On my first night in London, I roomed with three girls from California. I was exhausted from the day of long flights and near-missed layovers, but I clung to those girls like a lost child to a helpful adult. Hanging with them got me into this group of thirteen travelers that night who set off on a drunken scramble to find a bar that had something to do with vintage records, though I don’t much remember the details.
We never made it; I know that. Instead, we hit up a lot of little hole-in-the-wall pubs until we ended up back at the hostel with the help of our German guide, Izzy. The girls insisted I take Izzy, our German guide we found, back to her room. So, the blind led the blind only to find that my bunkmates had stolen my room key in an attempt to play matchmaker.
By the week’s end Izzy and I went almost everywhere together. She has dirty blonde hair with deep grey-green eyes, almond-shape, a shape that shows both happiness and frustration poignantly. I first saw her in a hostel bar reading The Philosophy of Cats and I thought anyone who sits in a bar reading The Philosophy of Cats is someone I’d like to know. So, the California girls introduced me.
Izzy’s accent is predominantly English with a tinge of German, both stern and cute, both intimidating and endearing. Izzy looked amazing in every color but wore solely black instead. Izzy, a progressive socialite by night, worked as a protest photographer by day. When traveling, she strictly enforced that you could not sit on the bed with outside clothes, could not buy her drinks, and every expense was meticulously kept track of to prevent one from owing the other money. On top of all of this, she was vehemently vegan. Altogether, she was a strict, socialist, black-clad animal-rights activist who loved to party. She was an enigma.
I was similarly perplexed when, after inviting her to go to Ireland with me, she said sure. So, after a breathless goodbye in Westminster, a few days later we were to meet in Liverpool, auspiciously, on Valentine’s Day. I was to catch the train from Bristol to Liverpool, though, keeping with my tradition of accidental mistravel, I instead boarded the train to Cardiff. Upon arriving I realized something was off.
I explained my situation to the Welsh ticket attendant, and while she seemed to understand my problem clearly, I couldn’t even begin to understand her solution to it. If the English accent were to be compared to, let’s say, a baked potato, the Welsh accent would be Shepherd’s Pie, a slur of vowels with consonants sprinkled on top. She was very kind and patient, however, and printed off a ticket itinerary for me to read, circled the connections, and handed it to me along with a fresh ticket.
I had turned a four-hour trip into a ten-hour trip, leaving Izzy stranded in the Airbnb we booked. I got in around ten and brought with me one of the last bouquets of flowers Tesco’s had. For three pounds they came pre-wilted.
Our time in Liverpool was more frantic than romantic, most of it being spent coping with the travel delays caused by Storm Eunice. Our plan to take an early morning train to Holyhead and catch the ferry to Ireland was canceled due to rough seas. Instead, we spent the day booking last-minute flights from Liverpool to Dublin, filling out the Covid paperwork, and finding accommodations.
Ireland has a strange and unmistakable attraction to it. I don’t know what compels a young man to go to Ireland, but it does. Both The Troubles and The Book of Kells are entwined into its history creating a culture that can produce people like Conor McGregor and Seamus Heaney in the same breath. An Irish pub is as good a place to find a conversation regarding poetry as it is a brawl. Perhaps that dichotomy in culture is the root of attraction.
Izzy insisted we get up at 4am for our 8:30 flight, despite only being twenty minutes away from the Liverpool airport. We made it with three hours to spare. We flew Ryan Air, a risky choice in which one takes their life into their hands. Considering the turbulence, I would think their planes are made of Balsa wood, though I know they’re not because Balsa wood wouldn’t land with such a thud.
Before arriving, many travelers and Irish informed me not to take too much time in Dublin. All, without fail, informed me Dublin was the armpit of Ireland. In my short experience, I would disagree. It is less the armpit, and more the crotch: not the comeliest, but enjoyable, in a crude sort of way, if one can get past the smell.
Altogether, we took the advice. After a few days in Dublin, we boarded a train to Killarney, where we were trapped in the upstairs of an Airbnb as Storm Eunice pounded the skylight with rain. From there we went to Galway, where we’d spend our final week in Ireland.
Much of the trip was spent with head colds, locked up in rooms eating whatever could be bought at a Sainsburys and cooked in a microwave, washed down with Irish gin out of sprite bottles. Travel ages relationships quick. By the time we reached Galway, Izzy’s and my few weeks together felt like a few months. The inability to cook, drive somewhere, or call friends added to the pressure. In time, finding restaurants with vegan options seemed a nuisance, her politics seemed less agreeable, her meticulousness less cute.
The weather in Ireland was poor throughout. Our hikes were diverted by flooding, our strolls through town by piercing, cold wind, and our bus tours by stinging hail blown sideways. Despite this, or perhaps even because of it, Ireland retained the magic I imagined. The hues of green bogs and hillsides clashed violently with the gray clouds and pouring rains. Its basins became ponds, its ravines, rivers. The more the maelstrom, the more mesmerizing Ireland became. Even the tree roots seemed tied in Celtic knots.
There’s something intrinsically romantic, or at the very least binding, about misfortune. From hardship comes identity, perhaps because hardship gives our life narrative. Wine drank in plastic cups is definitely not better than wine in proper glasses, but it is a little sweeter, cuter, in a sepia-tinted kind of way. Ease and pleasure rarely make the highlight reel, and travel brings about such misfortune abundantly.
On our last day in Galway Izzy insisted we go to a true Irish pub, one of the ones with the name you can’t even begin to pronounce. We went to Taig Choili, whose name is pronounced using none of the sounds the letters imply. We sat between a few college students speaking in Gaelic and some older fishermen weather-worn from the day. In the background, a band of four played traditional Irish folk music. The tempo was upbeat and the atmosphere was fun until finally, at closing, everyone began to go silent. Once the pub was still a man began to sing, solemnly, acapella, the Loch Tay Boat Song.
It’s a mournful song about the coming end of a relationship, sung by a fisherman rowing home over the waters of Loch Tay. His words mingle the land and his love together into one personage, both the Loch and his lady bidding him leave. Despite the hardship, both have given him leaving is a tearful thing.
The night, moving in the unpredictable way that traveling nights do, catapulted us from the pub to a club, with soused dancing and flirtation in brogue. My American accent elicited questions from many a girl about my opinions on American politics: “our politics are so boring! But yours is like reality television!” And Ireland’s favorite American reality-TV star? Bernie Sanders. After mentioning his name the group of five Irish politics and history majors all screamed like fangirls. One leaned over to me and whispered, “the Irish love Bernie.”
The next morning was spent walking the piers, listening to the gulls in a solemn, conclusory manner. We struggled to find a place to eat our last lunch together, one that both of us could enjoy. But the struggle just made me smile. We caught the train to Dublin, barely, all the Covid paperwork stamped and approved for me to fly out the following morning.
We stayed at a posh hotel in a Dublin slum for cheap, where our driver cautioned carefulness if we go out at night. “Lots of druggies. It wasn’t always this way, but Dublin is changing. Everythings changing.”
I left early the following morning with not quite an Irish goodbye, just a quick kiss and drowsy hug at 5am. The plane took me through grey clouds with little holes framing vistas of verdant green, with lots of sheep and cows texturing the land like specks of the dark grey, often black sand that circumscribes the country. But, as always, sand gives way to the ocean, and soon verdant green view faded to the deep grey-green waters of the northern Atlantic.
Perhaps what compels a young man to go to Ireland is its fruitfulness even in hardship. Or perhaps it is just love of a foreign thing, of a new experience. Perhaps he goes just for the desire to be and give and get and not sleep alone. Perhaps he thinks that going will give him the clues to solve the puzzle of the strange attraction. All I know is that he goes, and leaving is a tearful thing.
