1. There is no water pressure in Ireland (or at least in Dublin) so when you turn on the water (or flush a toilet) you hear this very loud "Brrrruuuummmmmmm" which is the water pump turning on. When you first turn on a tap, the water comes out in a trickle and then about 10 seconds later, (after the pump turns on), you have free flowing water with pressure. This happens 74 times per day.
2. The toilets in our apartment have two buttons, one for a strong flush and one for a dainty, light flush. I prefer only to use the dainty flush.
3. As Andrea kindly explained to me:
Candy: here are Sweets
Chips: Crisps
French Fries: Chips
(and I'll keep adding to this list)
4. Eggs are not refrigerated in the grocery store. They're on a shelf, next to bread.
5. The washing machine and dryer are, one machine (this is not true everywhere and any self-respecting Irish person will tell you these machines are useless). But in our little apartment, they are one. Which means, in short, it's just a washing machine. The first week we thought we'd try it out. Well, after washing 3 small towels and attempting to dry them for 2 hours 40 minutes, we decided to take the wet towels out of the small machine and proceed to lay them out all night. (and of course they still were not dry by the next day because it's Ireland) We imagine that this drying experiment cost us somewhere in the range of 20 dollars. =)
6. The heaters are "Storage heaters". This means they wait until nighttime, when electricity is cheaper (off-peak), and then throughout the day they release the heat they stored over night. Where it stores this heat I don't quite understand but this is meant to save us money so we're fine with it.
7. Electric kettles are AWESOME! I've wasted hundreds of hours of my life waiting for water to boil on the stove when all I needed was an electric kettle! It literally takes 30 seconds to boil an entire kettle. It's insane and it excites me every single time. Now I love to make tea and coffee.
8. Oh, this is slightly unrelated to differences but just something *new* we've encountered here. The store Argos! (pronounces Ar-goess) This is a store where you look things up online (or you go into the store and look things up on computer kiosks) and then they go back into some huge warehouse and then bring it out to you! It's a small storefront (resembles a radio shack or something) but behind it is a huge warehouse containing anything and everything. TVs, laundry hangers, actual hangers, furniture, christmas trees, toys, telephones, tools, towels, high chairs, ANYTHING! They literally have a 2,000 page catalog you can take home and you just go in, give the item number and they bring it out!
9. The queue on calls with the electricity company. If you call the electricity company, Airtricity, and there's a huge long wait (say 10 minutes, which means 35) they give you the option to CALL YOU BACK when its your turn! Isn't that GENIUS?! So, it recites the phone number you called on and says "We'll call you back within 10 minutes. You are next in line"
10. At the grocery store (Tesco), in order to get a grocery cart, you have to insert a 1 EURO coin to unlock the carts. Two funny things related to this. One, for the first 4 times I went, I did not get a cart on principle because I refused to pay 1 EURO for something that should be free. So, instead, I carried 45 pounds of groceries around with me in a backpack and small basket and nearly passed out each time (This was due to wearing 4 sweaters, a coat, hat and scarf because its freezing out and, as covered previously, I didn't have a cart to put them in). And two, on the 5th time I decided I would ask an old woman who was just finishing with her cart if I could have it. What's WRONG WITH ME?! I just thought...well, she's already paid 1 EURO, and she lost it so if she's done with it, why can't I just use it?? Well here comes the mortifying part. On that trip, I decided to bite the bullet and put one Euro into the cart. Well, come to find out, once you're done with the cart, it spits your Euro back OUT! ughh... ok. so now I'm cheap, stupid annnnd tried to steal from an 82 year old Irish woman who had to walk her groceries all the way home. She must've thought I was a crazy person asking if I could have her cart (with her Euro still in it). This makes me laugh now but boy did I feel stupid...
11. All the speaking toys have Irish accents! So cute. We saw this toy in Tesco that was identical to one that Norah had at home but it had a British accent.
3 comments:
Ireland is sounding more like Canada all the time. We have low flush toilets too - half flush for the "light stuff" - full flush for the "big stuff" (lol)
We used to have a store called Consumer's Distributing which sounds like Argos. You would go in and check the catalogue, fill out an order form and bring it to the counter. The cashier would send your order to the back where some guy spent all day running around, pulling items off the shelves and sending them to the front. You would pay the cashier and walk out with your new hair dryer (or whatever else). They closed up years ago though.
Most grocery stores here have coin carts. You have to "rent" the cart for a quarter and when you were done, you got the quarter back. Some stores want a Loonie now (our $1 coin) but I figure if I have a dollar, I need it to spend in the store, not to rent the cart. There are guys in the parking lot who look for rogue carts to redeem the quarter in the cart parking place.
I hope you bring a talking toy home - I would love to hear that! Keep writing - enjoying your blog so much!
other differences: vim is cif
campbell soup is erins. im not a big chocolate eater but do u find irish choclate is sweeter??? danielle
Danielle, Thanks for the comment! I had a laugh though because I had to read it out loud to Wayne because I don't know what Vim OR Cif is. haha! He explained to me that they're cleaning products. I wonder if Vim is Candian? Definitely don't have it in the States. (We have Lysol, windex, Clorox, etc but no Vim) Anywho, thanks for the additions, I very much appreciate it. I'll have to try some chocolate and find out. =) I'll report back.
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