The Irish Countryside from the Inside of a Bus

I woke up before Starbucks opened.  That’s the precedent for an early rising.  I was going on a tour to the Cliffs of Moher on the Atlantic coast.  The bus was scheduled to leave Dublin at 7:00 A.M.
 

I reached the bus stop early to find one frazzled driver corralling confused tourists while his co-worker smoked cigarettes and avoided responsibility.  A small queue formed.  When a brisk wind blew, the temperature hovered around 40 degrees Fahrenheit (around 5 degrees Celsius). 

 
The frazzled driver was shivering in his T-shirt.  As he checked people off his list, his lazy colleague continued puffing on his cig.  This seemed the epitome of the Irish working class:  some were diligent; the rest were belligerent. 

I climbed aboard behind some American girls, which turned out to be a mistake.  If I wish to dose off, I can easily tune out English, but when I hear mutterings of a foreign language my curiosity impels me to decipher the strange words.  This mental occupation prevents any chance of slumber. 

As it turned out, the American girls hardly spoke English.  Their limited diction was littered with textese terms, likes, and other fillers that aren’t really words.  Mostly I heard things like:  “Oh my God, that’s, like, hilarious.  Oh my God, look at those lambs.  They’re, like, so cute.”  These kinds of Americans make me cringe because they make the rest of the population look dumb.  These are the kind of ignorant Americans who enter a foreign country and expect everyone to speak clear English to them. 

The tour guide, on the other hand, spoke rapid-fire English with a thick Irish accent.  Usually when I hear my Mexican friends speaking Spanish to each other, I think they are speaking incredibly fast.  Likewise, non-natives may struggle to comprehend the Irish if English isn’t their primary language. 

Because I have much practice with a core vocabulary of often-used words, I can instantly recognize the sounds of the Irishman’s speech, which sound similar to pronunciations with which I’m more familiar.  I can also match the sound of a word to its meaning.  All of us who readily speak English can do this fairly easily. 

But when we hear foreign languages we may only hear syllables or indistinct sounds to which we cannot attach accurate spelling.  If you didn’t speak English and you heard the word vo-cab-u-lary, you may think you’ve heard four words.  Viewed in this manner, foreigners’ tongues may seem to rival the rate of an auctioneer, but, more than likely, the speed is a misperception caused by a disconnect between the ears and the brain.  We can’t recognize the words, let alone their meanings, so we have no bearings with which to accurately judge how fast a foreigner is really speaking.

If anyone on the tour bus wanted to hear the endless statistics about Ireland, their English had to be extremely polished.  I sat near a German woman who had no clue what the driver was saying.  Her daughter had to summarize the lengthy divulgements. 

A French woman near me also acted as her group’s translator because a few of her companions could not keep up with the bus driver’s words.  Once we reached a rest stop and all of us piled back onto the bus, a few couples switched seats, forcing the annoying Americans to usurp a French woman’s spot.  There were no assigned seats, but apparently this woman was either an obsessive creature of habit or a stickler for order. The French woman was mildly distraught over this disorder and eventually vented her frustration to the Americans, who had no idea what she was saying.  I witnessed the conversation, which was very one-sided on both sides.

At first, the French woman hovered near the Americans and silently waited for them to get out of her seat.  Wordlessly receiving her impatience, one of the Americans said, “Someone took our seats, so we had to move back a row.”

 

“Comment?” inquired the French woman.  “What?”

The French woman’s companion quickly translated but, strangely, chose not to confront the Americans in English to handle the matter directly.  Understanding what both sides were saying, I chose not to get involved in the squabble.   

The Irish driver, whom hardly any of us could understand, swooped in to solve the issue, but the French woman remained steadfast. 

“Tu ne peux pas changer,” she said.  “You can’t change places.” 

A Taiwanese man next to me interjected, “Excuse me.  I don’t speak English, but I think she is saying someone took her seat.”

It was an impressive sentence for someone who claimed not to speak English.  The diversity of the passengers breathed life into this mundane quarrel, and I found it fascinating that everyone involved both understood and misunderstood each other at the same time.  This scuffle proved to me that you could fight without words and without fists.  A penetrating glare is a universal red flag of pissed-off-ness.  Like her country has done many times, the French woman lost the battle and was exiled from her translator. 

 

The driver consoled the French, however.  There would be an opportunity to shuffle the seats after we stopped for a photo. 

“Apres nous arretons pour prendre des photos,” the French translator bellowed, “nous pouvons jouer des chaises musicales.”

Aside from the linguistic entertainment, the view from the window offered a serene diversion.  Mossy green fields were divided by stone walls.  Within the delineated confines, sheep wandered aimlessly throughout their limited pastures.  Their wooly coats were marked by vibrant red or blue paint so that the farmers could identify their livestock should they manage to escape.  Some of the sheep were so heavily painted they resembled cotton candy with limbs.There were also cattle, horses, and, in a few spots, el pacas, a breed of llamas.

 

The landscape was punctuated by limestone, and in one stretch a large rock slate served as a mini mountain.  When creatures could roam across the supercontinent Pangea, the rock that would become Ireland was in the Caribbean, so the natural environment is quite different from Scotland’s despite the two nation’s proximity. 

The tour guide rattled off dates and statistics with very little fervor.  He seemed to be reciting a script at times.  Every now and then he would needlessly repeat himself.  He would describe the features of a castle, which was not yet in view and then exhaust the subject before we reached it.  Then, once we could actually see the castle he would attempt to refresh the same tirade but with different synonyms.  His recitals were like the same mediocre play performed twice with a change of actors and background scenery.  With this technique, he succeeded in boring me not once, but twice.

The lesson I took from this was to be more aware of my own speech.  Like the driver, I am guilty of rewording statements to seem like I have more to say.  For whatever the reason, I feel impelled to lengthen my sentences or carry on when my listener does not visually signify his recognition.  What I should do is be more direct with my statements and delete fluffy phrases like “kind of” and useless add-ons like “or something.”  I’d wager that most of us struggle with the silence in between dialogue, so we feel compelled to fill that void with more words.      

Don’t get me wrong.  I welcome commentary during tours.  I want to learn the history from a local’s perspective, but I don’t give a damn about the parameters of the world’s largest thatched roof. If you mention a claim to fame, the feat must be noteworthy. If you have nothing worthy to mention, let me enjoy the view in silence.  Its beauty, at least, will be untainted by soporific droning.  The countryside in Ireland is very peaceful and needs no soundtrack to be enjoyed.