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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 morning at an ungodly hour Daniel, Isma and Chris left for the surfing trip. Now it was all equal: two girls versus two guys. Oh, and they really gave us a really hard time convincing them to hurry up in order to go to city centre and catch the DART to Howth before midnight.

Fair enough, I’m exaggerating. Anyway, we finally arrived in Howth sometime in the afternoon and walked along the pier, said hello to the fat seals and took the cliff walk. Somehow I’ve got the feeling that this is almost an obligatory trip – everyone seems to go to Howth with his guests. I can just say that it is absolutely worth it time and again. Especially on a really nice and sunny day. Sadly, we had to leave rather early because Caro and Kathleen returned to Swansea in the evening, but not before recharging our batteries in the Abbey Tavern.

After we had said bye-bye at the bus stop, Michi and I went to eat yummy burgers, started to make plans for Sunday that heavily depended on the weather and went to The Mezz in order to listen to some live rock music.

After what felt like hours of waiting the band finally started to play. But they did not play any rock, they played funky music. Moreover, they we’re a really motley crew: a pale old guy in a jacket playing the trombone, a drummer who could have come straight from the seventies („Look at dem threads“), the bearded guy on the bass guitar nodded like a pigeon, the keyboard and sax guy looked a bit like a German TV presenter and the guitarist, unlike any other guitar playing male in the world, was sitting shy in a corner of the stage. And then there was this other guy who was dressed in a retro Adidas jacket and wore some rasta hat. He totally failed at playing Mr Cool and we just thought „what a jackass“. Well, until he started to sing with an awesome voice. Each song his stage-acting got better and better and when we left we just thought „what a brilliant gig!“

Sunday morning Michi and I wanted to enjoy a full Irish breakfast a.k.a. artery killer in Bewley’s in Grafton Street. The switch to daylight saving time stole us one precious hour and upsetted our plan as we were way too late and could not find a place that still served breakfast.

So we decided to skip it and have lunch instead. While we waited for our meal in the Citi Bar, a blonde in her thirties accompanied by a half-emptied pint of Bulmers came to our table. We could smell from quite some distance that she was absolutely drunk, but being the nice, polite guys that we are we joined the conversation she maintained with herself. Difficult, because she was unable to finish a single sentence. „Aaanywayy“ she frequently said in the middle of a sentence before verbalising another one of her woozy thoughts. Occasionally she looked at her reflection in the mirror and failed at removing a streak of hair from her face. In the middle of the „conversation“ that, by the way, included asking us if we were a gay couple she announced to all the other guests that we are German and left the room.

In order to make the most of the great weather, we took the DART to Bray. Originally we wanted to walk along the cliffs to Greystones, but sadly it was closed to the public due to falling rocks and ongoing construction works. Plan B: climb Bray Head and walk through the hills. Although I am pretty sure that we did not walk the same path as Flo and I did last December, we ended up at the very same bus stop somewhere in between the two towns. I can’t explain it. And, of course, it started to rain cats and dogs. So we took the bus back to Dublin and had a nice dinner with the boys who had just returned from their surfing trip. Somehow I’ve got the feeling that the powers that be do not approve my wish to walk from Bray to Greystones…

„Aaanywayy“, Caro, Kathleen, Michi thanks for coming over to visit me – it was great! I hope I’ll be able to see you in Swansea soon.

Thursday Heleen and I went to Howth. Unfortunately, it didn’t really start that well. Diesen Beitrag weiterlesen »

Sunday afternoon, I met Chris, Tom, Stefan and Lukas/Klaus in the Luas to Connolly station, where we took the DART train („bring your own oxygen!“) to Howth, an old fishing village located on a small peninsula north of Dublin. The 380 cents for a return ticket turned out to be a good investment. Diesen Beitrag weiterlesen »