A guy with greasy blond hair and Atlantic-blue eyes hoists a backpack onto his shoulders. He snaps it around his waist. It’s half the size of his body, and I could fit four of them inside Big Red. Surely, with such modest gear, he must be traveling only for a week or two. And he must be moving around a lot. I plan on staying right here in Dublin. My instinct, as always, is to settle down, dig my heels in, and work hard at something, even if that something is only waiting tables. But it will be waitressing in a foreign country, far away from home. The backpacker strides swiftly out the door, looking carefree and unencumbered, leaving me with the exhausting thought of maneuvering my monstrous luggage through an unfamiliar city.
Why Ireland? Well, for starters, four hundred dollars (my parents’ generous, hesitant contribution) is enough to purchase a student work visa, something available in only a handful of countries, two of them—Australia and New Zealand—instantly ruled out because they are too far to find cheap airfare. Also, the rainy Irish weather appeals to me. If I am going to be miserable, I want the skies to match my mood. Last fall I took a course on Joyce, and I’ve been conjuring up long, dreary days wandering like Ulysses, rainy nights in cafés punishing myself with Finnegans Wake. This portrait appeals to my romanticized notion of melancholy, the kind I plan to undertake in Ireland, not at all like my current depressive state of pondering my postgraduate future, which consists of numbly attending lectures, sleeping twelve hours a day, and when I’m feeling really ambitious, staring blankly at the wall. Most of all, I just want to be somewhere else. When it comes to Ireland, it’s not so much a matter of Why here? as Will it be far enough?
It is not solely the post-graduation unknown that has unhinged me recently. It is also the fact that I was not expecting to be facing the abyss at all because I’ve had a very specific plan for my life since fourth grade. Up until recently, I fully expected to transition smoothly into the “real world,” riding into the gloriousness of my adulthood on the coattails of my one true calling: music. Viola, to be specific, the instrument I devoted myself to since I was eight. I even spent my freshman year of college studying with the principal of the Boston Symphony. But somehow, everything fell apart that year, and I was no longer on my way toward being a professional musician.
One might assume that this is an exciting turn of events. A serious child who, from an early age, dedicated herself with rather extreme discipline to one thing, is now liberated. While all the other kids were able to acquire and discard hobbies, figuring out their likes and dislikes, merrily wandering the aimless path of youth, this poor dear was stuck practicing and practicing and practicing. And now she’s free! The possibilities are endless!
Oh, the possibilities are endless. They weigh me down, tramp around my brain in their muddy boots. I was happy along my determined, orderly path. I don’t want options. I don’t want to explore. My future used to be a straight, sturdy line, but now it’s all blurry, as if I’m under anesthesia.
On the plane, I diligently studied my guidebook’s entry on the hostel where I’m staying, but I have no clue how to actually get there. A new surge of confident travelers envelops me, and when the wave subsides, I have been spat out on the other side, face-to-face with two angular women behind an information kiosk.
“Hi? I’m trying to get to my hostel?”
The one not texting whips open a map and expertly traces my route. “Right, you’re after the Airlink bus, which is outside now. Take it to the civic offices. Walk up Fishamble Street onto Lord Edward Street. Your hostel is on the corner.” She circles the spot twice with her pen, then pushes the map toward me and flashes an obligatory smile.
“Thanks,” I mumble. Forward motion, I think. Just keep moving.
I will myself through a revolving door and out into Ireland, where my bus is sunning itself. Three massive steps lead up into it, though there might as well be one hundred.
“You’re grand,” says the driver encouragingly, but I cannot see any graceful way to get myself plus Big Red inside.
I briefly consider splurging on a taxi, but it seems like an unnecessary indulgence when the bus is right here. It’s cheap—and it’s waiting. Okay, I tell myself. You may very well be about to make a complete ass of yourself, but no one knows you. Come on. Get on the bus. Get. On. The. Bus. I put two feet on the first step and then turn back around to face my engorged red opponent. Twisting the suitcase sideways, I drag it awkwardly up onto the step with me. Only half of its girth makes it; for a moment we are in a perfect precarious balance of bag and girl. Just as I am about to lose the battle to the overhanging weight, two steroidal angels reach down, and my suitcase floats the rest of the way in. We shove it into the space designated for luggage, leaving enough room for someone else’s small purse or perhaps a wallet.
I did it. I’m on a bus alone in a foreign country. For a fleeting second, I feel something surprising alongside the familiar emotions of confusion, doubt, and apprehension. Later, I’ll look back and recognize this rush of excitement as my first glimpse of what exactly it means to travel alone in a faraway land: I can go anywhere. I can do anything. And the all-important: I can be anyone. Soon enough I’ll come to crave this feeling, seek it out and cultivate it, but right now it’s an indecipherable sensation, quite possibly, I consider, indigestion.
[2]
Our heroine discovers a strange tribe of people with no steady residence or employment, among them one of her neighbors to the north, a riddling Italian, three fearsome giants, and a confounding native who speaks a strange repetitious tongue. She bravely orders a meal to be eaten all alone while pondering the age-old question: Is one really the loneliest number?
I’ve never stayed in a hostel. I didn’t even know what a hostel was until I opened my Let’s Go Ireland 2002 to a helpful explanatory entry: “Hostels are generally laid-out dorm-style, often with large single-sex rooms and bunk beds, although some offer private rooms for families and couples. They sometimes have kitchens and utensils for your use, bike or moped rentals, storage areas, and laundry facilities. The Internet is becoming an increasingly common hostel amenity, though Web access is often via mind-numbingly slow connections.” It sounds kind of like sleepaway camp. And it’s by far the cheapest accommodation going, which means it’s for me.
Besides being at the top of an unforgivingly steep cobblestone hill, my hostel, Kinlay House, is fitted with a seemingly impenetrable door. After I’m buzzed in, I manage to pull the handle at the exact wrong moment, getting nothing but an unsatisfied click as it relocks. After three tries, I finally get the timing right and find myself red-faced but inside. An unimpressed blonde slouches behind a counter, her Rapunzel hair twisted into a thick braid that hangs drowsily over one shoulder. Her green corduroy dress has patches for pockets. Like the girls in the airport, she is surrounded by maps and pamphlets advertising attractions and tours. Here, however, there seems to be no organizing order to the papers, which are fanned out on the counter and stuffed into hanging racks behind her. She’s tracing her middle finger on one for Dublin historic walking tours.
“How many nights are you staying?” she asks in an accent I can’t quite place—Russian, maybe.
When I tell her two, she glances at her computer but doesn’t ask if I have a reservation. Since it doesn’t seem like a piece of information that would strike her as particularly interesting, I keep it to myself.
She eyes my massive suitcase before informing me with a smirk that my room is on the third floor. I hand over forty euros.
“There’s an elevator, but you won’t be able to fit inside,” she tells me with unchecked glee. “The stairs are right behind you.”
Freshly polished, slippery-looking oak steps spiral high into the air. But I have made it this far, and the thought of collapsing onto a bed fuels my determination. I twist. I pull. I curse. I am breathless when I finally reach the third floor; I lean against the railing, panting. My gaze follows drifting smoke to a room down the hall where three pairs of bare feet stretch out tow
ard a blaring television.
A dripping male body in a discolored towel and flip-flops emerges from the door across from me. A high-pitched, virginal “Oh!” slips out of my mouth before I can stop it. In my college dorm, half-naked guys strolled through the halls at all hours, but I’m caught off guard now. Since there was a check-in area, I’ve revised my notion of hostels from a summer camp to some place more like a cheap hotel, where people typically remain fully clothed in the common areas. Shower dude ignores my prudish exclamation and continues down the corridor, trailing squishy wet footsteps.
My room is the farthest one from the stairs. The hobbit-sized door rests askew on its hinges, forcing me to lean both down and slightly to the right in order to enter. A guy my age with shaggy blond hair and the shadow of a light beard is propped up on one of the beds, reading a guidebook.
“Oh!” I respond stupidly for the second time in three minutes. I knew this hostel was co-ed, but I didn’t realize that meant there would be boys in the same room.
“Hey,” he says. It’s an infinitely more articulate greeting than anything I’ve offered so far.
The room’s furnishings are minimal. A low table accompanies each bed. All four mattresses sport matching maroon sheets with colorful quilts neatly folded atop. I survey the church steeple and small swath of Dublin rooftops through the triangular window above my bed. The sun is lost behind clouds that have descended rapidly upon the city in the last ten minutes. A mass of cranes pierce the gray sky. I saw them on the way in from the airport, too. The whole city seems to be in a state of renovation. New buildings shoot up higher and higher next to structures that look as old as time.
“Are you headed out?” the stranger inquires. He looks up at me. No, I’m not headed out, I think. Headed out where? All I want is to sleep, to just close my eyes and start over again tomorrow, when I’m less overwhelmed.
But I nod because it seems, from the way he asked the question, that I should be headed out, that heading out is the thing you do once you arrive in a new city alone with no idea what you’re doing there.
“Want some company?”
“Sure,” I say. I gingerly tear the Dublin section out of my Ireland guidebook, and then there is nothing left to do but leave the room with this stranger, still grimy after my long flight.
Matt is Canadian. He’s been in Dublin for a few days, waiting for his brother to turn up. They’re backpacking for eight weeks through Europe; the next stop is Germany.
“What are your plans for the summer?” he asks me.
“Well, I might … I’ll probably just … I’m not sure, I guess,” I stammer.
“If you have time, you should go to Galway. Try living out there for a few weeks and see how you like it.”
Of course I do have time. Time is all I have, stretching out like a waking dog, but go live somewhere I’ve never heard of?
“It’s great crack,” he declares.
Here we go. Here’s where things with your new drug-dealer buddy get weird, I think. Matt must notice me flinch, because he rushes to explain. “Craic—that’s the Irish term for a good time. You know, good drinks, good company, good music.”
“Of course,” I bluff unconvincingly.
“Where to?” Matt asks.
When I shrug, attempting to convey that I’m easygoing as opposed to completely disoriented, he tells me that if we take a left, we’ll hit Trinity College. Now, Trinity I know. All the best universities, whatever nation, have been drilled into me by my father. McGill is the Harvard of Canada, St. Andrews the McGill of Scotland, Oxford and Cambridge a debatable tie for most prestigious in England. Every time my dad lectures somewhere elite, he procures for me a souvenir sweatshirt from the campus store, the way some people collect stamps or magnets from different cities.
Trinity is a fortress. Spiky wrought-iron gates surround the massive stone structures. An enormous wooden door serves as the main entrance, though people move only through a small aperture cut into it, no wider than to allow two at a time. A constant glut of tourists and students dribble through it.
Inside, the sounds of the city are muted. We traverse the cobblestones, pass the rows of bicycles lining every path and the looming arch where tourists listen attentively to guides, and head to the Book of Kells exhibition, where ornate Latin manuscripts transcribed by Celtic monks are housed. In those days, a young monk entered the monastery at fifteen or sixteen years old. He received a tonsure, a shaved head, the mark of a slave. He also accepted a new name. Then he undertook a life devoted to the study of God’s word, fasts, and manual work. It is a sign of my somewhat disturbed state of mind that I’m jealous of this imagined monk who, day after day, transcribed minute letters by hand with a creaky calligraphy pen (and it’s not like they had Wite-Out back then). I’m jealous because he knew his exact purpose in life.
It’s nearly six P.M. when we emerge, and the narrow streets are buzzing with Dubliners returning home, their heads bent against the rain. The air suddenly feels cold and lonely. I move closer to Matt without realizing it, awkwardly bumping into him. I’m apologizing when I glance into a brightly lit pub where the customers are glowing like an altogether different species from the rush-hour traffic. I’m delighted by this timely reminder that I am spending the summer before my twenty-first birthday in a country where the legal drinking age is eighteen.
“Let’s get a beer,” I say conspiratorially.
“After you.” Matt bows chivalrously as he opens the door for me.
We order Guinness, since that seems like the Irish thing to do, though I notice only two elderly men nursing the same thick concoction. All the younger patrons are sipping fruit-accessorized cocktails. The bartender tips my pint glass to one side. He pours it nearly full with creamy brown liquid before setting it atop a sticky bar mat. The beer trickles down like sediment, light, foggy brown giving way to deeper colors. A minute later, he returns, holds the glass directly under the tap this time, and places a small spoon upside down over the rim, the hump extending up toward the ceiling. This time he pushes the handle away from him, letting the beer cascade over the spoon and become a half inch of dense white foam. It’s not sweet—not by a long shot—but the bitterness is more subdued than when I tried it back home, and it goes down smoothly. We order a second one, then a third.
I know absolutely no one in Ireland other than this stranger I have just spent the afternoon with. I imagine my lawyer mom finishing up the day’s client meetings, my professor father being greeted by students’ groans as he distributes a pop quiz. Erica is back in Connecticut, maybe unpacking the contents of her dorm room, unloading clothes into her childhood dresser or shopping for a new skirt to wear the first day of her internship.
I imagine the people whose lives are most intertwined with mine, and I realize life has gone on without me. The planet has not imploded because I, the girl who has always done what is expected of her, decided not to, just this once. As centuries of inebriated Irish before me have surely found strange wisdom at the bottom of their Guinness glasses, so too do I as I polish off my third one: apparently, I am not the center of the universe, and the earth will continue to revolve around the sun whether or not I decide to spend a purposeless summer in Ireland. This is the kind of revelation that is liberating when you are drunk, and rather depressing when you are sober, but luckily, at the moment I am the former.
Back at the hostel, the last thing I mumble to Matt before drifting into a deep, drooly sleep is “see you tomorrow,” but in the morning he and his bags have disappeared. He is replaced by three massive Dutchmen who make my oversize suitcase look like doll furniture. They appear as I am exiting the room, and naturally “Oh!” is all I can think to gasp at the disconcerting sight of them.
“Uh,” one of them replies in a cross between a greeting and a grunt. He steps aside to let me pass. Each guy is bigger than the next, like a matryoshka set. All top six feet and are thick as tree trunks.
“Hello!” says the last of the threesome cheerily.
He offers me his baseball mitt of a hand. “We are from the Netherlands.”
This cannot be happening. Staying with Matt was one thing, but bunking with three Brobdingnagians is another thing altogether. As I hurry downstairs, I think that the Dutchmen are probably at this very moment sweating and farting and lying around the room in their gigantic underwear. But none of this is as worrisome as the fact that I have to sleep in there with them. As if this is even an option; whoever put those three hulks in a room with a five-six American girl who has never set foot on foreign soil on her own is seriously deranged. I’ll bet it was that snarky blonde at the front desk.
I hear my mother’s voice. If I’m uncomfortable, I need to be an adult (I am an adult, after all) and let the person in charge know. After all, I doubt my parents will be too thrilled when their youngest daughter is molested and mutilated, her lifeless body thrown into the River Liffey in the dead of night. Right? Right, I tell myself as I screw up my courage and walk determinedly down the last few steps only to realize that the blonde has been replaced by a stubbly-bearded guy rolling a cigarette. He looks how I imagine National Geographic writers look: rugged, self-reliant, and unimpressed with squeamish little girls who request a room change.
Shit, shit, shit. I backtrack from the group of travelers milling around the desk examining street maps and strapping on well-used backpacks. National Geographic notices my presence and gives me a questioning look. I’m frozen close enough to the counter to seem like I need something but just far enough away that, since I’m not actually saying anything, I must appear a smidge nuts. The seconds tick by in slow motion. Sunlight streams through the windows, and the fear I felt in the enclosed space of my room drains from my body as if I’m waking from a bad dream; a dark blush blooms on my cheeks. You’re being ridiculous, I admonish myself, and scurry toward the scent of breakfast.
The Good Girl's Guide to Getting Lost: A Memoir of Three Continents, Two Friends, and One Unexpected Adventure Page 2
