Joy and Sorrow

After having worked for another 2 weeks, learing new things about data migration and data mapping and doing more vital parts of the current Anaeko projects, Ela finally arrived at Thursday the 29th.
I picked her up from the bus and we went to our new accomodation, the Belfast International Youth Hostel. The room was small, but we had a private bathroom and 2 beds, that we moved together to get a double bed ;)
Over the week we went shopping (Ela needed some new trousers and shirts), made some walks around the city and cooked food at the house. It was very nice to have her around the week, things were easy, work was easy, the time elapsed very fast and the week was over very fast, too fast.
On Thursday morning the next week I brought her to the bus station, it was the time for farewell, 4 more weeks for me to stay here alone. I watched the bus till it went out of my sight.

Dublin, here we come

Chris and me took the opportunity to get to Dublin with free lodging at the weekend, our trip started at Friday evening, the bus was full with girls, that wanted to go to Dublin for partys. The smell was quite different, perfume everywhere, short skirts and tight trousers.
After arriving in Dublin we met with Sandra and Sabine at the "Spire", well one tourist attraction, yet it was nothing more than a gaint needle with some light around it, nothing spectacular.
The place of the girls was a mess,, tidy but the carpet had some serious spots of ... well we don't know and maybe we don't want to ;)
After a night on this wonderful floor we went to the Guiness Storehouse, well we thought it would be a brewery but it was nothing more than a gigantic merchandising house with some explaination to the history of guiness, its ingridiants and the process of brewery. At the top of this house, we could enjoy a great view over dublin and some cool, really bad tasting Guiness beer ...
Chris and I want to a small tour through the city and some shopping. The city is quite different to Belfast, many tourists around, especially many spanish groups and students. At the evening we took one more tour to the city, visited some places again and took a closer look at the Dublin night life.
Our last night was as bad as our first and we were happy to take the first bus back to Belfast.

Interview and more

My duty on Wednesday was to meet Kevin at FGS and go to the job interview at Anaeko. Wearing my best clothes like a shirt and good trousers and some new shoes, I went to FGS while it was raining all the time. After arriving there it suddenly stopped raining.
While waiting for Kevin I met Ruth the first time, we had a small talk and I needed to wait another 15min for Kevin. In his VW Polo we drove to Anaeko that was close to the us well known Sandy Row. I wectoas introduced to Colm Hayden, the technical director of Anaeko. I gave them some details of my skills and tasks at quo data. After all the interview went fairly well, it was quite different than our training at shool, but somehow it was enough for them ;)

My first day startet at Thursday 9:30, I was introduced to the complete team, that was somehow small, some of them were at holydays. The first task, was to get myself familar with Opalis a Microsoft product, we were developing some sort of plugins for. This took me the Thursday and Friday and I was an Opalis expert ;)

The "Battle of the Boyne" Day(s)

The 12th was a holiday called "Battle of the Boyne Day". We had free on Monday and Tuesday, some stores were still opened.
The night to the 12th was quite peaceful, well we listened to some technomusic until 3pm, that came from a party not too far from us.
Robert told us, that in the night, some police men got hurt by fireweapons at a riot in Belfast centre. We decided to go on a trip and check out a hostel near Sandy Row. It was a bit strange, cause we directly went into a street party of the Oranie, celebrating the Battle of the Boyne. Children and adults were walking over with beer and were somewhat drunk, something like this couldn't be possible in Germany. We went back to our home and took a route that run next to the Queens and the Botanic Gardens.
In the evening we walked a bit around and found garbage cans burning on the bridge. Many people were on the move to watch this spectacle. To get a better view, we took a detour to get to the other side of the river and took some pictures and made a film, it can be watched here.
After bystanding long enough, we returned home and took a nap till the next morning.

To get to know Belfast better and to check out the wall papers we went to the Sandy Row again, to get information on the prices of the hostel, Chris and me booked 2 rooms for our girlfriends and us. Sebastian, who escorted us, took a church guide with him and we continued our journey to the ghettos of Belfast. It was a very, lets call it, interesting experience. High fences, strange children, that where drunk at 1pm and a day with Sebastian. At the end of our trip, we found burning garbage cans on the bridge again. Some of the teens disliked that we took pictures and they threw empty bottles after us. The bottle almost hit us if we hadn't evaded the attack.
We returned to our house, I chatted with my girlfriend, played a hour on my PC and went to bed.

The first weekend

The first night wasn't that great, we had no bedlinen.
After having checked out the south area around our house on friday, we tried the city center on saturday. Chris and me went north, along the Ormeau Street to the Victory Square Shopping Center, this one is really big and very new. There are many expensive shops, for example an Apple Store and different fashion stores.
Finally we found what we were looking for, a mobile store from Vodafone and O2. Because we have no internet at home, we needed to get some 3G USB Modem. We already got some information about Three, another mobile provider here, and now we wanted to checkout the tariffs of the others. We grabbed some product sheets and walked a bit around the city centre and returned home to check the deals ;)
At the later afternoon we returned with the others to buy the 3G Modems, we decided to get some "Pay as you Go" from O2. After that we searched some outdoor store, to buy 2 sleeping bags and solving our problem with the missing bedlinen.
We went home and bought 3GB traffic for 15 Pound and startet chatting and browsing :) At the evening we watched the Germany vs. Uruguay game at TV, some went to a pub to watch it there.
I totally forgot to mention, that we also bought some food on friday and saturday. It isn't as cheap as in Germany, but still affordable.
On sunday we explored the university and the area west to us and went shopping, yes the stores are opened every day the week, first to the city centre, because I was looking for some jacket, after that we went back home and stopped at a grocery store ;) and bought food again. At the evening we watched the World Cup Finale together.

Our Journey - Part III

We were the first at our new home and checked out everything, the kitchen looked great, the livining room was good too, but then we saw IT, the washing room. Well looking at the picture isn't enough to realize how bad it really is. There is a smell of oil in there and to misfortune it is also the drying room.
Ok lets check the sleeping rooms and the bath, which is quite good, the shower is useable and it is sort of clean ;)
We have 2 single and 2 double sleeping rooms, well the second double room is only has one bed and a mattress on the ground everything allocated on 2 floors.
Chris and me selected the upper double bed room. Sebastian got the single bed room next to us.
After all put their baggage on the rooms, Kevin waited for us in the living room, to tell us something about the house, which is actually a "great house", and where we are going to work the next weeks. To our suprise Monday and Tuesday are holidays, people celebrate the "Battle of the Boyne".
I was a bit disappointed, because Sebastian got my job at Queens and I need to go to another place, to be honest I hoped to avoid the dress coat. My new internship place is a company called Anaeko, I need to find some information in the Internet, after having gotten a 3G USB Modem.
Most of us start to work at Wednesday, Sebastian is lucky, he starts on Monday the 19th.

Ok the next stop, a shopping center to get something to eat and drink and a 3G USB Modem.

Our Journey - Part II

The checkout took ages and my bag had some minor damage at the zip, but nothing to complain about. Hungry we were buying some food at the airport, not as expensive as in the plane.
The bus stop wasn't easy to find, cause there was a big construction site at the airport.
In that time we got the Irish weather better to know than we wanted, it was raining all the time, but in the end we were rewarded with our bus to Belfast.

There was more space than in the plane, but in the end it wasn't much better as to be seen on the following picture ...
Yes the bus was leeking, but well, we survived the 2.5h trip.

After that we finally met Kevin, who called a cap for us and some of us including me had a ride to our new lodging in Delhi Street, with some conversations about football and the good things about Belfast like beer, women and beer.

Some minutes later we were finally here, our own house. But more later ;)