Sunny day, sweeping the clouds away*

Spring is finally here! We have gone a full 3 days without siginificant preipitation!

The UNGS has been very busy at work. His year-and-a-half long training course (meets 4x quarterly) is getting down to the lat stages and there was a group project to be completed. He wound up doing most of it, which has meant that I haven’t seen a lot of him recently and he won’t be here Saturday either. Next Thursday is a holiday, though, so I’m trying to look on the bright side.

not so difficult today (hee!) The forecasts are accessible from here. My friends at the water department are big fans of the Kachelmann forcasts. I am definitely hoping this forecast is accurate.

*Aren’t those lyrics so much better than “He who doesn’t ask remains stupid.”?- which is how part of the Sesamstrasse Lied goes

Update

Well, we bought our tickets for our US trip in the summer.  The pain (so expensive) and not on one of those cushy airlines I like to fly with, and really, really not non-stop.  Still lots and lots to plan for the trip and lots of work to do while we’re there.

re: mailing items over – the elimnation of “per ship” mailing through the post office has really made this prohibitive. We have to bring over what we can mangage ourselves and ultimately we may have to get part of a container.  We’ll see how much is left once I decide what I can manage to part with.

In other news -

I am enjoying wathing lots and lots of pope in the US coverage.

And I am trying to figure out how to import my blogroll. I started out by going through the expat blog links and adding many new blogs to my Google reader. Now, I have exported the file and spent entirely too much time reading your blogs! We’ll see how soon I get a real post up or get that list imported.

My shelf

I will consider myself tagged by the indominable Ms Mausi

The shelves are only so empty because I have yet to retrieve my things from my parents’ place. This presents a huge problem because we can’t ship them. (We would be elegible for customs and the Zoll has no guidelines for the pricing of used clothing and books (the vast majority of what I own).

We haven’t proceded all that far down the “reduce” road as far as our things are concerned , but at least most things have their place now that we have a larger apartment.

Oh and yey for Pappi’s at Ikea. They fit in the shallow Billy shelves and are cheap!

And a lot of the work has been trying to organize the things that have fallen into the category, “krims krams” for way too long.  On the left you now see a little drawer for little bike related objects and for playing cards and for our 4 zillion roles of tape.

Old scores

The pedestrian’s version of “geblitzt werden”. I normally do not “drive black” but on that day, it was risk it or wait another 20 minutes for the next street car. It cost me the 30eur I had in my pocket. Without enough money to buy a return ticket, the return trip truly was a walk of shame.

And we’re BÁC part II

Eating Out

Wish I had some good news here. We didn’t eat anywhere that was particularly cheap – mostly in the 7-8 eur range without drinks. Beer ranged from 4.20 ish to 5.40 ish (temple bar, need I say more?)

So assuming you can’t do cheap, cheap (or we just didn’t know how) here is what we loved:

Breakfast at the Queen of Tarts

Queen of Tarts
4 Cork Hill Dame Street,
Dublin 2 Dublin city

across from an entrance to Dublin Castle and just down the hill a bit from Christ’s Church (east)

I could take or leave the brown bread. The apple scone was divine. The coffee was good. Very cozy. Unsettling chicken.

Dinner at Fafie’s (Creperie)

They have a web page with menu’s, a map and photos here.

Fish and Chips in Howth*

(rhymes with Both)
What my brother-in-law must have thought when in response to his question about what I wanted to do in Dublin, I said “I want to go to a chipper.”? And we did, although slightly more upscale than what I had in mind. The chips were chips but the fish “catch of the day” was light and flaky. So good and sitting on a bench with the sun shining down on you and the sea breeze in your face – heaven. Howth was one of the peak experiences of my life (and the subject of a future post).

Skirts that we are, we decided to the give the vinegar a pass.

And we’re BÁC* part I

*Baile Átha Cliath‘ (‘The Settlement of the Ford of the Reed Hurdles’) i.e. Dublin, Republic of Ireland

A really wonderful trip. We had a gracious host, better weather than forecast, Glück im Unglück, good food, great beer (really, check this place out). Sure, it did rain, and not everything worked out, but I am thoroughly satisfied.

And naturally, we have some travel tips – not that I can suggest anything much (especially not food) in Dublin that is particularly cheap.

Trip preparation

RTE is great. I have my quibbles with them, of course. To listen to them, not a single soul goes to church and all Americans are twits (grrr. . .didn’t know St. Patrick was a real person – where did that guy come from, Utah???!). True, but only about half true. Their documentaries (Documentaries on One), as I have previously reported are not for the faint of heart, depressing stuff. But here is what I would recommend before a trip to Ireland.

What If. . . (this covers so many areas of modern Irish history – really good). Kilmainham Gaol was a different experience having listened to audio of James Connolly’s daughter talking about her last visit with her father.

Speaking Ill of the Dead (though I largely had no idea about whom they were talking when I listened to the series initially)

You can find both here or in the Itunes store. Free – that’s $0 and being the only point where the euro and dollar prices are equal these days, it’s also 0 eur (yee-ha!).

Also 100% free and fabulous are the iwalk podcast walking tours from the Dublin tourist office. They overlap quite a bit, so you might want to put together your own tour using their pdf booklets (free, downloadable). I didn’t do this and spent a not insignificant amount of time fast-forwarding to things we were looking at. (Also available free at Itunes).

And let’s not forget Wikipedia, which has a nice overview of Irish history. My poor unnamed German spouse was forced to read the German text on the plane. Also extremely helpful in reading more about the folks mentioned in the podcasts. Usefull terms – Irish history, Easter Rising

How literally should one interpret “literally”?

I was reading a description of the desired applicant at a copywriting company yesterday when I ran across the following

• You do not translate Kompetenz, Kontrolle and Konditionen literally

Now what I want to know is, “What in heaven’s name do they mean?”  If you do the following,

• Kompetenz = competence
• Kontrolle = control
• Konditionen = conditions

it’s not literal, it’s wrong! The literal translations, off the top of my head, would be expertise, checking/inspection, and terms. Do they mean they don’t want these, or do they simply want people who don’t fall into the most common Falsche Freunde traps?

I also ran across the words “Plus Points” on their web page. I am more familiar with this phrase in German. Do the Brits say this? In NY English, I think we would say something “is a plus”.