Our Journey through the Emerald Isle

So, I'm pretty sure I knew I couldn't keep from getting sick the WHOLE semester...but when I woke up Thursday morning with the awful cold/virus that's been making its way through the RT-82 group, I was NOT giving up my plane tickets and hostel reservations to Ireland. So, after class, Emily, Josh and I headed off to the Emerald Isle. Or rather, we headed to London - since it's near impossible to fly from Stuttgart to anywhere in Ireland. So after an hour bus ride to the Stuttgart airport, a walk through security that everyone easily made it through, but...me. Naturally, it's that whole not looking like any real ethnicity thing. Holds me back every time. It's about the 4th time on this trip - alone. But we made it through and boarded flight #1 of the weekend and found ourselves at London Stansted. Oddly enough, finally in a city where EVERYTHING was in English, we didn't feel as comfortable as we do "coming home" to where everything is in German. Perhaps this is a sign of things to come in about a month when we return home. But we spent a few hours layover there before jumping on flight #2 of the night to Cork. We arrived fairly late in the evening, but were still taken by the immense Irish hospitality and found our way to our hostel (which also happened to be a pub) for the first night quite easily. So we checked in, had our first pint of Irish stout, and met our dorm mates. The next day, we headed out to Blarney, walked up through Blarney Castle (where it PAID to be short!), kissed the Blarney Stone (and, yes, Uncle Bob, I did get you a piece), and walked among the Rock Trails. We had lunch in what we considered to be an authentic Irish pub and headed back to town. We walked down St. Patrick's Street (which we deemed the Michigan Ave. of Cork) and then headed up towards St. Anne's Church where Emily and I rang the bells of Shandon. We got our money's worth, ringing 3 songs (Amazing Grace, Don't Cry for Me Argentina, and the Welsh National Anthem...there were few choices) and then donned our ear protectors and headed up to see the actual bells - again, much like walking up the Duomo in the sleet, wondering why on earth anyone would pay to walk up here. Someone, of course, rang the bells as we were standing next to them, shocking both of us, but we regained our bearings and climbed even higher (it seemed like us and the birds really) to see a view of...industry. The climb was worth it though. We climbed back down, ringing Do-Re-Mi (mind you, this can be heard all through Cork...) on our way out :) Then we headed for the University in town. The architecture was amazing. It had the atmosphere of many American Universities, too, and gave us a bit of a taste of home. We headed back into town, walked around for FOREVER before finding a place to eat, and then headed to our hotel for the night. The next morning we grabbed a cab to the train station and jumped on the train to Dublin. There happened to be a rugby game in Dublin on Saturday. And they happened to be playing New Zealand (currently the best in the world). It was PACKED. Awesome. But we made it to Dublin without a problem, received the same wonderful hospitality, dropped our things at the Train Station and headed to the Guinness Factory. The Guinness "Experience" is the most visited attraction in Ireland. Lines weren't that long, luckily, and it turned out to be a pretty interesting tour. It's essentially about how Guinness is made, why its made, etc etc. And it ends with a chance to learn how to pour your own and some free samples of their lesser known varieties. We then headed over to a local pub to watch some of the rugby game & get some fish and chips before heading towards Trinity College. We walked around the college area (all of which was already decked out for Christmas) and then began the long walk across Dublin to the Heuston Train Station, the long bus ride to the airport and a brief night of sleep before awaking at 4:30am for our flight out of the Dublin Airport. We packed up our things, made it through security, and hopped on our plane. The real fun started at the Frankfurt Airport when all we wanted to do was get on the train back to Stuttgart. But there was a police officer blocking the only escalator. When we asked him if we could get down, or even when we could get down his only response was "no!". Gotta love the German Bundespolizei. But we found an elevator and made it to our train. So, 5 airports, 5 train stations, and about 400 escalators later, we were back in Reutlingen - Just in time to pack for our week long class trip to East Germany...

"Don't TOUCH me. Sleep on your OWN side of the bed. Are you INCAPABLE of that?" -Emily to Josh...and she doesn't remember saying it...in her sleep.

"Mummy, where are we going" -Little girl
"We're going to Thailand" -Mom
"On a Ryanair flight? Good. Luck." -Us

"Kelly, next Halloween I'm going to be you. All I would need is a scarf, an itinerary, and a bottle of wine." -Josh

"j/k dog lol" -me

"There's chloride in my water" -Emily
"That's for your teeth" -Josh
"That's FLOURIDE" -Emily

"Do they sell chocolate on this....cart? Or am I going to have to wait for another?" -Angry Emily...she doesn't really like flying...

"I don't know if you knew, but David Hasselhoff singlehandedly took down the Berlin Wall"-Josh

"If I were a boy I think my parents were going to name me Christopher" -me
"You look like a Christopher" -Josh
"What's THAT supposed to mean?"

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