Weird DNS behaviour

Weird DNS behaviour

I got hold of a really cute little PC, that I want to fiddle around with
as a little side-project. It has a normal LAN connection via Ethernet and
the /etc/network/interfaces configuration is
# loopback: lo
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
# device: eth0
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.1.11
broadcast 192.168.1.255
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.1.1
dns-nameservers 8.8.8.8 8.8.4.4
Now, everything runs smoothly, the PC binds to 192.168.1.11 and I can ssh
into it. However, curl google.com fails (directly connecting using the IP
173.194.112.255 works). So, something's gotta be wrong with the
nameservers.
And here come's the strange part: After ifdown eth0 && ifup eth0 all DNS
queries work. And this happens after every reboot. I have to manually
restart eth0, before I can resolve domain names.
Currently I cope with that by having an Upstart script restart the
interface 10 seconds after booting. But I'd really like to fix the cause
and not the symptom.
Is it my fault or is there some bug? I'm currently running Ubuntu Server
10.04 LTS for compatibility reasons.