Diskurswelt.de

The main campus of the Institute of Technology is located in the centre of Tallaght, which itself is located in the South West periphery of Dublin. It takes just a few minutes to the biggest shopping centre, „The Square“, and the adjacent Luas stop „Tallaght“. My little room in Kingswood Heights is in walking distance, too. It takes me approximately 20 minutes to get there, but as you know: I’m a convinced pedestrian and I don’t mind walking a few steps. In fact, I enjoy it although I have to walk most of the way right next to Belgard Road, which is quite busy.
I created a personal map of Tallaght and its „sights“ to illustrate this entry: my Tallaght map

The campus itself is different from the German campuses that I’ve seen so far. It is very small – there are only about 2500 students – and includes a main building, a parking lot, a small Student Union hut (with snooker tables) and two other small, remote buildings that are not really related to my studies. But as you can see on the map: there’s a lot of space for further expansion of the young ITT.
I spend about 99% of the time in the main building, which has lots of facilities that you cannot find at the University of Bamberg. There’s a small branch of the Bank of Ireland (with an ATM), the student Health Care Centre (free!), a chaplain, a library (you can borrow dvds), a branch of QuiznosSub (fat, fat, fat – even in the salads), a canteen (expensive, horrible and even more fat), a snack shop that sells crisps and candy bars (did I already say fat?) as well as some textbooks, a relaxation room, a convenient printing system and I’m sure that I forgot something. Ah: strangely, the revolving door is not powered.
The largely air-conditioned lecture and class rooms are rather small, but modern. I will write something about the lectures, when I finalized my learning agreements. This will hopefully be in not so distant future…

Then, of course, there’s the privately owned Tramway Court, which is somewhat part of the campus. Besides a stationary shop, the Metro bar and some small offices, it includes several modern apartments which are very popular among the Erasmus students. Chris, Manon, Berta, Isabel, Ricky, Alejandro, Carmen, Elena, Piotr and, to cut a long story short, many more live there in theaparments.
Each apartment has a nice, cozy living/dining room and houses three students. While one of the flatmates has a single bedroom and a bathroom, the other two have to share a twin bedroom, which is not much bigger than the single bedroom, as well as a bathroom.
On the one hand I am a bit sad that I initially did not want to move in there. The appartments are well-equipped, the atmosphere is very friendly and international, it is cool to have your friends nearby and you need only five minutes to get from your bed to the classroom (dental hygene included). On the other hand I am pretty happy that I do not live there: the internet connection is not very stable and the landlord totally rips you off. The rent for a shared bedroom is 425 Euro per month per person. Electricity, use of the washing machines etc. not included.
As I currently spend a lot of time at Chris‘ and Alejandros place, I am able to enjoy some of the positive aspects a bit while circumventing the downside.

Friday, for instance, Tom, Chris, Christian and I spent the whole in Chris‘ apartment, where we played Pesten, a Dutch card game similar to Uno and Mau-Mau. I’m really looking forward to Thursday night, because Chris‘ flatmates will be gone for the weekend and we’re going to occupy their flat again.