Glendalough & Kilkenny Tour (22.11.)

I seriously had to consult a calendar to realise that today it's exactly five weeks since we went on this trip. This is so... weird. On the one hand, this is a long time if you think about in in terms of up-to-dateness of this blog. I'm bloody five weeks behind! On the other hand, it's also a short time, because my subjective feeling is that so much time has passed since this trip. It's like it happened somewhere in the past, ages ago. But actually, that's only because so much stuff has happened in the meantime. My brain just can't cope with all this anymore. It's like my camera not being able to cope with all the beauty surrounding it (my excuse for any bad picture ^^).

Anyway, I should get started with this post before my memories get even more blurred and I start confusing the trips I went on. xD
So, this was another trip organised by the International Office, and again we were excited when we got an email from some dubious "Summer School" two or three days before the actual date of the trip. This email contained our ticket that we had to print out and show when entering the bus on the day of the trip for the first time.

Our bus. Example picture -  this is for sure not the meeting point next to Phoenix. :-P

Glendalough

First, we went to Glendalough. Let me just insert the obligatory map:

That's County Wicklow - Wicklow, as in Wicklow Mountains. You might remember them from the two hikes I attended with the Rovers. To support your memory, I'll provide the links here (apologies for the German language used in this post) and here (that was my first post in English language, so no more complaining possible :-P). 

Since we had to go there from Maynooth, we spent some time on the bus first. That gave some people the opportunity to get some sleep they lacked from the night before (I think that had been the evening with pancakes and, ahem, interesting conversation topics... period!). Which then again gave others the opportunity to take really cute sleeping pictures. I'm not going to post anything here, because I might get killed for that...
So let's just continue with the topic of this post. Glendalough, which is a valley with two lakes. You could have guessed the lake part, because lough = loch (as in Loch Ness ;-)) = lake. And since we are in Ireland, we didn't start with the lakes, but with the leftovers of a monastery.

Our guide explaining the special cross.

There was some special cross. Superstition (I don't know how else I should call it) suggests the following: if you put your arms around the cross and your finger tips touch, you will find your true love within one year. As if this cross had a clue. Especially since you apparently had to be a tall person with long arms to be assured of finding your future love. I didn't try, by the way.
While others took their tourist pictures with the super smart cross, we disappeared with a small group to walk to the lake. The second lake, which was a bit further away. According to the member of our group who had already been there, this was the "right" lake. I don't know anything about right and wrong lakes, but it was really nice. Just a bit wet on parts of the way there and back. :-P

Okay, that was not so nice but rather irritating... O.o

And for the sake of the running gag as well as for lovers of sheep: oh, sheep! <3

Somewhere in Wicklow

Before we went on to Kilkenny, we could enjoy Wicklow a bit more. :-)

Group picture taken by Win :-)

Fun Fact: Hollywood, California, was named after Hollywood, Wicklow.

Kilkenny

Then, we had some free time in the nice town of Kilkenny. I have another obligatory map, just wait for it. :-P

First, we went to a café/restaurant the tour guide had recommended to us. Absolutely not touristy, totally priced for the locals, suuure... (I went for the chips. ^^)
The we checked out the castle. Only from the outside, because we would have had to pay to get inside. And since we didn't have a lot of time (eating had taken ages...), it wouldn't have paid off.

I just like taking random pictures of rivers...

... obviously.

Then, we had a short discussion if we still had enough time to walk through the town centre to the church we could spot in the background. Result: yes!

We had time to check out the inside of the church and still made it back to the bus in time, I need to mention!

I'm back...

... in more than one aspect.

Firstly, I'm back in Germany. Tomorrow, it will be one week since I arrived at the airport in Frankfurt. One week since I had to say goodbye to the country where I spent my Erasmus semester. As you can tell from the fact that I'm writing again, I managed to make it on my own at the airport in Dublin, which was actually the very first time when I was really on my own at an airport.
Anyway, that was not the biggest problem, although Lufthansa was trying really hard to annoy me (when I arrived, zero baggage drop off counters were open, and at some point a queue had formed that almost reached the exit). The hardest part was leaving Ireland.
And actually, the country made it really hard for me to depart, because the last days were really nice. No, I'm not talking about the last minute Christmas presents shopping on the 20th - the last Saturday before Christmas. That was more of a disaster and cost me lots of nerves...
I'm referring to the weather. It was actually pretty nice and made it even harder for me to leave. For example, here's my last picture of the annoying field:

Yeah, I do miss the annoying field, no matter how annoying it always was to walk around it... And I'm not going to talk about all the Erasmus people I met in Ireland. They know.

Anyway, and secondly, after coming back, making a calendar with my Ireland pictures for my grandparents, being in a strange, unreal mood for days (I'm still not completely back in Germany if you ask my mind) and surviving Christmas, I'm finally back on my laptop to try and write another blog post.

But first, let me continue the blues (when looking up on dict.cc, I found out that you can actually say "katzenjammer" in the U.S. xD) and end this post with mentioning that I also miss the campus of Maynooth University. Not the North Campus with the lecture halls in particular, to be honest. But I somehow miss the library - which is probably because I spent sooo much time there and got used to being there. At the end of the semester, it was almost the only social activity you could have: going to the library, meeting people there. And, of course, I miss the South Campus. In order to be able to understand this, just have a look at the pictures of the shooting we did in our last week of lectures:

Hogwarts photo shooting, part 1

Hogwarts photo shooting, part 2 

Tesco jumpers <3

Apology post - and in addition: nice photos!

I just realised that I'm one month behind with this blog - again... Probably, some people have already started wondering once more if my blog is dead. Answer: no it's not. I'm just dying because it's the last week of my semester abroad (scary thought, btw...), which means I have to do annoying assignments... Honestly, I'd rather write all blog posts about last month than finish my essay. Problem: the deadline is in two days, so I don't have a lot of time left for procrastination. At the moment, I'm just not doing anything for my essay because I'm writing my second translation exam in about 40 minutes. Therefore, I'll just try to find some nice pictures in order to say sorry for the huuuge delay. Probably, I'll publish all missing posts when I'm back home. But I will publish them eventually, I promise!

Anyway, in the meantime, have a look at the nice pictures of Maynooth that I took on Saturday when I was early for the Belfast Tour. :-)

And if you're already in winter / Christmas mood now, have a look at the beautiful pictures of the Christmas decoration in Dublin! - Thanks for the photos and editing, Petra! :-)

Another visit from Germany (13.-16.11.)

Yeah, so I'm in the library at the moment and should be writing my essay which is due in a week. And what am I doing instead? Trying to write another blog post... I know, I have strange priorities. But at the moment, I feel like I cannot focus on writing academical work anyway (no, it's not possible that this is because I was out dancing in the Roost last night until... very late). while I still seem to be able to write sentences on a slightly lower level. And I mean, who needs high quality texts for a blog post? :-P

Anyway, the title already gives it away: exactly one month after Arthur's visit, I had another visitor from Germany. My boyfriend finally managed to find a weekend where he could come and visit me on this island with supposedly terrible weather - regarding his ideas of appropriate temperature and so on... ;-)
Jonas arrived on the day of the due date of my second assignment of the week. Accordingly, I was slightly stressed out when trying to manage everything. But I was actually able to print my assignment, hand it in, eat something and get the bus to the airport. Okay, to be honest, the bus was shitty late - so late that I almost freaked out at the bus stop. Not a good way to deal with public transport in Ireland, I was told by an expert...
Anyway, Jonas' flight was delayed, which meant that I could spend some time waiting at the airport - drying included, because it was raining heavily. Of course, on that day - of all possible days - the weather had decided to be Irish...
When the arrivals display finally changed, I began to get minimally excited...

(Short remark, 2 days later: in the meantime, I've left the library - and the country -, come back, and left again. Now I'm finally at home and determined to finish this blog post tonight!)

And I wanted to note that I was not the only excited person when it came to this visit. No, I'm not referring to Jonas, but to a few of the other Erasmus students. They were behaving as if this was some huge event, and not some people meeting in the pub in Maynooth... At least, nobody brought their party hats to Brady's. xD
After this Thursday evening/night in Maynooth, Jonas and I spent the rest of the weekend in Dublin, On Friday, we wandered around in Dublin (Penneys was part of it - I finally got my Hogwarts sweater!) and went to the National Museum (Decorative Arts and history) - and ended up doing a "pub crawl" with a few other people. On Saturday, we went to Howth. Which is a really nice town, but unfortunately, the weather decided to go Irish again at some point. I mean, we had already gotten wet on Thursday on the way from the bus stop (yeah, Dublin Bus, that's also an Irish experience you have to make) back to our hostel. But that was nothing, I swear, absolutely nothing in comparison to Howth. I've never been that wet in my whole life, I think. That was a bit too Irish, I'd say. But we compensated that with hot chocolate, going to a nice vegetarian restaurant, and another typical Irish experience - way better than the weather: a third visit to a pub! Including listening to Dani, an Erasmus student from Spain. Going on Erasmus is really an international adventure!
Sunday mostly consisted of leaving the hostel and going to the airport. Where we coincidentally met two people who had just returned from a weekend in London. :-D
Anyway, this was the short version of an in any case short weekend... And I still feel sorry for Jonas who got a bit too much of the real Ireland. No, not the pubs, the weather. I'm not exaggerating when I say that this was the weekend with the most rain since I came to Ireland... To validate my statement: someone posted this in the Freshers Facebook group...

I don't need to say anything else, do I?

And I'm not planning to say anything else, actually. I'm just going to find a few of the pictures I took during the weekend.

Merrion Square

Slightly wet path...

Oscar Wilde.

St. Stephen's Green

City Centre

Sven!! (From Frozen, window of the Disney Store) 

Howth

:-)

I was not joking about the amount of water...

Saturday night

Dani!

I also liked the lighting in Sweeney's. Yes, I'm a lighting freak...

... and a decoration freak. That was at our hostel.

Finally, there is only one more thing for me to say:

thank you for coming! (: