So, yeah, Internet is way more common here than I anticipated, and the hostel I'm in only charges one Euro a day for Internet use. So, time to use this collective blog, eh?
Day 1:
I'll be blunt. Day 1 fucking sucked. I got into London Heathrow airport and dealt with the most rude, intolerable bitch of an immigration officer there is. The Bitch chewed me out for not having written proof of my bank account balance being enough to pay what I owe to my host university (which... I don't owe for another 3 weeks), then chewed me out for choosing to come a month early, then had the gaul to say I put HER in a bad position by my poor preparation. On hindsight? Should have lied and said I was just going to be there for a few days and went on my way, but still. It put me in a foul mood until I left the country, mostly because it flared up all my pathetic little neuroses sending me into a loop of "oh god can I afford this oh shit I shouldn't have come this early oh god oh god I fucked up", so you can guess how my attitude towards the rest of London was.
ANYWAY, then I found out that, contrary to what I had thought, London is not a country covered in the EU Railpass, so I had to drop the equivalent of $400 on a plane ticket from Stansted Airport to Dublin. Wish I had known this beforehand, since it would have saved me some dough. To wit, the next plane ticket I could buy was (I thought) for the next day. So, I went to the airport (a 18£ train ticket later...) and slept the night. What a pain.
I probably should have taken the Chunnel down to France and just started my journey there, but after doing some research that actually would have cost me MORE money. Holy fuckin' shit.
(Day 2) So, the next day I'm biding my time at the airport, trying to shut up the voices in my head telling me this was all a mistake while I wait for the queue to open for my flight out. I go through all that only to find out that I had misclicked and bought the ticket for... the next fuckin' day.
Pissed out of my mind, I buy a train ticket back into London and went sightseeing. I'm really glad I did that, since it gave me time to clear my head. Saw some statues, went to Hyde Park, Buckingham Palace, St. James' Park, and a bunch of other places. I tried to do as much free stuff as I could but in the end still spent too much damn money in London. Went back to the airport, slept, woke up at 4AM and spent the next few hours until my flight out worrying about money. I got into Dublin, wandered around until I found a hostel and slept for 12 hours.
The rest of the trip has been much better, and those neurotic, worthless voices about money have stopped screaming at me. For the past 3 days I've wandered around the city a bit, went to Trinity College (Ohmigod the place where Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde were educated), wandered down to St. Stephen's Green, through some other Parks (including one with a bitchin' statue of Wilde), gone to a few writers' museums, got my history on at the Kilmainham Jail and other "heritage" museums, and gone out drinking every night in bars with live music. It seems like every bar, every night, has either a garage band or some guy with a guitar playing Irish drinking songs or something like that. It's been awesome, especially since Guiness, a delicious-assed beer if there ever was one, is the cheapest beer here. This lead to drunkenness, and drunken dancing, neither of which are bad in my book.
I think I've gotten all I can out of Dublin, now, so I'm going to head down to Cork tomorrow, then down to France. Here's hoping 2 years of High School French 5 years ago will do me some good.
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In response to what others have posted:
Trance: Whatever you're going through, it's not the end of the world. We all have that teenage angst about something that makes us lose our composure, but it'll pass and things do get better. I, too, used to have violent fantasies about killing the people who caused me discomfort, and I can tell you this from experience: crying about it on the internet does no damn good. It may suck, but you have to deal with it until it passes--the rest of your life won't be like this.
Otter: You and I? We really need to meet up for real at some point. I get the feeling we'd get along fuckin' famously.
CT: Hahahahahaha I laugh at your misfortune. But seriously, I hope your sister is O.K.
Everyone else: Ballsack.
