Jeez. Has ist already been 18 months? It has.

Probably this would be around the time where I’d say, I’ve really arrived. Settled down, got to know everything, and planned next steps.

This all applies, and the latter especially: My time in Dublin is getting to an end. Soon. In about 2 weeks, I’ll finish up my little “living abroad” experiment and transfer back home to Germany, to work as an Agency Product Consultant in the Google Hamburg office. When I was offered this role, I couldn’t quite resist, although it hasn’t been an easy decision. I’ve got my life here, my work, friends and colleagues that I’ve really well connected with.

I’m however not completely new to that new place – as my girlfriend lives in “The most beautiful city in the world” (as it unhumbly claims) – and I’ve visited her quite often during the past 18 months. I’ve also worked together with colleagues from Hamburg such as the Marketing department on several projects, so the transition is expectedly going to be smooth.

My new role involves quite a bit of traveling, so apart from the north of Germany, I’m going to come around a little. Maybe this offers opportunities of visiting friends that I haven’t seen in a long time.

I’m not sure yet what’s going to happen to this blog. I’m probably going to keep it up and update it with my Hamburg experiences for a while. So, stay tuned for some stories from the German side of my life.

Photo credit: King of Monks.

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.

It all began with a rather painful goodbye at Hamburg Airport, a pretty calm flight over the North and the Irish Sea, and a hard landing in Dublin (– not figuratively spoken: Nobody clapped. Not even the Polish passengers, who usually do, at least on Wizzair flights from Poland.)

I’m staying at Waterloo House, a truly superb four-star Bed & Breakfast in south Dublin city. A kind taxi driver took pity on me and my bike at the airport and took me on his van. But before being able to actually cycle left-sided, I had to find a bike shop where they would re-adjust the handle bars – of course, I would have done that myself, but a strict lady at the airport security check took my Allen key (a.k.a. Inbus-Schlüssel, yep, another one I learned these days!) from me, “due to the fact that this is a tool, and a tool aboard would be a security thread.” – Sure, whatever.

Long story short, after two hours of seeking, I finally found a bike shop that does repairs, and those guys helped me out in the wink of an eye. So, now it’s a guy from the cycling capital of Germany destablizing Dublin. (Although I can say, cycling left-sided isn’t much harder than driving the car. Maybe a little more dangerous. For me.)

As for the city – it hasn’t changed much since my last visit, only do I realize that those five consecutive days of good weather in May must have been absolutely exceptional. I’m going to buy an umbrella very soon.

Oh, and I’ve already made some friends here, as one of my next posts might show…

Oh boy, what an immense effort to get two bicycles transported from one German city to another! Deutsche Bahn courier services offer a subsidized rate with Hermes Logistics – 25 Euros per bike, not including the packaging (”only 5,90 Euros, for a limited time only!”). Aer Lingus charges another 30 Euros for the transport via plane. Ugh. But I really need a bike in those forthcoming first days of living in Dublin, so I can take a look at all the rooms and apartments available on the market.

And another question that bothers me: How on earth will I span the distance between the airport and my temporary accomodation with a packed bike and a heavy case in both hands and a bag around my neck? I guess a cab might be the easiest solution, though I have to admit that I’m usually too avaricious for that.

But at least, I’ve already made contact to some people in Ireland who are looking for new roommates in the surrounding areas of my new place of work. The first appointments are made, and I’m very anxious to see if the offered (”double”) rooms really qualify for a monthly rate between 500 and 1000 Euros…