Kategorie: Belfast

Hello everybody!

Today Tim and I had our kinda first day at work. What do I mean? Yeah The first day we had were more like an introduction to the company itself and that was quite intresting. I forgot to say that I am now working for the IT Support at Concentrix. Concentrix provides phone, chat and mail support for other companies like Microsoft, EA and Kings(Candycrush) and just took of the customer support from IBM so they jumped from 6000 employees to 45000 employees and in the next month 1000 more will join them. Thats quite a number of people and of course those people need a place to work and I think that will be our job. I think we will set up the workplacements for most of the time and of course support the people who are currently working but what we acactly hove to do will us told tommorow, our first official first day at work where we going to meet our co-workers. I am looking forward to meet them. My first impression of the company is that those people are all nice and flexible and I hope my first impression wasn’t wrong. That’s what we will see tommorow.

While exploring every corner of Belfast talking to other people is obviously a must do which turned out to be much better than expected. Most people just confront us because they heard a word of german and somehow become really interested finding out what we are doing so far away from home. This is often the start of a long lasting but still entertaining conversation which already paid out a couple of times. Not only are the people incredibly nice but you can really feel that they want to know your story and don´t have any bad intentions on their mind.

We met a really friendly lady called Jane who worked at the International House and was responsible for some of the social activities in the afternoon. One of the best experiences I had in the first week was our lesson in bodhran which is a traditional irish instrument really similar to a tamburine. Jane told us to come to one of the most famous pubs in belfast the „diry onion“ where we also met some other folks from the International House and started our lesson in bodhran drumming.
It was a lot of fun and after a while people even started dancing around us which made it even better. After some drinks and around 20 songs later we started our trip back to the apartment.

Hi everyone!

Like it was said in the title that was our first free weekend we had in Belfast but it wasnt that spectacular like you could imagine. Most of the time we were sitting at home and were watching the british television. I for myself love british television shows like „Doctor Who“ or „Sherlock“ are really awesome shows with a lot of drama and thrill. today however we decided to go out and have a little BBQ. The weather was like always not the best but we got that going for us. The hardest thing at the BBQ was to get it started because a the wet air the fire extinguished really quick but after some time we finally made it and the meat was well done like it has to be. Now we are justing in our flat and relax ourleves because tomorrow is our first day of work.

Hello everyone,

the food in Ireland is very expensive and the fast food is not the same like it is in germany.
So it takes a lot of time to get used to it.
For Example the „Döner“ is completly different to the „Döner“ from germany but it is an experience.
They meat which is used is lam.

and the living costs are very high.
You´ll have to decide what you can buy and what is useless, but in the supermarkets there are a lot of offers so you can for example buy 2 for the price of one.
In the appartements there are modern kitchens so we are saving some money by cooking some of our favorite dishes from home.

The first couple of days passed by and I am more and more adapting to my environment which took some time especially if you are used to really high german food standards and cheap prices. Here in Northern Ireland the clocks really tick differently, not only are the people really unique but there is something about Belfast which is completely new to me. But one thing after another:

We had to call the police after just one day being here because there were some random strangers we could not identify who were throwing stones at the window and managed to break one. After talking to the cops on the phone we could hear them arriving just a couple of minutes later. We had a really informative chat with them in which they told us, that this would be their 600th something case just today (and it was still the early afternoon). This truly was an odd way of greeting your new neighbours and of course the the police couldn’t do anything about it so we just called our landlord and our agency telling them about the situation. Our landlord told us that he will send somebody to fix it and we went on spending some good times around the city and forgetting about the incident.

Hi everybody!

Today we had our last day at school. We started as always at 9:00 am and in the first lesson we learned about wishes and regrets and where do you it and in which forms. That lesson was over really fast and we went to the break. In the second lesson we got a new teacher because our other teacher Gale was sick that day. In this lesson we had multiple texts with multiple headlines und cover pictures which we had to match correctly. The time went by really quick like the other one before and leo and I went down to get our certificate. He got his certificate for the C1 level and I for B2 and I dont really understand it because we where in the same course. However I am still lucky that I got it.

Then right after school Leo, Martin and I decided to go to the city center to watch the Giro d’Italia but there was nothing because there were still in the preparation. So we split up, Leo and Martin went to the city court and I went through the street looking for some nice shops and I founds one. The shop is called „Forbidden Planet“ and is full with comic and cartoon stuff. I spend like an hour in there and looked at all the stuff they had. Now I can call a parody book of the brony fandom, a card game and a BMO plushie mine. Tomorrow I will go there again because I am going to meet a guy here from Belfast to watch some cartoons togehter and have a little chat.

Hi there people!

Today was not a spectacular day. I went to school this morning and was there at 9:00 am but the class started at 9:20 am because there were so many people too late. In the first lesson however we learned a bit about stressed sentences and linked word and that was pretty intresting but still nothing really new to me. A bit later we got a new classmate, his name was Fernando. He is from spain and got in my group. Together we did some group tasks, I was directed to Fernando and Nacho and the teacher wrote a sentence on the board and the guys had to explain it without using any words from the sentence. I got almost everything right but sometimes it was just a word that was missing. In the second class we talked about jobs and CVs, how do you right one and what do you put in it. The lesson was over really quick and we went home.

Tim and I decided to took a „little“ nap for like 3 hours and then we went to the city center to buy some clothes and stuff like that. I have some problems regarding my credit card because I forgot the unlock the pin before I got here so now I can’t use it, exept I send it back to germany so one of my roomates could do that for me. So now I had to search for a ATM that accepts my girocard and we had to test like 4 different banks until i found one where I could get some money. Now I have some money and finally I can spend it on exploring the city. Tomorrow I will met again with Jane to watch the Giro d’Italia and to do some activities. I am glady looking forward to that!