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City living
Opinion: Donegal to Dublin, what a trip!
It's been almost eight months since I left my glorious Donegal behind, packed up my life and headed to Dublin to university. Wow. Freedom! The Leaving Cert was a distant memory and Dublin’s bright lights were all I could see.
First things first, when you move into your student accommodation (also commonly referred to as ‘living in poverty’), you must make sure to instantly try and strike up a friendship with your new housemates, or else!
Well I did try, but this mid-week party scene just wasn’t where I wanted to be. Nor did I want to be woken up at 3 a.m. to hear my housemate return with 30 people, who would continue to shout and shout and shout (babble really) until about 5 a.m. Always fun. Not to mention being malnourished and attempting to clean the beer sodden floors the next day. I’m not one to criticise socialising, but when it’s two or three nights every single week, it gets to be a bit much.
Dublin also has a strange phenomenon of having no stars and an orangey tinged night sky, due to the city lights. I know this because I spend my evenings as far away from my apartment as possible, which usually means seeking refuge in the wall-to-wall windowed library.
But Dublin being Dublin, there is actually a man patrolling the library for whisperers and mobile phone users, known only as “Libro-Cop”. In UCD, I’m on the south side of the city and with the south side comes the mysterious D4s. Who are they, how do they get so orange and why do they deliberately make their hair look like they back-brushed it with a lawnmower?
Before my city living awakening, I always assumed these D4s were highly exaggerated and half made up. But, I’m afraid that’s just not the case! Strangely, one day as I was sitting in a sociology tutorial, we were discussing urban-rural divides in Ireland.
One ‘D4’ decided to explain to the class that rural people are dominated by the Catholic Church, don’t go on holidays, aren’t educated and are extremely afraid of sandwich bars. “I see them every day”, she said “standing shaking at the sandwich bar, overwhelmed by all the choice that they have, they’re just not as cultured as we are”.
I sat there in shock, pondering about the necessity to even have fifty thousand choices of breads and fillings, but knowing that I can honestly say I’ve never been afraid to approach a sandwich maker.
Well, this article was just a small round up of my Dublin experience. So for you rural, uneducated, Catholic, uncultured people I warn you to be prepared for city life and to never ever give into the allure of ugg boots.
By: DoneDub
We'd love to hear what your new student life is like in Cork, Galway, Sligo, Limerick, or any other part of Ireland! Submit your own insider's view. It could be a massive help to others!
