Dublin uber alles....

Sony Center in Potsdamer Platz

Three kids have now told me that Temple was their first choice, but that they were denied. In addition the professor mentioned the temple law review a few times in class and one of our professors is a visiting lecturer at the University of Miami. My school is awesome. For the past two days I pretty much just slept and studied. The final was hard, but he assured us he will grade easy. He also assured another pass/fail student before the test that he would be fine. I was the first to finish, as always. As a result I was “iced” by the professor at dinner later. For those unaware, “icing” is when you surprise someone with a Smirnoff ice, which they then must drop to one knee and chug. Its gross but fun to watch, and my professor did it to me! All in good fun. After the final I shot over to potsdamer platz to see the sony center, it was worth the trip even for the sub 10 minutes I spent there. Tomorrow I grab my plane to Dublin, last leg of the journey!

I woke up early grabbed breakfast and made the hour and half trip to Schonfeld airport. Pretty unremarkable except for the guy checking passports giving mine a 5 minute thorough screening. With some last minute switching i was able to weigh in at 20.9 kilos and not have to pay overages. On the plane the stewrdass made an announcement that people who didnt have EU passports needed this special card to turn in at immigration. I misheard her to say people who had EU passports needed it....but then i figured everyone with the exception of me and one other family were all either german or irish, so i mucked it up by not gettng one right away. At the little irish passport inspection window the guy kepy saying to me "have identification"...as he was holding my passport...so i kept pointing to it and he was clearly gettign mad. Then he spoke up, "having a vacation???"  ...i was like    oh...yeah    that makes more sense. The accent was thick and he mumbled...not my fault entirely.

The hotel looks REALLLLLLLY fancy on the ground floor/reception area and smells like pee upstairs. It was cheap though and is in a sweet location. I forgot there was a time zone switch and so i keep thinknig its later than it really it is. I messed up my day a bit because i didnt think i had time to do certain things and turns out i did. However, that has been somewhat fortuitous, by buying your tickets to the guisness factory and jameson distillery you save 10% and can skip the lines. So tomorrow those are the first things I'm doing. After that I want to see this famous prison where the hunger strikes occured and where the leaders of the easter uprising were executed, if there is time i want to do a city tour and a walking tour of trinity college. I also want to shoot up to belfast for a day, but its "too close to departure" for me to book it over the internet, however the office for the tour is right around the corner so i'm gonig to swing in there tomorrow and see if i cant get fit in last minute. I also picked up a brochure for a literary pub crawl, where two actors reanct scenes and writings and jokes an other literary moments as you tour the city and get pints at various locations. It will either be amazing or suck bad, and i'm kinda betting and hoping it will be both.

I mucked about in Dublin a little today, saw the parliment, found the tourism office, saw this big needle monument thing, a few statutes, temple bar, bought some small souvineers,walked through trinity college, saw the hunger monument, and got dinner at this 300 year old pub; irish stew and of course a pint. Dublin is sweet, its really small and clean, everyone is friendly and the accents are lovely, its also a great plus to be able to speak the language, but they have difficulty undestanding me and vice versa on account of the accents. There are so many modern glass buildings here that it looks alot like Berlin. Also alot of the signs and things in the city have the galic as well as english on them.

Hunger Memorial

Temple Bar, i dont know why its famous, but know that it is.

I have liked each city better than the last on this trip, they just kept getting better and better with 2 slight exceptions, rome and venice equally were shit holes and viena and budapest were a tie. Prague was a little more beautiful and had the best food of the trip, but the language barrier was steep and public transit wasnt as good. BUt i think i like Dublin even more than Berlin, which was better than prague which was better than vienna/budapest, which was better than bratislava and ljublana and of course all were better than europe's mexico aka italy.

A dude from the last program from texas who i got along well with is meeting his girlfriend here and they are doing 3 days in dublin and then renting a car and circling the island. I sent him a message ot meet me at the guiness factory tomorrow but as neither of us has cell phones, and i have no idea if he has internet who knows if it will work out. I dont mind oturing this place alone, but it would be nice to have someone to go out at night with. Last night i pulled what is apparently known as an irish exit; where you just leave without telling anyone and go home. I had no interest in saying good bye to the miami kids. They overwhelmingly were not people i ever wish to speak to again with a very small handful of exceptions. The term they use in "princesses" for the girls because they always must be the center of attention and are real snobby. They were all very nice to me, but i just dont care for that personality trait. They were saying that if they are ever in philly they'll call me and i need to come to miami....neither of those will ever happen. I might consider visiting burt in georgia and or lanny in texas, but beyond that i'll pass.

I checked my school e-mail for the first time in quite a while today and have tons of things i need to take care of when i get back, including booknig a flight to New Orleans for a weekend (dad, we'll talk) and all kinds of other stuff ranging from bachelor parties to budget proposals to re-scheduling classes since i currently only have 2. Liz is picking me up at the airport and i'm making her make me mac and cheese for when i get home. I figure i'll take a day or two to reacquaint myself with america and decompress before i start trying to figure out how i'm going to visit everyone. I figure i'll go to bath first, especially seeing as i need my car, keys and phone. Then i'll prob take a day to deal with philadelphia area issues, then return to the lehigh valley, and then another day or two before a sweep through baltimore and waldorf. side note: kim...i completely destroyed the suitcase you gave me, it now has 2 busted zippers, a huge hole, and no wheels.   ...very similar to my jetta actually. I'm not meant to have nice things. Well considering i am touring two alcohol factories before noon, i should probly get to bed. See y'all soon.

James Joyce, the irish lovingly refer to him as "The Prick with the Stick"