Irish Summer

This is the second summer for me in this beautiful country and I am not sure how to put this, but this one has been quite cold and rainy so far. It’s almost as if this country would like to live up to all its stereotypes and rectify the fantastic impression of last year’s summer; loads of sunny days, but without me breaking out in sweat all the time – just perfect.

However this Tuesday was a beautiful, sunny day and lucky me got the day off to finally do some long overdue touring of Dublin's beautiful surroundings.
We started off with a drive to the Powerscourt waterfalls. (I will omit details of the drive, as it was absolutely frightening to just watch my partner maneuver on the narrow roads managing to avoid busses and large trucks who seemed to know where they were going and would let nothing stand in their way to reach the target. We on the other hand had no clue where to go and surprisingly enough we only found signs on every second crossroad, so there were a lot of wrong turns made during the course of the day.)
The waterfall was beautiful with loads of forest to discover. We had a nice walk and then continued to Glendalough. On a Tuesday the grounds were nicely empty and we could secure the most gorgeous picnic spot at one of the lakes. Its so peaceful and quiet at Glendalough, I am sure we will pay another visit to the place.

We saved dessert for Brittas bay. Ireland has a sandy beach! I was amazed, as I had so far only seen beaches full of pebbles (not that there is anything wrong with those, but still, a nice surprise).

All in all a beautiful day! Now I keep my fingers crossed that the sun will strike Dublin soon again :)

A weekend to Paris

I enjoyed the most gorgeous weekend trip to Paris. What a fabulous city. It feels a lot more like Europe than Dublin with all this monumental buildings full of history, the charming cafés and beautiful parks. Needless to say I really enjoyed it.

Back in Dublin I still seem not quite ready to fit in.
I was offered a ride and quickly went into the car and sat down. After a moment I wondered why there were pedals in the legroom and the driver was looking at me a bit surprised through the window. It was about this moment when I noticed the steering wheel in front of me.
I must be the only person who still has not understood that the steering wheel in an Irish car is on the right.

St Patrick's

My first full St Patrick's weekend in Dublin and today we are here exactly 1 year. I remember how we stumbled out of the plane last year, happily surprised that the streets were not covered in snow and breathing the air that felt almost a bit too light and moist and surrounded by a climate that was almost too mild and warm compared to Finland (friends of ours described last St Patrick's weekend as one of the coldest in a long time:)).

This year I of course wanted to do the full touristy thing and woke up on Saturday at 10:00 (!) to make it into town in good time for the much talked about St Patrick's day parade. Experienced as we are these days we completely avoided public transport and walked into the centre, which proved to be the smart thing to do and also very enjoyable, because most of the time it did not rain yesterday.

Very excited, we joined the crowds beside Dame Street expecting the marvellous spectacle to begin. There was just a small problem. Everyone seemed to be moving constantly. A few people joined us to stand and wait, but the majority of people pushed themselves either up or down Dame Street, complete with a large number of offspring trotting behind them equipped with whistles that they used rather frequently, and at least 2 push chairs. I would be lying if I said I feel comfortable in crowds, but this crowd was also rather confusing. We could not really make out why everyone was constantly on the move; had we missed the whole spectacle already?

At some point absolutely everyone started to move around us and we decided to join the movement: moving away from Dame Street and back to where we came from. I was rather disappointed and happy that we were able to snatch a quick glance of the parade hanging from the Trinity college gate later in the afternoon. Luckily they showed the parade in the evening on TV as well so we were able to see what we had missed out on. The whole atmosphere in town is a bit like May Day in Finland, just that everyone is dressed in green and carrying an Irish flag, an inflatable rubber Guinness or huge green rubber hammers (why hammers?).

All in all it was exciting to watch people of all nationalities happily waving shamrocks, flags and the green rubber hammers. The highlight was definitely a group of young pretty girls with ginger full beards and large green hats dressed up as Leprechauns. Unfortunately I forgot my camera at home.

Happy St Patrick’s Day everyone!

Do you want chips with this?

This will be one of the first questions you will hear moving to Ireland and it will be your constant companion during your time here.
The first time I heard the question was in a restaurant. I ordered the typical Irish dish called lasagne when the waiter asked the seemingly routine question “Do you want chips with this?” I was startled, so far I had only eaten chips in burger joints or as a side dish with sausages, but it really did not seem to fit with lasagne. Now one year later I would almost miss something if I don’t get chips with my lasagne.
Irish people just love anything that is made of potatoes. The other day I had a pub lunch: there was my meat and my veggies, mashed potatoes and of course a bowl of chips. Why would the mash be enough; it seems the perfect meal contains at least 2 dishes made of potatoes.

Pictures of Ireland

Sometimes I wish I would always carry a camera with me. There are some pictures you simply have to see for yourself.
There is for instance the street I walk along every morning: every 5 – 10 metres there are signs telling "engines must be switched off when waiting here". What do you think you will find next to these signs? Usually a bus, engine running, door open and the bus driver having a little chat with some of the other bus drivers who have left their busses behind – of course with the engines still running.
Another picture that still always makes me smile is the enormous "No parking" sign on a wall and the cars piled up all around the foot path right in front of it. Some cars so close to the other that they unfortunately also take up half of the street, but that is fine, because pedestrians are to be ignored in this country.
Then again, you really cannot blame the poor motorists, they have every right to hate pedestrians in all forms and shapes. Pedestrians walk across any red traffic lights. It seems as if they do not even spot them, they just walk past me while I am waiting for my turn to cross the street, constantly afraid of being driven over, and they effortlessly part the traffic and somehow manage not to get hurt. How do they do it? It’s a miracle. I can only watch but I have not learnt how to imitate this yet and I am not sure if I want to. Last week I crossed the street while having a green light and was almost killed by a car. The driver was honking angrily how I dare cross the street when I have a green light. I think at moments like this I still stand out like as a foreigner and maybe that is the safer option.
Oh yes, one last picture I saw last week. Again I was waiting at a red traffic light for my turn to cross when I saw a blind man approaching. I thought surely now I will have some company waiting at the red light with me, but I was wrong; the blind man made it successfully to the other side and he did not even stop once.

Rain

After this morning I can no longer avoid this subject! There I was happily getting up in the dark listening to the wind and the rain (not really happy anymore when I noticed the rain) and then walked my usual way to work trying to avoid the big puddles of dirty rainwater on the side of the streets (there are loads of them and with hardly any space its really hard to avoid them).
I almost made it, always carefully avoiding other pedestrians, cars and well loads of water, but then I made a big mistake: I crossed the street in front of my office turning my back on the traffic behind me for a moment. I had not noticed the biggest puddle of rainwater just on the other side and one minivan concentrated all its effort on really targeting the water.
It was the biggest splash with at least 10 meters of dirty waves all over me.
This was my worst start to the day ever! Water was dripping from my glasses; my coat and my shoes were drenched and squeaked when I walked away.
My bag was luckily waterproof (I am here now 8 months and yes there is at least something I learned already).

Against a stream of penguins

So far I was able to avoid the favourite, or shall I say most hated subject of Dubliners: the traffic. Its bad, I knew that, I have seen it but so far I was lucky enough to avoid the it.

I started a new job this week and now instead of travelling from my little southern suburb even further south (not the most popular direction and therefore completely bearable plus also equipped with a new tram system); I now have to cross town and head North.
I still take the nice new modern tram, but now unfortunately into town, which proves to be the far more popular direction. In fact it’s so popular that instead of jumping right onto the tram and occupying a decent standing place I will need to let a good few trams go past before I get to squeeze myself into one of the most overcrowded cabins. Soon they will need to employ someone to push people into the trams. I guess I should travel to China before complaining to much.

After this free slimming treatment my journey continues in an exciting manner. Now I need to walk through town to catch the local train. Again everyone seems to prefer the opposite direction and I have to fight my way against a stream of penguin suited men and women in nice costumes and chunky trainers on the slimmest of all sidewalks. On my first day it was raining on top of that: imagine managing thousand of people walking your way with umbrellas and then of course you also need to avoid the occasional obstacle such as a beer delivery for some bar or a heap of trash.
It proves to be a challenge.

From then on its actually fairly easy, because I seem to take the local train into the unpopular direction, once I have managed to walk up the stairs against the stream of people leaving the train I get a fairly decent standing place.

Just when I left work I thought that surely now I would be heading into the right direction…little did I know.

Merry Christmas

My first Christmas in Dublin; it was very interesting. Christmas started a lot earlier here.
In mid October Christmas decoration was already competing heavily with the Halloween decoration in the shops. It looked rather funny: windows decorated with witches and spider webs and then in the entrance area of the shops the big gift packs of chocolate and shower gels all nicely decorated with golden ribbons, angels and of course Santa. It was a really amusing sight.
Things got even more exciting after Halloween. Friends had warned me that from now on most ATMs in the centre would always be out of cash and the city would be unbearably crowded. Did I believe them? Of course not; I thought it would be crowded alright, but not THAT crowded.
Well it was an experience and I surely learnt now where and when to shop for Christmas.
To be honest it almost feels a bit empty now. For months the ads on radio and TV were reminding us to get all this Christmas shopping done and the voices started to talk faster and faster coming closer to Christmas and now its all over. Of course there are the sales, but I am still recovering and won’t venture back into the centre just yet.
Otherwise Christmas was lovely. People send loads of cards here, even more than in Finland; they eat, drink and party like everywhere else! It was a great holiday!

The power of Switches

After my first shower it was time to do the dishes for the first time. During our first day we had used up the plates that were kindly provided by our landlord so I went into the kitchen to inspect the sink.
There were two taps: One was labelled “Hot” and the other one “Cold”: I slowly opened the hot tap a bit and waited for a while. I did not want to burn myself seeing as the “Hot” marker seemed to scream: this is really hot and you better not try holding your hands under this tap.
I carefully touched the water a bit and then immediately pulled my hand back. The water was ice cold.
Surely they must have labelled the taps wrong I thought, so I carefully opened the other tap, which also had ice-cold water.
This was bizarre. I let both taps run for a while, but the water did not start to heat up.
Finally it dawned on me that there must be a switch for the hot water. So far I have found a lot of those switches. Every socket seemed to have a switch, the stove had a switch and even the heating in the sitting room had two switches, so I was on the right track now.
What more is there to tell, I found the water boiler in the hot press and switched it on. After a good half hour I actually had screaming hot water and the ice-cold water from the other tab. Interesting, another new experience. We had already learned a lot about our new flat. Not only did it look quite different with fitted carpets, flowery sofas and a lot more stuff and a lot less storage space, but it also worked a whole lot different. We now had to master a whole army of switches that were conveniently hidden in all kinds of places.
I will leave out the incident when I stood in the hot shower and then nothing more happened, absolutely nothing, no water, no nothing. Anyway I called our landlord describing the problem and he came by…guess what…he found a secret switch that could be turned back on and that was it!

Irish Showers

I did not expect too much from Irish showers, especially after living in Finland for such a long time.
One really has to give it to the Finns; they know how to build efficient showers. The water pressure is always the same wherever you happen to shower. Huge water towers provide plenty of water so everyone can indulge in long, warm showers with the perfect water pressure for as long as they like. Water isn't really in short supply; after all the country is covered with lakes and it does rain a lot during the very short summers.

Remembering the good old days I carefully stepped into our shower for the first time. My friends had congratulated me earlier that our flat that was supplied with an electric power shower. They only threw in a word of warning that it might make an awful lot of noise, which would be a small price to pay, after all, I could take a hot shower whenever I wanted to.
I had eagerly nodded at my friends, but did not quite get what they meant. Why should I not have been able to take a hot shower whenever I wanted? Who would hold me back?
In the shower I started off by inspecting the chunky box that was hanging on the wall of my shower. There was a round dial for power and another one to adjust the heat. At the bottom of the box was a “Start / Stop“ button. Apprehensively I pressed the “Start / Stop” button and a few drops of water started to fall from the shower-head paired with an incredibly loud sound that reminded me of an air plane having a bad case of diarrhoea. I watched the drops for a while and then took a look at the power dial. It was on full power!
I stared in turns at the dial and the showerhead and then adjusted the showerhead so that all the drops would come out at least in one big stream. The water now came out in the middle of the showerhead and had slightly more power, but I still needed to turn up the water temperature to very hot, so I would at least feel a burning sensation where the hot water hit my body.
Quite a strange feeling really; part of my body was covered in goose bumps (it was cold in the bathroom since we had not yet found all the right switches to switch on the bathroom heating) and the other part of my body was stinging from the hot water.
Its not too bad really, after a while I am sure I will get used to these showers, and for sure there are a lot of things worse then freezing in your shower and it might always happen that we do find the right switch for the bathroom heater).
Come to think of it I cannot name a single one at the moment.