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Anthony invited everyone to party in his flat in Talbot Street (Elodie lived there before) on Saturday. Everyone was supposed to wear something green, because of Paddy’s Day. I just have one green piece of clothing: a cap. Carmen just had a scarf. In order to increase the proportion of green, we decided to buy two green cans of pringles: one with good ol‘ sour cream, the other one lime-chilli flavour. Well, actually we bought them, because we were hungry and they were dirt-cheap… anyhow, other guests made a bigger effort.

The atmosphere was a bit strange (as so often people just talked in French) and I did not feel well due to a really sore throat. Hence, Berta, Isa, Carmen and I left quite early.

Instead of going home directly, we decided to go to the Fibber Magees, where Chris and Isma were supposed to arrive soon. We had a nice chat about some weird topics until we became witnesses of a situation that could have come straight from a movie scene: there was some argue between a man and a woman in the middle of the room. Apparently, the man had said something offending or had touched her. In turn, the woman decided to get rough. She took her pint glass and smashed it on the lad’s forehead. Bam! Thousands bits and pieces of broken glass flew through the room and the guy’s face was all covered in blood. It felt almost surreal. Of course, he wanted to take revenge, but people quickly separated them.

Phew! We looked at each other and were just shocked. Usually, it’s really nice and peaceful there.

Some people might think that we’re here on a holiday and party all the time. Unfortunately, this is not true. There is quite some work to do. Coffee helps, though.

Picture taken last Thursday in our kitchen.

Wednesday there was a bring-a-dish-from-your-home-country-party, but apart from the fact that our initially sneered at frankfurters were gone in the blink of an eye there’s not much to tell. If you ever have to prepare German food for a large number of people, just buy good ol‘ sausages and mustard. That might not be as impressive as the delicious Tartiflette from France or a mouth-watering Spanish omelette, but it’s popular finger food, can be prepared within some minutes and is still tasty when it’s not warm anymore. Depending on where you are it might even be cheap. Downside: some people will assume that you can’t cook a proper meal. Don’t do it if you want to impress girls…
But enough about the grandeur of German sausages, I wanted to tell you another story.

Our way to this eating binge was more interesting. Chris and I left the house and went to the Belgard stop where we had to wait quite some time for the next Luas. Our boredom did not last long: a bunch of teenage Irish girls showed up. They were all dressed in the ubiquitous tracksuits and were really young; maybe twelve or thirteen years old. While we just stood next to the rails and waited, they were running around us, climbed the benches and used their high-pitched voices to shout annoying (ridiculous) lines at us. Chris managed to keep a straight face, I had a really hard time to hold back the laughter.

Then they tried to hit on us. „Can I have your number? Can I have your number?“ a girl asked me with her thick Dublin accent „I’ve got a black marker and a red one. I’ll write your number in red on my arm. Red for love.“ Gosh, this was too much for me. I don’t know what came over me, but for some reason I suddenly had to think of a song and replied: „It’s 222 2222, I got an answering machine that can talk to you.“

The rest of the evening this BossHoss song was stuck in my head: Diesen Beitrag weiterlesen »

Saturday the boys asked me to go to Shelbourne Park, a greyhound race stadium, with them in order to become millionaires. Sure! So I met them in the city centre and we went there together. It was a really good idea: for a fiver you can watch (and bet on) eleven live races. None of us had any clue whatsoever and we just decided based on the odds and the dogs‘ recent average times. We always betted between two and four Euro on either place or win and shared the risk. Sometimes we really identified the underdog winner, often „our“ dog failed miserably. However, Kiwi turned out to have just the right touch.

Afterwards we met the girls in Fibber Magees in order to celebrate our millions moderate losses of approximately four Euro and sixty cents per capita. Great fun and definitely worth it.

Chris had guests this weekend: Stefan, who studies with us in Bamberg, came over and brought his friend Kiwi along. They arrived Thursday afternoon and left Tuesday morning. The fun began right on the first evening when we decided to say hello to some pubs in Temple Bar.

We enjoyed really good live music in The Quays Bar, The Mezz(!!) and Farrington’s and had a really good time. Afterwards, on our way back home we had several remarkable encounters: after a lot of to and fro, Chris said „Bon Anniversaire“ (French „Happy Birthday“) to a woman in the Luas. She turned out to be Irish, not French, and was perfectly able to speak and understand German – she must have heard everything before, too! I instantly killed the conversation with some stupid busdriver quote.

In Kingswood we met a garda on a bicycle who caught my friends in the act of increasing the mineral content of the soil. At least that seemed to be what he thought as he said „Keep it in the pants“ to one of them. The last few metres on our way we speculated that he might just come back and reveal his real identity: Erasmus policeman from Bavaria, who understood every single one of our words.

Lesson learned: you never know who speaks German!