Off to Dublin

Everything About the Pav Is Cheesy, Including Its Patrons

This weekend brought a trip to Dublin, Ireland with my Canadian friend, Robyn. Robyn and I met in the journalism program at TRU last year, and Robyn took a job as an aupair in England after graduating last spring.

We live a few hours apart in England, she in a small town near Lincoln and myself in Manchester. For Brits, it is an ungodly distance apart--three hours in Canadian terms. And both being true-blue Canadians, we don't consider the distance much more than a short drive. It has been a running joke between the two of us to listen to non-Canadians discuss distances.

On Friday night, my South African friend, Shaun, was expecting his friend Joe to visit Manchester for a wedding the next day. Joe is living in Southampton, which is a three and a half hour trip by car, maybe four with traffic. When we asked Shaun what time Joe would be arriving in Manchester to join the party, his reply was typical of most Brits and generally all Europeans:

ohhhh, I don't know. Not tonight that's for sure.

If he even makes it here at all.

Journeys exceeding one hour are almost unimaginable for those not acclimitized to the expansive True North landscape. When I tell people I'm from Canada, I usually use Vancouver as a reference point of where I am actually from. Although, when I refer to my city as being "near" Vancouver, people assume I mean within the means of a municipal transit system. When they find out I can't walk to the city, let alone live nearly four hours away, they are appalled.

I thought you said you lived NEAR Vancouver!?

And it is understandable. In four hours you can drive from one end of this country to the other. In less time than that, you can drive from East to West. And if you put in a serious day of driving--ten to twelve hours by Canadian standards--you would find yourself well into France or driving off the end of Scotland.

Robyn & Me At the Pav - Pre-trip Party

However, Robyn and I exemplified Canadian travellers (particularly from small-town Canada) on Friday morning while trying to rendez-vous in Manchester. Our plans are embarassingly sparse in hindsight, but at the time knowing Robyn arrived in Manchester at the Picadilly Gardens around 9 o'clock seemed more than enough information.

So I arrived at the Picadilly Gardens around 9 o'clock Friday morning to find Robyn. I soon realized that finding Robyn in a block stretching some 100 square metres in a city that boasts a density of nearly four thousand people every single square kilometre...might be a problem. Not surprisingly, the morning turned into a few hours of Where's Waldo-esque wandering (I am without a cellphone in England, and times like this prove just how wrong I was about spending four months "disconnected"). By 2:30pm, Robyn and I were reunited, looking forward to the weekend's trip, and swearing up and down that the morning's display of mediocre communication would never be repeated.

Needless to say, Joe never did make it to Manchester that night. I suppose he dropped off somewhere between hour two and hour three.

And Robyn and I were off to Dublin the next morning...after all--it is only an hour's plane ride away.

Robyn, Shaun & Me - plenty of fun without Joe.