I'm starting this post from what our host refers to as "the special lounge" somewhere in the boonies of Northern Ireland. Misho is sprawled out on a brown sofa across the room from me, chuckling while watching a video on his StupidPhone. The floor is carpeted in red, a stately wooden bookshelf stands across from me, filled with important looking leather bound books. Wooden beams line the white ceiling, an ornate silver fireplace squats on black tile to my left and white elephants serve as end tables beside each chair.
How did we end up here?
Our couchsurfing host is a house sitter. And she happens to be sitting a mansion. Complete with jacuzzi (just in case), bar, multiple lounges, a pool table and several bedrooms. There are also horses, dogs, cats and a four wheeler. And a dairy farmer named Andrew right next door, who seems to be good fun. Or craic. Which is a word I've been hearing so much lately that it's starting to seep into my vocabulary.
But I still don't say it out loud. I don't want to be that person. The person who spends three weeks in a country and starts using the lingo just to sound cool. So even though I would love to say, "what's the craic?" instead of "how are you?" I refrain. In total, I've spent six months in Ireland during the last six years. Which doesn't seem like quite long enough to earn the right to start "craic"ing.
Misho and I checked out of our Galway hostel at ten o'clock. We only had 140 kilometers to hitch, so I wasn't too worried about the time. However, it took us two hours before we were able to find a decent place from which to hitch and then catch a ride out of the miserable city.
"Thanks for stopping!" I sighed as Misho and I loaded our bags into the car of the Polish woman who'd pulled over.
"Sorry if it smells," she said, gesturing to her sleeping baby in the backseat. "She threw up a while ago."
"No problem," I assured our lift. "We're just happy to be out of the cold."
"I'm only going to Tuam," the woman warned us.
"As long as it gets us out of Galway."
We stumbled out of the car in Tuam, thanked the Polish woman and got ready to hitch.
"I made a mistake," Misho frowned.
"What?"
"I left my sketchbook in her car."
"Oh no! What was in there?"
"Just some sketches... and I have pictures of most of them... but what will we write on to hitch now?"
"I'm a vagabond. I'm the queen of resourcefulness," I said, digging into Ellie and pulling out my packet of "important documents."
Guess I can sacrifice this for the cause... I began to scribble "SLIGO" onto the blank side of a sheet of paper from the hospital in Chiang Mai. So on one side was the name of our destination, and on the other was my diagnosis of chronic allergic sinusitis.
Woohoo.
We caught our next ride with a couple of quite proper middle-aged women on their way to Knock airport to drop off a rental car.
"We'll need to hitch from Knock airport to Westport," they told us. "There won't be any buses, since they're all still on strike. So we picked you up for good karma."
I grinned in the backseat, imagining these two women in their high heels and fancy clothes thumbing for a ride.
Now that's a roadside attraction.
We were dropped on the side of the road just before the women turned off to the airport. So with three rides down and fifty kilometers to go, we stuck out our thumbs for the fourth time.
Why does no one in Ireland seem to travel very far?
A red car (red cars never stop) stopped for us.
"Where are ye goin'?" a fidgety little man with a spectacularly thick accent greeted us.
"Sligo," I said, wondering how he'd missed our sign.
"When are ye gettin' married?" he asked me, and I cursed myself for sitting in the front seat.
"I'm not getting married," I tried to keep the annoyance out of my voice.
"You like Connemara?"
"Well, we didn't really have a chance to see it this time. Maybe next time I'm in Ireland."
"When are ye moving to Connemara?"
"I mean, it seems like a nice enough place... but I probably won't move there anytime soon."
My answers must not have suited the fidgety Irish bloke, because he pulled over five kilometers later to let us out.
"Thanks for the lift..." I said, confused, but grateful to not be trapped in the car with the bizarre little man.
"You want some bacon?" Misho asked, peering into the butcher's shop in front of which we'd been left.
"Well..." I considered our budget.
"Let me treat us to some bacon," my Bulgarian insisted.
"Okay," I conceded. It doesn't take much for me to concede when it comes to bacon.
The little man sat in his little red car and watched us the entire time, sending prickles down my spine.
After procuring our streaky bacon, we walked to the other side of Charlestown, found a decent enough place to hitch and stuck out our thumbs for the fifth time that day.
Freaking Ireland.
Five minutes later, a man in a classy car and a business suit pulled over.
"Someone's watching out for you two," he commented, a little amazed at himself. "I haven't picked up a hitchhiker in twenty years, but I saw your sign and had to stop."
"Well, we really appreciate it," I laughed. "Our last ride was a little strange."
And we spent the last forty-five kilometers to Sligo talking about his family, their recent trip to Bulgaria, and life in Ireland.
"Where do you want to be dropped off?"
"Is there a Lidl or an Aldi nearby? It would be great to do some shopping before we meet with our host."
"Sure, I can drop you off at Aldi."
So Misho and I bought some cheese and chocolate for lunch (we have a very well-rounded diet. As in, if we continue to eat like this for much longer, we will both be remarkably well-rounded), and a pile of vegetables and eggs for dinner.
Then we lingered in cafes and on park benches until we met with our host, a Bulgarian/Lebanese fellow who lived in a surfing village ten kilometers west of Sligo. While waiting, we were accosted only once by an evangelist named Eric, who gave us pamphlets about Jesus and told us how wonderful it is to know that you're forgiven.
"I was like you, raised in a home without Jesus, but I found him," Eric preached. "And he's changed my life."
See, this is where you fail, I thought as Eric continued to assail us with religious rhetoric. You don't even ASK what my background is before you tell me that I'm wrong. You just assume that I'm like you. You don't take the time to understand that I grew up with Jesus. My entire existence was oriented around Jesus. And finding a way to live WITHOUT Jesus is what changed my life for the better.
The rain finally chased off the Irish evangelist, and Misho and I ran under the awning of a nearby pub to hide.
This might be the first time I've been grateful for rain in Ireland.
Martin met us around six o'clock and drove us to the beach near his home in Strandhill.
"Have to see the ocean once today."
Martin and Misho talked about the waves and surfing, and I worked on my Slavic squat while breathing in the cold ocean air.
What a surprise. I had no idea Sligo or Strandhill would be so lovely. But this might be my favorite stop in Ireland on this trip.
Martin and I cooked up a dinner of bacon, leeks, onions and rice in his warm, friendly home. We shared dinner, wine and conversation with Martin and his flatmate, an alternative healer named Helen.
We were even able to wash our laundry. Which had been sitting at critical status for the last three days.
I can still smell NEPAL on this shirt, I wrinkled my nose as I threw my longsleeved smartwool into the wash. The last time I wore that was... sitting around a fire in the mountains near Pokhara. Out trekking with Matt. Mmmm.... the smell of two month old dal baht. Hello.
Martin drove off to work in Sligo the next morning, and Misho and I strolled around Strandhill.
 |
| Since my clothes were in the wash, Misho (who rations his clothes like he won't get to wash them until going home to Bulgaria), let me wear his plaid shirt. Which went stunningly well with my poofy Thai pants. and... errr.. lumberjack hat. |
Misho and I withdrew from the cold, whiling a couple of hours away in a bustling seaside cafe. I dreamed and schemed about my summer, and he sketched a sneaky Bulgarian in my new journal.
Then we hitched into Sligo and spent the afternoon ambling around the town full of cafes, bakeries, craft shops and nary a tourist.
This place has all the things that tourists like... but... without the tourists.
Sligo. Who'd have thunk. This place is fantastic.
Martin met us after he finished his work at the hospital, and took us for a walk along the Garvoge River.
We made it back into town in time for a screening of 'Atlantic', a documentary about fishing villages in Ireland, Newfoundland and Norway. And how the Irish government has given away nearly all of Ireland's fishing rights to the EU.
On one hand... I feel sorry for all these devastated fishing villages. But on the other hand, I feel like they're just arguing about who has the right to rape the ocean. There's nothing in this film about actually taking care of the ocean and aquatic life. It's just about politics.
Which feels rather superficial.
Martin, Misho and I spent the rest of the evening drinking at a pub in Strandhill and listening to live music.
I needed a couple of days like this. In a HOME. With someone who not only let me wash my stanky laundry, but even cooked a dinner and bought some drinks. And it's not as though I NEED people to cook me dinner and buy me drinks. What I need is to NOT feel unwelcome or like I'm doing something wrong. Which is what Diarmuid made me feel. Martin and Helen treated me like I'm worth supporting. That my lifestyle is okay.
And boy, do I need that sometimes. It's isolating enough to travel the way I do. I need all the Martins and Helens I can get. And I will never stop being unbelievably grateful that Martins and Helens are out there.
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