Belfast Tour and some Maynooth pictures (13.12.)

Here's another reason why I wasn't ready to say goodbye to Ireland and why the Farewell Party was premature. I still hadn't been to Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland. Sure, we had been driving through it when going on the GoT Tour and to the Giant's Causeway. But that's like landing at Dublin airport only to go to Maynooth. It doesn't count as having been there. So I hadn't properly been to Belfast.
Anyway, this tour was the last one of the three tours organised by the International Office I had already booked during orientation week. So I had always known that I would go to Belfast just before the end of the semester. (The date was - next to the price - a reason for many people not to book this tour: studying instead of touring, please!)
Unlike the week before my alarm worked and I had no intention of being late again. Especially since the street had been slippery the day before I decided to leave the house really early just to make sure I wouldn't be late. This led to being on campus way too early, of course... But since it was December and quite cold (no snow to be seen though) I used this opportunity and took some pictures of wintry Maynooth:

Next to the annoying field quite early in the morning...

South Campus again. <3 That's my desktop background at the moment.

But nice Maynooth pictures are not what this post is about. After standing around in the cold a bit we could finally see our bus coming that brought us to Belfast.
The first part of the tour was going to the Titanic Experience, a museum-like something about the Titanic. The real ship, not the film with Leonardo DiCaprio. Of course, the cinematic history of the Titanic was also covered but in the first place it was about the real events. That's because the ship was actually built in Belfast, just in case you didn't know that (I didn't ^^).
It was quite interesting in there, because you could see how the ship was built, what it looked like on the ship, what happened in the night of its sinking, how the wreck was examined on the bottom of the sea and so on...

It even looked interesting from the outside:

The rest of the day was basically free time. The bus driver drove us to the city centre of Belfast, told us about a few interesting places we might visit, told us when the bus would leave for Maynooth again and then kicked us out of the bus at the City Hall.

Anyway, that's where Belfast's Christmas market happened to take place, so we (including Vansch who was in Belfast on her own that day) went there. It was nicer than the Christmas market in Dublin, I'd say, but we didn't buy anything. The prices were around the same as in Ireland or Germany - only in pound instead of euro. xD

Then we spent ages looking for something to eat. But we managed to do other stuff as well: checking out a few streets of the city centre, going to some market, having a glance at a shopping centre (not for shopping but because it looked nice) and going to the cathedral. And we were almost punctual when going back to the bus... I mean, it hadn't left without us and we weren't even the last ones!

Erasmus Farewell Party (12.12.)

The last week of the semester had not even begun (it was the Friday of the second last week) when all the saying goodbye stuff started. With the official Erasmus Farewell Party organised by the International Office. Way too early, at least in my opinion. I mean, I still had to hand in two essays before going home (and two more after returning to Germany) so the semester was definitely not over then. So I guess most people were not really in farewell mood, but we went there anyway. If nothing else, there was at least free food. :-D That's why I was part of the group that left the library on Friday evening to go to Pugin Hall where the event took place. Oh, and just for the record: we had to leave the library through the emergency exit because the regular door was still, ahem, not usable.

(We're not exactly sure how it happened but according to rumours that had already happened a year earlier. Weird annual thing. xD It took them ten days to fix it. And a week to turn off the alarm of the emergency exit.)

Anyway, next to food (and drinks of course) there were also other reasons to go to the party. Dani was playing and singing. And the International Office had prepared a presentation. It contained wishes international students had uttered at the beginning of the semester. Since nobody of the Erasmus students could remember somebody asking us about our wishes, we came to the conclusion that only Study Abroad students had been asked. Or maybe only Americans. But it was quite entertaining to read wishes such as "I want to fall in love in Ireland"...
Furthermore, they showed the contributions of the photo competition and announced the winners. A few days ago the International Office had been looking for more participants desperately so some of us had submitted one to three pictures. This was mine for the category "Ireland is ...":

Ireland is ... full of cute, adorable sheep!

You could basically divide the submissions into two groups: beautiful landscape and funny pictures. The winning pictures were all landscape pics which was a bit boring, to be honest. Although everybody knows that I'm a fan of landscapes - anyone can do that. I would have preferred something more personal, like "being a Maynooth student means being surrounded by Germans" or "being a Maynooth student means knowing the only hotspot in the library" (the hand dryer in the bathroom xD).
Anyway, it was a nice evening, for once they had enough food for everybody (we could even take the leftovers with us), and afterwards we went to a pub with a big group of people.

(There is a reason why I personally don't take pictures in pubs - the quality is shite. But this was a revenge pic for somebody sending me pictures of bagels I missed out in Mannheim...)

... and partying in Dublin (still 6.12.)

Normally, after a day of touring through Northern Ireland, you wouldn't do much in the evening, I guess. But this was Erasmus, so there was not much "normal" about the whole time anyway. And since it was December we could already feel the end of our semester in Ireland coming. So we had decided to go out in Dublin again because we knew it might be our last time to do it (we were right, btw). Well, and we kind of had to do it because it was Saturday. I mean, seriously, there are basically two days a week where you're able to go out in Dublin when living in Maynooth or nearby: Friday and Saturday. Because on these two days, you actually have a possibility of making it back home without having to take a taxi. Night buses leaving four times a night between midnight and 4 a.m. are a wonderful invention!
But anyway, before I could think about making it back from Dublin to Maynooth, I had to make it back from Northern Ireland to Maynooth and then from Maynooth to Dublin. The first part of this journey took a bit longer than expected due to a traffic jam in Belfast... But I actually managed to make it back to my guest family's house and have a warm shower (urgently needed after a day in the rain) before taking the train to Dublin.
First (after going to McDonald's, ahem), we went to The Grand Social. That's where we had already been when we were partying in Dublin on another Saturday. I actually think I never mentioned that on this blog because it didn't seem too important to me in comparison to the Galway trip and the Samhain festival which took place in the same week...
Anyway, it was fun the first time so we went there again. But although I was there twice I possess zero pictures of the club because I don't really take pictures when going out. I'm more the landscape picture type. Win probably took pictures, because she took pictures always and everywhere. :-D But never mind, just have a look at the website of The Grand Social. It's a really nice club with different dance floors and we didn't have to pay to get in there.
Unlike last time we didn't stay there until we went home but went to another club. It's called The Church - because that's what it is / was. A club (and some more stuff) in the building of a former church (St. Mary's Church, if Wikipedia is right). Again, no pictures of my own. But just google it for yourself or have a look at their website.
The concept and the location were quite interesting and impressing. But in my opinion there were just too many annoying drunk guys around this night. So we didn't stay too long before we ended up in McDonald's again. xD Anyway, if you ignored drunk people and focused on the music it was quite okay. Again, for the second time in a week, I was forced to dance to Taylor Swift's Shake It Off. (Win had already made me do that in the Roost which serves as a night club every Thursday.) I feel like I'm not going to get that song out of my head ever again. But yeah, that's Erasmus memories...

Giant's Causeway Tour (6.12.) ...

Annotation: yup, I'm back with this blog to finish what I've begun a long, long time ago...

Yeah, so what is the best thing you can do during the time when you should be sitting in the library doing your assignments? - Exactly, going on another trip! :-D
Actually, it wasn't really my plan to go on this trip. It was organised by the International Society, and the tickets were sold at the same time as the tickets for the Peter Pan Panto. But I didn't buy one because I thought I wouldn't have time for that and I was planning on being a good girl, going to the library, writing my essays, ...
Totally successful, obviously. :-P No, seriously, by coincidence I checked my where-to-go list I had made before coming to Ireland at some point and realised that the Giants Causeway was on it. That was the moment when I thought, "never mind about essays", because I really wanted to go there, and this was my chance to do it before going home, so I just had to do it! (Fortunately, there were still ~10 tickets left to buy in the SU Headquarters, because the official ticket sale was already over when I had finally made up my mind.)
I was really lucky that I could go on this trip. Twice. First, when I was able to buy one of the last tickets, and second, when I was actually able to join the trip although I was f...ing late. This was because on this day - of all days of the whole semester! - my alarm decided not to go off. I have absolutely no explanation for this, seriously... But yeah, that's kind of... bad timing, if you're told at the orga meeting that the bus leaves at the university at 7 a.m. sharp... Anyway, thanks to Sirkka, Laetitia and a really nice bus driver who so didn't leave at seven sharp, I was able to join the trip somehow. The way to the university was terrible and I was almost dying, btw...
____

I can't even remember when I wrote the above part of this blog post. Anyway, I'll just write a few sentences and then add (maybe a few more) pictures.
The weather wasn't exactly the best at this day, but well, it was December in Ireland, so we didn't really have a right to complain about the rain. And the landscape was still astonishingly beautiful. So it wasn't even a problem that we went to a few places that the Game of Thrones Tour had already covered.
Anyone remember these, for example?

Correct, these are the Dark Hedges. :-)
We also went to Ballintoy, Carrick-a-Rede and Dunluce Castle (no responsibilities taken regarding the spelling...). And this time, we actually went on the rope bridge instead of just (maybe) spotting it in the distance. The picture to prove it:

And since I don't really have a clue about which place was named now, I'll just post the rest of the GoT pics now, calling them "Beautiful landscape in Northern Ireland" ...

The colour of the water. <3

The rope bridge from another perspective.

Dunluce Castle...?

And a close-up of the obligatory "oh, sheep!"

I'll skip the part about lunch - it was at the same "cafeteria" where we had stopped at the GoT Tour, not too spectactular... - and continue with the actual topic of this post. We finally went to the Giant's Causeway!
That means: now it's time for the always necessary map!

By the way, it was quite an issue to get the map the way I wanted it. I don't know why exactly but it kept showing the Giant's Causeway as the "Strasse der Riesen" (flawed German - that's disgusting!) although I used Irish Google and Irish Google Maps! -.- I first had to change the language settings of my internet browser to make it work...

First we went to the visitor centre and wasted a bit of time there:

Cute hedgehogs!

Cute foxes!

And now the pictures of the Giants Causeway. To be honest, I couldn't quite handle the audio guide, my camera and the rain at the same time, so I just took pictures without bothering too much about what the automatic voice wanted to tell me. Unfortunately, that means I can't tell you lot about the Giant's Causeway but that it's not man-made but formed by nature (volcanic activity) - and that it's a huge tourist attraction. Even in the December rain... For further information, just have a look at the (hopefully) official website. There you'll also find a lot of pictures taken under the perfect conditions. Unlike mine. :-P

And in order not to spoil the mood created by this amazing beauty of the earth I'll just end this post now and continue in another post... ;-)