Victoria Franklin, Ringsend, Dublin
I live in one of those new apartments on the lock of Grand Canal, overlooking the water. There are two rooms, the bedroom and the main room - nice and simple. I live here with my boyfriend, David. We've only been living here for seven months, renting. One of my good friends lives on the third floor. We saw her apartment, and I liked the look of it. When we saw there was an apartment available here, we took it. We don't see her that often, but it's nice to know there's someone there we know.
We used to live in Temple Bar. It was really noisy. You could feel the vibrations from one of the nearby clubs. Here it's more for couples.
The neighbours are really quiet. It would be nice to meet more of them. Bertie Ahern opened a social-housing building a while ago, and a few people went down to that, but that's about as sociable as it has been around here.
I've had chats with a few of the other people in the building. Everybody likes to have a chat, especially about having our bikes stolen. There used to be 15 bikes in the garage, but there's only five left now, so somebody is helping themselves.
You do get the feeling that this is an up-and-coming area. I went to Mass recently in Ringsend, and you can see the locals are part of a very close community; everybody knows each other. They have all seen their neighbourhood change a lot. It must be weird for them.
I'm from Italy, so I lived there until 1997 and again for a while last summer. The apartments there are bigger, more like proper houses; they're not just for students and part-time living. You can get whole families - generations - living in apartments with six or seven bedrooms, whereas here it's one, two or three bedrooms, so you don't get families. It's a different attitude to apartment living. In Italy you're also much more likely to know the neighbours. People stay in the building long-term; there will be kids around playing with one another, and there are often gardens and common areas where people gather.
My commute's not bad - about 20 minutes to Dún Laoghaire, where I'm a project accountant for a renewable-energy asset management firm - and David has a 20-minute walk to the IFSC. I get the Dart or, now the weather is getting better, take my scooter. I have a Vespa, of course, flying the flag. "Hey, ciao!" I beep at everyone.
I'd give up a garage and a house just to live closer to town and have a life. People who live way out have to make so many compromises, whereas here you feel so close to everything. At the moment I'm happy to be enjoying the city.
In conversation with Davin O'Dwyer