All Good Things Must Come to an End

[Forewarning, I’ll try my best but parts of this are going to be cheesy]

Four months and four days later, the time has come.  I’ve been dreading it since the day after I arrived in Dublin and started the beginning of the best four months of my life.   The room I’ve used as home base for my travels is nearly empty.  My two suitcases and backpack are stuffed to the brim.  My passport is in hand.  With a heavy heart, it’s time to go back to Oregon.

Finals came to a wrap on Thursday.  Services Marketing was first up early Tuesday morning and I think it went quite well.  At night on the same day was my Irish History exam which I didn’t put much effort into because I had a high enough grade coming into it.  This was one of the only classes which had a fair amount of continuous assessment so 50% of my grade was already calculated.  Thursday was Business Information Systems which I also believe went well enough.  I don’t think I’ll ever complain about final exams in the US again after going through Irish exams and I couldn’t be happier that they’re finished.

Walking back to campus after my Thursday exam was when it really started to sink in that I would be leaving Ireland very soon.  It was also another one of those moments where it hit me how lucky I was to have been able to go abroad.  Not many people get to do this and I couldn't be more thankful that I had the opportunity!

On Friday, I headed into the city to do some last minute souvenir shopping and then walked around Dublin for one of the last times.  I also went to the archaeology division of the National Museum of Ireland which had some pretty neat/old artifacts and made my way over to the outside of the former recording studio U2 used for their first three albums.  Similar to the John Lennon wall in Prague, the outside of the old studio was heavily graffitied by fans.

National Museum of Ireland

U2's old recording studio

When I got back to my place, I started to pack which is always just an all around terrible experience.

After cleaning on Saturday, I met up with some friends in town to go out to eat and hit up a few pubs for those final Irish pints.  It was a great night but so bittersweet!  I'm going to miss my Dublin friends so much and can't wait to see them again!  It was incredibly sad on the bus back to UCD knowing it was my last time in town for a long time.

The last pint of Guinness

Laura and I

Going to miss them all so much!

I know the question I’m going to get asked the most when I get back to the states is “how was Ireland/Europe?”  I don’t think there will ever be an answer that will do this experience justice.  To try and sum up the last four months in a few words is impossible.  Amazing?  Unforgettable?  Exhausting? Educational?  Fun?  Surreal?  All are beyond true but to shamelessly quote my own blog title, “there are no words” (which, by the way, was an obscure Friends reference).

I think the chosen title for this last blog entry done in Europe sums up the biggest thing I’ve come to realize on this trip: All good things must come to an end.  Time is limited and no matter how much you enjoy something/someone, eventually that experience will cease.  It’s happened with the people I’ve met and the places I’ve been to not just here in Europe but also back in the states.  While kind of a depressing thought, it compels me to make the most out of every situation.  I think I did a pretty good job of keeping a positive attitude and enjoying every single experience even when things did not go as planned.  Sometimes the best stories are made when things go wrong, even if it may suck at the current moment.

I met my three most important goals: I wasn’t deported, I didn’t get arrested, and I didn’t die.  Success!  I didn’t make as many Irish connections as I would have liked but I met so many other people that live around the world through my travels, which is a good substitute.  I was fortunate enough to be able to go to multiple cities in Ireland, Scotland, England, France, Italy, Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland, Spain, Austria, the Netherlands, and briefly Switzerland.  The only other main places I wanted to try and get to were Sweden and Ibiza, Spain.  Guess I’ll have to come back…

I want to give a few quick shout outs to some people who made this whole study abroad experience possible.  Firstly, to one of my best friends and roommate Heather, who pushed me to go abroad last year when I was struggling with some life decisions.  Second, to my wonderful parents who helped me financially to get over to Europe and pay for the school part of my trip.  Third, the best former boss/current friend anyone could ask for, Laura, who employed me for 5 years which allowed me to afford to travel to so many places and experience so many new things.  Fourth, my resident director Eimear who made this whole experience the best it could have been.  I couldn’t have asked for a better resident director!  And finally, all of the awesome people I met both here in Ireland and while traveling.  I’m going to miss my new friends so much and can’t wait to hopefully visit people around the U.S. when my bank account isn’t so upset with me.  Any of them have a place to stay if they’re ever in Oregon or Colorado!

My flight to Chicago leaves in the morning and then after a few hours of layover, I fly back to Portland.  I’m thinking I’ll do one more blog entry in a couple of days after getting home so if you’ve made it this far in the blog (props to you!), there will be one more.

Goodbye Dublin!

Goodbye Ireland!

Goodbye Europe!

Slán!  

Until next time...

It's the Fi-nal[s] Countdown

It's amazing how well the title fits for this posting as well as allowing me to make an Arrested Development reference.

The single digits are upon me.  I don't know how it's possible but in exactly one week, I go back to the states.

I've had two exams so far and have three to go.  On Thursday was management accounting which, as I was expecting, did not go so well.  Accounting is not my thing and the way classes work here did not help me learn the subject.  When I took another level of accounting at CSU, I had class multiple times a week and lots of online practice problems which helped me successfully get through the class.  Going from that to one class a week with no other material made this course incredibly difficult.  Oh well.  At least that's out of the way.

The exam set up didn't add to my success either.  The testing centre is off campus.  The school provides a free shuttle bus but it only holds about 40 people for a school of +20,000 and everyone else has to to pay for the city bus or take a 45 minute walk.  The actual building the exams are held in, I'm pretty sure, is a place where they do horse showings.  It's essentially a giant warehouse/barn.  There are well over 1000 students taking exams of varying subjects at the same time in this massive room which gets quite distracting.  Some exams end sooner than others as well so half way through there is a shuffling of 100s of students whose exam time has expired.  I already get a little test anxiety and all of the above just heightens it.  That and knowing these exams are worth, on average, 80% of your total grade is nowhere near ideal.  The way exams are run here is the only thing since being in Europe where I just do not understand why something is done the way it is.  Everything else I've been able to see it from a different perspective, but this just does not make any sense to me.

Not a good representation at all but this is the
warehouse where we take the exams

Saturday was better.  It was my Marketing Communications in the Digital Age exam which was all essay format questions, something I'd say I'm really good at even if I don't entirely know the answer.  There was some sort of science test going on at the same time and an announcer would come on and talk about the multiple choice section of the science test so that the whole room could hear.  It was very distracting!

I've got two exams on Tuesday and then my last one on Thursday.  A lot of people I know only had two or three exams so I'm not really sure how I got stuck with five.  I have one last outing planned at the end of the week with some people as a final goodbye.

I should probably start thinking about packing at some point which might be my least favorite thing in the world.

Climb Every Mountain and Feel the Burn

Oh boy where to start...

I got back from my week long trip with Megan last night and for the amount of traveling we did, I'm surprisingly not as tired as I thought.  I still am not 100% sure I know where we were some of the time but I'll try and piece it all together.  I've split the trip into two parts, Italy and Austria (with a few other places thrown in here and there).

Italy:

My journey started last Monday when I took a flight to Nice in France to meet up with Megan who had gotten there a few days earlier to see a friend from school.  Waiting for the bus at the airport to get into town, all I could think about was how much the place reminded me of Hawaii.  There were palm trees everywhere, tourists in khaki shorts, and it was hot and humid.  I met up with Megan at the train station.  We had about an hour and half to kill so we walked around the town a little and then caught the first of what was to be many trains.  After a brief connection in Ventimiglia in Italy, we made our way to Genoa.  We got there around 8 PM and the streets were deserted.  After checking into our hostel, which had a surprising amount of people there for it being a Monday in Genoa, we tried to find a store but everything in the city with the exception of two restaurants was closed.  Genoa is an odd place.  In the morning after not knowing where our train station was and sprinting to the train, we got on with about two minutes to spare and headed to Cinque Terre.

Genoa

Cinque Terre, or the five lands, is a stretch along the coast of the Italian Riviera.  The little towns are close together and can either be traveled between by hiking or train.  The towns of Cinque Terre are Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza, and Monterosso.  Once we settled into out hostel in Manarola, we got a quick breakfast (drank the best orange juice I've ever had...freshly squeezed) and walked around the town.  Walk really is not the right word to use here.  Almost everywhere people "walk" usually consists of hiking up very steep hills.  The scenery was stunning!  Whether you looked at the buildings that made up the town, the water, the huge green hills, or the vineyards, everything was spectacular!

Cinque Terre

If I remember correctly, we took a train to Monterosso and after exploring a bit, hiked from there to Vernazza.  The hike was pretty intense!  It was a lot of very steep uphill but the views made it all worthwhile.  We were able to soak our feet in the ocean once we got to Vernazza and the water was perfect!  We hung around the town for the night and watched the lights come on from a viewpoint on one of the hills.

Cinque Terre

The next morning we took a train to Riomaggiore and looked around followed by taking another train to Corniglia.  We hiked from there to Vernazza.  This hike was not nearly as tough going in our direction and also offered amazing views.  After heading to the beach again, we got a train to Monterosso and hopped on a ferry that took us along the coastline to Riomaggiore where we got on another train back to Manaraola.  The view of Cinque Terre from the water was, once again, absolutely amazing!  That night we got some fresh seafood pasta (I had octopus for the first time and had no idea how to eat it) and watched the sun go down on "our" town.

In the morning we headed back to Monterosso and walked around a little before saying goodbye to Cinque Terre.  

Cinque Terre

Our train took us to Milan but was late and the train we were supposed to connect with was leaving about ten minutes after we arrived.  This was one of the only portions of our journey we didn't already have tickets for so we missed the train.  This posed a problem because the place we were staying for the night in Verona had a strict cutoff for checking in and we were worried we wouldn't make it.  After waiting a ridiculously long amount of time in the ticket line and witnessing what appeared to be a group of pickpockets scouting out potential victims, we booked a train to Verona.

The Arena

We ended up making it to our bed and breakfast in time and were able to relax a little after a stressful past few hours.  Megan and me headed into town and saw some of the sites such as the Verona Arena and Juliet's Balcony from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.  Seeing as the story is fictional, we were slightly confused as to how the balcony we looked at was the balcony.  Verona was a neat city and I would like to spend some more time there.

Juliet's Balcony

Austria:

This brings us up to Friday.  Megan and I went from Verona to Innsbruck in Austria, which was a beautiful train ride!  When we arrived, we met up with Megan's college friend Gwynne who lives and "works" in Bludenz, Austria and her friend Katy.  We walked around the town a little and soaked in the amazing views of the Alps.  The four of us hiked up a steep hill and got to the ski jump used in the 1964 Olympics.  That jump was steep!  The pictures don't do it any justice.  After taking a tram to the top, we got a gorgeous view of Innsbruck.

Innsbruck

Ski Jump

The next day Megan and I got on yet another train and moved on over to Salzburg with every intention to recreate The Sound of Music.

We decided to go on a tour which was way overpriced but definitely convenient.  The tour took us along with a large group of other Sound of Music nerds to the lake where Maria and the kids fall out of the boat and we could also see the backyard of the Von Trapp house as portrayed in the movie.  Our next stop was the famous gazebo in "16 Going on 17" which had been moved after filming to a park.  With the soundtrack playing, we then headed up to the lake district where all of the shots at the beginning of the movie were filmed.  It was stunning!  Next was the church where Maria and the Captain got married.  After driving on an autobahn, we got back to Salzburg.  Megan and I then continued our own tour in town, going to the Mirabell Gardens where a lot of Do-Re-Mi was shot and many other various locations around the city.  It started to rain pretty hard but we trudged through and ended the day with watching the movie (the hostel we were staying at showed it every night).

Lake and Backyard

The Gazebo

The tour bus

The day is now Sunday and we took a train to Bludenz to meet back up with Gwynne.  We ended up going to the Fohrenburg beer festival where we met up, once again, with Katy and two others.  For dinner, we rode the rail to Feldkirch and got giant schnitzel in the courtyard of a castle.

Beer fest

In the morning, I got up and said goodbye to Megan and Gwynne and then headed, via train, to Zurich, Switzerland where my flight back to Dublin was departing from.  I was able to spend the whole day in Zurich which was fun!  I had heard how expensive Switzerland was and the rumors were true!  There was a food stand selling normal hot dogs for the equivalence of about 7 euro!  I got kind of sad in Zurich because it was going to be my last place in mainland Europe.  I had to stop for a second when I exited one of the churches because it was probably the last church I would go into in Europe for a while.

Zurich

It was also a depressing thought when I got to the Dublin airport that the next time I would be there will be to go back to the US.  Even on the shuttle bus I was thinking that the next time I buy a ticket, it will only be for one way.

Although it was a lot of traveling, it was a great week and I got to see a lot of really amazing things!

-----

I think I missed describing one train connection but other than that I believe I covered everything.  As you can tell, it was a lot of trains and a lot of walking/hiking!  My legs were a little mad at me a few times throughout the week.  I now need to get the motivation to study for exams.  My first, and probably the hardest, is accounting on Thursday.  Then I have a few days until my next test on Saturday.

Wish me luck.