Sí an Bhrú

The preceding night hadn’t even officially finished yet, as the alarm clock dragged me from a world of sublime dreams five minutes before morning would officially commence at six am. The savoured beverages were still strong on the body and the mind, not too surprising as I had gulped down my last Carlsberg only a few hours before. A hint of doubt on my mind, with the temptation of staying warm and cosy in bed exercising its strong appeal. Yet morning had broken and virgin sunlight was making its way through the thick curtains already, and the day’s plans were too good to let go of.

But what had happened the previous night? Well, I must admit, that Thursday night was one of the better ones so far. Finishing a shorter than normal week at 5 pm by drinking my first pint of the weekend with some colleagues at The Barge –the popular pub just across the road- after which I made my way home to exchange the office kit for something more gregarious. It was half past seven when I met up with Pieter and Gijs at a restaurant that came highly recommended by Padriac –a colleague with whom I’ve worked closely together over the past weeks- a recommendation well worth its merit as we found out. Decent red wines made an excellent combination with the sizeable dishes of meat that were presented to us and although we were a definite nuisance to the personnel I’m inclined to say that we were good customers after all – also given the size of our bill. The bottles of wine were followed up with some pints at a local bar and though after midnight no drinks were served no more (Good Friday had officially started) I wasn’t feeling all too well waking up. That’s what I started with right?

Yes, that’s what I started with. Today. Awesome day. Bo and I visited Sí an Bhrú aka Newgrange which basically comes down to what may have been tombs dating 6000 years back – that’s beating the pyramids and Stonehenge by 500 years and a millennium respectively. Informative guides made the huge heaps of earth and stone come to life, especially when we were awarded access to the central chamber in one of the larger units. It’s really quite impressive that 6000 years ago people constructed such huge structures, especially when we found out that at winter’s solstice and at no other time a year the sunlight reaches down to the inner chamber and lights up the room for about 17 minutes. 6000 years ago! Ireland is full of awesome and impressive historical sites, and we have begun our quest of visiting them all. What Ireland is definitely not full of are buses that run on bank holidays, as we already found out during our Carlingford trip. And as Sí an Bhrú is located some place inland with green rolling hills surrounding it the ‘price’ you pay for this relative isolation is the absence of much public transport. Ha, I only like it that way! Be innovative, car-less as we are, think of some cool alternative! And that’s what we did, cycling from our awesome Dublin dwelling to the train station, putting our bikes along with ourselves on that very train, getting off at Drogheda, and cycling the approximately 10 kilometres to Newgrange. Coupling new experiences of glorious Irish country side exposure with practicality; by 5 pm we were back home in Dublin, having had a fantastic day, and starting to enjoy what would become a very relaxing and rewarding evening. Life is good!

SHE GOT THE JOB!!!

She did it! From April onward Bo will be a proud LinkedIn employee! Awesome :D And I'm so proud of her!! 

The Pub

Inadvertently but not less true I find myself adapting to Irish life to the extent that I spent all my evenings this week in the pub. And it’s not been like ‘I’m going to the pub tonight’ but rather ‘I’m meeting this and this person and the venue happens to be a pub’. Where else? So it was Monday night English class with Sara, Tuesday night watching Ireland – Austria with Bo, now I just come back from meeting Louise and Dan – the former being an Erasmus friend of my sister Anne – and tomorrow it’s gents’ eve with Pieter and Gijs which will no doubt feature some pints in one pub or the other as well. Not entirely surprised but rather slightly amused at the realisation how well one can adapt to a country’s habits by just meeting people and having a good time. Good night. 

Your Italian for my English

That’s what led Sara to respond to my add and that’s how we end up chatting away happily in either language every Monday evening in one of Dublin’s many cosy pubs; one week Italian class and the other week English. I must admit that the conversations in English go a whole lot quicker than when we oblige ourselves to speaking Italian and Italian solely, yet either way I’m having a great time in Sara’s company. Interpersonal dynamics are certainly at odds each time you shift from ‘student’ to ‘teacher’ as in one week you’re correcting one’s language and explaining the grammar behind it while the other week the roles are reversed. She’s great company and conversation topics range from our lives pre-Dublin to all the outdoor fun awaiting us if the weather would only permit so. Teaching and learning while the social life is every growing; Dublin’s treating me well in every aspect!

Vintage Vintage Vintage

Our house grows more and more awesome, with ever more vintage candle stands in the alcoves and on the book shelves that our living room features and a growing numbers of inspiring items on our walls. There is for instance the polished mirror showing a map of how people viewed the world in older times, bought at an antiquary in Carlingford, and added today is an old map of Ireland caught in a warped wooden frame. The latter has already three drawing pins punctured on its surface, indicating the places in Ireland that we have visited. Needless to say that the explicit endeavour is to have the entire map dotted with colourful pins in three years’ time. We found this unit this morning in a lively what used to be shop floor someplace west Dublin, filled with people selling antiques, posters, paintings and woodwork. American sixties music was played, and the rear featured a number of stools, chairs, tables and couches where people could eat organic food and drink fair trade coffee. Spending all the cash money we had on as much stuff as we could carry back home we ended up with a whole lot of new decorative stuff. Awesome!

I had already been assured by my former fellow trainee Jan (who spent 10 weeks in Dublin) that the restaurants here are first-class. Until yesterday we had eaten at some decent places indeed, yet those humble experiences were altogether dwarfed by the tapas feast we gorged on yesterday night. Spending well over three hours on the spot there was excellent wine and delicious food to make sure I felt more than satiated by the time we got home. Olives drenched in garlic and herbs, stuffed peppers, an astonishing combination of artichokes and ham, chorizo as it should be, thin strips of beef, and figs with soft ice cream need little verbal amplification I reckon.

Lets close with the standard line of my favourite radio station here (they literally play my own peculiar mix of music listed in my playlist) in their paradoxical attempt to attract both people appreciative of good music and the broad segment of proletarians who are usually all too keen to keep up with quasi famous people’s day to day frivolousness: “More music less talk on Q102, let’s move on to the celebrity news flash”. Fortunately the latter lasts adequately short to make up for the good stuff. Soon more and better, tomorrow morning week IV in the Irish capital commences!

  

Cats and dogs and the like

We live in Dublin 6. Dublin 2 is the area north of us bordering the river and the splotch above the river goes by Dublin 1. Dublin 4 isn’t far off and adding those up is pretty much where your day to day life takes place; walking from our home to Dublin 1 is half an hour of sturdy strides and we’re in an area where the average tourist doesn’t even venture into, that small the actual city centre is. Now you see, Dublin counts about 1.3 million inhabitants. And as the Irish generally don’t seem to build houses more than three stories high you wouldn’t get those 1.3 mln squeezed into an area that could easily be covered on foot. Today I found out where at least a decent portion of those other people live. The girl and I were to pick up our freshyly ordered bikes in Dublin 24.

The taxi ride there already took close to half an hour –with roads not even too congested after rush hour- and no way would we have found that Halfords unit on our own with the dismal bus system they have in place here. With howling winds, slashing rain that felt like hail stones thundering down, and the night already ink black we were happy to cross the parking lot, dodging puddles on the way, reaching the safe haven of the huge Halfords store. We got our bikes, paid loads of money to the only guy working there in that huge store empty of people, and ventured off into the night, with little idea how to get home.

* Salesman: “Just follow that road and you’ll head back into the city eventually.”

* Us: “The road we took with the taxi? Can you do that by bike?”

* Salesman: “That guy says you can.” (pointing vaguely to a distant figure in the store below the Harfords unit)

The reason for us trying to verify whether we could take that route by bike wasn’t idle as about 20 minutes later we were ploughing our way strenuously through everything that Mother Nature threw at us, on a road that resembled a highway all too well, with cars zooming past us and covering our already soaked outfits with another spray of mud and water.

You may think now; poor Bo, poor Tony, such weather, such hardship, such pain! Such agony! Well, I loved it! We had just bought two awesome bikes, we were cycling in a new area of Dublin that we had never been to before, defying the Irish weather… with the water dripping from my face I was smiling broadly and enjoying tremendously. I was beginning to feel at home and starting to acquire the means to do so! And although I may be a little strange for acting as such, when I stopped occasionally to see how well Bo was catching up, her face was beaming with joy as well, soaking wet and covered in filth. She rivals my optimism and resilience all too well and particularly in those circumstances that becomes all too evident. I couldn’t count myself luckier :)

And the bikes, they were well worth it! Never have I ever owned a brand new bike. Never. I have had bikes that looked new, brushed up well with previous owners looking having looked after it decently enough, but never have I owned a bike with no one else ever having used it before. This is new, and it’s great. I baptised mine James, a fit name for such a slick hero, and Bo’s bike’s called Mary. I bought a lock for money I wouldn’t buy a bike in the Netherlands for, and seek to have it insured soon enough as well. James, what a champ, he makes me feel even more at home. 

Darlingford

“If me and me mate get a ride each time we hitchhike to Dundalk it’d surely be no problem for you lot” said the bloke working at the Adventure Centre – pants covered in mud, Irish face open and cheerful, looked as if he had just dismounted a tractor in the fields above – eyeing Bo with a broad grin. It was Sunday (i.e. yesterday) afternoon, and we had just completed about in excess of 15 km of hiking, only to find out that no buses ran from the village of Carlingford to Dundalk on public holidays. Hence the guy’s suggestion to hitchhike to Dundalk, from which regular buses should operate to Dublin. As I’m writing this story from our living room in Dublin it may be evident that we got there in the end, and much easier than anticipated, as the owner of the Adventure Centre took us along with a van full of Scottish employees on their way to the airport. So that’s the end of the story, how did it begin?

Saturday relatively early morning we embarked on a bus in Dublin, off to enjoy a few hours’ ride through Irish country side, with the sun playing hide and seek behind the white clouds and the prospect of a weekend away from the city with all its St Paddy’s frenzy ahead of us. Carlingford –our destination and voted for as best place to live in Ireland – is located beautifully at the shore of a broad inlet from the sea. With mountains rising up straight from the waterline, remnants of medieval castles scattered throughout the small village and nothing more than sheep and lush green grasslands beyond, Darlingford –as locals tenderly call the village – makes for a spectacular destination to spend the weekend. The ‘Adventure Centre’ where we stayed provided the best budget for value option and apart from shrieking hen party celebrations in the middle of the night proved to be worth the money. Beers and pub food on Saturday evening, red wine and sirloin steak on Sunday, Irish breakfast for a day’s start-up and muffins and scones for lunch made sure that we did not only enjoy the country side by merely hiking.

“When we live in Dublin we’ll be like gone hiking loads in the weekends.” That was the idea. And our first hiking weekend proved to be a promising start of this endeavour, being out there for well over five hours, climbing mountains, making our way through muddy creek crossings, slipping in sheep’s dung, and enjoying spectacular views. Let the photos do the talking. It was *** awesome *** !!

The Green City

At one of Trinity College’s impressive high ceiling decors, with 100-real-candle chandeliers dangling above your head, and a few hundred co-Dubliners around you, the scene was perfect for us to get acquainted with our new home. 10 short movies, all featuring some unique aspect of Dublin, were shown consecutively, ranging from cartoons to documentaries to drama.  With the whole city centre lit up green for the upcoming St Patrick’s festivities I already started feeling at home, walking routes that start to feel familiar, taking a take-away soup from a Chinese shop who’s chowmein had served me well the previous time. And speaking of St Paddy’s…

 … that’s one good reason to escape Dublin! And that’s what we do, spending two nights and three days in Carlingford, a supposed-to-be picturesque village on a peninsula a few hours north of the capital. Should be awesome hikes and cosy pubs and lots of rain. And why we leave Dublin when the nation’s greatest festivity is about to start? Let me quote a taxi driver -sturdy looking bloke, Northern  inner-city slang, tattoos on his knuckles, you may know the type- who drove me to work the other day: “Good for your will, if you know what I mean, driving a taxi on Paddy’s in Dublin, but after 5 (pm) I’m out of there, becomes way too rough. You could earn a decent sum of money, but you’ll be getting a hell lot of trouble, that’s for sure.” I’m not the biggest fan of crowds and drunk teenagers puking on the street anyway, so I’d rather enjoy the more genuinely Irish St Paddy’s in some quaint rural townhouse.  So hiking shoes are packed, and ready to leave tomorrow early in the morning! Speaking of hiking shoes…

… those had come in only last Thursday, along with all my other stuff! The house that already felt welcoming and warm now really starts to feel like home, with the shelves filled and the closets full of my own clothes! With boxed piled up ceiling-high, the first thing I did when coming home yesterday, was ripping them open one by one, until I found what I had desperately missed the past two weeks; my running kit! With two warm 3-course meals and a Guinness per day, not to mention all the sweets and chocolates surrounding our cubicle at work, I already started feeling the taint of my ravaging appetite when not being able to level it off with some decent work-out. So off I went, running along the canal, breathing in the sounds and scents and movements of the city and its dwellers, only to return an hour later, feeling fan-tas-tic! Plans to complement the running with football and golf are on the rise, more on that soon! For now, enjoy St Paddy’s lads!

The black gold

Drink 1 Guiness a day. Obey that easy rule and you’ll blend in perfectly with the Irish. Well, although it’s not too much of a deliberate choice, I find myself anxiously close to that average, as the picture below illustrates. The afternoon had barely commenced or Pieter and I decided to do as locals do in Croke Park and have the fun started a little before the GAA match. To our disappointment we couldn’t savour our liquid brunch on the spectators’ seats and thus we had to choke this brown unit down lest we’d miss the match. Chitchatting and strolling around the four of us were late to enter anyway, found ourselves accidentally spoiling the minute of silence held, before we sat down cheering for ‘the Dubs’ in what was clearly a crowd of away supporters. A remarkable experience it was, all in all, also with my numb hands being unable to grasp the frozen fries that had drowned in the sea of curry before me. Next match will be summer time!

Other fun stuff includes my Italian – English tandem with Sara (every Monday evening), meeting Naomi & Raoul (friends of Cath to whom I was virtually introduced by same), after work beers on Friday (to be continued), and many plans that start to materialise. I shall keep you posted!

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog, welcome to my new world, welcome to a new adventure! After having lived in Poland, India, China, and a brief London episode, the Irish adventure commenced about two weeks ago. For the next three years I will be working and living in Dublin, Ireland. Apart from getting to know Dublin thoroughly plans are to leave the capital regularly, so as to discover all that the lush green country side has to offer.

The first weeks have been all about settling in; the new job & new colleagues, but also finding an apartment that is affordable and cozy and well located and awesome and has the soul or character if you will that I value so much in a house. And yes we did find it; the perfect match with all that was sought after.

Whether I will keep up the writing spirit for the upcoming three year still remains to be seen, but I do intend to share my experiences via this blog for the foreseeable future, not only for you to read but as much to store my own memories lest I forget as times passes.

Details of the past weeks and plans for the near future shall be unfolded soon, yet now it’s past 23:00 and although the 10 minute stroll to work every morning is a blessing compared with the daily NS agony I had to sustain while working in the Netherlands I do feel the desire to go to sleep now. Eight hours of sleep, such luxury ;)

Soon more and better!