The relativity of punctuality

Five years ago I went to Ireland for the first time, praised for its laid-back attitide and its chatty inhabitants. If every person, or at least every second person you'll meet, engages you in a small talk, sure my English would improve quickly. An ounce of practice is still worth a pound of theory!

Quickly, I did not only practice my small-talk skills about west-winds, liquid sunshine and other weather conditions, but also my "laid-backness".
In other words, out the window with my well-trained punctuality. 15 minutes was the maximum duration I would wait and then label anybody as late. Now I had to make sure to be at least 30 minutes "late" or rather add 30 minutes to the agreed time. The more remote the location the more time you had to add. I still remember being greeted even coldly, when I arrived at a party on time...
 

The good part about Ireland is that you can stop a bus in the middle of nowhere and they wouldn't mind. Backpacking is so very easy and if you were at a bus stop at 10.10 am and the bus was due at 10 am, well, you would still get it, for sure. (What a change from Berlin with people getting frustrated with their underground train being late for 2 minutes. With a line at a 5-minute-frequency!)

The Inishowen Peninsula is so remote, that even the national carrier would not operate there and private companies do not have bus stops. And when I still missed the bus, with the next one departing 2,5 hours later, my new host family told me to enjoy the city and they will drive into the village later to pick me up.

I embraced the Irish attitude towards time management and part of me keep that for good.

But that was then. After six months I returned to continental Europe. And even though I returned to Ireland a year later and again two years later, I was time-pressured (by either a return flight or the policy of a German company) and consequently missed "the Irish way".

Five years on, Ireland has changed. Two bus companies compete for the fastest and most punctual connections to the west coast and the number of motorways incresed from one to seven. An underground was supposed to be built to connect Dublin Airport with the city centre and train connections on the west coast are reopened to increase the number of connections.
In order to compete with continental business destinations, Ireland had to improve reliability and punctuality. Or in other words: continental European standards will soon reach the last corner of Irish laid-backness.

Before I continue I have to admit, I am spoilt: communication and punctuality work so perfectly at my home university, that's hard to beat. But in an academic environment you expect high standards, don't you?

Thus, all of my fellow exchange students are shocked when a lecturer is 20 minutes late. Or they don't show up at all. And apparently, communication is overrated, too...

And even though it might be frustating after a while, I am amused. It resembles a part of Ireland that I became attached to five years ago and thought it had disappeared.
So, once more I will embrace it, lay back and do as the Irish do!

Slaínte from Galway, Ireland,

Doreen