Getting fired, Sinterklaas and Galway.
So I walked into the National Pen office with all my luggage still from the great weekend in Edinburgh and found there was no work at all. Getting used to that kind of situation, we were all chatting away about what happened during the weekend. Until some French people walked in quite upset telling us they just got fired!! Because there was absolutely no work and none to come, National Pen decided not to keep on paying everyone for sitting on their ass all day and for Tim and Lise and me too, together with about twenty people, this was our last day at National Pen. A quite abrupt end to our career there, two weeks before the normal finishing date. A bit confused we went home, not really knowing whether to be sad or happy; after all we could sleep long the next morning :-)
We filled our unemployed days with Christmas shopping, sorting out bank and tax stuff, sending post packages home and reading on the couch. We also came to the conclusion that we would never be able to finish our ALDI-food storage in the ten days we had left… So we started cooking everything we had and taking food to whatever party we went to.
The 5th of December was the day most of us got fired, but it is also the day Sinterklaas comes in Holland and Flandres. It is something completely different then Santa Claus, let me get that straight, but ok there are also presents and candy involved. So the ex-Dutch team celebrated Sinterklaas at Thom’s place and we all got many gifts, and ate chocolate letters, speculoos, pepernoten and nicnakken.



At the end of the unusual week, Anais arrived in Dundalk. Because there is nothing to see here and only one or two nice bars to go to, I wanted to spend the weekend in the West of Ireland, Galway. I gathered some other people who wanted to come too and eventually six others joined us. It was great to be with such a big group, but hard to organise ourselves it seemed.. By the time everyone got ready in the morning (one shower for 8 people is not a lot), the last bus tour to Aran Islands and Cliffs of Moher already left. But no worries, we took another bus that took us through all of Connemara, which is a wonderful area full of bogs, lonely valleys and small black lakes. We went all the way to Clifden and took a walk and a hot chocolate there. We filled our evenings in Galway in a cozy restaurant where I had a genuine Irish stew, in bars with live music, in the youth hostel where Lydie and her husband Ton cooked for us and we illegally smuggled and drunk wine and cider. Sunday evening, Anais, Romano, Tim, Aurelie and me went clubbing in Cuba, which immediately reminded Anais and me of the best nightclub in Newcastle: Cuba Cuba. Of course it did not reach up to these kind of expectations but it was nice as well.
Before we had to sit on the bus for another six hours, we did some sightseeing in Galway on Monday, because there is a nice Cathedral and a kind of castle that does not look like a castle and is a bank now. We had lunch in I think the nicest restaurant I been to here in Ireland. It was called ‘Lemongrass’, looked brand new and had Eastern Asian specialities. At one point I had to suppress a feeling of guilt; “travelling, eating out and shopping while being unemployed… is this right…” The feeling went away quickly though and then I went and bought some more souvenirs. In Dublin we had to say goodbye to Anais, it had been so great to see each other again. Lise and me spent the rest of the evening in Dublin, at Agi’s place and her too I had to say goodbye.
More goodbyes on Tuesday, when the final party took place in Najet and Jessica’s place and our last day in Ireland I spent in Belfast. I hadn’t really seen the place and I figured this was my last chance for a visit. Romano, Tim and Aurelie joined me and we took ‘Le bus rouge’ as Aurelie called it, and saw all the wall paintings in the city. To our delight, there was a very nice Christmas market as well and we strolled around, had some gl?wein and enjoyed the atmosphere. Back in Dundalk Lise joined us for a last Guinness in The Phoenix and then we had to head back to Willowdale to pack our stuff.
The next day Tim and me got on the plane back to Belgium and we realised that three months National Pen are over. A short period of time, but so much has happened. I have a lot of good memories of Ireland, and sometimes encountered situations I rather hadn’t been in. But if I learnt one thing here, it is this spoonful of Irish wisdom: “He who runs away lives to fight another day”.

Never go to an Irish hairdresser, my first bad experiences travelling alone and Edinburgh
Things are getting really quiet in the company right now. The only people with a lot of work to do are the Italians and the Spanish. All the others have few or no customers to call, which means very relaxed days at work with a lot of coffee breaks and chatting, but which also means no upsells and boredom. Our supervisors tell us ‘try to look busy’ for whatever stupid reason and we can take as many days off as we want (without being paid of course). So Lise and I decided to go home for Christmas with a different look and booked ourselves a hairdresser for Thursday afternoon. I had made phone calls to find out what the cheapest one in town was and maybe that is where it went wrong. I wanted a soft curl and Lise wanted a nice short do with blond highlights. After a couple of hours we were staring into the mirror at each other, Lise wondering how I would face life as a poodle and I trying to discover the highlights in Lise’s grandma-cut.. I did not even have time to try and fix my hair because I had to catch the train to Dublin that same night, to take the plane to Edinburgh the next day. My French friend Anais lives there for one year and we decided to do exchange trips.
My hair would be the last of my worries that night though… I was waiting for the train on a nearly empty platform in Dundalk when a guy, only a teenager, came to sit next to me on the bench. After some small talk he found joy in pulling down his trousers and showing me everything that he got. I was completely disgusted and as if that wasn’t enough, a couple of hours later a man with his face all covered in blood came to ask me ‘if someone could fucking tell him what the fuck was going on’. This happened when I was looking for the bus stop to take me to the airport in Dublin. I have travelled on my own on quite a number of occasions, but something creepy like these incidents have never happened before.
You can understand I was happy to be away for a couple of days and especially Edinburgh is such a lovely city. On top of that, Christmas was everywhere so Anais and me a spent time on the Christmas markets, on the fair and doing Christmas shopping.









On Saturday morning, we visited the Whiskey heritage centre, which was a good start of the day.. We tasted no less than five different kinds of whiskey and when we went to Camera Obscura, the house of optical illusion, afterwards, everything was turning even more than it should have..




A nice meal in a traditional Scottish pub helped and after that we went back to Anais’ place where I met her funny German flatmate. Nicole had been baking cookies the whole afternoon and I think it needed an army to finish all of them. The whole kitchen was full of them and unavoidably we got stuffed with them too… Nicole didn’t want to come with us to the pub (I guess she had another army to feed) so it was just the two of us going into town to see live music at … and give it a shake in the very trendy nightclub …
The next day I found a cold chocolate drink next to my bed when I woke up and felt deep shame when I remembered having asked Anais to make me a hot chocolate when we had come back from clubbing. I simply fell asleep why she was making it.. After she had forgiven me for my rudeness we went to make some nice pictures of the city and went to visit Mary’s King Close. This building is still restored as it was in the middle ages and you walk through the streets and the houses like they were centuries ago. Very fascinating, and on top of that we had a very funny guide who was dressed up as a medieval woman and told us a ghost story too. Due to getting up late it was already dark when we got out of the Close and we had our lunch/dinner in the famous Frankenstein pub after some more shopping. On our way home we stopped by the Edinburgh Hard Rock Caf? because I never went to one of those in my life. Anais and me spent the rest of the evening just chatting and catching up as girls are supposed to do :-)



Monday started even earlier than usual because I had to catch the first plane back to Dublin. But upon arrival at work around noon, I felt truly stupid for getting up at half five in the morning as not very good news waited for me and many other employers of National Pen…

Universal Pen, the Prodigy in Belfast and the Giant?s Causeway
Even though the Dutch orders were the most numerous of all in National Pen when Tim and I arrived, now we have to do with only a couple a day. French people apparently are a bit slower when it comes to their presents for the end of the year, and the market is booming at the moment. Because there are too little French upsellers and Belgian people have a reputation of speaking all kinds of languages, from today on I find order forms from France, Wallonia and Switserland in my pidgin hole. A bit more difficult but at least I have got work to do and I am getting the hang of ‘Bonjour madame, Jakoba d’ Universal Pen a l’ appareil’ :-)
More Pen-news: in the second round of the team-contest; team two (German/Dutch team) has won! So that meant that we were all taken out for dinner in Cafe Metz one day during work. Excellent feeling to get paid for eating and drinking on behalf of the company. We tried to pick the most expensive things off the menu, eat as slow as possible and of course dessert and coffee after our meals were vital.
I did not get so much work done this week, because of the dinner, but also because I was making a lot of phone calls to train and bus stations, youth hostels, tourist informations etc. Together with Aurelie, Chrystelle, Mehdi, Thom and Romano I was planning to discover the coast of Northern Ireland, mainly to see the famous Giant’s Causeway. Last minute, the guys found out that the Prodigy was playing in Belfast on Friday evening so we could actually combine that with the trip since Belfast is on the way. The girls were not so much inspired by the Prodigy so it was just Mehdi, Thom, Romano and me who left work early on Friday and enjoyed the concert very much. Because we were so late with buying the tickets, we had seated places. However, we did not sit for one single moment, it was just jumping and dancing; great!! We even saw the Backstage Sluts before the Prodidy so we were very happy about that too. Unfortunately, the night ended sadly because Romano could not find his camera anywhere. Lost in the taxi… And not only was it a very good quality camera but there were also lots of nice pictures still on there. So no proof that we went to the Prodigy concert, only our entrance ticket.
In the Belfast youth hostel, I was hoping for a quiet night after a busy week, but no… In the middle of the night I woke up from Mehdi who was throwing his shoes to snoring Romano. Oh well.. who needs sleep anyway. The next day we met Aurelie and Chrystelle in Belfast city centre. We decided to take a sightseeing bus to the North that would take us all the way along the coast. A good idea, because we enjoyed the beautiful cliffs and shores and by the time we arrived in Ballycastle, it was already dark. We found Castle Hostel, with the very friendly hostess, and everyone tried to get a bed removed as far from Romano as possible. As for the rest of the evening, we had a nightly stroll along the bay, found a cosy restaurant and had a drink in a pub with live traditional Irish music! When the band quit, Thom polluted the pub with DJ Tiesto (Dutch) which was in the Juke box. What a culture shock!















The next day we woke up early to take another bus from Ballycastle to the Giant’s Causeway. This is a beautiful natural phenomenon; a very long time ago lava has burst out of the earth and formed hexagonal rocks. Very impressive to see all this and we took a long walk all on and along the cliffs.

















To go there during winter time is a bit chilly maybe, but the good thing is that there are not many other tourists and you are just surrounded by the nature. The sun even started shining around noon so that made it even more beautiful.



After a visit to the gift shop, we took a taxi to Portrush, one of the biggest villages around (still only couple of thousand people) were we had something to eat and took the train back to Dundalk. Tim had gone back to Belgium for the weekend so we had lots to tell each other when I came back home, in 39 Willowdale.

?Ozzy ozzy ozzy oy oy oy?, Tim?s friends and bowling
Mood:  sharp
The last to arrive at National Pen and the first to leave (well who can blame her) was our only Australian colleague Lauren. Having travelled through Europe for nine months, she ended her journey in Dundalk, Ireland. It is too bad that she was here for only such a short period, cause I’m sure we could have had much more fun. But as friends come and go, we came together in the Malt House that Tuesday evening to say bye bye to Lauren. Initially, it was planned that everyone should dress up as an Australian animal, but for unknown reasons this was cancelled. Some brave souls put on a sweater with kangaroo pockets though.. so we all felt very Australian after all. We spent the evening playing very very weird Australian drinking games and every five minutes Lauren shouted “Ozzy ozzy ozzy” to which we replied “Oy oy oy”. Fun guaranteed!



The next day at work we were all a bit silent of course; firstly because going out on weekdays is never a very sharp idea, but mostly because Lauren’s seat was now empty. The silence did not last long though; Friday night we were woken up by laughter and shouting of at least five Belgian guys. Tim’s friends had arrived… In the morning I found someone sleeping on the couch while the spare room was empty.. so I understood that Tim had probably showed them around some pubs already. During three days, the number of inhabitants of our house was doubled and none of us got a lot of sleep. But of course Thomas, Stijn, Florian and Jules were very welcome since they brought Belgian beer and chocolate :-) Especially Tim revived upon that. Friday night they of course hit the Dundalk pubs, but I decided to join Dutch and French guys for some bowling! Next to ALDI there is quite a fancy amusement park and as it happened, just now there was a fair going on there as well. So after the Dutch team kicked the ass of the French team with many strikes, we had a ride on a couple of attractions. Back in the city centre, I found Lise and the Belgian guys in a proper party mood. So I finished my Baileys and joined them to Ridleys where we showed Tim’s friends what an Irish nightclub is all about. At the end of the evening, I was still thinking clear enough to remember that my bike was still at Thom and Medhi’s house and told Mr. Taxi driver to drop me off there. Coz of course I wanted to say goodnight to the guys I knocked on the door and when nobody answered, I shouted ‘whoehoe’ through their letterbox. Still no reply so I just left thinking they were still partying somewhere else.
All this ended in cancellation of plans the next day to go to Belfast (Tim and his friends) and to go to Cooley Peninsula (me and the French) as a result of inability to get up early enough. Aurelie and me had late lunch in a nice place next to the bus station from where we just missed the bus, and decided that we had not quite seen everything of Blackrock. We picked up Mehdi, Romano, Thom, Chrystelle and a friend of her and spent some time on the beach. Very funny was that we met the Belgian gang there as well; and they were looking for cockles on the beach to take home, boil and eat. Comments as “those Belgians…” were heard but when I got home later I found them all with their plate of seafood! The fact that Stijn got sick later that night probably had nothing to do with it..
It was a while ago that anybody had thrown a house party so Saturday evening we were invited at Wiebke’s place. There, Mehdi told me he actually did hear me the other night but he was too afraid to come out of his room because he thought someone was in the house shouting ‘whoehoe’.. Lise and me found this so funny that we caught the laughing disease for the rest of the night, going ‘whoehoe’ all the time. It got so bad people did not believe us when we said we were not on drugs. It got worse when we tried to go to a nightclub later on and someone told me he could not get in Silence because he was a farmer (he might have meant foreigner but well..). We found this extremely funny as well and started asking people if they were farmers too. We did not get in to the Nightclub ourselves and just went to another one and had an afterparty at our house, where the last party animals only gave up at eleven in the morning…

The plasma screen, the Pen Party and Trim Castle
Mood:  bright
While Lise and me where still trying to wipe away the last traces of our Halloween make-up behind our computer, men with large boxes walked into the office. In amazement, we all watched them hanging a big plasma tv-screen on the wall; the guys were hoping for live football during work but quite the contrary was true.. On the screen the upselling list would be on view the whole day, so you are forced to see how much you are making and who the f**k was selling more than you. At first, we could not believe National Pen would spend so much money on a stupid list which everyone can consult in their computer anyway, but it was true.
Thanks to the screen no doubt we made the one million profit that week. As they promised, there would be a huge pen party with food and some free drinks (not more than two per person of course, after all it is only one million euros we brought in). It was good fun though, because everyone was there and to keep it Pen-style, some prizes were handed out such as envelopes with cash.. After the food we got down to it in the nightclub Amber, and it was funny to see some of our supervisors go crazy, or at least trying to. I discovered that one of them actually is capable of smiling.. In any way, it was another too late evening followed by a too bright Saturday.

Nevertheless, Lise and I felt brave enough to hit the road and go and buy some useful stuff for the house. To fight the cold, we made up a winter-plan which included hot soup, blankets and a warm fluffy shower mat for our freezing feet in the morning. It did not go so well in Atlantic Warehouse where I did my very best not to drive into anything with the trolley and where they did not have the right size of pot we had in mind for our soup. So we went out with an empty trolley which Lise rammed into my knee for unclear reasons. In the brand new shopping centre The Marshes (never seen innovation in Dundalk) we got lucky, found all we needed and felt proud of ourselves. Unfortunately we did not find a taxi back home and had a miserable time carrying the heavy groceries back to 39 Willowdale. No time to crash on the couch though because Aurelie and Mehdi picked me up to go to Blackrock, the Dundalk seaside. Fresh air was nice, I took some seashells with me and we had a hot coffee in a mysterious pub. The night fell soon, but we made plans to discover some more of Ireland the next day. When I came home, the house was filled with the smell of wonderful soup that Lise made. It was so nice to have some homemade soup instead of these instant things and we all experienced homely happiness. :-)



As discussed, Aurelie, Mehdi and me got up early the next morning (don’t worry no sooner than nine) to go to Trim Castle, the biggest one in Ireland were Braveheart was shot. We were all excited to go there, for my Lonely Planet said many promising things about it, but it appeared to be quite far. We had to go to Dublin first and take it from there to Trim. Determined as we were, we left Dundalk and finally arrived at the castle around half past three in the afternoon. That was just in time to catch the last guided tour and visit before sunset. We also caught a glimpse of the castle by night, were impressed by the grandeur of it and so we immediately forgot the long journey. We took the way back in two stages and stopped in Dublin to have dinner in a Malaysian/Chinese restaurant. I wanted to try Malaysian because I had never had that before and ate a lovely salmon. Very enjoyable day, we dozed off on the way back to dark Dundalk.

Oktoberfest, Clubblin in Dublin and Halloween
Mood:  caffeinated
From this title it probably seems I am doing nothing but partying here.. quite the opposite is true though, because we are working very hard here every day. Still getting up at seven to make the first phone call at eight, just half an hour lunch and no earlier off than half past four. The supervisors of National Pen are still keeping very busy coming up with different tricks and games to keep us going. Right now we are devided into 4 teams; the French team, the German/Dutch team, the Scandinavian team and the UK team. The goal of the contest is to make as less errors as possible and every day the new scores are up the wall. The winning team will be taken out for lunch by the company :)



In the meantime, we are striving towards the one million profit, and the company is going to throw a party/dinnerparty for everyone when we have reached it. But instead of waiting for that, we make our own parties here as well. The Beerkeeper, the pub that is known for his several different beers from all over Europe, had an Oktoberfest celebration with live music and jars of beer, German style ! We got down there with all the National Pen colleagues and sang along jolly with the "Anton aus Tirol" music. Too bad there wasn't any more sauerkraut und bratwurst, but it turned out to be a great evening, though a bit too late for a Thursday night...



luckily the weekend not far off and as my housemate Lise went to Dublin Friday evening to visit Agi, I thought I might just as well join them on Saturday. After having visited Dublin with my parents and viewing all the sights, I had to check out the nightlife up there as well. So we had a grand girl’s night out, starting with shopping at Pennies, through pizza and gin at Agi's apartment, having a drink in Pravda and ending up at Zanzibar, a fancy nightclub. On the way back, we even met a Dutch guy; Agi and Lise have lived in Amsterdam for two years and speak some Dutch, which Diederik picked up while we were walking behind him. Very funny; and he appeared to live in the same street as Agi as well so coincidences galore :)
The next day we woke up with the sun in our eyes. That hurt a little at first, but after a while we picked ourselves up to eat a coffee and a croissant in Dublin’s fresh air.
In Belgium, Halloween is not really a big thing and we don't really celebrate it, but here it is more popular, just as in England. The 31st of October fireworks did not stop above Dundalk and a few kids came at our door with a shy "trick or treat" Unprepared as we were, Lise and me gave them some cookies and cold pancakes… Of course, some colleagues from National Pen had organised an own Halloween party where we were happy to dress up for.



In the meantime, the daily rain has changed into severe cold, the days get shorter, nights longer and the moon brighter...

Discovering ALDI and throwing a houseparty
Mood:  energetic
Exhausted as we all were from running around in Dublin that Saturday, I had an early night and awoke as reborn on Sunday morning. For it was a nice day, I figure I could make something of it, took my bike out of the shed and aimed for Cooley Peninsula. My Lonely Planet had told me it is one of the nicest spots over here and it could not be too far so why not try to cycle there, armed with camera and packed lunch. Soon became clear that it was not as easy as I thought… Through lack of detailed map and sign boards I experienced many Dundalk streets from both ways. And just when I thought I was on the good way, an enormous roundabout crossed my path. I had to cross a three lane road to get where I had to be, to find out there was only a motorway without a cycle track whatsoever so I had to risk my life a second time on the roundabout to go back where I came from. My trip was not a complete waste of time though, because I crossed one bridge over a large river with a lot of sand banks in the gloomy mist (good for one nice picture at least) and because I passed ALDI!!! Not everyone might share this enthousiasm with me but I love ALDI… It is unbelievably cheap and they have got such good stuff over there hehe. So I popped in on my way home, stuffed my backpack with as much food as I could carry and was determined to be back with grander means…
The weekend was closed with a drink with the collegues of National Pen, in a pub we hadn’t been to yet. At the bar, I talked with a couple of Irish guys for a while and they were trying to guess where I was from. One of them actually thought I was from Newcastle hehe!! I was very happily surprised to hear that and felt like a proud Geordie :-)
So the next working week started with a tired Monday. Luckily, on the phone people cannot see you yawning nor the bags under your eyes. So I just sold my pens, calculators and Christmas cards as usual. I am quite getting the hang of it actually; you discover the right things to say to convince the customer he needs some more goods and you dare to go a bit further. I even get a small kick out of it when I succeed.
On Tuesday, French people decided to have a little birthday party at their house, so Tim and I decided to stop by and meet Thom and Romano (Dutch), Mehdi, Jessica, Michael, Geraldine and Celia (French), Sofia and Christian (Swedish) and Rusty (Irish) there. There was some eating, some drinking and some watching football going on but we decided that our house party, planned for coming Saturday would be much more rocking! :p



And so it was… Friday night Tim and I checked out the Chinese Restaurant in town, which was very nice, and afterwards I joined the Danes in the Beerkeeper. One of the nicest pubs I have been to so far, they have a lot of different brands of beers, many Belgian ones too, that goes without say. Lise’s best friend Agi came down from Dublin for the weekend to visit us and not miss out our crashing party. Saturday was filled with preparations such as buying drinks and decoration, cleaning the house and finding a way to play our music. People were invited for eight-nine, and by ten the living room was quite full already. Some time after that the front door was occupied as well by smoking and talking people and everyone was in a great mood. Quite some dancing was going on as well, especially I have to go crazy on ‘My Doorbell’ by The White Stripes. Since it was actually the mutual birthday party of Lasse and me, there was actually a birthday cake. We only realised that after Lasse himself had gone to bed already. No harm done, thought Lise and me, and we stumbled in his room, singing, forced him to blow out the candles and ate the cake ourselves … In any way, the last people went back home around seven in the morning and by that time I had crashed into the couch myself. Christian (Danish) had been as kind as to put me into my bed, and when I woke up there the next morning, we found much people sleeping around in our house haha.. After sending them back home, Lise and me walked Agi to the busstop to wave her goodbye again and had a sandwich in town. We were still a bit dizzy, but we always have a lot of fun the day after partying, talking about all the things that had happened the night before. With our last strengths we cleaned the house (again) and then crashed in the couches (again)…




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Prizes at National Pen and being 23 in Ireland
Mood:  celebratory
As every year, I celebrate my birthday at the 14th of October, but it has never been the case before that I was in Ireland at the time. It is always special to celebrate your birthday abroad and so it was this time. I thought the day would pass quite unnoticed but my wonderful flatmates did not forget about it and even got me presents!! I got a nice flower from Tim and some nice things to eat and Lasse and Lise got me a yoga set with among others a facial massage!! Very interesting hehe.. When people at work found out it was my birthday, they all came to give me pens and other desk articles, very thoughtful of them :-)
Because at National Pen, as in any other company probably, money making is the main concern of our supervisors, prizes are handed out every day to the ones who upsell the most. There is an upsell list in everybody’s desktop so you can cheque if you are doing well. Among the prizes are boxes of chocolate, cinema tickets and tesco vouchers. So it happened that I got the highest number of upsells and the highest value as well on my birthday and got a bottle of red and a bottle of white wine! Not bad for a birthday present. We emptied them during a game of UNO at our place.
Very nice was that my parents came over to Ireland for a day to celebrate my birthday with me and to come and take a look at where I live and what I do and stuff. They came friday evening and it was already half past nine by the time we actually met each other. We took a taxi to the city centre and went to the only nice restaurant I know over here: Century nr 32. We had an excellent dinner and chatted the night away trying not to forget anything that had happened so far. The waiter from the restaurant remembered me from the last time I went there with Wiebke and Tim and he actually invited himself to my birthday party the next week hehe. He also got me a cake so the birthday was complete! It was past midnight when we got back to Bay Estate and I could show my parents the house and introduce them to my flatmates.



The next day we took the train to Dublin and enjoyed the rest of our time there together. I got a green Ireland T-shirt and some other nice things, we encountered shouting Christians again and had a Guinness! It was another lovely Saturday and Saint Patrick’s cathedral was blinking in the sunlight. The day was over way too soon and before I knew it I was running to catch my train back to rocking Dundalk without being able to properly say goodbye to my parents. Anyway, I am very happy that I could show them I am doing okay over here and everybody got home well in the end so I guess that is the main thing :-)

Christians in Drogheda and football in the pub
Mood:  energetic
The first week of work was concluded by the first house party we experienced here in Dundalk. Most of the other verifying agents as we are as well have been here for about a month and know each other quite well now. It was easy to integrate into the group though and we helped Kryszof (a Polish/Swedish guy) celebrate his birthday together with French, Dutch, German, Danish and other colleagues. At the party, Mehdi (French), Thom and me agreed to go to Drogheda the next day, which is in between Dublin and Dundalk. So we met up the at the bus stop the next day, together with Aurelie and Chrystelle, two French girls. For a change, it was a really nice and sunny day and, with the party still in our clothes, we decided to go for a coffee and hit the cathedral afterwards. Arriving there, we found a troop of people singing and dancing in front of it. They had banners with “Saint Oliver pray for us” and shouted “Halleluja praise the Lord” every once in a while so we figured it was the Christian Society at work. Reminded me of the Christian students back in Newcastle, inviting you for a free BBQ at the beach and then throw it at you when you least expect it: “Are you a believer?” We pulled Mehdi, who was already dancing with them, away from the Christians and did some more sight seeing in the city. With its remains of old fortifications, watch tower and river running through the town, we had to conclude that Dundalk is not as nice and lively, but we had to get back there anyway. On the way back the guys found it funny to take pictures of us sleeping on the bus and we decided to conclude the day with pizza and beer at Thom and Mehdi’s place. It ended up a private party with music, dancing and beer cap competions, which Chrystelle won.
The next week was full of waking up at seven, fitness, football and of course, pens. Tim and I found out that it is not a cliche that the Dutch people are close-fisted.. it is much harder to upsell pens to them then to the Belgian customers. Of course our Dutch colleagues Romano and Thom’s explanation is that the Belgians do not think and just say yes to whatever you suggest to them. Hehe, the quarrel between neighbouring countries is really alive.
For the first time in my life, I signed up with a fitness centre, the JJB. I have never liked these weight lifting machines or rowing devices and what have you, but when I heared there is a pool and a Jacuzzi up there as well, I thought might just give it a chance. Nearly everyone from National Pen joined so we actually see these people 24/7! By now, I have become a real fan of the aerobics classes (abs and burns for example) and have convinced my flatmate Lise to join as well. One has to do something to compensate the evenings of Guinness in the pubs.. One night we even went to watch football over there together with the native Irish. Unfortunately, they played nil-nil against Switserland so there was no national celebration afterwards but a nice experience anyway. And we all got a green and white striped football cap!!

Freezing Irish wind and moving in with Danes
Mood:  special
Hi folks!

When I now read my first post, applying for the job and getting ready to go all seems so far away already. We have been in Dundalk for over a week now and so much has happened. It was a lot to take in at once: training at work with a lot to remember, looking for accommodation, buying all the necessary stuff and finding our way around the city. I should emphasize that the B&B National Pen put us in was awesome!: a lovely Irish family (Ann, Antony and little Mark) made us fantastic breakfast each morning (yes, with scrambled eggs, bacon and sausages if we wanted to!) and put us in the loveliest rooms.
There is where we met Lasse and Lise, Danish people who also came to Dundalk to work for National Pen. After flicking through 'The Argus' and 'The Dundalk Democrat', we found a house for four or five people without too much trouble. The man wanted to show us the house immediately and here we are now.. at the moment of writing, Lise is vacuum cleaning the house. And no, I shouldn??t feel guilty because I scrobbed the kitchen yesterday! The house is very nice and spacious, but the former tenants, a whole bunch of Letvians, did not mind living in a pig??s stall without any hot water (:-o)?K So we didn't exactly got bored yesterday when we moved in. But now that we got the heating fixed, the boiler and nearly all the light bulbs, cleaned the rooms and cooked our first meal here, it is starting to feel like home :) Now if we could only get the washing machine working it would be perfect...
Today was our first working day, like 'for real'. Whereas the training got quite boring last week, time flew by now. The Dutch market is very busy and there is only four people to deal with it. I was a bit nervous when I called my first customer, but once I got the hang of it, it was kind of fun hehe. Only once I accidentally dialled a wrong number and had a paranoid old lady at the other end of the line: 'No, I will not tell you my phone number!! The other people sitting around me seem to be nice. On my left hand side is Wiebke, German and on my right hand side is Thom, Dutch. There is people from all over Europe gathered in one big office, so that's an interesting lot. I hope I??ll get to know many of them.
Then finally I should not forget to tell you that we had our first night out in Dundalk too! Last friday, we went to Mr. Ridleys, quite a fancy nightclub in Park street. The 12 euro entrance fee surprised us but the music was good and the drinks were cheap. So after a few guinesses, I tried to socialize with some locals, which I succeeded in up to some point, but can??t say I made any friends really. In a small city like this people thing you are some kind of alien when you are not Irish.. But I won't give up until I have some redheaded trueborn Irish friends!
But it should be said, Dundalk is cosy and quite lively too. Second-hand shops are present in town, so that is enough for me to like it, haha. I've become a member of the library, Tim and me have taken the heritage trail and we have discovered one or two places where they serve something else then fast food. People are really friendly here as well, I think, especially in shops. If you buy anything, even if it??s just a bottle of water, they tell you ??you are grand and thanks a million??. Then I just answer 'Ok, see yous later' !