My Trip to Ireland

It started with one of those nightmare air travel experiences that everyone shares at one time or another: I’m in the tiny airport in my small town, telling the old-timer that I don’t want to fly to Philly if my already 3-hr late flight isn’t going to get there in time to make the connecting international flight. I foolishly let him assure me that “we’ll try our best …” Well, it turns out the air traffic controllers always send off the international flights on time – in this case, half full, since the rest of the passengers, including me, from all the late connecting flights got left behind and ended up in a very long line, moving at a glacial pace, for several hours – everyone’s eavesdropping on everyone else’s frantic cell phone calls to the airline, whose remote lackeys finally say they can’t book us on other airlines, and we should just stay in line. We end up at the unpaid-for hotel (air traffic and weather weren’t their fault) at 1am, get up early to catch a connecting flight to some other city to finally spend another sleepless night flying over the Atlantic while being interrupted by the flight attendants every 15 minutes for food, movies, ear phones, duty free, etc., finally arriving at the conference center at 6am Irish time. I’m so wasted from 2 nights of sleep deprivation that instead of sensibly going to bed for several hours, decide to take a nap and then go swimming and then eat lunch and then get an excruciating migraine, which sends me to bed for about 16 hours, during which I throw up both my migraine pill and later the extra-strength Tylenol loaned by a suitemate, finally falling asleep and waking up pain-free the next morning just in time for the conference to begin. So much for getting there a day early to adjust.
The one and a half days of the conference go the way my conferences usually go: I chat with a few people I know, and spend most of my time feeling inadequate and hating myself for feeling inadequate. I always find myself talking to people about teaching rather than research.
Finally, I look around and notice how absolutely beautiful is the University of Limerick. The Shannon River runs through the campus, which is spread out over several acres, lots of natural green space, walking paths, obviously enjoyed by members of the surrounding community, and their dogs, on a regular basis. We are staying in a relatively new campus village, where each floor has 6 rooms en suite with a common kitchen slash sitting room. The best thing is how sound-proof all the doors are - quiet, clean, comfortable, with a cold but perfectly adequate breakfast each morning. The complex is connected to the main campus via a very long, architecturally unique footbridge that crosses over the lovely Shannon River – I noticed great blue herons, swans, Irish crows and jays, and lots of other vocal birds, including owls in the early morning.
My usual preferred mode of travel is to do what the locals do, rather than do the bus tour thing. Just walking around campus is pretty much enough for me. On my one day to tour, I start off on a bus tour then realize I just need some down time, especially after the driver turns on Irish musak, worries about the traffic we’ll encounter during the bank holiday weekend, and someone from the conference sits behind me and wants to chat. So I manage to jump off at Ennis, the driver kindly dropping me at the train station, where I conveniently catch a cheap train back to Limerick. Back to campus for a swim. Interesting that the locker room in the pool is co-educational – no walking around naked like I do at home. After a bit of a rest, I take the bus back into town to find some souvenirs, but unfortunately just in time to catch the stores all closing. Oh well.
Another highlight: after the conference ends on Saturday noon, I’m lucky enough to hook up with N, our host prof at UL, who first takes me and another yank, K, on a little walking tour of Limerick City, then we’re off to N’s lovely home near the Shannon, where we take her dogs on a lovely walk through lush, cool, green paths along the water, visit the local marina, and finish with tea and conversation.
The trip back goes amazingly smoothly – I luck out with no one in the middle seat, and in the window seat a Slavic-looking young man with a broken nose who obviously doesn’t want to chat, mostly sleeps or plays with his iPhone. I imagine he is in the Russian mafia. I spend my time napping, reading, and meditating, trying to apply Pema Chodron’s astute advice (from The Places that Scare You).