Kategorie: Privat

More about the Dublin nightlife

Hello once again 🙂

The last few weekdays my roommate Chris wrote back and forth with some German girls over here in Ireland on the social network StudiVZ. He finally arranged a meeting on friday evening. He asked them if he could bring ’some‘ workmates, in reality meaning a mixed group of Herbertons and Ladlanes of about 8-10 people.

The girl who arranged the meeting was a bit shocked over so many people. She led us into a (SURPRISE!) pub where two other girls waited which she also knew from StudiVZ. We talked, we drank and since Becky(an abbrevation she hates! :P) lives here for a few months now, we got some really good advices. She works in the travel business and travels alot around here. So she could give us especially good advice about quick trips you can make on weekends.

At around 3am or 4am the rest of us left the pub, had a bite and then took off. Ben, Flo and I took a cab and drove home. While driving we made small talk and the taxi driver once again indicated that our district is REALLY dangerous…

Yesterday, perceived a few hours ago ;), we met the girls again at a location called ‚The Academy‘. I liked the location itself a lot. On two of the three floors the main theme was Rock and Indie Rock. The 3rd floor closed when we arrived but on that floor regular live gigs take place. The sofas in the lounge area were godlike… so incredible cOmFoRtAbLe… Furthermore did that floor have a section with a XBox, a football table and an extra room with a big display and two Guitar Hero DJ stands.

The music was very good, very loud and besides getting jostled like hell, dancing in that environment made a lot of fun . At 3am the club closed unfortunately. So we were literal thrown out. 🙁 We said goodbye to the girls, which looked gorgeous by the way and took of, following the Luas lines home.

The girls took pictures, so check back, I’ll try to get them…

*the camera is still on* So lets open up Studi, what was her name again? oh yeah… Isabelle *cencored*… found her, ok lets click here and then… hey… wait a second, is the camera still on… Jesus Christ, I’ll have to remove that later… *camera off*

Chapter 4: Work, a lot of new and a bloody afternoon

Hey guys!
Today I’ll tell you something about my work. The company I work for from now on is called ‘Lagan Technologies Ltd.’, or just ‘Lagan’, which supports hardware, maintains server and develops software solutions for the British and the American government.

the Lagan building

Before I get there on my first day at Monday I met Kevin at his office, together with Oliver who works in another division at Lagan, because he wanted to drive us to the company and to introduce us to our future bosses.
Finally at Lagan, which lies in the north of Belfast nearby the airport, we stepped in the foyer and waited a minute before Oliver and I were introduced to Oliver’s boss, which name I already forgot. He shows us the office area, the kitchen and introduced us to some of the employees.
After that he brought me to my boss John and to Gary, very kind persons by the way. Then John showed me my workplace and the server room and explained me a lot for this purpose.

my workplace

My first task was to set up two ESX-Servers running on Linux and to configure them with another server remotely (with ‘vSphere’) for the purpose of creating virtual machines on the ESX-Servers. Than I had to make many ISO-Files from different operating systems like ‘Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise x64’ or ‘CentOS 5.5 x64’. After that I virtualized these operating systems and did many, many updates, configured for example the ‘Microsoft Internet Explorer Enhanced Security’ and the ‘Shutdown Event Tracker’. I did this to create from the fully updated and operational VM’s templates. I’m still working on this task.
Besides I changed the IP address of each ESX-Server in Linux and I upgraded one of these with memory up to 24GB RAM, that was the first time ever I touched server hardware on my own and it is – what a miracle – not broken or exploded (Leo!). xD …never mind…

Normally I would end this Blog for now, but today something horrible happened. After work I met with Friedrich in front of the City Centre because we wanted to drive with one of his workmates, Matt, to a huge TESCO for some daily shopping. Along the way to Matt’s car we passed a bus stop where an older lady was waiting on a bench. Nearby was standing a man with a Bullterrier on a leash. All around also were many people. So far to the initial situation.
Suddenly, for no apparent reason, the Bullterrier was attacking the older lady, bit her above the knee and don’t let go! The owner of the dog swooped down on it without hesitation and tried to get his dog off from the woman. All people around looked shocked to the incident and nobody had the guts to interfere. The older lady stops to scream early, maybe the shock, so that the only thing you could hear were things like “Oh my god!” from the people around. Very creepy moment!
With bad feelings Friedrich and I were walking towards the woman to help her somehow, but before we reached her, the owner of the Bullterrier finally made it to open the dog’s mouth and pull him back.
Somebody of the people around already called an ambulance and a fierce discussion starts with the owner of the dog. At this point Friedrich, Matt and I were leaving this place – aghast at this shocking 10 minutes…

Well, so far, stay tuned and a last hint: Beware of Bullterriers (or other dogs), especially without a muzzle!

Irish Music

Sorry for being late, this blog should already have been online yesterday but with our internet connection it took me ages to upload the videos.

Well, I already told you about the home party where I was invited. There I met some people and one of them invited me to his BBQ on Saturday afternoon. I took my roommate Tim with me and we went there with him and a French colleague of mine. At the BBQ, which was a Brazilian one, we met a lot of people mainly Brazilians but some South Korean and Irish people too.  Tim already told very detailed about it in his blog which I got to recommend to you: “and Suddenly! Brasilians everywere!”. On Sunday we went out for a walk through the city.

Another picture from inside the temple bar yesterday and one from the River on our way home at Saturday night. Sadly I did not make any photographs from the BBQ but I asked the other people to send me their pictures. So maybe there is a BBQ update coming the next days.

See you later,

Lionel

Chapter 3: Nature, the smell of BBQ and hazardous free-climbing

Hello people!
What to do at the ‘holy’ Sunday? According to the sunny weather the question were quite fast answered. Since the very beginning of our arrival in Belfast we wanted to climb one of the mountains nearby Belfast – so it was settled. We took all the things we could need on this journey, above all the camera, and walked (or better hiked) straight through the city towards the approximately 7 miles in the north distant ‘Cave-Hill’.

Already at the foot of the mountain I was impressed about the beautiful view of the nature. On the way up we took a lot of photos and were more amazed of the sight the more we came higher. We saw many guys driving up and down the hill on mountain bikes, hardly surprising because most of the paths and trails seemed to be made for biking.

probably the highest point

Finally on the top of the Cave-Hill (approximately 350m) we all got stunned by the amazing clear and wide sight above Belfast with its harbour, the surrounding land, the distant mountains and even narrow the coast of Scotland(look at the panorama-picture from Friedrich)! As a result of that the view reminds me a bit of the sight while gliding. 😀 After a few minutes we discovered something funny: On a lower laid peak, not far from us, sat a single guy having a BBQ, such epic funny scene!

view from the abyss of the highest point to the BBQ-Guy

After a couple of minutes and a hundreds of photos later we decided to go down. About the same time, maybe a bit earlier, rain clouds appeared at the horizon, by the way. Half way down we discovered two small caves… Wait a sec… Yay, that’s why it’s called ‘Cave-Hill’! xD Whatever… One of the caves was about 30m high on the crag and the other maybe about 4-5m. We wanted to begin in a small way, so we climbed into the lower one, nevertheless it was quiet tough because we all had the wrong footwear thus we had barely grip. At the same time it starts to rain, to our disadvantage because the rocks getting even more slippy. After a short break in the cave, the rain is still falling, we decided to climb back down at last. That was really hard and dangerous at once but the adrenaline was soaring, a very exciting moment!

exploring the 'mysterious' cave

Finally we left the mountain behind and we came across a nice castle somewhere in the woods. The door of the fence was closed, so we can’t get very close to it. Because we were quiet exhausted we took the bus to Belfast City Centre but walked the remaining way to our apartment anyways.
All things considered it was a very cool, fascinating and exciting day so that I just can recommend it to you to do similar on any sunny weekend, if you interested in nature and adventures! 😉

Next time, maybe tomorrow, I’ll tell you something about my workplace and I hope I can post pictures of it, too.

See you then!

and Suddenly! Brasilians everywere!

Moin everyone,

last weekend, Lee and I where invited to a BBQ. Actually Lee knew most of the people because he met them on Friday at a houseparty. Anyways I did’t know what was awaiting me. First of all we had to meet his french coworker at someplace ( I actually forgot the name of the place, but there is a huge metallic needle pointing towards the sky) and we had only twenty minutes to get there by foot, normally its about 30 to 40 minutes. So we were more running instead of walking. We arrived 2 minutes to late and the girl was not there, she came about 10 minutes later(damn it!).

We had to take the bus to get to the BBQ because it was way out of Dublin. Finally at the BBQ we realised that the Grill was a simple hole in the ground with a grillage on it, but Caio (the brasilian guy who was giving the BBQ) had at least half a cow, in the form of brasilian steaks and sausages, in his house (no really it was very very much).  He grilles the steaks medium rare and they tasted awsome. Actually it was not like in Germany where everyone gets his own plate. the steaks and sausages where put an a Plate near the Grill and then cut to fine slices. Everyone who was hungy coud get there, take a peace or two, and eat whenever he or she wantet (really fun).

Most of the time we where talking english, even when I talked to lee. I don’t know why but our main topic with most of the people there seemed to be beer 😉 . What Lee and I hat not realized was that about 17 From 20 poeple where from brasil and suddenly everyone was talking potugese (first because it was easyer for them, lates besause of the alcohol I think).

By the way, brasilian girls are getting a bit freaked out (or crazy,  like Raoul called it)  when they get drunk :).

Finally all the meat was gone and no one wanted to go home,  we had to take the next bus to Town. The only Problem with that was that there was only one last bus remaining to bring us into Town and Lee didn’t manage to get the brasilians out of the house. I was waitig at the Bus stop, the secont our Bus arrives Lee and the others ran around the corner, it was so damn close. Otherwise we would have had to walk back, which would have taken us about 3 to 4 hours or even worse (and this after our sprint from the afternoon).

Back into town we first went to a club but we didn’t stay long (don’t ask me why). Raoul brought us to another houseparty where everyone was in a costume. There where Carly Caplin,  a boy who was dressed like a girl and actually enjoied it a bit to much and much more. Unfortunatly there was not enough beer so Lee and I decided to get home around 4 o’clock in the morning or 4am.

We where drunk, exousted and tired but very happy (hopefully lee can upload some pictures, I need mz new Handy). Oh fuuu I forgot about my work..hell… next time.

Till then, Tim.

The first week is over…

https://userblogs.fu-berlin.de/afibinirland2010/wp-admin/post-new.php

Hi folks!

On friday we had our last workday for this week and we could start in the weekend at least.

Our weekend started with a long friday… we arranged a meeting with some peers of the other apartments at our den.

There we drunk a little… I call it „preparty“.

After that, I don’t know the exact time… we went to the club „Tripod“ according to plan.

The good was, that all were let in… but on the other hand, the club shut down at 3 o’clock am.

Disappointed, we walked back home 🙁

At Saturday we slept it off and experienced a unspectacular day.

Today we did one’s shopping and enjoyed the nice weather.

See you soon.

Greetz Chriz

Tripod Club Dublin

First Week in Belfast

Hey,

the first week is almost over. A interesting and funny week. I had my job interview on friday at Translink. Work in a windows environment (Security, Server, Windows 7 and Client) will be my main task. More details next week.

On Saturday we watched the FA Cup – Final (Chelsea – Portsmouth 1:0) in a pub (surprise!!). The atmosphere were great and loud. Unfortunately the wrong team won.

In the evening we met our german guys in the same pub (surprise!!!) and had a really good night. I was wondering about the clothes of other people. They are all dressed up like they were going to a very exclusive party but they are just visiting a pub !! Just a pub !!

Greetings to Germany and Dublin!

David wars!

Dublin nightlife up close

Hello everyone,

The last few days were very interesting, lots of alcohol, lots of money pulled out of jackets, purses and trousers AND lots of drunk friends and people. On Thursday the the group of us living in Ladlanes and we, from Herbertons met in Temple Bar. I thought Temple Bar was one special bar but as soon as we arrived at our destination I knew it was a whole area which is called by that name. We walked through that district while waiting for the Ladlanes which were a bit late and walked past the Wall of fame.

The Wall Of Fame in Dublin Temple Bar shows some of the most famous irish artists which originate from Dublin

On the Wall Of Fame some of the most famous irish artists originating from Dublin, e.g. Sinéad O’Connor and U2 are immortalized. Finally we met the others and entered Oliver St. John Gogarty Bar. We ordered some drinks, chatted and after a while a life artist started to play guitar and sing. Some songs were familiar, others weren’t but the guy was really really good. The atmosphere in the bar was really warm and talkative. It was so loud that you had to get really close to someone you wanted to talk with. (which is good when talking to girls ;))

On Friday we planned to check out the nightlife of Dublin, means the nightclubs. The Ladlanes came over to our apartment where we started warm up drinking. When we left some of us were already drunk and it probably was fun to watch from outside. We googled were we had to go to but we missed the last bus so we had to walk to our destination. Chris and I roughly knew were the club ‚POD‘ had to be because it is near our work place. After walking for half an hour most of us were tired and impatient for finding the club. So we decided to go into a random club. When we entered we saw the sign reading ‚POD‘. I guess we accidentally found what we were looking for… we are SO GOOD! 😉 We entered and were baffled. There was almost nothing going on on the dance floor(s) although it was already past 12:00pm. So the first thing we did was to buy more alcohol, 3 Coronas for 10€… and again… and…

At around 3:00am the club closed and we went home. We headed home while the Ladlanes walked off in the other direction to get home too. On our way home Alex walked across the street to talk to a group of four strangers which fortunately weren’t hostile. But they gave us great advice by telling us to not talk to strangers on the streets, especially not so at night. They said our district is BAD and very dangerous and we should be careful outside and rather run than getting in danger.

We kept walking and almost home I slipped and while slipping already, I slipped again, so I fell face down on the pavement. I didn’t hurt myself (fortunately) but the way I fell was so funny that Chris and Flo started laughing really really hard. I joined in and we got home amused. At home I went into bed right away and instantly fell asleep.

Today we got up at around 14:00pm and did absolutely nothing at all until we dressed up at around 19:00pm to visit some of the Ladlanes and check out their apartment. Afterwards we wanted to go into a nearby pub but we didn’t feel like it and our last Luas‘ departing time was 0:30am. So we decided to get that Luas and drive home ‚early‘ today. *smirks mischievously*

Chapter 2: Nightlife, unfamiliar frankness and alcohol

Hi folks!
On Thursday we’d got a call from our comrades of the 5 men apartment (they haven’t internet yet, poor guys…) to come to a pub called “The Botanic Inn”. Luckily this pub is not very far away from our apartment, only 10-15 minutes by foot, so Riccardo and I decided to go there. Friedrich prefers to stay in the apartment because he had an interview on Friday.
On our way to the pub we saw a house spotlighted by black light, that looks really cool but we didn’t took a photo, shame on us but maybe we take one next time… 😉

Finally in the Botanic Inn the first thing I noticed was the strong smell of beer and the fact that most of the people were already drunk. We found the others easily and after a short small talk and introduction how the things will work in the pub and with the girls in there, we bought our first drink: a typical Irish Cider (really delicious by the way). The price was around 3.20 pounds a pint I guess.
It took only a few minutes and we were introduced to some native guys the others met there earlier. They are friendly and frankly in fact, a little too intrusive but this was maybe the alcohol… xD Speaking of alcohol: I’ve never seen so many glasses falling to the ground, break into pieces and alcohol spilled all over somebody’s lap. That was kind of weird because nobody cares.
Anyways, the music there was a mixture of Rock’n’Roll, party music and other stuff I don’t know. Later this evening there was a band playing live-music. Not my kind of music, but the girls compensate this point. They are really nice and good-tempered (not to mention that most of them are epic hot dressed… whooohoooo!!!) so you can have easy conversations with them, especially when you tell them that you’re from Germany 😉 …but this goes for everybody else too. Otherwise a very few people confronts you with the old, typical German stereotype (you know, the Hitler and Nazi stuff), but they always said that is funny here… oO

Well folks, I still could tell you so much about this evening, for example that a homosexual guy was trying to pick up Konstantin (epic funny moment) or that two cute girls were for some reason extremely in love with my eyeglasses, so that they always wanted to wear it… But I think you experienced similar like this. That was a really great evening, it was a lot of fun, we even met an older guy from Germany who is living in Belfast since 2 years. Today we want to go to the “Botanic Inn” again… 😀

Yesterday Friedrich, Riccardo and I met us with Sebastian, David and Kevin and we talked about our upcoming workplaces. My work starts next Monday, so I will tell you about that when the time is right.

I think I’ll post a picture of my Thursday evening in the pub soon…
(And I hope my words are right resp. the text is readable. lol)

See you next time!

Groundhopping Part I

May some of you know, I am a football fanatic! It is my duty to visit as many football grounds as possible.

I really like these britsh football stadiums. There are five teams located in Belfast: Linfield FC, Glentoran FC, Cliftonville FC, Crusaders FC and Donegal Celtic FC.

Unfortunatly all there grounds are scattered to the four winds and therefore I could only visit one stadium today. I choose the Windsor Park, home of Linfield FC.

Logo of LFC

Linfield FC is the most successfull team in Northern Irish Football by wining the nationale league title 49 times. Linfield’s home ground is Windsor Park, which is located in south Belfast.

Unfortunalty the season in northern irland is all over and I hoped this will not deter me from getting inside. Of course it did not 😉  So I can show you some pictures:

Way to Windsor Park
Inside the ground
Windsor Park
Windsor Park

It was an awesome atmosphere even without any fans. I really like it and hope to watch some matches in Irland as soon as possible.

Best regards to my guys in Dublin and Belfast 😉 Pictures of other grounds will follow! If you are interested in higher quality and more pictures write me a mail!

PS: Sorry for being late, watching the Europe League – Finale between Fulham and Atlético Madrid with my spanish housemates 🙂