Dublin – My Bittersweet Symphonie
Just got back from town with my co-worker Andreina and her husband Simon. We had such a great time drinking a beer at the Market Bar and then having Tapas and Sangria at Havana. That place where Havana is (all the way south from George Street) is amazing and full of NORMAL people (well as normal as they get around here ;-))! Well, I had to catch the latest bus back up north where I live unfortunately… The thing is, everytime I have a nice night out in Dublin I really think that I could have had an amazing time in this city had I just lived closer to the city centre. Yeah some days it’s smelly but you’ve got all the pubs and bars. Of course had I had a group of people that knew their way around here to go out with, too, probably would have made a huge difference. Dang. It’s days like that when I curse at my office for being so boring and never going out after work on the weekends (and we’re all around the same ages more or less). Everybody just lives in their own kind of bubble. Roommates aren’t better cause they’re working weird shifts. Just saw my one roommate go out with her sister and another girl when I got back but no invitation along. Bummer. Well, actually might be safer to stay in tonight. There’s a helicopter circling over head and a police car with 4 guardi stopped some drunk guys that were walking on the sidewalk in front of me on my way home and they got them the pet down. Yeah, looks like it’s just another night in the ghetto.
Anyways, the whole point of this entry is that I’m sure I could have befriended Dublin much more, had I been in a different area and had a group of people who could have taken me to all the cool places that only locals know off. Bummer. Makes me feel really bad or almost regret (though I couldn’t really have done it any different) how it all went and how I’m not a big fan of Dublin even though it does have its fun parts. But hey, it’s been hiding them from me pretty well.
Oh and to my defence, another typical Dublin story that comes back to mind, just as I start to feel bad about not liking the town that much: When I walked to the bus stop this evening to get to town there was this guy leaning over on the side walk and he was just puking like a mad man. Sooo nasty! And it was 7pm.
On the bus back to my borough this guy sits down next to me. At one point he takes out his cell phone and starts talking: “Ja hi, naja mir geht’s ganz gut nur langweilig ist mir. Die Stadt gefällt mir nicht so. Total dreckig hier und so” I was like huh?! Well he was still on the phone when I had to get off the bus otherwise I would have totally said something like “I know how you feel” in German to him. But I just made him get up so I could get out of the bench and then said “danke” and just smiled at him. Should have seen his face! 😀
Ah well, good night world!
Elections
For the past few weeks there’ve been loads of posters on the streets showing heads of different Irish politicians. Obviously elections were coming up! From what I’ve seen, PR for the politicians is by far not as mad as in the US nor Germany. I think people were still more bummed about Liverpool losing that soccer (ok, football…) match than they were excited about the elections yesterday. I did actually see one cutie politician campaigning in a shopping centre and by his looks alone I would have voted for him but well I’m not Irish. 😉 So girls, check him out.
Anyways, this article on yahoo was pretty interesting as it explained some of the backgrounds and the preliminary results of yesterday’s election:
Last Minute Dublin
Well my days here in Dublin are numbered so when my company sent me to the city centre to do some field research yesterday of course I used the opportunity to check off some of the touristy things from the list. So once I was done with my research, I headed to the National Museum and toured that in half an hour. Well, I had been meaning to check out the Tara Brooch and since there’s no admission fee I did that. Cute museum, of course totally lame after seeing the British Museum earlier this month. The guards/guides were super friendly though and this one guy showed me where that brooch was and told me the hole story about it. Irish kindness. I actually bought a book at their store because I’d been meaning to get one on world history that’s short and with loads of pictures to read up on that since I feel like I know shit about history and this one looked quite good.
Looked at the parliament building from the outside and took a peek at the National Library and then even had time to walk around most of the National Gallery. Not a big fan of religious paintings or the ones with huge people and fat women in them but they did have a Picasso and a Monet and a couple of other nice paintings and hey it was for free. 😉
I then wandered off to Merrion Square to take a photo of Oscar Wilde’s statue, which looked quite cool. Also managed to buy a bodhran (Irish drum) stick for Juliane’s friend as she had asked me to and to get some groceries at the Asian Market. I had figured that the streets were packed anyways and heading home would take just as long as just staying in town a bit more and taking a later bus. So I did that, picked up a cheese pizza at ALDI and then was wrecked. Exhausting!
So happy that it’s Thursday already. One more day until the weekend! Yay! I rented a car for Sunday and will head up to Northern Ireland to look at the Giant’s Causeway – the only thing that’s still on my “want to see list”. That’s gonna be the 4th country I’ll be in this month…. Wow. 🙂