My temporary apartment is on the east side of Dublin, just across a canal from the greyhound race tracks. Dell is letting me stay there for a month while my rental in Dun Laoghaire is finalized. (By the way, if you want to know how tight the real estate market is in Ireland, check out www.daft.ie. A majority of the other users of the Internet cafe I frequent are playing tag team on the phone and using daft.ie to locate a place to live before it gets rented out from underneath them. Unfurnished places are a lot harder to find than furnished). I took the bus into the city today. As I was coming in, it struck me how international this place is. There are always lots of people walking on the sidewalks, but today a couple of groups caught my eye. Heading one direction was a group of pre-adolescents from South America, all wearing matching yellow backpacks. In the other direction was a group of mixed age women wearing matching black t-shirts personalized for each of them. The two groups didn't pass each other so much as blended together for a moment before emerging from the other side.
The internet cafe I like to go to is run by a group of Africans. I often hear French and Italian there, some Russian, but mostly Slavic languages I can't understand. Some of the stations have video cameras, and some people teleconference there.
On the streets, you hear all sorts of languages. Because of the proximity to water, there are a lot of Philipinos here - merchant marines and their families. It's summertime, so a lot of the people I'm seeing are on vacation - especially the French.
Dublin is home to Trinity College but is too big to be influenced by the students into becoming a college town. Still, when school is in, I'm sure there are a lot of foreign students there, too.
The weather today is nice. I might try to get a sandwich and hang out at St. Stephen's Green. I still haven't found a really good coffee shop here, yet.
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