Diskurswelt.de

On Friday, my friend Brandi arrived for a three day visit. We took a long walk through the town (i.a. up the quays, across the Liffey and back) and caught a glimpse of the rather disappointing Maritime Festival before I introduced him to Bulmers as well as some friends of mine in Thomas Read.

The day after we took the DART to Malahide, a small coastal town some kilometres north of Dublin. We strolled through the park and enjoyed the sun which kept us out of the castle. Later on, we went from the marina along the coastline to the beach and enjoyed some very spicy pub food in Oscar Taylor’s for a belated lunch.
In the evening we went to try some microbrewed beers in Dublin’s Porterhouse near Grafton Street. Yuck! It was horrible. To some degree it was our very own fault, because we decided to check out some rather strange beers (Chocolate Truffle Stout). Anyway, we decided to leave after our first pint and met up with some of the remaining Erasmus students at Anthony’s flat for a relaxed evening. I sincerely hope that their other offerings are better, but somehow I do not want to figure this out myself anymore.

On Sunday afternoon, we wanted to have a barbecue at our place. So Brandi and I went to the Aldi to buy some food and charcoal briquets. After entering the store, I immediately headed for the briquets. This turned out to be a good idea: there was only one bag left. We continued our way through the store to get some groceries and went to the checkout. Before queuing, I asked my friend: Do we have everything we need?
Beer? Check! Cheese? Check! Charcoal? Che.. wait a minute! Where is our charcoal? Someone had robbed it from our trolley. We looked around and spotted a bunch of girls that were just leaving the store with a bag of charcoal. Our bag of charcoal. I got really angry, but what can you do? So I had to walk all the way to B&Q to buy a bigger and more expensive bag. Thanks a lot, girls. Very nice of you.
Anyway, the barbecue was pretty cool although Abdoun was our only guest. After he had left, we watched the German movie Der Baader-Meinhof-Komplex to kill the time until 3:00 am when Brandi took the cab to the airport. In between, Andreas and Janine dropped by to say hello to us and goodbye to Chris.

Here are some photos of the weekend:

As you can see, we had a pretty good time. Thanks for visiting, Brandi!

Saturday, I had my last exam: Distributed & Mobile Computing. Just like Economics and Advanced Databases it went pretty well. I don’t really know what to expect in the two management subjects, but that did not matter anymore that day, because we had a barbecue at our place. Chris was the hero of the day: he had finished his exams the week before and when I returned in company of some friends to our home, we were delighted to see that he had already lighted the barbecue. Awesome!

We spent all the afternoon and evening lying in the grass, enjoyed some of the good stuff, talked about all the world and his brother and did not leave the green before the last rays of sunlight were gone. After dark, we went to the last Erasmus party in city centre. Of course, it was in Anthony’s flat and almost everyone was there. Great fun!

Unfortunately, our friend and housemate Isma could not join us – he had left already on Friday due to another exam in Spain. See you, amigo.

As promised earlier, here are some impressions from my trip to the lovely town of Bamberg two weeks ago.

If you think that I spent all the time eating, you hit the bull’s eye. One spare rib all you can eat, three barbecues…