MAGAN'S WORLD:Manchán Magan's tales of a travel addict.
THERE ARE HUNDREDS of books about planning trips abroad, and thousands more about what to do once you get there, but I have yet to find one about coping with coming home.
Often those first few weeks back are the most alienating and stressful aspect of the whole trip, a form of post-traumatic stress akin to the separation couples can feel after a woman has given birth. There is a division between you and the rest of the world that is hard to bridge.
I invariably feel confused after any trip longer than a week. On touching down in Dublin I try to avoid the feeling that descends on seeing the grim dishevelment of the baggage-reclaim area, the larval skin tone of my countrymen and the shabby, post-apocalyptic feel of the route into Dublin. I call it reverse culture shock.
I find it helps if I avoid looking out of the window at all in the city until I've reached, at least, the GPO.
Once you're home you have to endure those first few days of disconnect, of trying to explain to people all you've seen and experienced, of getting over their uninterest, and avoiding reaching automatically for the back pages of the Sunday newspapers to find another cheap flight somewhere new.
I find the flashbacks most unsettling of all. The smallest of things can set them off: a checkout girl's smile catapults me 3,000km across the globe to an open-air market with the sun beating down, as might a pebble at the bottom of a bag or the lingering smell of a T-shirt I wore while away. It just will not let me go.
The trick is to prepare yourself, to focus on the homecoming as much as you do on going away. It's the opposite of what those lobster-skinned sombrero-and-sandal people do, the ones you see in the arrivals hall in December, beamed directly back from some strand in the Canaries.
You need to keep in mind that life hasn't been on pause while you've been away. It takes a degree of agility to slot back into the reel without disturbing the flow. You can't expect the cast of your life's soap opera to stop what they're doing and focus on your overexposed photos and rambling stories. Even a week is a long time in a soap opera; expect the unexpected - "So granny is now an episcopalian line dancer and has eloped with the mayor of Cracow. That's nice."
The more you gloat about your holiday the more resentment you'll provoke. Jealousy is unavoidable. Perhaps you should consider photographing the ugliest and worst elements of your holidays or, better still, coming home with some brain-swelling, skin-suppurating illness, so there is no chance of inciting envy.
If this seems a step too far, then resort to the tried-and-tested method of easing the homecoming by bribing your way back into the group with extravagant presents. Unfortunately, this requires plummeting yourself further into debt, so it's unlikely to make you feel any better, but it will definitely help the others.
Reverse culture shock deserves to be studied more closely, and in the interests of sociological exploration I am willing to offer myself to any enlightened research institution wishing to fund my travels in return for a full account of my reactions upon coming home.
In the meantime, I wish to offer my three-point primer for a seamless homecoming, to help you avoid three of the mistakes I invariably make:
• In Ireland the driver's seat is on the right. (Sitting in the wrong seat always looks foolish.)
• As a rule we don't kiss each other, either once, twice or three times, when greeting.
• We don't eat with our fingers.