Sampling whiskey at the Roe & Co. Distillery in Dublin: Andrew Watson ’12 (second from left) with his fiancée, Felicity Cushion, and his Moravian College roommate, Rudy Garbely ’12, and wife Carolyn Hoffman

Andrew Watson '12

Dublin, Ireland

Sometimes we follow our heart to new places. Andrew Watson followed his to Ireland.

After dating across the Atlantic for a few years, Andrew Watson ’12 and his now-fiancée, Felicity Cushion, a resident of the UK, decided it was time to live together. Ireland presented a simple solution. Cushion didn’t need a visa since the UK was part of the EU, and Watson was able to get a Working Holiday Authorization, which he later turned into a longer-term visa through his employer. The two have lived in Dublin ever since.

Watson, who earned a BS in physics and mathematics, works for Ireland’s National Institute for Bioprocessing Research and Training (NIBRT), about 20 minutes south of Dublin’s city center. NIBRT trains biologists in how to use equipment specific to the biopharmaceutical industry. The institute also offers contracted research service, and some do pure research.

“My group at NIBRT is sort of unusual in that we don’t really do any biopharma research. We’re developing software—in collaboration with Siemens Ireland—to improve the biopharma manufacturing process,” explains Watson. “Our software makes it easier to gather data from disparate databases, quickly analyze it, and present those results in an intuitive and user-friendly way. The biopharma industry is in the middle of a big push toward digitalization, and Siemens and NIBRT are trying to be at the forefront of that.

Watson finds life in Dublin as rich and engaging as his work.

“I spend about 60 percent of a typical day programming,” Watson adds. “We’re a small team, so we’re all ‘full-stack’ developers—we have to think about everything from the operating system to the database to the user interface. It’s a lot to handle, and I’ve definitely learned a lot in this position.”

Watson finds life in Dublin as rich and engaging as his work. He and Cushion live right in the heart of the city. Within a five-minute walk from their apartment are roughly 40 bars and pubs, restaurants serving all sorts of cuisines—Italian, Japanese, Greek, and more—cafés, theaters, museums, and beautiful old cathedrals. “I think Dublin has a reputation as being conservative and traditional,” says Watson, “but over the last decade or so, it has become a thriving, modern European capital city.

“I think it’s easy to reduce countries or regions or people to stereotypes if you’ve never encountered a different culture,” Watson continues. “But everywhere, people have diverse political views, cultural values, and interests. I’d like to think that Americans understand that not everyone in Ireland likes whiskey and Guinness.”

Watson with his fiancée in Galway.

At Glendalough, a glacial valley just south of Dublin

At the Teeling Distillery in Dublin

Insider Tips: Andrew Watson’s Dublin

FAVORITE BREAKFAST SPOT: Metro Café on South William Street in central Dublin. It offers great food, serves breakfast all day, and is near lots of places to shop, eat, and drink. Get there early, though, because it has limited seating and fills up quickly.

BEST PLACE TO EAT ON A BUDGET: Dublin isn’t the best city to visit if you’re on a tight budget—it’s consistently rated among the most expensive places to live in Europe. But if I had to pick the best inexpensive place to eat, it would be the Pieman Café in Temple Bar. They do traditional Irish meat pies, such as beef and Guinness or chicken, leek, and Cheddar cheese. You can get a pie, a side dish, and a craft beer for about 10 Euros ($11.75).

MUST-TRY LOCAL FOOD OR BEVERAGE: Ireland may be best known for Guinness and whiskey. Most of the whiskey production moved out of the city in the middle of the 20th century, but craft distilling is on the rise. A recent addition to Dublin is a small, independently owned company called Teeling, the first new distillery built in the city in 125 years. If you want to try some good Irish whiskey, learn a bit about how it’s made, and tour a real, working distillery, I strongly recommend Teeling over some of the more well-known brands.

FAVORITE LOCAL MUSICAL GROUP: And So I Watch You From Afar (ASIWYFA) from Belfast; I’ve seen them in Dublin. They play really energetic, experimental instrumental rock. Listen to their song “The Endless Shimmering” here at mrvn.co/asiwyfa.

YOU SHOULDN’T LEAVE DUBLIN WITHOUT visiting Temple Bar, a neighborhood in the center of the city full of pubs and restaurants. Temple Bar is to Dublin what Bourbon Street is to New Orleans or South Street to Philadelphia. It’s full of restaurants, gift shops, whiskey stores, and pubs. If you’re not a fan of crowds, try to go there around lunchtime. I highly recommend Bunsen Burger for dinner, the Old Storehouse pub for drinks and live music, and Hanley’s Cornish Pasties for a great late-night snack.

MOST FUN THING TO DO OFF THE BEATEN PATH: Dublin has lots of hidden gems. In the Iveagh (pronounced “ivy”) Gardens, a small park right in the middle of the city, you’ll find a waterfall, a hedge maze, an archery field, and a pond. The Liquor Rooms is an underground speak-easy-type cocktail bar on the river Liffey, at Wellington Quay, and City Hall Café is a lovely little coffee shop underneath Dublin’s City Hall (it doesn’t show up on Google Maps, but it’s there, trust me).

FAVORITE PLACE TO SIMPLY TAKE IN THE SCENERY: A short train ride from Dublin is Howth (pronounced “hoe-th”), a peninsula that juts out northeast into the Irish Sea. It’s not very touristy, and it’s a great place to go if you want to escape from the hustle and bustle of the city. The cliff walk around the peninsula is absolutely breathtaking (it’s where Felicity and I had our engagement photos taken), and when you’re done, you can grab fish-and-chips at Beshoff Bros. or Leo Burdock’s, two of the most famous “chippers” in Ireland.

SOMETHING SPECIAL ABOUT DUBLIN THAT WILL SURPRISE MOST PEOPLE: Dublin is a very old city, with evidence of settlements dating back to at least the seventh century. Although practically all the native, and later Viking, structures are long gone, you can still find Norman architecture from the early 1200s. Probably the best-preserved part of the original city walls can be found behind St. Audoen’s Cathedral, where the only original city gate remains standing.

WISHING FOR WAWA America totally blows Europe out of the water when it comes to junk food. Every time I come back to visit, I fill my suitcase with chocolate and snacks and bring them back to share with my coworkers. There are a few shops here that sell imported food from the US, but a box of cereal can easily cost over $10. Also, I would really appreciate it if Wawa could expand into the Irish market—that’s my first stop every time I’m back in the States.