Diskurswelt.de

Yesterday afternoon, the Luas Red Line only operated between Tallaght-Blackhorse and Heuston-Conolly. Instead of providing shuttle buses to bridge the gap, they just „apologize[d] for any inconvenience“. Any? Bullshit!

So, take the bus. This only works if you have a certain knowledge of the city, because the information provided in the bus shelter is little and almost useless and the next bus stop is not announced during the ride. Being in Dublin for quite some time, I fortunately have this required level of knowledge. If you don’t have it, you can at least make use of the plenty of time that you are waiting for the bus to guess. The timetables provided are almost obsolete. Depending on your location, the bus will be about 10 to 20 minutes late… if it arrives.
However, you also need money. Of course, you say. Well, you need to have the exact fare. In coins, no bank notes accepted. While every Luas stop has a ticket vending machine that accepts bank notes, you are just flat on your back if you are forced to take the bus and don’t happen to have coins.

During the night, you can only take the so-called Nitelink bus. It does not matter where you want to go, you have to pay a fiver. Although that is more than twice the cost of Tallaght-Dublin one way during the day, you don’t get any extra service, e.g. security. Moreover, the bus driver will likely not adhere to the regular route, so be extra attentive where you currently are and prepared to be later in bed than you wanted to be. Especially if you want to get off at Tramway Court or The Square.

Dublin wants to play with the big guys. But while cities like Berlin, Lodon, Hamburg or Madrid can, despite their size, provide acceptable means to get from A to B for citizens and tourists alike, public transport in Dublin is just broken in so many ways. Hell, even German small towns, such as Bamberg or Hilden, manage to run a proper bus system during the day.

Thursday afternoon Chris, Carmen and I went into the city centre. See what happened:

Saturday evening, I’m in the Luas on the way to the party. An old men gets up in order to get off. The tram stops, the doors open. He says „totally love you shoes“ and leaves.
Yeah, I like ‚em, too. Thanks.

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 »

Friday I wrote my last exam: Innovation and Entrepreneurship. It was okay, because I already have some knowledge from my studies in Bamberg. My fellow Irish Computing students were not so happy. I am not sure if one was really able to do well in this exam without any prior knowledge. The lecturer, the class itself and the material were not very helpful. However, exam time is over; done.

Afterwards, all Erasmus students, InCuSo members and some of the Computing students went to the Fitzsimons in Temple Bar, where a pint is more expensive than a bar of gold and a cover band played great songs. They even tried Satch. But where was the Doktor? We sent him an SMS: „O Doktor, where art thou?“. His reply „Still in the universe“. Whatever that meant, he finally showed up.
Later, after Anna had accidentially wished Chris a happy birthday, we sang as loud as we could for our birthday boy Tom.

And suddenly it was time to say goodbye, because many people already planned to leave on Saturday. Some of the people I will probably never see again, some others I really do not want to meet ever again and then there are those that I already miss although they are just gone. Such as Tom, Stefan and Mr. Klaus. I really hope that I’ll meet you in Nijmegen, Kapfenberg, Derby or wherever you’ll roam (Bamberg?). It was very awkward to say goodbye and I am sure that I did not find the right words. Bye, guys!

Saturday, the leftovers (read: people who were neither already on their way back home nor had a hangover) met at Elodie’s flat for this semester’s last Erasmus party. Surprisingly, there were not many, but it was fun anyway. In the end, of course, time for more goodbye’s. Bye, everyone!

On Sunday Daniel, Herr Doktor and I went to Anna in order to help her moving all her stuff to Antje’s place in the city centre. The hard-earned prize: bruised shoulders, tons of food that she and her house mates were not able to eat before they left and a nice meal when we finally arrived. Tired and lazy we spent all the evening on Antje’s comfortable sofa before we had to say farewell to Anna and Antje. Bye, girls!

However, there was another mission to complete: we got a bike from Antje, but how were we supposed to get it from the city centre to our house? We thought it might be possible in the Luas, but the security staff in the orange vests just gave us a very unfriendly gesture to get lost. They did not even bother to speak to us. Just a gesture. Of course, not a single word about a refund. Where is a hero when you need one?

Herr Doktor offered to ride the bike home for us so that Daniel and I could take the Luas. Very nice of you, Chris! There’s our hero! When he finally arrived completely soaked in Kingswood, we said goodbye to our housemate and friend Daniel, who left on Monday at an ungodly hour. Bye, Bobo!

Bye, bye!