Photo by Maria Celeste Gomez

It’s a bit hard for me to assess what kind of topic might actually be interesting for my few frequent readers here. After over six months in Dublin, the most important stories have been told, and the phase of settling in is definitely over. There are changes coming up that I will mention in one of the next posts, but until then, I don’t want to bore anyone with articles about Dublin weather. That would be the same story, over and over.

For today, let’s take a look at the Dublin transportation system. Have you ever been to $yourfavouritecapital ? If so, you have probably been relying on a not perfect, but probably so-so functioning public transportation system. – In Dublin, you’d be screwed, if you did.

Let’s start with buses. I’m talking about these really nice and modern double decker Volvos, that you’ll see pretty often on Dublin streets. Fine. But what if you’re planning on taking the bus to a suburb far away, maybe for dinner with friends? Of course, you could take a look at the online time tables, which thankfully they’ve introduced here as well. Thing is: There is only one of those per route and direction, and not one per stop. In other words: You cannot find out when exactly a bus will arrive at a selected stop. You simply can’t. Instead, you are forced to do the maths by taking the time mentioned in the table (= the time the bus starts its journey at the original stop), and then re-calculating the arrival time by adding an approximate (of course, not exact) journey time listed on the time table.

Then there’s DART. Introduced in 1984, it has become increasingly popular linking southern and northern Dublin suburbs, crossing the city centre on its way. Often packed (mostly in the mornings and evenings, of course), and sometimes even on time! You wouldn’t actually believe there is an electronic arrival time display? (There is.) There are signs and wonders, after all.

Oh, and not to forget the city’s newest symbol of modernism: LUAS. Whatever that stands for. Two lines, “red” and “green”, cross Dublin and link the outer suburbs with the city center. Would you have guessed: Of course, the lines do not connect with each other. The closest you can get from red to green is a 15 minute walk. Argh!

See this hilarious video regarding pretty much all of these issues:

To say something positive: The new Aircoach fleet, that brings you from and to Dublin airport (cause guess what, neither DART nor LUAS go there) is very luxurious and even has Wi-Fi on board, so the one hour trip to the city centre becomes a little less boring. This, however, has got it’s price: a return ticket is 14 Euro.

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: