Rorys Blog

Brian….a man with thoughts (like mine) that are never far from the pub (that’s about the only place our thoughts converge, I’d be getting worried if I thought about the same things as Brian).  For you a small description of the nightlife in Aachen.

Oddly enough it’s not hugely different from Ireland in that yes they have pubs and clubs here.  Here however they tend to stay open a lot longer than in Ireland, some places open till about 6 I must get the name of one off Hardy (that’s the poor German we managed to turn into a raging alcoholic while he was in Ireland ).

I’ve been out the last 2 weekends with a mixture of Germans and Irish and we’ve gone to a few different places.  There’s 2 Irish bars in the city one is only an Irish bar in name though because it’s usually full of Germans.  The other place is run by a hippy and it’s the only place you can watch Rugby or Champions League games around so if you like your football you gotta go there.  Haven’t been back since the CL semi final but I probably should go back to see if yer man has changed his jumper.

Hit some of the other places too like Die Kiste (aka the place where some fella tried to molest Ronan and get him to go clubbing) which is a metaller pub kind’ve like the downstairs part of Bruxelles but a lot smaller on the bright side the beer in there is good and it’s only €2 a glass on Thursday nights.   I suppose I’d better get this bit out of the way as well, not far from here is Antoniusstrasse can’t remember what the lads called it but it translates into something like whore lane, yes ladys and gentlemen you guessed it it’s the red light district (district is overstating things a bit given that it is just a lane really but worth a walk through all the same).

Aside from that Pontstrasse is the main street for boozing and late opening places…..you can also pick up a big dirty kebab if you want as you stumble home, the good news is that it’s only about 10 minutes from my gaf.  The 2 Irish pubs are also only about 5-10 mins away too.  There’s also a club called B9 somewhere in the city, one of the lads from Dublin who was here for a few months described it like this.

Martin: “It’s full of young ones, very young”.

Me: “14 year old young or something slightly less illegal?”.

Martin: “You’d probably want to ask for ID before you did anything”.

So other than the night life what else has been happen you might ask.  At work I’ve been moved onto something different so I’m no longer doing TR ramp down stuff, from next week I’ll be working on a feature called AASRG (Automatic Active Standby Geographic Redundancy) for those of you who care which is probably none of you

I was supposed to be going to Copenhagen this weekend but I left it a bit late to get flights so I’m gonna have to rearrange that one.  So I’m going to figure out something else to do this weekend, perhaps go to one of the museums around Aachen.  There’s also a vague plan to go paint balling at some stage in the next while which should be fun.

Terry were you disappointed with my last post?  I’ve been here just over a week what did you expect?

Work is starting to pick up anyway and I’ve started running test cases to get this TR clean up job moving.  I’m working with a fella called Sameeran and sitting in an office with a few other people working on the High Load/Overload area of the project so most of the TRs are related to this area.  So what’s doing for the rest of the week then I hear you ask….well work wise I’ve got a software upgrade to do tomorrow and then hopefully get through a few more test cases this week depending on how well the upgrade goes and how much time I get on the hardware.  I need to get a new ID card at work as well I got one then some one went and changed the card reader at the front door so I’m back to using the visitors entrace for the moment.

Other than that I need to go get myself registered with the local authorities tomorrow because I’m staying here for longer than 3 months so myself and another Irish fella are off to get that done in the morning.  Haven’t made any plans for the weekend yet…..I intended on going out and taking some photos on Saturday/Sunday but that didn’t happen out of laziness so I think I’ll go for it this weekend instead.  It wasn’t a total write off as I did manage to get to the train station and get myself a monthly bus ticket which is handy….no more making sure I have the right change before I get the bus.

I’m off to Copenhagen on the 21st because it’s a bank holiday weekend here so I’m going to fly up there and meet a friend from work who’s in Stockholm….apparently I should be prepared for a lot of walking.  I’ve also got tickets booked for a Nine Inch Nails concert in Dusseldorf on the 26th of June.  I need to find someone to go with me too….any volunteers?

That’s about all I can think of at the moment….for my dear mother and her love of food, there’s a nice little Spanish restraunt around the corner from my gaf so I’ve been there twice.  Going to try out a few more places next week maybe there’s a lot of them dotted around the market area which is just up the street from my apartment.

I haven’t been arsed writing much lately, anyway I’m here in Aachen….gonna skip a description of day 1 because walk around -> sleep -> eat -> pint -> sleep about covers it.

Aachen is a nice city so far and I’m living pretty much smack bang in the middle of the city….lots of architecture to look at and plenty of shops and pubs around the only one I’ve been in so far is the Irish bar (cliched I know).  There’s also a distinct lack of fast food restraunts around the place which is good because I hate looking at the poxy things on O’Connell Street.  I’m taking the bus to work and it only takes about 15 minutes which is nice and most importantly they’re actually on time (screw you Dublin bus).

My apartment is decent enough too….3rd floor of the building there’s no lift so I’m going to get plenty of exercise walking up all those stairs.  The only things that annoy me about it are the kind’ve shite web access and the low hanging lights with  nice heavy shades that I’ve walked into a few times.

The plan for the weekend is shopping on Saturday…..food and a jacket apparently it’s normally pretty sunny here but it lashed rain today on the way home.  Don’t have much food in the apartment aside from breakfast cereal and I’m not really arsed shopping until Saturday so it’ll be poxy Ericsson food till then.  That’s about it for the moment……more to follow when I work up the motivation to write something.