Reeling in the Year - Autumn/Winter

September

In September I moved into my new student abode in Inchicore, where Fitzy, Sam, Sean and I continue to live in domestic bliss. I was tickled pink by the old fashioned fireplace in my bedroom. After a year in grey, impersonal student halls, this was a serious improvement. Prior to this, Shannon, Sorcha and I made the trip down to Wexford to stay at Shannon’s family holiday home on the beach. We even went for a swim and nearly got hypothermia and died. I also had to learn to cope with two 9am land law lectures, and knuckle down (or at least appear to be knuckling down) in order to give my request to be sent to Berlin on Erasmus more weight.

Freshers' week

On the beach in Wexford

Party over here

October

I turned twenty, threw my first house party with my new housemates, and found out that I would in fact be going to Berlin on Erasmus in September 2014! James Vincent McMorrow played a gig in the chapel in Trinity in aid of mental health week, a gig which Ruairí and I were lucky enough to attend. Words always fail me when attempting to describe it; it was really something special. Charles, our French friend from Berlin paid Dublin a visit and stayed Chez Moi. On Halloween, I dressed up as an asparagus by painting myself green and wearing green clothing, and saw a rat in my local Tesco in Inchicore.

Gorilla, Asparagus and Someone Famous

November

Absolutely nothing comes to mind when I think of November, which is worrying as it was just last month. I mostly remember feeling frazzled, exhausted, and emotionally drained, but a German class trip to Belfast offered a brief reprieve from all that. Belfast is a fun city.

Law n German on tour

Belfast City Hall and me

December

Christmas jumpers and an endless stream of “Twelve Pubs of Christmas” pub crawl invitations on Facebook. Nuff said. London Grammar with Kieran and Thomas in the Academy, Law and German’s Christmas dinner spearheaded by the wonderful Annie for which I made pavlova, a lovely quiet Christmas with family, and a visit from Sorcha and Shannon whom I eagerly await as I type this. 

Melon starter

Reeling in the Year - Summer

May

Exams began, and they weren’t nearly as impossible to get through as I had thought. The work was back-breaking and because my four law exams (constitutional, Irish legal systems, criminal and contract) were scheduled the same week I was left exhausted, emotionally unstable, and with a chronic hand cramp. But they were over soon enough, along with my three German exams, and I was free to look forward to the summer ahead of me. I started moving my things out of my room in Halls and bid Dublin farewell, because I was off to Wiesbaden for the next three months!

Law and German finished exams at last

The warehouse party that never was

Last day in Dublin

 June

In June, I started my job in the supply chain department of a large company based in Wiesbaden, Germany, having spent the last week of May getting used to my new surroundings. This was also the month I got locked into my new apartment, freed by the fire brigade, and evicted the next day. I also received my exam results after a nervous wait and to my utter relief I passed first year with a nifty two-two. Not bad for someone who slept through a lot of lectures, partied hard, and procrastinated.

In Wiesbaden

 July

The beginning of July was tough. I had been in Germany for just over a month, and the novelty was starting to wear off. Worryingly, Nana had taken ill back in Ireland and although Dad did his best to keep me up to date over the phone and via email it just wasn’t the same. I was tired, lonely, and missing home and friends. Fortunately, I finally had the opportunity to visit Sorcha, Shannon and Ruairí in Berlin, enduring a fifteen hour round bus trip to do so. I met Sorcha and Shannon’s thirty-five year old roommate, skinny dipped, stayed up all night swapping stories, ate döner and had an altogether pleasant forty-eight hours in the Hauptstadt. The following weekend, my chum Maria visited me in Wiesbaden. Selfies, twapes, Malibu rum, crepes, ice cream and sightseeing were the order of the day, and I was very sad to see her leave.

Reunited with Shannon

Apres midnight swim

Crepes at the La La Land Cafe, Wiesbaden

Maria's visit. My decision to wear shorts in public was a big one.

Frankfurt am Main

Apple ice cream

August

August was great! Nana started to show signs of recovery, I had built up a great rapport with everyone at work and I was really enjoying my job even though the 6am starts were crippling. I finished work on the 15^th of August and my colleagues presented me with a card and gift and showered me with praise and applause. There was a lot of awkward hugging (I am the least tactile person in the world and Germans love hugging and cheek-kissing) and promises to keep in touch. I lapped up the attention. After saying my last goodbyes to Wiesbaden, I headed to the airport on the 19^th to fly to Berlin. The ten days ahead of me looked rosy and I felt content. I spent two days with Sorcha and Shannon in their apartment in Spandau before they had the argument to end all arguments with their flatmate (and landlord) and were consequently thrown out. We arrived to meet Kieran, who was joining us for a week, at the airport with all our worldly possessions in tow and ended up checking into a hostel called Generator together where we dormed with Charles, Seb, Max, and Comme – four French guys from Lyon who became our best friends for the week. The next day, Nick showed up in Berlin to surprise us all having booked a flight over from Washington DC via Dublin on a whim. Katerholzig, hangovers, rooftop techno clubs, breakfast buffets, cocktails, getting to know the world’s most quirky city even better, a visit from Jade and Ollie, heart-to-hearts, hugs and constant side-splitting laughter made that week in Berlin undoubtedly one of the best of my life. On the 29^th of August Shannon and I flew back to Dublin, and back to reality.

The Irish, the French and the American at cocktails

"The Jade"

Ooh er

The dorm

Burning the candle at both ends got to us eventually

Heading home after almost four long months away

Reeling in the Year - Spring

January

The first month of the new year is hazy in memory. I do know that it involved several parties in Shannon’s granny’s old house, threatening letters from the law school, our first Law Ball, new clothes, mock trials, trips to Workman’s, missed German drama rehearsals, a Luas fine, and (half-baked) new year's resolutions.

Wir lollen

 

Law Ball

February

February saw me desperately trying to learn my lines for the fast-approaching German drama, The Night We All Got Horribly Drunk Hence Nobody Can Remember What Happened, oversleeping the morning on which the tickets for Trinity Ball went on sale and very nearly not getting one,  the German theatre group’s performance of “Pension Schöller” in St.Killian’s Deutsche Schule, my first trip to C.U.N.T., the theatre group’s trip to Tübingen (which is one big hilarious blur of exhaustion, forgotten lines, and collapsing sets) and travelling onto Berlin from there to meet the rest of JF law and German for reading week. “Dreeeeeeeeeenk some!”

Bundestag, Berlin - JF Law and German 2013

CU Next Tuesday

"Pension Schöller"

Sorcha and I thought that this was hilarious at the time

March

I attended Bombay Bicycle Club’s St Patrick’s Day gig in the Academy, fulfilling a long-held dream. I had desperately wanted to go to their last Dublin gig but unfortunately it was on the same week of the Leaving Cert Irish orals so everyone was too exhausted to go. This gig more than made up for that bit of disappointment, as Bombay played a stellar set and we were up the very front for the whole thing. March was also the month I got elected to the DU Germanic Society’s committee after showing up to the AGM on a whim, and I attempted to have my tea-damaged laptop keyboard fixed without success.

April

The first half of April revolved around Trinity Ball: getting excited for it, actually going to it, and then living in a post-Ball bubble of euphoria for days after it. It truly was a fantastic night; we spent the afternoon in the sunshine all kitted out in our finery in Shannon’s back garden, before hitching a free ride to Trinity in a stretch hummer at about 11pm. Bastille, Ellie Goulding, Imagine Dragons, the Vaccines were the main headline acts and they plus several others kept us entertained all over campus until 5am. Jolly good fun. The rest of April involved a lot of cramming for nasty first year exams which (for me) were to begin at the beginning of May. I was swallowed up by a vortex of stress, fast food, and crankiness where I remained for the remainder of the month and well into the next.

We scrubbed up well

"Page of Friends"

Vogue