Maakt niet uit

Story of my holiday: Part One

Started by collecting my friend, Christina, at the airport in Belfast. First port of call was home to drop off her stuff. Nothing exciting happened here so we got home and sat for a bit. Soon we drove up to the north coast of Ireland and had a wee drive around there and the beautiful scenery. Coupled with me nearly tipping the car round a tight bend going a tad too quickly. I swear I’m a good driver.

We came home and proceeded to have the first (and definitely not last) drink of the night. We started on White Russians cause we’re so fucking classy. Shortly followed by wine. Shortly followed by beer. Hardened drinkers, obviously. Or so we thought. 

We were so classy that we brought a bottle of vodka and coke on the bus and sat like little teenagers at the back swigging on this bottle. What made this even better was that before this we had hidden a hip flask of whiskey under a traffic cone in the nearest small town, so that we could pick it up on the way back after the night out. 

We headed to the first bar already a bit merry and ordered a Guinness, just to complete the stereotype. Christina had this strange idea in her head because she was in Ireland everyone was happy and willing to open up to strangers, so with this thought she turned to the person sitting next to her and asked, “Hi! What do you work as?” As imagined she was greeted by strange looks from this person. The night only got weirder.

We hit a few more pubs and Christina was a bit piddly to say the least. We attempted finally to get into a gay bar in Belfast so that we could have a late night but Christina kept getting turned away from this particular one, so we headed to one round the corner, unknown to us that they were run by the same people and the bouncers were in contact with headsets. Not allowed in there either, Christina was too drunk. With that we got a box of chips and sat in the street eating them, soon followed by Christina “losing” her passport which then magically reappeared in her pocket. 

We then proceeded to call it a night and walked for a bit out of Belfast so that we could get a taxi away from the stupidly expensive taxi ranks. Found a taxi and got to the small town where I left the hip flask, with the traffic cone sitting outside a barber shop. I asked the taxi driver to stop just outside the barber shop, and given it was 3 in the morning the taxi driver obviously thought I was drunker than I actually was…or he just thought I was retarded, because he replied with, “Are you sure it’ll be open this late?” Ran over to the traffic cone and got the hip flask. Back home. Pizza. Nom.

Next night was more successful. Decided to go straight to the gay bar. Got in no bother. Except I kept being mistaken for a woman. Even by drag queens. A haircut was definitely in order.

Last night in Belfast was quite eventful. We started drinking White Russians early and made the foulest lasagna known to man. Dry and overcooked. White Russians made up for this mishap. We did our usual of getting the bus into Belfast with our bottle of vodka and enjoyed watching a hen party on the bus. Went to a few pubs, got a few drinks then Christina got tired so we decided to call it a night and walk out of Belfast. This is where we found a child’s scooter on the street. Being slightly inebriated we decided to take it and have some fun, followed by trying to pass it on to some men drinking on the street in our best Russian accents (dangerous part of Belfast, not the best to use a Belfast accent) They kindly declined. I then got on the scooter and was having a great time until I tripped over a taxi. I was pushing myself along and caught my leg on the wheel of a taxi, hit the dirt and proceeded to shout “Man down! We have a man down!” I cut my elbow. It was painful. Followed by home. Cheese on toast. Nom. 

Next day was hitchhiking.

So, we began by hitchhiking from Belfast to Dublin. My mum wanted to drive us to the nearest service station on the motorway from Belfast to Dublin, which turns out to be quite far. We got out with my mum and sat with her whilst she worried for a while and did the typical mother things of “Do you have enough food? Do you have enough money? Do you need a drink of water? Want me to ask people for you?” She finally calmed down and we had our sign drawn so we headed to the exit of the service station and waited (Me and my friend, Christina). A few minutes passed and within 10 minutes someone had stopped. I opened the door, climbed in and listened to the guy on his telephone. It definitely wasn’t English he was speaking. Then I realised - it was Russian. Bonus given that both me and Christina speak Russian. We started a conversation and it turned out I had done it again - the Latvians were following me around the world. I have this habit of attracting Latvians wherever I go and hitchhiking in Ireland was no exception. This guy was from a small town near Riga and was slightly eager to know why I spoke Latvian too. So we had a wee conversation in Latvian and he told me all about the local drink and that if you drink too much you end up in the hospital. 

We got out in Dublin and wandered around, got a drink then decided in our infinite wisdom, to walk to the airport. Just 9km I thought. How wrong was I?

9km slowly turned into 18km. Arriving at the airport was one of the most relieving parts of my journey. We quickly went upstairs in the airport and slept there for the night. Next stop - Estonia