IRELAND - DUBLIN

From Switzerland I am used to being punctual. For lectures, you show up a little earlier because the lecture starts at the specified time. I did the same here, but only the other exchange students were here. Not even the lecturers were there. Basically, if the lecture starts at 9 a.m., you don't have to be there before then. In the meantime, I've gotten used to it and enjoy the freedom of not always having to stick to the time.

But there are still times when the lecture times confuse me. Recently, I received an email from the lecturer saying to meet at 9:00 for the start of the lecture at 9:30. When I arrived at 9:15, completely stressed out thinking that I’m late, I was the only one in the lecture hall. When I decided to get a coffee to pass the time, I met the lecturer on the way out. He was astonished and said: "You are early.” I was a bit confused, but thought I had misremembered his email. In the café I met the other exchange students who were already there at 9 am. So I wasn't the only one who had misinterpreted the email. Although we should all know by now that you don't have to be there on time.

It can be said that generally no one shows up before the specified time and if the lecturers are then finally a few minutes late, they wait for the rest of the students because no one is there yet. At the end of the lesson, there is usually too little time for the lecture or tutorial. Then they always say we couldn't start yet because no one was there and I always think to myself that this is exactly the problem. If the lecturers started their lectures on time, the students would be there too. But this way you get used to always being a little late and I have to admit that by now I've also reached the point where I'm always a little "late". At home, I have to learn to stick to the schedule again.

A funny time-related misunderstanding happened to me the other day. “Half ten" is not the same as "halb zehn" (9:30) in German, but is "halb elf" (10:30). In the spoken language they just skip the “past” and “half past ten” becomes “half ten”. Not knowing that, I replied to the message that our group meeting was at "half ten": "Isn't it at 10.30?" and got back "That's the same", I think my group briefly doubted my knowledge of time. I still have to think whenever someone tells me the time with half x.

The Irish are generally not very punctual, at least the buses are always late aswell. If they are 5 minutes late, they are on time. If you want to go somewhere, you have to leave very early, because you never know when and if a bus will leave. Maybe the same bus line comes three times within 3 minutes and maybe no bus comes for 20 minutes or maybe the bus even comes on time but is so full that it doesn't let you get on.

The only thing that runs on time are the trains, and people are at the station or on the train a good 30 minutes beforehand, because you don't want to miss the train and getting to the station with these buses forces you to calculate in some extra time.

You just have to take your time and the Irish seem to have it. There is no such thing as looking at your watch and being annoyed that the bus should have left 5 minutes ago. Maybe also because you don't know exactly when the bus is supposed to arrive. Because the bus leaves when it leaves. So far I haven't found a display/app that reliably tells me when the next bus is leaving. Even the display at the bus stop keeps changing from the bus will arrive in 15 minutes to the bus will arrive in 1 minute. But in the end, even this display is often wrong.

Once you have made it onto a bus, however, you still need a lot of nerve. Because in city traffic, the bus is clearly standing more than it is moving. But the nice thing here is that people here have time, or at least they don't get upset that buses take so long here. The Irish also very often just start chatting to you, which makes your bus rides definitely feel shorter. Once the bus I was on was already quite late, but the bus driver still stopped in the middle of the intersection and got out to help a blind man cross the street. Things like that are not rare here, which I think is very nice.