The Long Way to Galway

Lucia had been looking forward to this trip for months. Her best friend Niamh had moved from Madrid to Galway two years earlier, and Lucia had finally saved enough money to visit her. She landed in Dublin on a gray Friday morning, picked up a small rented car at the airport and sat down in the driver's seat. Then she noticed something strange: the steering wheel was on the wrong side.

Of course, she knew that people drive on the left in Ireland. She had read about it, and Niamh had warned her several times. But knowing something and doing it are two different things. Lucia used to drive to work every day in Madrid, and after ten years her hands moved by themselves. Now every one of those habits was wrong.

The first roundabout was a disaster. She went around it in the correct direction, but she couldn't decide which exit to take, so she went around three times while a bus driver behind her shook his head. At the second roundabout, she turned on the windshield wipers instead of the turn signal. "I'm never going to get used to this," she said to herself.

After two hours, she left the main road to look for a place to have lunch and got completely lost between green fields and stone walls. The road became narrower and narrower, until it was blocked by about forty sheep. An old farmer in a wool cap was walking slowly behind them.

"You're not from here, are you?" he asked with a smile when Lucia opened the window. She explained that she was trying to get to Galway and that she wasn't used to driving on the left. The farmer laughed. "My cousin lived in Spain for twenty years," he said. "When he came back, he used to drive on the right for weeks. Nobody was angry. We just got out of his way." He gave her directions, a small bag of apples and one piece of advice: "Keep the stone walls on your left and you'll be fine."

By the time Lucia arrived in Galway, it was almost dark. Niamh was waiting outside her house, worried. "The trip was supposed to take two and a half hours!" she said. Lucia got out of the car, hugged her friend and handed her an apple. "I know," she answered. "But I think I'm finally getting used to it."

A week later, when she was driving back to the airport, she didn't make a single mistake. On the plane home, she looked at the Madrid traffic through the window and wondered if driving on the right would feel strange now.