Dublin

365 days and 2 hours after leaving Frankfurt airport I arrive back in Dublin airport. Since then life has been strange to say the least. Applying for unemployment assistance as an Irishman who was outside of Ireland for more than 2 years is the same as a Nigerian student applying to live here, so I had wonderful questions on the benefit form such as:
* Where have you been before Ireland?
* Why do you want to come to Ireland?
* How long do you want to stay (0-1 year, 1-2 years, 3-5 years or 5+ years, tick as appropriate)
* How do you plan on financing your stay here?
* Do you have any close relatives in Ireland (i.e. mother, father, brother, sister), give address, d.o.b. and the year they arrived in Ireland (I kid you not!)
* Do you have any other friends or relatives in Ireland?
* Where are you staying?
* How did you find this accomodation? (My sarky answer: "Phoned home")

I remained composed and answered all the questions. Now I await a means tester to find out how much money the Irish goverment wants to give me. The maximum is 130? a week which will have me living the life of Reilly.

Stay tuned for more details...

Frankfurt

16 hours after leaving Rio I land in Frankfurt airport, for about the hundredth time in my life. It beat Heathrow - 8 degrees and raining.

No ramp thing, so it is a short walk to the waiting bus. I was still dressed Rio style so I nearly froze my cahones off. Baggage collected it was down to the S-Bahn to ride into town. Seconds after sitting down it was like I had never left. Grey people looking out grey windows onto a grey sky. How can a year pass so quickly? I know people say after a 2/3/4 week holiday that it "flew by" but to say that 1 year (1.28% of my probable life expectancy) was over as if I had never gone seems exaggerated. But to be honest, completely true. Some old friends and a smidgen of alcohol eased the whole acclimatising process, but it was still extremely weird.

London

Rio had been 30 degrees and sunny. During the short stop in Sao Paulo it was 29 degrees and sunny.

Heathrow was 10 degrees and overcast.

You know you are back in Europe when a small bottle of mineral water costs twice as much as an "all-you-can-eat" steak and salad buffet in Bolivia...

Welcome home.

Rio

While standing in line at Rio airport I realised there were some familiar faces in front of me. I reckoned it was probably some people I had met in Rio, but as I got closer and my glazed eyes managed to focus I realised with a shock that it was the 3 Irish boys from Laos / Bolivia. Yep, 11 months after meeting them for the first time in Vang Vieng, where we were jumping out of trees in to a crystal clear lake, we were now in Rio airport dressed sensibly and all on our respective ways home. We had 2 hours to take off and we exchanged civilised stories. We gradually realised that something was missing and started nervously looking at each other until someone broke the silence and meekly ventured "Beer?". After 51.7 weeks on the road we weren't going to say no. So 4 beers each and a couple of unbelievable stories later an air hostess (or whatever their PC name is these days) comes into the bar and tells us that the plane is waiting. We stagger on to the 747 with the lads trying to persuade the rather good looking hostess to come home to Ireland with us all. She politely declines and a few minutes later we are accelerating down the runway leaving a year of fun, frolics and life changing experiences evaporating behind us in a jet stream.

Rio - The world's greatest city?

Did I tell you that this is one of the world´s greatest cities??
I think it has actually just soared into the top spot in the "Places I want to live" list, knocking Barcelona off the top spot and sending Sydney, Nelson and Buenos Aires further down the list. I just cruised down to the beach yesterday evening for sunset and there were thousands of people just hanging out, BBQing, drinking, volleyballing, rollerblading, surfing, bodyboarding, sleeping, snogging, caipoeiring, singing, dancing and basically just having fun. I think having a beach increases a city´s liveability index by about 100%. Add to that the background of forests, lagoons, granite peaks and islands, add a shot of the great food and amazing juices, sprinkle liberally with Rio´s Joie de Vivre and stir it all together for instant happiness.

I reckon I will be the first gringo to visit Rio and not "do the Christ" as they say, i.e. visit the Christ the Redeemer statue on top of the hill. Rio has an uncanny knack of throwing up low flying clouds from nowhere, so the statue becomes completely invisible in minutes. Today´s plan of sightseeing was nipped in the bud by an errant cumulus so I went surfing instead... Maybe tomorrow, but hey I feel like a local and as we all know, locals never do any sightseeing in their own city. Either that or it means that I have to come back someday...