And it’s Friday!

I love finding the Friday Five notify e-mail in my inbox – it convinces me that it really is Friday.

1. What’s the last place you traveled to, outside your own home state/country?
Well, Arvika this weekend… It’s Sweden, after all.

2. What’s the most bizarre/unusual thing that’s ever happened to you while traveling?
I’ll get back to you, too early in the morning to think… Well, ok, we had a pretty weird time of it when arriving in Ireland a few weeks ago, and since I haven’t told you that story yet, I might as well sneak it in here…

We’d been down to Worthing to see my old pals and so we’d had to get up at five in the morning to catch the bus to Stansted. There had been an accident on the motorway, which meant we arrived late and had to wait for the next flight – five hours later… So by the time we arrived at Shannon we were rather looking forward to getting to the hostel and relaxing. However, at this point the fates (or whatever) decided to demonstrate to us why Ireland has a reputation for being slow-moving and running to it’s own rules.

Our flight landed at ten to seven – on time. Everything went fairly speedily inside the airport, so we were outside looking for a bus at a quarter past seven. Now, Shannon is not exactly a big airport. In fact, it’s tiny. I have no idea how many flights arrive there every day, but it can’t be very many. It certainly seemed more or less shut down for the night when we arrived, and this was an ordinary weeknight. The bus to Limerick leaves every hour or so, but we wanted to go to Ennis, and the bus there runs less frequently. So, we get to the bus stop and look at the time table. The bus left at seven. The next bus is at nine. I would very much have liked to know how many passengers the bus at seven had – I somehow have a hard time believing it could have been anywhere near full. No one ever thought of making the buses correspond with the arrival times of flights, obviously.

Anyway, we shrug and head back to the terminal to see if it would be possible to get a taxi. There are certainly no taxis outside, but since we’re the only passengers left that’s not terribly surprising. So I go in and find the taxi desk (the only thing still open – all the shops and cafes are shut for the night, at seven pm…) and the lady says she’ll get us a taxi and we can wait outside if we want. So we wait. And wait. And wait some more. A taxi arrives. It passes us and parks in an employees only carpark. The driver disappears inside the terminal. We wait some more. Another taxi arrives and actually draws up in front of us. The driver gets out and asks if we’re waiting for a taxi. I confirm that we are, indeed, waiting for a taxi, this is why we’re sitting waiting at the taxi rank. He says that it’s the other one we’re supposed to have. I tell him the other driver has disappeared inside. He says he’ll go get him. He disappears inside. We wait some more. The first driver comes out and waves to us. We take this as a sign that he might just possibly be persuaded to drive us to Ennis, so we lug our bags over. He looks a bit surprised at our request but opens the trunk and heaves our bags inside and we get in and he actually drives off, gets us to Ennis and takes our money like a perfectly normal taxi driver, which leaves us wondering whether we might not have imagined it all…

Interestingly, none of the taxis we saw in Ennis had taxi-signs on the roof of the car. They had the taxi-signs all right, those plastic things that normally has a light inside them to signal that the taxi is free, but they all had the plastic thing inside the car, up under the windscreen. We figured it was better not to ask…

3. If you could take off to anywhere, money and time being no object, where would you go?
No object, eh? Well, one thing I’ve always wanted to do, but which is somewhat unrealistic due to the money/time aspects, is circumnavigate the world without the help of airplanes – just rail and boat, preferably. I want to feel for myself how big it really is.

4. Do you prefer traveling by plane, train or car?
Plane for convenience – you get there quicker. I like trains as well, though, and I have no objection to cars, either. I just love travelling, really…

5. What’s the next place on your list to visit?
Well, Scotland in September. Been there before, though. Next place on the ‘places I’ve never seen before’ list is probably Vienna, seeing as Andreas is going to be there for a year.

Voice in my head: Billy Joel – For the Longest Time