17 September 2008: Dublin, Ireland

I woke up to get my stuff from the hostel and left without saying a word to the dudes, who I guess were still awake from the night before. I met Sam at 8:30 and, as I was leaving the UK that afternoon and coins wouldn't do me any good once I left, realized that I had over £5 that I needed to spend. What a feeling. So I spent the first part of the morning drinking tea at Starbucks and the second half of the morning feasting on fish and chips for the first time of the trip. Finally.

I wanted to get back to Dublin sooner rather than later so I could try to get some work at the hostel, and so I had to book it to the bus station because the next bus wasn't for an hour. But I still had £1.15 left and, like I said, there was no sense letting it go to waste. So I ran all over the few blocks on all four sides of the station until I found a store and got a little roll of bread and a can of Coke. And I was clean out of pounds. Waste not want not.

The ride was 2.5 hours and uneventful, and when I got to Browns hostel in Dublin Carl, the dude from the desk the other day, told me that there were only three beds left for that night and so he didn't have any work for me. I told him I only needed one night and would take anything, and he said "Maybe a couch" and let me store my stuff for the day. I took the storage room key, said "thanks, Carl," and when I came back up again said "thanks, Carl" one more time. He just said "cheers, buddy."

And that was when I knew I had him.

I knew his name, and had said it twice, and he didn't know mine. There was no way this dude was going to make me sleep somewhere else. There was no way he was even going to make me sleep on the couch. I had him.

So I went away for a bit and when I came back I asked Carl if he had thought of any work for me to do. He said "No, but here, you can take a bed instead of the couch." I'm good.

That's it. That was really the whole day. I had already walked around Dublin countless times and there wasn't really much else for me to do. Other than walk around more. But nothing really interesting happened during the day.

I also hung out for quite some time in the hostel, but the thing is that spending one night in a hostel is weak as hell. It's not enough time to get into the scene, and the way hostels work if you're in the scene you don't really talk to people out of it. You just stick to the people who have been together for a few days.

So after a while I went upstairs and met a bunch of Spanish kids. They were alright, despite the fact that they didn't understand that five Spanish people talking quickly at the same time is going to be impossible to understand for an American who hasn't studied Spanish since high school. They started playing "ya nunca e," which is the Spanish version of Never Have I Ever. In some weird sort of way, I almost knew it was going to come to this.

I hung out with them for a while but all the talking in Spanish started to get to me really bad. I was exhausted and hadn't planned on doing anything that night, and was already in my pajamas, so I went back down to the people I had been hanging out with originally.

That situation really hadn't changed at all since I left, and there was still not really any point in being there. One of the Spanish girls, who had been clearly into me, came down and said they were going to Temple Bar and I should go to. I said I didn't want to walk as far as Temple Bar and wasn't going to change out of my pajamas, but she said I should go out with her anyway.

I didn't really care at this point, since I was tired as hell but one more night of not sleeping wasn't exactly going to kill me, but as I was heading out this dude presented me with a bowl of pasta and said he couldn't eat it all. Like hell I was going to pass that up.

So I sat down and had some pasta, while the Spanish girl looked bored and annoyed as hell because her friends had already left. I didn't really give a damn. After I had eaten, though, she still wanted to go out, and we left.

The Spanish girl kept asking me what I wanted to do, but I was absolutely and completely impartial as long as it wasn't going all the way to Temple Bar. She kept suggesting we go back to the hostel, which didn't surprise me at all, and I said I really didn't give a damn.

Then she kissed me and led me down an alley. Then I went home and finally went to bed.

Welcome to the hostel.