The next morning, all the questions and doubts about the meaning of my footsteps didn’t bother me as much. So what if all my daydreams were pointless? I resisted the urge to attribute some kind of significance to the story and instead tried to face the path ahead leading to its conclusion. It was never the meaning of the road that drove me here, any more than it was a meaning that made life worth living. My train was going to leave from Euston station at around 8:20AM. If there was ever any meaning in whatever I did, it would be in my taking that train with an acute awareness that it might well be pointless. I didn’t know if it was the auspicious morning light or the crisp morning air, but the thought of accepting the lack of meaning no longer frightened me as much as it did the night before.
When I stepped out of the hostel at 7:00AM, no one was around and the streets were still quiet. Everything–from the cracks on the sidewalk to the subway signs–vividly reminded me of how far I had come. I allowed my overzealous steps to guide me randomly around the neighborhood. The only thing audible in the quiet of the morning streets was the dry sound of fallen leaves crumbling beneath my eager steps. By 8:00AM, I was back at Euston station, where I bought some more bread and water and boarded the train. The final trip toward Dublin was underway. The plan for the day was to get off the train at Crewe, a city near the Wales border, at around 11:00AM. At Crewe, I would take another train to cross into Wales and arrive at a place called Holyhead by 1:40PM. From Holyhead, I was going to take a ferry at around 2:45PM, arriving in Dublin by around 6:00PM. There was plenty of time between transports and all the steps had already been mapped out. I just sat back and idly watched the serene landscape outside the window for the entire train ride.
The train uneventfully passed through vast commons on which animals were grazing peacefully. There were some regional towns, but mostly the scenery consisted of open fields full of pleasant morning air and tranquil sunlight. As I traveled farther, things were slowly but noticeably changing. At Crewe, I switched to a smaller train which had all these Welsh writings on the outside. Even the displays inside the train and the announcements were in Welsh, which I had never read or heard being spoken. The train glided through the Welsh countryside warmed by the afternoon sunlight. But gradually, clouds formed and the sky began to turn gray. There were still patches of sunlight that created silver linings at first, but even they disappeared in time. Everything turned gray and stayed that way. The empty and dull surroundings reminded me of the train ride through western Azerbaijan. The only major difference here was that there were forests and rivers here instead of the dry steppes.
By the time the train arrived at Holyhead, the sky had turned so gray that it looked like it was going to rain at any moment. Holyhead looked interesting, but there was nothing much to do near the center of the town, nor did I have time to venture farther from the town center. I headed straight to the ferry terminal, which was right next to the station, and joined a small line. The gates were already open and passengers were boarding. When it was my turn in line, I asked the staff whether I could sit by the window. She chuckled and said that there were no seats on the ferry. Feeling slightly embarrassed by the silly question, I just asked back, “Oh, really?” and the staff said with a smile, “Yeah, it’s a big boat.”
After some time, a bus came and hauled passengers directly onto the ferry. The ship was indeed so big that I didn’t even know that we were already on it until I got off the bus. It had no seats and instead had large open areas with a bunch of shops and restaurants. I walked around for a bit but didn’t know where to sit. All the restaurants, bars, and cafes were busy, and the tables had already been taken. I kind of felt like an odd duck, being the only one roaming around with a giant backpack with a large plastic water bottle fitted on the side. I climbed some stairs and passed through several crowded floors until I randomly reached an open deck at the top.
By this time, the sky was even gloomier, and the rain was drizzling all over the deck. The ferry was slowly pulling away from the dock. The large funnels on the deck exhaled thick clouds of gray steam which were quick to blend into the spray of rain and disappeared without a trace. On one side of the ferry, I could see a long and narrow breakwater jutting out into the water, but anything beyond that narrow strip of land was just a blur, obscured by gray fog and rain. As I walked around the empty and wet floor, steady raindrops continued to land incessantly on my shoulders and the hood, picking up the intensity every minute. I didn’t mind the rain. It made everything feel real. What began as mere daydreams was now as real as the drizzling rain and wind blowing from the gray sea. I thought about the naive beginning of the trip and all the intense doubts that used to consume me. I felt that I had finally come to terms with them.
It was getting pretty cold to stand around and the rain started falling even more heavily. Since I didn’t want to stay soaked for the next few hours on the ship, I retreated back inside. After walking around the bustling restaurants and cafes once more, I managed to find a seat somewhere near the window. The window was wet with drops of water, and I couldn’t tell whether they were from the rain or the spray of the waves angrily breaking against the ship’s hull–they were probably from both. The daylight grew sparser as the ship sailed farther into the churning sea. In the evening, the sea looked more menacing and I could no longer discern where the sea ended and the dim sky began.
Sitting by that window, I was hungry and thirsty, and my head began to hurt a little. In that blank moment, I realized one thing. For the first time since leaving Sydney, I was tired. It was different from the usual feeling of being fatigued. It was a feeling that I was prepared to move on and do some normal things for a while. I was ready to go to Seattle. I was ready to take the leap of faith to a new life.
Eventually night took over the sky, and I had no clue where we were because nothing was really visible outside the window and the deck was closed. I couldn’t really look up the current location because there was no free Internet on the ship. But it wasn’t long before I could vaguely make out some lights on the far side of the water. As passengers one by one began filing toward the exits, I managed to walk out onto the wet floor of the side deck to have a better look at the lights. In the distance ahead, a vast stretch of shoreline was glowing. It was a flat skyline dotted with red, white, and orange night lights. The lights flickered in place, indifferent and unreachable, neither getting closer nor farther. It was Dublin.
At some point, a dark silhouette of a long breakwater appeared on the side, and the ship slowly but steadily sailed alongside it. The shoreline was now visibly closer and the shapes of the buildings emerged faintly. At the end of the breakwater, the ship stopped and made a sharp turn into the docks, pulling very slowly next to a humongous container ship and giant cranes busy unloading all sorts of containers from it. The arrival was pretty unceremonious. The ship came to a full stop and sat there for a while, and a bus hauled the passengers to a nearby office where everyone showed their IDs to an officer who then casually let them through.
There was a bit of a hold up when it was my turn, though, because the officer didn’t really know what to make of my unusual itinerary. When I told the officer that I was coming from London, he looked a bit confused while flipping through the passport. He remarked, “It says you left Paris yesterday.” “Oh right,” I added, “I got to London from Paris.” Eyes still on the passport, the officer then asked, “How long were you in Paris for?” I was going to say I was there for the almost two whole hours, but wasn’t sure how that would jibe with him. So I just said that I didn’t really stay there because I was going through Paris from Budapest. All this left him quite puzzled, but the crux of the confusion came from a follow-up question about how long I would stay in Ireland. The officer didn’t seem to know how to process my honest reply, “I’m leaving tomorrow for Seattle.” With a confused look, he tried to summarize, “So you were in Budapest, Paris, London, now in Dublin, and you are leaving the country tomorrow?” When he put it like that, the whole thing did kind of sound nonsensical. I didn’t know how to explain it, so what I went with was, “Yes, I just wanted to see Dublin.” Still doubtful, the officer reluctantly stamped the passport and just waved me through. He didn’t really understand what in the world I was doing. That made two of us.
I hopped on a bus toward downtown and changed to a tram to go to the hostel. People were just going about their normal evening routine, talking about things like where they went for a run or whose parties they were going to. No one really knew or cared about the fact that I had finally reached Dublin. And why would they? Even I didn’t know what exactly the story meant. After dropping my stuff at the hostel, I headed out and roamed around the city that I had dreamt of reaching for so long. The wet cobblestone streets were packed with busy pubs and, for some reason, many American flags. Christmas-themed decorations were everywhere and a joyous atmosphere was in the air.
No one on those busy streets cared about the fact that I had finally reached Dublin, either. Everywhere was bright and full of festivity, but it was precisely there that I felt lonely for the first time on the trip. It wasn’t about being by myself–I hadn’t felt that way when I was walking around the night streets of Bukhara, Baku, or Istanbul alone. The feeling was about the personal burden of facing the pointless nature of my pursuits. I was no longer content with the explanation that my pursuit became meaningful through my awareness of its meaninglessness. Now that I had finally reached Dublin, I was grasping for a clearer sense of why it all had to happen. My story, I felt, deserved a more concrete explanation to reach its proper resolution. If my awareness of meaninglessness attributed some meaning to my taking on the pursuit, I wanted to know what exactly it was. The indifference of everything that surrounded me made it clear that I alone was to bear the weight of that search. The streets were full of buzz but also felt most silent.
At any rate, figuring my arrival deserved some kind of ceremony, I walked into a random pub and sat down in a corner with a pint of Guinness. I had Beijing Duck in Beijing, so why not a Guinness in Dublin to top it all off? The bar was packed and was full of regular activities that one might find in a night out. All around were just people having a good time and a local musician banging out familiar tunes on his guitar. I thought all I wanted was to do some normal stuff for a while, but all these sights of normalcy weren’t enough to fill the heart thirsting for more clarity. It was getting too late, and I decided to just head back to the hostel and call it a night. I kind of wanted to get an early start in the morning because my flight to Seattle was at 4:30PM. I didn’t finish the pint and went back on the streets. The night was cold, but it wasn’t raining anymore. I lazily strolled along the banks of the river as it quietly yet rapidly flowed in the opposite direction.
On my way back, I mostly thought about the questions that I started asking since getting to London last night. What did reaching Dublin really mean, and how did I feel about it? I needed a bit more time to think about the first question. I thought I had found the meaning in the lack of meaning, but I didn’t have the courage to accept that frightening conclusion. The second question about the feeling wasn’t all that difficult to answer. Reaching Dublin made me feel tired and lonely, for the first time since leaving home. I was tired in that I was ready to move on and do normal things for a while in Seattle. And I was lonely in the realization that no one could answer for me what meaning my foolish pursuit amounted to. The night deepened, and the weight of the unanswered question pushed me down.