Just shortly after the start of the new school year, eighteen students of class 7A got on a plane and flew to Ireland for their language trip. They spent a week in Dublin getting to know the people, the culture, and the history of Ireland. Here are their impressions and recollections of the trip:
On Monday, we met in Vienna at the airport to catch our morning flight to Dublin. Our host families picked us up from a meeting point close to our neighborhood as soon as we arrived. For the rest of our first day, we settled in at the families’ home. The next day we hopped onto a bus to Dublin City and met at our language school at Dame Court. For the following days, we would learn about Irish culture, sights in Dublin, and the population in the four hours of classes there. After school, we did an orientation tour and went to the archaeology exhibition of the National Museum. It was so interesting that we would definitely go a second time. On Wednesday we went to the famous Trinity College, looked at the renowned Book of Kells and enjoyed the immersive experience about the history of this book. Later that afternoon, we walked to the park Saint Stephen’s Green and did a nice scavenger hunt with amazing prices before heading home.
On Thursday, we started the day as usual by eating breakfast at our host families, getting ready, and making our way to the language school. After the lessons we went to a pub called Wetherspoons, ordered food and had a fun pub quiz, so we had a good time there. Afterward, we walked to the National Library for a short visit, continued on to the Oscar Wilde memorial and then ended our joined activities there which meant that we all went out for our own adventures for a bit, then took the bus home to our host families and had dinner before going to sleep.
After our classes ended on Friday, we had a longer break before going to the EPIC museum which presents the long history of the Irish population and Ireland’s struggle with emigration. After this fascinating experience in the museum, we conducted short street interviews to find out Irish words, the best pizza places, or what our interviewees would like us to know about Dublin.
The next day, we got up at around 7am on Saturday. After a good breakfast we met at our meeting point, Saint Brandon’s Catholic Church. From there, we took the bus to the popular Cliffs of Moher which took us around three hours. There, we briefly visited a museum and had time to walk around the cliffs, which had an amazing view. After that we drove by bus to Galway. There we had some time to walk around the city and grab something to eat. Then we drove back to Dublin and arrived shortly after 8pm. We ended our day with a good dinner with our host families.
On Sunday we started our day a bit later than usual, at around 11:30am. The program for our last full day was a visit by train to Howth. It is a small fishing village with a lovely cliff walk. We walked around the sea and also visited a small beach. Afterward, our group split up: one part walked back into town to eat lunch, the other started the first few kilometers of the Cliff Walk, which Howth is also very famous for. After that, we went back to the train station and went back to Dublin by train. In the evening, we packed our luggage and tried to catch some hours of sleep before our flight back to Vienna.
On Monday, we had to get up really early. Our host families drove us to our meeting point at Saint Brendan‘s Catholic Church at around 2:30am. There we met the rest of our class and took a bus to the airport. Our flight was at 7:16am and we finally arrived in Vienna at 11:05am. We took one last photo together before our own families picked us up and drove us home.
Students of 7A
Mag. Anna-Katharina Pfeifer
Katharina Schulz, BEd