The year was 2004, and a young, naive Cliff hopped a British Airways flight “across the pond” for his first sojourn outside of the United States, a Spring Break trip to England and Ireland.

I was a high school senior at the time; in fact, I was the only student on the Ireland leg of the school-sponsored trip, and therefor considered myself to be the justification for the trip for the rest of the middle-aged travelers with us.

Our short stay in England was relatively without incident, save the night one of our more aged travelers lost her tooth during a rather dubious meal at a Asianplace (I still maintain we may have eaten Mu Gu Gai Puppy that night).

I was anxious to reach Dublin, as we had just finished a unit on the Age of Realism in our British Literature class, and I was anxious to stakeout the sites native to one of my all-time favorite writers, the august and irreverent Jonathan Swift.

Our hotel was equidistant between the Guinness brewery and the Jameson whiskey distillery, a geographic tidbit that would prove useful later in the journey.

To find our bearings, the group thought it best to first find the Dublin Tourist Center, in order to grab a few maps and perhaps snag a light lunch at the small sandwich shop there.

Some of you may not be aware of this, but one of the major tenets of international travel is to find some focus point that you can compare to your homeland.

For some, it’s checking out foreign TV or going to a church service in this strange, new land.

For Cliff, that point was and always shall be finding a bottle of Coca-Cola and trying to figure out what about it wasn’t up to snuff.

On the British leg of our journey, all the Cokes I found were off French or German manufacture, the former being somewhat on point and the latter being too sweet even for my overfondness for sugar.

Upon reaching the Dublin Tourist Center, I was pleased to see that the Irish manufactured their own Coke, in a small town near Northern Ireland.

I purchased a bottle and was quick to remove the cap, hearing the beloved fizzle I knew oh-so-well.

However, after taking a sizeable swig, I found myself choking down swill that was nothing like my beloved beverage.

While the carbonation was at the right level, the sweet syrup was nowhere near correct, tasting as though someone had substituted salt for sucrose.

As I looked for a way to salvage the beverage that had cost me a few Euros, my eyes happened upon some packets of raw sugar, likely placed on the table for the benefit of the nation’s legion of tea-drinkers.

“This will work,” thought Young Cliff, as he ripped open two packets and began pouring them into the bottle.

Life lesson: Never pour raw sugar into Coca-Cola unless you want a carbonation eruption of Vesuvial proportions.

(If you’ve ever seen one of those videos where people combined Diet Coke and Mentos, the reaction I caused was not dissimilar).

Foam spewed everywhere - on the table, the floor, my corned beef sandwich and myself.

My fellow travelers were too busy being doubled over with laughter to offer any help, and before you could say “Begosh and begorrah,” the security staff was at my side, asking me to leave in a polite but forceful way.

I was forced to abandon my Coke-drenched half sandwich and the stuffed shillelagh I had purchased at the gift shop.

I was told I was no longer welcome in the tourist center and that they would be keeping a file on me, beginning a long list of public buildings and institutions I now find myself barred from.

The rest of that trip, I found myself the object of ridicule from my fellow travelers, and I stuck to non-carbonated beverages for the remainder of our time there - namely pints of Guinness and wee drams of Jameson.

Clearly, Ireland was not a country to be enjoyed sober anyway.

Cliff McCollum is managing editor of Gulf Coast Newspapers. He can be reached at cmccollum@gulfcoastnewspapers.com.