Ireland & USA Little Differences #22: Hosting Tourists
Hosting Tourists
Before I moved to the US, hosting tourists in Ireland is something I did my fair share of. Actually I think I did more than my fair share of it, but it goes with the territory of travelling yourself, and of being interested in other countries.
Mostly the tourists I’ve hosted have been American and English - though not at the same time; I’m talking different people you understand. The English may well have colonized North America to the extent that that US speaks its language, but you don’t exactly hear of English-Americans.
And being different people, the English and the Americans behave differently, as indeed do Irish people. Many people in Ireland are familiar with the experience of opening their front door to a neighbour who then complains that your house is very hot. The neighbour will however nod instant understanding upon hearing the words, “We have an American staying with us”.
England, being so much nearer to Ireland than the US, has a tendency to send her tourists just for weekends. This puts great pressure on the hosting, but I’ve always been game and take my guests for a walk.
In Dublin I’ll walk them both sides of the river, through real and fake Georgian Dublin, through medieval Dublin, along canals, by piles of rubbish and great architectural examples, down laneways and over bridges not on posters, and the English will follow me, absorbing what they pass until finally God, a Roman Catholic with little time for the English, catches up with us and rains on our little tourist parade.
-Hey look, I add following the script, it’s raining! D’ya fancy a pint?
And the English people, being on their holidays, decamp to the nearest quality pub for the rest of the weekend before the person with the best camera and the weakest stomach is sent outside to take photographs of Dublin in the rain.
When I try the same day with American tourists, it goes very similar except there will be regular interruptions of, What is that building? as unremarkable buildings are pointed at from the middle of the road.
And as you read out loud what the building says it is you are quickly hit with the follow-up question of, Should I take a picture of it?
This being a great philosophical question you take time to consider it, saying, Eh, to buy you time only for another question to come hurtling at you. It’s another building question quite near the original building but before you can answer this question, or indeed the previous one, it is immediately followed by the Should I take a photo of this one? question, and sometimes with the appendex, Or that one?
You know in your heart of hearts that if you treat these questions like the multiple choice questions they shouldn’t be, and tell people that they should take pictures of buildings (A), (D), (E), and (H) but not of any others, your life would be so much easier. But you can’t do that because you enjoy misery so you squirm on until God, a Roman Catholic who smells the descendants of the English, rains on your little Irish festival.
-Hey look, you add following the script, it’s raining! D’ya fancy a pint?
And after your American guests ascertain that the pint measure you’re referring to is both imperial and alcoholic they have a discussion and issue their response:
-Why don’t you book a reservation and we’ll come back tonight?
But it’s not really a question, and by ‘tonight’ they mean half-past five.
Inevitably the American tourist will want to see the real Ireland, which I hear is just outside Lucan. They will want to travel to Galway.
As a host you make a phone call, and you show your guest where to catch the bus to Heuston in the morning, from where they can catch the train to Galway, and you tell them there’s no great need to wake you when they leave.
So when your guests return from Galway for dinner the next day you are left wondering if they travelled by Tardis. As host you are told that your guests did indeed see the real Ireland in Galway; It wore a primary coloured straggly woollen jumper, and it had a dog on a string.
In the US this scene is almost identical. You, the Irish tourist want to see the real America, which you hear is near Route 66 so you ask for directions to catch the Amtrak to a city on the route.
Your American host says it’s not a problem to take you there the next day. You think this makes sense since your host doesn’t know what bus to catch to the train station, and you set about drinking until 4:00am.
At 4:45am you are woken by your host so you can leave by 5:15am when your host drives the six hundred miles to a few buildings and a post office on Historical 66. In your dazed state you are hugely annoyed and confused, grateful and hateful, yet all the time unaware that your host has actually shown you the real America.
Back in Ireland, unlike your English guests, your American guests will constantly question why they are walking so much. One third of them will actually die from walking.
Eventually so, you will go for the bus. The American tourists will stand at the bus-stop, on the side where the stop says to queue, and believe they are actually first in line. You as host will try to point out that when it comes to bus-stops and exit signs on buses, you really shouldn’t believe everything you read.
After the melee to get on the bus, you and your guests will be separated. Awkward you’re thinking but at least you get a break from the tourist questions.
-What building is that? You hear shouted from six rows in front of you. Being Irish you ignore your guests for without alcohol in your system there are scientific reasons why Irish voices won’t go above certain levels, and you’re also hoping that one of the twenty people between you and your guests will answer for you. Probably another tourist.
Meanwhile an Irish tourist in America asks where to catch the bus only to be told that no such method of transportation exists. You, being an Irish tourist, have already spotted several buses so you are confused and believe yourself stuck. But far from it.
Instead your host, in a very comfortable car, drives you personally on a guided tour, answering your questions before you even ask them - some you were sure you were never going to ask - and all in a voice loud enough for you to hear six rows back.
There are of course no judgements or criticisms intended, but I feel knowing how hosting tourists differs is important information, especially with my impending move back to Ireland. You wouldn’t believe how much I would charge to shelter with you all weekend in an authentic Irish pub.
See Other Little Differences Between Our Great Nations:
• Robins
• Fun
• Pharmaceuticals
• Talking Temperatures
Eolaí gan Fhéile:
You should write the Irish-American equivalent of McCarthy’s Bar, Eolaí. Splendid.
I would be happy to spend all day in an irish pub. Can I stay with you when you move back?
Cheers Kav. Have you read Bill Bryson’s The Lost Continent? I still have yet to read McCarthy’s follow up, The Road to McCarthy - which is partly set over here.
Elizabeth, when I move back I may be staying in a kennel. Bring tape for the dog-hair on your clothes. -And stop ruining my stereotypes.
Can’t say that I have Eolaí - to either of those. Will keep a look out for them. My dad bought me McCarthy’s Bar ages ago (when I still lived in Ireland) and I dismissed it as another sycophantic wannabe-Irish effort, without even reading it. I only read it properly recently, and maybe it’s the fact that I’m now distanced from home, but I appreciated the humour in it very much.
Kav, I’d always liked McCarthy when he did the travel stuff on Channel 4 and that book is both funny and loving.
Bryson’s is much the same in that it’s his first one and a pilgrimage to his American past prompted by the death of his father - he had been living in England for something like 18 years I think at the time he wrote it. It’s very wicked in its sarcasm (makes McCarthy like Mary Poppins), and upsets people when it happens not to talk up their town, but overall it is no less lovingly told. I read it before ever setting foot on US soil and again after my cross-country bicycle trip and it stands up well to time.
I would completely recommend The Lost Continent - or anything by Bryson for that matter.
A copy was given to me just before I left London to live in KC by a young Scots programmer working for me. Evidently this book tickled him pink and even more to know where I was headed… I really didn’t get to read it (nor comprehend his enthusiasm in donating it to me) until many years later when immersion in the culture made the book (and the donation) all the more hysterical.
Bryson has that great ability to both inside and outside his own culture - mostly because he left it for all those years – making his observations all that much more tangible coming from a Midwesterner.
In the late 90’s I was playing tourist guide for my then boss and her manager. They arrived in from Kansas on Friday night and I met them on Saturday morning.
As their hotel was close to Christ Church we began with the Guinness Hop Store. On seeing the old Guinness billboard with the farmer pulling a cart in which sat the horse (the Guinness for strength one) my boss’ manager announced it was a rip-off of Budweiser’s Clydesdale adverts.
Then on to Christ Church cathedral itself. My boss was in complete awe that a building could be so old. And I mean awe. She was babbling incoherently and touching everything. I really thought she was losing the plot.
Newgrange had been my plan for the Sunday but I began to worry that I’d have too much trouble trying to explain its relevance to one, and the other would end up a basket case, and decided on a drive in the mountains instead.
That, it turned out, was even more trouble. But that’s a story for another day.
A year later I was the tourist and was taken to an American football game, a baseball game, a rodeo and a medieval re-enactment. I too misinterpreted a lot. And I babbled incoherently too. Mostly about why it hadn’t rained so we could go to a pub.