Coming Back from Belfast: Part 3 of 3

Our last day in Belfast was actually only about three hours long, because we had to catch a morning bus to Dublin. So Natalie took us to the botanic gardens and to one of those cheesy and ubiquitous souvenir shops (which was blaring "Galway Girl"...see Part 1) before seeing us off at the bus station.


During the bus ride, I sat next to a girl in her mid-twenties who was doing a few months of traveling in Europe while she sorted out her quarter-life crisis. We talked for the latter half of the trip to Dublin; I got the feeling that it had been awhile since she was able to have a face-to-face conversation with anyone. While I admired her gutsiness for traveling alone, I was also glad not to be in her position. Sharing my experiences with other people is one of my favorite parts about traveling. I would've been so lonely and frustrated if I were roaming around by myself.


The other memorable part of this trip was when the bus was stopped so that the garda could do a passport check. Claudia hadn't brought her passport with her (and in fairness, no one checked us when we were coming in), so there was a moment of deer-in-the-headlights glances as we all wondered if she'd get kicked off the bus. "I will leave you here," Jessie declared. "I'm going home." Fortunately, her student ID card was sufficient proof that she wasn't a renegade vigilante, and the bus continued on its journey. (By the way, the bus had cameras monitoring its back and sides, which I haven't seen anywhere else and can only attribute to a security precaution. I'm sure they were helpful when someone had to get out and throw up.)


A few hours later we were in Dublin, wandering around in search of the spot where we could pick up our connecting bus. Turned out there was no need to rush, because so many people were waiting for that bus that it filled up (after Jessie and Kelsie got on, but while Claudia, Emilie, and I were still in line) and they had to send another one. "Ten minutes," the driver of Bus #1 promised us. He even gave Emilie the phone number of Bus #2's driver, Brendan, so she could call him if he didn't show. ("I have Brendan's phone number now!" she gloated.) Twenty minutes later--after Jessie had fulfilled her earlier promise to leave others behind in her eagerness to get home--Brendan rolled in and we (the original Dublin Three, as I noted) were on our way to Cork.


I'm sure I slept at some point during the next four hours, but what I remember is looking out the window and marveling at almost everything I saw. It was that rare and precious Irish phenomenon, a sunny day. Ireland is hard to surpass, beauty-wise, on a sunny day. I thought about that, and I thought about trying to answer that constantly recurring question of "Why Ireland?" Everyone asked me that before I left (except my relatives who assumed I was going because of my Irish ancestry) and people here still ask it. (People in England ask it a lot, in a way that makes me feel a little standoffish. Sour grapes much?) To be honest I don't think I had a good reason for coming. But I can think of lots of reasons that I'm glad I came. (If my introspective ramblings are of minimal interest, you can pretend this post ends here.)


Initially I felt a little guilty about my choice--an English-speaking first-world country with a border separating it from even the ghost of violence--as if I were taking the easy way out, while other Macalester students were going to war-torn or poverty-stricken regions where different languages and different customs could make for real culture shock. But for someone who, before coming here, had never used an ATM or booked her own flight or boiled rice for herself, this was as much a leap out of the comfort zone as going to the Antarctic. (No one ever thinks to study abroad in the Antarctic, do they? It's criminally underrepresented in those information packets you're supposed to pick up during sophomore year before you've even declared your major....) I'll freely admit that I'm about as sheltered and lacking in self-sufficiently as a middle-class white girl can be (i.e., very). And I didn't go abroad with the illusion that the experience would completely change my life or transform who I am or suddenly crystallize where I fit in the larger world. This isn't Eat, Pray, Love. ("Self-acceptance, check. Spiritual enlightenment, check. Hot Brazilian, check..." Do not get me started.) What I did hope for was a chance to see things I never could've just imagined, and to touch things I hadn't even known about. And on a selfish level, I did want to prove to myself that I could thrive in a different environment--that it was possible to pick myself up and set myself down in a new place without vaporizing. (Yes, just like beaming technology from Star Trek. Someone needs to get on that, by the way. Why stop at cell phones?) So, ta-da, I haven't vaporized (though much of my parents' money has), and I've also developed an appreciation for the history and landscape and people of Ireland...and other places too, but now I'm getting ahead of myself.


Can't have that, can we?


Yup, another cliff-hanger. You're used to that by now.