Dublin - past to present and some major gaps

As my profile gives away, I'm living in Dublin right now, that is since August 2004.

What can be said about Dublin in the year 2005...? Well, it has changed a lot. I know because I can compare it to the state of things 12 years ago, when I left my little hometown, no actually home-village, in Austria to take on the privileged position as Au-pair in the big city of Dublin - with the much desired side-effect of aquiring a presentable level of English that would help me to get on later in life.
Actually, I'm just realising - by this I can trick the inflexible nature of the blog-order and return right to the start of my wanderings (before the move to Dublin I obviously had to stay in the little village and to finish the Handelsakademie, so my travel stints were limited to a few interrail-adventures around Europe).

What happened 12 years ago in Dublin? Well, enjoying the biggest freedom I ever had - I could actually reach the city center in a 40 mins bike ride (no need to beg a lift from the parents to the next town which was 26 km away) - I was independent! And I could go to as many gigs as I wanted. Ever since my first mass-concert experience, which was - I have to admit - Joe Coker, it turned out that I had found a major obsession in my life (which then was kind of difficult to live out in a small village in the south of Austria).

Anyway, I arrived in Dublin at the right moment. The music scene was vibrant and there were loads of brilliant bands and singer/songwriters around. Who did I go to see on a regular basis: my very favourite band were The Frames, then there was Mundy and The Mary Janes and The Big Geraniums, The Pale, Engine Alley (still think they're great, a pity they didn't really make it), I think the Cranberries were also around playing in small venues but I never bothered to go and see them, there were so many other interesting bands; there were acoustic sessions going on every Tuesday in the International Bar hosted by a guy called Dave Murphy and musicians like Paddy Casey, Damien Dempsey, Glen Hansard, Bronagh Gallagher and many more were regulars at these sessions.
Plus, to my biggest thrill, I got to hang out with these people sometimes. Coming from my village, I'd never actually met any musicians in person and I was very impressed by what they were doing. I couldn't exactly figure out what they were doing to create such great music and poetry and I was very much in awe.

Apart from going to every gig possible I also worked in different places after finishing my Au-Pair time. Luckily no digital pictures of that time exist, else you'd see the effect of a vicious combination of chips and burger sauce that I'd lived on working for Abrakebabra, or the leftover cream-cakes that I could take home every night when working in the lately deceased Bewley's Cafe. Anyway, I got to lose the extra kilos that added the complete new dimension to my appearance in a timely food-poisening in Marocco a few months after my return from Ireland, and luckily they have not come back since (not even now, since I'm back in the country of greasy food and chocolate bars).

I think I have to leave the part about the present in Dublin for some other day. Stay tuned :-) !

Well, some information on present events can be seen below - we (my friend Hilary and me) organised the Berlin Anticonformiste Festival in Whelans that took place on April 23rd this year.