I got in Germany on the 21st and caught a train to my place in Bad Mergentheim. It was super cold in Germany. About 1 degree Celsius and snowing. When I got to my place I was surprised to find that my flat is actually pretty nice. It is fully furnished, which I knew, and it has nice wood floors and a deck with a bench and table. It is very roomy also which is nice.
One interesting thing is that there are only two bedrooms instead of three so we'll see how we work that out when my two room mates show up. There are about 3 mattresses in each room so there isn't a shortage of places to sleep. Anyways, I tried to stay awake as long as I could to acclimate to the time difference but I was unsuccessful. I fell asleep shortly after 6pm and woke up wide awake at about 6am on the 22nd.
It was a long journey the next day to get to London to meet Danny. I got to Hahn about 4 hours before my flight. It is a real small airport about an hours bus ride from the Frankfurt airport. It is where Ryan Air flies from and they are Europe's version of southwest except worse. I wondered around for about 10 minutes and realized that I'd seen the whole thing. The flight to London was only a little over an hour long. I spent about an hour looking around the airport for Danny since I was supposed to meet him there. I couldn't find him so I assumed he had already taken the bus into downtown because he had mentioned we had to check in at our hotel at a certain time. I figured he had gone to do that and then would meet me where the bus stop was (fuzzy math on my part). He wasn't there and I wondered around for a couple more hours trying to call him some more from pay phones and it wouldn't work. I tried about 12 different phones and then I finally found a train station that had wireless internet. I realized Danny had sent me an email saying that he had passport issues in Dublin and they wouldn't let him fly to London. So I was by myself.
I decided to make the most of it and see what I could at 11:30pm in London since the next bus to the airport wasn't until 2:40am. I started by walking to Buckingham Palace which was only a few blocks away and then walked by St. James Park, Westminster Abby, Big Ben, and then across the river to the eye of London. It was about a two hour long walk or so and it was a lot of fun. It wasn't quite how I imagined I would be spending my birthday but it was still a good experience.
I got back to the London Airport at about 4am and my flight wasn't until 11:05am. I tried to move up to the 7am flight but it was going to be 180pounds (about $370). So I pulled my second allnighter of the trip. When I got to Dublin, Danny was actually there this time. We spent that afternoon basically walking around all of downtown Dublin. I saw where he goes to school and a ton of other stuff. It was Easter Sunday though so a lot of the shops were closed and even though it seemed like a lot of people to me, Danny said it was nothing. We went to a cool Cathedral for a 30 minute mass that night. The Cathedral we went to was really nice and it was the one that St. Valentine (Valentine's Day) went to.
We went to a local pub and had a bowl of Guinness stew and watched the end of the Manchester United vs Liverpool game. The pub was packed full of people watching the game so it was real hard to find a seat. Later that night we went to another pub and I had a pint of Guinness. The Pub's are really cool there. Pretty crowded but a real laid back environment. The second one we went to had a guy playing acoustic guitar and he was just doing covers of 90's songs pretty much. We met up with some of Danny's friends later at this sushi place and then went to have some Gelato. Later, we went to a pool hall and played for a while.
The next day Danny had some school work to do during the day so he sent me on a day tour of the Ireland country side. It was really beautiful and very interesting. The tour stopped at a few glacial lakes and talked about a lot of the history of Ireland that I wasn't very familiar with.
I saw Guinness Lake where the guy who owns Guinness lives at in a huge mansion. In the afternoon we went to Glendalough and saw a the Cathedral there. They talked a lot about the history of the monastery there. I took a 15 minute walk and saw both of the lakes there also which were really cool.
That night we met up with his friends and played some poker. I taught them a thing or two. Between games we walked over to this Fish and Chips place called Burdock's. It is supposed to be the best place to get Fish and Chips in Dublin cuz all the stars go there when they visit. It was a lot of food but I didn't really think it was anything special. I only made it through about half of it though cuz there was so much.
At about 3am that night I had to catch a bus back to the airport because I had a 6am flight (allnighter number three if you're keeping track.) I got into Bad Mergentheim at around 3pm and found a grocery store a block from my flat and bought some dinner. I ate and watched some TV and then all of a sudden I woke up on the couch at it was 3am. I went to bed and slept more until almost noon and then my goal for today was to figure out how to use my washer machine and find some internet. I accomplished both. After eating lunch I decided to wonder around every inch of my apartment and see if there was another router I could pick up that didn't require a password. Luckily, I found one by the window in one of the bedrooms. I think the people who lived here last used the same spot because there is a real fancy window seal that works well as a desktop haha.
Well I think I've rambled enough. I'll post more later.
Here are the links to more of my pictures:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2119291&l=bf40a&id=19704976
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2119274&l=d3758&id=19704976
