When I first signed up for study abroad, I usually thought about the romanticized version of what my life would be like in Dublin. I spent my time daydreaming about old oak libraries, crumbling castles, antique bookshops, grey skies over steep cliffs, and the bright green of damp moss. Of course, when I imagined these things, the images playing in my head like an embellished movie trailer, I was still almost a year out from actually being in Ireland. When I eventually found myself at only a couple months before my trip over the pond- an excursion I covered in my previous blog post here (embed link)- the realization of what I was doing: moving to another country- another continent, for an entire academic year, started to firmly settle in. Rather than the grandiose romanticisms I had concocted, the smaller, but much more important thoughts started to surface when considering what I was walking into.
Such as:
How am I going to get around? (Walking is the most reliable form of transportation, but if you can’t make it by foot, the Luas is the way to go! Getting a ticket is a very simple process, and they have kiosks at every stop for you to purchase them. Of course, there is also their bus system, as well as the Dublin Area Rapid Transit (DART) system if you need to get around outside of Dublin and the nearby local towns- I’ll make sure to cover these in another post.)
Where do I wash my laundry and how do I pay for it? (They use an app at my student accommodations, took me a solid fifteen minutes to figure out.)
Who are my flatmates going to be? (My flatmates are actually really awesome people, and even if they weren’t, since classes started we haven’t gotten to see that much of each other anyway. So to all of the future study abroad students, don’t stress about this too much. Everything works out in the end, and there are so many opportunities to make friends in Dublin both in and out of your flat.)
How do I work an adaptor? Wait, the converter is something completely different? (When traveling abroad, make sure to look up the voltage of the place you are going to, as well as what the voltage limit is for your personal electrical items. For instance, I only have to use an adaptor for my phone and laptop, but for a straight iron, hairdryer, or kitchen appliance (e.g. wafflemaker, mixer, coffee machine), it is imperative that I use an adaptor and a converter or else the voltage will lead to damage such as melting, or burnt fuses.)
What do you mean, there’s no quarter-equivalent coin in the euro system? (They only have coins that equal 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, and 50 cents here- which come to think of it is more options than we have- along with a coin that equates to 1 euro, and another for 2 euros.)
A question that I had to answer quickly was: Where am I going to find my food? If I’m being honest, the jury’s still out on whether I’ve actually found an answer for this one yet.
Living full-time in a RV for as many years as I have has lent myself some measure of adaptability when it comes to the process of finding food in a place completely unknown to me, but I hadn’t realized just how nationalized our country was when it came to big grocery chains before I was smack dab in the middle of Dublin and only seeing what I perceived to be little convenience stores; I say ‘little’ because I have actually been to a few convenience stores in the states that are bigger than most of the grocery stores I’ve come across here.
In the US, no matter what name is plastered on the front of a grocery store, we have a general idea of what we’re getting into; we have several large chains to help us get around, and even though there is a somewhat notable difference between say, Walmart and Publix, you can still navigate the sprawling aisles, the wide open deli and bakery, the self-checkout. Even in the middle of nowhere, I’ve found one can stumble upon a somewhat familiar store like an Ingles (North Carolina), a Costco (Texas), a Jewel Osco (Illinois), a Piggly Wiggly (Tennessee), a Target (Oregon), a Kroger (California), a Food Lion (Kentucky), or a Meijer (Wisconsin) and get the gist of what the shopping experience will be like. With all of the above being usually large stores filled with anything and everything a person could be searching for- albeit maybe a few things missing or added from state to state- I had come with the very naive assumption that the grocery situation in Dublin would somewhat resemble this.
If you can’t guess from my lengthy and drawn out exposition, I was very wrong.
I had to use GoogleMaps to find my first grocery experience, which was a Tesco around seven minutes from my flat. I had a short list of items I needed to purchase; chief among these was brownie mix, eggs, and butter. My mom, and I’m sure there are some introverts out there who can relate to this, was very adamant I make a type of baked good and set it out in the common room for everyone so I can “have the chance to meet my flatmates and make a great first-impression.” Of course, despite my grumbling about the whole affair, she turned out to be completely right, but she doesn’t need to know that.
Now, the first thing you will notice upon entering a Dublin grocery is that they are tight little things. I immediately felt cramped when walking in and this wasn’t even on one their busier days. The aisles are narrow and short due to the building’s size, and for the accommodation of everyone considering the amount of space available, they do not offer shopping carts of any size. Instead, this is a breed of store dominated largely by baskets and good old kangaroo shirt-pouch handling. Or in my case, just grab a bunch of stuff and try to keep it all in your arms until you get to checkout.
If you are shopping in Dublin, and if you’re from somewhere other than the South, you probably won’t be too caught off guard when having to pay for your plastic bags. I never had to mess around with this because I always carry around my own tote, which I highly recommend to anyone trying to save a few bucks. If you’re worried about space, just know that getting your groceries in Dublin is a completely different affair than the states. Most people here visit the stores two to three times a week, myself included. This makes for lighter loads to lug back to your dorm and a medium-sized tote like mine being able to fit all my groceries with space to spare.
When shopping here for the first time, I never knew how strange it would be going into a store and not recognizing most of the brands, or not being able to relate certain products to ones I know of.
For example, anyone that’s been to Aldi’s has seen off-brand items. My dad and I used to go to one when we were based in Illinois for a while, and it was fun going down the aisles, picking products with labels we had never seen before. What’s different about that experience and my own in Dublin is that, at Aldi’s, while things were altered slightly in appearance, they were basically the same. Sometimes they were exactly the same- I’m looking at you knock-off Fruit Rounds cereal. Here, there would be products I’d never seen before, or had no basis to go off of.
That alone, added twenty minutes to my shopping experience. Me carefully inspecting each individual label and product description, while locals just shuffled around me. It was slow-going. Still, I was making progress throughout the store, at least.
Then I got to the eggs, though.
Or more accurately, I didn’t get to the eggs.
I had picked up my brownie mix, found my butter, but the eggs were nowhere in sight. I checked the dairy aisle at least six times, having to switch out my butter twice with the amount of time my search was taking. There was no store helper in sight, so I just went up and down the eight aisles at my disposal multiple times before almost calling it quits.
It was only as I was about to put the brownie mix back in the baking aisle that I had the sense to look up. There, sitting on the top shelf above all baking products were the eggs. Unrefrigerated, room temperature eggs.
Apparently, they don’t refrigerate their eggs here because they simply don’t have to due to their processing. Ireland companies, unlike American ones, do not wash off the protective outer layer of the eggs. Since this is still in place, the eggs are fine just sitting in the baking aisle. Funnily enough, both countries have these different ways of preparing eggs to thwart the same issue: bacteria contamination. I don’t know whose got it right, but so far nothing bad has happened from these eggs, so I’ll call it a tie.
Just a little parting note: I’ve only ever used the self-checkout at their groceries here, but when you do input your American card to pay, the machine will always start to call for assistance from a store clerk. Do not worry, you’ve done nothing wrong. Since our cards are not Irish, the cashiers will ask you to sign a receipt. Sometimes it’s as simple as putting down a line in ink for confirmation, other times the clerk will ask you to get out your driver’s license so they can compare signatures. Something I was so not expecting when I did my little scribble.
Hope this helps a little for anyone shopping in Dublin for the first time. Remember, if you can’t find something and you’ve been searching a while, it never hurts to look up!
The Global Gator 