To clear things up front: I’m fine, I’ve settled in to Dublin and my work even more, and in Dütti got a first visitor from my hometown. I’ve survived my first Irish-weather-induced cold (altough suffering a lot and learning the term “mancold“) and am getting ready for new challenges at work, such as my first webinar (some kind of an online seminar for AdWords customers), that I’m going to conduct on the forthcoming Wednesday at 4.00pm CET (UTC+1) (also see the announcement in the Official German AdWords blog).

Just a couple of days after my last post, my flatmate Paul celebrated his 30th birthday in the nearby Ocean Bar. Since in this country, they throw you and your crowd out at half past twelve by brutally switching the lights on and the music off, we quickly changed the scene to our apartment, where the party would go on until half six in the morning.

The week after, I was in Hamburg again to visit Cristina, and to redeem her belated birthday present, and see A Fine Frenzy (Twitter) perform a just stunningly great show at Große Freiheit 36. What a lovely, talented and down-to-earth girl!

One of the major advantages of being a “young professional” (some may call it “Yuppie”) I’ve identified is that I always know somebody who knows somebody with free tickets for a venue, a concert or a free dinner. Some might see this as a freeloaderish approach, but until I’ve reached the status of getting this stuff myself and sharing it with others, I’ve decided to enjoy the generosity of the people around me.

This is also how I came to see Poland beating the s**t out of Ireland at Croke Park Stadium, having really nice seats up high in this awesome venue, which holds 82,500 people and is the fifth-biggest stadium in Europe. That day, it was incredibly packed with an impressive number of Polish fans.

And who would have thought that I would ever meet Giovanni Trappatoni, the man who aroused my interest in linguistics at a very early stage of my life? Anyway, this is probably the nearest I’ll ever get to him (taken out of a distance of approx. 500m, so please disregard the lousy quality):

And just a couple of days ago, my team from work attended an Italian Cooking School class in a Dublin suburb, creating some nice Lasagne, Saltimbocca a la Romana and original Tiramisu as a team building challenge.

As the end of the year is approaching, I get a bit homesick, of course. My other flatmate Tricia has announced to get our apartment’s christmas decoration started this weekend – the deal is: NO PINK whatsoever –, and Dublin’s streets and trees glimmer of their seasonal-acquired lighting since… September, I think. At least, that’s how it feels like.

In only two weeks, I’ll go home for the first time I’ve moved to Dublin, and I actually can’t wait to meet all the people I haven’t seen now in almost four months – some, of course, even longer. It’s a nice opportunity to meet all those people and share my experiences with them, and to listen to their stories of ‘08.

So now that I’ve settled in a little – although I still discover new things every day –, things in Dublin become more routine-ish, but more funky as well. The constant marveling of the first weeks has been replaced by a “proud to be a Dubliner” feeling, which I really enjoy.

The only thing I have to take is being urged to start the social part of my weekend on Thursdays. Of course, I still have to work on a Friday, thus, Thursday’s (still easy) pub night makes me suffer already beforehand. On a Friday, everybody is going out – so I do, too. Being wrecked on a Saturday then, you just hope Sunday night to be over as soon as possible, without having slept too much the whole weekend. It’s called “swimming against the tide”, as I was taught recently.

The first paycheck has found its way to my – *drum roll* – new bank account, the Internet connection has been installed the forthcoming weekend, oh, and did I mention our new 42″ High Definition TV? (I tend to call it “Goliath”.) – As you can see, I’m really content because apparently everything’s working out really well right now.

Last week, Cristina came over from Hamburg to celebrate her birthday here in Dublin, and we spent a gorgeous day at two lovely towns on the seaside in Dublin’s north: The more down-to-earth, kind of rough and coarse Howth with it’s fish trawlers and a quite stiff breeze on the one side, on the other side the more elegant and tacit but stunningly beautiful bay of Malahide – both easily reachable by Dublin’s public transportation train DART. We had a great time – as did this seal in Howth’s harbour obviously as well:

So my job has finally started! Almost three weeks ago, I had my first day as Trainee Account Associate, here in Google’s European headquarters in Barrow Street, Dublin. Since then, there have been a huge amount of information to process, surprising launches to notice, other exciting projects to watch, many nice people to introduce myself to, and loads of great food to consume. Right now, I’m attending my second induction class, and will change over working with my actual team by next week. It’s a pity that I didn’t start a couple of months earlier, otherwise I would have had joined my team – and four thousand (!) others – to head for the EMEA Sales Conference on Rhodes, Greece, and break the Guinness World Record in mass Sirtaki dancing. Congratulations on that!

By the way: My employer is hiring new grads (but not only those) all the time. For instance, they’re looking for a University Programmes Specialist for Germany at the moment. Let me know if you need more information.

So much for work. As for living, I’m happy to have a place to call home again. Paul, a 29-year old advertising manager, and Tricia, a 24-year old legal consultant, have accepted me as their new flatmate in a spacious and fancy – but not too fancy – apartment. My stuff has also arrived already, but I’m still struggling with the amount of cardboxes I need to unpack. (Did I mention Irish apartments to be significantly smaller than German ones?)

The area I live in, Grand Canal Dock, is one of the wealthiest in Dublin. Recently renewed – and still, some construction sites shape the picture –, it is a lively and fancy area to live in. Whilst the office crowd invades the streets on workday mornings and early evenings, it remains pretty calm (some might say: dead) on the weekends, but I like it. The city centre is only 10 minutes away by foot, and Ringsend Park with its great sport sites is just over the bridge. I even found the reasonably nearby branch of Tesco to be an alternative to the still stupefying pricey Fresh market right around the corner. Would you believe a 9-spool package of toilet paper might cost you (*drum roll*) 11.49 Euro? You better do, if you’re in Dublin.

I even had my first celebration abroad: I turned 26 last Saturday, and although I start to feel the big ‘3′ rolling quite intensely on me, I had a great time. Cristina came over from Hamburg, and we spent a terrific night at O’Donoghues pub in Dublin’s city centre, joined by my new flatmate Paul and some of my colleagues. Not to forget my Swedish colleague Martin’s attempt to fall back on his (very) basic German:

Uhm, more stories of life in Dublin to come – betimes.