Fellow Travelers

There is a beauty and community when traveling by bus. I’ve seen quite a few instances and they are heartwarming. The recent high school graduate on a ten hour bus ride to his summer job before going off to college. He needed his phone charged and the USB at his seat wasn’t operational. The older gentleman, in his late 40s, helped him by plugging his cell phone at his seat. There is an etiquette when the bus is full, too. I moved my small blue backpack to my lap so the woman who got on the full bus, and had no seat until I smiled and signified she could sit next to me.

The most heartfelt happened at the Ballyshannon bus stop on Saturday morning. A woman approached me needing help reading the bus schedule. (“Heaven help her,” I thought to myself.) She spoke in heavily accented English, and needed to know when the bus to Donegal would arrive. That was only the first question. What time did she need to leave to get to the Dublin airport on Tuesday. “I will be at the embassy,” she said. I pull up Google maps to find the distance between the embassy and airport. “Which embassy,” I asked. In Washington, DC, there is Embassy Row but I wasn’t sure that would pertain to Dublin. “Ukrainian Embassy,” she replied. She calculated with her fingers the hours it will take to get from Ballyshannon to the Ukrainian Embassy and from there to the Dublin Airport. I am writing this with tears in my eyes right now. Some travelers are making very different journeys.