Avoiding Responsibility

A few people have asked me recently what life as a working holiday maker, and how difficult it is to make friends and establish yourself in a country. So rather than writing a huge blurb, I thought I would give a brief description of my night last Friday.

It all starts back in the An Ogie Dublin International Youth Hostel on Mountjoy St, Dublin 7. I moved in when I first got to Dublin, and set about getting a life. One of the great advantages of living in a hostel (at least for a couple of weeks) is that you are amongst equals - there are lots of people who have moved to the country and are looking to make friends, so it isn't difficult (if you are a sociable person anyway) to make a circle of friends. And this is precisely what happened - sitting around in the common room one evening, a German bloke (lets call him 'Fritz') asked me if I wanted to go and watch the Manchester United game that was being played that night. So off we went to the pub, had a couple of beers, a good chat, and even better, Manchester lost! :)

So a couple of weeks later Fritz decides to move to a cheaper hostel, and moves into a shared room with a guy from Trinidad (lets call him 'Ay Mun'). So Fritz, Ay Mun and I hung out lots (primarily in establishments whose primary source of income is derived from alcoholic beverages). One particular night Ay Mun met a French bloke (lets call him Pierre) who joined us at the pub to watch the football.

So Fritz decides that he's going back to Germany, ostensibly because the beer is better over there (and its true for lager) So it's just Ay Mun and Pierre and I. And then Pierre decides to up and leave back to France, ostensibly because the wine is better there (it is). So as is the way with these things, we have a going away party (and yes, it was held at a pub, suprise suprise). Whilst at this gathering, I met an Irish bloke who played football with Pierre (lets call him Paddy). Turns out we have a lot in common (he likes beer, and so do I! wow!) and we both wanted to go drinking in the eastern european bar off one of the back streets in the city centre.

And so we meet up and drink lots of russian beer (really good, but only discovered the fact that it was 8% after already finishing 4 :) and get chatting to a crazy russian dude from St Petersberg and his Moldovian girlfriend.

So there you go - its easy enough to make friends when you move to another country, you just have to be open to meeting people in ways that you normally wouldn't inside your comfort zone (having a mobile phone and a taste for beer also helps :)