Diskurswelt.de

Yesterday, there was a belated birthday party. Isa and Isa, Carmen and Julia, a friend of her from Valencia, Oscar and I went to in Berta’s flat in order to celebrate her birthday. Having a bit of pity with the only German in a room full of Spaniards, Oscar told me „Felix, you have to learn Spanish. You have one night!“
Anyway, it was great fun. Later on we went to The Mezz where we met Klaus, Stefan and Jeremy and danced to great rock songs (‚Killing in the Name‘ and the like) until they closed.

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.

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!

Happy new Year! Yesterday Chris and I showed Thomas a bit of Dublin: Trinity College, Grafton Street, National Gallery etc.
We really had to make plans for the evening, because we did not want to end up spending New Year’s Eve on our own.

Luckily we met someone during our explorations and kind of invited ourselves to a party. Moreover, we knew that there was a get-together at Anna and Georg’s place and Klaus invited us for some beers with him and the other Austrians. In the end, after a lot of back and forth and some stupid incidents, we just had a few beers and nachos in our living room and watched Mister Bean on telly before we went into the city centre.

At about eleven o’clock we finally arrived in Temple Bar, which was veeery crowded. Most of the pubs and clubs asked for entry fees (>= €20), but somehow we managed to find some that didn’t. Chris convinced us to get a shot of the „world famous ass juice“ in The Mezz. Well, it was probably not the greatest idea. Then we had a pint of delicious Smithwick’s in Farrington’s. There was barely enough air to breath, because the location bursted at the seams.

Just some seconds before midnight we arrived Half Penny Bridge where we met Anna, Georg, Klaus, Stefan, Immanuel, Julia, Lizzy and many more. The small pedestrian bridge was full of people from every corner of the world. You could hear English, Italian, German, Spanish, Polish and whatnot. Stefan had bought lucky charms for everyone (a pig with a top hat for me) and some stranger hugged everyone.

Being used to the extensive (and expensive) run for the best fireworks in Germany it was a bit strange to see no fireworks at all. Therefore it became boring outside very soon and Georg led all of us to a Hogan’s, a cool bar in Georges Street (haha!).
Unbelievable: they closed at quarter past one in the morning. On New Year’s Eve! So we asked some local who told us to head to The Globe, another nice pub just around the corner. That was a straight tip and we had a pretty good time over there until they closed, too.

All in all I had a ball. I have to admit that I missed the fireworks, though. New Year’s Eve in Ireland is indeed very different from German Silvester. It ended for me lying happy in my bed at approximately half past four in the morning where I dozed off while listening to some audio book using my mp3 player.
Some hours later, in the middle of the night, I suddenly woke up with „Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds“ in my ears. A great song for a great night.