Project#2, Snapshot#5: Tough American

After a nice, perhaps too long, hiatus, I am back, and my keyboard and my conscience are kicking my butt with vengeance. Finals are over, moving is done, waitress job has begun, and between serving gyros and trying new recipes, I will hopefully commit myself to writing for the rest of the summer.

Let’s see. I left off wandering into the night with my two new German friends, Toby and Stephen. After wandering the night, Toby became frantic looking for a place to watch the sunrise from. After a few failed ideas, in the growing grey light we threw ourselves into the side of a steep, very tall hill and began to run. With our packs on. Uphill.

Stephen ran ahead with the camera, and Toby decided either to be a gentleman and help me or to help me to get himself to the top faster. What was really happening was him pushing my pack up from behind while it was attached to my back, making me stumble and go slower. I insisted I could do it and raced him up with a smile on my face. I admit part of it was wanting to impress him. Also I was just having a grand old time racing the sun to the top of that hill.

We didn’t go all the way to the top. We didn’t need to. We had the most stunning view from the outcrop we made ours. Admittedly the sunrise wasn’t as much of a sunrise as it was a gradual lighting of the city to a less-grey grey. But it was beautiful none-the-less. So we sat and talked and they praised my sense of adventure.

Toby looked at me through corner of his eye and said, “You’re a tough American. Not many people can keep up with us like this.” And that, to me, was the very highest praise they could have given me.

They then invited me to go to Inverness with them. They were planning on swimming in Loch Ness and finding the monster, they said. Since I had no plans other than to be in Oxford in a few days to visit a friend, and I was having the time of my life, I shrugged my shoulders and said “Why not!” After all, this is why I didn’t plan my trip ahead of time. So I would be free to grab incredible once-in-a-lifetime opportunities just like this one. So we headed to the train station, where I bought an overpriced ticket to Inverness.

In Inverness and terribly underfed all of us, we found a little diner and had a traditional Scottish breakfast (which was one of the weirdest looking meals I’ve ever seen). Waiting for the bus to Loch Ness, Toby once again praised my toughness, peering at my faithful orange pack holding five weeks of necessities. They were only traveling for two weeks and were both carrying much more than me. He couldn’t believe it.

After a couple of days of climbing over fences and scaling castle walls, we parted ways. I was sad to see the backs of them, but was eager to get on the road on my own again. I was also exhausted from trying to keep up with them. I would never tell them that, though.

Sincerest Apologies for a Necessary Hiatus

I am so incredibly sorry for my disappearance. It probably seems as if I ran off with these Germans in Scotland and got abducted by faeries or a bloodthirsty clan of medieval Scots. This is false. Rather, I was abducted by finals. My apologies, but I am finding this temporary hiatus to be entirely necessary. It will all be over in about a week, I swear.

Project#2, Snapshot#4: Scotland is Built-In Whims

Scottish countryside, from my train window seat

This also delayed blog post describes one of my many I’ll-do-this-on-a-whim moments. In fact, Scotland was built of a

whole whim constructed of many other whims in my mind. The first whim was that I would momentarily say Cheerio to J.K. Rowling, see a castle or two, and move on to good old England and London Town.

After the delays I described last post, I found myself exhausted on a train finally in Scotland, on my way to Glasgow, from which I anticipated connecting to Edinburgh (pronounced EdinberUH, as I was corrected when first setting foot on Scottish soil). On the train, I had one of those moments fellow solo travelers will be familiar with: utter, plain, despondent loneliness. When all of a sudden, someone further along the train laughs a big laugh, and stands to go to the bathroom. I look, and my jaw almost literally hits the floor. My only thought was God, he’s gorgeous!!! On an intermediary connection, I surreptitiously made sure I remained in the same car as this beautiful ox and his companion. As I watched them (not so subtly, because I’m sure I was noticed), I could tell they weren’t speaking English, but I was a bit dazzled and couldn’t tell much else.

When we arrived in Glasgow, I tried to let them get ahead of me in the station because I’d heard them say in English that they were connecting to Edinburgh, too. I must have looked positively helpless, though, because the beautiful German, as he turned out to be, approached me immediately, asking if I was going to Edinburgh too and would I like to find the train with them? I felt shocked and alive with excitement at my glorious good fortune.

My new temporary companions were German young men, named Toby (the beautiful laugher from before) and Stephen. They were positively amicable and lovely people, and interesting, too. Toby was only a year or two older than me, Stephen two more than him. Stephen studied photography, I think in Berlin. He was clearly the artist of the two, sporting the fancy camera and scruffy unkemptness. Toby was working as a tech repairmen, having finished school already. He had a passion for architecture, though, that just made me swoon, and an energy like an overexcited puppy.

Me! In front of the Glasgow Cathedral

There were two trains for Edinburgh left that night, as it was already fairly late. Toby wanted to try to find the Glasgow cathedral, since we had an hour or so, and so we struck out with a local who pointed us in vaguely the right direction and advised us to walk fast.

It was much further than we expected, and Stephen and I worried that we would miss our train, though Toby was haphazardly optimistic. We did miss our train, by the way, but we got some excellent photos. Running back with minutes to departure, we just missed it. There was one more, in another 40 minutes, and Stephen and I refused Toby’s pleas to keep exploring. We were not missing this train. So Stephen and I chatted and got to know each other and I explained some English grammar at his request while Toby had some whiskey at a pub with a local across the street.

Toby and Stephen, as we walked quickly in Glasgow.

We all made the train on time, sat down at a table, and I couldn’t believe that three hours before I had been wallowing in lonely self-pity, because here were two high quality traveling companions.

As none of us had hostels booked, they invited me to join them in their sightseeing plans: drink the case of Heineken they were lugging around with them while running around the sleeping city taking pictures. I took approximately half a second’s thought. This was not exactly the most advisable course of action in the young-woman-traveling-alone handbook, but I had already decided that these were two people I would trust for life. And if I ever run into them again, somewhere in this world or the next, it’ll be like no time passed, I can tell you that for sure.

Project#2, Snapshot#3: Panicky In-Betweens

Today, my friends, is the day I try to leave Ireland and go to Scotland. I say try. I ultimately succeeded, but not before being very nearly thwarted at every turn.

I took a bus from Dublin to Belfast, intending to catch a ferry across the water to Scotland and say hello to J.K. Rowling and Hogwarts. My challenge to myself had been to avoid at all costs (and it cost dearly) flying. To me, planes take (almost) all the romance out of traveling. I still think that. I told people that to me, a plane was like a time machine that took time: you climb into a big metal tube, wait, get out, and you’re somewhere else. I wanted to watch the land go by, I wanted to see one place change into another seamlessly. There was also a colossal tradition of expatriot Americans traveling Europe that I wanted to be part of, and I think the rail system is essential to that tradition.

So I sat on the bus, so excited about the ferry I was to catch that afternoon. I had never traveled by ferry before, really. Not to change countries, anyway, which was an infinitely more exciting prospect than traversing around, say, Florida. In terms of scheduling, I was definitely pushing it. I would have to dash from the bus onto a taxi and dash immediately onto my ferry in order to make it. I was so focused on dashing, of course, and changing my money, and finding a taxi, that it completely slipped my mind that my big orange backpack was under the bus. With my whole life in it. Even my international identity. By the time I realized I didn’t have a 35 pound bag on my back like I should have, the bus had gone. Panic mounted in me. I had my wallet, and my journal, and a book. I paced the station, checking all the buses. I knew what it looked like, but even that was blurring. I didn’t know the bus number, I didn’t know if it was going back to Ireland. I knew it was blue. I could remember that. What do I do? I need that bag! Using the credit card Dad had gotten me for emergencies, which this certainly was, I called him. Having completely forgotten there was a five hour time difference, I felt even worse when I realized I had woken him up. But he snapped awake when he heard me crying and heard what had happened. “Tell someone,” he said firmly. I didn’t know who to tell, because who could possibly help me? The bus was gone, gone, gone. “Find the information desk and tell him. Where you were coming from, when you got here, whatever you remember. You’ll be fine. They’ll find it. Call me when they do.”

So that’s what I did. I must have looked pathetic, with puffy eyes and disheveled clothes and unwashed hair. And American, no less. I was a bit stung when the man at the info desk smiled at me bemusedly and said “You’re backpacking and you left your backpack on the bus?” I nodded, trying not to scrunch up my face in visible irritation. He chuckled on the phone with someone, and nodded, presumably saying the same thing he’d said to me. Irritated and offended as I was, his calm amusement with my tragedy calmed me down, too. If he wasn’t seriously concerned, then it must not be irreversible. Granted, I was still pretty panicked. After he told me that they’d found the bus and it was coming back, I waited by his little glass kiosk like a panicked but well-trained puppy, looking around the chaotic bus station with big, red, glassy wet eyes.

Then I saw a man, my previous bus driver, walking up with big strides and my blessed, lost orange backpack. “Thank you so much!” I cried in relief, running to meet him. “You left your rucksack on the bus? How’d you forget a thing like that?” He was also bemused with me.

Blushing and smiling embarrassedly, I went back to the pay phone to call my wonderful dad, straddling my backpack protectively as I held the phone.

As an epilogue to this story, I will briefly mention that I, of course, missed my ferry and waited in the port for four hours. From the tiny, smelly station on the coast in Scotland, I caught a fateful train into Glasgow, which I will write about next week, and in which Germany makes its only debut in my trip.

Project#2, Snapshot#2: The Politics of Poetry in Dublin

I sincerely apologize to everyone, for I, The Great Wandering C-Bear, wandered away from my blog and my promise of a post a week. Admittedly, it’s a hard motivator to swear to report the past rather than live in the present through words, which, I would say, is my normal writing habit. But I will persist! Because once begun, I never quit.

SNAPSHOT#2: DUBLIN

For a few days, I did nothing but wander the hills in the tragically and hauntingly beautiful Connemara. Basically, all the sad, dark Irish myths and fairy tales you’ve heard besides the brownies and sprites and fairies, the nature in Connemara embodies it. At least, it did when I was there. Brooding cloudy sky, rolling hills of grass and moss and rocks, sheep roaming. And a seemingly aimless dirt path winding through it all above the highway. At some points I felt I was in Narnia, at some in Middle Earth. Either way, the solitude was serenely complete, and you felt a sad solidarity with the atmosphere.

Then I went to Dublin. There was nothing in Dublin I had particularly in mind to do besides drink Guinness, and Irish coffees, and see the various writers’ monuments. Also to see Stephen’s Green, mostly because I had just finished reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Once I’d done all that, and twiddled my thumbs in my hostel (again, I hopped off the bus in the middle of Dublin, walked down the street, and Oh look! A hostel! Only in Ireland would I have this luck), I went into the pub next door to the hostel with the book of Yeats poetry I’d bought. It was still early-ish in the evening, so there were only a few people there. I drank an Irish coffee, and then a half pint of Beamish. As I continued reading this sad Irish poetry, and continued drinking, I believe my facial expressions got more and more animated and expressive. I must have been hilarious to watch. And sure enough, in the middle of one such sad poem, someone snatched the book from my hands, saying “What’re you reading?” I looked up at a middle aged portly looking Irish man, in the corner with a few other older and elderly Irishmen. He held the book in front of him, squinting at the cover, and exclaimed “Yeats? What’re you reading Yeats for? Never a less Irish poet.” Now, at such an explication, I was quite taken aback. I’d felt rather proud that I’d been making a point of reading literature from wherever I was traveling, and this was in fact my second Irish writer. I’d expected appreciative smiles, not scolding. This man’s name was Stephen. His friend’s name was Stephen also. I thought of them as Stephen the Younger (the anti-Yeats-man) and Stephen the Elder. There was another friend or two that hopped into and out of the conversation, mostly to get my attention, but Stephens the Younger and Elder seemed more intent on conversing with me than showing me off, and thus kept my attention.

From these Stephens, I learned about “real” Irish, not Yeats Irish, the romanticized version all we Americans eat up. Stephen the Younger was a cab driver in Dublin, and he bemoaned how international the city was becoming. It used to be more Irish than it is, he told me. We discussed Yeats and why Stephen thought he was so un-Irish. Yeats doesn’t write about the Irish lower class, he said. He writes about the frills and romance, but not about the trudging peasantry that make up the real Irish tradition. He was just trying to sell books and cover his arse from the Brits, he said. Interesting perspective, I thought, taking my book back gingerly. Stephen the Elder was one of eight brothers and sisters, and was also illiterate. He quit school at 10 or 11 years old to start working for the family. This is the trudging lower class Stephen the Younger was talking about, he pointed out.

I was taken aback. Lover of learning and reading that I am, I’d never really imagined a life without books, without learning. And here sat before me, buying me drinks, a man of maybe 70-something reading at a fourth grade level. In that moment, I felt I’d taken my education for granted, and so did all of my peers back home. All those people who for weeks I’d been declaiming to myself as slaves to the system, narrow-mindedly following the educational path society has laid for them, not taking chances or learning what they love instead of just career training. Here was a man to whom society had never offered those opportunities. Or any opportunities. And I felt humbled. Truly humbled.

EDITORIAL NOTE: Pictures to come. They are on my computer at home and I am currently traveling. My apologies.

Project#2, Snapshot#1: Blood Pudding in Galway

Here I sit, on my third attempt to begin this colossal project, and I’m realizing I didn’t really think it through all the way. So I’ve decided to make an Amendment to my initial Project Outline.

THE BIG AMENDMENT: Each post will tell one story of my travels, hopefully they will be in order, though no promises to accuracy or the fancy of my whims. This is a very necessary revision, I realized, because if I were to tell the whole arc of my travels I would have to tell much of the whole arc of my life. You may or may not know, but traveling, especially of the kind I did, is as much an emotional journey as it is a geographical one, and the whole shazam would take as much as a book, and as long to write. And who knows. Maybe someday I will write a book about this. So. We focus on the geographical, in little flashes, like snapshots.

 

SNAPSHOT#1

When I stepped off the bus that had taken me from Shannon Airport to the city of Galway, the first thing I noticed was how cold it was for July. The sky was overcast, the air was damp, and there I stood outside the bus station in my shorts and sandals, with a backpack full of t-shirts, tank tops, and only one pair of long jeans and one long sleeve shirt. No jacket or sweater. I was too deliriously excited and starry-eyed to care. An easily fixable problem, I told myself. It’ll probably warm up. So I changed in the restroom, strapped my life onto my back, and just started walking. Somehow, I stumbled upon an internet cafe within yards of the station. I will tell you this, that would not have happened anywhere but Ireland. There are many moments when I thank whatever gods of travelers or wanderers were looking out for me that I began my journey in Ireland. So many travelers and backpackers come through that country that everywhere is prepared for us, with hostels, net cafes, and hotels around every corner. And I mean every. So I strode on into this fine internet establishment, bouncing on the balls of my feet, eyes bright and open to any and every possibility. I sat at a computer, and emailed my family to let them know I had arrived, whole and healthy and hungry. I stood to pay, when I finished, and cheerily said Good morning to the man behind the counter.

“Good morning, yourself,” he said. I paid, and asked him where I could find the best Irish breakfast in town. I felt something like my dad, who is nothing short of pro at mingling with waiters or servers or counter people.

Lynch's Castle / AIB Bank

The man looked at me brightly and smiled. “Are you American?” he asked me. I confessed that I was. “Traveling alone? You seem awful young.” I got that a lot. He then told me there was an excellent restaurant not too far away that served a full traditional Irish breakfast for not too much. He even drew me a map, and indicated on the map where else I should go in the city, sites to see and such like that, when he realized I didn’t know anything about Galway and had just kind of landed here. “Here it is, just around the corner from Lynch’s Castle. It’s a bank now, but you can see there’s a little placque on the side saying what it is.” When I asked him what Lynch’s Castle was, rather than taken aback, he hunkered down on the table and started to weave me a tale, right there in the internet cafe.

 

Lynch's Window, allegedly THE window

Centuries ago, there was a judge named Lynch, who had a son that everyone liked. He was a very charming fellow, see, and he had a love story. “They’re always love stories, aren’t they?” the man said with a laugh. He was in love with a girl in town, and at the pub, had a few too many pints, and got in a fight with another fellow over her. And he ended up killing him. Now, the penalty for murder was a hanging, but this was the Judge’s only son, and he loved him. So he put his son in the jail, to figure out what to do the next day. That’s what Lynch’s Castle is, see, is the jail. Everyone knew that the penalty would be hanging but thought for sure the Judge wouldn’t do it. The boy was so well-liked, though, that no one wanted him to be punished. They mobbed the jail to break him out. But the Judge had thought they would do that and so had moved his son to his house in the middle of the night. And he hung him there, in the dead of night, in the window of his own house. The people were sad at the boy’s death, but rather than lashing out at the Judge, they commended him for his dedication to justice.

 

 

We joked about the dark Irish stories, I thanked him, took my hand-drawn map, and found me my first European meal. And let me tell you, it was delicious, blood pudding and all.

Project #2: Consider This My Genesis

I find myself sitting at my kitchen table, sipping at the juice from the can of peaches I just ate, and contemplating the act of storytelling. For an art and science as ancient as storytelling, it’s a really difficult thing to do. In the Fiction workshop I’m taking, the professor has a tendency to go on cryptic tangents that somehow explain the art of effective writing somewhere in the undercurrents of his robust and legato voice, but most of the time I find myself confused, vaguely understanding what he’s trying to communicate, similar to the way that metaphors communicate with a reader in some intangible, unplaceable way. Will letting his riddle-like wisdom wash over me make me a better writer through osmosis? Probably not, but one can hope. He writes beautiful, cryptic, mesmerizing prose, but that doesn’t seem to translate productively into professing. Which makes me wonder, does the way I act in “regular” life inform my writing style in the way his writing seems to inform his speech? Maybe I should start looking for the stories in life, in the day to day, rather than cerebrally digesting essay topics that occur in my life, as I sometimes find myself doing.

My first thought, as perhaps is everyone’s who has something to say, is that I have nothing to say. But as I find myself missing Europe and my backpack and the railway stations and the curious and interesting people I met from day to day and place to place and the snatches of conversations I heard on buses and in parks, as well as all the things that led me to the airport near my home with a one way ticket to Ireland in hand, I realize: Holy cow. I’ve got a quite a lot to say, haven’t I?

Which leads me to my next project.

Last month’s project was all about finding beauty where I am here at home, and to be honest, it proved invaluable in letting myself feel as excited to be here as I was to be in Europe. Now it’s time to share and reflect on all the things that happened to me and all the things I learned about the world, about people, about myself.

PROJECT #2: CONSIDER THIS MY GENESIS

Each week, recount the stories of my adventures, in chronological order to the best of my ability.

PARAMETERS: One story, once a week, photos included, until finished. Which, I warn you, will take longer than one month, though the storytelling gods only know just how long. This is going to be fun.