The 100,000-Step Program

I just about panicked on my first day in Dublin. While the first cool air outside was invigorating, and while the city as narrated by the cab driver was intoxicating, a chilly reality settled over me once I unloaded my life’s belongings into my rented room for the fall. I was now irrevocably in Ireland. This was not home. This was an entirely foreign place. And I didn’t know what I didn’t know.

The undertaking was too large. That was what I kept thinking as my first afternoon in the city filled in the romanticized Ireland which I had foolishly built in my head. Cars went the opposite direction, wheeling through bizarre roundabouts. Trains and buses operated by some alien logic. The Tesco supermarket demanded the currency I didn’t have to buy the groceries I needed. There were classes to register for at a university I had never seen. Everything that I saw just added on another unknown. I felt like a foolish, romantic English major with too many ideas and too few answers. Some traveler, right?

Such was my mood when I lifted my first pint of Guinness, served warm in a Blackrock pub called The Old Punch Bowl. You might think that this story’s turning point coincides with the pint because I’m already a burgeoning pub-crawler. But I’m only mentioning the pint because Guinness is delicious and hardy. The change, the life preserver, came by way of my mother, who had accompanied me to Dublin to help me settle in. In her life she has become a veteran traveler, unflappable, curious, and resolute. In short, the ideal counterpart to the harried little bumbler that I became once I left American soil.

The key to being abroad, she told me, was to learn curiosity. If you intentionally seek out how to understand every place you encounter, nowhere can remain daunting. She persisted with the lesson despite the long silences and objections that I gave in reply. My resistance was mostly irrational, and my mom told me so. Learning means that you watch what the Irish do. I’m not Irish, Mom. Don’t be a stubborn foreigner. Exploring also means wandering into any shop you want. But what if—No, anywhere at all. Time doesn’t always have to be an issue. Even if the trains—Can’t you take my advice for what it is? You’ll miss the whole country if you don’t get flexible, you contrarian.

So take her advice I did. We began with Tesco, coming through the automatic doors to find the things we hoped would be there. Miraculously, I survived selecting and purchasing Irish food with euros. After the supermarket, we continued to the DART station down the road to untangle the train system which connects the towns clustered on the eastern coastline. Howth (pronounced to rhyme with “both”) sits as the farthest stop to the north, Greystones as the farthest south. One train arrival at a time, we learned how to make sure we were on the correct side of the platform, so we’d know when to scoot and when to sit. Our sense of direction came along more reluctantly, both in downtown Dublin and along the narrow streets of the seaside villages. Street names are often optional, and the streets meander absentmindedly. My mom has no qualms talking to anyone, so I watched her approach strangers to ask for pointers. Like a tourist. There—did you catch it? My knee-jerk reaction to something different. Asking strangers actually put us on the right track every time we tried it, thanks to the generosity of the Irish here. They’re generous with their words, pleasantly giving us more than others might. So I will probably ask for directions like a tourist, with my Texas accent, and maybe eventually it won’t embarrass me.

To clarify—I’ve been the only apprehensive one. My mother walks with her eyes up, map in front of her, and mind sure that everything can be undertaken. As a young mother of three squirmy boys, she lived in Wales for a year and visited every country in reach. I was a toddler; she was learning to travel like a European. Accordingly, everything that I see through my childlike suspicion is a pleasant homecoming for her. I don’t get miffed at the imbalance, seeing as I need to learn so urgently. Adapting comes by necessity when you’re on a new continent.

Gradually, my worries unfurled. When cars seemed to be in the wrong places, I somehow turned my head. The trains and buses have their logic printed at eye level for waiting passengers. Tesco doesn’t swallow American students whole. University College Dublin is open to walk through, and, as it turns out, its malleable registration process isn’t designed to torture students. All these things deflated to manageable levels.

Following my mom’s lead insured the first week in Dublin was a lesson. Not a victory, not a loss. Just an opportunity. For now I won’t get into the specifics of the villages, though there will be plenty of time for that. I’m only posting the pictures she and I took, the fruits of our hard-knock learning. These places are beautiful, with their cobbled lanes and pastel storefronts somehow immune to time’s passing. But I can only appreciate them if I can fit myself to the larger country. That is a tall order, one needing to maintained constantly, regardless of how this first week went.

The initial panic quietly resurfaced as I watched my mom’s bus pulled out into the street for the airport. We walked over 100,000 steps across only this part of the country, but I was still uneasy. Maybe that feeling will dissipate by the end. Maybe it’ll linger throughout my stay, just another bother to live with, like erratic weather or stuffy bedrooms or drippy faucets. Doable, but not preferable. If I’m smart, I’ll just give an Oh well and keep walking along the beach. There—did you catch it? My new plan for all things new and Irish.