Took a flight from London to England on the 10th June and stayed in Dublin until the 12th with Dan's friend. We took a bus from Dublin to Galway which took about 3 hours. When we arrived, we dragged our massive lot of luggage to the taxi stand and took a taxi to our motel. That afternoon we walked around the city and got info about local papers for jobs and flats and also to find a pub that was going to show the State of Origin, we then headed back to the motel to start ringing people about flats and share-houses. The next day was pretty much the same except most of the morning we were at the pub watching the State of Origin. At 2pm the local paper, The Galway Advertiser, had print-out of the Accommodation in Galway that they would sell a day before the paper was to come out for 2 euro. There was a huge line for it. We lined up and got a paper and started ringing people. Alot of the rooms were not suitable for a couple, so we didn't have much to choose from. We found three that were suitable and arranged to view them the following day. We hoped that we would like at least one because we were out of the motel the following day. Our first viewing was in Ballybrit, a suburb about 15minutes from the city, it was where the Galway races was hosted annually. The lady didn't seem too bad, she said she had a little girl and the rent was cheap. The place smelled a little like cigarettes, but we assumed that it wasn't her because she was pregnant. We said we would call her the following day with our answer, we didn't really like it that much though.
We then went to the next house which was a little further out. The ad read: Wanted Mature Couple to live with Mature-aged couple. We thought, oh well we'll take a look because we didn't want to get a house with party animals. We turned up at their doorstep and a young girl with a Polish accent greeted us. She told us that it was her god-parents who were living there, not her, she was just there to interpret. They didn't even speak a word of English! How was this going to work! He also had a freaky looking eye, so I didn't like it. We were quite disappointed and so put our eggs all in one basket hoping the next place would be great. The next morning we got up early to go view the house, even rang to confirm that we were coming, arrived at her doorstep and rang the doorbell. No answer. Dan rang her number and she was like, sorry somebody already took the room. She was inside and we were right at her doorstep and she didn't even have the decency to answer the door and tell us. Slack cow. We were really peeved by this stage because it was raining and the bus wasn't due for ages, so we walked all the way back to town... we walked and walked... it sucked. Dan thought we should just ring the first lady and stay with her because it didn't seem that bad. We ended up moving in that night... and that's where the "fun" began.
We went down to the local cornershop that night to get some basics for brekky. She also asked us to get wine and coke for her because she was having friends over. The lady was in her 30's and pregnant so we figured it wouldn't be a loud night. Boy were we wrong.When we arrived back, her "friends" were younger than us, one was only 14. Her seven-year-old daughter went to bed at about 11pm. They were in the lounge room chain smoking with the window closed and drinking. We headed to the kitchen to make some toast for ourselves and they followed us in there smoking and puffinf away, we only had a quick polite chat to them, I was starting to get a bit angry because there was no windows in the kitchen, so we left for bed. At about 2am until 4am they were running up and down the stairs and screaming and laughing. It was the worst night. It didn't get any better from then on.
We went into town everyday to look for work and to just get out of there. When we got back each day, they had eaten or used something of ours out of the fridge, even when we had it tied up in a bag. She was also always drinking, every night she drank a bottle of wine or beer. She was too lazy to take her kid to school and the kid ended up missing a week of school days just because her mum was too lazy. She didn't get up till 2pm everyday. We had enough after the end of the second week and were contemplating leaving. We thought we'd just move out and live in Galway somewhere else. Daniel got a job in Sales Marketing on the 26th and started there at 9am all dressed up professionally...he quit by midday because it was selling make-up door to door (not his strongest point). I came to his rescue with clothes and met him down the street and we decided to leave Galway because we weren't getting any real work. We decided to go back to the house and talk it over more. While we were waiting for the bus, something caught Daniel's eye, blowing around in the wind...he stomped on it and discovered it was 20euro!! Then he saw another 20euro!! This, we thought, was a sign from God. Finding 40euros was definately meant to be, it was two tickets outta here! We headed back to the house and packed up all our things, we were going to do a runner. We decided we would leave early the next day just after her partner went to work.
I was sick that night and felt horrible the next morning, so we decided that we would leave when she was to go to town that day. We waited, and waited and waited and waited... the lazy cow didn't even get up until 2pm! We were so mad. We wrote her a note saying that Dan's friend was ill and we had to leave and return to oz. She finally left for town at 3:30pm and we called a taxi straight away, left the note and got our butts outta there. We took a bus to Cork at 5pm, which took 4 hours. We didn't care, we were just glad to get out of there. We arrived at Cork at about 9:30pm but had to organised place to stay. The first place was booked out, the second was a 100euro/night. We thought it was ridiculous so kept looking. The third was a real swanky place which costed 200euro for the night! It was getting late and we were tired and sick of lugging our enormous crappy suitcases around, so decided to go with the 100euro/night. It was so not worth that much, but we were too tired to care. The next day we stored our luggage in their storage room and hit the city. We wandered around and tried to find a cheap place to stay. We found a hostel and booked a Private Room for the night, 52euros. The next day, we stored luggage at the hostel and tried to look for a place to stay at for a week that wouldn't break the budget. All the B&B's we rang up were booked, so we started panicking. We tried to book back into the hostel we stayed at the night before but they were all booked out too. We ended up going door to door at all Accommodation places and eventually found a hostel with a share room. We dragged our luggage to the new hostel and tried to settle in to a cramped little room which had two bunk beds.
We were sharing with two other Aussies, which we thought was cool. That night, they went to the bar for drinks, whilst we went out for dinner. We splurged a little on our meals to comfort ourselves. Before we went back, we walked up the road to ask the B&B's if they had a room for the following night, luckily they did and we could check in tomorrow at 11am. We got back to the hostel and got ready for bed. There were about three pubs across the road with really loud music until about 3am. Our Aussie roomates came home drunk as skunks at 3am making noise and carrying on. They finally passed out and I think we got about an hours sleep until some group of drunk guys out on the road decided to hang out in the streets and make as much noise as possible. To make matters worse, the guy who was in the bunk below me wouldn't stop snoring or farting, he absolutely reeked and when he wasn't farting, he was snoring. I was so peeved off the next morning and utterly exhausted.
We checked out the next morning and headed straight for the B&B. We had to hurry because Dan wanted to watch the Tri-Nations at the pub down the road. Our room wasn't ready until noon, so we left our luggage and went to the pub to watch the footy. At half-time, we quickly went back to put our things in our room. The lady at the B&B offered us the room for a weekly rate of 220euros as she could see we needed a place for a while. We were very thankful and accepted her offer. After we watched the footy, a victory for Australia! we headed back and I HAD to have a nap. Dan went around the city to put his resumes in.
The past few days we haven't done too much, just been getting the paper and looking for work and flats. We went all the way out to Carrigtwohill to look at a flat but decided not to go for it because it had a very inreliable bus route, this decision not to take it was definetaly confirmed when we had to wait for the bus for an hour and a half before we could get back to Cork! Funny story though, while we were waiting for a bus, Dan really had to pee, I mean really had to, he couldn't stop whinging about it. I laughed and joked and told him he should pee in the bin. He continued to wait for the bus and he couldn't hold on any longer, he got an empty Lucozade bottle I had in my bag and he peed in it while I covered him from view. It was so funny. Grotty boy.
We also went to F.A.S (dunno what it stands for) but it is Cork's job agency. We went there and prnted a few of the job descriptions off. The only bad thing about trying to find work in Ireland is that there are so many Polish people here, I mean thousands everwhere. They come over here because it is easier for them to get work. It sucks for us though. We have applied for a few jobs so we will see how we go...
So, that is our trip up to date...To be continued....
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