Suddenly – Dublin
Even though it has been a little bit more then a month since I changed my facebook location from Umag to Dublin, I still receive skype / e-mail / facebook messages such as “What? Dublin? How come?” or “Hey, U in Dublin for work? like for ever or?” every couple of days.
I did reply to some of these messages, but among so many friends and so many messages I think I still owe the answer to about 70 people. 🙂
Well, not to repeat myself few hundred times, I’ll try to put it here in the blog, and I’ll try to make it as short as possible… 🙂
Idea to leave home and go “somewhere” wasn’t new in my head. It is just a bit different than it was before. After my successful work career in Dubrovnik, and chance to get to know “multicultyeverything” companies and being around many wonderful places, the worm that requires to meet new people, new places, cities and cultures has inhabited my body and there is no way to get rid of it.
My favourites were places where English is a common language, such as London or Amsterdam, or Vienna where Serbo-Croatian is almost “native” language. 🙂 Dublin? To be honest, I never thought about Dublin or about Ireland at all. Somehow it is far enough from Croatia, and the only “connection” with Ireland are U2, Enya and Guinness 🙂
However, two years back, a very good friend of mine with similar thoughts almost overnight got recruited to Cork (Smaller IT place here in Ireland). His move announcement and often communication with him through this years tingled the worm inside and Ireland suddenly became plotted on my “to check” map.
The sequence of life events through last couple of years (flood, getting married, both of us lost jobs as we worked for the same company, loans, working from home 24/7 and those earnings were enough only to close the loans) did not allow any big planning for the future, new car, travels and the only reason why we managed to live normally is because our families helped us. Bored and stressed with every day negative information that comes from our media and life in general we decided that something must change as soon as possible.
After a couple of argues and even more constructive conversations, counting pros and cons we found a compromise (at the beginning of 06/2013) that we will go for vacation in Cork and that we will check how Ireland and Cork look like. We still did not get to the agreement that we are going to move, we did not send any CVs or contact any recruiters. We wanted to check first.
As all third world travelers, we purchased the tickets 45 days in advance and we were supposed to be in Cork in mid of July, as prices were still around 200 Euros, we purchased our tickets to Cork via London.
At the evening of 30.06. we were on the main square in Umag celebrating the Croatia joining EU. Since next morning, 01.July, till 10.July our LinkedIn account was bombed with offers from Ireland, Slovakia and Gibraltar recruitment agencies promising better future in their countries. The worm of “better life” moved once again, and we returned couple of CVs, as people asked so kindly.
Till the mid of July and the beginning of our Irish vacations we arranged one face 2 face meeting in Cork. During our stay in Cork we were invited to two more face 2 face meetings in Dublin, one for my wife and one for me, so we changed our plans for one day, and we went to see Dublin and had job interviews.
As IT jobs are really needed here in Ireland, and my wife is a heavy duty genius c++ and iOS developer, she was offered to move to Dublin after just a couple of days.
We started to count pros and cons once more, expenses and costs, feelings and needs, sunny days back home and rainy days here in Dublin, opportunities and possibilities. To leave home, or to stay home?
And yet one more time, we found compromise 🙂 We decided that we are going to give Dublin a chance 🙂
In the meantime, just 11 days after our arrival in Ireland, I was offered a job too. But, we are luckily both in IT, so this does not apply for other professions. I have to check with locals how other professions live here. 🙂
I.S.