After just sly over a week it is time to recall what was good, what was bad and what was new.
What’s new?
I must admit that I’m still not really used to the traffic here. Driving on the left side of the road may be normal for the people over here, but it still makes me feel uncomfortable.
Another thing which seems odd to me is the fact that people get tickets when they enter a bus only to throw them away immediately because they don’t need it. Since the bus only has one entrance next to the driver, everyone has to either have a card or buy a ticket and nobody can dodge paying the fare. Even if you have a card you get a ticket, which is useless in my opinion to be honest. Once you’re in the bus the ticket becomes meaningless, regardless of how long you will stay in the bus. Thats why everyone is just throwing them in the bin.
Another thing I noticed is that when I buy groceries more often than not there are special offers to buy a certain food 3 times and get it for the price of 2. It seems to be normal to always have some kind of special offer each day/week.
What’s good?
When I think about good things that come to my mind about Belfast/Ireland I have to talk about the nature here at first. It’s as they say => pretty green. Also the air is more fresh and there is less smog then in Berlin. How did I notice? You really notice that the air smells different and cleaner, especially after it rains.
One other really handy thing is that you get most of the groceries not only in small packages/sizes, but also in greater quantity than we are used to. This makes the shopping for us 4 people way easier. For example you can buy noodles in 3kg packages and this is not a special offer!
What is bad?
I think there are no things that are really bad, but some things that are annoying. One thing is, that our accommodation isn’t really great. There are many little things that could have been done better, like a better equipped kitchen for example or the condition of the accommodation itself. And the walls are very thin, so you can hear everything. It’s not the best, but it’s not the worst either.