Are You Looking In the Rafters?

Relaxing on the balcony of my apartment over the weekend, I took a moment to bask in the comfort of my surroundings.

There was a time not too long ago when my only goal was to get out of my hostel-turned-home in Ireland and into a place where I didn’t have to wear flip flops in the shower. A time when I yearned for the comfort of sheets free from a plethora of stains and bug eggs. A time when…well, you get the picture.

A few days into our trip, my friends and I began the search for a home of our own. We were going to be in Galway for the next five months and the hostel was no place to return after a hard day of work. How were we to know that only one of us would ever find a job anyway?

The friendly guy at the front desk of the hostel suggested we get up early on Thursday when the Galway Advertiser included its weekly housing insert. There were several ads that looked fairly promising and we bunkered down in our room that morning, armed with a cell phone, pad and paper, our hopes and dreams, and the stares of a creepy girl in an adjacent bunk who spent her days in the hostel reading behind a makeshift curtain she had constructed out of a bath towel.

With her as our inspiration, we knew we had to find another place to live.

Bridget had the best phone voice and was enlisted to make the calls. We managed to create a decent list of about five places to check out and made appointments for the following day. I had a good feeling about this.

That night we decided to get a sneak preview of our first option, just to get an idea of what we were dealing with prior to our actual appointment. Patrick’s home on Cabbage Lane sounded like a real dime piece and was just outside the city center, but as we roamed the streets with our map, we couldn’t figure out where the hell Cabbage Lane was. We passed the street before it on the map and the street after it, but there was nothing in between, save a dingy alley.

After walking back and forth for over half an hour, past the cemetery and back to the city center, we decided to take a stroll down the alley. An incredibly safe decision as the final light of day disappeared. I had never been to the Soviet Union, but I was fairly certain it had the same bombed-out flair of this alley. Large chunks of stone and brick were missing from the narrow walls and the barbed wire lining the top of a large fence really made the area feel homey.

Ready to turn around, I looked at the wall in front of us and was suddenly immobilized. Bridget and Liz watched as I crouched down on all fours, laughing so hard that there was no actual sound coming out of my mouth. Unable to speak in full sentences, I only managed to raise my hand and point to the wall. “Gra-ffitti,” I gasped. “Gra-ffitti.” I was dangerously close to peeing my pants and waited for my friends to make the connection. Looking around, they finally saw it. Scrawled on the concentration camp wall in front of us in bright spray paint was “Cabbage Lane.”

How, I thought, could we have possibly missed such a clear street sign? Silly Americans! I tried to collect myself and stood up slowly, checking to see if any pee had soaked through my jeans. Following the graffiti, we walked a few steps further and there it was, our potential home!

“Maybe it’s not as bad in the inside,” I said, as various scenarios ran through my head.
What would I tell my friends when they came to visit? “Hook a left at the alley and make a right past the barbed wire. If you see a prostitute, you’ve gone too far. Should you run into a one-legged man named Jose, blow your rape whistle!”

I was in no mood to get raped my first week in Ireland, especially with such an early morning ahead of us, so we turned around and headed back to the hostel, willing to give Cabbage Lane the chance it deserved.

The next day we returned to Little Bosnia with a fresh perspective. This wouldn’t be so bad! Patrick, the landlord, arrived after awhile and led us through the front of the house, apologizing for the mess. “I’m just finishing painting.” The various paint cans and toxic fumes were a pretty good giveaway. Patrick explained that we would share access to the home with two other boarders who were living upstairs. He assured us we would have separate entrances. We were to use the back door, easily accessible by way of alley.

The kitchen left something to be desired, as did the family room, bathroom and three tiny bedrooms. I tried to picture coming home to this everyday and convinced myself I could be happy here. There was no room in the kitchen for any sort of table, but cable was included with rent and what could be more quaint than tv dinners next to the leaking radiator?

We told Patrick we would think about it and get back to him by the end of the day. Exiting through our special entrance in the back, Liz and I were beginning to get excited. We actually had the promise of our own place to live! And all those kitchen utensils….this was paradise!

Then Bridget spoke up. “We’re not living here,” she said. “We deserve better.”

Liz and I highlighted all the luxuries of Cabbage Lane. The security system, for one, was top-notch. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been one to mess with barbed wire. The leisure activities in the alley were also endless. I would be celebrating my 22nd birthday in Ireland and a rousing game of pin the beer can on the backyard hobo seemed like the perfect way to ring in the new year.

“We deserve better,” Bridget repeated. “No, we deserve better. We are not living here. We deserve better.”

Liz and I both knew we couldn’t argue with her. I deserved to live in a home with a front and a back door. A home with windows.

Feeling a bit defeated, we made our way to our next appointment. This place was a little bit better, and on a legitimate street with a real street sign that didn’t originate from a spray can, but it was still way too much money for the size.

Zero for two. Walking a few blocks, we made our way to bachelorette pad number three. The place was located inside a gated community that in no way resembled a maximum security prison. Chunks of gravel and stone were replaced with lush, green grass. Special entrances with real ones. It was glorious.

We were several hours early for our appointment and decided to press our heads up against the windows to get a taste of what we were dealing with. To this day I’m not sure if the house was that incredible or if it just looked like a palace in comparison to Cabbage Lane.

The only problem was the price. It was 1200 euros a month compared to the 900 we would be spending at the penitentiary. We sat outside of the house for a good twenty minutes, contemplating our options. We finally decided to go look at the last two places and take it from there.

The next abode was listed as a “student accommodation” which really translated to “shitty accommodation that only students will find acceptable.” The house on 4 McDonough Drive was a forty minute walk from the city and my feet were already killing me. It was, in many ways, an indication of what was to come as a Tasty Sandwich Girl.

A few minutes into our trek, the rain began to fall. We knew enough to carry umbrellas everywhere we went, but mine was no match for the weather of Ireland. Bridget and Liz walked ahead in embarrassment as I pulled out my plum colored shield, the cloth covering torn away to reveal three metal rods.

The rain came harder and my umbrella continued to take a pounding. Another metal rod popped out from under the covering before the handle snapped off in my hand. Disgusted, I hurled the plastic piece to the ground, and was left holding a thin stem of metal. Bridget and Liz found my predicament quite amusing. I found nothing funny about the possibility of electrocution. Next to drowning under a ring of fire and being stabbed to death, I couldn’t think of anything worse.

Nineteen hours later we arrived at McDonough Drive, yet, once again, we could not locate the exact property. We searched and searched before calling the landlord for help.

“It’s the house with the blinds in it, 4 McDonough Drive,” Tom said. “I’m not there, I’m at a pub, but there’s a key in the rafters above the door. Let yourselves in and have a look!”

I was getting pretty fed up with Tom, yet equally intrigued by this Irish way of life. Bridget hung up and we continued our search for house number 4. Tom had failed to mention that there were three McDonough streets in this neighborhood clearly designed by an urban planning mastermind.

After another nineteen hours, we were pretty confident we had found the place. Bridget called Tom again. “Are you standing in the doorway,” he said? “Are there rafters above you? No, that’s not it.”

Had no one introduced these people to the key under the rock concept, I thought to myself! Still, we trudged along and finally found THEE 4 McDonough Drive, complete with rafters. Standing under the doorway, the three of us looked up in silence. How the HELL were we going to get these God forsaken keys down?!

“Liz is the lightest,” I finally said. “You’re going to have to climb on my back and get the keys. And Bridget…take my camera and get some pictures.”

“I’m not climbing on your back and reaching up in the rafters!” Liz exclaimed.

After finally convincing her that this was a much better idea than throwing ME on her back, she swung her legs over my shoulders as I crouched down on the pavement. Slowly rising, I hoisted her up into the air, her legs dangling around my neck. The entire situation suddenly struck me as the funniest thing I had encountered in quite some time and I snapped my legs shut in an attempt to once again keep my bladder in check. “I have to clamp it shut, Liz!” I gasped, laughing hysterically.

“LAUREN! I swear to God if you don’t stop making me laugh, I will piss on your back! I’m serious, I will piss on you!”

I knew I didn’t want any pee on my back, so I pulled myself together and steadied my shoulders. Liz moved her hands along the rafters, fumbling for any sign of a key. “It’s not here! And Jesus Christ, there are probably cockroaches up here!”

“Keep checking,” I ordered. “And Bridget…take another picture.”

Liz checked one more time before I lowered her back down to the ground and we marched ourselves back to town. Tom could drown in that pint of Guinness as far as I was concerned.
Resigning to the thought of living in an alley, I hobbled down the street with my broken umbrella and blistered feet. Our final house of the day was over an hour away on foot and I was ready to call it quits, but Bridget and Liz convinced me to give it a shot.

Walking up the hill of Laurel Park, I knew we had found home. I paid no attention to “Seamus Doolin is a child molester” scrawled on a wall at the top of the street and headed to 244 with a renewed sense of hope. Three days later we moved in and never looked back.

Our modest home on a quiet street above Galway has seen others come and go since our departure last October, but I still think of it as OURS, sent to us when we needed a tiny miracle the most. I would think of Cabbage Lane frequently during our time in 244, and imagine how different things would have been. Coming home from a hard day of sambo sales, I’d grip my fanny pack of money tightly as I made my way down the alley, past the barbed wire and into the special back entrance. Flopping down on the couch with my dinner, I would fill out paper work for my tetnus shot, all the while thinking, “this is not why I came to Ireland!” before taking comfort in the one thought I would cling to each night in my windowless bedroom…

At least it’s a good story.