"Small" trip to Sligo (7.11.)

I'm not exactly sure how that happened, but I think it went like this: I just intended to watch a film for my German class on a Sunday evening. And even before we had started watching it, we had agreed on going to Sligo five days later. Well... :-D
Initially, we had planned to stay there for two days. But when we had to realize that it wasn't too easy to find a hostel that wasn't booked out, and that we might need the time of the weekend for, ahem, other stuff, we decided to handle it a bit differently.
But first, let me mention the "other stuff": I'm referring to the assignments that were due at that time. Since we had spent the study week with doing everything but studying, the studying had to be done at some other point. So I ended up in the library after the rehearsal of the choir, for example. That was where the following conversation took place (not the exact wording, naturally):

- What are you doing here?
- Well, I have two* assignments due next week and have to do some reading now.
- Two assignments? So, what are you doing at the weekend? *haha*
- Ahem, actually, I'm going to Sligo on Friday...
- What?! You have to write two essays for next week (and haven't written a single word so far, annotation of the author), and you're going to Sligo on Friday? You're worse than me...!

* Tbh,  I was even thinking about doing three assignments at that point. But the third one was not obligatory (the good thing about having to do 3 out of 5 worksheets), so: bye bye :-P

I'm not exactly sure how bad that is, but I felt like I was being a relatively bad person then. Didn't prevent me from going to Sligo, though. xD
Since we decided not to stay overnight, we had to try and make the most out of one day. Which means we took the first train in the morning. Can't remember the exact time, but it was probably something around 8 a.m. Yeah, and since the last train back to Maynooth would have departed way too early (something around 6 p.m.), we decided to go back by bus. Because there was a Bus Éireann leaving from Sligo at 1 a.m. xD An no, that's not normal for Irish public transport, the destination of this bus was the airport. But it was so nice as to stop in beautiful Maynooth on its way there.
Anyway, we took the train at a rather early time and were quite early in Sligo (despite of the obligatory delay of Irish Rail :-P). But yeah, it was not exactly the plan to stay in Sligo town for the day - although it's a city compared to Maynooth -, but to go to a mountain named Knocknarea (no clue about the pronunciation, but I hope the spelling is correct at least) somewhere nearby. Of course, not near enough to just walk there. So we got to enjoy public transport again. And - of course² - the bus didn't stop directly at the mountain, but at some street with a sign "Knocknarea 3km" or something like this.
Which means we had a nice walk to the mountain. And I'm not being sarcastic this time, it was really nice. Even the weather was nice & warm & dry, I have pictures to prove that!

Oh, sheep (trying to hide)

It's a long, long road...

Oh, cows - and people taking pictures of them!

Oh, more sheep!

Oh, and more cows!!

After some time, we eventually reached the mountain. But somehow, we were a bit on the wrong track and couldn't make it to the top that way. Our surrounding was nice anyway.

But at some point, the beautiful Forbidden Forest environment got slightly too bushy for my taste, and started to remind me of the hike with the Rovers. If you read my post about it, you should know which kind of traumatic experience that was for me... So we eventually decided (were forced) to go back and ask someone for directions.
When we reached the way a nice person had described to us, there was actually a sign saying, Knocknarea this way... Whatever. xD
So we were finally back on the right track and actually made it to the top of the mountain.

Oh, even more cows! xD

Slightly wet path.

Made it to the top.

Necessary selfie. Not the first one. But the only one in this post.

Sunshine + rain = rainbow!

Even wetter path after the rain.

On top of the mountain, it started raining, of course. So we went down again. And decided to continue walking a little bit further, since Strandhill wasn't supposed to be very far away. Well... I was able to take some nice pictures - on the way there, because when we finally reached Strandhill, it was getting dark. :-P

Cows - what a surprise!

In Strandhill, we just went to a "fancy" restaurant, where we could get food. And wait for ourselves to get dry again. Then we took the bus back to Sligo, checked out the town a bit (Tesco and Penneys were part of that...) and finally went to the cinema to watch Interstellar. Actually, this was the first time in an Irish cinema for me, because Maynooth doesn't have one, while there are two in Sligo... This was a really nice ending for a great day. Or, wait, this was not the end. To be precise, the end was taking the bus at 1 o'clock. But it was a nice end anyway, because for once, Bus Éireann was there on time. So I was really at home shortly before half past four, as far as I can remember...

P.S. I almost forgot the inevitable map to illustrate where I've been this time. Sorry! :-D Here it is:

In the north of Ireland, pretty close to Northern Ireland.

Samhain Festival (31.10., obviously)

Since it is my declared goal to finish with the posts about October before the end of November (very ambitious xD), it's time now to write a post about the last day of October. I mean, yeah, we had just returned from Galway the night before, but, of course, we couldn't just have a day off after that. Having days off is not what Erasmus is about. :-P
So it was the 31st of October, commonly known as Halloween - or Hallowe'en. (That's how my Early Irish lecturer spells it, and it's actually a legitimate spelling variant of it, I looked it up. ^^) And nobody gave a shit about how to spell that, because we didn't celebrate that, but Samhain. Which could be spelled differently, like Samain or Samaine...? And please nobody ask me about how to pronounce it in English, I so don't have a clue. xD
Anyway, we celebrated the day a bit differently - the original traditional Irish way, I'd say, because Samhain is a Gaelic festival. Proven by Wikipedia. :-P
The Celtic Society of the university (yeah, Maynooth has a society for pretty much everything ^^) organized a trip to a Samhain festival at the Hill of Ward.

Since even most of us (and we live in Ireland at the moment) were like, "Where the hell are we going anyway?", I don't expect anyone to know where that is. Therefore, it's time to insert the obligatory map now:

But to be honest, most of us didn't really care where exactly we were going. It was more like a group event, and a birthday party for one of us. xD
It was only during the trip when I learned that the Celtic Society had actually sent emails with important information regarding the trip. Well, needless to mention it - I hadn't received any emails. And I was not the only one... But yeah, I mean, I had somehow expected that there wouldn't be toilets somewhere on a hill and that you should wear proper shoes. My opportunity to wear my shiny rain boots again... :-P
So we went to Athboy with a bus and had dinner at some restaurant. After that we where still too early for the meeting in the park. Only that nobody mentioned that we were supposed to meet all the other festival participants. So I was merely confused - "What are we early for, and why are we going to a pub now?" Okay, honestly, you don't need a reason to go to the pub when you're in Ireland, but I would say you need one when you're going there with a group of students who want to attend a Samhain festival...
Whatever, after half an hour we could finally go to the meeting, where we got the briefing for the festival plan, including the rehearsing of a song we should later sing. I managed to find the lyrics online, which was necessary, because I was just unable to remember these four lines. xD

Tlachtga Lady Goddess Fair
Come to us on frosted air
Guide our path by pale moonlight
Light our fires on Samhain night.

This is the song of Tlachtga, the mythological person whose story was told on her hill (seems like the Hill of Ward can also be called Hill of Tlachtga or so) in that night.
The atmosphere of this festival was really incredible, first the gathering in the park, then the light procession up the hill, and then the festivity on the hill with the telling of the story and the playing of music...
There is now way of capturing the feeling of the Festival of Fire in pictures (or videos - someone actually did one, but fortunately, that never appeared on Facebook...), but I was at least trying. Just try to ignore the quality, my camera was not made for night shots...

Yeah, Halloween was also present...

Our flag-bearers ;-)

I hope you can tell from the pictures that it was pretty magical and amazing in the night where the curtain between our world and the Otherworld is supposed to be at its thinnest. And no, that doesn't mean that the people who went to the bushes are possessed by ghosts now. I mean, some people took the risk of meeting Otherworldly creatures while peeing even twice: uphill and downhill. I just waited until we got back to the pub. There you're only at risk of meeting drunk people (not sure what's more annoying though ^^).

Galway City (30.10.)

Yay, I finally reached the last Galway post - and it's not even December!

And this is the post which is actually about Galway itself, not about some day tour to I-don't-know-where. We used our last day to check out the city we had been staying in the days before...

NUIG

As already mentioned in the orga post, some of us visited the campus of the NUIG, the National University of Ireland, Galway. At some point, people were wondering: "Why again didn't I apply for this university instead of Maynooth? Oh, right - because it's not a partner university of my home university...!" So, yeah, the NUIG was kind of nice. :-P

Fun Fact: The NUIG has, like the former NUIM, its own waste bins. And nobody seems to understand the Irish recycling system.

Free Walking Tour

I just want to point out that this time could do a tour of the city with a big group without any problems. Unlike the disaster in Dublin. :-P
Oh, and speaking of disasters: I'm one when it comes to history. So I cannot really give a proper summary of what our really nice tour guide told us about the history of Galway. What got stuck in my head is: it was kind of bloody, with lots of dead people. Anyway, I'll just provide a link to Wikipedia here for the people who are interested in the History of Galway.
I'll just move on to the pictures I took during the tour. Maybe that was another reason why I didn't hear and memorize everything: I was just too busy trying to take at least decent pictures with my phone (reminder: my camera had died the day before and I hadn't brought my charger...).
The results:

In Galway's cathedral. One of the youngest cathedrals in Europe or so...

Special Irish marble.

Some fairy bridge.

You're at the west coast, when... there are signs in Irish only.

Comment in between: if the internet is slow - which is the case at the moment - uploading pictures is incredibly annoying...
But never mind, I'm going to upload some more pictures, no matter how long it will take me. For example, some...

... Random Pictures!

They are just too cute to keep them for myself!

In Penneys, I think.

Oh, rabbit! <3

Seaside

Good thing a few of us "decided" to take the bus two hours later than the majority. (We would have had to stress "a bit" to make it for the earlier bus...) So we actually had time to look for the seaside. Searching for it took some time and nearly got us killed by a car (electric cars are evil, because you cannot hear them coming!), but we eventually managed to find it. Which made me really happy, because I like going to the seaside. And taking pictures of it. Although I might like the latter a bit too much...

Anyway, I obviously survived the trip - including all the selfies that other people took of me and that I'm certainly not posting here now! - and can now present a few seaside pictures to end the Galway posts with: