Ireland Trip 2018 6CD
On the 9th of September, a plane took off from Vienna Airport and landed in Dublin two hours later (local time). In it were classes 6CD and professors Fischl, Satzinger and Windischhofer. During the following week, we stayed at host families in Bray in groups of two or three. Bray is a small town at the coast, south of Dublin (one hour with the DART). The first thing we experienced was how different the families were – some were young with a lot of other host students and some were old couples.
The morning routine depended on the distance from our language school. The school was an Irish primary school where we had lessons with native speakers in three groups. The classes were focused on speaking and learning about Irish culture and other interesting topics.
After school, we quickly ate our lunch packages, which we got from the host families (usually with an extra package of crisps and chocolate bars), before we started our afternoon trip. Sometimes with public transport (watch out! Cars are driving on the left side!!!), sometimes with our private coach, we visited different sights such as: Dublin Tour incl. Trinity College, Glendalough, dog racing and St Patricks Cathedral.
Twice, we had full day trips. Once to Knowth, (a hill grave, 500 years older than the pyramids!), and Malahide castle. The other trip was to Wexford National Heritage Park where we had a look at Irish History through exploring the buildings from Stone Age to Viking times.
Thursday, we had a free afternoon where we could decide to either go to Dublin on our own or to attend the cliff walk with the teachers.
Actually we were a little bit scared of Céilí dancing, Irish folks dancing with traditional music. BUT It turned out to be real fun with us wanting to dance for another two hours.
In most of the evenings we got time to talk to our families (unfortunately not all families wanted that) and to meet our friends and go to the beach, some of us even went swimming, with the water having 14°C.
The 6cd had a lovely week, sunny skies, very untypical for Ireland to have rain only once, a bright green and an enjoyable programme.
At the end of the week, the 16th of September:
Cheers! (No worry, only the teachers were allowed to go to the pub, cheers means goodbye in Irish English)
Jarmila Frimlova and Teresa Dujmovits
