I got up in the morning and the sun shines right in my face and I though:
well it seems today will be a nice day.
After I reached my workplace the corrugated iron on the roof made some unusual noise. In the next moment I looked out of the window and saw a lot of hailstones.
I thought it is June and not December..typical Irish Summer
Tuesday is cinema day in Dublin.
In the afternoon Angelo and I went to the cinema next to „The Spire“ and saw
„X-Men: Day of Future Past“. I didn’t saw the movies before and still it was a very nice film.
After that we took a walk instead of the bus and enjoyed the evening sun.
Yesterday we visited the data center again to deploy one Dell server for our Hyper-V cluster. We got there with taxi again. At the way back it was even the same driver as last time. And the security guard was happier this day. It was all in all the same task like last time we went there with the exception that the switch in the rack we got still space for server is full now. So next time we need a new switch too. And like I said i took pictures. Note that unfortunately we can’t get better cable management because the systems run 24/7 productive and we can’t unplug anything not even for minutes. So we have to stick with the cables that some older System Engineers plugged.
That is why on Sunday, I got up at 8.45am, had breakfast and at 9.20am left the house to go (as in walk) to Howth. Google says that I walked around 32km that day but it’s not as accurate and it was more than that because I also did quite a lot of back and forth around the paths there. I did 47634 steps which brought me to a total of 136467 steps and my team of 7 people to 643791 for the week.
I actually awoke to the sound of rain which kind of put my mood down but I was still hell-bent on doing this walk. The rain only lasted a few minutes and then the sun tried her best to dry up the streets and sidewalks. It wasn’t dry but quite warm when I left the house and started towards Artane Castle to buy water and a snack at Tesco.
I continued down the road a few minutes later and turned left at the T-junction, walking towards the Artane roundabout. I wound my way through the streets of Dublin this way and soon came to Dublin Road which is kind of a coastal road leading to the Howth peninsula. It started to drizzle even before I came to that road but as I turned onto it, the wind from the sea was so strong that the tiny raindrops „fell“ horizontally and felt like needles, piercing the right side of my face. I kept walking and soon felt like this was some kind of punishment I had to withstand to be worthy of the sight that would be at the end of this road. The rain kept on lashing me for quite a while and only stopped when I reached Sutton which is located right at the entry of the peninsula. Of course, the rain started again a few minutes later and continued all the way until I reached the end of Howth harbor and the public restrooms. I was so unbelievably happy to see those restrooms.
I thought about having lunch in one of the restaurants but I don’t really care for seafood that much and considering the prices displayed on the menues, I stopped caring about “real” food altogether. I grabbed the small bag filled with nuts and raisins that I bought at Tesco earlier and took a couple of hands full. 200g of this mix really fill you up even though the taste isn’t as satisfying as that a nice steak with French fries would deliver, accompanied by a nice Guinness. Anyway, it kept me going and so I walked around the peninsula, came by the lighthouse, the beach and walked all the way back towards my home. Those last kilometers were really difficult and I had to sit down a few times just to rest my feet. My ankles and even my hips started to hurt before I finally arrived home. I had the dinner that was waiting for me in the oven, took a shower and went to bed, happy that I had used the day the way I did.
Just a reminder: These photographs are resized to conserve space so if you would like to see any particular photograph in its original size and quality, please contact me when I’m back in Germany. 🙂
On Friday afternoon, Eamonn offered to take me to Galway on Saturday and maybe on Sunday to go up Croagh Patrick with him. Unfortunately he cancelled but offered to take me to Glendalough on Saturday instead.
Around 1.30pm, I met him and his wife Angela in the parking lot of Tesco and off we went in their car. We took the M50 that, much like the A10 for Berlin, runs around the city of Dublin. It is a tolled road but it is the quickest way from one side of the city to the other.
We drove through the Wicklow Mountains and stopped occasionally when there was something to see. There were definitely a lot of things to see as you will notice in the gallery below. In Roundwood, a small town along the way, we stopped for lunch and I had a burger with rocket, the famous green stuff that apparently everybody loves… personally, I think of it more like Reinald Grebe who put it something like “the weed that comes from abroad, is a lucky one”. Rocket is just a fancy dandelion and it doesn’t taste even remotely good. Fortunately, the beef and the onions were able to cover up the taste of it. The fries were awesome as well and I was absolutely satisfied when I had the cup of tea afterwards. The food was Eamonn’s treat which I found very generous of him.
We went on to Glendalough which is a glacial valley in Wicklow. There are different difficulty paths that run through the whole valley, along lakes or up mountainsides. It’s a very beautiful place to be and up on the mountains that enclose the valley, the air is serene and filled only with the many voices of nature. I took a lot of pictures that you can see in the gallery below but unfortunately none of them were able to catch the real beauty of the place. I’m starting to believe that no picture will ever achieve that. *sigh*
View Towards Dublin
National Park
Water
More Water
Deer
Glendalough Valley
Glendalough
Waterfall
Glendalough Valley
The Path
Sun Piercing the Scenery
Glendalough Monastery
Tower Plaque
Tower Entrance
When I came home that day, Anne and her Family were having a BBQ so I joined them for dinner and later had 3 Guinness with Eamonn (Anne’s husband). It was a very nice evening and it went on for hours. I went to bed around 12.30am and set my alarm for 9am. Come back tomorrow to learn what I did on Sunday and why I had to get up so early.
My weekend was rather quiet since I was a bit sick. On Saturday i walked from Clontarf to the South of the City center and looked at some places i didn’t visited before, like the harbor. It’s not the nicest I’ve ever seen but far away from the worst. Many ferries go from there and tourist journeys. After that day my cold got worse so I stayed in bed for the rest of the weekend so I don’t have that much to write about. But today Amit and I have to deploy a server in the data center again so I write about that when I got home. I hope everybody have a nice work week.
At saturday Tim, Martin, Nick, Joel and I went to the ComicCon here in Belfast. I really love to go to cenventios and suff like that. Just the feeling when you know everybody around you love comics, mangas or ponies! There were a lot of people selling some merchandise from popular comic series like Batman or from games like the Legend of Zelda but the thing I love most at conventions is the Cosplay. A cosplayer is a boy or a girl dressed up as a charakter from an anime or from a comic book and there were a lot of cosplayers. Have some pictures!
Joel with Lightning from Final Fantasy XIII
What time is it?
Star Trek
I really loved it because the people were nice and there were so much merch that you could buy. I think that Nick, Joel and I liked it but Tim and Martin not so much which I can understand. You have to be a fan of such stuff to like it or else you just staying there and think yourself „What is this?“
Fhtagn <3!
In the end I can say that it was a nice day even if we waited like one and a half hour in the rain to get our tickets. I am most happy about the Applejack plushie I bought which looks super cute together with the Link plushie from the Legend of Zelda that Joel bought.
This week we got another visitor which isn’t Toni. No this time it was Joel, a student from the Strato AG, who came over and stayed for a weekend with us. It was good to see him again after 5 weeks which felt abit longer than it actualy was. I showed him a bit of Belfast at the day he arrived, we went shopping togethera and visited some sites. He told us something about his work in Derry and we told him something about our work here in Belfast. We went to the MCM ComicCon Belfast the very next day together to buy some merch and to make some pictures with the local costplayers and we did make some nice pictures, but I will tell more about it in another post.
I think I already talked about that one market we have next to our work placement at the Lesley Exchange Building from Concentrix. At friday Tim and I were there again and agein we were looking for lunch. This time when we looked around we found another Burger stand but this one was special. It was so special because they had him and with him I mean the „Titanic Burger“. That Burger was giantic. Two times 6oz Steaks, two times Bacon pieces, four cheese slices, rocket, and grilled onions. When the griller finished the Burger he said „It is like a piece of art“ and I said „Beautiful“ then the man next to me said „Beautiful is the perfect word to discribe it …“. The taste of that Burger is … you know … I can’t tell you. It is indeed to good to say it in words you have to go and eat by yourself.
After the Comic Con we decided to drive back to the city and go to a few shops again. Martin was interested into the Nintendo GameCube which was actually sold at a pawnbroker called CashConverters. Before we went there Eric, Joel and Nick were interested in visiting a store called Forbidden Planet which was something like a mixture of all convention stands we of the Comic Con and sells everything what is related to the drawn art. The shop was overran, I think because of the event earlier the day and after looking around a few minutes Martin and I decided to go ahead of the others to CashConverters. On the way to there we found a similiar shop which was way larger and we looked after games that we know from the past. Since we found some of them but nothing which interested us any further we left it and we’re heading back the original destination. Martin bought a black version of the console and a game and after meeting up with the others we went to Iceland to buy some groceries. When we got back home we made some burgers in the evening and had a good time. The Sunday was mostly eventless and after having a relaxed day it’s now bed time for me.
On Friday Joel came to visit us in Belfast, because there was a convention to take place from the 7th to the 8th June of 2014. He arrived around 17pm here, and after a quiet Friday evening where we cooked some pasta and looked some films we (Nick, Eric, Martin, Joel and me) got up at about 10 pm in the morning to get ready for the event. After having a nice breakfast we took a cab to the Kings Hall which led us trough some nice neighbourhoods around Belfast which I‘ haven’t seen before. Around the Lisburn Road there is a big mansion district where a lot of really impressive houses are located. While we we’re driving to the venue the weather already started to getting worse. There was a huge load of rain coming to the earth and it didn’t seem to clear up so soon. As we arrived we we’re shocked about how many people lined up to get into the Comic Con. It was a queue which was about 300 meters long and we first had to walk to the end of it. As expected the weather seemed to side against us, so instead of getting better the rain steadily hold on while we were waiting to get in. We were curious about how long it would take to reach the entry and already got used to the idea that it could easily take 2 hours to get in, but as the people were moving in batches it happened to be slightly earlier. After about a hour we finally where in the batch that was getting access to the area.
The entry fee was 8 pounds which is okay in my opinion for a big event. After we’ve passed the gates a huge wave of humid heat was streaming towards us, which was at first really heavy but after spending a few minutes in the building you got used to it. It also had the advantage that the clothing was drying fast which was completely sodden after the rainfall. The convention itself wasn’t what like I’ve expected it to be. On each stand there was a lot of merchandise for sell, mostly more expensive then you can buy it elsewhere but anyway a lot of stuff huddled up. Me as I’ve never been a fan of animes and mangas and most comics at all (probably because I’ve never been interested enough yet to get deeper into it) was a bit disappointed, but anyway I’ve bought a few souveniers which aren’t related to comics in particular. Eric explained me afterwards that there’s a difference between a convention and a fair where more stuff is free available and new products are announced, while conventions usually are for selling stuff and meeting up like-minded persons. I now can say that I wouldn’t visit it anymore, but for more interested persons, it’s a nice thing for sure and it was an experience on its own that had to be made.
