OPINION:You Irish are infected by a very special malady - lack of organisation disease, writes Sara Reyners
DO YOU know the atmosphere typical of small towns? They try not to attract too much attention, sometimes they even seem to try to be forgotten. Yet they are quite charming and, what's more, the locals realise it. They have a tourist information office, but not too many tourists because that's no good. And the people are still friendly to anybody who comes to visit their little town. This sort of place usually has one problem: lack of organisation.
Galway is a charming town
in the west of Ireland, but unfortunately it suffers from the same disease. In which capital city would it happen to you that you have to stay in four different rooms for five nights, taking into account that you booked well in advance? Or that you are led on a different bus tour than the one you wanted to do?
The first symptoms of the lack of organisation disease occurred when I first arrived. The room I reserved three weeks beforehand wasn't available. For some mysterious reason I wasn't "in the book". "But don't worry, love," the lady of the house assured me, "we'll find you another room soon enough." And indeed, 10 minutes later, she found me a room and called a taxi to bring me there.
Unfortunately, this new room was a bit far from the city centre and it was quite dirty. So I decided to leave it for what it was and take a look around myself. I soon found another room where I could move, if I agreed to move the next morning to a room on the ground floor. Now that wasn't an issue, I was just glad I had a place to stay . . . till I saw my new room the next morning. There was a big fish tank built in the wall between the room and the hall. Anyone passing through the hall could see straight into the room. Now, I must admit they had had the wonderful idea of putting little curtains in front of the tank, just a pity they were a bit too small to cover it completely. And then the noise it made . . . no, I knew I couldn't stay there.
So a new search for a room began. Again I found one quite soon. But also in this BB, I had to move around three times if I wanted to stay. Oh well, at that point I was just glad to have a roof over my head.
When this happens to you once, you still think it's funny. A nice story you can tell when you come home. But when these things keep happening to you it becomes increasingly hard to see the humour in them. Because unfortunately, the accommodation wasn't the only problem I encountered. The symptoms of the lack of organisation disease spread . . .
Galway organises a number of bus tours to beautiful destinations such as Kylemore Abbey, the Cliffs of Moher and the Aran Islands. After a very nice tour to the Cliffs of Moher and the Burren one day, I decided to take the tour to Connemara and Kylemore Abbey the next. I chose a different company, so we would be driving in a small bus with a limited number of people. Only five people showed up. So our driver went to one of his colleagues and after some discussion, he came back, and asked us whether anybody insisted on seeing Cong. Nobody said yes, so he ushered us off the bus and brought us to another bus with "You'll go with this tour" as the only explanation. Thinking it was approximately the same tour and slightly irritated about the driver's behaviour, I got on the bus. Big was my surprise after driving for half an hour when the driver told me that we weren't going to pass Clifden either, a village I had wanted to see very much. In combination with my accommodation problems, this setback was already a bitter pill to swallow. When I wanted to go to the Aran Islands the next day and a new problem arose, I no longer knew what to think. I asked the girl at the reception of my BB whether a ferry went to the Aran Islands from Galway directly, or whether I first had to take the bus to Rossaveal. She assured me that there was a ferry going from Galway and explained where I could buy a ticket. The next morning, I went searching for the ticket office, but I couldn't find it. So I asked a guy who was hanging around in the harbour for directions.
"You can't take the ferry from Galway," he said, "you have to go to Rossaveal."
"Then why is there a sign up behind you saying 'ferries' and why did a girl from town assure me that there are ferries?"
"Well, yeah, there are ferries going to the Aran Islands, but they only go during the summer. Just go into one of the tourist offices and buy a ticket. The bus brings you to Rossaveal and there you take the ferry."
Well, I supposed I could do that. Only, it costs €25 for a trip and somehow I suspect the locals from the islands don't have to pay €25 every time they come over. And they definitely don't book their tickets at a tourist office. When I met a local at the Aran Islands and I asked him about it, he told me he paid €8 to take the same ferry I was on.
Why couldn't the guy in the harbour tell me this? He was clearly from the neighbourhood. So what is this? A case of bad luck? Did the local community of Galway decide to conspire against me? Or was I defeated by the lack of organisation disease?
I know one thing, I was glad to go home.
Sara Reyniers is Belgian. She lives in Dublin and designs websites for Dutch customers of an online advertising company