Author: Heli

I work at Haapsalu Vocational Education and Training Centre as a Coordinator of External Relations. I am managing international projects and writing blogs about them. I like my work with young people because they make me learn new things all the time. Meanwhile, I like travelling and spend a lot of time in Ireland because of my personal life :)

Baking bread in Dublin

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All the Estonians say that the thing they miss more than anything else when they are abroad is rye bread. Actually, I have to admit that I don’t miss rye bread so much because usually, I eat more wholemeal bread at home and so it’s funny that one of the first things that we did together, this time, was baking a rye bread 🙂

That’s because there was a bread baking machine which had been never used and it was just exciting to try it and the smell of the freshly baked rye bread is one of the best things that I know. But I have to say that it tasted as good as it smelled and it was so easy to do it with this machine. We just had to put all the ingredients into the machine and that was it – nothing else because everything was done by the machine and we just had to wait when it all got ready. The next time we are going to try the wholemeal bread and then we can make up our minds which of these was these best one.

Bye bye Haapsalu, Hello Dublin :)

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IMG_3033It has been nice here, what else do you expect from a summer resort town at the seaside. We have got just these three summer months and sometimes the weather is not on our side, but this year it has been and it’s possible to feel the peaceful spirit of this little town which is so quiet and abandoned during the winter time. All the cafés are open and the tables are set outside, each one of them is offering tasty cakes, so it is hard to choose the one you really want because they are so filling and melting in your mouth and unfortunately you are not able to eat more than one at a time. The promenade is beautiful as always and people are just wandering around without any reason and finding their way on the terraces of the cafés. And the most important – the sun is shining and it’s warm and you can wear your summer clothes at last.

IMG_3037I really hope that it will stay the same until August when we are coming back and we will be able to enjoy the warm and dark August nights. I am a bit afraid that I will be missing my new bicycle because I have had it just for some days and it looks so very summer resort like and fits here so well. But at the same time, I am longing for Dublin and Ireland and my month ahead and all the nice plans which all I even don’t know at the moment. That’s the best part every time – just follow your inner feeling and it comes out the best. Actually, I like to have two homes, the better thing could only be to have two summers as well.

In the heart of the city where the shops are so pretty

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Just trying to get into the right mood 🙂 Last summer I had a lot of time to walk around on my own and when the shortest ways to almost everywhere go through the shopping streets, and for cut offs you must even go through the shopping centres, I started to look at the shops a bit differently and found that they have a lot to tell. When I saw a bus driving by with the phrase from Molly Mallone turned into a shopping commercial, I couldn’t help, but just took a day and captured them with my camera. And here they are – the shops of Dublin, my favourite one is still Chapters, although I like lots of them pretty much.

What can you find in the streets of Dublin

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During my walks in the streets of Dublin, I have found and captured different things, moments and people. When you come from a small place where the streets are mostly quiet and the only time to watch people around you is during the big summer events, it’s always interesting for me to walk around, stop here and there and find something new.

I have found some old bikes, decorated bikes and even traffic signs for bikes, and I have to say that Dublin is not the bike-friendliest place on the earth 🙂 and old carriages.

I have seen lots of people performing in the streets, some of them are real,

and some of them are not so real, but look quite similar 🙂

And sometimes you can find me sitting somewhere in the streets of Dublin 🙂

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A cheerful look makes a dish a feast.

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That’s so true, that I couldn’t help myself to write it down here. It could be understood in two ways, at least for me it gives two gorgeous meanings. It’s really nice to have your dish to look cheerful, or colourful or full of life and art, but it’s always nice to get a cheerful or friendly look or a look that’s full of love when you share your dish with your loved one and that makes it always a real feast for me.

Here I would like to keep some of our little feasts, just to have them in order to remind me some wonderful moments that we have shared 🙂

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All the roads from London take you to Dublin

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Again I have a work trip to London and of course, I make up a plan, that I will escape to Dublin for the weekend. The flight companies are on my side and they offer especially cheap tickets for these days, so there’s nothing to hold me back.

The main topic for this visit is Eurovision, which is not too happy to the both of us because both, Estonia and Ireland, didn’t make it to the finals, but we don’t let it spoil our mood and we keep watching all the semifinals and the final concert on Saturday. And even the victory of Ukraine doesn’t ruin it, in spite that we are supporting Australia because we just want to know what will happen if Australia will win. Ok, the song and the singer were good too. But this year we are not going to get to know it and we don’t care, the best thing is that we could spend some days together.

We also went to see the exhibition of 10 drawings of Leonardo da Vinci, which is a choice from the Royal Collection and was shown in Dublin Art Museum. So after all these museums in London, and there were actually three of them – the Natural History Museum, the London Museum, and the Portrait Museum, I have also seen the original drawings of Leonardo da Vinci. Well done 🙂

And London was blooming 🙂 in Dublin it was much colder.

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Happy New Year

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Now it’s 2016 already, sounds good 🙂 When you sum all the numbers together it will be 9, and 9 is my life number, so it must be a good year for me.

As a year before there was a New Year Parade and it was written on the Internet that there was supposed to be also a Luminosity Show, but as it came out, we were looking for it at a wrong place. This time, it wasn’t on the Trinty College wall, but on some other building near St Stefan’s Green and we found it out when it was over already.

The parade was great, maybe a bit smaller that last year, and there were not so many different vehicles, bicycles, and costumes, but quite enough to enjoy it. The weather was really cold and when the parade over I was really frozen, the first time I felt so frozen in Dublin. So the only way to get some warmth is to go home and make some Irish coffee and start to wait for the new year.

Trying the new selfie-stick
New Year Dinner

The Force Awakens

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Maybe I was the last one on the Earth who hadn’t seen Star Wars, but now I’m not any more 🙂 As the new Star Wars came out and everyone was os excited about that, I also started to be excited and as much as I thought I really felt that I have a big blank in my education. So, to get me started, we did a Star Wars marathon, three movies altogether, that was my limit for one day. All the other details I got by asking questions and listening to reciting the story. After all these preparations, I felt really ready to go to the cinema to watch the new Star Wars movie and I have to say that I liked it a lot. And to be honest, I had seen one of them somewhere in the past, but I just didn’t remember anything about it. I was just thinking that these are not my type of movies, and somehow I was right too, but in some strange way, I enjoyed them, like I seem to enjoy most of the fantasy things – books and movies.

Christmas Carols

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This Boys’ Choir, with its enthusiastic conductor, singing in front of the GPO was really nice and made you feel like Christmas. They were singing all well-known Christmas songs and you couldn’t help starting to sing together with them. The choir was from one of the local Boy’s Schools nearby and the age of the boys was between 13-18, I guess. They seemed to enjoy it a lot and the the girls, who probably were from Girs’ School and who happened to pass, enjoyed it a lot too.