Meeting the residents

Today we had our first contact with the residents of Keel, Achill Island. The plan was to interact with the Irish and to invite them to learn something about us, our plans and our different cultures. To make the locals feel welcome and to give them a �taste" of our cultures some of us prepared a buffett with food typical for the countries we are representing: fish from Sweden, sweets from Brighton, beer from Germany, pistachios from Iran and much more was waiting to be discovered. Little after 4 pm the first residents arrived and it was most interesting to talk to them and and to learn something about the island and the way people live and work here. The reception lasted for about two hours and once it was over we had established a lot of contacts and set up projects for our stay on Achill Island.

by Anne Mevenkamp

Riddles and Guiness

Most of the students were already there and when we arrived we had to catch up with some of the drinking that had already happened before our arrival. With a bit of discipline, however, we managed to reach the same level of drunken conviviality. The international group had totally colonised the pub - the only two locals beat a hasty retreat. 

Somebody asked whether we would like to solve a riddle and (thanks to the alcohol) we were very enthusiastic straight away. Tine described a strange scenario and we were only allowed to ask questions that she could answer with yes or no: 

E.g.: �Somebody is found dead on the beach with a match in his hand - what happened?"

I will not sum up all the dead ends we ended up in when we were trying to find out how anybody can die on a beach as a result of an �accident" with a match. At one point I suggested that �the dead person had been crossing the Atlantic in a propeller airplane using the matches to keep his eyes open in order not to fall asleep. Then he did fall asleep, the airplane started to to fall down and he clung to the match as he died in the crash." It was not the correct answer ;-)

I am not going to tell you the right solution here. Maybe it will help you to know that some kind of �flying device" was involved and that there were not enough parachutes for everybody? If you still find it too difficult you are allowed two pints of Guiness to stimulate your imagination ;-) or you could send an email message to the webmaster ;-)

Here are two more: 

�Somebody is found dead in a sauna with a thermos flask next to him. How did he die?"

�A stone owner puts a stone in front of the house of a house owner and has to pay money for it. Why?"

Unfortunately, my time in the pub was limited because some of us had arranged to meet back at the hostel at 9 o' clock to do some work. So Oliver, Marc and I started our sobering way back through dark streets with puddles back to the hostel. Oliver and I had a look at the hundreds of photographs which we had taken on our travel, in Dublin and in the hostel and tried to put them into categories so that we would have easier access when we need them for the web pages. During this time Marc was very kindly giving Anne a mock exam for the �Klausur" that she was going to write on Monday morning. After the test she will be allowed in the pub, too ;-)

Guiness is good for you!

by Laurence Borgmann