Finding Somewhere to Live

Home is where the axe is!

Once your in Dublin, we'll assume that you have your first week accommodation sorted out by whichever company brought you over. After that the fun begins to try and find a place to live long term.

You have a choice of course, you could if you are lazy and have more money than sense simply keep staying in hotels and bed and breakfasts, but trust me you'll fast get sick of having no time to yourself or privacy. I spent another week split between 2 separate rooms in 2 separate houses. While the 1^st one was fine, the cheaper one staying in a house owned by 'Mim' was excellent and I was made to feel far more at home. (I'd strongly recommend it for a stay if you have a choice in fact, as its the bed B & B I'd ever stayed at in all my years traveling around.)

When looking for somewhere to stay long term chances are if your working for screen scene then they will help as much as possible to find you somewhere that both meets your budget and also that's a nice place. In the case of those who came over around a similar time as myself, we had to also contend with the fact that the students were all coming back and looking for a place to stay. So most places were gone inside of 24 hours, often far less, so you had to be fast.

Www.airbnb.com is a good place to look for places and was found by Yanko sitting just behind me right now. Now price wise your going to often need one months worth of rent as a bond and usually either 2 or 4 weeks in advance. Also some places want a year long contract so you may have to either negotiate a shorter term, or look elsewhere.

I'm paying 200 euros a week for my apartment which has 1 bedroom, a bathroom, a kitchen and a main room to myself in a self contained apartment. But you can spend as little or as much as you want really. Now for me as I'm living away from my wife and kids, to me it isn't home without them so it doesnt overly bother me. (plus I spend most of my time either at work or reading in the pub around the corner lol). On top of this I have the electric to pay as well.

Now this means either setting up an account over here, or using a one back home (which could possibly incur bank charges for transaction not in your own currency, so look that up!) Also if you do open an account you will need your passport and a utility bill such as an electric of phone bill before you can open one.

Having access to the internet is of course a priority in our online of work. While some ISP's over here do let you do a 'month by month' connection, its often easier to simply use a dongle. O2 over here seem to be the best bet at the moment. Although at the time of writing it does only give you 5 gig a month so you'll need to be careful!

Touching on mobiles I would strongly suggest picking up a local sim card as it'll be far cheaper and if you have either a second phone or a one capable of two sim cards you can also keep your old number from back home.

Now please keep in mind that this blog is my own opinion only, its not being 'funded' or influenced by anyone and you take the advice here or leave it. Hopefully the entire intention is that it will help people coming over t6o Dublin to get a feel for the place when working over here a bit faster.

My biggest advice for anyone with a family is to resist the temptation to keep loking at pics of your wife and kids every 5 mins as that's a one way ticket to driving yourself nuts. Make sure that you do have some semblance of a social life over here as you will fast get sick of things otherwise.

'All work and no play makes jack run round with an axe'.

...next time we'll cover the practical side of living in Dublin.