Demipair in Dublin

14.10.2016: Actually, today is already my 36th day, but somehow you still need some time to get used to it. That's what I've been busy with for the past month. After all, there's a lot that's new to me. And it takes time to get used to a new country, a host family, dealing with children, the language school, and everyday life in general. Plus, I've been thinking a bit back and forth about whether I really should do something like a blog. But now I've decided to do it after all, because the ability to combine text and images so well and so easily is a very useful feature.

This will now be the introduction and I'll give you a brief summary of everything I've done so far, because I didn't just hang out on the weekends. That's good too, because I want to see something of the country where I'll still be living for about 5 months.

In fact, I spent the first two weekends just exploring Dublin to get to know some reference points and some culinary places.

On the third weekend, to be more precise, on the 25th of September, I already went on my first bigger excursion. I had to get up at 4.40 in the morning to take the first tram (they're called LUAS here) into the city. There, a tour bus was waiting for my two girlfriends and me, as well as a bunch of tourists, to take us to the 'Cliffs of Moher' on the west coast of Ireland. The several-hour drive across the country was fortunately interrupted by a few breaks, so we had time to visit one of the typical fishing villages on the coast, which are particularly attractive due to their colorful houses.

When we arrived at the cliffs, we were really impressed by these mighty cliffs, up to 200m high, against which the Atlantic crashes tirelessly. However, the cliffs are very popular with tourists and sometimes you have to wait a while to take a photo from a certain point.

Since we were traveling with a tour operator, we only had 1 1/2 hours at the cliffs, which we thought was a bit too little. So we only had time to really look at the cliffs themselves and had to leave the visitor center, which looks a bit like the Teletubbies' domicile, aside. It was definitely a very eventful day and when I finally got home in the evening, I fell straight into bed. After all, I had school again the next day.

The next trip I went on was the following week. Together with a few girls from my language course, I took the train to Malahide, a town north of Dublin, with a park, botanical garden, and a small castle (Malahide Castle). We walked around there a bit, visited the castle, and finally went to the Italian restaurant.

Then came the next bigger trip last weekend. We took the train to Bray on Saturday, a small town south of Dublin. There is a kind of promenade and even a small amusement park. After satisfying our hunger, we set off from Bray to Greystones, which is about 6km further south. Both are connected by a path that runs along the coast, parallel to the railway tracks, and allows for beautiful views of the coast.