I'm starting this post from the mushy brown couch of the reading room of Sleepzone Hostel in Galway, Ireland. The walls are painted bright red and plastered with posters of famous musicians. Abysmal pop music resonates through the many rooms and I escape into my favorite playlist on YouTube.
Misho and I sent out at least a dozen thoughtful requests to couchsurfing hosts in Galway, and received two declines and... crickets for our efforts. So we decided to book a cheap hostel for two nights, because Galway really is a charming little city, and Misho ought to see it.
And I would like to visit Galway without getting frostbite. Ugh. That was a tough first trip to the west of Ireland.
While I type, Misho putters about the hostel's sterile kitchen, preparing some manner of Bulgarian dish with poached eggs and yogurt.
There are worse things than traveling with a Bulgarian who loves to cook. Mmm... yes, I could get used to this.
I landed in Dublin's airport at around three thirty pm on the twenty first of March. Because of my daunting experience entering Ireland in 2013, I was a bundle of anxiety.
Which makes sense. I mean, last time I was here, they took me into a narrow corridor, interrogated me for forty-five minutes and inspected every single item in my carry-on.
My heart pounded and my knees knocked as I approached the stern looking woman at passport control.
"Hello, here's the address of where I'm staying my first night in Dublin and here's my EasyJet ticket that shows I'm flying out of Belfast on April eight."
The woman took my documents and scrutinized them for a moment, four of five blokes with badges breathing down her neck as she did so.
She must be in training...
"What brings you to Ireland?"
"Well, I'm going to visit some friends in Cork and Doolin and I want to explore the west coast. And I have a friend from Bulgaria whose film was accepted into a festival in Dingle, so I'm going there for a few days."
"Have you been to Ireland before?"
"Yes, in 2013 and 2011."
The woman rummaged through the blank pages of my Canadian passport, which has no evidence of any adventures until I started using it in Malaysia this January. She furrowed her dark brows into a frown.
"What were you doing in Ireland?"
"Just traveling... exploring...I think Ireland is a really beautiful country," I deliberately did not mention volunteering, after how much trouble that word had landed me when I'd proudly brandished it in 2013.
"And these friends... how did you meet them?"
"I've spent a lot of time traveling and I'm always meeting people. I have a friend in Cork because of a yoga training in Spain ages ago where I met an Irish girl who introduced me to a lot of her friends. I met the friend in Doolin when I was at the Cliffs of Moher in 2013."
"Do you have addresses for any of the other places you're staying?"
"No... I didn't think I'd need them."
"How much money do you have?"
"Plenty. A couple thousand in my bank account."
"Do you have bank statements you can show me?"
"No... I mean, I'm only here three weeks. I can show you my credit card."
The woman frowned again. I was surprised she didn't hear the knocking of my knees.
"Is something wrong?" I asked, bewildered by the intense interrogation over such a short trip.
"No, nothing's wrong," the woman replied, looking over her shoulder at the blokes behind her. They nodded their heads, and the woman stamped my passport.
I HATE IRISH PASSPORT CONTROL. Never, in any other country I've visited, am I interrogated so fiercely and made to feel so unwelcome. I don't understand it. Holy hell.
Ellie was waiting on the belt for me when I finally arrived, appearing slightly resentful that I'd allowed her to idle there so long. Like the last kid to be picked up from school.
Not my fault Irish Immigration has somehow decided I'm a threat to Ireland.
Misho's flight had landed just a few minutes before mine, and my Bulgarian friend was waiting for me at arrivals with an enormous hug.
Nothing better than someone meeting me at the airport.
Misho had visited Dublin a few months earlier and still remembered how to get around. I, on the other hand, had forgotten nearly everything except Lochlann's quaint kitchen and the clay pot for use on safari. So Misho took over the navigation, and I gladly relinquished it to him.
Finding my own way around a city is empowering and I love it... but sometimes it's relaxing to just stare out a bus window and not wonder how to get to where I'm going when the bus finally rolls to a stop. It's nice to just stare out the bus window.
We met Misho's friends at Hogan's Pub for a couple of drinks before driving to their home. Where I sat in front of a fire, drank a glass of red wine and cuddled their excessively friendly dog named Freckles.
Francesco's flat is beautiful... but it isn't a home. There are no photos on the walls. There are no messes in the kitchen. Or anywhere, for that matter. There's a coffee table with coffee table books and a bowl of oranges and bananas in the kitchen. Which does not, a home, make.
This is a home. A place where people allow their stories to collect. And now I get to sit with Aran and Gillian's stories.
We boarded a bus Eireann for Cork at noon the next day. We'd considered hitching, but the aggressively cold weather and the illegality of hitching on the motorway deterred us.
"If it's an adventure, we hitch. If it's an ordeal, we bus," I stated my motto out loud to no one in particular. It's something I need to tell myself every so often, as I'm the kind of lady who has the tendency to get caught in ordeals. And life is too short and too precious to spend the whole damn thing trapped in an ordeal.
My friend Patrick picked us up from Cork Bus Station three hours later, and I experienced one of those glorious moments of complete astonishment at the kindness of people. One of those moments wherein I'm able to forget my burgeoning cynicism and just feel gratitude. Patrick is a fellow I'd met briefly during my visit to Cork in 2013, and we'd messaged each other on facebook a few times. So when Misho's film was accepted into Dingle's animation festival and we added Ireland to our summer adventure, I facebooked Patrick.
If you have the space for a couple of vagabonds, would you be up for hosting us the night of the 22nd of March? If not, NO big deal. I can definitely find something on couchsurfing or we can stay in a hostel. I just wanted to ask you first.
And of course, Patrick said we could stay. And he picked us up from the bus station, introduced us to his hill-walking friends at a pub, prepared us a delicious breakfast the next morning and dropped us off at a perfect hitching spot outside of Cork.
All whilst sick. From what he said was a virus, but I think was some bad pudding, as neither Misho nor myself caught the sickness.
And he would do all that for a complete stranger and for a vagabond he met only briefly four years back.
Six and a half hours and seven rides later, Misho and I finally arrived in Annascaul, a small village about twenty kilometers east of Dingle. We'd hitched with so many people for such short distances, that our drivers blended together.
Except for John.
John had one seat in the front and a mountain of carrots, tables, blankets, and a timid looking border collie in the back.
"One of you has to sit in the back," John said when he pulled over. "Only one seat up here."
"I will," I volunteered, forever eager to experience the unorthodox.
John was a Welshman living in Ireland. A chap who'd traveled the world years back, but was currently living off the dole because his best friend had recently undergone a leg amputation. So John quit his job as a builder and became a full-time nurse to his recovering friend.
"He's finally startin' to get around," John continued as we sped along and I struggled to keep myself aloft on a topsy-turvy table and not tumble onto the tremulous border collie. "After he's able to look after himself, I'd like to travel again. I spent one New Year's in the Saraha desert. You know those tricycles with skis on the bottom? Went into the desert with fifty people, and we all got drunk and rode those tricycles down the sand dunes. And if you ride 'em down, you have to push 'em back up. On the way up, my foot hit something hard in the sand. So I dug around a bit and pulled out a full bottle of unopened whiskey! Yeah... I'd like to travel again..."
John dropped us off a few kilometers down the road and wished us luck on our trip. As Misho and I shouldered our backpacks and got ready to stick up our thumbs, John rushed out of his car again.
"Here's my number," he handed Misho a slip of paper. "If you want to drop by for a meal or a place to camp out for a few days, you're more than welcome."
This man has so little. And he's willing to share it with a couple of hitchhikers.
I experienced another moment of astonishment.
Our hostel in Annascaul was run by a vivacious chap named Bryan.
"You're the Canadians, then?" he asked when I told him I had a reservation for two days.
"Well, I'm from Colorado, but I have a Canadian passport. Which I use more often these days... Misho is from Bulgaria."
"Then why do I hear a Dutch accent?" Bryan looked confused. "I have a lot of people coming in and out of here, and I've gotten good at placing accents. And yours is Dutch."
Why isn't Maud around to hear this?
Bryan showed us to our dorm and explained the showers, the wifi and the morning's free breakfast.
"Should we pay you now?"
"Nah, we can take care of that later, like," he waved me off.
Misho and I walked the two kilometers into town for a pint at The South Pole Inn, a pub which commemorates and celebrates the life of Irish Arctic explorer, Tom Crean. A fellow who may very well be the most badass explorer of all time ever. He participated in three expeditions to Antarctica in the early 1900s, spent 492 days stranded on ice with his men, then sailed in a lifeboat for 1500 kilometers to find help for the rest of his stranded crew.
Suddenly I don't feel so hardcore for hitching 150 kilometers in Ireland...
Bryan had told us that the first bus between Annascaul and Dingle would pass around eleven am. But since the film festival started at nine thirty, Misho and I found ourselves on the side of the road at eight o'clock with our thumbs up. And after forty minutes of waiting in the bitter cold, stamping our feet to keep warm and blowing on our freezing thumbs, we snagged a lift.
"We're on our way to the film festival," we told our ride. "But the bus doesn't start running until eleven."
"The bus won't start running at all," the fellow at the wheel informed us. "The buses are on strike. Drivers aren't getting paid enough."
"Oof. How long do you think the strike will last?"
"Who knows? Don't see the issue getting resolved anytime soon."
Well... guess that means we won't have a backup. I mean, I wanted to hitch anyway, but it's always reassuring to know that if no one stops, the bus is an option. And now the bus isn't an option. People will just have to stop.
We arrived at Dingle's Animation Festival right on time, collected our passes and filed into our seats.
Look at us getting lucky with rides. Hope the rest of this trip takes a similar tone.
Most of Friday was about guest speakers. I heard from people who worked on Mulan and How to Train Your Dragon. I heard from people who worked on The Secret of Kells. And even though I'm not an animator, I enjoyed being surrounded by such a passionately creative group.
However, Ireland was spectacularly sunny that Friday, so regardless of the bubbling creativity, I abandoned Misho in the afternoon and went for a walk about Dingle.
The awards were announced at around nine pm Friday night, but we had to hitch back to Annascaul before dark, else it would mean a three and a half hour walk. In the dark. In the cold of an Irish... umm... spring. Which neither of us were particularly keen on.
That's awkward. I hope Misho's film doesn't get nominated for anything since he won't be there to receive the award... but it would sure be great if he were to win an award.
We shared a bottle of cheap French wine and a chocolate bar from as we watched "Hunt for the Wilderpeople" in front of a roaring fire.
Mmm... reasons I'm happy to be in Europe. Wine. Chocolate. Friends. Cozy living rooms with roaring fires.
The next morning, Misho scribbled "BUS ON STRIKE" onto a piece of cardboard, and "DINGLE" into his sketchbook. So he held the town sign and I wielded the "feel sorry for us because there's no bus" sign, and we found ourselves in Dingle for the second day of the festival in no time at all.
Misho spent the afternoon being productive and making connections with other animators, and I just bought some blood pudding for dinner and watched films.
We managed to get a lift to our hostel from someone who took pity on us due to our sign. Where I cooked up our black pudding and we spent the evening watching Louis Theroux and game-planning our next day.
A two hundred kilometer hitch to Doolin. Oof. Haven't hitched that distance in ages. But... Irish people are friendly. Except at passport control. And since the buses are on strike, I'm sure they'll be extra helpful. It's just... no backup plan... in the cold... Blurgh.
It's okay, Bourget. The worst that can happen is you get dropped off in the middle of nowhere and no one will pick you up. So what? In Europe, the middle of nowhere is like, five miles away from a town. Middle of nowhere in Europe does not equal middle of nowhere in Colorado. You might have to walk a few miles to get to a town wherein you can book a hostel.
A lot of walking and paying for a hostel isn't the end of the world. So don't act like it is. Since you're hitching regardless of whether or not it feels like an adventure or an ordeal, approach it with the mindset of adventure. Find the fun. And the hilarity.
No comments:
Post a Comment