I’ve become the sort of foreign traveller I scoffed at in my youth

I SENT a few texts home during the week, complaining about the heat and humidity, and about how I kept having to slip into the pool to cool off.

To my surprise, each text seemed to elicit an unconscionable amount of abuse in response — four-letter words and everything. One texter was unkind enough to express the hope that the next time I “slipped” into the pool I might break more than a sweat.

OK, I know how awful the weather has been at home. It’s deeply unworthy of me, on holidays abroad for the first time in years, to be gloating. But I can’t help it. I seem to have picked a more or less perfect 10 days to visit one of the southern states of the US. It’s their perfect time — not too hot, not too many insects, seasonal fruit at its ripest and endless sunshine.

Mind you, when I gloat, it’s as much relief as anything else. Relief, usually, that I’ve survived. Years and years ago — so long ago I was a callow young trade union official in my twenties — I was part of a union delegation to what was then still the united country of Yugoslavia. Tito was still alive, and foreign trade unionists were treated like royalty.

There were four of us. Our leader was a most distinguished figure (so distinguished I won’t mention his name) but actually, now that I think about it, I wonder had he ever been anywhere as exotic as this before.

On our first night, our Yugoslav hosts laid on a great banquet in the old part of Belgrade city.

The main course, served on great heavy plates, was the ugliest fish I’ve ever seen, each fish staring balefully at us, as if to say “Go on, then, eat me if you dare”.

And each plate was garnished with the Irish flag — made of chilli peppers. I don’t know who had told them that the Irish flag was green, yellow and red, but even though spontaneous translation hadn’t reached its heyday back then, it was clear that our host was enormously proud of the effort made.

None of us had ever even seen a chilli pepper before. I took one bite of the green one, and concentrated on the Yugoslav beer for the next hour. But our leader saw it as his patriotic duty, and his duty as a guest, to eat them all. I can still remember his face, and the way his eyes bulged, as he moved from the yellow to the red pepper.

The results, for several days, were disastrous. The rest of us virtually had to carry him from meeting to meeting, and the awful dreadful sounds that emanated from his hotel room at night will live with me forever. And I will also never forget his parting advice when we got back to Dublin. “If you’re ever tempted to try the foreign food,” he said, “tell them you’re from Ireland, and we only eat spuds.”

Well over 30 years later, I seem to have become that sort of traveller. I love foreign food, and I love travelling. But something happens to me when I get on a plane. I become utterly, completely, incompetent.

It’s awful. From one end of the day to the next, I can’t figure out if am I ahead or behind of home, timewise. The currency completely baffles me. I can’t even tell my left from my right — my wife tells me to turn left at the next traffic light and I go into a complete panic. In fact on one recent journey from the house we were staying in to the local shops, I turned right four times in a row and ended up right back where I had started from, without managing to reach the shops at all.

Everyone we’ve met since we landed here has been really civilised, friendly and hospitable. They’d need to be, because apart from everything else I’m also having language difficulties. It’s America, right? They speak English, right? Well, I’m sure they do. I’m the one who’s forgotten how.

Every day I have conversations where I struggle to communicate what I need to people who are only too willing to help. The other day I wanted to fill the car with petrol, as you do. It’s the work of a minute at home. In the garage I pulled into, two elderly men and a young attendant took about 10 minutes to explain what I was doing wrong.

There was an additional lever that had to be operated, and I just couldn’t get it. Eventually, one of the old men took me by the hand, guided it to the lever, and (if you’ll pardon the expression) jiggled it up and down to show me how it worked. The other old guy, in the meantime, nodded sadly to my wife, as if to sympathise with her on her unfortunate marriage.

And I have discovered that it is simply impossible to buy swimming togs in the US. I arrived without mine to find a swimming pool waiting incredibly invitingly for me. We had passed a huge department store on the way, so I knew how to solve the problem. But they’d never heard of swimming togs — never heard of them! In desperation I eventually said “I’m looking for swimwear”. “Oh, you mean trunks, sir?”

Does all this sound as if I’m complaining? Well, if it does, hit me over the head. The first time I came to America I was 20 (and a lot more competent than I am now). I fell in love with it then, and my only regret is that there haven’t been enough opportunities to go back.

It’s a country of endless fascination. Over the last couple of days, we’ve met crocodiles and racoons. We’ve seen the most beautiful sunsets, and walked and cycled in areas of wilderness that are quite unique. We’ve met perhaps the friendliest and most hospitable people in the world.

THEY are the thing, in the end of the day, that make America special. They’re different. I’ve never believed the American people are well-served by their systems, especially their education system, because they are genuinely bright, interested and curious, and yet surprisingly ill-informed about the world in which they are so influential.

In some ways that contrast is the most fascinating thing about them. The more you see of the country, the more you realise that if this were your home, you mightn’t be too interested in anywhere else. It may be the reason that a people so willing to help, who enter into other people’s wars and conflicts out of a genuine desire to make things better, so often end up reviled for their efforts.

Every time I go to America, I really want to understand it better — especially that amazing mix of an idealistic and passionate people and an often cynical politics that plunges young Americans into wars they can’t win. In order to understand it, I’m going to have to come back again.

It would help if I could tell my left from my right, of course. And if I learned how to speak American.