A Night to Remember

I will preface this post by saying that the night I am about to describe is one of the most memorable evenings from my 3.5 weeks of traveling. and possibly even from my entire time so far in europe.

It was my last night in Dublin, my last night of traveling before heading home to Vienna and the start of the new semester. Melissa, my partner in crime in Dublin, left Monday afternoon, but my flight was Tuesday. I spent the afternoon walking around enjoying the sunshine and the bustle of the Irish and tourists in the beautiful city, and then went to grab a bite to eat around 6. My plan was to get some good, cheap Irish fare and then spend a few hours chilling in the Temple Bar, enjoying a final Guinness and whichever band happened to be playing.

The restaurant that the cute kid working at my hostel suggested looked great, but would leave me with possibly not enough money for a guiness (which was the most important part of the evening plan), so I found a little pub that looked good enough. I ordered Guiness beef stew with mashed potatoes and it HIT THE SPOT. And right as I was finishing, a cute German couple sat down at the table next to me.  I knew after 2 seconds that they were German, not Austrian. When the waitress came to take their order, they had a bunch of questions about the menu, and she had difficulty translating for them, so I jumped in, and we ended up talking for a long time. I gave them a list of things to see in Dublin, the boyfriend even pulled out his map for exact locations. I left the pub smiling, it had been a long time since i last spoke German.

When I arrived at the Temple Bar, a guy was singing and playing guitar. He was fantastic. I ordered what I thought would be my final Guinness of the trip, and sat down and enjoyed the music for a solid 2 hours. The people next to me were the only other ones in the pub besides myself who would sometimes sing along, and when I got up to leave after my beer was drained, they were like, what?!? you're leaving already?!?

Needless to say, I ended up taking my jacket off, pulling a stool up to their table, and before I knew it, the husband had brought me another Guinness. It was a middle-aged couple from Chicago and an Australian girl of around my age. We all got to talking, and it turned out that they had been wondering about me the whole time, since I was sitting alone but seemed to have such a good time by myself. They even thought that maybe I was the singer's girlfriend, since I would look right at him and sing. (haha)

The Australian girl was also travelling by herself and we really hit it off, and then I find out that the wife's parents are Austrian, and she did a ton of travelling. Then a few more pints appear in front of me, and sometime later the German couple from dinner show up, and we have turned into the rowdiest group in the pub. When the singer finishes his set, he exits with us clapping and shaking his hand.

The new band starts, and they are a more traditional Irish band, with guitar, violin, singers, and fluting. They play an upbeat one and I start doing some pretend Irish dancing (right up front of course, where everyone can see me), and a few songs later, they dedicate a song to me and I get french girls and Irish guys dancing with me.  It's my German friend's birthday (his girlfriend informs me) so I get the band to make an announcement for him, and there's vigourous applause.

A few songs later, a man sitting behind us goes up to the band, and they say he has an important question to ask. We find the woman he was sitting with, and he asks her if she'll marry him. The bar goes WILD, and Laura and I grab the woman and help her through the crowd to her man. They hug and the crowd isn't satisfied until we get a ton of kissing and pictures of them.

I am DYING of happiness at this point.

I left the bar sometime later, because I had a skype date to keep and my suitcase to repack before flying out the next day, but I left with my heart so full and my head spinning from an overdose of happiness.

An epic finish to an epic month of travels.