A trip to the old country

I moved to Germany in March of this year, and haven't been home to see my family and friends in eight months now. Time really flies! That's about to be rectified as on Wednesday night I'm popping over to Dublin for an 11 day trip.

It's going to be weird. Not only will I get to see Ireland in recession after so long living with the "Tiger", best of all I'll be a tourist observing it in my native city, which I am kind of looking forward to. Nothing to do with Schadenfreude, but my brother told me things are starting to get cheaper, which is about time. As he said it, we'd only ourselves to blame for paying €5 for a cappucino. Well, I never did!

I reckon I'll have a fairly full calendar trying to meet up with people, and already have a few dates filled. First will be the launch of a book I worked on in a previous life that has taken nine years to get published. Now that's gonna be weird! Also planned is a day trip to the Belfast Beer and Cider Festival with TheBeerNut and a few more like-minded folk from Irish Craft Brewer. Most of all though, I'm looking forward to slipping into the Bull and Castle beside Christ Church Cathederal, probably several times, for a few pints of Galway Hooker and other delights. As well as meeting up with my old mates TBN and Thom and new blogger pal Velky Al in the B&C for lunch on Monday, on the 20th we're having a regular ICB brewers tasting evening where I'll get to see my oldest ICB mates and some new ICB faces. Well new since I left anyway. Such gatherings are always fun. Mmmmmm...

In the meantime, the few readers I have shouldn't expect too many posts as my poor Mother doesn't have the best Internet connection in the world. But I hear the Porterhouse does have free wireless access. Well fancy that