I am at the most harried airport restaurant in the world. The staff are all little women and men dressed in black who rush around grabbing plates off tables and slopping baked beans onto the giant white plates with no care for the beauty of the meal presented. This is all I think because of the girl they have standing downstairs with a sign that says “Full Irish Breakfast 9.95”.

Even though it's 6 in the morning, the price is cheap enough to attract hordes of males, namely the sort of Irish frat boy that is sitting at the table behind me. It was certainly cheap enough to attract me, even though if you convert the currencies (I've been trying not to) it’s fifteen dollars for three types of meat and some dubious-looking scrambled eggs, BEVERAGE NOT INCLUDED. Luckily I’m vegetarian, so it’s less. The tomatoes, hastily-slopped baked beans, toast, an egg, and coffee I got for 6.95 were still more than enough food to make my digestive system rather surprised to be eating things at the wee hour of 5:45 am.

The general fervor at this restaurant is in keeping with my morning so far, which began at four fucking thirty. I got the airport shuttle all right, but at the bag drop desk, the Aer Lingus representative informed me that my massive blue bag weighed 28 kilograms.The limit is 20. It’s 12 euro per pound extra (which is eighteen dollars – I converted in my head before I could stop myself).

“Er… what would you suggest I do about it?” I made that face my mother gets when she’s distressed or dubious about something – the eyes sort of crinkle downwards, and we can’t help it, we sort of grimace, or smile.

The guy was very blonde, very gruff, very pub-looking. He took no guff from nobody, and had been up since the night before dealing with stupid tourists. Still, he sighed and went, “You got a carry-on there?”

“I do!” I said. “Yes!”

“Well, I’d try to shove some stuff in there.”

I had been hoping it was something less obvious, like maybe there was some kind of magical charm I could produce that would render my suitcase multiple kilograms lighter, but instead I went with a heavy heart into a roped-off corner of shame, unzipping the beast and spreading its useless, heavy crap everywhere.

How had it come to this? Apparently the majority of my luggage was nameless paper scrap, receipts, nearly-empty bottles, and just, in general, dirt. Why did I keep these things? And how could they add up to eight extra kilograms? I had to throw away something heavy, and fast, so I chucked my lovely fifteen-euro rubber Wellington boots into a garbage can. Then I put on my winter coat over my spring one. Sweating and straining, I went back to the desk and hauled my bag on the scale proudly in front of the man.

It was two kilograms over. I inhaled in quiet desperation and mild panic.

Then, deus ex machina: “You’re fine,” he said, sticking a “HEAVY” tag on my bag. I suddenly wanted to marry him.

And now I’m sitting in this airport bar, relieved, feet on my 9.8-kilogram backpack, and I’m supposing that this should all teach me something but probably doesn’t. I’m drinking cold coffee and wondering how early a person should get to her airport gate (isn’t this something I should know by now?) – I’m fed, safe, have gone through security, and because of these things I am feeling like maybe Ireland isn’t all that bad. Certainly there have been times where I felt like I should be somewhere more exotic, but on the whole, the people are generous, sort of nonchalantly so. And all that rain does make things pretty afterwards.

Here are the things I will miss:

I will miss that they know what I say when I say “coffee”, mostly, and it isn’t an Americano.

I will miss that their current recession makes ours look like nothing at all, and I’ll miss how very lasses-faire the country is being about it. The news coverage makes it seem like everyone in Ireland is just collectively shrugging and going, “Well, guess I’ll have another pint,” unless they’ve lost their jobs, in which case they are, probably, not. Hopefully.

I will miss the fact that they sometimes say my accent is delightful. This is in contrast to Germany, where it will be incomprehensible.

I will miss their businesslike, well-behaved dogs, who fetch papers and trot ahead of their masters cheerfully.

I will miss the fact that their networks constantly replay The Simpsons, Futurama, Malcolm in the Middle, and Sex and the City. It’s like being stuck in the 90s, but in the best way ever.

I will miss that these people fry tomatoes for breakfast. And their bread, oh god their bread, their bread!

I will miss the guy in a suit who just sprinted past, clutching his briefcase, oiled hair bobbing in the wind as he yelled, “Well, fuck it!”.

I will miss their woodstoves, which make the whole street smell like fall in the country even when it’s dreary winter in the city.

I will miss that the Irish say “turd” instead of “third”, which lends an American in every conversation with the number in it to snigger in a slightly superior manner and get distracted when it comes up.

I will miss the fact that their drinking habits make anyone else's look reasonable and practical by comparison. I will miss that they go to bed not at 5 am – who does that? Come on, Spain – but, in general, at 2. Then they get up the next morning at 8 and do it again. As one of the teachers at my friend’s school said, “We sacrifice sleep to have a good time,” which explains why nearly everyone who is 30 here could pass for 50 in America.

I will miss the city of Cork. I wish we had Cork in the States. Maybe it could move there, or I could move here.

I will miss the country's incredibly combative newspapers, “combative” both in the sense that there are I think fifteen of them for a nation slightly larger than my state, and in the sense that their headlines often scream things like “POPE KNEW PERVERT TO EXIST!”. They have rather spotty and repetitive news coverage, but rather excellent editorials and little short pieces about nothing.

Most importantly, where else on the planet can you go horseback riding on the beach for fifteen euro? I’m sure it happens, but only in countries where you can’t go look at hundred-dollar wool sweaters afterward and bitch about the price.

I have a flight to catch, I think, so I’d better leave all these lonely men to their baked beans and drip coffee. It's raining, which is fitting. Goodbye, Ireland!