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.
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.
Have you guys ever had a song stuck in your head because you heard it somewhere, even though you didn’t hear the whole song but actually only caught a snippet over a conversation in a pub? For me it is this song that’s stuck in my head since yesterday evening. I heard it in the Glencormac Inn at the bottom of the Sugar Loaf Mountain in Wicklow. A group of 14 people from System Dynamics went up the mountain after work. It was a good hike and at the end of the day I had 17898 steps on my pedometer and a couple of sandwiches as well as 2 Guinness in my tummy.
Down there at the pub
Halway, almost all the way around 😉
Allllllllllmost there
Whoooohooo!
Also, Mr. Bavar, Mrs. Teichmann and Mrs. Neumann came to System Dynamics yesterday to see how and what I’m doing here. It was nice to be able to show someone what I actually do here instead of just having to describe it as best I can. Nicola and Eamonn were talking to them as well over tea and coffee.
Because I didn’t want to go to the hike in my work clothes, I changed into jeans and a t-shirt. Unfortunately, I’m a man of habit and my habit is to keep my Leapcard in my pants pocket… my work pants pocket…
I didn’t have any change for the bus but Bridgitta, a colleague from SD, gave me 3€ so I could at least take the bus home. I decided to walk to work this morning to bring my step count up and also because I didn’t have enough money at home. It was a nice exercise, took me just over an hour and brought me 8k steps for today. I’m now up to ~9500 and I’m thinking about walking home, as well. That would easily be another 17k-18k steps for today but I’ll sleep in tomorrow because I have to get a rest at some point. Depending on the weather, I might walk up to Howth around noon tomorrow but I might also just do that on Sunday or even next weekend. We’ll see…
today me and Toni met our instructors Mr Bavar, Mrs Teichmann and Mrs Neumann in the Arlington Hotel. We had a very nice conversation about our time here in Dublin, the host families and about our currently workplaces. They invited us for a few drinks and gave us some useful tips for our work. The week is nearly over and we have only three weeks left. I will enjoy the next days and weeks and looking forward for new unpredictable impressions.
Now that the road trip is over and I completed the last calculations concerning payback to the guys, I can go ahead and make new plans. There’s not much I can do concerning tomorrow, when my supervisors will come and check out System Dynamics for themselves but I can make plans concerning my/our last hours here in Dublin.
I didn’t worry about the time the plane would depart when I saw the schedule a couple of weeks ago but now that I know about the public transport situation here in Dublin and also the rest of Ireland, I can’t really wrap my head around just what the people were thinking when they booked the flight for this ungodly hour. It might be absolutely ok and even possible to reach the Tegel or Schoenefeld airport in time at any hour of the day but here in Ireland that’s another story. The first bus arriving at the airport is number 16 at around 8am. My flight leaves at 7.10am… What’s wrong with this picture?
So, in collaboration with the guys from Derry, we’re planning to stay at the airport from Friday night to Saturday morning. It shouldn’t be a problem IF… we bring enough resources to keep us beertertained. Budweiser, Carlsberg, Heineken or any other liquid of the canned variety will take care of that but I guess I’ll come back to that when the date draws closer.
Tomorrow afternoon, there’s also the hike that is organized by the Sports&Social Committee here at System Dynamics. I’m taking part in that to see the Wicklow Mountains and raise my step count for the SD Summer Step Challenge 2014. I hope my team “The Caribous” will win or at least reach a good second place. 😉
Arriving at Dublin Airport around 7.20pm on Friday, George and I went to Avis to pick up our car. After my VISA was declined, we had to book an insurance packet with Avis directly which cost us 12€ per day on top of what I had already paid in advance. It’s still very cheap to get a car for the weekend and after that minor setback, we were off to the guys in Derry. The drive up there was nice and after around 20 minutes on the road, sitting on the right side of the car, shifting with the left hand and driving on the left side becomes quite natural. The only thing that bothered me up until the end was the indicator being on the left side of the steering wheel which made it virtually impossible to use while shifting gears in a roundabout for example. When we arrived in Derry we had a small birthday party for George with Budweiser and Cake.
The next morning started off with a nice breakfast after which Joel came to Tobi and Paul’s place and then we were off to meet Max on a parking lot near to where his girlfriend was staying. Paul was kind enough to burn his road trip CDs for both our cars so after a few minutes our cars both looked kind of like this.
It took a little getting used to driving with another car behind me so when I came upon a place I thought was beautiful and well worth taking a couple of pictures, I pulled over with Paul rushing past me. Granted, I was kind of quick in my decision making and didn’t really have the time to indicate my desire to pull over so I wasn’t surprised that Paul didn’t make it. I was actually glad because I myself barely managed to come to a stop before the pocket ended. After that, it went rather smoothly. I tried watching out a little more and we reached every place safe and sound. We even came across a nice place where I had the chance to transform my Renault Mégane into a Dodge Ram. Well, sort of… 😉
Pimp my Ride, Hillbilly Style
The first stop of this journey was Mount Errigal in County Donegal. The Saturday sun blessed us with an amazing view as well as a nice tan/burn. We climbed 688 meters all the way to the tippy top which took us roughly two and a half to three hours and about an hour for the way down. I had to change my t-shirt and the others had to change their shoes and pants because the bottom of the Mountain was quite boggy. We started toward Galway at around 2pm and got there at 7.30pm. We spent the night at a nice little B&B run by Larry Bogan who’s a very nice man. Before going to bed, we decided to go into city center to eat something and maybe also have a pint of Guinness. It turned out to be quite hard to find a place that everybody could agree on and so we ended up in a diner eating burgers and drinking milkshakes. We were all pretty beat after climbing that mountain and driving down to Galway so we went home after that dinner.
Mt. Errigal
Mt. Errigal
The next morning, Larry made pancakes for us and we had toast and fruit as well. We left his B&B at around 9am, walking on the beach of Galway Bay for a bit, taking pictures and collecting a few shells; well, I did that anyway. After that we were off to the Slieve League Cliffs which are not as famous as the Cliffs of Moher but reach almost 3 times higher. The look down to the Atlantic waves smashing against the walls of the mountain was entrancing and so was the drive up and down the narrow roads there, going up and down, left and right.
Galway Bay
Sliabh Liag
Sliabh Liag
Since Paul had to return his car before the rental place closed, we had to make our way back rather quickly and also get gas before returning the car. We managed it all fine, got back to Tobi and Paul’s place and had a little time to relax before we made our way into the city to have something to eat and drink. Since their favorite restaurant was closed, we ended up getting bat wings coated in cornflakes and dipped in scalding hot fat. The Hillbilly’s Family Meal comes with 6 pieces of chicken, 4 helpings of fries and a 1l soda. I went to bed at half past twelve and got up at 8 to have a final breakfast in Derry, before leaving for Dublin via the Giant’s Causeway and the Causeway Coastal Route.
Beautiful Ireland
Dunluce Castle
The Giant’s Causeway was beautiful, the rope bridge tiny – from up where we looked at it – and the Causeway Coastal Route was amazing, breathtaking and fast. I had a blast riding that road like a dolphin rides the waves of the ocean.
George
Giant’s Causeway
The Chimneys
Der Causeway und ich
Giant’s Causeway
Giant’s Causeway
Rope Bridge
George and I stopped at a restaurant which made the famous ‘golden seagull’ its emblem and took off ‘flying’ down the M1 Motorway towards Dublin. Now, when I say flying, I don’t literally mean flying like but I was going almost 180km/h at one point though the overall speed limit is 120 if not lower. But what can I say; it’s frustrating, having a fast car that isn’t allowed to go fast.
Giving the car back at the airport was easy enough since there was no damage done to the car, the tank was full and we even threw out the garbage. We made our way into the city by bus and when I came home, I put my clothes in the washer, went to Tesco to get some cash as well as deodorant and had dinner and a pint of Guinness with Eamonn, my host dad. After that I took a shower, shaved and went to bed.
In short: whoever said that driving 250 miles is hard, is not well informed because after driving roughly 1331 kilometers this weekend, I think 250 mi are a piece of cake. 😉
Even though I had a major fuck-up *salutes Major Fuck-up* yesterday afternoon at work, because I didn’t quite think things through, I still love working at System Dynamics. It’s just the right size to have enough going on to keep someone busy and it isn’t big enough to force you to concentrate on just one aspect of IT. I like the wide range of insight you get into different things depending on the circumstances. For example, I fixed a printer even before someone actually noticed (or informed us anyway) that something was wrong. Later I got to play around with the network some more which is when the fuck-up happened. I kind of forgot to make sure that the switch I put into the network wouldn’t mess up the spanning tree setup SD has running here and after showing Eamonn how to configure trunk ports, it hit me when people started banging on the server room door. Unfortunately, I’m also kind of quick on the whole “write memory”-aspect so there was no quick and easy way to fix what I had just done. However, there was that config.txt, which I had saved just a couple of days ago, so I quickly grabbed a USB stick and pasted the old configuration back to the switch. Problem solved, roughly 10 years of life expectancy lost but everyone had access to the servers, the network and the whole freaking world again. I’m really terribly sorry about that and I can’t believe I didn’t think about this possibility before messing around in the productive environment BUT this will also never happen to me again, lesson learned.
Later today, George and I will go and get our car from Dublin Airport and drive up to see the guys in Derry and have a beer to celebrate George’s birthday which was on Monday. We’ll spend the night there and in the morning, make our way down towards Galway where we’ll spend another night before heading back towards Derry and then Dublin again. You will probably read about everything we do along the way in either George’s or my posts. Considering the pressure we’re under with this road trip, I really wish there was a better way to deal with the whole program in a way that doesn’t force you to come right back home after the work is done. I would’ve liked the opportunity to maybe stay 2 weeks for a holiday and to have time to really enjoy this country.
I hope you’ll have a great weekend as I hope we’ll enjoy ours.
Angelo
I heard that the weather in germany is very good. Thirty degree and sometimes a little bit more. Well here in Ireland is also summer. Fifthteen degree and a lot of rain but It is typical for Ireland.
At the weekend Angelo and I will drive to Derry and visit some friends. After that we will drive along the westcoast towards Salthill. I think it is a great opportunity to make awesome pictures of the country, huge stonehenge, old monuments, beautiful houses and the endless fields.
I hope that the weather will be good on these days.
Since last I saw you My heart didn’t beat My tears kept on running And my soul did weep
For your beauty is perfect pure and divine Oh if I could only forever sit by your shrine
I would sit there and be Till the end of all time For that end would be also – I’m sure of it – mine
After the weekend in Connemara, I had to call in sick on Monday because I woke up with a headache and nausea that made it hard for me to even write the emails to the different offices that needed to be informed. I lay in bed the whole day drinking tea and water and sleeping in between. I only had to take one Ibuprofen in the morning, though. I consider this good because I don’t really like being on painkillers.
I went to work on Tuesday and had new/further tasks to perform concerning SDs network infrastructure. I’m still tasked with the documentation but my work concerning switch documentation is mostly done and all that’s missing are the desk numbers and respective ports in use. Now I was asked to also create a new diagram showing the network layout. Now, you’ve seen the pictures; it’s a hell of a job, figuring out what goes where and what is what in the first place.
All the while, I’m also still fumbling around with my virtual environment and I want to get the most out of it because I might have to know my way around it later. I actually didn’t do much – if anything – concerning the virtualization today. I was busy making my way through cables and switch configs because another side project of mine, is to teach Eamonn the ways of the force… uhm the cisco switch cli.
I fear I won’t have enough time to finish even one of my main projects before my time here comes to an end. It’s almost mid-term and I’m looking forward to our trip to Derry-to-Galway-to-Derry-to-Dublin this weekend.
