Chapter 5: Prohibition, visitors from far away and perfect weather

Hi everybody!
Sorry for being late this time. I simply can’t imagine that already another week has passed… Also I had to apologize if my sentences are sporadically a little bit weird because yesterday I forgot to do some push-ups, so I’ll do it while blogging. ^^

Well, some bad news at first: Actually we are supposed to write about our work placements, but on Friday last week I had to sign a written agreement about preserving the company secret. Nevertheless I’ll post something on my own risk – no risk, no fun! *lol* No, actually I think it is ok as long as it relates to my blog. 😉

Among others my tasks last week were to update a Dell switch and a Cisco router with the latest firmware and to configure SNTP, the time zone and the summer-time on the Cisco router. And in order to update the router I had to create a TFTP-Server (with some Freeware program) so that I was able to upload the new Cisco IOS. Furthermore I copied 2 Backup-files, created VMs of them and integrated them into a Test-Network, also I upgraded another ESX-Server with 4GB RAM.
Today I started to reinstall a Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. In the process of that several (annoying) problems and errors occurred – I’ll don’t want to list them all, but it took way longer than normal to start the installation process at last (after installing ‚.Net Framework‘, ‚MSPowerShell‘ and a BIOS update for example). Tomorrow I have to finish the installation and configure the Exchange Server…

the Botanic Garden

Now for something completely different. On Sunday, where the weather was really beautiful warm and sunny, I received lady visitors from Germany: A former female superior from the German armed forces (Sandy) with another girl which I don’t know before (Mary). Mainly they came in order to visit a Rihanna concert in the ‘Odyssey Arena Belfast’ and to see me. 😛

They also took a flight from Berlin to Dublin and a bus to Belfast like we did by the way. So I went into the city to pick them up, but they’d left the bus somewhere else than us so it was hard to find them… After a short walk through the city I led them to their hotel and went to the ‘Botanic Garden’ to meet Riccardo and Friedrich in order to relax a bit in the sun. On Monday night I met with the two girls, after they were back from the concert, at the Botanic Inn to drink some beer and talk with Sandy about the good old times at the armed forces. We had a lot of fun at that, oh yeah… xD They left Belfast yet this night with the bus to Dublin because their flight to Berlin was about 7 or 8 o’clock on Tuesday morning.

Well, I’m a bit exhausted now and I’m getting very tired too. I think I’ll post something like general facts (good-to-know-stuff, you know) about Belfast next time… maybe…, we’ll see… 😉

Catch ya later!

Hey guys,
Today I had my first day at work but I will start with the weekend. On Saturday night we went to a pub how´s called „Botanic Inn“. We took a cap, because it was raining. By the way the caps are cheeper than in Germany. After an half hour the other people from our group appeared. It was quiet noisy in the pub, but not because of the music; people were laughing and talking loudly and at minute intervals glasses got broken. Some of the irish took a cup too much, like a man next to us. He was very drunken and his friends took pictures and made fun of him. I had a nice talk to a guy named Metthew and two girls how were absolutely sweet^^. At 1am the bar had closed, so we went home.
Next day, on Sunday we decided to hike to „Cave Hill“. The weather were irish mixed at this day but we had been protected by umbrellas and rainjackets. We saw the buityfull countryside of the north of Belfast and took a lot of pictures like this:

At 9am in the morning I was at work. My boss and the employees introduced me in the work process. In this project my company is responsible for a lot of workstations which used for X-rays and the diagnose. They showed me the infrastructure, how to maintain the serverfarm and whats to do if there occur allerts or errors. One guy „Berry“ was very friendly to me and I asked him if he know somebody hows would rent or sell me a bike because my company is directly in the city-centre. Tomorrow another stuffmember Metthew (but not this boy from the pub) will pick me up and than we will go to one of the hospital to setup a new workstations. I am very excited…

Yours Friedrich

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!