An Irish Adventure

The Irish Adventure

A tired and sleepy group of students met on September 19 2018 at 8:30 a.m. at Vienna airport, blocking the whole terminal for other travellers. “Who are they?”, people were thinking. The 11th-grade-students of the Laaerberg school, led by dedicated teachers and the headmistress. After a flight, which took them three hours, they entered Irish territory. The first problem they had to face was the coldness and it felt like ten jackets weren’t enough. Luckily their host-families, who picked them up in Malahide, were very lovely and offered them a warm cup of tea.

Mullach Ide (Hills of the hydes), or what the majority of people would call it, Malahide, is an idyllic village near Dublin with amazing landscapes and extremely benevolent inhabitants. Actually the teenagers were pretty surprised how polite a human being can be, as compared to people living in Vienna.

The second day started with the pleasure to run through Malahide, looking on the maps and searching for Irish College of English. The students’ coordination and map-reading-skills were challenged. Luckily all of them arrived safely and more or less punctually at school. After school they explored Malahide, which is basically just a crossroad. It seems to be a very important crossroad because it is called “The Diamond”. Their tour through Malahide started at Malahide castle, which is, by the way haunted. Just joking. Or not?... One of the many legends tell that its former occupants, the Talbot family, still walk through the halls and warm up a room by their appearance.

In the meantime, “the Diamond” is haunted by the students, who do not only become more familiar with Irish culture at school but also in their spare time. Accordingly they tried GAA-Sports, especially Hurling, which seemed to them the fastest game in the world causing fun as well as muscles ache on the following day.

On the next day the extrovert rowdies stormed Dublin and left it with a big amount of fresh knowledge and bags full of souvenirs. They visited Trinity College, and the well-known shopping streets. They also visited their old friends Daniel O’Connell and Molly Malone, and the Monument of light (the spire). A Sunday walk in Glendalough, made them feel free and they experienced an environment full of nature, which you can’t encounter in Vienna.

The following week passed by very fast because the teenagers remembered the deadline for their projects. For that reason they spent the majority of their free time in the Malahide Library.

Nevertheless the students had some time to play Laser Tag and Bowling in the evenings. Furthermore they also had the possibility to prove their feeling for rhythm and show their dancing skills at the Irish Dance evening. Fun, fun, fun - even though some feet were stepped on.

On Friday they all survived the presentations, in which they could sum up all their achievements and all their new knowledge from the past two weeks. The students were so glad, all the pressure fell off their shoulders and they could enjoy their last days in Ireland. Doing a cliff walk and visiting Dublin one more time, they captured their last impressions. Some of them also went to a Funfair nearby Malahide, while others had their evenings with their host families or at the Diamond.

With tears in their eyes and a deep pain in their breasts, but also looking forward to meeting their families again, they left Malahide on a cloudy Monday morning. It seemed like Malahide was also pretty disappointed seeing them leave. So with mixed feelings they got to the airport, waving their lovely host-families goodbye. They really had grown together during these two week; not only the students became closer friends, but also the teenagers and their host-families got on very well. All in all, they learned a lot about Ireland and Irish culture as well as they improved their language skills there. Moreover, each and everyone got closer to their hearts and souls. They felt more mature, “grand” and more educated than before. Humming the melody of the Irish song ‘’The Wild Rover’’, a tired and sleepy group of students arrived at Vienna’s airport, where their families picked them up. The Irish adventure with all different aspect, left an irreversible’ impact, for sure. Neither they nor the teachers knew whether they would come to school the following school day.

Denise & Thuy An 7d