Sandwiches, Tralee, and the Best Bus Driver Ever

Tralee, and Limerick, enroute to Doolin

The following combinations of sandwich fillings were available in Limerick Monday morning. They are, unfortunately for the hungry American, common.

• Ham and potato salad
  
• Turkey and stuffing
  
• Turkey and cranberry sauce
  
• Ham and onion
  
• Tuna and sweetcorn
  

On a sandwich? How do they even THINK of these things? The selections in England are even more bewildering. I'd have taken a picture of the ones at the York train station, but I was too tired and hungry to be amused by what appeared to be either terribly ill-conceived experiments conducted by aliens on what humans eat, or a joke conspired by sandwich makers and the operators of CCTV cameras in stores. On these sort of occasions, I usually settle on "Chicken BLT on thick, chunky bread." Sometimes it's funny later.

Yesterday, Kerry won the football final. As I was in Tralee, the capital of Kerry, things were expectedly crazy. Every car that came through the main drag laid on the horn, and any passengers waved air horns out the window at passerby who returned fire, so to speak. By 7pm, there wasn't a sober person on the street, save for me, who was trying to take pictures of pretty things, but I then decided that I was more likely to get a can of Bulmers thrown on my camera than a decent shot of anything. Instead, I walked out of town a bit and took roughly a million pictures of a sunset. On the way back to the hostel I was accosted by at least three extremely drunk men, one of whom was probably 80 years old. The pub I'd watched the game at said that they'd have a band in, so I stopped in the doorway to listen but heard a cover song and decided I didn't want to put up with bad covers AND drunk slobs, so I tried to find a shop open on a Sunday night for a sandwich. Besides, I was sick of every male I walked past slurring, "Heyyy-eyyyyy," at me. (And no I don't even know how you can slur a nonword like "hey", but they managed.) The only thing open was a fastfood joint named "Supermacs". The counter was staffed by the only cute - and coincidentally, the only sober – boy in town. It didn't hurt that he kept smiling at me. While that was probably due to my funny accent, I'll take what I can get.

I had to get up at 5:30 in order to catch the 6:15 bus out of town, which was my only chance in getting to Doolin before 8pm. I didn't sleep well either, due to the text messaging from my youngest sis (YstSis, until I find a better acronym) and Tim (who doesn't get an acronym), who wanted to talk about the Timbers game. Any other night, guys. Poor Tim is IN Portland, but can't follow the games due to work. So YstSis texts me the latest halfway 'round the world, then I text Tim. Communication these days is strange, isn't it? (btw, Timbers 3-0! 3-1 on aggregate! Bring on the next round!)

Irish towns are hard to identify. I mean, I know when I'm in one, I just don't know the name of it. This is a problem when riding the bus, as the driver sure as hell doesn't inform anyone of where we are. In small American towns, everything is named for the place. You'll have the Newport Bank, the Newport Insurers, the Newport Police Station. Here, everything is Paddy's Pub, Diarmuid's Shoes, and O'Shea's Groceries. In every town! This meant that on the ride to Doolin from Limerick, I couldn't sleep for fear of missing my stop and ending up in Bogville in front of Murphy's Pub where there's no ATM, no place to stay and noooo bus on Sundays. So when the old lady at the front of the bus who had been shouting into her cellphone for the whole journey began to have technical difficulties, I was the one she approached.

"Do you speak English?"

Sigh. "Yes."

"Of course you do. Now, could you tell me why my phone isn't ringing? It's only vibrating and I CANNOT afford to miss calls today, it's urgent."

So I gave it my best shot, but for the life of me, I don't know why it wasn't ringing. It really should have been ringing. But after fifteen minutes or so she gave up and tried the boy across the aisle who merely looked at the thing, with visible disgust I might add, and it rang. This is why I never got into fixing cars.

BUT the trip got immensely better when we hit a traffic jam in some tiny town called Lisdoonvarna (we got stuck in front of the sign labeling it as such, that's the only reason I know the name). A delivery truck parked on the wrong side of the road couldn't pass us, and after consultation between our driver and the other, it was decided that the bus would back up. Meanwhile, traffic was piling in from both directions. The bus driver (known from now on as Best Bus Driver Ever, or BBDE) was already getting excited. "Making ME back up? He could've. He should've. He's the one going the wrong way! He got scared though. He had room, he just got scared." After the truck was past, it was a matter of dealing with all the cars that were following the truck, all of which had decided to follow the truck's lead by driving on the wrong side of the road. So we hiccuped through town, jamming on the brakes so hard every few seconds that people's faces kept bouncing off the seats in front of them, and BBDE less and less successfully stifling his shouts at the other drivers. Finally, in a tirade I could hear all the way near the back of the bus:

"OCH, fuck.. fff… *mumbles* AGGGHHHHGGGH! DIS IS WHY I DON'T HAVE ANY HAIR ON ME HEAD!" (btw, I think I came to Ireland just to hear someone shout that)

"THERE ARE PEOPLE HERE WITH LICENSES! I WOULDN'T LET THEM DRIVE A PRAM!" He was a short man, with a high-pitched voice which made it all the sweeter. Even people in the restaurant next to us were laughing.

About an hour and 8km later he saved me a walk to my hostel by dropping me off right in front of it, but not before I'd nearly gotten off the bus earlier. Told that he'd get me closer to where I was going, I hopped into the front seat, with full view of the road ahead. Big mistake. Sure, we only went like a hundred feet, but it was a hundred feet of terror. There is no way that vehicles that large should be on roads that small, especially when there are other cars and pedestrians. But for entertainment alone this guy won the close race for the highly coveted best bus driver title.