All Aboard The Disoriented Express

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been obsessed with maps. Once an atlas salesman came to our house when I was about nine and, in the middle of hawking his wares, specifically remember saying something along the lines of ”but Dad, these include Croatia and Macedonia!”. The salesman looked on, smiling and nodding feverishly, no doubt feeling very lucky he came to the house where the kid had a knowledge of post-Yugoslavia geographical politics.

I used to study atlases intently, especially the political maps (mountains and valleys weren’t really for me), even then I was fascinated by the nature and location of borders, and with the additional information on flags, capital cities, national demographics, languages and religious make-up, it’s been the bedrock of most my interests developed since. Even now, I’m still fascinated by and feel very comfortable with a map in my hand. Which is just as well really, because I’m useless without them.

I’ve always been a little disoriented in places I don’t know (I once walked from Galway City out to a few miles shy of the Gaeltacht in my first week in college) but last week in Belgium was just plain embarrassing. Flying into, ahem, South Brussels Airport, a name which stretches the truth to breaking point (it’s south of Brussels in the same way Belfast is south of Reykjavik) as opposed to my regular, much more central Brussels put me off just enough to miss my stop from Midi, overshooting it no Noord when I should’ve got off at Centraal, and then missed the first train back because I’d freaked myself out enough to be convinced I’d end up in Bruges or something. I fully deserved all the slagging I got from the friend I was meeting at Centraal, but if only my lack of direction was limited to a bingo tour of Brussels’ train stations.

The following night, what should have been a three minute walk from the park to the hotel took about an hour and a half and a lift back from the Arab district. This would’ve been OK if it was just me, but the fact I was walking home with someone made it a whole lot less funny. And needless to say, the profundityof one’s lostness is directly relative to the level of how much you’re wanting to impress the person with whom you’re lost. It’s presumably a law Isaac Newton forgot to wrote down, perhaps because he was too busy trying to find his way out of a large orchard with Mrs Newton.

The worst thing about getting lost, whether literally in Belgium or otherwise, is how easy it can be. One minute you’re on terra firma, the next you take one wrong turn, don’t pay as much attention as you ought to, or get caught up in where you ought to be rather than where you actually are, and suddenly you can find yourself a long way from what’s comfortable, in a lot of all-consuming trouble. And you sure as hell can’t unwalk any route, no matter how much you’d like to.

Come Sunday, I’ll be embarking on a journey into largely unchartered territory: going on work experience on Top Gear. The chance to work in Television Centre has been an ambition of mine since my atlas skimming days, and so I can’t help but feel tremendously excited about the unseen adventures that lie ahead.  In fact, it’s probably the type of place where wondering where the hell you are is encouraged.

It’s always nice to know where we stand, or know where we’re going, but we’re  all destined to stray at one point or another, so we shouldn’t fret too much about it. Lord knows worrying about your missteps won’t get you any less lost.  Rather than obsessing over the best routes, the best thing to do is just enjoy the journey and take it all on board. Wrong turns lead to destinations too.

Advertisement