On Saturday we have been to Kinsale, where we found the perfect children’s playground: “Charles’s Fort“.

The fort was constructed in the 17th century and is located at the approach of Kinsale harbour. Today the fort is a mixture of a ruin, a park, a museum and an art gallery. Something for everybody. People are sitting in the café or laying in the grass, while their children play knight and princes in the ruins. Some of the intact buildings are used for exhibitions and the view over the harbour is stunning.

In Memory Of The Spanish Expeditionary Force
Of Juan De Aguila To Kinsale
On The IV Centenary
1601 - 2001
The Cultural Association Of The
Invincible Armada Of La Coruna – Spain

Unveiled By
President Of Ireland Mary McAleese
22nd September, 2001

Entry is 3.50 Euro for an adult and half as much for children and students. It seems like nobody is controlling the tickets, even if they say somebody might ask for them. Taking into account the quality of facilities and condition of the park, this is a bargain! And I haven’t even mentioned exhibition yet! When we where visiting the Fort last Saturday, they displayed modern art from an artist named Tony Haywood. Even if I never heard the name before some of the exhibits reminded me a lot of what I’ve seen at previous Ars Electronica Festivals.

Today we met our (hopefully) future landlord and visited the flat we fancy. The apartments look as ready as possible, a chair is missing here, a closet there and a fume hood is waiting for installation. Overall, nothing that couldn’t be finished within a day. We most likely can switch to a flat in the first floor, and he even told us about a way to get a resident parking permission. Which would save us at least a 100,- Euros a month.

Everything would be perfect, if there wouldn’t be the issue with the ESB. The landlord is very confident to get them to work soon, and us in within the next weeks. However, time is ticking. We can only stay in Bishopstown for 3 more weeks. The landlord promised us, that if the building doesn’t have electricity till then, he will prepare a flat for us on one of his other properties for the time being.

I don’t want to relocate with all the stuff 2 more times, but at the same time I don’t want to stay in Bishopstown for too much longer either.

At the moment all we can do is to hope that the ESB will start working next weekend.

So I can’t open a bank account without prove of address. Without a Meldezettel, prove of Address means some bill form a governmental institution, like electricity or gas, under your name. As mentioned before, I don’t have any. The bank won’t accept a letter from the landlord, but they will make an exception if I bring them the letter from the Social Welfare Local office. I’ve been to the Department on Friday, which by the way has closed over lunch time even when the office is opened, and you will also need prove of address to apply for a PPS number. Great. But unlike the bank, they will accept a letter, form the person on such a bill, confirming that I live at this address. I finally managed to get all the necessary documents and went back to the office first thing on Monday morning. By the way, the Social Welfare, Community and Family Affairs Department will not open before 9:30am. I guess they start late to compensate the fact that they close early at 4pm. However, the important thing is that I successfully applied for the PPS number on the 22nd of August. The application takes a minimum of seven to ten days to process, so if I am lucky, I will be able to file the Form 12A till the end of the month. The Form 12A, Application for a Certificate of Tax Credits and Standard Rate Cot-Off Point, needs to be filed in within the month you started working, or you will be charged 42% emergency taxes. Which one probably gets back at the end of the year. And once I get the letter with the PPS number, I’ll also be able to open a bank account and get on the pay role.

The weirdest thing about the whole story is the fact that I still believe it’s much easier then in Austrian.

Last week a friend came over, who actually owns, what he call’s a little house in Ireland.

Right.

On Saturday he showed us around the Irish Highlands. Which also proofed to be a good opportunity to play a bit with our new toys.

What a wonderful view.

There is a fundamental difference between an optimist and a pasimist. Optimists can only be disappointed, while pessimists can be positively surprised from time to time. These days it is good being a pessimist. At least my mood doesn’t suffer from disappointment.

Last week the landlord told us that the ESB will start tomorrow. This Tuesday he told us they started today. Maybe next week he will tell us they started yesterday?

Being back at work helps to rise my mood, but there are new problems coming along. Problems called bureaucracy. Getting a PPS number promises to be easy, opening an bank account is a different story. There is nothing like a Meldezettel in Ireland, but you need an invoice from a governmental institution as prove of residence. I temporarily share a house with some students, there are no gas or electricity bill’s addressed to my name. The bank can not accept a letter from the landlord, but the nice lady behind the counter told me she will make an exception and open the account by taking the letter from the social agency, the one notifying me of my PPS number. This procedure can take up to 2 weeks and I have to give them our temporary address in Bishopstown. Being a pessimist, I am very confident that we will still live here when the letter will arrive.

With all the stuff we brought over, the little room is virtually filled to the brim.

And what you see here is actually only a bit of the stuff from the Landy. The big TV is placed somewhere on the ground floor, the surround equipment is on the closet and a lot of the inexpensive stuff is still in the car.

To live or even sleep in this little room would currently be impossible. Thankfully, being summer break, most of the other rooms are empty right now. So we occupied another one and put the beds together to have enough space for the mattress we brought over.

University will start again in September. Till then we must either have moved in, to the flat in downtown, or found something else.

One can get the feeling that being unemployed is like being on holiday. Maybe there are people out there who could enjoy doing nothing, except sitting on a sofa watching TV, for all day long. But I’m not one of them.

Personally, it freaks me out. There are so many things I wanted to do ages ago and never found the time. Now I had the time, but didn’t really feel comfortable to do any of them. It was a wired feeling, which really freaked me out. When I visited Ireland in May it looked like finding a job as software developer over here, would be even easier then back home. I had a job interview within days and the recruitment agencies told me about salary perspectives I wouldn’t even have dreamed of.

Reality, however, looks different. I came over on the 1st of August and didn’t had a job in sight. I spent the first week in Internet Cafes and reading newspapers, finding barely anything new or interesting. Plus the fact that we still don’t live in our flat, it really was a depressing time.

It was last week when things finally started to get going. I finally had interviews coming on and they really went very well. It was this Monday when I got the offer, exactly 2 weeks after arriving in Ireland and exactly the same time it took me to find a job in Austria.

Yesterday I made the decision to accept the offer and even if I where in office yesterday, today is more or less my first day in work.

It feels good to work again.
It feels good to develop again.

The tickets where booked and paied and even if nothing in Ireland seemed to work acording to plan, we decided to stick to the timetable and bring our car, fully loaded with our belongings, over.

This means 7 countries in 1900 km and 78 nautical miles.

We had a late start, leaving on Sunday after 2pm, but it was fine as we booked the ferry from Calise to Dover for 6am. Enough time to compansate troubles and get some sleep. The first few hundred kilometers went, a last gas stop in Austria and up to Germany. The Landy didn’t feel the extra weight at all, if I have ever mentioned the TD5 as underpowered, I stay corrected, it is an unbelivable torqui engine. The cars only downside have been it’s firm springs, a feature I normally like, but not on roads like the German A3, and we where there for another 600km. The day I realized that it was going down with the German ecconomy was the day I noticed that there Autobahn is in worse conditions as the Austrian ones. The German’s have allways been proud of there beloved Autobahn, where you can drive over 200kph, safely. Really, 10 years ago, you could feel the German / Austrian boarder by the simple fact that the car was running smoothly the moment it hit Germany. But these days? It’s plugged with speedlimits “80 – Strassenschäden”.

I don’t want to pick at the Germans, but they are not good drivers, at least not in a traffic jam. I know, because we spent 2 houers virtually standing on the A3. At the end it turned out that the only problem was a restriction from 3 to 2 lanes. In Bavaria the holiday season started this weekend, so the roads where quite crowded, still no reason for such a traffic jam. The problem was that most drivers where constantly switched lanes in the hope to get on the faster one.

We hit the Netherlands at night fall, way behind schedule. And it wasn’t the traffic jam that was the problem, it was my calculation. I thought we would master a bit over 100kph in avarage, but breaks and heavy traffic slowed us down to under 90. I really like Holland and the dutch people, a pitty we couldn’t stay for a break.

Did you knew that Beliguen has the only entirly lit motorway in the world? Well I thought I did, but it just wasn’t. I could see the lamp posts, but most of them where turned off. Is there an energie cirsis I wasn’t aware, or do they asume people don’t want light after midnight? Really, I can hardly find anything to like about that country! And if you know anything, please tell me. The water is undrinkable, Kempische / Campinioises don’t taste even half as good as they look and why are the clerks behind bullet proved glas????? I allways bounced through that country, and until somebody is telling me a real good reason to give it a closer look, I will keep on doing so.

We finaly arrived in France for the last few km for the day. After 12 houers of driving, it really gets hard to keep consentration on the road – I now know how Jeremy Clarkson must have felt when he raced that Mercedes SLR to Osloh. The French are there own brew, but I like them. Did you know that, before recent events, I wanted to learn a bit of french and take part at the GTR? I still plan to do that, once things have sattled down again. We finally arrived in Calis after 3 in the morning and catched an hour of sleep till we where loaded. (Not enough sleep I’m afraid.)

Anther hour of bad sleep on the ferry and then we where in Dover. Our route brought us around London, so hitting traffic jam was only a matter of time. By the way, is the first of August bank holiday in Britian too or only in Ireland?. Yes we hit a traffic jam, and oh joy after the one in Germany, this was really bringing back my faith in car drivers. Nobody was switching lanes, and even if it was a really terrible accident which included several trucks and blocked all but one lane, we where out of it in no time.

Our route brought us through Bristle and 17km close to Bath. What a pitty we couldn’t pay Bath a visit.

What a beautiful bridge.

We arrived in Fishguard at 5pm, behind schedule but early for the ferry. We had to kill 2 and a half houers and where suprisingly awake. (Gucky missused the navigation system to watch some Stargate )

While the first ferry was one of this big, slow, crouser like boats, this was more like it. Mind you, it cost over 3 times as much as the one to Dover.

We arrived in Ireland around 11pm, 200km to go. As the night fell in, our bodys reminded us that we are awake for over 30 houers now. Gucky took the first 100km as she was able to catch some sleep on the ferry. I tried to master the rest. And to be perfectly honest, the only thing that made me go through the last 50km was the simple wish to sleep in a bed.

We arrived in Cork at 2:20am, 36 houers after we left Linz.

Written: 03.08.2005

Recent events made me fly quite often for the last 3 months. In average once a week. Which ended up in me hating airport procedures even more then I did in the past. The following lines where written while waiting for a connection.

So I needed to get from Linz (Austria) to Shannon (Ireland), not that I wanted to get to Shannon in the first place. However, the fastest way is taking Ryanair from Linz over Stansted to Shannon. Have I mentioned that this was one week after the terror attacks in London? No I wasn’t strip searched at the security check in Austrian and they didn’t even made me take off my shoes, just. They do preformed a very close search for any peace of metal, using a hand held metal detector, and went through all my stuff. Which made it just as worse as the security check in Germany, which currently is the 2 nd worse, only topped by this paranoid frightened Americans.

At least, compared to any charted airline, this Ryan does believe in time is money. So we where quite on time as the pilot aborted his first approach in Stansted. The reason for this full pressure fun at 50 feet was some airplane standing on the runway, the other runway. We landed with only 15 minutes delay, which didn’t really matter, because I was doomed to stuck at the airport for hours anyway. Too less time to escape, too much to just sit around, being left to do nothing else but shopping. Last time I checked, my testosterone level was way to high to find shopping an enjoyable activity, and no, I am not fine with the idea of you destroying my luggage while taking a loo.

Security check in England was pretty much business as usual. Have I mentioned that my girlfriend was at the Airport on Thursday the 7 th of July? How did the Birts react? Have they closed all air traffic over England? No. 14 people missed the flight, because they where stuck in traffic, beside that, business as usual.

I finally arrived at Shannon a quarter past 11pm local time. Picking up my luggage, which arrived, rather surprisingly, in the reclaim from ?La Passo? And went home in a small rented car.

I written most of it while waiting at the airport, and something stroke me. Today modern travelling is nothing more then an endless line of queuing and humiliations. But only a few decades ago, people where sometimes travelling, no to get to a place, but for the joy and the event of travelling itself. A lot has changed.

Written: 16.7.2005

On May my girl friend came over first, as she was the driving force, the one already having a job. The Institute was paying her hotel bills for the first two weeks, giving us time to look for a flat. Apartment prices in Ireland are ridiculous high. Prices for a small two bedroom apartment start at 800,- EUR per month and you better but an extra 200 quid on top of that if you want a decent one. After visiting a few object in the sub 700 Euro mark, we focused our search on single bedroom apartments in the sub, to around, 800 Euro zone. After a few frustrating days we went off to visit a really nice flat, which was in fact to small. But the landlord told us that he knows somebody who just finished an apartment block, which could be exactly what we are looking for. (I know somebody who knows somebody who has – the Irish way. A friend of mine, who often made business over here told us about it.) Within a few minutes we where off, picking up the key, and viewing the object. A really nice, brand new apartment, between 50 to 60 square meters, for 700,- Euro cold. A bargain, where to sign? (At this point, I should take some time to explain to my continental friends, that in Ireland, like in the States, rented apartments are usually fully furnished.) Well, it wasn’t finished yet, but almost. He told us it would be finished by July and that we could rent a cheap room in some house of his, which he rents out to students during the year. Which would have been fine, as I had to finish some projects back home anyway and couldn’t come before August. It sounded brilliant.

So it did. July passed by and it still wasn’t ready. The landlord told us the ESB (Irish OKA) didn’t show up to install electricity.

A decision had to be made, and we decided to drive over on bank holiday, as planed. That means we have to store all the stuff we brought over from Austria, somewhere in this tiny room.

(With the backseats removed the Land Rover has a storage capacity of three and a half square meters.) That was last week. If we are lucky, we might be able to move in, in two weeks.

But there is another problem. I currently don’t have Internet access. Over here in Ireland, broadband is dead cheap. For a wireless, (so you don’t need a phone line, which most likely would be another problem – in terms of time) flat rate, access you pay around 25,- Euro a month. (That is flat rate!) I will most likely go to Irish Breadband. Great, but I don’t live in the new flat now, I currently stay in this little room in Bishopstown. Ripwave doesn’t work here, neither does the offer from Nova Networks. Breeze would work, but that includes the installation of an antenna and a 12 month contract (bounded to the location). By the way, from ordering to installation usually takes 10 to 15 days. Bugger.

Not having Internet access makes things particularly difficult right now. I have to check my e-mails for news from the recruitment agencies and browse the web for opportunities. The way to the Internet café became quite a routine lately. Beside that, I think I’ve become addicted to the Internet over the last years, I was virtually always online. At work, at home and tainks to my Motorla A925 3G smart phone, every between as well.

- Till I get some decent access again, will I feed this blog with content I wrote offline.

Some friends back home asked me to keep them up to date with recent events over here. I first thought about spamming them with mass e-mails, till it stroke me – hold on a minute, isn’t that exactly what web-logs have been invented for in the first place?

This is what I leave behind,

i had a nice home, great job, lovely little sports car and I gave it all up to move with my significant other over to Cork, Ireland. Restart, back to square one.

Coming up, is what is going to happen.