I had many misconceptions about Ireland and the Irish before taking my trip. I talk about these in our book, Passport Knuckle Ride, and now I finally had the opportunity to prove/disprove my beliefs.
What I got right
Where to begin? Let’s start with the things I got right. Ireland is in fact as green as I thought it would be. They do drink a lot of Guinness. They have cool sounding accents and I had a hard time understanding some of the people. Both Celtic and Gaelic are used to describe Irish things and Gaelic is also the Irish language. I had never heard the Irish language before and must admit it sounded nothing like I would’ve thought - like a mixture of Arabic, German and Turkish.
What I got wrong
What did I get wrong? There were not nearly as many red-heads walking around as I envisioned. I didn’t see any drunken pub brawls, though plenty of drunk people. I didn’t see any rainbows despite the fact that it rained frequently and I didn’t see a bunch of cartoon Leprechauns everywhere.
When it came to the Leprechauns, I had to know if they were as big a deal as Americans make them out to be. We asked our Dublin cab driver and he immediately started laughing. They are in fact a big deal, but not in the way I had thought. The Irish do not commercialize the Leprechaun as we do in the United States, however this mythical creature is a huge part of their folklore, culture, and history. It was Disney and Lucky Charms cereal that had Leprechauns wearing green and characterized them how we see them today. They live in the hollow hills, originally wore brown suits with a red cap, and they aren’t really considered friendly. In fact they’re known to be tricksters and even though they cannot tell a lie or break a promise, it’s pretty much guaranteed that they will manipulate you in some way if you happen to meet them. As you probably noticed, they fascinate me.
What I did not expect
And now to discuss the things I did not expect in Ireland. My regular car insurance did not cover renting a car in Ireland. I’m not sure why I didn’t think of this, probably because I don’t rent cars often in other countries. However, it was 40 euros a day for rental insurance through the rental company. Not expected and not welcomed. When I purchased my travel insurance, I did see that rental car add on and promptly ignored it. I won’t do that again.
Any road that isn’t a major highway will not have shoulders. I knew country roads were likely to be narrow, but expected some measure of a shoulder or mirrors to see around curves and corners. Neither exist. So though I was comfortable driving on the left, the narrowness of the roads combined with the lack of shoulders and speeds in excess of 40-60 kph were terrifying. Terr-i-fy-ing! Large tractors would be barreling down on me and I had no recourse but to pull over into a hedge or a bush and will myself and the car to be smaller.
There were so many tourists! It was July, so I expected tourists, but Dingle in particular was out of control. This small seaside town on the west coast simply could not handle the hoards of people and often I was turned away at restaurants - there wasn’t capacity for a party of one, even sitting at the bar. Absolutely craziness and I will never visit Dingle again in July or August.
I had read that I would need cash and thankfully this turned out not to be the case as I couldn’t find a place to exchange money. Clearly I was not going to do it at the airport as the rates are never good. You can do it at the post office, no fees charged, however they do not exchange $1 or $100 and guess what I had? All $100 and one $20. So make sure you have smaller currency to exchange money at the post office.
What I learned about myself
I found every person I met to be friendly and genuinely curious as to how my trip was going and what I thought of Ireland. I did get the “where are you from” question a lot and simply replying with “the United States” was not enough to quell people’s curiosity. I was a little bit irritated by this until I found myself thinking the same thing about every person of color I saw on the street. I would immediately categorize the person as an immigrant or a tourist. It was a shock when I realized my biases. Why was I doing this? Because I unconsciously had in my head that all Irish people are white - which may have been true decades or a century ago, but is not the case now. What’s even more interesting is that I would not have even been aware of this internal bias if I had not answered the questions in our Passport Knuckle Ride Workbook. The questions helped me confront my misconceptions in such a way as to also recognize my stereotypes, biases, and yes my racism. (shudder)
Yes, me too. It does not matter what color we are, we all have some form of discrimination that we carry with us day to day. Travel helps me directly confront these parts of myself so I can do better each day. This is the reason for our book. As individuals, we can work on ourselves and one by one make the world a better place for the whole.
~Benef