As I neared the end of my expat adventure, I began to contemplate the return portion of the return Dublin to London ticket I'd already purchased. I decided not to use it. Instead I chose to wander my way back to London with my friend Jimmy. In just under three days, we took a train to Cork, a bus to Rosslare, a ferry to Wales, a train to Cardiff and a train to London. Considering all those transport links, the holiday went surprisingly smoothly. In fact, and perhaps because of this, much of the trip was disappointingly unremarkable. The closest thing to a mishap we experienced, and thus the most interesting bit, was our arrival in Rosslare.
Jimmy and I were spending the night there in anticipation of taking a ferry to Wales the next morning. The only address we could find for the B&B where we were staying was the very helpfully specific "Rosslare Harbour," but it appeared on Google maps to be remarkably close to the Europort. We'd decided to disembark there and walk up to the B&B. Suddenly we noticed a brown, clover-adorned sign pointing toward the Clifford House just as the bus pulled away from a different stop. As it was too late to get off there, we just rode down to the Europort stop as originally planned. How much further could it be?
The bus pulled into the Europort harbour, travelling a surprising distance from the point where we should have left the bus. "I wish it weren't driving so far in," Jimmy commented. I had to agree. We were supposed to check in to the B&B at 9 PM, and we had little chance of making it at that time. I'd rung the owner from the bus to tell her that we'd be 10 or 15 minutes late, and we both figured we'd easily be able to make that time. We're fast walkers.
Our driver wasn't so confident. We were the last two passengers on the bus, and he'd to come down to help me open the hatch on the side of the vehicle so I could retrieve my luggage. We chatted to him for a bit, and he asked us where we were staying. We told him, and he stood mulling it over. "Clifford House, Clifford House...I don't know it." He gave us general directions as to how to reach the area where most of Rosslare's B&Bs are situated. He apparently had very little faith in our ability to navigate, because he suggested, "There's a boat leaving tonight. You should probably just take that. You'll have to cancel the Clifford House." He looked at us regretfully and then boarded the bus.
Jimmy and I decided that was rubbish and went to find the B&B despite his counsel. We located and climbed up the lengthy set of stairs he'd described as part of our route to Rosslare's B&B enclave, then turned right as he'd directed. After walking past an ubiquitous chain hotel, we encountered a construction site and a torn-up sidewalk. We were not prepared for, nor enthusiastic about, fording a mud puddle, so we turned back the other direction. Directly we came upon and walked down a short gravel path, finding a paved road lined with B&Bs at its end.
We followed it, carefully searching for our accommodation. Eventually we arrived back at the intersection where we'd seen the sign for the Clifford House from the bus. It, of course, pointed accusingly in the direction from which we'd just come. We duly turned around and trekked back up the road, redoubling our efforts in scouring the signs along its sides. We failed and came once again upon a fast food restaurant we'd encountered at the outset of our journey. We went in to enquire if they could help us. Fortunately they were able to direct our poor, misguided selves a few metres beyond the gravel path from which we'd begun and from which we'd elected to turn the wrong direction.
Given this guidance, we finally found the Clifford House. We picked our way down the slightly dark gravel driveway and walked directly through a pair of glass doors. There was no-one about, and it felt very seriously as if we'd just broken into someone's private home. We'd poked our heads into a dining room, a sitting room, and a kitchen before one of the owners found us skulking about. "Oh," she said by way of explanation, "I didn't hear the doorbell." We hadn't seen, nor had we rung, the doorbell, and I'm certain she was perfectly aware of this. However, she was perfectly lovely and polite as she showed us to our room and directed us to a pub where we could still find food service at that time of night. She then left us with the key, which was attached to an enormous, lacquered cross-section of a tree branch, and headed out.
Jimmy and I slowly threaded our way up the now completely dark gravel drive and successfully navigated our way to the pub. To my delight, I discovered that SKY TV was airing a highlights reel of sorts from the Liverpool v Bolton match I'd missed the day before. I managed to avoid devoting all of my attention to the telly, and Jimmy and I launched into a discussion about our respective states (he is also an American expat). Suddenly he interjected, "I hate to say it because I'll probably jinx it, but I really like Rosslare!" I completely agreed. It probably had something to do with our only staying there for 12 hours, but Rosslare had exceeded all the expectations we hadn't dared to hold.
The only other incident particularly worth noting happened on the train from Cardiff to London. The service was slightly late in arriving at the platform, and the train manager soon made an overhead announcement explaining why in exacting detail. They had reached Swansea 45 minutes late after being held up on the English side of a specific tunnel by a broken-down train within the tunnel. They had to wait for that train to be removed before they could continue with their journey. But, they had managed to reduce their tardiness down to a mere 10 minutes by the time they reached Cardiff.
This is, I think, typical of UK public transport announcements. In the US, it would be sufficient to blame "technical difficulties." But in the UK, that is just not informative enough. I remember being taken aback the first time I heard a Tube announcement proclaiming that, "Due to a person under a train, there are severe delays on the _____ line." What?!? Are they OK?!? That was always slightly unsettling, but I encountered a far more morbid explanation when I once attempted to change to the Victoria Line. A Transport for London employee was working his way down the stairs from the platform, turning the crowd away as he went. "The Victoria Line's closed," he announced. "Why?" one of the more belligerent crowd members demanded. "Because someone just died on the platform." Oh.
Jimmy and I enjoyed several more entertaining announcements from the train manager throughout our journey back to London. Just before the train reached its final destination at Paddington station, he remarked, "We've had a good run" before launching once again into a full description of what had transpired earlier in the journey. That was one of the last announcements I heard before I repatriated. How apropos a summary it was.
21 December, 2007
18 December, 2007
Repatriating
My overseas adventure met its untimely end a few weeks ago. I slowly wound my way back to the US via Cork, Rosslare, Fishguard, Cardiff, London and Toronto, finally touching down in Minneapolis on 5 December. Now instead of being an expat, I'm a repat. This is the second time I've needed to switch the prefix of my label, and the experience is uniquely bewildering. But I'm finding it quite amusing as well, so I'll to try to describe it as best I can.
One source of bewilderment is the strange temporal shift that occurred when I arrived back home. Suddenly the period I spent away compressed so completely that it's impossible to believe I was gone for 10 months. And the time occupied by my adventures is capable of stretching and collapsing depending on how and where I think about it. When I was thinking about Minnesota before I left Ireland, I felt as though I'd been away forever. Recalling or recounting specific incidents also makes the time expand to forever proportions. But taken overall, and compared to the fairly constant continuity of home, my time abroad seems incomprehensibly brief. So brief that it's almost like I never left.
And yet the familiar also seems so alien. Streets that I used to be able to navigate automatically suddenly require a thorough scouring of my mental map. And that mental map now has blank spots. Both metaphorically, in not being able to remember how streets connect, and literally, in the case of the 35W bridge. Then once I've figured out where I'm going, I'm sometimes thrown off by my fellow vehicles and the direction in which they're moving. Single-decker buses drive with SUVs, trucks and vans that have increased wildly in size since I left (at least compared to the smart cars I'm accustomed to seeing). At stop signs, I find that I look right first, then glance left to find cars that I didn't think were there suddenly approaching from a different direction than I expected.
Everyday procedures, objects and surroundings can also be confounding. I'll have the correct change for a purchase counted out and waiting when I reach the cash register only to find that I've forgotten about sales tax and the price is actually higher than listed. There are dollar bills instead of pound/Euro coins. I need to flip light switches instead of pressing them. The accents, phrases, mild profanities and intonation of the people surrounding me are completely different than I've become accustomed to. They stand out to my brogue-acclimated ears in a way they never did when I used to live here. And rather than feeling at home in the place where I supposedly belong, I feel lost. Adrift. Alienated. I will never truly belong here again.
While this can be a bit disconcerting at times, it is also a source of pride for me. I like it when people remark on my trace of an accent, when they laugh at and correct my strange British/Irish idioms. It may seem stubborn, but I am going to keep using those idioms, and their British English spellings. Because I want so badly to retain something, some sort of evidence of an immensely meaningful part of my life. My warped sense of time already seems to have robbed it of part of its significance, and I don't want to lose any more. In a particularly desperate attempt at preservation, I've even caught myself exaggerating the bit of an Irish accent that I managed to pick up. I drop more h's when I tink certain tings tan I ever did before.
Clearly, there is a large degree of reentry shock to be dealt with. But I also take pleasure in rediscovering the luxuries I've grown accustomed to living without. While much around me may have taken on an unfamiliar familiarity, my bed will always be irrevocably mine. And it's perfect. At least compared to my London mattress, which had a deep trench in its middle, and my Dublin mattress, which featured springs that had lazily uncoiled and were given to poking me relentlessly. I've also found American water pressure amazing. It blasts shampoo out of hair rather than tentatively trickling it out. Sink faucets, too, are shining examples of ingenuity. Hot and cold water coexist in one faucet. No scalding my hands under one faucet and having to turn it off and ice the burn under the cold tap at the opposite corner of the sink.
While I'm gradually becoming more used to being home, it will take a while to re-acclimate to Minnesota and its ghastly winter climate. I don't think I ever will completely. I'll always be a repat to some extent. But I'm pleased with that. I've found that it's easier to create interesting adventures with an expat/repat/outsider mentality. I'm going to retain that, explore the Twin Cities as if I've never seen them before and wring everything I can from them. Because that's what I mean by repatriating.
One source of bewilderment is the strange temporal shift that occurred when I arrived back home. Suddenly the period I spent away compressed so completely that it's impossible to believe I was gone for 10 months. And the time occupied by my adventures is capable of stretching and collapsing depending on how and where I think about it. When I was thinking about Minnesota before I left Ireland, I felt as though I'd been away forever. Recalling or recounting specific incidents also makes the time expand to forever proportions. But taken overall, and compared to the fairly constant continuity of home, my time abroad seems incomprehensibly brief. So brief that it's almost like I never left.
And yet the familiar also seems so alien. Streets that I used to be able to navigate automatically suddenly require a thorough scouring of my mental map. And that mental map now has blank spots. Both metaphorically, in not being able to remember how streets connect, and literally, in the case of the 35W bridge. Then once I've figured out where I'm going, I'm sometimes thrown off by my fellow vehicles and the direction in which they're moving. Single-decker buses drive with SUVs, trucks and vans that have increased wildly in size since I left (at least compared to the smart cars I'm accustomed to seeing). At stop signs, I find that I look right first, then glance left to find cars that I didn't think were there suddenly approaching from a different direction than I expected.
Everyday procedures, objects and surroundings can also be confounding. I'll have the correct change for a purchase counted out and waiting when I reach the cash register only to find that I've forgotten about sales tax and the price is actually higher than listed. There are dollar bills instead of pound/Euro coins. I need to flip light switches instead of pressing them. The accents, phrases, mild profanities and intonation of the people surrounding me are completely different than I've become accustomed to. They stand out to my brogue-acclimated ears in a way they never did when I used to live here. And rather than feeling at home in the place where I supposedly belong, I feel lost. Adrift. Alienated. I will never truly belong here again.
While this can be a bit disconcerting at times, it is also a source of pride for me. I like it when people remark on my trace of an accent, when they laugh at and correct my strange British/Irish idioms. It may seem stubborn, but I am going to keep using those idioms, and their British English spellings. Because I want so badly to retain something, some sort of evidence of an immensely meaningful part of my life. My warped sense of time already seems to have robbed it of part of its significance, and I don't want to lose any more. In a particularly desperate attempt at preservation, I've even caught myself exaggerating the bit of an Irish accent that I managed to pick up. I drop more h's when I tink certain tings tan I ever did before.
Clearly, there is a large degree of reentry shock to be dealt with. But I also take pleasure in rediscovering the luxuries I've grown accustomed to living without. While much around me may have taken on an unfamiliar familiarity, my bed will always be irrevocably mine. And it's perfect. At least compared to my London mattress, which had a deep trench in its middle, and my Dublin mattress, which featured springs that had lazily uncoiled and were given to poking me relentlessly. I've also found American water pressure amazing. It blasts shampoo out of hair rather than tentatively trickling it out. Sink faucets, too, are shining examples of ingenuity. Hot and cold water coexist in one faucet. No scalding my hands under one faucet and having to turn it off and ice the burn under the cold tap at the opposite corner of the sink.
While I'm gradually becoming more used to being home, it will take a while to re-acclimate to Minnesota and its ghastly winter climate. I don't think I ever will completely. I'll always be a repat to some extent. But I'm pleased with that. I've found that it's easier to create interesting adventures with an expat/repat/outsider mentality. I'm going to retain that, explore the Twin Cities as if I've never seen them before and wring everything I can from them. Because that's what I mean by repatriating.
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