by Davina S. Vaughn

Created on: February 03, 2007   Last Updated: April 30, 2007

Heres something on Dublin, Ireland.
I know, I came in the wrong season. Since I arrived in October, I nearly constantly had rain and storm and miserable people around me.
I made my decision to leave Dublin again in May - after just 3 months, I am fed up with it. It is difficult to describe, what is wrong with this European capital. But I try to give a short summary. In May, after my temporary contract ends, I will either move to a different part of Ireland (there are just a lot of job offers, that are tempting) or to a different country on the whole.

Many people found their way during the last decade to live and work here in Ireland. The European Union, the English language and some changes in tax law made this an interesting country for many international companies. These are mainly looking for multi-lingual employees for Customer Service and Call Centers (but thats just a few to name).
So, the people came and flooded this small island.
Still many Germans are to be found to cover all the jobs for German speakers (but these rather stay at home being unemployed and complain about it), while Polish people take over with fair knowledge of the language.
SO, its not about jobs and economy. Thats what you have in surplus here...
...its about not being able to cope with it.

I really think, that other parts of Ireland are still what theyve been two decades ago. A third-world European country with a lot of musical and drinking culture, poverty, hunger, bad roads and the only thing to hate being the English.

Dublin now has definitely improved on many things, but its a slow process. And I see everything here going down the drain in less than 5 years.
Now that Bulgaria and Romania joined the EU, companies will invest in those even cheaper places.
And there we are. Instead of making Ireland more attractive for the people that are here already of for more people to come, every mistake possible is made.
Rent is unbelievably high: for a 6m2 room in a shared house nice area I pay 400 (incl. gas, electricity etc.) per month. For public transport (which is crap) I pay around 100 per month. I dont start talking about the prices for groceries or clothes.
All this might not sound too bad, but I am not earning much in my Entry level job.
Another thing that bothers me (especially as a German) is that things dont work as they should... buses dont run on time or break down (it happened to me three times already!), rooms are freezing cold and cant be heated properly (which anyway costs a fortune),

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