Have I done the Kindle rant yet? I'm too lazy to go look so I'll just assume I haven't.
As you probably already know, my mother bought me a Kindle for Christmas, the Internet on which worked for a month and then spontaneously gave up the ghost. The friendly but incompetent customer service lady said the poor thing was defective and sent me a new one, which had the same problem. (The one I sent back still hasn't arrived, as far as I know, so...eeurgh. Damn you, Deutsche Post!) When we called customer service again, another stubbornly incompetent lady told me that the 3G network is only for the Kindle store (and, apparently, Wikipedia, which still works too) but the rest of the Internet browser comes from a different Internet service that doesn't work in Germany.
This is clearly bullshit. I used the Internet easily for a month before it mysteriously cut out. The customer service woman claimed I was using a WiFi internet connection without knowing it, despite the fact that (1) it said "3G" in bold print at the top of the screen and (2) I was using the Internet in places where I know for a fact there is no WiFi connection, thereby implying that I was a technological retard, which I didn't appreciate. Also, if this is true, why does Amazon.de sell a 3G version of their Kindle? Which is the same that you buy from the American site? ARGH.
Anyway. Kindle II worked fine until England, when I charged it overnight and it subsequently refused to turn on. Sure that the damn thing was broken, I was getting all psyched up to call Amazon again, until I charged it again in Germany and now it works fine again. So I didn't get to test the Internet in Britain like I wanted to either.
More recent insanity: I've been using the $100 gift card from my grandparents to buy music and books, so I went on my account to check the remaining balance which was--ready for this?-- $298.58. What. Also, Amazon had mailed me a gift card for $142.04 for no reason as well. Why are they trying to give me money?! In any case, I e-mailed them today and they took away the $400 or so that their madness had credited to me by accident.
I considered not reporting the credit, but I didn't want to have used the money to buy merchandise only to find out that I would have to repay them for it. Also...it's like stealing. So I am now back to my original balance, trying to convince myself that doing what I believe to right makes me feel good when I'm really thinking, "I could buy so much music with $400!" Ah well.
Right, so, other news. This week was hard--in places, miserable; just loneliness and homesickness and angst and other unpleasant things that happen to people who spend far too much time thinking about their lives. Remedies are hard to find because everyone in the building but me has real work to do (studying), so I can't go knocking on doors, and there is literally nothing to do that doesn't involve an hour-long journey to another city. Sure, I can read books or practice guitar or write stories or write e-mails or read webcomics or whatever, but what I really want to do is talk to real people and make friends.
If you're a keen reader of this blog (hah), you will be thinking, "But wasn't Tuesday the day that she was going to have Englischnachhilfe?" Yes, it was, and I did. Now, the worst didn't happen; three people did show up, two of which hadn't told me that they were going to come. But all but one of the people who told me they were going to come, didn't. I shouldn't be too upset about it, since it's not a party that I'm throwing but like a homework thing, but...still, it was frustrating.
That's why Wednesday and Thursday were much better. I'd made cookies for the Nachhilfe, so I took them to people I like in the Wohnheim and bought myself some actual conversation time. Yes, I'm still at the point where I feel like I need to give people stuff to justify me talking to them. Headdesk.
On Thursday, I went to Erfurt to have some pizza with some of the other assistants. I think we need to get together and talk more often, not just for companionship but for the very simple reassurance that we aren't crazy. All four of us talked about the awkwardness of trying to talk to large groups, the embarrassment of not being able to express ourselves, the frustration of struggling to make friends, the loneliness of being an outsider. I can't express the relief I felt at hearing that I wasn't the only one feeling ignored, awkward, and lonesome. We are really going through the same thing, but it seems harder because we're going through it alone.
While still in Erfurt, I got a call from one of my students inviting me to a birthday party at the Wohnheim, which I eventually attended after I staggered back into town. I'm still not sure whose birthday it was, and I'm pretty sure half the people crammed into that tiny dorm room either didn't know or didn't care. At the Wohnheim, "it's Monday" is considered sufficient reason to drink, smoke, and shout into the wee hours of the morning; a birthday is almost overkill. Anyway, I spent some time standing awkwardly by the door, trying to hold conversations with the people around me over the pounding music in German and breathe in the smoke-laden air simultaneously (not easy, I tell you) before I was comfortable enough (and there was enough space) to sit down. I ended up having a very nice conversation with a student--the same who'd called me--who has been consistently friendly, proactive, and generally wonderful, and we discussed me going home to visit her family again and driving a tractor. So it was all okay in the end.
Except that it's not over; life goes on. Friday came around and everybody left, guitar class was canceled, and I found myself with a whole evening with nothing to do, again.
I'm very sorry that you're sitting through all this griping about loneliness, genuinely. I don't like writing about it but I want to remember it because it's an important part of my experience here. I've had so much time to myself to think that my brain has worn tracks in the wilderness, and I always seem to drift down the same well-worn paths that don't lead anywhere. I need input from another mind to wander off in new directions, and I just feel stuck.
So. Life is terrible, and life is wonderful; one day is endless silence and the next day is deafening laughter. I'll probably never get used to it.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Bergfest
Well, yesterday was my Bergfest. Thank goodness it was a good day, eh?
Bergfest ("mountain party") is the celebration of the halfway point; you've climbed to the top of the mountain and now you're heading down the other side. The students celebrate it for those of their number who are halfway finished with their time at the Fachschule. For me, my Bergfest means that it's been five months since I arrived in Stadtroda, and I still have five more months before I go...wherever.
It's a very odd feeling to be at the halfway point. On the one hand, it feels like I just here and I can't believe that I'm already halfway through. On the other hand, I can't believe that I've been here what feels like most of my life and I still have another half again to go through. Isn't it odd how memories and perception of the passage of time work?
The somewhat odder feeling that's been plaguing me recently--that I'm about to tumble off a cliff of activity and noise into a void of nothingness--is because the Winterschule groups that arrived in October will be completing their classes in March (in five weeks and two days, as I was reminded by a student) and will all leave for practica or work. This means that everything will return to how it was last fall: namely, quiet, peaceful, slow, and really really boring. Also, almost all the friends I've made are in the Winterschule groups, and I feel like I'm just starting to get to know them a little better.And they're leaving in a month, which is practically tomorrow and also a really long way off. Isn't this confusing?
To assauge this somewhat, I'm trying to start something I should've done a long time ago: start an Englischnachhilfe meeting. More students than I expected have shown interest, so I'm going to try to set up an out-of-class meeting/study session/party to (maybe) speak English and (hopefully) have a fun time. That's next Tuesday. I'll let you know what happens.
Before I forget, I should tell you how the rest of Hamburg went. After I posted my last post, I was hanging out in the kitchen and started chatting with a nice woman from Madrid. Of course she tried to speak to me in Spanish, and I got all embarrassed that the only non-English words I could dredge out of my brain were in German. Then we both started talked to a Japanese girl sitting there as well, then another American asked me what state I was from, and then we all started exchanging travel stories with a couple of Australians who'd come in to eat their ramen, and before long it was 11:30 and we were being thrown out of the kitchen, which should've closed at 10.
Next day I didn't have too much in the way of plans, so I consulted my computer and decided on the Hamburger Kunsthalle (the Art Gallery). It started promisingly enough, with old masters and David Caspar Friedrich (I really like his paintings!), but eventually it degenerated into modern art (yech). When I left, it was pouring just like it had been when I'd gone it, except now it was dark, and I simply couldn't make myself trudge through the rain to another museum, so I had dinner in the train station and went back to the hostel to relax a bit.
As I was reading my book about English history, I got a text from a Couchsurfer that had been unable to host me but had offered to meet for drinks or something while I was in Hamburg. We'd tried to connect and hadn't been able to find a good time, but now she offered to meet me in an hour with some friends, so off I went. Together with her, another German friend of hers, and a guy from Vancouver (lol), we found a bar with a nice place to sit (despite the pounding music and pea-soup smoke) and chat for a while. One of them told me that I spoke German almost without an accent, and although I know that's not entirely true (the music was really loud), it still made me feel all happy inside.
We split up with plans to meet at the Fischmarkt (Fish Market) the next day, and I went back to the hostel and crashed. Although I'd been planning to get up early, that never works out well for me and packing took longer than normal, so I barely made it to the Fischmarkt before it closed. Still, this meant that the vendors selling meat, cheese, fruit, fish, and all manner of trinkets and clothes were trying to offload their goods at low prices, so I got some cheap fruit and the very last fish sandwich and tromped off happily through the rain back to the train station. I finally arrived back in Stadtroda that afternoon, andimmediately set to work planning my lesson eventually got my lesson planning done around midnight. Ah, life back to normal.
This is now the last week of classes in Jena, which means everyone's taking tests and I'm trying to get my forms signed so I can not get credit for anything. (What? I know, don't make no sense.) This means Russian class is over (YAAAY) and so is linguistics (booo). I've already sent in the money for next semester so I can keep my free train ticket card thing, so now I just have to wade through the ridiculously overcomplicated course list from hell that is the Jena Vorlesungsverzeichnis to find my next classes.
So that's my life right now. I've been fighting with myself and agonizing over whether I should return to the States to see my family and friends or if I should stay in Europe and travel, and although I know they're not mutually exclusive, I still haven't come to a reasonable conclusion. I think, though, that I'd really like to visit home. I just don't want to, y'know, stay there.
Bergfest ("mountain party") is the celebration of the halfway point; you've climbed to the top of the mountain and now you're heading down the other side. The students celebrate it for those of their number who are halfway finished with their time at the Fachschule. For me, my Bergfest means that it's been five months since I arrived in Stadtroda, and I still have five more months before I go...wherever.
It's a very odd feeling to be at the halfway point. On the one hand, it feels like I just here and I can't believe that I'm already halfway through. On the other hand, I can't believe that I've been here what feels like most of my life and I still have another half again to go through. Isn't it odd how memories and perception of the passage of time work?
The somewhat odder feeling that's been plaguing me recently--that I'm about to tumble off a cliff of activity and noise into a void of nothingness--is because the Winterschule groups that arrived in October will be completing their classes in March (in five weeks and two days, as I was reminded by a student) and will all leave for practica or work. This means that everything will return to how it was last fall: namely, quiet, peaceful, slow, and really really boring. Also, almost all the friends I've made are in the Winterschule groups, and I feel like I'm just starting to get to know them a little better.And they're leaving in a month, which is practically tomorrow and also a really long way off. Isn't this confusing?
To assauge this somewhat, I'm trying to start something I should've done a long time ago: start an Englischnachhilfe meeting. More students than I expected have shown interest, so I'm going to try to set up an out-of-class meeting/study session/party to (maybe) speak English and (hopefully) have a fun time. That's next Tuesday. I'll let you know what happens.
Before I forget, I should tell you how the rest of Hamburg went. After I posted my last post, I was hanging out in the kitchen and started chatting with a nice woman from Madrid. Of course she tried to speak to me in Spanish, and I got all embarrassed that the only non-English words I could dredge out of my brain were in German. Then we both started talked to a Japanese girl sitting there as well, then another American asked me what state I was from, and then we all started exchanging travel stories with a couple of Australians who'd come in to eat their ramen, and before long it was 11:30 and we were being thrown out of the kitchen, which should've closed at 10.
Next day I didn't have too much in the way of plans, so I consulted my computer and decided on the Hamburger Kunsthalle (the Art Gallery). It started promisingly enough, with old masters and David Caspar Friedrich (I really like his paintings!), but eventually it degenerated into modern art (yech). When I left, it was pouring just like it had been when I'd gone it, except now it was dark, and I simply couldn't make myself trudge through the rain to another museum, so I had dinner in the train station and went back to the hostel to relax a bit.
As I was reading my book about English history, I got a text from a Couchsurfer that had been unable to host me but had offered to meet for drinks or something while I was in Hamburg. We'd tried to connect and hadn't been able to find a good time, but now she offered to meet me in an hour with some friends, so off I went. Together with her, another German friend of hers, and a guy from Vancouver (lol), we found a bar with a nice place to sit (despite the pounding music and pea-soup smoke) and chat for a while. One of them told me that I spoke German almost without an accent, and although I know that's not entirely true (the music was really loud), it still made me feel all happy inside.
We split up with plans to meet at the Fischmarkt (Fish Market) the next day, and I went back to the hostel and crashed. Although I'd been planning to get up early, that never works out well for me and packing took longer than normal, so I barely made it to the Fischmarkt before it closed. Still, this meant that the vendors selling meat, cheese, fruit, fish, and all manner of trinkets and clothes were trying to offload their goods at low prices, so I got some cheap fruit and the very last fish sandwich and tromped off happily through the rain back to the train station. I finally arrived back in Stadtroda that afternoon, and
This is now the last week of classes in Jena, which means everyone's taking tests and I'm trying to get my forms signed so I can not get credit for anything. (What? I know, don't make no sense.) This means Russian class is over (YAAAY) and so is linguistics (booo). I've already sent in the money for next semester so I can keep my free train ticket card thing, so now I just have to wade through the ridiculously overcomplicated course list from hell that is the Jena Vorlesungsverzeichnis to find my next classes.
So that's my life right now. I've been fighting with myself and agonizing over whether I should return to the States to see my family and friends or if I should stay in Europe and travel, and although I know they're not mutually exclusive, I still haven't come to a reasonable conclusion. I think, though, that I'd really like to visit home. I just don't want to, y'know, stay there.
Friday, February 4, 2011
Lasers, Cream Tea, and Rainy Afternoons
It's a rainy, windy, sit-inside-with-a-good-book-and-a-cup-of-tea weather right now. Basically, it looks like a typical winter day in Washington, or England, or anywhere else, for this matter, near the ocean at this particular latitude. Of course, my jeans are still wet halfway up the calves and my coat's hanging up to dry because I went out tromping through the rain anyway. But more on that later...
Two days ago, on a greyish Tuesday morning in London, I met Stephen outside the Victoria Palace theater doing what Brits do best: queueing. You see, if you go early in the morning to the theater, you can get cheap tickets for good seats for same-day performances, and that was what we were attempting to do, and sure enough, we secured two third-row tickets for Billy Elliot for £19.50 each--not bad. But that was for that evening, and what we were tackling that day was Greenwich.
Some very few of you may remember that this was not my first sojourn in Greenwich with Stephen. Almost exactly two years ago, I visited London for the first time in early January with Jewell, Chelly, and Edith. We were all on a budget and asked Stephen to take us to a cheap restaurant, and he said he knew one in Greenwich, which sounded good to us. However, Expert Guide Stephen got us off the Tube at the wrong stop, and although we got a good look at the O2 Center (which I lovingly call the Impaled Jellyfish, since it looks like a white jellyfish impaled on a yellow anemone), we had to hike for at least half an hour although dark roads through fields to get back to Greenwich, when the DLR stop we should have used was just around the corner from the restaurant. To top it off, the sweet-and-sour that Stephen and Edith ordered made them both feel queasy. We've never let Stephen forget it, and Greenwich has had...interesting memories attached ever since. On the plus side, we did get to see the brilliant green laser marking the Prime Meridian piercing the mud-colored sky overhead.
This time around, Stephen got the Tube stops right and we took the DLR train out to the right station. For the Whovians: I got very excited going through the Canary Wharf stop, laughing and pointing and generally embarrassing Stephen as I looked for signs of Dalek attacks. Unfortunately, when the Doctor sealed up the hole in space, all traces of alien invasion seem to have vanished. More's the pity.
We stepped out of the station in Greenwich to a nice English drizzle. From what I saw, Greenwich is a rather sweet collection of small shops and curvy streets on the banks of the Thames; it doesn't feel much like London at all. The trinity of blessings to the budget sightseer are the National Maritime Museum, the Queen's House, and the Observatory, all free admission. We popped into the museum first, looked at one exhibit about nautical exploration, and then Stephen decided he wanted to take the guided tour of the Queen's House, so we left again and went next door.
Apparently, the Queen's House is so called because it belonged to a couple different queens whose names I have forgotten (Wikipedia it if you want to know!) and was used to host parties and such--which, incidentally, it still does; you can rent out the house for weddings and such if you have £7,500 laying around). Now it is mostly empty, displaying a tiny percentage of their collection of nautical paintings--mostly dramatic pictures of boats. The major lulz here is that the house is built directly over a main road, with two wings on either side and then a bridge over the road so the masses could still use it as, y'know, a road. Apparently, the queens used to watch the commoners go by and, presumably, contemplate how glad they were to not be unwashed, ignorant peasants.
(Side note: Ski jumping is on in the background as I write this, and I didn't see the whole thing but it looks like one of the skiers' skis--there's no better word for this--exploded when he landed. Holy crap. I mean, if you're in a sport that consists entirely of skiing off cliffs and trying not to break every bone in your body when you land, the least you could expect is that your skis won't freaking explode when you touch down. The guy's okay, somehow. But still, damn.)
Anyway, it was lunchtime, so for old times' sake, we went to the same cheap Chinese place that had been so much trouble to get to the first time 'round, and Stephen very pointedly did not order the sweet-n-sour. With fuller stomachs and no trace of nausea, we braved the cold back to the NMM to look at more fancy boats. (The pieces of that guy's ski are still just lying there at the bottom of the run for other skiers to ski into. This is a sport for the spectacularly suicidal--no, that's not right, it's run and organized by serial killers. "What, after you ski off a ledge and fall hundreds of feet, you want to land on a smooth surface? Dude, we're looking for ratings here. The demolished pieces of ski are an extra challenge." WTF?) However, I'd heard that there was a planetarium show narrated by none other than David Tennant on, so we hiked up the hill to the observatory.
From the observatory's perch, we had a good view of the Docklands and Canary Wharf, with the Gherkin and St Paul's just visible as silhouettes in the misty distance. We found out that the show cost another £5 or so, and so we opted out and looked at astronomy pictures instead. We also got sucked in by a fun little simulation/game where you had to build and test out some kind of space probe, and if you did it wrong the computer would go on and on about how silly and incompetent you were. We even dragged one of the staff over to play with us and successfully launched a comet probe. We then finally got to see the house where the Greenwich Laser shoots out toward the Impaled Jellyfish and stood on the line marking the Prime Meridian, which was much more exciting for me than for Stephen.
Eventually the observatory closed, and we took a stroll in the direction of Blackheath to get a look at the church that Stephen will be married in. (Ask him, I don't know.) We took a bus to Waterloo and from there back to Victoria (over Westminster Bridge; no matter how many times I see it, the sight of the Eye and the Houses of Parliament lit up at night makes me very happy, especially from the front seat on the top deck of a red bus). At Victoria, we had a quick dinner at Wagamama (I didn't read the menu very closely, apparently, and missed the part where my soup was going to be spicy) before we headed back to the theater for our musical.
Billy Elliot is a musical, as mentioned, about a boy for a family of miners in Durham who turns out to have a great passion and talent for...ballet. Not expecting that, were you? Now, I assume many of you are Americans, and when I wrote "Durham" you just assumed that was some place you've never heard of and went on to the part of the sentence about ballet. That's fine, because pretty much all I've known about Durham for most of my life is that it has a hospital in it (because Stephen applied to do an internship there) and that it is somewhere north-ish. Now, this is key: it's in the north. Still nothing? Okay.
I really hope I'm not going to be stabbed by a bunch of English people for this, but like all dialect families, English in Britain is less like a jigsaw puzzle of distinct accents and more like a watercolor painting, where the accents all bleed into each other with certain distinguishing marks in different places. Yes, apparently, British people can place each other to a specific city by their accents, so there are some clear markers, but there are also general tendancies, from the famously posh and traditionally southern RP (think the Queen and Stephen Fry) up to Scouse in Liverpool and Geordie in Newcastle and on to the Scottish. In between is a whole continuum of accents. Am I boring you? I'm sorry. The point is, Durham is in the north, and the northern accent sounds nothing like the southern accent and is often unintelligible to me. Almost every character in the musical (accept for some comically posh southerners) spoke with this accent. If not for the months I've spent listening to Bethany, it would have taken much longer to figure out what on earth was coming out of these people's mouths.
(Bethany, if you ever read this: Yes, I know your accent is totally different from the Durham accent. Yes, I know that you are from Noath Yoaksher. I'm trying to illustrate a point here.)
Anyway, once I got over the shock and settled into the rhythm of the thing, the accent wasn't so hard to decypher. Apparently back in the day (not sure of the exact time period, but last hundred years-ish?) Durham was a big mining town, and there was a huge strike/class war over the miners' rights/pay/something important, during which time poor cute Billy was learning to dance. Of course, his dad wasn't having any of that rubbish, but finally learns to support his son and help him get into a ballet academy. Everyone is happy--well, actually, the miners' union gives in and the strike ends unsuccessfully, so all the miners have to give up and go back to work underground, and Billy leaves all his friends and family to try and make it as a ballet dancer as an underprivileged, undereducated, working-class, low-prestige-accent-speaking kid in a Royal Ballet Academy on his own. But, y'know, he's following his heart and all, so I'm sure that went without a hitch...
The next day, Stephen and I met at Victoria to catch another train--this one to Canterbury. I'd planned on doing Canterbury the first time I was in London and, like with Greenwich, never found the time. The centerpiece of Canterbury is, of course, the cathedral, which has been the seat of the archbishop of England for, like, a super long time. Way back in 15-something, Chaucer was writing about the pilgrims on their way to Canterbury; I'm sure you've heard of the Canterbury Tales. Have you ever wondered why the pilgrims were going there, though?
I'd always assumed it was because it was the archbishop's church, but that's only half the story. A long time ago (in a galaxy far, far away...), Henry the Something-th (second? Third?) was squabbling with Pope and the Church about something (can this get any more vague? I'm sorry) and he wanted to have an archbishop on his side. He appointed his friend and adviser, Thomas Becket, to the post, but this did not go as planned. Becket got religion and became an outspoken defender of the Pope and the Church, enraging the king who'd put him in that position of power. After a while, the King burst out with a not-very-subtly-phrased wish that someone would get rid of that damn priest for him (possibly accompanied by some winking, nodding, and nudging) in the hearing of four of his knights, who promptly went off and killed the heck out of Becket by stabbing him and chopping the top of head off in his own church. But after they buried Becket, miracles started happening, and a cult grew up around the guy, who got sainted just a few years later. Thus the pilgrimages.
ANYWAY. Very pretty cathedral; big and soaring and full of stained glass, like a cathedral should be. We wandered around and petted the cathedral cat and took pictures, and Stephen ran into some people he knew from his hometown (England is a really small country). Any guesses what we did next? That's right: TEA. Stephen had found a teahouse online, so we went for cream tea with scones and clotted cream and jam. The whole world could do worse than adopt this food for daily consumption; it tastes like summertime and happiness. Anyway, it was getting late, so we hurried to the Roman Museum to look at some of the cool stuff they'd dug up from Roman Canterbury; apparently the Nazis helped with this by demolishing a lot of the buildings that stood over the remains, though I'm sure the inhabitants of these buildings weren't too thrilled with that at the time.
Stephen took an earlier train back to London, so I wandered on my own through the darkening streets of Canterbury. I found an Oxfam bookstore and treated myself to three new books, since my Kindle's acting up again and is unusable. I got dinner at Boot's and headed back to London and to my hostel to pack.
When I'd planned this trip, a flight at 6:25 am from Stansted sounded like a good idea. I would arrive in Hamburg before 9, so I'd have the whole day to explore instead of wasting the time en route. Great, huh? Yes. Except. For international flights, you're supposed to arrive two hours early; two hours before gate closing was 4am. It's an hour from London to Stansted, so I'd have to get one around 3 or a little earlier; and the bus left from Victoria, so I'd have to leave time to get from my hostel to there. All together, this meant leaving my hostel at 1am. I tell you, the guys at the front desk sure gave me weird looks when I presented myself before them at 1:05, all bundled up with my pack on my back and my arms full of my stripped bed linens, announcing that I wanted to check out.
Long story short, I got to Stansted at just after 3am, wide awake and wishing I wasn't. My bag, I was sure, was far too heavy. At check-in, I tried to make it look light by slinging it on one shoulder, and the guys at the counter didn't bother to ask, so I thought I was home free. Imagine my horror when we started boarding the plane and the guy at the counter had a scale sitting there and was asking people with bags smaller than mine to weigh them. One woman said that she'd just take her coat out of her bag, which was fine with him, but doesn't make any sense--you're still taking the exact same amount of weight onto the plane for the same price, so what difference does it make? Anyway, he had already pulled two people out of line to reconfigure their luggage, and I was bursting with impatience to get through before they rejoined the line, since there wasn't any room around the scale. The guy barely glanced at me and let me through no problem. I can't wait to get home and weigh the thing to see how much extra weight I got away with.
I slept fitfully on the plane and staggered back into Germany sleep-deprived and disgruntled at not being in England anymore. I got off the bus in Hamburg and found my way to my hostel, where I was way to early for checkin. Maybe it was how I was tottering and slurring my words, or maybe it was the bags under my eyes, but the kind receptionist checked me in anyway, and I went up to my room and collapsed into sleep. So much for extra time to explore. I am never doing that again.
I peeled myself out of bed around 4pm, feeling hungry. On the map, the town center didn't look too far away, so I started off walking. I detoured briefly out to a park with a view over Hamburg's harbor: the sun was just setting, a dirty gold on the horizon, mirrored in the thousands of orange lights sparkling over the water. The shipping cranes towered over labyrinths of shipping crates like enormous steel giraffes as a few ships went puttering serenely past.
The street I was on was mostly uninteresting until it suddenly transformed into the Reeperbahn. The Reeperbahn is Hamburg's main tourist attraction besides the harbor--it's the entertainment, clubbing and *cough* red light district. I was a little nervous and a little curious to walk through after dark, but since it was barely 6pm, the crowds hadn't gotten going yet.
Since I had no particular desire to see the inside of a strip club or sex shop, I kept going, getting hungrier as I went.A good two hours after I left the hostel, I arrived, footsore and rather hungry, at the Rathaus. Unfortunately, the Rathaus is located in what is, apparently, the main high-class shopping district, so there wasn't much in the way of affordable restaurants. I wandered through the streets, increasingly despairing of finding somewhere to eat, until I found a cute little Italian restaurant full of kind Italian staff who seated me right away and brought me some lovely tortelli. I don't know if it's rude to read a book when you're in a restaurant by yourself, but I did anyway. I took the S-Bahn home.
So, that brings us to this morning. My goal today was to take the free walking tour, but although yesterday had been clear, today was, as stated at the beginning, cold, drizzly, and windy. There were only six people, including me, who showed up for the tour, but our fearless Dutch guide led us through the wind and rain to all kinds of interesting buildings in Hamburg. We saw the Nikolaikirche, which had been the highest tower near the harbor in WWII, and as a result was the reference point for Allied bombers and was itself destroyed, leaving only a tower, now a war memorial, and a few ruined walls. We saw the building where a pest-control company made the Zyklon B gas, a form of cyanide used to murder people in the gas chambers; the two company heads had participated in the genocide, but the employees hadn't known what their product was being used for, and were horrified to discover it after the war. We saw the offices of a shipping company with a statue of a poodle on top, because the owner's pet name for his wife was "My dear poodle" because of her hair; apparently their ships are still called "poodles." We saw where the Great Fire of Hamburg started in 1842 because some jackass set a tobacco manufacturer on fire and subsequently destroyed 45% of the city. We heard about the firebombing of Hamburg in WWII that killed tens of thousands of people, because the dry weather and incendiary bombs created a firestorm over 800 C so that people trying to escape would sink into the melting pavement. And we saw Hamburg's work-in-progress, an orchestra house that the city hopes will become a symbol of the city like Sydney's operahouse, except some architects think the powerful winds from the harbor will blow it over.
After the tour, I made my way to the Hauptbahnhof to find tourist information for some recommendations, but the info guy was thoroughly unhelpful and I left no more informed than I'd entered. I decided instead to come back to the hostel and get warm and write this, which has taken rather a long time. So I'm going to get some dinner. Bye!
Two days ago, on a greyish Tuesday morning in London, I met Stephen outside the Victoria Palace theater doing what Brits do best: queueing. You see, if you go early in the morning to the theater, you can get cheap tickets for good seats for same-day performances, and that was what we were attempting to do, and sure enough, we secured two third-row tickets for Billy Elliot for £19.50 each--not bad. But that was for that evening, and what we were tackling that day was Greenwich.
Some very few of you may remember that this was not my first sojourn in Greenwich with Stephen. Almost exactly two years ago, I visited London for the first time in early January with Jewell, Chelly, and Edith. We were all on a budget and asked Stephen to take us to a cheap restaurant, and he said he knew one in Greenwich, which sounded good to us. However, Expert Guide Stephen got us off the Tube at the wrong stop, and although we got a good look at the O2 Center (which I lovingly call the Impaled Jellyfish, since it looks like a white jellyfish impaled on a yellow anemone), we had to hike for at least half an hour although dark roads through fields to get back to Greenwich, when the DLR stop we should have used was just around the corner from the restaurant. To top it off, the sweet-and-sour that Stephen and Edith ordered made them both feel queasy. We've never let Stephen forget it, and Greenwich has had...interesting memories attached ever since. On the plus side, we did get to see the brilliant green laser marking the Prime Meridian piercing the mud-colored sky overhead.
This time around, Stephen got the Tube stops right and we took the DLR train out to the right station. For the Whovians: I got very excited going through the Canary Wharf stop, laughing and pointing and generally embarrassing Stephen as I looked for signs of Dalek attacks. Unfortunately, when the Doctor sealed up the hole in space, all traces of alien invasion seem to have vanished. More's the pity.
We stepped out of the station in Greenwich to a nice English drizzle. From what I saw, Greenwich is a rather sweet collection of small shops and curvy streets on the banks of the Thames; it doesn't feel much like London at all. The trinity of blessings to the budget sightseer are the National Maritime Museum, the Queen's House, and the Observatory, all free admission. We popped into the museum first, looked at one exhibit about nautical exploration, and then Stephen decided he wanted to take the guided tour of the Queen's House, so we left again and went next door.
Apparently, the Queen's House is so called because it belonged to a couple different queens whose names I have forgotten (Wikipedia it if you want to know!) and was used to host parties and such--which, incidentally, it still does; you can rent out the house for weddings and such if you have £7,500 laying around). Now it is mostly empty, displaying a tiny percentage of their collection of nautical paintings--mostly dramatic pictures of boats. The major lulz here is that the house is built directly over a main road, with two wings on either side and then a bridge over the road so the masses could still use it as, y'know, a road. Apparently, the queens used to watch the commoners go by and, presumably, contemplate how glad they were to not be unwashed, ignorant peasants.
(Side note: Ski jumping is on in the background as I write this, and I didn't see the whole thing but it looks like one of the skiers' skis--there's no better word for this--exploded when he landed. Holy crap. I mean, if you're in a sport that consists entirely of skiing off cliffs and trying not to break every bone in your body when you land, the least you could expect is that your skis won't freaking explode when you touch down. The guy's okay, somehow. But still, damn.)
Anyway, it was lunchtime, so for old times' sake, we went to the same cheap Chinese place that had been so much trouble to get to the first time 'round, and Stephen very pointedly did not order the sweet-n-sour. With fuller stomachs and no trace of nausea, we braved the cold back to the NMM to look at more fancy boats. (The pieces of that guy's ski are still just lying there at the bottom of the run for other skiers to ski into. This is a sport for the spectacularly suicidal--no, that's not right, it's run and organized by serial killers. "What, after you ski off a ledge and fall hundreds of feet, you want to land on a smooth surface? Dude, we're looking for ratings here. The demolished pieces of ski are an extra challenge." WTF?) However, I'd heard that there was a planetarium show narrated by none other than David Tennant on, so we hiked up the hill to the observatory.
From the observatory's perch, we had a good view of the Docklands and Canary Wharf, with the Gherkin and St Paul's just visible as silhouettes in the misty distance. We found out that the show cost another £5 or so, and so we opted out and looked at astronomy pictures instead. We also got sucked in by a fun little simulation/game where you had to build and test out some kind of space probe, and if you did it wrong the computer would go on and on about how silly and incompetent you were. We even dragged one of the staff over to play with us and successfully launched a comet probe. We then finally got to see the house where the Greenwich Laser shoots out toward the Impaled Jellyfish and stood on the line marking the Prime Meridian, which was much more exciting for me than for Stephen.
Eventually the observatory closed, and we took a stroll in the direction of Blackheath to get a look at the church that Stephen will be married in. (Ask him, I don't know.) We took a bus to Waterloo and from there back to Victoria (over Westminster Bridge; no matter how many times I see it, the sight of the Eye and the Houses of Parliament lit up at night makes me very happy, especially from the front seat on the top deck of a red bus). At Victoria, we had a quick dinner at Wagamama (I didn't read the menu very closely, apparently, and missed the part where my soup was going to be spicy) before we headed back to the theater for our musical.
Billy Elliot is a musical, as mentioned, about a boy for a family of miners in Durham who turns out to have a great passion and talent for...ballet. Not expecting that, were you? Now, I assume many of you are Americans, and when I wrote "Durham" you just assumed that was some place you've never heard of and went on to the part of the sentence about ballet. That's fine, because pretty much all I've known about Durham for most of my life is that it has a hospital in it (because Stephen applied to do an internship there) and that it is somewhere north-ish. Now, this is key: it's in the north. Still nothing? Okay.
I really hope I'm not going to be stabbed by a bunch of English people for this, but like all dialect families, English in Britain is less like a jigsaw puzzle of distinct accents and more like a watercolor painting, where the accents all bleed into each other with certain distinguishing marks in different places. Yes, apparently, British people can place each other to a specific city by their accents, so there are some clear markers, but there are also general tendancies, from the famously posh and traditionally southern RP (think the Queen and Stephen Fry) up to Scouse in Liverpool and Geordie in Newcastle and on to the Scottish. In between is a whole continuum of accents. Am I boring you? I'm sorry. The point is, Durham is in the north, and the northern accent sounds nothing like the southern accent and is often unintelligible to me. Almost every character in the musical (accept for some comically posh southerners) spoke with this accent. If not for the months I've spent listening to Bethany, it would have taken much longer to figure out what on earth was coming out of these people's mouths.
(Bethany, if you ever read this: Yes, I know your accent is totally different from the Durham accent. Yes, I know that you are from Noath Yoaksher. I'm trying to illustrate a point here.)
Anyway, once I got over the shock and settled into the rhythm of the thing, the accent wasn't so hard to decypher. Apparently back in the day (not sure of the exact time period, but last hundred years-ish?) Durham was a big mining town, and there was a huge strike/class war over the miners' rights/pay/something important, during which time poor cute Billy was learning to dance. Of course, his dad wasn't having any of that rubbish, but finally learns to support his son and help him get into a ballet academy. Everyone is happy--well, actually, the miners' union gives in and the strike ends unsuccessfully, so all the miners have to give up and go back to work underground, and Billy leaves all his friends and family to try and make it as a ballet dancer as an underprivileged, undereducated, working-class, low-prestige-accent-speaking kid in a Royal Ballet Academy on his own. But, y'know, he's following his heart and all, so I'm sure that went without a hitch...
The next day, Stephen and I met at Victoria to catch another train--this one to Canterbury. I'd planned on doing Canterbury the first time I was in London and, like with Greenwich, never found the time. The centerpiece of Canterbury is, of course, the cathedral, which has been the seat of the archbishop of England for, like, a super long time. Way back in 15-something, Chaucer was writing about the pilgrims on their way to Canterbury; I'm sure you've heard of the Canterbury Tales. Have you ever wondered why the pilgrims were going there, though?
I'd always assumed it was because it was the archbishop's church, but that's only half the story. A long time ago (in a galaxy far, far away...), Henry the Something-th (second? Third?) was squabbling with Pope and the Church about something (can this get any more vague? I'm sorry) and he wanted to have an archbishop on his side. He appointed his friend and adviser, Thomas Becket, to the post, but this did not go as planned. Becket got religion and became an outspoken defender of the Pope and the Church, enraging the king who'd put him in that position of power. After a while, the King burst out with a not-very-subtly-phrased wish that someone would get rid of that damn priest for him (possibly accompanied by some winking, nodding, and nudging) in the hearing of four of his knights, who promptly went off and killed the heck out of Becket by stabbing him and chopping the top of head off in his own church. But after they buried Becket, miracles started happening, and a cult grew up around the guy, who got sainted just a few years later. Thus the pilgrimages.
ANYWAY. Very pretty cathedral; big and soaring and full of stained glass, like a cathedral should be. We wandered around and petted the cathedral cat and took pictures, and Stephen ran into some people he knew from his hometown (England is a really small country). Any guesses what we did next? That's right: TEA. Stephen had found a teahouse online, so we went for cream tea with scones and clotted cream and jam. The whole world could do worse than adopt this food for daily consumption; it tastes like summertime and happiness. Anyway, it was getting late, so we hurried to the Roman Museum to look at some of the cool stuff they'd dug up from Roman Canterbury; apparently the Nazis helped with this by demolishing a lot of the buildings that stood over the remains, though I'm sure the inhabitants of these buildings weren't too thrilled with that at the time.
Stephen took an earlier train back to London, so I wandered on my own through the darkening streets of Canterbury. I found an Oxfam bookstore and treated myself to three new books, since my Kindle's acting up again and is unusable. I got dinner at Boot's and headed back to London and to my hostel to pack.
When I'd planned this trip, a flight at 6:25 am from Stansted sounded like a good idea. I would arrive in Hamburg before 9, so I'd have the whole day to explore instead of wasting the time en route. Great, huh? Yes. Except. For international flights, you're supposed to arrive two hours early; two hours before gate closing was 4am. It's an hour from London to Stansted, so I'd have to get one around 3 or a little earlier; and the bus left from Victoria, so I'd have to leave time to get from my hostel to there. All together, this meant leaving my hostel at 1am. I tell you, the guys at the front desk sure gave me weird looks when I presented myself before them at 1:05, all bundled up with my pack on my back and my arms full of my stripped bed linens, announcing that I wanted to check out.
Long story short, I got to Stansted at just after 3am, wide awake and wishing I wasn't. My bag, I was sure, was far too heavy. At check-in, I tried to make it look light by slinging it on one shoulder, and the guys at the counter didn't bother to ask, so I thought I was home free. Imagine my horror when we started boarding the plane and the guy at the counter had a scale sitting there and was asking people with bags smaller than mine to weigh them. One woman said that she'd just take her coat out of her bag, which was fine with him, but doesn't make any sense--you're still taking the exact same amount of weight onto the plane for the same price, so what difference does it make? Anyway, he had already pulled two people out of line to reconfigure their luggage, and I was bursting with impatience to get through before they rejoined the line, since there wasn't any room around the scale. The guy barely glanced at me and let me through no problem. I can't wait to get home and weigh the thing to see how much extra weight I got away with.
I slept fitfully on the plane and staggered back into Germany sleep-deprived and disgruntled at not being in England anymore. I got off the bus in Hamburg and found my way to my hostel, where I was way to early for checkin. Maybe it was how I was tottering and slurring my words, or maybe it was the bags under my eyes, but the kind receptionist checked me in anyway, and I went up to my room and collapsed into sleep. So much for extra time to explore. I am never doing that again.
I peeled myself out of bed around 4pm, feeling hungry. On the map, the town center didn't look too far away, so I started off walking. I detoured briefly out to a park with a view over Hamburg's harbor: the sun was just setting, a dirty gold on the horizon, mirrored in the thousands of orange lights sparkling over the water. The shipping cranes towered over labyrinths of shipping crates like enormous steel giraffes as a few ships went puttering serenely past.
The street I was on was mostly uninteresting until it suddenly transformed into the Reeperbahn. The Reeperbahn is Hamburg's main tourist attraction besides the harbor--it's the entertainment, clubbing and *cough* red light district. I was a little nervous and a little curious to walk through after dark, but since it was barely 6pm, the crowds hadn't gotten going yet.
Since I had no particular desire to see the inside of a strip club or sex shop, I kept going, getting hungrier as I went.A good two hours after I left the hostel, I arrived, footsore and rather hungry, at the Rathaus. Unfortunately, the Rathaus is located in what is, apparently, the main high-class shopping district, so there wasn't much in the way of affordable restaurants. I wandered through the streets, increasingly despairing of finding somewhere to eat, until I found a cute little Italian restaurant full of kind Italian staff who seated me right away and brought me some lovely tortelli. I don't know if it's rude to read a book when you're in a restaurant by yourself, but I did anyway. I took the S-Bahn home.
So, that brings us to this morning. My goal today was to take the free walking tour, but although yesterday had been clear, today was, as stated at the beginning, cold, drizzly, and windy. There were only six people, including me, who showed up for the tour, but our fearless Dutch guide led us through the wind and rain to all kinds of interesting buildings in Hamburg. We saw the Nikolaikirche, which had been the highest tower near the harbor in WWII, and as a result was the reference point for Allied bombers and was itself destroyed, leaving only a tower, now a war memorial, and a few ruined walls. We saw the building where a pest-control company made the Zyklon B gas, a form of cyanide used to murder people in the gas chambers; the two company heads had participated in the genocide, but the employees hadn't known what their product was being used for, and were horrified to discover it after the war. We saw the offices of a shipping company with a statue of a poodle on top, because the owner's pet name for his wife was "My dear poodle" because of her hair; apparently their ships are still called "poodles." We saw where the Great Fire of Hamburg started in 1842 because some jackass set a tobacco manufacturer on fire and subsequently destroyed 45% of the city. We heard about the firebombing of Hamburg in WWII that killed tens of thousands of people, because the dry weather and incendiary bombs created a firestorm over 800 C so that people trying to escape would sink into the melting pavement. And we saw Hamburg's work-in-progress, an orchestra house that the city hopes will become a symbol of the city like Sydney's operahouse, except some architects think the powerful winds from the harbor will blow it over.
After the tour, I made my way to the Hauptbahnhof to find tourist information for some recommendations, but the info guy was thoroughly unhelpful and I left no more informed than I'd entered. I decided instead to come back to the hostel and get warm and write this, which has taken rather a long time. So I'm going to get some dinner. Bye!
Monday, January 31, 2011
The Best City in the World
I really, really like London. Have you noticed yet?
But then, today was a good day. Not a spectacular day, just a good one, and you will find out why momentarily.
Yesterday was a walking day. I decided to go on the walking tour of London, which I've never done before, and since the meeting point was at Wellington Arch, just on the other side of Hyde Park, I decided to start my day with a nice stroll. I mean, how far can it be?
Hint: Hyde Park is REALLY BIG.
Because I was clever and left lots of time, though, I actually did have time to go slowly and enjoy the walk, although the pleasure was somewhat curtailed by the fact that it was really bloody cold. I smiled at swans, chuckled at coots, giggled at geese, and bought a map. (A pocket London A-Z, for any Sherlockians. Also, it said £3.99 on the back, but the guy gave me 30% off with no explanation whatsoever. Must be my feminine wiles.)
At the Arch, I met up with the gaggle of my fellow tourists and we all set off in a herd together to hear about London. Pretty much everywhere we went I'd already been--two or three times--but I learned a couple new things anyway. I learned, for instance, that some German guys once camped in the back garden of Buckingham Palace because they thought it was Hyde Park, and that a drunk Irishman (insert your own witticism here) once broke into the palace, thinking it was a hotel, and had a conversation with the Queen. (If you want to LOL a bit at the security guards, here's the Wikipedia page.) Also, it takes a crapton of money to get into and maintain membership in the Athenaeum Club on Pall Mall--if I remember correctly, there's something like a 15-year waiting list to get in, and you have to be recommended to get on the list and pay to stay there (something like £3,000 a year); it's like £15,000 to get in and then £5,000 a year in dues. Damn.
Our route took us to Trafalgar Square, with the leaping fountains sparkling in the sunlight (insert your own joke about sunshine in London here), past a whole bunch of English Civil War reenactors in plate armor with pikes (no joke), and to the Houses of Parliament, where the Clock Tower looked splendid in glittering gold as our guide explained to us, in careful detail, exactly what "hung, drawn, and quartered" means. Lovely.
A group of us then continued on after the official end of the tour to our guide's recommended restaurant for a late lunch. I ate my sausages, mash, and Yorkshire pudding quickly and headed into the wilds of Leicester Square to find a movie theater playing The King's Speech, which took some doing, but I managed it. I had some time until the showing, so I wandered a bit, said hello to Covent Garden, and bought dinner at M&S before returning to themovie theater cinema.
I'd heard good things about The King's Speech and I wasn't disappointed. It tells the story of King George VI, the current Queen's father, who was thrust suddenly into the kingship after his older brother abdicated to marry a twice-divorced American woman. (Those Americans, my goodness...) Poor King George had a stutter, though, a terror of public speaking (unsurprising), and no real desire to be king, if you can believe the movies. (Advice: don't.) Doctor after doctor had tried to help him to little or no effect, until his despairing wife finds an unconventional doctor who finally manages to do the King some good.
I realize that a movie about speech therapy probably doesn't sound like the best thing in the world, but it isn't really about speech therapy. It's about the lines that are drawn between royalty and commoner, even in the modern world, purely by virtue of birth. It's about the destiny that the then-future King George felt was inescapable, a role he didn't want but accepted anyway, even at the brink of war. It's about the personal courage of the King, a real person with real fears and real problems, and how he learns to make a friend.
Anyway, I'm sure much of it is dramatized, romanticized, and exaggerated, and not being a historian, I can't tell you how much. I can just tell you that if it's at all true, King George's personal courage was amazing, and watching him try to speak around his paralyzing stammer makes you writhe in sympathetic agony. If you get the chance to see it, I recommend it.
After that I went home, ate my dinner and went to bed, which brings us to today!
It took me longer than anticipated to get to the British Library today, because I was determined to take the bus and the bus was late. I did make it, finally, and got to see one of the things I'd been looking forward to this trip: the Evolving English exhibition, about English over the years. There were copies of Chaucer, and clips from My Fair Lady, and sound bytes from all over Britain, and a bookmark from oh-so-long-ago inscribed in Old English runes. It was lovely, and I spent far too much time there--just like last time. I'd been planning to go to the British Museum afterwards, but I was very hungry and rather museum'd out at that point, so I bought a book about British history and curled up in a Starbucks with a nice latte for a while. (No eye-rolling now; this is my first Starbucks since August!)
I bought a Big Issue and asked the seller for directions, and so took another bus to Waterloo Bridge. Walking on the South Bank is something of a tradition at this point, and the clear sky and setting sun made it all so lovely despite the cold. I even, after admiring Ben and the Eye for a while, went back to my Egyptian perch and sat between the Sphinx's paws until it got too cold to not be moving, at which point I came back here to have dinner and relax and watch Top Gear.
Now I've been typing for far too long and it's time for bed. Tomorrow I have to get up early-ish to take a shower and go get in line in the hopes of getting tickets for a musical, then Stephen arrives! Yay!
But then, today was a good day. Not a spectacular day, just a good one, and you will find out why momentarily.
Yesterday was a walking day. I decided to go on the walking tour of London, which I've never done before, and since the meeting point was at Wellington Arch, just on the other side of Hyde Park, I decided to start my day with a nice stroll. I mean, how far can it be?
Hint: Hyde Park is REALLY BIG.
Because I was clever and left lots of time, though, I actually did have time to go slowly and enjoy the walk, although the pleasure was somewhat curtailed by the fact that it was really bloody cold. I smiled at swans, chuckled at coots, giggled at geese, and bought a map. (A pocket London A-Z, for any Sherlockians. Also, it said £3.99 on the back, but the guy gave me 30% off with no explanation whatsoever. Must be my feminine wiles.)
At the Arch, I met up with the gaggle of my fellow tourists and we all set off in a herd together to hear about London. Pretty much everywhere we went I'd already been--two or three times--but I learned a couple new things anyway. I learned, for instance, that some German guys once camped in the back garden of Buckingham Palace because they thought it was Hyde Park, and that a drunk Irishman (insert your own witticism here) once broke into the palace, thinking it was a hotel, and had a conversation with the Queen. (If you want to LOL a bit at the security guards, here's the Wikipedia page.) Also, it takes a crapton of money to get into and maintain membership in the Athenaeum Club on Pall Mall--if I remember correctly, there's something like a 15-year waiting list to get in, and you have to be recommended to get on the list and pay to stay there (something like £3,000 a year); it's like £15,000 to get in and then £5,000 a year in dues. Damn.
Our route took us to Trafalgar Square, with the leaping fountains sparkling in the sunlight (insert your own joke about sunshine in London here), past a whole bunch of English Civil War reenactors in plate armor with pikes (no joke), and to the Houses of Parliament, where the Clock Tower looked splendid in glittering gold as our guide explained to us, in careful detail, exactly what "hung, drawn, and quartered" means. Lovely.
A group of us then continued on after the official end of the tour to our guide's recommended restaurant for a late lunch. I ate my sausages, mash, and Yorkshire pudding quickly and headed into the wilds of Leicester Square to find a movie theater playing The King's Speech, which took some doing, but I managed it. I had some time until the showing, so I wandered a bit, said hello to Covent Garden, and bought dinner at M&S before returning to the
I'd heard good things about The King's Speech and I wasn't disappointed. It tells the story of King George VI, the current Queen's father, who was thrust suddenly into the kingship after his older brother abdicated to marry a twice-divorced American woman. (Those Americans, my goodness...) Poor King George had a stutter, though, a terror of public speaking (unsurprising), and no real desire to be king, if you can believe the movies. (Advice: don't.) Doctor after doctor had tried to help him to little or no effect, until his despairing wife finds an unconventional doctor who finally manages to do the King some good.
I realize that a movie about speech therapy probably doesn't sound like the best thing in the world, but it isn't really about speech therapy. It's about the lines that are drawn between royalty and commoner, even in the modern world, purely by virtue of birth. It's about the destiny that the then-future King George felt was inescapable, a role he didn't want but accepted anyway, even at the brink of war. It's about the personal courage of the King, a real person with real fears and real problems, and how he learns to make a friend.
Anyway, I'm sure much of it is dramatized, romanticized, and exaggerated, and not being a historian, I can't tell you how much. I can just tell you that if it's at all true, King George's personal courage was amazing, and watching him try to speak around his paralyzing stammer makes you writhe in sympathetic agony. If you get the chance to see it, I recommend it.
After that I went home, ate my dinner and went to bed, which brings us to today!
It took me longer than anticipated to get to the British Library today, because I was determined to take the bus and the bus was late. I did make it, finally, and got to see one of the things I'd been looking forward to this trip: the Evolving English exhibition, about English over the years. There were copies of Chaucer, and clips from My Fair Lady, and sound bytes from all over Britain, and a bookmark from oh-so-long-ago inscribed in Old English runes. It was lovely, and I spent far too much time there--just like last time. I'd been planning to go to the British Museum afterwards, but I was very hungry and rather museum'd out at that point, so I bought a book about British history and curled up in a Starbucks with a nice latte for a while. (No eye-rolling now; this is my first Starbucks since August!)
I bought a Big Issue and asked the seller for directions, and so took another bus to Waterloo Bridge. Walking on the South Bank is something of a tradition at this point, and the clear sky and setting sun made it all so lovely despite the cold. I even, after admiring Ben and the Eye for a while, went back to my Egyptian perch and sat between the Sphinx's paws until it got too cold to not be moving, at which point I came back here to have dinner and relax and watch Top Gear.
Now I've been typing for far too long and it's time for bed. Tomorrow I have to get up early-ish to take a shower and go get in line in the hopes of getting tickets for a musical, then Stephen arrives! Yay!
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Welcome to London
Ahh, London. Hello again, my darling. I've missed you.
I can't explain what I love so much about London. It's a huge, busy, noisy city, unbelievably vast and completely apathetic. And yet, somehow coming here feels a little bit like coming home.
To my complete lack of surprise, I was drawn to the City and the South Bank--this summer's old stomping grounds--as soon as I dumped off my stuff at my hostel. It was full dark by the time I accomplished this, although still fairly early; the overcast sky was that curious shade of muddy purplish-orangish-grey that all city skies seem to have in common. I emerged from the familiar St Paul's Tube stop to behold the monolithic white edifice towering impassively, unchanged by my six months' absence, over the scuttling lines of traffic at its feet. I turned my feet toward the river, occasionally looking back to see the majestic dome rising over the dark shapes of its lesser neighbors, which stared at its gleaming pillars with unblinkingly envious yellow-green eyes.
Over the Millenium Bridge I went, now huddling into my coat against the cold instead of sweltering in the summer heat. As usual, the Thames was flowing serenely by, illuminated by the glow of the still-bustling city. To my left, the round tip of the Gherkin poked up among the more conventionally-shaped buildings, and off in the distance to my right, around the bend in the river, I could catch a glimpse of a curved row of blue lights high in the air: surely the London Eye. At the other end of the bridge, instead of turning my steps to the Globe, I headed towards an enormous but singularly unattractive square brick structure sporting a high tower: a former power house, now the Tate Modern.
Why the Tate Modern? Well, RFS recommends it, for starters. I'd wanted to go in the summer but hadn't got around to it. Also, on Saturdays it's open till 10pm, and it was already past dinnertime.
This is how I found myself standing in an enormous industrial building, looking at art displays that...well. It's modern art. What did you expect?
Perhaps most face-palmingly painful was the feature exhibit, entitled "Sunflower Seeds", which was an entire section of the bottom floor covered about half a foot deep in sunflower seeds. No patterns, no special designs, just millions of sunflower seeds. But wait, it's better--they're not real seeds, but fake. Not just fake: handmade, individually painted ceramic sunflower seeds. Millions of them.
It's supposed to represent something about the nature of uniqueness, and something about China (it was a Chinese artist who "made" them, although from the video they showed, it seemed that he kind of supervised and got a village to do all the actual work for him), and something about mass-production and the human soul. Or something. Mostly my reaction was in three stages:
1. "Is that just a really ugly carpet that everyone's looking at?"
2. "Holy shit that's a lot of fake sunflower seeds. Bet that took a while."
3. "Why do no modern artists ever do anything useful or constructive with their time?"
Pretty much the whole museum was like that for me. The amusing bit was the three-step process of incredulity and hilarity upon seeing the "artwork" for the first time, utter bafflement and confusion upon reading/hearing the entirely over-exaggerated analysis of its deep inner meaning and bold confrontation of the concepts of space, or sexuality, or time, or whatever, and then the absurdity that leaves you no choice but to walk away shaking your head. Highlights of WTF:
Anyway, having used up a week's worth of WTF?!?!, I staggered wearily back to the hostel where I now sit. The plan is to relax somewhat tomorrow, since this is, after all, my vacation, and then visit the British Library and British Museum on Monday. On Tuesday, I get to see Stephen and hang out with him for a couple days, then I'm flying off back to Germany to hang in Hamburg.
P.S. I'm surprised to find that this is the first time I've used the label "WTF". I feel like that should've happened already. Oh well.
I can't explain what I love so much about London. It's a huge, busy, noisy city, unbelievably vast and completely apathetic. And yet, somehow coming here feels a little bit like coming home.
To my complete lack of surprise, I was drawn to the City and the South Bank--this summer's old stomping grounds--as soon as I dumped off my stuff at my hostel. It was full dark by the time I accomplished this, although still fairly early; the overcast sky was that curious shade of muddy purplish-orangish-grey that all city skies seem to have in common. I emerged from the familiar St Paul's Tube stop to behold the monolithic white edifice towering impassively, unchanged by my six months' absence, over the scuttling lines of traffic at its feet. I turned my feet toward the river, occasionally looking back to see the majestic dome rising over the dark shapes of its lesser neighbors, which stared at its gleaming pillars with unblinkingly envious yellow-green eyes.
Over the Millenium Bridge I went, now huddling into my coat against the cold instead of sweltering in the summer heat. As usual, the Thames was flowing serenely by, illuminated by the glow of the still-bustling city. To my left, the round tip of the Gherkin poked up among the more conventionally-shaped buildings, and off in the distance to my right, around the bend in the river, I could catch a glimpse of a curved row of blue lights high in the air: surely the London Eye. At the other end of the bridge, instead of turning my steps to the Globe, I headed towards an enormous but singularly unattractive square brick structure sporting a high tower: a former power house, now the Tate Modern.
Why the Tate Modern? Well, RFS recommends it, for starters. I'd wanted to go in the summer but hadn't got around to it. Also, on Saturdays it's open till 10pm, and it was already past dinnertime.
This is how I found myself standing in an enormous industrial building, looking at art displays that...well. It's modern art. What did you expect?
Perhaps most face-palmingly painful was the feature exhibit, entitled "Sunflower Seeds", which was an entire section of the bottom floor covered about half a foot deep in sunflower seeds. No patterns, no special designs, just millions of sunflower seeds. But wait, it's better--they're not real seeds, but fake. Not just fake: handmade, individually painted ceramic sunflower seeds. Millions of them.
It's supposed to represent something about the nature of uniqueness, and something about China (it was a Chinese artist who "made" them, although from the video they showed, it seemed that he kind of supervised and got a village to do all the actual work for him), and something about mass-production and the human soul. Or something. Mostly my reaction was in three stages:
1. "Is that just a really ugly carpet that everyone's looking at?"
2. "Holy shit that's a lot of fake sunflower seeds. Bet that took a while."
3. "Why do no modern artists ever do anything useful or constructive with their time?"
Pretty much the whole museum was like that for me. The amusing bit was the three-step process of incredulity and hilarity upon seeing the "artwork" for the first time, utter bafflement and confusion upon reading/hearing the entirely over-exaggerated analysis of its deep inner meaning and bold confrontation of the concepts of space, or sexuality, or time, or whatever, and then the absurdity that leaves you no choice but to walk away shaking your head. Highlights of WTF:
- A giant American three-way plug made out of mahogany, hanging from the ceiling (and I do mean giant), which was supposed to challenge the inherent eroticism of everyday objects (?!?!)
- A small, spindly tree carved out of a beam of wood, to find the younger tree within
- A large piece of white cloth curved around a glass beaker, with no explanation
- A piece of white octagonal paper glued to the wall, to challenge our conception of space and what makes a painting
- A video of a naked woman dousing herself in blood and then rolling around in feathers
- And a whole bunch of framed, honest-to-goodness museum pictures that "boldly experiment with shape and color" that all looked to me like various arrangements of blocks and lines painted by fifth graders.
Anyway, having used up a week's worth of WTF?!?!, I staggered wearily back to the hostel where I now sit. The plan is to relax somewhat tomorrow, since this is, after all, my vacation, and then visit the British Library and British Museum on Monday. On Tuesday, I get to see Stephen and hang out with him for a couple days, then I'm flying off back to Germany to hang in Hamburg.
P.S. I'm surprised to find that this is the first time I've used the label "WTF". I feel like that should've happened already. Oh well.
Friday, January 28, 2011
England again
Well, I should be asleep now, but I'm strangely wide awake, so I thought I'd drop a line. Tomorrow morning I leave for England. I'll be in London for another five days, doing fun things like meeting up with my friend Stephen, and then I'll be back to Germany, but in Hamburg. I've heard lots of good things about Hamburg, so I'm looking forward to seeing it for myself.
The Fasching party with the students went very well. For those who don't know, Fasching is like the German Mardi Gras; everyone gets dressed up in silly costumes (like Halloween) and drinks copious amounts of alcohol (like every day). As you may remember, I was enlisted to sing a bit for the evening's program, so I'd been practicing with the student playing the guitar. I had no classes the day of the party, so I had the whole morning and most of the afternoon to sit around trembling and being nervous.
Turns out, the whole thing went pretty well. I messed up a couple times, but just little warbles--I didn't forget the words or start singing at the wrong time, thank goodness. And since then lots of people, teachers and students, have said that they enjoyed it. So, altogether, I'm pleased.
After the program, there was of course drinking and dancing; I didn't do too much of either. There was beer spilled all over the dance floor, and in combination with the polished stone tiles and my near-treadless Converse, it was a broken femur waiting to happen. About midnight I decided to head home, and got stuck outside the door talking to the smokers huddling together in the cold. This, it turns out, is where I should have headed in the first place, since there was enough quiet to hear and enough good spirits to have lively conversations--if not quite enough fresh air to breathe! It was another hour and a half before I finally made it back to go to sleep.
Now all the students are gone and the whole building--the whole town, really--is deathly quiet. I'll be glad to get on a plane tomorrow and find myself again in a big city. I can't really explain what it is that attracts me so strongly to London. When I'm there, I feel small and lost, but there's still something beautiful and awe-inspiring about the city itself. I don't know, I can't explain it, and it's probably just romantic notions from watching too much BBC programming. But anyway, I'm looking forward to being in the land of the Angles again.
Oh, and I didn't hear back about the Top Gear tickets, which means I didn't get them. Oh well--I've already put myself on the reserve list for this summer. Fingers crossed!
The Fasching party with the students went very well. For those who don't know, Fasching is like the German Mardi Gras; everyone gets dressed up in silly costumes (like Halloween) and drinks copious amounts of alcohol (like every day). As you may remember, I was enlisted to sing a bit for the evening's program, so I'd been practicing with the student playing the guitar. I had no classes the day of the party, so I had the whole morning and most of the afternoon to sit around trembling and being nervous.
Turns out, the whole thing went pretty well. I messed up a couple times, but just little warbles--I didn't forget the words or start singing at the wrong time, thank goodness. And since then lots of people, teachers and students, have said that they enjoyed it. So, altogether, I'm pleased.
After the program, there was of course drinking and dancing; I didn't do too much of either. There was beer spilled all over the dance floor, and in combination with the polished stone tiles and my near-treadless Converse, it was a broken femur waiting to happen. About midnight I decided to head home, and got stuck outside the door talking to the smokers huddling together in the cold. This, it turns out, is where I should have headed in the first place, since there was enough quiet to hear and enough good spirits to have lively conversations--if not quite enough fresh air to breathe! It was another hour and a half before I finally made it back to go to sleep.
Now all the students are gone and the whole building--the whole town, really--is deathly quiet. I'll be glad to get on a plane tomorrow and find myself again in a big city. I can't really explain what it is that attracts me so strongly to London. When I'm there, I feel small and lost, but there's still something beautiful and awe-inspiring about the city itself. I don't know, I can't explain it, and it's probably just romantic notions from watching too much BBC programming. But anyway, I'm looking forward to being in the land of the Angles again.
Oh, and I didn't hear back about the Top Gear tickets, which means I didn't get them. Oh well--I've already put myself on the reserve list for this summer. Fingers crossed!
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Recent Things That Have Happened To Me
So, last time I totally forgot to wish y'all a happy new year. I was a bit angry at the time, sorry. So: Happy new year! There.
Well, let's see. I started writing a summary of my holidays, so you could have an idea of what I did for Christmas and everything, mostly because it was all fun and cultural-y and stuff, and I want to remember it. That got stalled, so it's still the half-finished-draft stage, along with Sevilla and Tarifa and Morocco and stuff. Sorry about that.
Anyway, the last week or so has been a bit rough. Not because anything in particular has gone wrong, I've just been feeling down--a bit homesick, a bit listless. I think this is partly because I either have already passed, or am about to pass, my personal record for Longest Time Away From Home. Last time was, of course, Marburg, but that was only from mid-September to the beginning of March, so...six and half months-ish. I arrived in London on the 25th of June last year, which puts me at seven months on next Tuesday. And there's still a long way to go. I don't have any idea when I'll be home again, or, for that matter, where home is.
Anyway. I'm listening right now to a song "borrowed" from YouTube because the students have convinced me to sing some songs at their Fasching celebration next week. I don't actually know the music that my guitar accompaniment can play, so I'm learning it now! In fact, I need to go catch the bus to get back to the station to get back to Stadtroda so I can practice this stuff. I'll be back.
Hi, I'm back. I missed the bus and the train each by about 30 seconds, so I had to watch my train drive off into the darkness and then wait another hour until the next one, at 21:22. I hadn't eaten any dinner, either, so I was not a hppy camper. Oh well.
There are assorting things to tell you...let's see.
Last week was the full-year students' last, which was very sad because they're my favorites. On Thursday last week, we went out to Japanese food and then went to see a movie in Gera. We were going to see Narnia, but ended up in Green Hornet instead. Personally, I didn't like Green Hornet at all, partly because Seth Rogen is, by all accounts, an obnoxious jackass, and because there was an awful lot of shouting and slang in German that I didn't understand. My brain almost exploded.
On Friday they moved out, leaving behind addresses and promises to write. I haven't heard from any of them yet.
Last weekend was somewhat better. On Saturday evening, Bethany and I traveled to Ilmenau and went to see Rapunzel for the second time with Victoria. This is absolutely a brilliant movie. It is sweet and adorable and sarcastic and I love it. It is especially amusing in German, which once again makes me lift my fists to the heavens and curse regional DVD coding that means I will never be able to buy a German-language copy that will work with my computer!
On the following Sunday, a bunch of the other Thüringen TAs came to visit Ilmenau, and we all went for a hike together. Luckily, it was a sunny day, if a bit crisp--but hey, y'know, it's January. We hiked up to the Kickelhahn, a huge tower thing with lovely views down to red-roofed Ilmenau and the rolling, mist-covered hills of the Thuringer Wald. The first part of the hike wasn't very difficult, but about halfway up, we hit all the unmelted snow, and it was quite a slog from there. In some places, the trail was barely discernible, and we were clambering over fallen trees and wending through soundless forests. Being the warmhearted team player that I am, I pushed on ahead and made it to the top 17 minutes before the next people before me and felt quite pleased with myself. At the top, we tried to have a picnic but mostly shivered in the cold wind, at which point we opted to go into the restaurant up there for warm drinks before taking an easier way down.
Oops, it's Sunday now. I keep getting distracted! I've just been working on correcting some practice papers from one of my classes. They're working on giving directions, so I asked them to write some directions using a map I gave them so I could correct them and see how they're doing. Some highlights:
"The pub is on the left-hand side. I go inside trink a beer and go out. I turn right..."
"At the end of the street I'll find the hotel. My next station is the Hot Dog Stand because I am hungry and the eat from the Hotel is bad. So I go out of the Hotel..."
I also got to work with dem Wöhlbierchen (my mentor teacher's daughter) with more Japanese today. Have I mentioned that we're doing Japanese together? Well, we are. The sweet girl is a big anime/manga fan and wants to go to Japan someday, so we meet once a week to learn hiragana and other fun stuff. It's quite fun and good for both of us; she gets to learn some Japanese, and I get to talk about grammar, drink coffee, and practice speaking German. She's a friendly girl and a quick learner, so it's great fun to work with her--when I can remember enough of my atrophied Japanese to teach her something useful!
One hilarious event that I forgot to relate: I've been meeting with a student to practice our songs for Fasching (which is this Wednesday...augh, I get nervous just thinking about it!). I'd just come in and still had my coat on; his roommate was just leaving to go drink some beer in the TV room. This student, the guitar guy, is a very friendly guy who often speaks to me in English while we work on the music. Anyway, just as I'm getting settled and his roommate is leaving, he glances at me and says, "You can take your clothes off."
It took me a split second to go through surprise, bewilderment, and then realization (he meant, of course, "coat" and simply grabbed the wrong word). This would've been a nonissue if his roommate, who speaks fairly good English, had not heard him and burst out laughing. I started laughing too, at which point the poor guy realized what he'd said and bolted for the door to shout "THAT'S NOT WHAT I MEANT TO SAY!!!!" down the hallway after his cackling roommate. I later related the incident to Frau Wöhlbier, who then hinted about it to him in class. Facepalm. Although it still makes me giggle, thinking about it. Of all the times to mix up those two words...
Well, anyway, the job search goes on. Turns out that it's a serious disadvantage--more serious than I'd anticipated--to not be an EU national during a search for an English teaching job in Europe. I can't figure out if this is a legal visa/work permit thing, or just a euphemistic way of informing everyone that they don't want any non-British-dialect speakers intruding in their schools. Either way, it's irritating. I found one job posting that was exactly what I'd like to do--except it's run by Cambridge schools, and non-EU national need not apply.
Option B is grad school. I looked through the Edinburgh application today and discovered that I'd need to write a research proposal. Now, this is not going to happen anytime soon, because I'll have to do quite a bit more research into the areas that I'm interested in to figure out what kind of project I'd want to work on. Library, here I come. On the good side, there are no real application deadlines, so I can apply whenever I figure out what the hell I want to do for the next few years of my life.
Finally, I discovered this song on my iPod today. I have several CDs loaded on there that I've never listened to all the way through, and I found this one while walking home. It seems to encapsulate a lot of how I've been feeling recently.
Well, let's see. I started writing a summary of my holidays, so you could have an idea of what I did for Christmas and everything, mostly because it was all fun and cultural-y and stuff, and I want to remember it. That got stalled, so it's still the half-finished-draft stage, along with Sevilla and Tarifa and Morocco and stuff. Sorry about that.
Anyway, the last week or so has been a bit rough. Not because anything in particular has gone wrong, I've just been feeling down--a bit homesick, a bit listless. I think this is partly because I either have already passed, or am about to pass, my personal record for Longest Time Away From Home. Last time was, of course, Marburg, but that was only from mid-September to the beginning of March, so...six and half months-ish. I arrived in London on the 25th of June last year, which puts me at seven months on next Tuesday. And there's still a long way to go. I don't have any idea when I'll be home again, or, for that matter, where home is.
Anyway. I'm listening right now to a song "borrowed" from YouTube because the students have convinced me to sing some songs at their Fasching celebration next week. I don't actually know the music that my guitar accompaniment can play, so I'm learning it now! In fact, I need to go catch the bus to get back to the station to get back to Stadtroda so I can practice this stuff. I'll be back.
Hi, I'm back. I missed the bus and the train each by about 30 seconds, so I had to watch my train drive off into the darkness and then wait another hour until the next one, at 21:22. I hadn't eaten any dinner, either, so I was not a hppy camper. Oh well.
There are assorting things to tell you...let's see.
Last week was the full-year students' last, which was very sad because they're my favorites. On Thursday last week, we went out to Japanese food and then went to see a movie in Gera. We were going to see Narnia, but ended up in Green Hornet instead. Personally, I didn't like Green Hornet at all, partly because Seth Rogen is, by all accounts, an obnoxious jackass, and because there was an awful lot of shouting and slang in German that I didn't understand. My brain almost exploded.
On Friday they moved out, leaving behind addresses and promises to write. I haven't heard from any of them yet.
Last weekend was somewhat better. On Saturday evening, Bethany and I traveled to Ilmenau and went to see Rapunzel for the second time with Victoria. This is absolutely a brilliant movie. It is sweet and adorable and sarcastic and I love it. It is especially amusing in German, which once again makes me lift my fists to the heavens and curse regional DVD coding that means I will never be able to buy a German-language copy that will work with my computer!
On the following Sunday, a bunch of the other Thüringen TAs came to visit Ilmenau, and we all went for a hike together. Luckily, it was a sunny day, if a bit crisp--but hey, y'know, it's January. We hiked up to the Kickelhahn, a huge tower thing with lovely views down to red-roofed Ilmenau and the rolling, mist-covered hills of the Thuringer Wald. The first part of the hike wasn't very difficult, but about halfway up, we hit all the unmelted snow, and it was quite a slog from there. In some places, the trail was barely discernible, and we were clambering over fallen trees and wending through soundless forests. Being the warmhearted team player that I am, I pushed on ahead and made it to the top 17 minutes before the next people before me and felt quite pleased with myself. At the top, we tried to have a picnic but mostly shivered in the cold wind, at which point we opted to go into the restaurant up there for warm drinks before taking an easier way down.
Oops, it's Sunday now. I keep getting distracted! I've just been working on correcting some practice papers from one of my classes. They're working on giving directions, so I asked them to write some directions using a map I gave them so I could correct them and see how they're doing. Some highlights:
"The pub is on the left-hand side. I go inside trink a beer and go out. I turn right..."
"At the end of the street I'll find the hotel. My next station is the Hot Dog Stand because I am hungry and the eat from the Hotel is bad. So I go out of the Hotel..."
I also got to work with dem Wöhlbierchen (my mentor teacher's daughter) with more Japanese today. Have I mentioned that we're doing Japanese together? Well, we are. The sweet girl is a big anime/manga fan and wants to go to Japan someday, so we meet once a week to learn hiragana and other fun stuff. It's quite fun and good for both of us; she gets to learn some Japanese, and I get to talk about grammar, drink coffee, and practice speaking German. She's a friendly girl and a quick learner, so it's great fun to work with her--when I can remember enough of my atrophied Japanese to teach her something useful!
One hilarious event that I forgot to relate: I've been meeting with a student to practice our songs for Fasching (which is this Wednesday...augh, I get nervous just thinking about it!). I'd just come in and still had my coat on; his roommate was just leaving to go drink some beer in the TV room. This student, the guitar guy, is a very friendly guy who often speaks to me in English while we work on the music. Anyway, just as I'm getting settled and his roommate is leaving, he glances at me and says, "You can take your clothes off."
It took me a split second to go through surprise, bewilderment, and then realization (he meant, of course, "coat" and simply grabbed the wrong word). This would've been a nonissue if his roommate, who speaks fairly good English, had not heard him and burst out laughing. I started laughing too, at which point the poor guy realized what he'd said and bolted for the door to shout "THAT'S NOT WHAT I MEANT TO SAY!!!!" down the hallway after his cackling roommate. I later related the incident to Frau Wöhlbier, who then hinted about it to him in class. Facepalm. Although it still makes me giggle, thinking about it. Of all the times to mix up those two words...
Well, anyway, the job search goes on. Turns out that it's a serious disadvantage--more serious than I'd anticipated--to not be an EU national during a search for an English teaching job in Europe. I can't figure out if this is a legal visa/work permit thing, or just a euphemistic way of informing everyone that they don't want any non-British-dialect speakers intruding in their schools. Either way, it's irritating. I found one job posting that was exactly what I'd like to do--except it's run by Cambridge schools, and non-EU national need not apply.
Option B is grad school. I looked through the Edinburgh application today and discovered that I'd need to write a research proposal. Now, this is not going to happen anytime soon, because I'll have to do quite a bit more research into the areas that I'm interested in to figure out what kind of project I'd want to work on. Library, here I come. On the good side, there are no real application deadlines, so I can apply whenever I figure out what the hell I want to do for the next few years of my life.
Finally, I discovered this song on my iPod today. I have several CDs loaded on there that I've never listened to all the way through, and I found this one while walking home. It seems to encapsulate a lot of how I've been feeling recently.
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