4 September 2008: Dublin, Ireland

After leaving the hostel, I got to the Victoria Station at 12:45.

The thing about London is that, for a city as huge as it is, it shuts down pretty early. What I mean is that at 9:30 it feels as if it's much later. This isn't because of jet lag, since at 9:30 it should have felt like it was in the middle of the afternoon, but for some reason everyone goes inside when the evening comes around.

My bus to Luton airport wasn't until 2:30, but I wasn't exactly thrilled with the prospects of waiting nearly two hours, so when the 1:30 bus rolled up I hopped on and got to the airport just over an hour later.

When we got there I was pretty famished, but all I had left was a £10 note. I didn't want to break it because you I wouldn't have been able to exchange the coins I got as change, since I found English stores rarely gave back £5 notes.

But then it occured to me that with the exchange rate as bad as it is, I wouldn't get back nearly enough to make it worth while. So I then decided to buy five sandwiches at £2 each and have food for the day.

But THEN the girl who I rode the bus with pointed out-- as you probably noticed-- that I was converting POUNDS into euros, not dollars. Suddenly it was like a light from heaven shining on me as I realized my £10 would be more than ten euros. I'll tell you, I had forgotten what it was like to be on top of the world. It was like I was in Mexico and had just gotten dinner for seven pesos. Tasty.

Of course, it wasn't at all like I had just gotten dinner for seven pesos, because I didn't get anything. On account of the coins thing. Dammit.

So instead of eating I spent the rest of my time prepping for check-in. When I checked in at Newark the woman at the ticket counter asked me how long I was staying in London. When I told her only two days, she said she needed to see a return ticket to America or a ticket out of London. When we landed in London, the customs agent asked the same question and also asked where I would be staying while in the city.

Both times I pulled out the e-mail confirmation for my flight, and in London I had the address of the hostel Megan and I were booked at. But I didn't want to have to stay one step ahead of myself the rest of the way, knowing where I was going after my next destination before even getting to my next destination. Where's the fun in that?

So the previous day I had found a flight from Dublin to a possible next destination-- I won't tell you where just yet-- and wrote down the date, time, and flight number. I also looked up a random hostel in Dublin that I would say was where I was staying. I had going through my head the things to say when the ticket counter woman asked to see my ticket leaving Dublin, but when I stepped up all she did was look at my passport and ask where I was going. Which, I do say, should have been quite obvious given I was standing in the Dublin line.

Officially cleared through to Dublin, although incredibly disappointed, I went through to security. Upon emptying my pockets I found a final 50 pence coin that I had failed to notice earlier. Winner winner chicken dinner.

I took my shiny coin to a bagel place and asked the dude working there if I could have a "side of tomato," which only cost 30 pence. He said no. He wouldn't even put in on a napkin for me! So I went one booth down and bought a banana. Take that, bagel place.

(One final thing about London before we switch gears. I picked up a copy of the Metro newspaper in the airport and saw the following two articles: One was about how Keira Knightly had been doing a promotional event outside the movie theater at Leicester Square the previous afternoon and the other was a headline that said "Prostitution Reaches Low of £15." How did I miss these two?! Seriously, how did I miss them? I need to get my head out of my ass and pay attention to this sort of thing.)

Anyway, on to my flight. I'd only flown Ryanair once before, a few years ago on a flight from Paris to Rome. Two things to note about that flight were the couple I was sitting next to on the plane who bought me a shot of whiskey, and the French girl I met at the baggage claim and went home with. And by went home with I mean we got a hotel room together and hardly left for two days.

So I was on the look-out for the new Marion Cousin. (Mah-HEE-own COO-zah)

The thing about Ryanair is that there are no assigned seats, so seating is a free-for-all. If you want a good seat-- or, rather, if you want to pick your seat before ohter peopl-- you have to arrive early so you can get in line first. If you want to sit next to a cutie you have to arrive early so you can wait until one gets in line and then you get in line after her. I picked Number Two.

And the cutie I picked was an English girl named Becky. She was, indeed, quite cute, except for a bit of a what-have-you on her right cheek and a snaggletooth that would make Mike Tyson. To be honest, the what-have-you wasn't so very terrible, but that snaggletooth... boy did it give her away, I mean it really did. She'd be an awfully cute girl if only she didn't speak. As it is, she just looks British.

Anyway, in addition to being cute, though, she was the biggest Negative Nancy I've ever met. The thing about Ryanair other than the seating free-for-all is that, well, there's a reason they're so cheap-- and, at £21 from London to Dublin, they're dirt cheap. There are twice as many seats as on a regular plane, and thus there is half as much legroom, and you have to pay for everything-- even a cup of water. Not exactly Air Force One.

Anyway, Becky was complaining about everything, from the seats to her job to having to fly to Dublin and then spend the weekend in Corey for work. I told her we should get a drink after landing, and she said the taxi would be waiting for her. I told her to just quit-- rather sensible, if you ask me-- and she said not a chance. Then she started complaining about Smart Cars, so I said that if her taxi was a Smart Car she would get a drink with me. Well, she hadn't checked any bags and so left right from the plane, so we'll never know if her taxi was a Smart Car. I bet it was.

(Oh, and the Dublin customs agent? He asked me how long I was going to be in Dublin, I said around three weeks, and he stamped my passport. That was it. I didn't even fill out a customs card. Silly Irish.)

I took a bus from the airport to Dublin for €2 and was sitting next to a woman who literally must have been 100 years old. She was gnarly as hell. She said she had spent the past 45 years working as a missionary in Nigeria, and I gave thought to asking her if she's ever read "Things Fall Apart" but decided she was too old and cute for me to ask her the hard-hitting questions.

But the thing about this gnarly old woman is that, during the half hour ride to City Centre, she sent two text messages. And the second one, I swear to you, it said "on my way 2 town, 10am mass, can u make it? txt me back if no". I'm not making it up.

First, since when do 100 year old women send two text messages in 45 minutes? It's like she realizes her time is running out and she wants to send as many text messages as she can in the meantime. You know, just for the thrill of it.

Second, since when do 100 year old women say 2 instead of to, u instead of you, and txt instead of text? She must be the dumbest person ever if she's 100 years old and still in 7th grade. Either that or, like I said, just doing it for the thrill of it.

When I got to City Centre the first thing I did was get Irish breakfast. Of course. This one was scrambled eggs, sausage patties, baked beans, mushrooms, and tea for €4.95. But since I had my pack on my back and my little backpack on my front I was a bit off-balanced and I spilled some of the eggs on the counter. The old man behind me, two seconds later when he got to where I had been, said "what the fuck is this shit?" Then, when he walked around me, he looked back and literally called me a "fucking cunt." This is true. I was stunned.

To make matters even better, he must have finished eating first because, while I was still sitting down, I saw him through the window staring at me for like ten seconds. Then, I swear to you, he came back inside and just looked at me. It was literally the first time I've been terrified of an old man. And I'm not ashamed to admit it.

After breakfast I took a walk to an internet cafe to try to find some hostels, but along the way I went down Moore Street, which is a cool little side street ride in the middle of City Centre that has fruit stands and fish stands every day. The fruit is all stupidly cheap, and I bought ten bananas for €1 simply because each banana cost a dime. Well, a euro dime.

At the internet cafe I wrote down the names of the three hostels closest to Temple Bar, which is the main nightlife district. My plan was to find out which of the three would let me work in the hostel in exchange for free accomodation and then judge which of those would be the best and most fun. I literally thought it would be that simple. Silly me.

To my credit, in nearly all of the hostels that I've stayed at-- which have been quite a few-- there were people doing that sort of thing. One girl at the hostel in London, who was working and sleeping there, told me that all you need to do is say you have experience working in a hostel. I honestly didn't think it would be a challenge at all.

Well, of the three bars I wrote down, the first only had a job opening as a night porter, which would mean working the front desk from 11pm to 7am. The dude didn't say how many nights it would be, but you'll have to pardon me if I say I wasn't the least interested in that gig.

The second and third places didn't hire temporary workers at all, so that was the end of Temple Bar.

Additionally, all three cost around €25, so without being able to get my bed paid for there was no way I could afford them.

The girl at the third place told me to try across the river on Gardiner Street. The first place I went to was nice, but they told me I'd need a resume to even have a chance of working somewhere.

At the next place, when the woman on the step asked me if I had come "for the bed," I went inside and asked if I could work there. She said no, but this hostel only charged €12 per night. That was a freaking steal.

Figuring I'd be able to make do without a resume somehow or other, but that I wouldn't have a chance if I was trying to make do without both a resume AND a shower, I got a bed for the night in the Citi Hostel.

Let me tell you this as simply as I can. The City Hostel was a dump. An absolute shit-hole. In fact, I'm not sure that "shit-hole" sufficiently conveys how much space could reasonably be filled by shit. This place was a shit-crater. Or a shit-pit, if you want to be cute about it.

I was paying €12, so you have to keep that in mind. But there were holes in the floor of my room, rain had formed a puddle on the table, there were no sheets on the bed, there were flies buzzing around everywhere, there was one bathroom for the whole hostel with three toilets and one shower, and there wasn't even a lock on our room. The one thing you can't fault Citi Hostel for is that they weren't locking hot water. The one thing you CAN fault them for is that there wasn't exactly a temperature control for the shower. Just degrees of water pressure. I'm not a scientist or a thermometer, but if I were either I'd put the temperature of the shower water at "15 degrees above comfortable." I still have blisters on my skin.

Three of the other beds were taken but only one person was there, a kid named Joel who seemed like a good dude. He was working on some stuff so we didn't say much, but I saw that there was a book on the dry side of the table. I went over to look at it and saw that it was a bible, and when I opened the front cover I saw "to Joel" written on it. Oh boy.

I took a nap for an hour or so, and lay on top of the blanket. After all, even though I brought my scabies cream with, I was in no rush to get another batch. When I woke up I took a shower and went hostel-searching. The first one I went into had a dude named Roy at the desk. I asked him about working there for accomodation-- which he called work-to-stay, and so will I-- and he asked if I had a resume. I told him I didn't but that I had worked at a hostel before, and he said to come in the next day. I figured that was the one, so I called it quits on the search.

After I left the hostel I went walking around town, but it was pretty nasty out so I went back to the hostel and had five bananas for dinner. One of my roommates Alex was there, but said he was moving out of the hostel the next day. I asked him how long he had been there for, and he said he'd been in Dublin for two and a half years and in Citi Hostel for five months. I couldn't believe it. Five months. This guy was a champ.

Joel came back and said that he had almost gotten a job doing promotions for Monster energy drink, which is branching into Dublin. His job would have been to simply drive a truck around and play music and pass out Monster, and they would have paid him €30 an hour. The reason why he didn't get this job? He doesn't have a driver's license. Good grief.

We'll excuse him for not having a license at 22 years old, though, because he did bring up sheets from the front desk, where apparently the woman had forgotten to give them to us earlier. Whoops. At any rate, Joel was reading his bible earlier, so I guess that makes him God's prophet of sheets.

And let me say that in addition to the sheets prophet, Joel turned out to be a total dude. He's from New Zealand and decided a few months ago to sell all his stuff and save money to move to Dublin. He'd been in Dublin for a week, and in the Citi Hostel for a few days, and hadn't had any luck yet finding a job. He told me that everyone said he was crazy for moving on such a whim but that he "had to go" and that "the time was right." Lord, I hear you.

Approximating that Joel was my new best friend in Dublin, we split a liter of cider and then headed to an Australian bar that Joel had been at the night before. They have jugs of beer (I will never call them pitchers again) for €9.50, with each jug having about three pints. Every other place in town has €5 pints. It was no question.

We got a jug and sat down next to a table of four girls, and one of them was giving us the eye. There was karaoke going on, so I went over to their table and asked them what song I should sing. I sat down with them, talked for a bit, motioned for Joel to come over, and we were in.

The girls were Sarah and Beatrix from Spain and Natalia and Alice from Poland. The Polish girls were definitely the ones we were interested in. The whole thing was going spledindly and, I'm telling you, it had all the makings of a great night. They were taking pictures of us all in the new-bar-friends sort of way and there was cheersing going all around, and then the Spanish girls got up and it was just me and Joel with Natalia and Alice. It was as money as could be.

And then we got up to go to Temple Bar, and along the way Natalia mentioned something about boyfriends. I didn't really pay any mind to it, but when we got to this one bar Alice grabbed some guy who we had actually been going to meet. Again, I didn't pay any mind to it, which was as much a product of the cider and the €9 jugs as anything else. I said something to Alice about seeing her on Sunday, and she literally turned to me and said "I don't want to see you on Sunday." Well, you can guess what happened next. I was on my way back to the hostel.

Joel told me later that, after I left, Alice and her boyfriend-- as he turned out to be-- left to go somewhere else, and Natalia began saying things like "My boyfriend always cheats on me, but I need him!" Joel left pretty soon, too.

And that was my first day in Dublin. Not so terrible, all things considered.