I could hardly believe that the weather forecast kept it’s promise actually! The whole last week we made all jokes about that this is too good to be true for Belfast and it’s actually impossible to have a whole warm and sunny weekend without any rain. But this weekend was one of the few exceptions indeed. All sunny, all warm and no rain. While writing these lines I still can’t believe it really. I mean one of the best personal experiences I’m going to take home is not complaining about, no, even appreciating the German weather from now on! As we say in German „Schlimmer geht’s immer!“, which means something like „It can always get worse!“.
My weekend was pretty chilled and calm all in all. On Friday Eddie came from Dublin to visit us. Eddie owns the house, where I’m living at with Michael, my colleague, and Brian currently. We got all really good friends and I’ve to admit, that I really feel home there, except the fact that I miss my family and friends very much of course. But they’re the best roommates I could really wish for during my stay. Always kind, always careful and haven’t made me feel not welcome or so once, which I appreciate very much. We ended up just hanging around, listen to BBC radio (they’ve a pretty good show Friday nights) and ordering some food.
The next morning I went to the gym by foot after having breakfast. I bought a bottle of white wine from Tesco as soon as I got back because Michael invited me to the birthday barbecue party of one of his oldest friends Judith, who he has known since his childhood already. Of course I didn’t want to be left empty-handed. Michael was already there, so I had to go by my own. I took an Uber there as her place was located outside of Belfast in Newtownabbey and it would have taken over one hour by taking the bus and only 20 minutes with Uber. So comfort won this time definitely.
The closer I got to Judith’s house, the more I realized that this has to be a wealthier suburb definitely. All the houses looked very modern and neatly and the area was very nice and quiet, almost comparable to „Zehlendorf“ back in Berlin. Somehow it reminded me of Los Angeles as well because of all the hills, where I spent my year abroad six years ago. As soon as I’ve arrived at Judith’s place, I was warmly welcomed from the very first beginning and got offered some food immediately. This came convenient as I was starving because of my finished workout before. I got some sausages, a burger, some chicken-vegetables-skewer and salad. Later on we got some marshmallow as well and I tried s’more for the first time. It’s a campfire snack and basically a „marshmallow sandwich“ (two slides of biscuits, filled with two melted marshmallows). It was delicious, but not really particularly advantageous eating it as the texture is very sticky.
We ended up playing some games, building human pyramids (pictures of the results are below) and playing cards inside of the house as soon the sun went down and it got way more fresh outside. Around 1am Michael and me decided to get a cab and going back home. All in all it was a very nice evening and interesting to see yet again the proper local side of Belfast people, who are in the same age like me as well. Also it was great to see with whom Michael grew up, because they were all in the same school. One of the biggest differences between the culture over here compared to ours in Berlin is that people are much more in relationships and even get married in a much younger age. Half of the group were already married and it’s the same case at Locate a Locum too. I always kind of felt like an „alien“ getting engaged at 23 back in Berlin but over here it’s entirely normal. It seems like that smaller cities are growing up in a much more traditional way as big cities like Berlin, London etc.
