BennyTheJudge

today I finished my 6, no, correction, 5 weeks assignment in Ireland in the outskirts of Dublin.

The giant software / hardware maker I was supposed to work for asked all IT contractors to take a week off, so my 6 weeks became 5.

I actually kinda enjoyed these 5 weeks and this was primarily thanks to the good spirit of Irish people. I confess I didn’t know so much about the Irish people and their ways of life but I have found the ones I have met to be very good people indeed.

I started with a flight from Rome airport on Aerlingus where I realised that on the flight there were not one but two groups of irish students returning from school trips. Teenager. A mixed groups (boys and girls), slightly older, and a girls only group. I thought: this will be a trip to hell.

With my usual luck and despite begging the lady at the check in desk to be seated as far as possible from the school trips, I was seating with one group behind me and one in front of me.

To my astonishment these kids actually behaved, first of all their teachers were pretty stricts and controlled them closely, second the kids behaved of their own initiative which to me was a huge relief but also a big shock.

Had these kids been Italians, Germans or (worse) British, it would have been a disaster. But the Irish kids behaved. So really it all started under the best of auspicies.

The taxi driver who took me to the hotel was very polite and chatty – he did ask a lot of questions – which normally would have pissed me off – but I found his interest and conversation heartwarming in landing for the fitst time in a new country to embark in a new job. And he promised to get me there for less than 26 euros which he did.

The staff at the hotel, the Carlton Blanchardstown – ex Park Plaza on my GPS – were also all very polite, nice, smiling, they also asked kind of personal questions but their interest seemed also in relation to helping me, in fact when I told what company I was going to work for, they informed me that they ran a daily shuttle service to this company, free of charge, which was great.

On the quality of the work and on what i have seen inside those walls, I think I better skip that part for the time being, anyway it has nothing to do with Ireland per se, but I do pity the Irish bank that put itself in the end of some seriously disorganised people.

anyway i want to recap all the good things and also the less good or bad things in my short experience in this very specific and peculiar part of Ireland that is the Blanchardstown area:

1) car rental in Ireland can be very cheap – booking via autoeurope ireland but some companies tend to develop a vindictive attitude if you don’t take extra insurance (the worst is Thrifty which I discourage everybody from using) – which will more than double the cost of the car rental, and they will do the hold/auth thing on your credit cards for amounts starting at 1200euros  for a small economy car – in which case very easily you will max out your card.  Occasionally to make your life even more complicated – thanks Hertz – they will disregard to remove the hold/auth on your card so that when you expect to have been freed from it – like 4 days after you  returned the car in perfect conditions and with a full tank – you will have new transactions rejected because someone, like for example HERTZ, is still holding 1600 euros on your card. At that point after frantic phone calls, some of which to numbers that are advertised on HERTZ website but no longer exist – and funnily enough the message will be in Spanish – you will have to get the AUTH code from your bank/credit card company and their fax number; you will have to find a nice Irish lady at the HERTZ customer care centre (thank you M.!!), give her the AUTH code and the fax number and she will finally lift the hold so that you card will be functional again. [Obviously in the meantime you'll need another card or two]

2) hotels in the Blanchards area can be… 3 hotels…  according to my research, there are only 3 hotels in the area: the Carlton Hotel Blanchardstown, the Crowne Plaza Blanchardstown and the Travelodge Phoenix Park. The latter is like any other Travelodge, basic, functional and to some degree clean but it has no free internet and some room might smell of smoked cigarettes. The price however is sometimes only slighly lower than the Carlton – depending of various circumstances. So you can get a Travelodge room for almost 40 euros a night but you might get a Carlton room for 47 euros a night. Only 7 euros difference, which are balanced by all the free stuff you get at the Carlton, the fact that the Carlton is a 4 star hotel,  it is much nicer, it has a free gymn and depending which company you are working for, it might have a free taxi service, which is worth almost 10 euros. I stayed at the Crowne Plaza only one night and it is nicer than the Carlton, although the interiors were designed by the same people since they are identical, however the Plaza costed me almost double the price of the Carlton, it had a smaller car park and no offers of free taxi. The Carlton Hotel Blanchardstown s really a great hotel which gives very good value for money, it has a great staff, and I can only recommend it – make sure you get the appropriate discount during the online booking if you are staying 2, 3 or 4 days.

3) Landscape: beaches, cliffs, green fields and so on – I have seen very little but there must be plenty of those and you can never get enough of that beautiful Irish landscape. However in the Blanchardstown area you do get to see a lot of green fields although they will be part of a rather suburban or even industrial landscape, but the overall perception is not to be in some wasteland but in a nice and well planned area of recent development with room for cars, pedestrians and bicycles and bus services which, if not ideal, are still present and well functional.

4) food: honestly, it’s time Ireland becomes aware that there is food beyond carved roasted meat, chips and crisps and Irish breakfast. For example there are “SALADS”, but not like the SPAR Caeser salad  (1 part chicken, 1 part bacon, few lettuce leaves and a lot of dressing). For example the Carlton is a great hotel but in the menu there isn’t one single salad, you might get steamed vegetables on the side of some meaty or fishy dish but that’s not good enough. Let’s say Ireland is not a vegetarian paradise, although there are some exceptions like Cornucopia in Dublin, a great vegetarian restaurant with a nice atmosphere.

5) last but not least my favourite of all things Irish: no, not the Guinness, I don’t like beer and I don’t like Guiness, sorry. I am talking of RTE Lyric, a great radio that you can also listen online which is a truly great radio with a varied selection of great music, classical, opera, jazz, contemporary and world music. Kudos for RTE Lyric and its Djs who are all very professional, very informative and select great music. I love you all guys and I will miss you in a sense but I will keep listening to you, although it won’t be the same listening to an Irish station while driving around the Irish country – well at least in the microcosm of the Blanchardstown area.

So good bye Ireland, or “Slán leat” and I hope to be back sometime.