It's actually not voodoo. Routing makes a big difference - the packets take a longer trip than a straight line distance on a map.
Here's a map to illustrate the European internet backbone architecture:
The map is old but gives the right idea. Finns will be happy to know that a new cable is being installed in the Baltic Sea between Finland and Germany, i.e. bypassing Sweden and Denmark and giving better performance.
Typical customer support.. "make sure you have the power cable plugged in, thank you and have a nice day!".
I wouldn't trust the in-game network performance too much either, but it usually gives a decent general idea.
If you want a more accurate result, I'd suggest opening up Command Prompt and typing "ping -n 100 159.153.76.33". It will run a series of 100 ping commands to the Dublin server. My results looked like what one would expect from a 3rd world connection that I have to put up with: Minimum = 59ms, Maximum = 102ms, Average = 64ms
Hope that helps someone. Now I'll go and cry myself to sleep and dream of 21st century.