I soon realized that was ridiculous because lots of my friends here either knew of them and wanted to go as well, or just wanted to go for the sake fo going to a concert and Dublin. So I planned most everything from the tickets to the hostel and come Friday, we were on our merry way. There were 8 of us total, but we took different buses to Dublin since some people actually had class, since you know, that can unfortunately happen on Fridays.
Maggie and I headed up at the crack of dawn on the 8 o'clock bus and since it takes about 4 hours, we got there just in time to hunt down a place for lunch. I had 7 euro to my name so it was lucky we found a place with a lunch special for 7 euro.
So with full stomachs, and empty wallets in my case, we roamed about Dublin. Since I had been there already, we basically did whatever Maggie wanted to do and I added my two cents every now and then. I was actually surprised by how much I remembered from the walking tour we had when I was there with API.
Eventually we wore ourselves down, and made our way to check into the hostel before we had to meet the other part of our group. Now, I knew when booking online, that the hostel had separate dorms for males and females, which is very common in hostels and I knew it wouldn't be a problem for the two guys in our groups. When I was checking in, the guy at reception saw that we were a group of 8, so he offered for us to have an 8 person room all to ourselves and then wouldn't need to split. Thanking him, I accepted and Maggie and I went up to the room with the linens for 8 people. Our hostel provided linens, but you had to make your own bed. When we got to the room, it was actually for 10 people which we didn't think anything of. Maybe the guy at reception had a slip of mind.
We also blew off the fact that 4 of the beds had linens on them already. We didn't really know what to think of it so we did just that, didn't think about it. There was nothing else to indicate that someone else had been there or was going to stay there that night, especially considering we were told we had the room to ourselves.
Forgetting all about that, Maggie and I went on our merry way to meet up with the other who had arrived. We walked around for a bit and decided to get an early dinner at a famous fish and chips place:
At this point we needed to head back to the hostel so that the people who had just arrived could drop off their stuff and so that we could get ready for the concert. As seen in the picture before, it's a "thing" to have tribal-ish face paint at this concert, so being the prepared fans that we were, we arrived as the only ones with our faces painted. Eventually, some guy was walking around painting other people's faces, but he was very impressed that we came so prepared.
The concert itself was AWESOME and I will definitely go to more concerts if they're in the area when I get back to the states. It was also a really small venue and since they weren't as well known, it wasn't super crowded either.
We even got pictures with them afterwards as we were leaving!
I apologize in advance for how long this post will be, but here's where our hostel experience gets, hmmm, "interesting". I didn't hear anyone in our group come home since I was so tired and I expect they were trying to be courteous. What did wake me up were the 4 french girls who burst into the room talking loudly at about 5:30 in the morning. They stomped about the room, turned on the light, spoke/argued loudly in french for a minute or two, and then left. They woke most of us up, so now we just kind of stared confusedly at each other while still half-asleep and wondering what on earth had just happened. Eventually, we turned out the light that they had so courteously, left on for us, and tried to go back to sleep.
Not 5 minutes later, they were back, and they were louder, and they were angrier. They go up to the 4 beds they said they had reserved (only 3 had people in them) and started screaming at whoever was in it. Like, borderline pop-a-vein-in-your-forehead screaming. Now, at this point we're all still half-asleep, but you tend to wake up reeeeal fast when someone is standing ominously over your bed yelling at you to get out. They keep going on and on even though the bottom bunks are now vacated by a surprised Maggie and Ally. "Get out of my bed!" "I made this bed! It's mine!" "I didn't see YOU put the linens on the bed! OUT!" "I need to sleep! You're in MY bed! Up!"
I have never been more thankful for my experiences at summer camp. Specifically, the experience of being rudely woken up in the middle of the night to deal with other peoples' problems. I immediately spring into camp counselor mode and make sure no one is going to hit someone else because it could've easily escalated into something of that sort. I also stop anyone from undoing a bed and we all try to get the French girls to lower their voice to a more reasonable volume than banshee.
I see that they had brought someone from reception with them to prove that "these people STOLE our beds!" Completely disregarding the fact that all 8 people happen to have keys to the room and that there weren't physically enough beds in the room for everyone.
I feel bad for the guy though since he wasn't the one to check me in and obviously hadn't checked the french girls in either. He also didn't speak the best English, but he didn't need any language to tell that they were angry and we were confused.
Eventually both groups produced the slip of paper indicating what beds we were assigned and lo and behold, both said the same room, for the same night, and our bed numbers overlapped. What I thought was weird was that they were only overlapping by 2 beds so there should've been two spots open instead of just one. It was at that point in the night that the poor guy left to reception to try and sort things out. Realizing long ago that this was not the "8-person room we could have to ourselves", my slow-to-wake-up brain realized there were indeed 9 people sleeping in beds even though we were only a group of 8.
Yes, there was another random person in our room that we all had been too asleep to notice before now. I don't even remember if she was Irish, Australian, American, or something else, but she did thankfully speak English and she explained her story to us. She had checked in after Maggie and I had fallen asleep, came up to the room, and found someone's (Ally's) stuff all over the bed she was assigned. Realizing there must have been a mistake, she went to reception to tell them, but they just reassured her that it was her bed, so she came back, moved Ally's stuff to the floor, and went to bed.
Then it comes out that when the others in our group came back they had actually realized there was a stranger in Ally's bed. Being too tired to really care, Ally took one of the other open beds, thus why she was in one of the French girls' beds. Speaking of which, they all just sat there on Maggie's bed the whole time brooding and talking to each other in French not really bothering to join in on the conversation.
I decide to talk to them directly and they tell me "we really just want to go to bed since we have a flight to catch at 10 in the morning". I let that one slide and didn't ask why they were clearly out partying until 5:30 in the morning if they had a flight to catch at 10 and why they had even bother with a hostel if they were only going to get 1, maybe 2 hours of sleep. They also were grumbling about boys being allowed in the room when their friends who were boys hadn't been. That I was able to blow off completely on reception and I think it finally started to sink in to them that we were just as clueless as they were (only much less angry). One of them also finally apologized for waking us and said she finally realized it wasn't our fault after all.
Thankfully, I was able to hold back my colorful response to that last bit until the guy from reception came back. I mainly wanted to know if we were the ones that had to move, or if the french girls would be moving because honestly, all everyone wanted was to just go to sleep. He hands me 5 sets of linens (not 4) and is like "4 people have to move" to which I reply, "yes, but which 4? who is going?" and he just repeats "4 of you." Realizing I wasn't going to get anywhere with him, I turn to talk to the French girls. One walks right up to me, snatches the linens out of my arms and says "We will take the new room. We asked for one when we first went back down to reception anyway." Then they all leave acting as if they are doing us a favor for taking the new room because it's such a burden.
The guy from reception seeing that there has not been a fist fight of any sorts and that everyone now has a bed, scuttled away. Don't blame him. I wouldn't have wanted to deal with our situation either. We all just stand around looking at each other again repeatedly asking "What the HELL just happened?" Eventually we were able to calm down and go back to sleep.
Honestly, it was one of the the most ridiculous experiences I've ever had. Looking back on it, it's SO incredibly ridiculous I can't help but find the whole situation extremely hilarious. Thank god life skills learned at summer camp never go out of fashion.
I woke up earlier than everyone else as I was catching the 10 o'clock bus back to Cork while everyone else had planned on staying in Dublin for the day since they didn't have much time the day before. Turns out I got company from Maggie and Ally as they too wished to return to Cork earlier. After literally running to catch the bus on time, we finally were on our way back to Cork after a fun and truly bizarre two days in Dublin.
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