The border between the UK and Ireland is obviously a strange one. It’s burdened with the weight of history — the recent Brexit-influenced convulsions are the latest evidence of that — and given the deep psychic weight of the thing it’s always a shock to be reminded how simple it is to cross it.

When I was traveling around Ireland back in the autumn of 2020, friends would ask me if was difficult to get into Northern Ireland. Americans tend to assume there’s at least border guards or something like you’d be crossing into Canada. And there’s just … not. You can hop a train or a bus or drive a car across the border¹ and the only obvious thing that changes are the road signs. For all the vast political differences between the UK and Ireland, it’s possible to walk between the two without even noticing you have.

Whether you should cross the border is a different question. Ireland isn’t in the Schengen zone, instead forming the “Common Travel Area” with the UK. I’m not entirely convinced I understand the intricacies of traveling between the two² but the simple fact is there are no passport checks traveling from Ireland to the UK as a matter of policy.³ That’s not reciprocal; Ireland reserves the right to check passports for those entering Ireland from the UK, and in fact they do when you fly into Dublin.⁴ But while they theoretically could check rail and bus and road links as well, I’ve never seen it.⁵

The COVID rules have put an additional wonky layer on all of this. Currently the UK doesn’t require quarantining or tests when you enter from Ireland, but Ireland does when you enter from the UK. I’m following all the rules as far as I know — they change frequently enough to make that somewhat uncertain — and I’m doing all the things I need to to feel safe myself.⁶ But I’m prepared to misunderstand something and bounce off a border at some point, whether it’s the next one or the one after that or one further down the line. It’s still better to be risk being stalled than stuck.

I’ve spent the last week or so crashing with a friend and doing a lot of things that wouldn’t be notable except I’ve been unable to do them for six months. Things like eating in a restaurant or cooking a meal for someone⁷ or just sitting in a bar and having drinks with people.⁸ It all still has a sense of novelty about it, coupled with a vague unease. Is it really safe being outside without a mask?⁹ Do I really trust all these random people sharing my space to be as cautious and careful as I am?¹⁰

It feels like there’s this rush to get back to a sense of normality, whatever that means, and I think for a lot of people it’s not a matter of being safe — most people were blithely insensitive to the risks of seasonal flu or chronic hypertension back when things were “normal” — but a matter of not having to think about it. For me, that’s when the case numbers are low and the social interventions are mild and the medical treatments are effective. For a sizable minority it’s when people stop talking about it all the time, regardless of the actual risks. Faced with a very real risk of long-term disability or death many people can’t handle it, and one of the ways of coping with it is to ignore it and angrily demand everyone else ignore it too.

I watched Bo Burnham’s Inside when it first came out, and I’ve been cajoling various friends to do the same ever since. It’s been on my mind a lot. I strongly recommend you go watch it yourself without reading about it or checking out the various YouTube clips.¹¹ And it’s at least in part about that sense of fear, how being locked inside for so long we’ve developed all this trauma and an array of phobias about being outside and around other people. As someone who’s already all the way over on the introversion spectrum, I feel that pretty acutely. It’s something I’m struggling with.

But as foolish as it is to pretend we’re over COVID and blindly drop all the restrictions, it’s just as foolish to keep everything as locked down as they were in January. It’s true many governments have done a terrible job of threading that needle, never locking down far enough to seriously curtail the spread and recklessly throwing everything open as soon as they could plausibly do so. But there’s a middle ground to be had between the poles which is healthier than either extreme. It just takes a lot of work to find it, sometimes.

My initial plan had been to head to the Netherlands in time to celebrate my birthday, but the situation changed while I was here. Ireland scheduled my second vaccination date, and with the current quarantine rules I wouldn’t have been able to travel across the English Channel and return without isolating myself for two weeks.¹² So I’m heading back to Ireland.

I hadn’t expected to be able to get vaccinated in Ireland before August; despite the assurances I was given at the clinic, there was no way to arrange one before the officially mandated twelve weeks. I’ve attempted to get the second dose in the UK, which I do qualify for, but it’s proving nigh impossible in practice.¹³ It was while I was going through all that that Ireland shortened their waiting period to eight weeks between the first and second dose, and then scheduled the clinic I’m supposed to attend¹⁴ so I rejiggered my schedule to accommodate it.

The only particular hitch in the whole thing is the COVID passports. Ireland’s been lagging horribly behind the rest of the EU in implementing theirs. Presumably I’ll be able to access one¹⁵ and then things will be straightforward. Even if not, it’s possible I’ll be able to show my vaccination card from Ireland and as a US citizen that’ll be sufficient proof.

The big deal is that I’m moving again, in fits and starts. I have relatively firm plans for most of September through November. Some of them seem pretty solid.¹⁶ Others are a maybe at best.¹⁷ Others are … who even knows?¹⁸ But traveling in the best of times always requires a certain resilience and optimism, a tolerance for missed connections and bungled reservations. I’m just grateful to be in a moment where COVID seems more of an annoyance to making plans than an absolute barrier. And for as long as it lasts, I’m going to make the most of it.

Next: Dublin (DUB) to Amsterdam (AMS)
Prev: Dublin (DUB) to Birmingham (BHX)

Footnotes

¹ I’ve done all three.

² The Common Travel Area mainly permits citizens of Ireland and the UK to live and work in either, much like EU citizenship does for members of the EU. As a US citizen my permission to visit Ireland is separate from my permission to visit the UK, but somewhat weirdly if you travel from Ireland to the UK the UK just assumes you have permission to stay in the UK for three months and leaves it at that.

³ I showed my passport twice on my flight; once to the gate agent to verify my identity matched my boarding pass before I got on, and once when I disembarked in Birmingham to some functionary standing in the corridor doing spot checks, I assume because of COVID restrictions. Both asked me if I had arrived recently from the US, I said “no,” and that was that. I suspect my driver’s license would have worked as well.

⁴ Although when I flew in in 2019 they just waved everyone who said they were an Irish or British resident through without checking, leaving a handful of us behind. And proceeded to give me a hassle when I dutifully lined up and presented my passport.

⁵ And I have seen plenty of Irish citizens online claiming they’ve never seen it in the past few decades, either.

⁶ I took my first COVID test ever last week. It was negative. The test was a home lateral flow kit, and if I never need to jam a Q-tip up my nose and wiggle it around for 10 seconds ever again it’ll be too soon.

⁷ Or having someone cook me a meal, which has been far more often the case

⁸ Six or less still, but even so.

⁹ Probably yes.

¹⁰ Obviously no. A better question is whether enough of the people around me are being safe enough to reduce the risk that I’ll get COVID-19 to a level I’m comfortable with. In a sedate restaurant with lots of space between tables, I think they are. In some of the crowds I watched on television celebrate England’s victory over Denmark in the Euro semifinals, absolutely not.

¹¹ Although if the YouTube clips are all you’ve seen, I strongly recommend you go and watch Inside and marvel about how decontextualized the clips are.

¹² Had it been scheduled two days later I would have been fine, because that’s when Ireland is set to drop most of those travel restrictions.

¹³ To get vaccinated in the UK, under current rules, you need to be registered at a GP, whether temporarily or permanently. You can only get registered at your local GP, there’s only one local GP where I’m staying, and they took over a week to register me. At which point they informed me they don’t have anything to do with vaccinations.

I’ve had this back-and-forth conversation with them about five times, where they’ll inform me I need to call 119 to see about getting scheduled and I’ll tell them I have and the instructions are to register with a local GP to get it scheduled. They’ve sent off an email asking for clarification from the NHS. I assume they’re still waiting for a reply.

¹⁴ Again in Galway. sigh

¹⁵ The passports will reportedly be available to “those living in the EU” which I certainly am, but it’s unclear whether they really mean “resident in the EU” which I certainly am not. At present, anyway.

Even if I do qualify, it’s not clear to me whatever technology scheme they cobble together to verify my status will allow me access. As an example, if I had gotten the second shot in the UK I’d have been unable to log into the NHS App to prove it; you need to be permanently registered with a GP, not temporarily registered. And even then you need to get a text on your phone from the NHS every time you want to log in, and while they theoretically can do that, every attempt I made while testing it out failed.

¹⁶ I doubt anything could convince most of the United States to shut down at this point. COVID’s over, baby!

¹⁷ I’ve booked a cruise around Iceland in September — long story — and I’m reasonably comfortable predicting it’ll be safe by then. I’m just not entirely sure I’ll be able to get in for it.

¹⁸ Knutepunkt, the larp convention, is scheduled for early October. And it’s anybody’s guess what the restrictions will look like in Oslo by then.