and onto dublin

Ah the joys of early mornings. After many days of late nights and sleeping in, rising before 6am was a shock to the system. I caught a taxi to the airport and made my flight with plenty of time to spare. I must have left something in Cork because my bag now weighed less, even though I’d put more in it. I also didn’t get asked my test my carry on bag, which was disappointing because I’d put a lot more effort into packing it better this time just in case. Typical.

I’m being hosted by a couple while I’m in Dublin, but I wasn’t meeting them until after lunch so I killed a couple of hours walking around the city. I met Mel and Bryan at 1pm. Mel’s from Vancouver and Bryan is from London. They met over the Internet about 5 years ago and chose Ireland because it was easy for Mel to get a visa. They are currently going through the process of applying for another visa and have to prove they are a couple. It’s been a lot of work for them. Their application includes phone records from years ago to prove they knew each other, stacks and stacks of photos and a LOT of paper work. One more reason for me not to fall in love with someone from another country. Mel and Bryan had a couple of things to do so I tagged along. They also gave me a bit of a tour of the city, which was great because I didn’t know a thing about the city at all. I’d assumed the bit I’d been walking around all morning was the main street, but no. That was over the bridge.

They live a quick bus ride away in a house that has 10 bedrooms. It’s about four storeys, but Mel and Bryan have scored two rooms on the ground floor, one which Bryan uses an office. He runs his own business fixing playstations and game consoles. Mel works at a café called The Cheese Pantry.  It was reviewed in a paper recently and it sounded great so I was all in favour of heading there for dinner.  When I went hunting for lunch earlier, I really struggled to find anywhere I wanted to eat. Apparently Dublin is not known for its food at all, so I’m really glad Mel and Bryan knew somewhere good. A friend of theirs, Mel’s first couchsurfer, Kirby, joined us for dinner. Kirby’s Australian but is determined not to go home. She’s on a working visa but can only work for the one company for six months at a time. She’s about the come to the end of her six months at a job she really enjoys. It’s a bit of a hard time for her because she doesn’t know where she’ll be in a few months time. I can’t help but wonder if that will be in sometime soon. Stressing about visas and trying to work out where to go and what to do.