Hello alle,
I miss you all, really I do. I just can't seem to keep up with everything I want/need to be doing. It's honestly the travel that stresses me out the most, but I've also been looking at stuff for the summer. It's very disheartening to write your CV/resume and realize you've done nothing. But that's depressing news!
So when I last left you, it was mid-October. Oh, how time flies! We did no travelling the next weekends, which is probably why I did not end up posting (I generally try to do one a week, I swear!). We had a nice quiet weekend at home. I organized a beer pong (technically Beirut, but whatever) tournament, which was great because everyone was home. We also went to the Flomarkt (flea market) again, which is always fun. The weather was nice and we explored Dresden a little bit. We found a beautiful park and I took some great pictures, which will be up on my photobucket whenever I get the chance. We had our first biology exam at the end of October, and it was a joke. There were yes/no questions! YES/NO QUESTIONS ON A SCIENCE CLASS'S EXAM. There just isn't a whole lot to report over the last two weekend in October.
Halloween, a huge party holiday in the US, was really stupid here. I was not in the spirit, as I knew it would not be the same and I was trying to be more Deutsch in my Halloween separation. All we really did was go to the student's bar and have a beer on Halloween, which is fine with me. I'm too poor to buy a costume anyway!
The next week was stressful, as we hadn't travelled in a while and we were going to Dublin on the weekend. Also, we had a hell-day with class from 7:30 to 12:00 and lab from 1:30 to 5:00. It was terrible, as expected, but clearly I lived. It was worth the suffering to go to Dublin this past weekend!
Dublin was a little different than the last trips we've been on because it was just Zeynep and I. We had a reasonable flight at 1:30 from Berlin to Dublin, so we took a bus on Friday at ten to get to the Berlin airport. We went through security, did all that, then took our flights. Zeynep told me right before we took off that she HATES planes (I was surprised, she travells internationally quite a bit), so that was a minor bump in the road. Everything was fine, obviously, so we arrived in Ireland at about 3:30pm. Of course we were starving, so we went to a pub to eat some traditional Irish food. I had bangers and mash, which is like basically German potatoes and sausage, but it was delicious. Then we went back to the hostel, walked around some and sat on the River Liffey to enjoy the nightfall. We went into a pub, grabbed a pint just to be Irish, and went to bed early.
On Saturday we started by walking to the Guinness Storehouse, which was quite the trek from our hostel. We got a little lost, but we left with plenty of time, and we saw some sights we wouldn't have otherwise. Lots of beautiful old churches in Dublin. The storehouse was amazing. So much information on the history of Guinness and just the brewing process, I was fascinated. With the admission price you get a free pint, so we got that on the top floor in their gravity bar with a 360 degree view of Dublin. The weather was nice and it was beautiful to look out over the city.
Next we went on a free walking tour, which was great. I have done them in two (maybe three?) cities so far, and the guides are great and it's so nice to have some background on the history and the people in the city. Our guide was a native Dubliner, and was very sweet. We got some food with her afterward, and she explained the rules of rugby to us while we watched Ireland vs. South Africa. Rugby is the most violent game in the entire world, and they wear NO PADDING. *Shudders* It was about six by the time we were done eating, so we went back to the hostel to rest.
I don't normally do pub crawls, but Dublin was definitely a great place to do it! There were a lot of people who were fun to talk to, and I enjoyed the atmosphere of all the places they took us. Of course they were all like "O'Neil's" or some such. Hilariously stereotypical. We ended at a club sort of thing, but I honestly do not like house music. That is one thing about Europe I dislike- I'm a much bigger fan of hip-hop (Blackmusic auf Deutsch) for dancing and party-going. Zeynep and I had been up since seven, so we were exhausted. We went home pretty early and went to bed.
Sunday was frustrating because the bus didn't come on time, so we had to take a taxi to the airport. That also used up most of our money, so we were just hanging out waiting to go back to Germany. We discovered we had to have our boarding passes stamped because we weren't EU citizens, and had to run from our gate back through security and back to the gate in fifteen minutes, but we made it. Barely. What now, ghetto European airlines?! Take that! We arrived back in Germany at about one and took a bus back to Dresden at two. We got home and I lazed about for the rest of the day, as per my usual Sunday routine.
I started writing this on Monday and now it's Wednesday, and I SWEAR I am going to post this before the weekend. We have our week-long break (holiday, Urlaub, whatever) starting on Friday. Our flight leaves at eight, so we're catching the bus to Berlin at 4:45AM. That should be a great time. I'm running around doing last minute things like printing out directions to the hostel, thinking about places I want to go in the cities we're visiting, and doing laundry. We also have a cultural excursion today in twenty minutes, so I have to go to that. I'm honestly really stressed right now and I'm mad at myself that I left everything to the l ast minute, as per my procrastinator's nature. That's honestly all I can say right now. I won't be on the computer during the week long break, because I don't want to bring it and it get stolen, so you'll have to do without me for a little while. Miss you all terribly.
Tschuss!
