Dublin

Dublin

When our semester in France started, I was surprised that we had already first holidays in February. At first, we had an introduction week in January, then three weeks of studying and then, we had a whole week off. My friends from the Czech Republic therefore thought that I did not study at all because I was already travelling in February.

Even though it is easy to travel from Lille, I did not expect me travelling so much. During my holidays, I already agreed on going to Amsterdam for a whole week to visit David. Although when I heard that many people in Lille planned trips together I wanted to go with them too. So I made a compromise. I went to Amsterdam for four days when the girls went to London and then we all met in Dublin. Last day we were supposed to visit Brussels.

Why Dublin?

I never thought about going to Dublin. I did not know much about this city and I did not even remember if some of my friends had gone there or not. When we were choosing our goal destination for this winter holiday week we searched at Ryanair website. It is such a great low cost company for taking a plane. They offer different cheap plane tickets every month and there is a special option that you can set the city you want to fly from and then set your budget and you will see whole offer of tickets. It was convenient for us. In February, they were selling affordably priced tickets to Dublin. In the beginning I did not know if I wanted to join the girls in London or in Dublin. Later, I agreed on visiting London with my friend Lucy from the Czech Republic in March and since I had never been to Dublin, I decided to travel there with girls from Lille – Katarina and Lucia. I bought the ticket from Amsterdam to Dublin for less than 30 € and we all had a ticket back for 20 € from Dublin to Brussels. Afterwards, I found out that the city looked really nice on the picture. It was a coincidence that my Czech friends went there one week before us.

Couchsurfing

Couchsurfing is the important part of this trip. This semester I started to like it even more. For those who don’t know this website – Couchsurfing is a server mainly for meeting new people. There are many options you can use. Hosting people belongs to the main ones. When I heard about this for the first time I could not believe that the system could really work. It works like this: if people are interested in meeting new people from different country, they can offer their house/apartment to host them. The thing is that the accommodation is for free. When people create their profile, they immediately write information about their flats on their profile. They say if they live in the city centre, how many people they are able to host and their passions, hobbies, languages and interests.

At the earliest, I did not believe it. I heard about Couchsurfing for the first time in England when I wanted to meet new people. For each city in the world, you can find events, meetings, people who host and many other activities.

Therefore, when I was an Au Pair in England I set there Norwich and then I found a lot of people who wanted to hang out or I could just write a message “on the wall” for people from that city. It worked well and thanks to it I got to know many people - from Greece, England, Switzerland and many other countries. It helped me a lot because I did not go to school there and it was kind of difficult to get to know new people. On Couchsurfing I found my friend Kostas from Greece and later we did a lot of trips together!

When I found out that the website is awesome I wanted to explore all possibilities. I also attended many Couchsurfing meeting that were organised in Norwich. I think that there are many of them in every bigger city. During my last week in England I went to London. I was super excited about the city but when I saw the prices of accommodation in London I could not imagine being there more than three days. At that time I did not have much money. Therefore, I decided to check Couchsurfing. I sent many requests for hosting me. I came up with a whole message about the fact that I was looking for a host for three nights and I was also interested in hanging out together.

I received many positive answers! I was amazed. I decided to ignore the ones from people who did not have any references (to avoid bad people). That´s a good thing that you can see references of another people and when someone has more than 10 references, he or she is probably more reliable than someone who does not have any. Since I had many answers, I could even choose according to my criteria – location, pictures, hobbies and so on. I think that if you travel alone and in addition you are a girl, it is way easier to find a host there.

Before coming to London I received many messages and I was indecisive where to stay. That´s why I decided to stay with one guy one night and the other nights I stayed somewhere else. I was surprised that everything went well. It was fun to be with someone who was born in London. I don’t remember the name of the guy now but we went to the centre and he showed me a lot of non-tourist places. Few months after we even met in Prague!

Then I “moved” to the second place in London. I decided to go there because the guy – Sean - he hosted another girl the same age at the same time. It was so cool! We were exploring London together and one evening we went out together with Sean. The name of the girl was Alexandra. She was from Germany and I was impressed by her story. She told me she decided to travel for three weeks in Europe and she was staying only at someone´s accommodation through Couchsurfing! I also met her few months later in Prague! Sean was especially kind. At his apartment, we had a nice room with Alexandra and Sean took us to the pubs to taste the best beers in London and he even prepared a chocolate as welcoming gift for us! I was so happy to have spent lovely days in London with these people. It was a pleasure to meet them.

Couchsurfing in Dublin

The best Couchsurfing experience came this semester – Dublin and Barcelona. When we already bought the tickets to Dublin, it was time to find accommodation for us. We decided to try Couchsurfing even though we were three girls. In the beginning, I thought it would be impossible to find something for all of us. I was mistaken! I sent few requests and I received positive answers! One guy - Mislav from Croatia accepted us! We were so happy and excited to try Couchsurfing together. Later, we found out that we were not the only ones travelling to Dublin from Lille at that date. Other people (mainly Mexicans) went there so we could do something together.

It did not last long until the holidays were here. When I was chilling in Amsterdam I was not so excited about Dublin because I didn't know anything about the city and I did not know people who travelled there either. But everything changed rapidly. We successfully met at the airport in Dublin with the girls. It was quite late – 10 p. m. and we had to find our hosts. When we were walking there I was not sure if it was a good idea. Mislav was not even at home. He was working that evening but he told me that another friend of him - Yansley would open the door for us. It took us some time to find the right place where they lived and the streets there looked creepy at night.

Yansley opened the door and he invited us inside. When we entered the flat we were amazed. It looked amazingly nice! In the living room there was a big window with nice view. I could imagine living there and drinking coffee at the window every day! After few minutes there we knew that we made a good choice! It was a shared apartment of young people from different countries. People were from France, Croatia, Brazil, etc... Everybody was really friendly. We immediately felt as being at home! We were living in the living room – one of us was sleeping on the sofa and the other two of us were sleeping on mattress. We already had a lot of information what to do and see in Dublin and we spent there three nights.

As it normally goes, I was ill for this trip. I don’t know how it was possible but I was at least four times ill in Lille. I guess that it was caused because of the rainy unstable weather but sometimes it was crazy because every time that someone asked me how I was, I said: “I feel ill. I have to take a rest. ” I bought many pills and I even wanted to try some Mexican antibiotics because I was desperate. Fortunately, illness did not discourage me and I went to Dublin. I remember I was wearing a big scarf the whole time and for a walking tour I took thermos flak with tea. Despite all of this I enjoyed it anyway.

Program

I don’t remember exactly what we were doing whole days. On our way from the airport I received a message from Lilian saying: “I need to talk to you. It is an emergency. ” She even posted this message in our group. Therefore I thought that something terrible happened. Later she said that they bought more tickets than they needed for a whole day trip to the Cliffs of Moher and they wanted to ask us if we wanted to join them. I wanted to go so bad but since we were supposed to spend only three days in Dublin, we did not want to travel through whole Ireland and we skipped this trip.

That day we went to the lighthouse instead because Yansley recommended us to go there. It was a crazy trip. We had all instructions but we got easily confused and lost. We decided to walk the whole time and we almost gave up when we were caught in the middle of a rural area in Dublin. The journey was endless. We were walking two hours! Nevertheless, we continued and we found the lighthouse. I can't say if it was worth it or not but it was a nice place and we enjoyed great walking.

We wanted to meet another friends from Lille the second evening and we decided to come to their hostel. The problem was that everybody was exhausted. Since we had to walk 30 minutes to their accommodation, they showed mercy on us and we went for a beer. I did not even had a beer because I felt sick. People said that the cliffs were amazingly beautiful but they were freezing a lot and they all got sick as well.

The other day we all went together for a free walking city tour. It was my first time I tried it. Before this trip, my housemate told me about free walking tours but I had not tried it. It is such a good idea. You go there and if you like it you can leave the tip for it. Our guide was the best! He was originally born in Dublin. Therefore he was talking about many interesting things. In addition, I liked his accent.

Dublin is not such a big city. In the city centre, you can walk almost everywhere. During whole time, we did not even used metro. Prices were not higher than in France. I think that only alcohol was more expensive. I loved the streets in the city centre. They were narrow and small. The atmosphere during the night was awesome! The streets were alive and everybody looked happy. I could easily imagine living or studying there! For a little while, I considered the possibility of studying there but later I found out that scholarships are expensive there.

As always, the time went so fast and we had last evening ahead. We decided to cook for everybody in the flat because they were so nice to us all the time. We cooked baked potatoes with cream, onions, bacon and vegetable.

It was delicious (at least everybody looked happy). We did not plan it but we also bought the beers and we had a party! We wanted to be together with the people living in the flat to enjoy their company. We started to play some drinking game. After few beers Katarina found the guitar and she started to play!

We could not help with Lucia and we were laughing and enjoying ourselves whole time. Katarina was amazing! She was playing really loudly. She was playing a lot of famous songs and we were all singing! It was such a great night. Unfortunately, nobody wanted to go to the city centre with us but we wanted to explore the city during the night. Therefore, we went alone and we met our friends from Lille. We headed to the same bar as the day before.

For me, it was totally different than normal pubs. Everything looked smaller and more alive.

The most important thing was that they were playing live music. We had some beers and I was delighted. They were playing live famous songs and everybody (really everybody) in the pub was singing. I did not feel ill anymore! We should have stayed there whole night. It was awesome. Unfortunately, a lot of people were tired and guys, who would probably stay there, had to leave because of the flight. They booked the plane ticket for 4 a. m. or something and they did not buy the accommodation for that night. It was not problem to stay awake until 4 a. m. but the problem was that they had to go. Therefore we stayed only with Katarina and Lucia.

The last part of our trip was supposed to be one day in Brussels. Unfortunately, I had to cancel it because I felt seriously bad after being in such cold weather and drinking every night. The girls decided to skip Brussels too because we had not bought the tickets. When we came to Lille we were all happy about our trip. On one side, the city was stunning and we saw many interesting things. On the other side, the most valuable experience was meeting all the people and spending time with them. During this trip I understood the principle of Couchsurfing. It does not matter if the accommodation is for free or not. It is all related to people who you meet. If you can not travel at the moment – at least you can host people from all over the word. After this I was thinking of hosting people in Prague. Our hosts were awesome and we had a lot of fun together! They even had a special table for leaving the messages from people who stayed there! We left them one too.