OneRepublic in Dublin!! (19.10.)

Despite the recent change of language of my blog, I didn't even have to change the title of this post. That's the result of a very sophisticated choice of a headline!
And I can already tell that this post won't be as long as the last one. There are two reasons for that. First, it's already way too late, and I just want to finish this post because the concert I'm writing about already took place one week ago, and because I'm going to Galway tomorrow (ahem, in fact, it's today). Don't expect any posts for the next days - I'm absolutely not blogging with my mobile phone...
Second, I just took a closer look at all the pictures I took during the concert. Lots of them turned out to be blurred. :-/ Seems like my camera is only okay for taking pictures in the daylight...

However, maybe I should start from the beginning in order to not confuse people more than necessary. Last Sunday was the OneRepublic concert in Dublin. I was looking forward to this since August, my ticket is proof of that:

Fun Fact: I took the picture before I went to the concert. Afterwards it didn't look quite that good any more...

We went there with a group of Erasmus students, which I really appreciated, because queuing can be quite boring if you're doing it on your own. And, of course, there was a bit of queuing involved to get into the 3Arena, where OneRepublic's only Ireland concert of the Native Summer Tour took place. It makes sense that there would be only one concert in Ireland, since even the biggest arena of its capital is only around the size of the SAP-Arena in Mannheim. But actually, this piece of information is taken from the Wikipedia article about the tour. (Yes, there is a whole article only about the tour; no, I didn't know that before I googled it xD)
But I should try and keep a bit more to the point if I ever want to finish this post... We met in the afternoon in Dublin and started queuing around 5:30 pm. The official opening of the doors was 6:30 pm, and unlike everything else in Ireland so far, there was no delay. Which was really nice, because it had been raining a bit while we were waiting outside...

Waiting selfie... xD

Once inside the arena, we could - surprisingly! - continue waiting. Therefore I have some pictures of the arena and the empty stage now. But I really liked the arena, so it's okay that I had some time to examine it - doesn't mean I like waiting particularly...

By the way, I somehow like the lighting, although slightly pinkish...

Fun Fact: The name of the opening act was Kongos!

This was taken during the waiting between opening act and "real" concert.

Yeah, so this is the opening act named Kongos (unfortunately not The Script, probably because they are too famous in Ireland):

I can't really remember their sound, since I've still got the OneRepublic songs stuck in my head -typical case of "Ohrwurm" (earworm). But they were totally okay.
Of course, everybody was just waiting for OneRepublic. That became obvious in the break between Kongos and OneRepublic. Not only the seated section, but also the standing section got fuller and fuller. Unfortunately, is the word to be added here - too much fangirling around us for my taste...
When OneRepublic finally entered the stage, it was quite impressive. A few pictures to illustrate what I mean:

Huge white curtain.

Nothing to be seen so far, but everybody's already raising their phones.

Playing behind the curtain.

One of the security guys told us just before the concert started: "No videos, only photos!". I followed that rule (probably the quality of such videos would have been shitty anyway), so I won't insert any videos here, but I can at least copy and paste the setlist provided by Wikipedia. ;-)

"Don't Look Down"
"Light It Up"
"Secrets"
"All the Right Moves"
"What You Wanted"
"Stop and Stare"
"Something I Need"
"Apologize"
"Preacher"
"Come Home"
"Counting Stars"
"Can't Stop"
"Au Revoir"
"Feel Again"
"Good Life"
"I Lived"

Encore
"Love Runs Out"
"What a Wonderful World" (Louis Armstrong cover)
"If I Lose Myself"

And now, I'll try to find some okayish pictures of an amazing concert...

The lighting! <3

This could have been a good picture, if not, ahem...!

Shower of confetti! :-)

Oops, these are a few more pictures than I'd expected. Sorry, but I'm way too tired to delete any of them now.

Good night!

Day trip to Malahide (18.10.)

After neglecting the chronological order of the events for the first time yesterday, in favour of the immediate release of the post about our adventurous hike, I'm going back to normal now. I had already created a draft for this post before I switched to English, but luckily I hadn't really written anything but the title so far. For the people with knowledge of the German language, the original headline of this post was "Wo waren wir denn noch nicht...? Ach ja, Malahide!", indicating that after Skerries (twice) and Howth, it had been time to visit Malahide. To illustrate what I'm talking about, have a look at the inevitable map:

Source: Google Maps, as always...

The distance between the mentioned towns / villages / definitely not cities is not too big, and Malahide is located just between Skerries and Howth.
In order to go there, you just do the same you would do to go to Skerries or Howth: first go to Dublin Connolly, then take the train to your destination of the day. Sounds pretty easy, which is true - in theory. De facto, it's still not difficult, but is linked to lots of waiting. I could start complaining about public transport at this point, but yeah, everybody has understood that by now, I guess. So I'll just skip the grumbling part this time.
After everybody had arrived at Connolly, had gotten everything they wanted (coffee, mobile phone credit, tickets to Malahide, don't know what else...), we could finally take the next train to Malahide. And we didn't even have to break the rules of the train station (no running, wtf?) to make it.

Annotation: even if you're able to spot my reflection - this is not a selfie!

Yeah, and now I just checked out all of the pictures I took on that day. Believe me, that was hard work, since during the Malahide trip, it happened for the first (and so far only) time, that my camera capitulated: its battery was empty. Naturally, I didn't take that as a sign that I could have taken enough pictures for that day - no, I just continued with my phone! (To be honest, I had promised to take lots of pictures, so I couldn't just stop after only half of the trip. That wouldn't have been an appropriate kind of documentation!)

So, what's there to be seen in Malahide?
The answer to that question is pretty easy: there's a castle, and that's basically it. So, when we arrived in Malahide, we agreed on going to the castle first. By the way, this is Malahide's train station. I thought it was nice, so it deserved to appear in this post. ;-)

Going to the castle was supposed to be a relatively easy task, since it is the (only) attraction of the town. According to that, there were signs leading to it. Buuut (big but, ahem) they weren't exactly ideally positioned - there were at least two signs that were contradictory: they showed different directions!
However, although whoever had placed these signs hadn't wanted us to find the castle, we managed to do so. Well, first we found this:

Nope, this is not the castle. If it had been the castle, we would have been finished within a few minutes. :-D To gain access to the castle, you had to go into the visitor centre, try to get not too distracted by lots of souvenirs (we were sort of successful), and buy a ticket for the castle. Some of us got a ticket, the others got left behind here:

Not the worst place. ;-)

Inside the castle, we attended a tour. You get to chose between listening to a human guide talking English and an audio guide talking Spanish. Nobody was able to fully understand why there was only Spanish, but yeah, since we all understand English: who cares...
The tour guide started with telling us about the five (or so) ghosts living in the castle. Of course, we didn't see / hear / notice in any way any of them, but it seems like Irish people are really into ghosts. Not sure, if they are serious about it or if it's some sort of marketing strategy. Maybe both:

On the back of the toilet door.

Then, the guide showed us around the castle. I'll just insert a few (more) of the pictures I've taken.

Nice chairs, but no sitting on them, please!

Pretty lighting!

Margaret Thatcher has sit on the left one, if I remember correctly.

Cool moulding (or whatever you call that).

Next room: I still like the lighting :-D

Our guide explaining how to not lose your face (make-up) near the fireplace.

Upstairs: having tea next to the bed - nice. :-D

I like fireplaces.

Slightly kitsch, but I'd still love to sleep in a bed like this!

The lighting thing again...

The fireplace thing again. :-P

Looots of paintings. The big one (The Battle of the Boyne) is being restored atm...

And another fireplace to end with.

Of course, we weren't finished after the castle tour. When you're already there, you have to make the most of it. We had bought a combi ticket which gave us access not only to the castle, but also to the gardens. It was just in the gardens when my camera gave up. The following pictures might serve as an explanation why. (I'm not going to upload all the pics I've taken, no worries! xD)

I think, someone compared that to entering Narnia.

A very old tree.

This is probably the perfect climbing tree.

After our excursion to the gardens we had to get moving to meet the others again. The instructions where to go were pretty clear: go to the port. There was only one problem: so, where is the port? :-D
But we eventually managed to go there, I have proof of that:

The others had been sitting around (+ eating) enough, so we decided to check out the church nearby.

A blue door, seriously? xD

Interestingly shaped ... "trees"?

And this is - surprise, surprise! - holy water! Still no selfie. :-P

After that, we were done in Malahide, so we went back to Dublin. Some of us ended up in a pub, which is kind of normal for Ireland. I ordered tea again, which is kind of normal for me. I'm not going to try and describe the facial expression of the guy at the bar, who obviously didn't consider that normal. Instead I'll just finish this post with a nice picture (regarding the content, not the quality) of the Liffey at night. :-)