9 & 9 things about Ireland

Ok, you all know it by now, I'm leaving this island, returning to Continental Europe. After one and a half years in this country, I think it's time for a summary. Therefore, nine reasons why you should move and live in Ireland, and 9 reasons why you easily could miss Ireland.

9 reasons for Ireland

1. Great landscapes

Ireland's got one of the most diverse and beautiful landscapes I've ever seen in Europe; from vast mountains to sandy beaches, crystal clear water to colorful small villages - this is truly a scenery you shouldn't miss. This is the only place on earth (as far as my knowledge goes) where you can stand on the peak of a mountain, right in the mountains, and look straight to the Atlantic Ocean, barely 10 km away.

2. Fresh air

Ireland's air is fresh. Smog is a word not known in this country, when you spend your day out on the coast and the beaches, you fuel your body with so much O2, it sometimes feels like a drug. No dust, no headaches - just great.

3. Tranquility

This is a good place to rest. Ireland lies on the edge of Europe, people here doesn't tend to be in a rush. There are a lot of places where you can experience absolute silence and maximum relaxation. Away from people, somewhere in the nature, next to the ruins of an ancient castle, with a view to the Ocean - could it get better than that?

4. History

For all history freaks, this country's soil buries lots of things to be discovered. From ancient castles, lovely churches and abbeys - this is the place to be when it comes to history.

5. Food

Ever thought of Irish food being the twin of English food (well, the downside of English food)? You are completely wrong, my friend. This is heaven for gourmets. Steaks over here are just gorgeous. You pay a lot, in general more than on the mainland, but what you get for that can easily be compared to fireworks for your mouth. It is just great. You actually need to test it on yourself.
A great location for pristine food is English Market in Cork - you get a variety of almost everything, from Western Cuisine to East India, French cheeses and a lot more. You simply neeeed to go there.

6. Apple

Apple, my workplace, is a cool place to be: you get to meet a lot of international people up there, the company's a good place to work and makes the first steps easy for you in this country. You get a lot of support there if you need it.

7. Street musicians

Ever took a stroll on the Oktoberfest in Munich? Or through any other pedestrial zone in a bigger city? There might be good street musicians, but nothing that blows your mind. Most of them are, actually, quite bad.
Ireland's different in that; really, I've seldomly seen so many Bob-Dylan-Wannabees in a single place. If you would give away 1 € every time you meet one of those, you would be poor after crossing the city... .

8. New experiences

When you move to a new country, it's always good, because you gain a lot of new experiences. Ireland's a good place to start with that. Everything's quite straightforward and manageable. Nothing is really big in this country - Dublin, the capital, has a population of over a million, but that's the biggest it can get... .

9. Irish people

Irish folks can be very nice and friendly, often giving a helping hand when you're in struggle. So it's worth visiting this country and getting to know these people. They're quite uncomplicated and warm.

9 reasons against Ireland

1. Roads

Ever thought of bringing your own car to this country, my friend? This is not a good idea. Believe me. You need 5 h to travel the 200 km from Cork to Dublin - some national roads with two lanes can easily turn into small one-way paths with kilometers of kilometers of traffic jam. Road signs are a better joke (they point you one time in the right direction, when you come to the next junction, they're completely missing) and the roads are mainly in a very bad state, with chuckholes all the way.
You can forget your antishocks, your car needs every 4 months new tires, but lives therefore 4-5 years less than the average EU car. They pave the roads here with a tar that's harsher than in the rest of Europe and especially damages your car. Traveling is therefore a very unsatisfying and exhausting. There are no highways or interstates existing in this country, which makes traveling hard.

2. Houses

When you decide to live here - try to get into a concrete house. Most of the houses here are of such a low quality, you can't imagine. They're throwing trash into the housewalls as insulating material. You can hear a whisper throughout the house. When there are heavy winds, the whole house is shaking. And the rent is horribly high: for a room, only a room, you spend 300-400 €.

3. Food

Food is good? Well, in restaurants, yea, where you pay horrible high prices. When you go to the supermarket round the corner, you find a big variety of meat: ham, ham, ham, ham, cooked ham, smoked ham, oh, and did I forget to mention: ham? Same with cheese: you have a superb variety of cheddar, cheddar, cheddar, oh, and then there's cheddar, red cheddar, vintage cheddar, oh, and cheddar, of course.
They don't bake bread with yeast over here, but with soya-stuff in there. Result: the bread is not cuttable, you have an accumulation of crumbs instantly. Oh, and the bread itself has no taste. G-r-e-a-t.
You wish yourself back to the mainland. Believe me.

4. Apple

Apple is a great place to work in the beginning, but when things move on, you are not. Moving on. Being friendly to the customers is not the key qualification for a career. It's having good stats, and a team manager's recommendation. Anything else: no career, no moving.

5. Getting things

Ireland is a country where getting things is sometimes giving you a hard time. This country features no IKEA. There are no big electronics shops in here. You really need to dig deep to get the things you need - if it's tools, tv, or anything else.

6. Traffic

There are no driving schools in this country; mainly everybody who is 18 can instantly drive if he or she puts an "L" on the windscreen of his/her car. Therefore, traffic in Ireland is a battlefield. In general, Irish car drivers

- don't stop when the streets narrow down
- don't care if one lane is blocked - they just drive into every free space on the street, no matter what or whom they block
- ignore road signs completely
- get mad when you overtake them

So Irish drivers are in general absolutely ruthless. Don't expect anything, you can't cruise in this country, there's always a war out there.

7. Small country
8. Irish people
9. The Iceman

A 1000 ways to kill the iceman

I like living here. Really. There's only one thing that annoys me from day to day anew.

That is: the iceman.

There's one iceman (I think there's only one here in Cork) who drives with his van through the whole city selling his ice. Day by day, year by year. No matter if it's rain or shine, summer or winter.



The most annoying part of his van is the audio system integrated in it: whenever this van moves, it plays popular tunes at low quality that reminds me of the sound output of computers from the early 90's.

DAH DAH DADADADA DAH DAH DADADA

It's penetrating. Really. The iceman won't stop playing his tunes. You can hear the van approaching from Downtown, even when it's far out of sight (we live at the north side of Cork, on a hill - a steep hill, but that's another story).

Every day at 5 he enters Monastery Hill - the area where we live, drives up the hill, and turns his van right in front of our house. That takes time. And at no time he stops playing these tunes.

DAH DAH DADADADA DAH DAH DADADA

You get mad. Believe me. Irish houses are built out of some sort of pappmaché, so you hear it everywhere in the house. There's no escaping. I tried everything. Pushed my PowerBook to the max volume, with external speakers - didn't work. Had my iPod at maximum, with earbuds - from somewhere, there was a tingeling:

DAH DAH DADADADA DAH DAH DADADA

I am not the only one that gets mad over this. We have a dog living in our street - Buster. He's old, half-blind - but still hears well.
Whenever the iceman comes, this dog begins to bark, really bark, and begins to turn around his own center. I am afraid that he will, at some stage, lift himself in the air (through his body rotation) and then explode.



So we set up some ideas on how to kill the iceman. (This is not personal, really. I appreciate home services in any way - pizza, ice, that's just fine. But if he just would use a bell - I remember the milkman in my childhood coming through our street, or if he would at least play some real music).

So, yea, we set up a theoretical list on how to get rid of this person - well, actually, not the person, but the van and the music... . This is how far we got already:

1. Dress Buster to be ice-focused - he will then enter the ice van and eat all the ice.
2. Get a Khalashnikov and shoot the van.
3. Drop a bomb in the middle of the street.
4. Construct a rocket launcher and shoot a rocket on the van.
5. A long-term idea: teach the children in our neighborhood to dislike ice - might take a while, but the iceman will lose his clients.
6. Fly to Russia and buy an Original Russian Tank - and just roll over it.
7. Build some roadblocks and move em to our street.
8. Get some of those road blockers that stand up in the street so that the ice van will be able to enter the street - but will never return (in this case, we would have him in our street, but we can handle that then on our own.
9. Dig a big hole and wait until it vanishes in it on a bright sunny day.

As I am now leaving Ireland, I will probably be very happy just sitting every day in my room in Munich and hearing - nothing. Just nothing. No DADADADADADADA. Silence. That'd be great... .

Dear iceman, this should be seen as ironical comment (if you out there without humour didn't get it)

Tables have turned...

I quit my job here, needed to do that after my last application (Manchester) wasn't successful. After over 10 applications for different positions in my company and still resting where I am right now, I had to give me this push of self-confidence.

Tables have turned, my Irish experience (I don't like to miss in my life) will end at the 15th September 2005. Brings us to the next big question: what next?

Germany. Will try to find my luck again in my homecountry, somewhere between Munich and Frankfurt/Main (I have job offers in both cities).

Meanwhile, I'm walking on the creative path, just did some fruit advertising for my company. Like to see? For sure, I think.

So this is my gallery:


Golden. Delicious. Apple - Good for music.

Going bananas... finding the righ tunes? Apple - Good music. Just a click away.
(Even for Windows)

Exotic stars. Apple - Now in iTunes.

Like to go nuts? Apple - (but you can listen to decent tunes as well)

A bunch of real good music. Apple - itunes.com

I really like to send those in - but I ain't have a clue about the agency that does the advertising for Apple. Would be highly appreciated if someone could give me a hint... .

This week I had the pleasure to stay in Manchester (for another, well, guess - yes, unsuccessful application). Anyway, I can't blame the city - it's a great place, reminds me a lot of Munich and Vancouver, seems to have a lot of both of my "favorite cities": green, very green, but very metropolis as well. Vivid, very cool, very british, polite and open to the world. So I put a link to Manchester in the "Cities" section. Manchester can be best described as a city of the size of London, just 8 times smaller - some sort of a village which is surprisingly inhabited by over a million people. Same as Munich, but very multicultural.

So, in the end, I think it's a good thing to leave Cork - whenever I'm away from that "town", I feel vivid, when I'm there I feel lamed. So I will probably change the name of the blog in the next few months to: MACS RADAR: BITS AND PIECES FROM CENTRAL EUROPE.

I hope it works all out.

Swiss news magazine asks: Are Germans arrogant?

I am normally not a frequent reader of Swiss news mags, but I got directed there 'cause there had been rumors of an Apple Store to be opened in Zurich.
But instead, I stumbled over this:



A survey about how arrogant Germans are. Ain't that nice? There seems to be a large number of Germans moving into Switzerland (probably better chances to get work) and they seem now to take an in-depth look about how Germans and Swiss get along with each other.

I consider myself not being arrogant, but how about you? Do you think we (as Germans) are arrogant? Have you met some arrogant Germans so far? Or are we all simply nice folks?

Participate in the survey here (in German) and feel free to comment this... . Would be happy to hear from you.

Google's Maps: browse the world in satellite view

Just stumbled over it: Google Maps, a new service by Google, that's still in beta - but already stunning.

The concept is a rather simple one: just picture the earth from a satellite's view in different resolutions, alongside with a conventional map - you can easily switch between the both - and you get a complete different view of the world.

You can scroll through the world by simply pulling the map with your mouse cursor. And you can spot virtually everything - from the shop round your corner to the East-African Coastline.

Some of the spots I discovered:



Upper row from left to right: Rio de Janeiro, the famous Jesus Statue; Olympic Stadium in Munich, Germany; Paris, Eiffel Tower; Lower row from left to right: Pyramids of Giza; Colosseum in Rome; the East-African coastline between Africa and Madagascar. Click on the images to get a more detailed view

It's still a beta so you can't zoom into every piece of the world; but if you're living in a bigger city (or nearby), there's a high chance of spotting your house or even your car in front of it.

London blasts - a comment

700 injured, 37 dead so far. Several tubes and 2 buses blasted. Fear and chaos in London. All signs point towards an islamic extremist attack.

I could really cry.

I've visited London twice this year and was thrilled by the vitality, the thriving atmosphere, the many cultures living side-by-side in this great metropolis. It's one of those places on earth where you feel that you can achieve anything just by wanting it. Where you can widen your horizon, experience so many different ideas and forms of living. I supported the bid for the Olympic Games and am really happy they won it. This city deserves it.

It does not deserve such attacks. 3 weeks ago, my train arrived from Stansted in Liverpool Street Station. I went through Aldsgate and King's Cross, I know where Russell Square is. I crossed the city in one of those doubledecker-busses.

To the fistful of persons who sit in some caves and holes in Afghanistan right now and have a good time by having blown up over 700 innocent people that never never never supported the war in Iraq or Afghanistan (as whole Europe did), I have one question: What, do you think, did you achieve by doing this?

That the US and UK presence in Iraq and Afghanistan will end? That they order the troops back home? That they will stop chasing you, 'cause they're now afraid of you? None of that will happen. You're a drop on a hot stone.

You're not speaking in the name of Islam. You're speaking in your own, inhuman language by carrying out attacks like these.

And you won't succeed.

We're strong. And we're getting better.
We're not standing still and we will tighten our controls - it's getting harder and harder for you to plan and execute attacks.
We're protecting our citizens in doing that, no matter which nationality they have or which religion they belong to.
We're happy that there are places like London in this world where people of all races and religions live peacefully together and learn from each other. And those places won't be destroyed by a bunch of armed morons who think they can change the world in their way - from a cave in Afghanistan.

Londoners have shown that they don't panick, even in cases like this one. I hope that they (and all of us) won't panick in the future and will not see the attacks as a reason for distrusting fellow arabic citizens - who shall be protected as any citizen living in any country that's threatened by such attacks.

We are prepared for tough times - and we will probably have to live with the risk of such attacks for a while. But I've never seen that over 1 billion people, in Europe and the US, will change their way of living because some Al-Quaida guys fight their personal war against democracy and values they don't want to understand.

mac

+++ London blasts +++

There just have been several bombings reported that hit Downtown London just a couple of minutes ago. In total, 7 underground and bus stations have been aims of the attacks: Liverpool Street (where the trains from Stansted arrive), King's Cross, Edgeware Road, Aldgate and Russell's Square. 2 more buses have been blasted.

People doesn't seem to panick, the situation seems to be under control. The whole Tube system is currently down, several stations have been closed. Around 700 injuries and 37 deaths are confirmed.

Prime Minister Tony Blair is on his way back to London from the G8 summit, as well as Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London, from Singapore. Transport services are down in London for the rest of the day. The House of Commons congregated and condemned the attacks. A decision about resuming the service is expected for afternoon.

Al Qaida seems to have claimed responsibility for the attacks.

--- Paris has announced to increase the security alert status and has warned to travel to London. There are strong controls on the Eurostar train that connects London with Paris. Nevertheless it operates normally---

--- Berlin increased the security alert status as well. There are currently no reports about a threat in Berlin. The National Rail service in Germany has announced to tighten controls---

I am shocked. They harm the wrong persons, over 70% of the EU citizens were against the war in Iraq. I stayed in London just 3 weeks ago.

If anyone who is currently staying in London and reading this blog, please comment on the situation!

There's a blog where Londoners currently write about how they experienced the morning.

Cheers,

mac

Somewhere over the rainbow...

From Cork to Bantry and back - this weekend's trip was a long one, but again discovered spots I've never been before to. (For more pictures of this trip, click here.)

We started our trip actually quite late - around 2 p.m. We were just outside the city when we found out that we somehow managed it to forget the memory card of my digital camera, so we had to return what cost another 45 mins in total. But we finally made it and went westward - to Bantry, which is a coastal town, approximately 80 kms away from Cork. (It took us 2 hrs to get there - Irish roads...).


Bantry Harbor with St Brennan's Statue. He is supposed to have discovered America 1300 years ago

We nearly ran out of fuel but finally made it (a gas station helped, on the way). Bantry's a nice place, situated in a small harbor, a very cosy, very irish village. We strolled a short way along the harbor - it was quite windy - and got something to eat afterwards in a nice place named Vickory Inn.
That's a restaurant I highly recommend - pricey (as usual here in Ireland), but great food. I had some Scampis with French Fries (G-R-E-A-T) and Martin a cheeseburger (I think it was one... at least, it was a burger).


The Atlantic Ocean at Mizen Head


Result of that was that I had a sleepy compagnon next to me as I drove us south to Mizen Head. What really surprised me was that the roads really improved compared to the situation a year ago.

Destination was Mizen Head, the southwestern tip of Ireland. I actually never mentioned it before, but it is a damn great place. You have a magnificent view of the Atlantic Ocean, steep cliffs and the thundering of water... Just great, purely great. Even if it rains (and it rained when we were there).


A rainbow touching the waves of the Atlantic

I talked about the weather somedays earlier, remember? Fortunately, the weather changes quickly. And so we had rain and shine both together what resulted in - guess - yes, superb rainbows. It was really stunning, I've never seen before in my life a rainbow end right on the surface of the ocean.


Martin standing at the E-Bay (we called it this way):"Finally a place where I don't have to be perfect."

Later on, we discovered a small bay at the end of a pathway. It was really hard getting there, but we were completely alone and had a great view of the Atlantic Ocean. The sun came out and we were, at the end, sitting and standing there for over 2 h, simply watching the waters roll in and listening to the sound of the elements.

We spent the evening at Inchydoney Beach, that's pretty much half way between the tip and Cork and arrived at home around 10 pm.


Sunset at Inchydoney

It was, once again, a superb experience. Say about Ireland what you want - but the scenery is one of the best in whole Europe.

London 2012 will host the Olympic Games

Just confirmed: London will host the 2012 Olympic Games. YEA. My pleasure, it's a great host city for the Games.