The highs and lows of arriving in your study abroad country

There’s nothing worse than a baby.

Well, let me specify. There’s nothing worse than a baby crying on a red-eye flight across multiple time zones. It’s as if this child was brought into this world with the sole objective of waking you up exactly 43 seconds after your eyes finally shut for sweet slumber. I understand the whole “crying baby on a plane” is a cliché, but, I mean, it exists for a reason. If Shakespeare was alive and writing today, I wouldn’t be surprised on the day “Taming of That Baby in 28A” hit the marquee.

I know this is dramatic and there are at least six things worse than that human tornado siren a few rows up, but that’s hard to remember sometimes, especially when you are 35,000 feet up in the sky and the only bags you want when you land are the ones you brought with and not the ones under your eyes. But alas, I landed in Dublin, Ireland at 7:15 a.m. with two more bags than I left with the previous morning. I stumbled off the plane with my guitar and backpack, subsisting solely on pretzels and coffee provided by the finest culinary artisans United Airlines could find. Luckily, my bus wasn’t leaving until 11 a.m., so I had around four lovely hours to sit and soothe my weary bones at the world-renowned Oak Café Bar. It’s not actually world-renowned, but if you saw the words written on its walls, you would think a majority of the world’s traveling population had rested their tired legs in its hallowed booths.

For example, on the back wall was written, “In Celtic mythology, the oak is the tree of doors, believed to be a gateway between worlds.” The wall goes on to explain that I was sitting in the “threshold between arrival and departure.” I had no idea. I couldn’t believe my ignorance. Thank you, Oak Café Bar. I will accept your Red Bulls, day-old bagels and your smooth jazz as if I were a hobbit leaving Rivendell for Mordor. Your generosity is unmatched.

By the time 11 a.m. came around, I was existing in a haze of caffeine, obscure amounts of sleep and the anxiety that I unknowingly signed up for when I bought my bus ticket. It’s not that I didn’t relish my time at the Oak Café Bar; I just had to make that bus to Cork. And make it I did. I threw my duffel bag suitcase under the bus and boarded. By the time we were out of the city, I had fallen asleep on the softest pillow imaginable: my backpack—a beast probably larger than the baby I was rambling about earlier, but softer than memory foam. That could’ve been influenced by the three hours of sleep over a 24-hour period, but who is to say? When we reached Cork, I was back to the original number of bags I brought and was ready for what the coming months would offer.