Today, October 19th 2025 (festivity of Saint Peter of Alcántara, patron saint of Extremadura, my homeland), marks exactly twenty years since I relocated to Ireland, happy anniversary!

By way of celebration, I went for a lovely walk around Harmonstown, the area where Fredi and I lived for the first three months of our Irish adventure, before moving to Dublin´s city centre (thanks, Rafa and Hernán, for welcoming us into your house back then; staying with you made the adaptation period easier and much more fun).

(Picture of the DART station in Harmonstown. The DART is the short-distance train system in Dublin city and surrounding areas, and back then, it was our primary means of transportation, together with the bus, which, if I recall correctly, was route 42B.)

Now it´s when I would typically say, "OMG, time flies", "it seems like yesterday", "if someone had told me I would end up staying for twenty years", etc., etc., etc. And yes, they´re all clichés, but they´re also true in this case. On the one hand, I get the feeling that it all happened in a heartbeat (as Carlos Gardel used to sing, "twenty years is nothing").

On the other hand, I look back and realise how much progress I´ve made, how much I´ve matured and changed. And to be honest, I feel proud. Proud of what I´ve achieved so far in different aspects of my life, and most of all, proud of the three little ladies who didn´t exist back then and are now the three people I love most in this world.

Sometimes it´s good to spend a bit of time looking back, as we said in this post on the trunk of memories, to be able to appreciate the path that brought us here, and continue to walk with renewed energy.

So I am thankful, and I raise my glass for these twenty years in Ireland, plus all the years still to come! Sláinte.