goofy-congratulation-thread

As today is the birthday of Goofy, and we'll soon meet to celebrate it, I want to give everybody the opportunity to congratulate him, I'm pretty sure, that those who already visited me, want to use it, cause he's a very nice guy. Of course, even if you don't know him yet, but like him for his blog, which you hopefully read, you can also congratulate him! That's him:

bank holiday weekend

Tomorrow, monday the 30th of October will be off! Why? Don't ask me, it's a bank holiday, whatever this means... Anyway, we used the weekend to go to Galway, a very nice city in the west of Ireland, together with Flor, who's here at the moment (ole) and Marianna and Franziska, a swiss friend of her. I'll post pictures later on, since I forgot to get those of Marianna. I know my articles are short, rare and low-level at th moment, but please don't use this as an apology for not writing comments!
Goodnight, tom

FIREALARM!

Another thing the irish seem to be obsessed with, is security. Not only that there are security guards in any ALDI and any other shops, they also wear very funny yellow shining security jackets if they ride their bikes down the corner.
Another thing which is annoying is the fire alarm at DCU:

• it's loud
• you have to go outside, and in most cases going outside means getting wet
• there's one at most every week
• I've lectures in three different blocks, and in two blocks were already fire alarms, seems to be a question of time...
  

The reason I'm writing this article, is that there was a fire alarm today, and I've nothing really interesting to report, unless I've joined the volleyball club, first training yesterday evening, it was fun, and flor will arrive on friday!
Stay tuned and safe, tom

weird I am (II)

As I commenced to have fun in continuing stories, I've decided to start a neverending series (although it will end, that's for sure) with this one. So always when I have a silly, mad or similar kind of picture, I post them in a weird I am (**) article. I also decided, that each and everyone of you, who reads these articles has to comment them. Perhaps it works, we'll see...
So fight your weaker self and click the comment button, it costs you about 30 secs.

a tale of long nights (II)

Continuing from where I stopped, still tired, but satiated, I have to tell you, that we visited nearly the whole centre, 10km walk at most, says Agnes, we went back by bus, together with Marianna and Laetitia who we met for shopping, which ended up in a waste of money for strange gift shop things...
And while I cleaned up the mess of the house party the night before, Jasmin did something via the internet and Agnes took a short nap, Laetitia prepared a quiche with leeks for us, and we had a nice dinner with Marianna who joined us, too. Crépes for dessert! Deadly! Of course there was also a bottle of vine with us. Later in the evening, we wanted to go to the city, but first again to andy's and stefan's (from now on a&s's place, which is NOT a wordplay), and our plans to go to the city again slowly faded away while having good conversations and some drinks. So the Suiss fraction left us at about 2am, Andy accompanying them. I don't know exactly why, but we staid there for a long time, and at half past four, Andy came back and was delighted to see us still in his living room, although we just had decided to go home, but he managed it, to keep us there till 6am, again talking and talking, Goofy sleeping on the floor, which seems to end up in a kind of a tradtional thing...
(That was a long phrase, so even if its grammaticallically total wrong I'll stop it now.) Then again about 4 hours of sleep, me on the floor, because Agnes decided to capture my bed, we finally went to the airport to say goodbye.
And they all lived happily ever after.
Hopefully.

a tale of long nights

I'm just back from the airport, saying goodbye to Agnes and Jasmin and I'm completely tired now, they were only there for two days, but I never slept so few in Dublin before.
On thursday afternoon they arrived, and instantly, after a quick meal in my place, we went over to andy's and stefan's and afterwards to the city centre. First a tiny trip to Temple Bar, the real tourist centre of Dublin, and after that to Café-en-Seine (got the wordplay?!) to drink and dance. It was quite a large group, cause there were also 6 suisse visitors of Goofy there. I think we went back home at about 3 o'clock, but not to go to bed, cause my flatmates decided to have a house party, there was only one of my flatmates left, a couple snogging in the corner and andy, stefan, goofy, jasmin, agnes and me, but we went on talking. So it was late when we went to bed, and early in the morning when we stood up again, 10 o'clock, german time accidentally, so 9am for real. But nevertheless we took a nice breakfast and started to visit the town. And as I am too tired at the moment and dizzy in my head, I'll continue this tale later....

for charitable purposes

I'm now pretty sure, that the Irish are a great country of welfare! They seem to do anything to get some money for any kinds of charitable donations.
Why I'm writing this, is because yesterday in the Hub (meeting point for students) there was a big charitable party, but not one of the normal kind.
It was more like an auction, with different things to buy, but mainly persons.
You could e.g. buy someone, who had to get naked afterwards, behind the scenes. But there were also some public sales, they just collected money, and those who were on sale, had different things to do, mostly just to show their bra, or underwear or whatever, but there were also "girls actions", everyone may imagine for himself what they did.
I'm really sorry that I can't present any photos of that event, but it wasn't just a weird dream of me...

And another thing to say, Jasmin and Agnes will arrive today, so I've lots of things to prepare,
hope to see you soon, tom

a little correction

This evening after having dinner, ratatouille and potatoes, and while watching an episode of 24 it turned out, that both, Laetitia and Marianna were not really pleased with the photos in the introduction article though Laetitia didn't even see them.
But as I don't want to change "old" articles, I just decided to put some new photos of them on the blog.
By the way, they are both single...

weird I am

Very strange experience today: I really thought "He's driving on the wrong side!" while I watched American Dad...

So you see, nothing big happens here at the moment, tomorrow morning will be the first handball game, but that's all news.

So, good night everybody, don't forget to comment, I really appreciate to get a glimpse from what you're doing, tom

Mein Besuch

Nachdem ich gestern gut gelandet bin und heute erstmal ausgeschlafen habe, möchte ich alle Unschlüssigen hiermit ermuntern, Tom zu besuchen. Ein Besuch bei ihm in Dublin ist sehr lohnenswert, zumal Flüge echt günstig zu haben sind.

Allerdings reichen vier Tage wohl nicht ganz aus, um die Stadt ausreichend zu erkunden. Dennoch hatte ich das Vergnügen, bei irisch untypisch sonnigem Wetter mit blauem Himmel (siehe Foto von der St Patrick´s Cathedral), die Stadt zu erkunden. Dublin ist eine pulsierende Metropole mit verschiedenen Gesichtern, man sieht Geschäftsleute aber auch viele Bettler und meist nur in den zahlreichen Grünanlagen findet man Ruhe von dem Treiben auf den Straßen. Einen ausgedehnten Stadtrundgang sowie die Besichtigung der Guiness-Brauerei kann ich jedem nur empfehlen.

Abends haben mir Tom und seine Freunde das irische Nacht- und Studentenleben gezeigt. Höhepunkte waren die "3?-Drink-Party" im HUB, die sich aufgrund des "günstigen" Preises niemand entgehen lassen wollte, wie auch die Bartour im City Center. Dies heißt natürlich nicht, dass der Besuch des Pubs und der anschließende Pokerabend am Montag kein Spaß gemacht hat.

Also Tom, nochmals vielen Dank, vielleicht lässt sich ein zweiter Trip einrichten. Grüße an deine Freunde in Irland. Übrigens die Riegel habe ich am Flughafen noch bekommen. Sind von Butlers Chocolates (51 Grafton Street), kannst sie ja auch mal probieren.

Zu guter letzt noch einen Typ an alle, die eventuell Guiness oder Cidre mit nach Deutschland nehmen wollen. Am Flughafen gibts große Packungen (4xCidre oder 8xGuiness) die um einiges günstiger sind wie im Supermarkt.

Grüße
Tim

Nuts and Bolts Ball

Tim just left me and is on his way back home, it was a nice time with him around, and I hope he'll manage it to visit me one more time ;) This photo was taken in a pub around the corner, the Slipper.
There'll be also the Ball which I mentioned in the headline, it's organised by the Rock Climbing Club. It's gonna be a good party tonight, hopefully. So I think I'll have a nap, but really short, because afterwards I want to go to the climbing traning and to the swimming pool.

Thanks for the comments to those who managed it,
shame on the others ;)
Please wish some more rainless days, so far, tom

the weekend trips

The last weekend was very busy, on friday (my weekend starts on fridays!) we went to Howth which is a very nice place on the coast, it's like a little island, but connected to Dublin.


Afterwards we started a little shopping tour in the centre of Dublin, which ended up in two new jeans, a sweater and a nice blue jacket, very epensive day for me, but I was not the only one spending lots of money...

The next day, saturday, we made last but not least (we tried to get there before, two times) a trip to Glendalough, you can make there a beautiful hiking trip and visit a waterfall, a monastic city and some abbeys, founded by St. Kevin. Unfortunately the time there was very limited, because first bus wents there at 11.30am and needs about 1 hour and 15 minutes and the last one returns at 4.30pm, I hope you're all able to calculate the time in between.

Today was a very smooth day, I lied around in bed till half past twelve (half twelve like they use to say here, very confusing) and went to go swimming, doing saunaing and lying around in the spa pool a bit later with Stefan.

time to introduce people

As I'm now in Dublin for nearly 4 weeks, it's getting time to introduce some of my friends here...
So I'm gonna start with my two girls ;)

The one in the background is Laetitia, from the beautiful island La Réunion (I saw photos...), which is near to Mauritius. Very sporty girl, i.e. very very good in volleyball, but also in everything else, I found my master in her!

The other one is Marianna, from Switzerland, a big language talent and therefore studying translation (or dolmetsching as I would say, but I think I'm on the woodway with such expressions).

On the right side, you see Andy, an austrian guy who is carried around by Kylie, our US-girl. This is the place where I'm very often, the apartment of Stefan and Andy, Stefan is the Suisse guy you can see behind Markus aka Goofy who's also Suisse sitting in the bus and enjoying our trip to Howth.

I think this should be enough for the moment. Tomorrow Tim will arrive and I hope it'll be a funny time with him around here. I'll leave you for now, perhaps going over to my favourite place, exchanging some movies with Stefan, and fetching up some other photos!

By the way, I'm still waiting for comments...
Tom

what an ake!

yesterday was my first olympic handball training and I never felt my body like today, it's hurting all over!
but nevermind, kerstin just reminded me or asked me for my adress in ireland, so if anybody wants to write me a letter, no matter of what kind, I'll read them all, send it to:

Thomas Gengenbach
Shanowen Hall 4
Shanowen Road
Santry
Dublin 9
Ireland

And by the way, I would like to know who reads this blog and who doesn't read it, so I'd like to get some nice comments, if you like also in german, but I would prefer some english ;)
I'm off to the bar now, my guinness calls me,
cu all, tom

Clubs&Socs Day

Yesterday and today we had to choose some clubs and societies, and so I did, too. I'm now a proud member of the hiking soc, the handball club, the chess club and the rock climbing club. But I already joined the sports club, so I can go swimming on my own, and doing fitness or do spinning or things like that.
I'm looking now forward to welcome Tim next monday ;) and also Jasmin and Agnes in the midst of october, and of course I'm awaiting Flor in the end of october.
Everybody who want to visit Dublin should also feel warmly welcome to do so, and of course to visit me, too!

Hope to see you soon, tom

first steps

I recognized, that if I would write my articles in english, you could perhaps have more ambitions to read them, and at the same time, I can train my writing skills, which aren't very tremendous, or deadly, as the irish would say.
And this is what I'm doing now, start to write in english, and I hope, I get lots of comments from you, of course in english...

By the way, if anybody finds some misspelling, you are allowed to keep them ;)

I discovered, that some of my new Erasmus friends, also write blogs, so I'm going to link them under 'links' (where else).

Another problem is, that I don't have a camera with me, so if you want to see some photos, you could look at the flickr page of andy, an austrian guy, who is also linked by now.

Hoping you understand my bad english (only for the moment, it'll get better),
so far, and what's the craic, tom