drastically cutting back on number 4) but the Irish seem to be used to those prices.

6) Weather – It’s nearly the same in England but I am surprised by it anyway. When you are out and the day looks fine, some clouds all of a sudden show up on the sky. As a German I am like “great now that day is ruined”, but they Irish have the attitude “just wait, it’ll be gone on a few minutes”. And the surprising thing is, that is true. The weather changes so often during the day, my grandma certainly couldn’t live here (she always need a long time to adjust to these changes). But generally it is bad, and it’s only August! I am not looking forward to those short, dark and rainy days that will come up in November… And the weather forecast on TV is an experience. It is very randomly that they are talking about sunny days, but more about that there will be “some sunny spells”, so nothing to get excited about!

7) Organized without being organized – I know they always say about the Germans that they are very organized, but the Irish can top that by being unorganized. I was already shocked when I found out, while living in the US, that there are no names on the doors of houses and apartments- and still the mail gets delivered. I just discovered that in Ireland there are not only no names on the bells but also no house numbers on the doors. Some streets don’t even have names and still – to my amazement – the mail delivery guy delivers the mail. I think this deserves some award!

8 ) Pubs – Often called the living room of the Irish, the pubs really are a central element in the life of an Irish person. But not only do they spend a lot of time there, the Pubs are so important and well known that they serve as points of orientation. There is one corner in Dublin where the signs show 3 different Pubs (I will have to take a picture at some point) and when you ask somebody for the way, they will often tell you to make a right that the 12th lock (a Pub) and then go straight till you reach the Bell (another Pub).

Je t’aime Berlin!

I went to Berlin this weekend, basically to run some errands, but still had the chance to spend some time with friends and family. Sarah picked me up from the airport and we went to have a glass of wine at the Badeschiff. This is a swimming pool which is floating on the Spree, the river flowing through Berlin. That was very nice. When I got home I had some of the nice potato salad my mom made for me and waited for my sister Steffi to come home.

The next day I spend with Steffi and my brother Maik and we went to rent a boat and ride it on the Spree. After that we just started walking through Berlin, I just love that, but this made Maik very mad since he didn’t want to walk anymore. After we calmed him down with some ice-cream from my favourite store, we went home and I had a chance to say good-bye to Maik and my parents, who left for Turkey the same night.

Steffi and me got ready and met up with Sarah and her friends at the Beermile. This is an annual event where there is a mile-long street festival where people sell beers from all over the world. We walked down the mile and I tasted beers like strawberry-beer and passionfruit-beer. After that me and Steffi went to our favourite place in Berlin, an Indian restaurant on the Oranienburger Str., to have one cocktail and a nice meal. We then went home for a short night that ended 3 hours later with me heading back to the airport! Man, was I tired….

Official day of the sayings

Monday at work – nobody’s really motivated to do much. So what is the most likely result = lots of coffee breaks with lots of gossiping. I heart so many great sayings today, that I thought I have to write them down!

1) “This man has potential for more than one woman” The girls were talking about a rumor that one man cheated on his wife here in Dublin and then of said that this and looks like he has potential for two women.

2) “One is wearing two again” While having coffee, we talked about trimming our eyebrows. One of the girls then said that her sister called her one day to tell her that one is wearing two again, meaning that she needs to trim her eyebrows because they are growing together into one.

Wow it’s time for Tuesday and we become productive again I think

And a small addition since I got the pictures now!

Last saturday we had a small Teamevent where we went to Doreen’s house for a Barbeque. It was only the five of us but we had a lot of fun! I as very proud to announce my first potato salad, which got the Jury comment “just like grandma’s”.  So I guess it tasted good

Teamevents aka -workshops :)

My team was always talking about having a teammeeting and I though I can just organzise that, ecause then we can do it while I am still part of the team . Said and done! We decided to go to the beach and got the Management-OK to take the whole day off to participate in a workshop hehe.

So we had a conference call in the morning to predict the weather and whether to go to the beach or somewhere inside. We were optimistic and everybody was heading to Donabate beach, north of Dublin. Good gut we had there, because it would rain the whole day. (The party planner just organized everything )

The whole day was just so much fun. We took over 450 pictures (a small collection can be found below) and were just being very silly. A small extract:

• we used 5 people to try to make the IBM logo
• we did handstands and turned wheels
• misused a red carpet (from a wedding at the restaurant) for a photo session. We were posing and all of a sudden some guy from the restaurant comes up to us. Against our expectations he just took our camera, took the picture and sent us off in the typical Irish way “and now get the fuck off my red carpet”

Even the water was warm and I made up a theory. Here it comes:

The longer you live in Ireland and the longer you have experienced the Irish weather, the more likely you go swim in water (to have any summer feeling at all) right above the freezing point.

I certainly am not here for long enough so all I could do was dip my feet in – but only when the sun was showing !

It wasn’t very easy to keep the event a “secret” and tell everybody in the office that we had a workshop, when everybody’s face was burned. Some looked even funnier when the only thing that wasn’t burned in their faces was the space that was covered by their sunglasses. Too funny to look at and the whole office had a good laughter when we came back to work the next day! Yeah, sun really is a rare thing in Ireland with temperatures around 10-15C and light rain in freaking July!

Pirogi, Mr. Bojangles & Bray!

Since I have been to Poland a lot of time, Johanna lived there for a semester at university and Paul is Polish – it was more than obvious that we need to have a Polish dinner with some Pirogi. They look a bit like Tortellini and can be filled with loads of stuff. We bought some that were filled with potatoes, some with meat, some with cherries and some with sweet cheese. We ate so much…. But it was so yummy!

Friday was supposed to be calm, because I was so tired from the week. Johanna finally came over and we went to go see some movies at Paul’s place. But after talking for forever we started watching the movie at midnight and it didn’t take much and me, Johanna and Phillipp fell asleep so Paul was kind of left on his own with the movie night

Johanna then stayed at my house and in the morning we had breakfast while watching Sex and the City – the movie. What a way to start a day!!! On Saturday I was off to pimp my bike. I bought a bike the week before (I can’t believe I got such a cool bike for only 50 euro, but a colleague is going back to Finland and needed to get rid of it) and it needed some more accessories and – most importantly – a rinse. Now it looks nice and blue and I hope it will take me around for the coming year!

On Saturday night I went out with the girls. We met at Sabrina’s place and, so girly-like, got dressed and talked about everything. It was a lot of fun. When we arrived at the club Mr. Bojangles in Dublin it was still really empty, but we could also go to the one upstairs which was crowded already. We dance the whole night and it was so much fun!

Sunday I was picked up by Paul and we went to get Phillip and Johanna for our trip to Bray, a nice city south of Dublin. There was a lot going on – a flight show and a regatta. But the first challenge of the day was to find parking. We found a spot right next to the beach and asked the guy behind us to please back up a little bit so we can get in. But he was waiting for the same spot and refused to move a little bit. I got really mad with this guy, but we decided to just drive ahead. Phillip said that he will probably be punished by a bird pooping on his roof. It wasn’t quite a bird but when we passed him again (still looking for a spot) we saw that he got a really big dent when he tried to park and damaged the other car as well. So I though… there must be something more powerful up there responsible for justice on earth We just hung out on the beach, had some ice-cream and watched the flight show. On our way back home we stopped at dun Longhaire (pronounced Dun Lire), a nice harbor city for a little stroll before finally heading home. It was a nice Sunday in rainy Dublin!

Church, Museum and Beach (sounds so educative :D)

The weekend started off with at Church Pub. This is an old church which has been desecrated (and I was told that this is only possible in Ireland) and made into a pub. The interior still looks like a church, with even the organ still being in its place. Only that now there is a big bar in the middle of the Church and a club downstairs. It is a really nice place and (surprising for ”Mr. expansive Dublin”) the cover was free. We stayed there till the end and I got home at 4am.

On Saturday I decided to go to some of the (free!!!) museums after the forecast promised some more rain. It was very nice and I even made a nice bargain in the shopping street, where a lot of sale is going on at the moment. We also stopped at Trinity College and took a stroll around the Campus, which is right in the middle of the city. I am planning on coming back with some less time pressure and take a look at the beautiful (apparently ) library. The evening was spent a Sabrina’s place, where we made some very delicious pesto chicken and watched some movies until we fell asleep.

On Sunday Johanna and me planned to go to Portmarnock, because there is a farmers market, a nice beach and sun was promised. It really showed up but not for that long…We bought something to eat and had a picnic at the beach, which was very nice! Afterwards we collected some shells when the rain decided to come to the beach as well! Paul and Phillip came to the beach a bit later and the four of us took a walk on the beach. Johanna and I found a lot of weird creatures in the water – skin of crabs, a thing we think it’s a sea star but looks like a small octopus, etc. I decided to continue walking a bit farther away from the actual water… All of a sudden it started raining like crazy and we had to walk back to the car and through the puddles with our naked feet.

After that we headed back, but stopped in Howth where there was another farmers market (where I bought my first scone in Ireland) and took a look at the seals in the water. They were soooo cute…. Well, that was about it. I was totally exhausted and finally glad to be home to watch some Sex and the City!!!

Wicklow Mountains

My Saturday morning started off shitty – really! I got up a bit earlier to put my bed sheets in the washing machine and be able to hang them before I was picked up. A few minutes after hanging then outside, Julie calls me and tells me that this has never happened before! A bird just took a poop on my sheets – great Julie agreed to wash them again!

I was the picked up by Brixi and we went to get Mara and Johanna. Together we started out journey to the Wicklow Mountains. The weather forecast said that it will be raining heavily throughout the day, so my new rain boots were just about to be introduced to some nice puddles. Throughout our way to the mountains, Brixi was craving for some coffee. My roommate Conor told me to not miss a German graveyard in the mountains but I wasn’t really willing to look for it specifically. But while looking for some coffee we came across a small village where we got some coffee and surprisingly that German graveyard was right beside it. So we did take a look, but the term “graveyard” is way to exaggerated – about 5 graves.

We continued our card ride and stopped several times to enjoy the view, take some pictures and pick some flowers to decorate Mrs. andonna “powered by fairy dust” hansn (that’s the name of the car given by its owners Brixi and Potti). The weather was behaving well although it was very clouded at some points. We even came across an old building where only some stones were left. It might have been a scene from the Braveheart movie – at least it said that on a sign. And this morning, while having breakfast, Conor told me that some of these brick houses are haunted. Well see if a next Blog entry will follow .

Next stop was Hollywood – as small village in the mountains. I know, there are a lot of things that come to someones’ mind when hearing Hollywood. But what e got to see was only a few houses with – of course – 2 Pubs. Kind of disappointed by Hollywood we were determined to find the highest Pub in the world and followed the directions of one of the Ireland books we had with us. Unfortunately it lead us to the complete wrong direction, so we gave up on the pub and went to a near Italian restaurant.

Last stop on the trip – oh by the way it started raining heavily by now – was the Powerscourt waterfall. It was amazing and finally my rain boots had their first appearance of the day. We went climbing on the rocks in front of the waterfall and took a lot of pictures. The it was time to drive home in the pouring rain !

No summer for me this year!

I can’t believe it. I caught myself thinking weather I could walk to work wearing Flip-Flops or if it might be to cold. Then I reminded myself that it is July and everywhere in the world (maybe not EVERYWHERE) it is hot and sunny. And now I just looked at the forecast, because we were planning on a road trip and it shows me this:

What am I doing here? Voluntarily wasting my summer and sunshine this year? It is July…. (I hope you can feel my anger )

But trying to make the best out of it, I bought some rain boots – with heels. At least now I am looking good when it is raining all the time!

What a weekend!

The initial plan was to go to the south of Ireland for the weekend, because apparently we were having the keys to the house of someone’s friend. To nobody’s surprise the keys never got to us (my guess was that the guy suggested that at a pub and next day just realized that he just invited 10 people + to his place for the whole weekend). So his natural instinct set in and off was his phone from then on. Alternatives?

• Bed & Breakfast –> fairly expansive for my budget
• Camping –> no way!

I just got that information when I was picked up from home and didn’t even have any warm clothes for camping. Additionally there was a housewarming party of one of my colleagues, where I really wanted to go to. So the calculation went like this:

0% chance to camp + 100% wish to go to the party = decision to postpone the trip to Saturday (where we apparently get the keys –> p.s. never happened )

So half of the group decided to go ahead and set up the tents, while the other half attempted the party, which turned out to be a lot of fun! But we still started driving south the next morning and met the others in the city of Wexford. Lovely place (as the Irish would say ). We went to the beach and just when it started raining (not that I haven’t been freezing the whole time already) we left to get all the stuff for the barbeque. I realized that a B&B is really to expansive and decided that I might as well cam with all the others (last time as you will see later!).

We had a nice barbeque, made a fire and just had a lot of fun. The group was quite a mix of different people from Germany and some “real” Irish ones. At some point we started to all go to bed and I wasn’t really looking forward to a night with the bugs around me. But at least I was sharing the tent with Joanna, so I wasn’t alone. … And just like I expected it! I was woken up at some point – but way to early in the morning – by a bug crawling all over my face! I jumped up and continued my beauty sleep in the car. Terrible night and I will NEVER camp again!!!

Howth

After work I was picked up by Raiko and we went to Howth, a small fisher village by the water. It was so nice there. We went on one of the tracks and went up the cliffs. Awesome view from there! It was so typical Irish (at least to me); the cliffs, the water, all the green and cold, windy weather. Couldn’t have gotten more stereotypical

Then we went home and had dinner together with his roommate. We had my favorite German meet, sauerkraut and potatoes and I felt like I was home at moms!!!

Parties and Places

Friday started off with going to one of my friend Pierres’ friends. The live in downtown Dublin and we were just having some drinks and had fun talking. I met a girl from France that will start studying at UCD as! At some point we started walking towards Dublins party district–> Temple Bar. We met some other friends at a pub (ALL from IBM –> terrible) and I got shocked. I ordered a Heineken from Draft and had to pay 5:30 Euro!!! Isn’t that crazy???

We found out that the pub also has a club attached and went downstairs. I got really tired at some point and just wanted to go home. Of course, since I don’t know the times of the night busses yet, the bus left right in front of me. So I had to wait for 30 minutes and by then some others also decided to go home and joint me on the bus. This was great, because one of them had to walk into the same direction as me and this way I didn’t have to walk alone the whole way through dangerous Blanchardstown

5 hours of sleep later I got up and was happy not having to take the train into Blackrock (a small university city –> my university city in the south of Dublin) but could go with Julie and Conor (the couple I  live with). The weather was very nice and we let the roof of the car down and started heading towards Blackrock for my viewings. I went to couple of houses and in between had a look at Blackrock itself. It is a very (as the Irish would say) lovely town right by the water. It’s so amazing how the precense of water can fool you…. I felt like I am on vacation In the end I found a really nice place with 2 other girls and only a 20 minute walk from the University. So now, I can’t wait to move there…

(Sorry for the small and bad pictures but my camera is giving me a hard time with very blurry pics, so I had to use my phone camera and somehow couldn’t figure out the right setting )

I was then heading home, having to take the train and the bus and taking me 1 hour. I quicly got ready and went to a Barbeque. It was very nice and the weather kept behaving! We then went to Party #1. It was in Dublin and really funny. When most of the party guests left, the rest of us went to part #2. It was this really big house which used to be a B&B before and it really reminded me of one of those fraternity houses you see in the movies. But the party was very nice. They had a bad that played live music and till 5am we just sat on the sofa, froze our a.. off, dranks some beer and had great coversations….

RR – Rosi and Raclette

I had the pleasure of welcoming a weekend guest to stay with me, until her owner Sabrina returns from a trip to Germany –> Rosi. She is not even a meter high, but much longer. She has a little a big basket and is not very soft to sit on. But taking her out is just so much fun.

Small clarification at this point: Rosi (she was given this name by Sabrina) is Sabrina’s bike and she borrowed it to me for the weekend. Which is great! I will have to go see so many apartments, so with Rosies help I will give my feet a little rest from so much walking and will take the bike instead!

In the evening I went to a birthday party of one of my colleagues and we had Raclette. Apparently it’s very common in Germany, but I never did it before. I was told that it originates in Switzerland…. It is very nice. It’s a big oven-kind-of-thing that stands on the table, surrounded by little pans. These have to be filled and put into the oven to cook. On top of it you can put meat to grill. It is really cool and was very yummy….

Bloody Feet

Man, finding a room is really hard work – just ask my feet! I got an Email today that I could have a look at a room close to the University and I decided to go there right after work. So I had to go from far up north of Dublin to the south of it. It took me 2 hours!!! Amazing –> bus into the city (45 minutes), walk to the train station (and this shouldn’t be the last walk I am taking today – 15 minutes and 1.2 kilometers) and finally the train (amazing 10 minutes). But here comes the big one –> a thirty minute walk to the place and 2 kilometers (I actually checked it on google maps).

The room was nice but I got to know that my school is not actually on the main campus close to the house, but in the other city an hour walk away. I should have known THAT before.

I got prepared for the long walk back and just hoped to get home fast. It only took my 1,5 hours – Jippie!

The conclusion:

• 8 Euros gone for train and bus tickets
• I walked about 8 kilometers
• 2 empty batteries from my mp3 player that was running the whole time
• still NO room.

And the worst! I wore heels the whole time and can’t feel my feet anymore   (but I will spare you those pictures) and my laptop on the bag!

Downtown Dublin

What a weekend!

Friday started off with a barbeque after work, where there were way to much people from work – followed by a house party on saturday with even more people from work. Conclusion = no mor parties with so many people from work, otherwise no chance to get away from it!

Saturday was a nice day though! We went to Dublin City and started off with a cup of coffee where you always get a praline for free! Great idea We then went onto one of the tour busses and took a tour through Dublin. It really is a nice city although I was told that the sun always makes it look so much nicer Well, I will check it out again some time witout the rain… No it’s really nice!

On our tour we stopped to take another tour throug the Guinness Museum. It was very cool, we took a lot of funny pictures and we ate corrots in the Museum . We wanted to get the official Guinness Certificate, but we kind of missed the level on which you can get it. But at least we got one pint of Guinness for free! Our bartender even managed to make a shamrock in the foam! Very impressive And the Guinness actually tasted very good and was topped by a stunning view from the buildings’ 7th floor all across Dublin! There is the Jameson Musem where you can see how the Whiskey is made and try it. But I will keep that one till Jote comes and vistis me hehe

But probably the most shocking fact I learned at the Museum was that the Guinness was only copied. Porter beer was brought to Ireland from the UK and Mr. Guinness thought that he would want to make some dark beer himself. So he set up a receipe and created the Guiness – triggered by his “big brother” (named by the author – me ) Porter!

We finished the tour and the went to the park where an Street Art Festival took place. The sun returned, we met some friends and just relaxed in the park and played with some soap bubbles Great times!

Citygirl sees cows!

I am officially in Dublin! It was raining this morning so I didn’t mix up the cities
I was actually able to sleep through the whole flight from Washington DC to London, during the waiting time at Heathrow Airport and on the plane to Dublin then. I guess that’s even a new record for me! I still arrived two hours later and was very surprised to find that I didn’t have to get a cap but was picked up by Julie and Conor, the couple I will be living with!
We went to a pub, ate a burger and listened to some live music before I finally got to my new home and went – I guess you know   – back to sleep.

That was six days ago and ever since I have been working at my new internship at IBM in Dublin. It takes me 20 every morning and evening to walk to work and I always pass (and now the connection to the headline) some cows on a big green lawn. How much more “Ireland is the green country” can it possibly get? Cows living next to my house (not literally though but five minutes away). I never had THAT before.

The people at work are very, very nice and I have a lot of time to work on my thesis. Besides that… nothing big has been going on so far. I went to the shopping center nearby (which is apparently the biggest in Ireland but I guess coming from the US –> peanuts but still nice), went jogging and just recovered from the not-present jet-lag which I successfully overslept! But the coming weekend will be nice, since I will have the chance to see a little bit more of Dublin outside my 20-minute walk…

One more thing! I really dislike the faucets, although they were the same in London. I am burning my fingers every morning when there are two on each side of the sink and hot water comes out of one and freezing out of the other. I will take a picture of that when I get a chance!