Larking About London, Part II

I was determined to keep on schedule today, so I left my hostel on time, had a nice brisk walk up the river to the Tower, and was a good half hour early for the church service in the Tower chapel. The chapel itself was small and personal, but it's oh-so-full of history, and the choir was lovely. Besides that, the priest was warm, cheerful, and welcoming, taking a moment to shake my hand enthusiastically and ask me where I'm from. I quite enjoyed it.

I had been planning on exploring the Tower "quickly" and then heading off down the river to Greenwich. It soon became clear, though, that there was no way I'd get through the Tower quickly. I can't get through any museum with anything resembling speed, and the Tower is really fascinating, especially since I've recently read and watched Shakespeare's Richard III. (In this historical play, the Tower plays an important role as a prison and murder site.) Of course, given the choice between doing a whirlwind tour of the Tower, taking a boat downriver, and then running through Greenwich to try and see everything in time, or hanging out and taking my time at the Tower and doing Greenwich later, I decided to take it easy, and as a result, I got chased out of the Tower by Beefeaters at closing at 5:30.

Like I said, I really enjoyed the Tower--so much pomp and history packed into a (relatively) small space. I find British history very interesting and the entire concept of the monarchy fascinating (ask me why someday if you have a few spare hours and nothing of importance to do), but sheesh, there have been a lot of British monarchs, and they all seem to 1) be related to each other (and I'm not talking about succession here), 2) have died horrible or at least spectacularly interesting deaths and 3) have the same six or seven names. They're all very intriguing as individuals, dealing with some hefty questions: what does absolute (or nearly so) power do to the mind of a human? How does one cope with the weight of the responsibility and adulation (or hatred, as the case may be) of an entire nation? To what lengths will man go to get and keep power? (The answers are, respectively: nothing good, not well, and just about all of them.)

As a group, however, it only takes me a few seconds to get hopelessly lost in the maze of Edwards, Henrys, murders, wars, successions, and marriages. I can't keep straight who belonged to what family, whether they were Protestant or Catholic, whether they were good rulers or bad, and when they reigned to save my life. My brain has therefore developed a sort of self-preservative instinct so that whenever an audioguide or museum display tries to talk to me about more than one monarch at once and my brain goes into a tailspin, the whole thing just shuts down automatically and I wander away looking slightly stunned.

I am, however, determined to confront and conquer this academic and mnemonic failing in my cognitive abilities. I've purchased--as in, I've given real money that could have been used on, say, food, for--a poster laying out the names and terms of reign of the British monarchs, along with when they died and why, who they married, etc. As soon as I have a blank spot on my wall in Germany and some tape, it's going up there so I can get all of this labyrinthine insanity sorted out.

Er, anyway. The Tower is a hotspot of royalty-related regalia, from the actual Regalia and the Crown Jewels (which are, for lack of a better and more sparkly word, fantastic) to prisons, towers, and execution sites. Even I was surprised by how long I could spend wandering around the complex, looking at ravens, Roman walls, and famous patches of lawn.

So that's it for today, really. All I did from there was have a lovely pizza dinner, watch Top Gear, and book a flight from Venice to Liverpool. But I'm almost certain you don't want to hear about that.

But since you asked, Top Gear was awesome. :D Behold the invincible Hilux!

P.S. I keep forgetting to mention this, but I got confirmation from the university in Jena that I've been accepted to do guest studies. This means a Studienausweis, interesting things to study, and (hopefully) lots of new friends for Jennifer. Hooray!

P.P.S. I'm sleepy and it's late, so I'm going to bed. I'll get around to pictures at some point later. UPDATE: Pictures, yay!

Larking About London, Part I

Ahhh, London.

Being here is a serious case of deja vu. I was here for four days a year ago January, and despite the radical change in temperature and the leafiness of the trees, not too much is different. Big Ben is still strikingly gorgeous, the Eye is still impressive but silly, the Tube is still stuffy and uncomfortably loud and Tower Bridge is still unaccountably blue. This time, though, I'm alone, it's hot, and the whole place looks familiar.

This isn't just because of my previous excursion here, either. If you've talked to me or read anything I've written in the past year or so, you know that I've got something of a thing for British telly at the moment. So last time I was here, I had a vague idea that there was a Queen and a big-ass clock tower and people talking with accents in London, and that the entire country played croquet in coattails and drank tea incessantly. I know (very slightly) better now, and thanks to DW and TG, the views of not just the Thames biggies but the small towns and roads of England look familiar.

Anyway. I arrived from Bath in the early afternoon on Thursday, but it took me a while to stumble around to my hostel. Despite being somewhat unfriendly, too warm, and lacking in an easily accessible source of drinking water, the hostel has the distinct advantage of being literally right around the corner from the front steps of St. Paul's Cathedral. It's a lovely view when leaving in the morning and coming home at night, and it makes an easily identifiable landmark by which to navigate. It's also a five-minute walk across the bridge to the Globe Theatre--yeah, that Globe. Where, incidentally, I have a ticket to see Henry VIII. Just squee.

Er, anyway. I dumped my stuff off at the hostel and promptly headed off to the British Museum. You know, maybe it was that I arrived only an hour before many of the exhibits were closed, so I had to rush through, or that I've been spoiled by the Louvre, but (and don't excoriate me here) I found the museum difficult to enjoy. I'd like to go back and spend some more time there to really enjoy it.

This, however, is not to say that it wasn't worth the trip. In fact, going there was more than worth it for just one item in the collection, one that I had completely forgotten (or never knew) was there, one that I have a special reverence for as a linguist and language lover. I came across it after wandering through the Assyrian carvings and found it set apart in its own case, crowded round by tourists staring at it with the vacant-eyed zombie gaze of those who've heard too many numbers and foreign names spew out of the audioguides smashed into the sides of their heads but don't have the willpower to simply leave before their brains dribble out their ears because of a vague sense of guilt that they should care.

I consider this chunk of rock to be a part of my culture and heritage as a linguist, because it was a remarkable linguistic find and is now famous around the world. You see, the largely ideo- and pictographic Egyptian hieroglyphics were used mainly by the Egyptian priesthood, but eventually the way to read them was forgotten and all the texts written in hieroglyphics were unreadable to subsequent generations, because you can't decode or translate a language without some sort of analogue or key. (I'm looking at you, Sycoraxic.) Then French troops found this wonderful slab in the town of Rosetta, which is inscribed with the same proclamation in three languages: hieroglyphics, Demotic (apparently a dialect of Egyptian), and Greek. Because of this remarkable find and about 25 years of linguistic genius, hieroglyphics were unlocked and previously lost aspects of ancient Egyptian culture and history were suddenly within reach.

Sorry about the geekout, but that is seriously brilliant. And I loved standing there seeing the three blocks of text, saying the same thing in radically different modes, contemplating not only its huge significance to linguistic work but also the culture that had made it so long ago.

Whew, anyway, that was definitely the highlight of the museum for me, and I won't bore you with anything else I saw there. After dinner back at my hostel, I couldn't resist the lure of the Thames in the evening, so I took a walk across the river to poke my nose inside the Globe and saunter down the South Bank. I was originally going to just look around a bit and come back, but the evening air was so delightful, the atmosphere so fun and relaxed, that before long I was walking under the London Eye and admiring the luminous face of Big Ben against the twilit sky. I eventually made my way homeward along the north bank, but got completely sidetracked for a while by two huge sphinx statues flanking an Egyptian obelisk. Turns out that the space between the sphinx's front legs is the perfect place to sit and look up the river toward Westminster. I got a few laughs and cheerful waves sitting up on my throne and I loved it. I finally made it back just before midnight.

Yesterday morning, I went straight to the Globe first to get my groundling ticket to Henry VIII and geek out a bit in the Globe's shop. I then took myself off to Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery, which is like the Uffizi for London. I spent most of the day looking at paintings--Michaelangelo, Manet, Monet, Rembrandt, Van Gogh--and lost track of time entirely. I did take a two-hour break for lunch and a concert at St. Martin's church, but otherwise didn't leave the Gallery until dinnertime. From there I headed to Covent Gardens, but most of the stalls were closing, the shops were too posh for me, and I didn't feel like I fit in in the bustling restaurants by myself. I decided, therefore, to get lost--literally. I set off in a random direction and turned down whatever street looked good to me at the time. I didn't find much but a Tesco, though, so I bought a picnic dinner and found that I was just a block from the Thames. I snuggled up with the Sphinx again to eat my dinner and look over the Top Gear magazine I bought. Mmm, cars.

It was still too early to go home (I had no idea what time it was, because I had no timekeeping device with me, but it was still light, so that's close enough), so I caught a bus and took a joyride along the South Bank to Tower Bridge. Little bit of reminiscence there, too. I walked across the bridge, and after some trouble with the bus and the Tube (one just straight-up late, the other hideously delayed because of a fire at another station), I finally got home.

Being the clever and industrious Fulbrighter that I am, I stayed up until 2am doing nothing in particular on the Interwebs, then failed entirely to wake up in the morning until the cleaning staff came round at about 10:30--oops. I got out of the hostel as quickly as possible and took a bus towards Portobello Road, whereupon, after riding through London for a hideously long time and missing the stop completely, a friendly passerby took pity on me and pointed me in the right direction.

The scale of the Portobello Road Market is amazing. It takes up the entire road for block after block and spills into side streets, alleys, galleries, and plazas on either side. You could buy almost everything you would need for everyday life there, along with a very hefty dose of stuff you don't: clothes, shoes, jewelery, really gorgeous old books, silverware, more jewelery, paintings, maps, toys, knickknacks of every possible size, shape, color, origin, and price, food, produce, rusty keys with no locks, and just about anything else you can imagine that would fit into a streetside booth. To remedy my timekeeping problem, I bought myself an adorable little watch necklace that I'm sure will duly break or get lost in the next few days. For now, it works quite well.

I love the colors and cacophony of chaotic calls that characterize such a cornucopia of creativity (sorry, got carried away there), so I wandered up and down the street, partly because I was desperately trying to convince myself not to spend the rest of my life savings and partly because I wasn't really sure where to go from there. I finally found a bus toward Kensington and spent a while lying on the grass, eating strawberries, watching the swans, and reading a book. (My life is so hard.) I spent a couple minutes in the Natural History Museum looking at cool rocks and dinosaur bones then, figuring that I can't possibly get too lost in London, I picked another bus almost at random but got off early to have a look around Hyde Park, where I saw a Ferrari. (No, really, it doesn't get any more exciting than that.) From there, I considered spending a couple hours at the Tate Modern, but by the time I made it back to St. Paul's, I decided that I simply didn't care anymore and came home for the day.

I hate to make this sound like just a list of things I saw and did, because although it was fun and exciting for me, my report of it can't be that enrapturing for you. This, however, is the problem with traveling alone: you don't have anyone to share the wonder with. There were several times today where I wished that I had someone with me to wander about the city with. I know, though, that if I did have someone with me, I'd be fed up with them already and wishing I were alone. Ah well.

P.S. I saw another R8 today! During my long and epic bus journey across the city this morning, we followed a white Spyder for a couple blocks. I've never felt so jealous before.

Wandering In Wells and Gallivanting Across Glastonbury

Unfortunately, the Internet connection here at the hostel has been spotty, so I haven't been able to post anything before it shuts down on me, which is why there's now four new posts up. It's a significant amount to read, so sorry about that.

Anyway, today was my last full day in Bath, so I had to pack in everything that I wanted to see in this area into this last day. Whew.

I started out in the Bath Markets for a very specific reason: there was a stall full of discount paperbacks that I had heard from a very reliable source (i.e. Shannon) had books I was looking for. Sure enough, I found literally stacks of books by Jeremy Clarkson and even a couple by James May; I couldn't find Richard Hammond's autobiographies, which was somewhat sad. One of these days, I'll write a little more about my interesting relationship to Jeremy Clarkson, but for now, just suffice to say that I bought three of his books, sacrificing a dinner's worth of money, and have been reading Clarkson instead of Dickens all day.

I moved on with my treasures to the imposing and gorgeous Bath Abbey, which I posted a picture of in my previous post on Bath, to take the guided tour. The tour was just delightful: we climbed up the levels of the bell tower, saw beautiful views of the city from the tower in every direction, and looked at how the inner mechanics of the abbey's architecture and machinery work. I would've liked to have stayed longer in the abbey, but I was off again, this time to the Fashion Museum.

If you just said, "Fashion Museum? Jennifer? ...What?" then you know me better than Rick Steves does. He told me to get a combo ticket with the baths, so I did, but the Fashion Museum was rubbish and pathetically short. 'Nuff said.

From the museum, I walked across town and hopped on a bus to Wells. After careening around Bath all morning, the bus ride to Wells was very pleasant. I read my new book for the first half of the ride, then looked up at the rolling, sun-drenched hills and realized that not only should I enjoy the views, but I had no idea where I was. The bus trundled along between golden-green fields, cut into patches by ruler-straight hedges, on roads lined by chest-high stone walls and hardly wide enough for two cars to pass each other, even if you asked really, really nicely. The gentle hills were dotted with small houses, and every now and then we'd pull into an utterly adorable little town with some quaint English name, and I would barely have time to wonder where we were before we were off again through the countryside. I realized that if I had accidentally gotten on the wrong bus, or if I neglected to get off when necessary, I would never know until they finally threw me off at the end of the line in Bristol or Cornwall or York or wherever. Given the beauty of the view and the tranquility of a warm summer's day in south England, I couldn't really find any real problem with this, but it turned out to not be a problem, because the bus deposited me right in the middle of the market in the twee little town of Wells.

If you've never heard of Wells, that's fine, because I hadn't either until RFS told me about it. Apparently, its only draws are its markets, its general English-y cuteness, and, like a Lamborghini in a country shed, its gigantic and utterly gorgeous Gothic cathedral. The mighty structure towers over the town, its spiky towers looming across the rooftops, and looks, to me, altogether out of place. It is still breathtakingly beautiful and grand, and was the main reason for my visit.

I was facing a time dilemma at the moment, and in order to resolve the issue of having mismatching schedules and too much to do in too little time, I said "Screw it," bought a bag of strawberries from a nice lady in the market, and had a picnic on the lawn to admire the cathedral. That done, I ventured inside, which was similarly magnificent. I didn't, however, take any pictures, since I was unwilling to sacrifice £3 for copyright fees, and just chatted with one of the welcomers and bought a postcard instead.

The problem that I mentioned above was that I was planning on seeing both Wells and nearby Glastonbury that day, and I had to be back in Wells for Evensong in the cathedral and then catch the last bus back to Bath. By the time I arrived in Glastonbury, I had only an hour and a half or so to get the bus back to Wells for Evensong, so I cut the number of my sightseeing goals in Glastonbury by half and contented myself with the abbey.

Now, Glastonbury's a little bit different. It's also cute (I don't think there's much here that isn't), but to start, it's been overtaken by hippies and New Age types. Why? Because Glastonbury is the source of the King Arthur legends, and all of the Celtic mythology surrounding him. Chalice Well, which supposedly holds the Holy Grail and produces waters with healing properties, is nearby, and the abbey I came to visit has the tomb of King Arthur--or used to. Supposedly.

In the center of a town filled with Tarot readers and Egyptian goddess worshippers stands the grand old ruins of Glastonbury Abbey in their own beautifully quiet park. Only bits of the abbey and the surrounding buildings remain, and in some cases are just outlines in the grass; they are now carpeted by daisies and roofed by clouds. It was quite a jump from the cool and polished grandeur of Wells' cathedral to the warm, golden smell of summer and the rough remains of the ruined abbey. It was a sad but peaceful place, and I would've liked to have had much more time to explore and think about history and the passage of time, but I didn't actually have much time to spare.

Just outside the town of Glastonbury rises a huge hill (500-some-odd feet) with a tower, creatively called the Tor, at the top, with lovely views of the countryside. This had been my other goal in Glastonbury, but by then it was clear that I'd have to choose between climbing the Tor and hearing Evensong in Wells. I chose Evensong, so instead of taking the shuttle to the hill and climbing to the top, I just took a picture of it and returned on the bus to Wells.

Even though I returned in time for the service, I could only stay for about 20 minutes before I had to hurry back to the bus station to catch the last service of the day back to Bath. I didn't get to hear much of the service, but I strongly believe that, as beautiful as churches are during visiting hours, they are meant to be experienced in a service. The vaulted chamber reverberated with the hum of the choir's voices, which followed me out into the afternoon sunshine as I regretfully headed back across town to the bus station. I'd been fortunate enough to hear the organ being played when I had come earlier, but there is nothing like the harmony of a choir's voices in a church.

The ride home was uneventful, and I decided to celebrate my last evening in Bath by allowing myself to spend a little more on my dinner. I have been averaging £50 a day for everything except lodging--so food, transportation, souvenirs, admission prices, et cetera. I still had £15 left over from my original £250 at the beginning of my travels, so I decided to finish off a day of adorable Englishness with a very traditional (er, not at all, actually) meal of yakisoba and plum wine at a hip noodle bar. Tomorrow I depart in the morning for a week in London--a big change from the peace and relative quiet of the countryside. I am looking forward to London, though; I think I'm ready to move on.

Why Can't The English...?

I beg your indulgence to air some thoughts that have been brewing in my distracted globe...

As I may have mentioned, I chatted with a local named Mark on my first night here in Bath, and naturally one of things we talked about was language. If you act like a normal tourist (go on tour buses, read your guidebooks, listen to the audioguide and don't talk to the locals), you can almost imagine that you haven't left home at all, as long as you remember that "rubbish" is "trash" and that sort of thing. If you're like me, though, you much prefer to talk to people than listen to a recording, so the language issue becomes unavoidable.

In the musical "My Fair Lady," Henry Higgins sings of dialects, "The moment [an Englishman] talks, he makes some other Englishman despise him," right after he's demonstrated his prowess at guessing where someone is from just from a few words and expresses his disgust for dialects such as those of Yorkshire or Cornwall. I was always told that I would love this movie because it's all about linguistics (sociolinguistics and phonetics, really), but I, like most people, find Higgins insufferable. It's not just that he's arrogant and insensitive, but his elitist attitude about language--particularly the educated dialect he speaks, which, by random coincidences and freak chances having nothing to do with any sort of inherent merit the language, has become prestigious--is painfully and inexcusably wrong. (Diagram that sentence, I dare you.) Linguists now are carefully trained to parrot on command that there is nothing in any particular language that makes it better or worse than another by any absolute-truth sort of measure. According to personal taste, a language can be more or less beautiful than other, and there are most certainly grades of social prestige and importance. But every language is fundamentally arbitrary; what matters is the communication.

Being here, it's impossible to ignore the gradients of social prestige encoded in the language. Despite my aforementioned tolerance training and my disdain for Henry Higgins' supercilious attitude, walking down the sidewalk in touristy Bath, I draw instant conclusions about the people around me by their language without even having to see them. If I asked someone on a street corner for directions, I would take directions from someone who sounded British as accurate, while I would take an American's or Australian's directions with a grain of salt. Hearing an American dialect here grates on my ears; we don't sound like we belong here. The only things keeping me from attempting to disguise my accent altogether (and I've already adopted some vocabulary and prosodic patterns to make my own voice less painful to my ears) are that (1) my pronunciation and cultural knowledge aren't extensive enough to pull it off properly and (2) I fear the backlash when I'd inevitably be identified as an American.

I could write all day about this odd feeling that I have--like being a country girl in the big city for the first time, just linguistically. I don't think it's anywhere near as obvious to me as it is to the locals, who probably speak to American tourists all the time. And yet there's some sort of inferiority complex encoded in my language that makes me ashamed to speak my own native tongue.

Why? Why do I feel simultaneously that I have to defend the use and existence of my mother tongue, while at the same time I feel vulgar when I speak it? I think that in large part it comes from that fact that language use and its social implications are consciously discussed by Brits and Americans, and not favorably. I've heard several Brits express the idea that the Americans have ruined the English language, that we speak it wrong--that we've stolen their lovely language and sullied it, like a teenager borrowing Dad's Merc only to bring it back pimped out, painted with racing stripes, and with all of the levers and buttons replaced with gag toys from the dollar store. It's like they're simultaneously shocked, amused, disappointed, and disgusted. When the Brits impersonate Americans on TV, it's almost always with a Southern twang and an obligatory joke about shooting someone or marrying one's cousin. I've already had my vocabulary or pronunciation corrected to the "proper" word or vowel by half-joking, half-indignant Brits.

And this hits on something deep and scary and unpleasant. One's mothertongue is something precious, no matter what it is. Having been raised monolingual and then having studied other languages later in life, I can comprehend something said to me in German or Japanese, but English, particularly the northwest dialect of American English, speaks to my heart. There's something beautiful and affective about hearing something in my own language that my adopted languages, no matter how much I love and study them, don't have. This is why Bible translation is so important to the spread of Christianity; why, when minority peoples are conquered, their languages are forbidden to keep them under control. One's mother tongue is a function of the heart and soul.

And yet the Brits would have me believe that the language I've grown up with, my own tongue, is stupid and silly and vulgar and wrong--a corruption of the ideal that was stolen from them. My indignation comes from the fact that such an attitude attacks the safety and sanctity of my mother tongue. Yes, of course, I should laugh this off as cultural differences and move on with my life. But there's something interesting here under the skin.

The British attitude toward "the colonies'" languages (by which I mean primarily American, Australian, and Canadian English) is, of course, ridiculous. What is, after all, "correct" English? It can't be the Queen's English, because no one speaks the Queen's except maybe the Queen. English has been developing and evolving constantly for centuries, and modern English diverges from the ancient tongue just like all the other dialects do--look back at Henry Higgins' dialectal disdain and the wealth of dialects that English is comprised of. It's useless as well to say that England has a claim to the ownership of "true" English because English comes from England. It may be better to say that English was partly synthesized in England out of a mishmash of Latin, Greek, French, Germanic, and native tongues. But the development of English in England was just one stage of the language's life, and its offspring that have migrated to other continents are just as legitimate as languages as the one that has grown up on British soil.

It's better and more accurate, to my mind, to speak and think of English as an idea instead of a reality. There are so many dialectal nuiances, cultural eddies, social connections, phonetic variations, and historical transformations that make up the network of the English language that it is impossible to point to one and proclaim that that one is "true English" and the others are just variations. In the same way, there are so many people on our planet, all of which are human, but it's impossible to pick one out as being "the human", of which the other 5,999,999,999 are "just variations." Some are older and have produced others, some have higher social or economic status, but they are all legitimately humans in their own right, just as all languages, no matter how strange or familiar, beautiful or unlovely, high or low, ancient or modern, are all legitimately languages.

Of course, the Brits and I are welcome to feel about our respective tongues however we like, and to prefer one word, one vowel, one turn of phrase over another. And that's lovely, because a world with one language would not be one I would wish to inhabit, and nothing beats a good heated discussion about the relative merits of the features of different languages. But despite the fact that American English is unlovely to my ears now, and the British tongues much more melodious and interesting, my language is above all mine. And no one's allowed to make fun of it but me.

Cruising Around Cardiff

Cardiff. Doesn't the very word just beg you to give it a Celtic lilt and curl back your tongue for a retroflex "r"?

Alrighty then, maybe it's just me. (Not even sure that Welsh has retroflex rhotics...I'm probably getting that from David Tennant's Scottish pronunciation. Sorry.) But this was my first-ever excursion into the lovely land of Wales. Shannon and I have been planning to meet up to to go to Cardiff ever since we realized that we'd be in England at the same time. And why Cardiff, you say? Prepare to roll your eyes, my spellbound audience: Cardiff is where they film Doctor Who, and has a DW exhibition and many locations from both Doctor Who (which, as you know, I love desperately) and the more adult spinoff, Torchwood (which I loathe with almost as much vehemence). There's no point in trying to be coy about it: we went to Cardiff because of Doctor Who.

Accordingly, we met up and drove straight to Cardiff Bay to begin our trip with the exhibition. I took pictures of almost everything, but I'll spare you the gory details of set pieces, props, and costumes, all of which were geekishly fantastic, and just give you this adorable picture of me and the TARDIS. Unfortunately for my daily food allowance, there was a gift store as well, so now I've got to figure out how to safely transport my new poster...

Given that most of you are probably not Whovians, we'll move on to...more Doctor Who stuff! The Cardiff Millennium Center has two main attractions for me: 1) it's a towering, imposing, impressive structure inscribed in Welsh and English, and 2) it's the site of the Rift, a supposed crack in space/time where the Doctor can refuel the TARDIS with energy from the universe. In case you've missed it, the Doctor's saved the world many times over, and several of those times have happened here in Cardiff, especially on this spot. Pictures were taken and more geekery ensued.

Then the randomosity of the universe kicked in. We were walking on the bay in the lovely (and quite warm) sunshine when we came upon a beautiful red building filled with music and voices. Intrigued, we poked our heads in, only to find a cultural and educational celebration of Gypsy Roma Traveller culture. There were displays about the lives of Travellers and the issues that they face, including discrimination, educational problems, and (especially in the Nazi era) persecution. There was also free food, so we stuck around, had some sandwiches, and watched some adorable children do ribbon dances to Lady Gaga. I tell you, it was completely surreal.

Anyway, after dropping by the visitor's center for a map and strolling along the waterfront (where we came across the Ianto memorial totally by accident!) we headed toward the city center and Cardiff Castle. I was surprised how much Cardiff reminded me of Dublin; it was probably the pedestrian-only zones lined with nice shops and the bilingual everything in English and (to me) a gorgeous but unintelligible Celtic language. We spent the rest of our time in the Castle; we went on a tour of the Marquess' apartments (absolutely gorgeous and very interesting), climbed the Keep, and walked around the grounds. Not to sound like a snob or anything, but although the apartments were beautiful, I've seen more impressive castles. There wasn't much to it but the apartments, the wall, and the run-down keep in the middle. Of course, we didn't have time to go through the museum part as well, but my favorite castle remains the Chateau de Chillon on the shores of Lake Geneva in Lausanne, Switzerland.

The rest of the evening was uninteresting: I got some dinner at a pub and came back here to talk to my mother, but then my Internet died and stubbornly refuses resurrection. In the morning, I have a very busy last day of sightseeing before I return to London on Thursday. And so, as it is getting late, I bid you good night.

P.S. I learned today that the word spelled "quay" is, for reasons completely beyond my understanding, pronounced "key." For heaven's sake, why? I assume that I should just go with my gut instinct and blame the French language, and sure enough, the Online Etymology Dictionary says: "1690s, variant of M.E. key "wharf" (c.1300), from O.N.Fr. cai (O.Fr. chai) "sand bank," from Gaulish caium (5c.), from O.Celt. *kagio- "to encompass, enclose" (cf. Welsh cae "fence, hedge," Cornish ke "hedge"), cognate with O.E. haga "hedge" (see hedge). Spelling altered by influence of Fr. quai, from the same Celtic source." That last sentence there is the material point; given a lack of transcriptions, I'm not sure how the previous forms of the word were pronounced. In any case, I absolutely refuse to pronounce this word as "key", because 1) "key" is a stupid word for a wharf; 2) "quay" (like "kway") is a lovely word, taking advantage of the totally superfluous letter "q" that I quite like and 3) it's all-around more mellifluous and (to my ears and eyes) more aesthetically pleasing. And Dictionary.com lists my reading as well, so I'm never ever saying it "key." Grr.

P.P.S. On the motorway on the way to Cardiff, a jet-black Audi R8 flashed by us in the other direction, looking for all the world like a Night Fury on the way to ransacking a Viking village. My heart melted a little bit...

 P.P.P.S. For those of us who are Whovians, something I should note here: Despite all our previous assumptions, Daleks actually are fricking scary. There were three of them at the exhibition in a dark room filled with smoke, shrieking and blinking and firing lasers. Facing down one of those is basically staring down a screaming, hate-filled tank. I've never been afraid of a Dalek before, but now that I've looked one in the...eye-stalk, I can see how they could be such a menace. If they weren't so, y'know, pathetically inefficient and facepalmingly dense.

Bumbling About Bath

Okay, the rumors are true. Bath is indeed super-adorable, beautiful, and fun. I like it here. But let's rewind...

I got here on the bus at about 1pm on Sunday and went straight to my hostel, which is a pretty nice place for a YMCA hostel. In my dorm room, I met up with another American girl traveling on her own named Nicole, and we decided to explore together. We took a two-hour walking tour around the city (it is very beige, yet somehow it works), got some dinner from the grocery store, and lounged in the sun by the river. We returned to the hostel in time to watch a rerun of the Doctor Who finale with two adorable little British children and then the premiere of Top Gear. (I really do talk about the same things over and over, don't I?) I spent the rest of the evening watching TV and chatting with a new acquaintance about the proper spelling of "color", the proper term for football/soccer, and the stupidity of American movies.

Nicole and I began the next morning with the Roman baths for which Bath is named and has been famous for centuries. The museum and baths were just delightful, with lots of information and preserved structures from the hot spring's long history of luxury and decadence. It's amazing to stand over the stones of a ruined temple and imagine the men and women of long ago who trod on the same spot, never dreaming that we'd be digging up and treasuring their ear scoops and hair pins to put on meticulous display. I opted not to swim in the spa or drink the water (too expensive/don't care), but by the time we got out of the baths, it was time for me to go meet my afternoon bus tour.

At the recommendation of RFS, I'd booked a Mad Max bus tour. I'd decided for a while that Stonehenge was too far out of the way and too expensive, so I would just skip it, but that didn't seem right once I got here. The bus tour whisked us to hopelessly adorable Lacock, a tiny village whose only claim to fame is the many movies (like Harry Potter and Pride and Prejudice) who use its quaint streets and flower-hung houses as sets. We also pulled over to look at some thatched-roof cottages (seriously, my brain was screaming "TROGDOOOOOOR!" the whole time) before we finally got to Stonehenge.

We finally parked at Stonehenge and were herded through the gate and a tunnel under the road, but after that, it didn't matter anymore, because directly before my feet, Stonehenge towered over the windswept field. The flocks of tourists in their gaudy plumage gawked at the stones in their silent and dignified decay, audioguides chattering in their ears. I got fed up with the long-winded audioguide quickly and ignored it from then on, although I did have a very nice conversation with a couple of the guides/guards standing on the path. I thought it was terrible that the hordes of tourists were ignoring the real people in favor of their boring, long-on-facts-short-on-humanity audioguides, and chatted with the rangers about Doctor Who, Bluehenge, and the aura of the stones.

Because although I can see how some people would be completely unimpressed and nonplussed by Stonehenge, I'm just the sort of person who loves that kind of thing. Perhaps it's because that everything in American is new (nothing really older than 250 years or so--not from our civilization, at least) and the general attitude seems to be that newer is better. That may be true with cell phones and laptops, but that all melts away when you place your fingers on the cool, smooth stone of a church that has stood for longer than your country has existed, and stood before a pile of stones that were, with great effort, coordination, motivation and purpose, brought to this place, in this alignment, for completely unknown reasons. It reminds me that the world is not only bigger than I am, but that time stretches far beyond me, into the hazy past and into the future. It astounds me to stand in the grass near Stonehenge and hear nothing but the wind flowing over the rolling hills, ancient and solemn, and wonder who before me has stood on that same spot. Many tourists before me, with many lives of their own; Victorians, come to chip off a piece of the stones to take home; farmers, construction workers, Doctor Who film crews...and back, further and further, to the Druids, and thousands of years before them, the initiators of Stonehenge, about whom we know very little. It blows my mind. I love that.

I could easily bring a blanket, a picnic, and some art supplies and spend hours at Stonehenge. As you walk around it, the stones touch and interact with each other, constantly playing with shapes and shadows. I ended up having to run to get back to the tour bus, and I was still five minutes late. I didn't want to leave.

We arrived back in Bath at about 5pm, so I returned to the hostel and had some dinner with Nicole. At 8, I left with another new friend, Jessica, to go on the Bizzare Bath walk, which came highly recommended by pretty much everybody. The crowd was enormous--100 people at least--and the show was quite good: basically a one-man stand-up comedy act using the streets of Bath, the assembled crowd, and passersby as fuel. Highlights included a magic trick with a lost ring and the miraculous escape of a toy bunny from being chained up, weighed down, tied in a bag and thrown in the river. If you're ever in Bath, don't miss it. I met Shannon and her mother randomly at the beginning of the walk, and afterwards we grabbed a bite to eat together before splitting up for some sleep. Because the next day was a big day--the reason I was in Bath to begin with. Yes, it was time for the epic Cardiff excursion! But more on that in another post...

Warum ist die Banane krumm?

Some questions simply don't have answers...

I woke up this morning with a headache, and my fingers on my right hand ached where I had accidentally slammed them in trunk under my bed the night before. I'd woken up what felt like once an hour throughout the night, and when I tried to put my contacts in, I found out that my bottle of contact solution had gotten shampoo in it and ruined them. I finally staggered out of the hostel to head for the bus a little disgruntled.

And yet, as soon as I got on the big red double-decker and found a seat in the front of the top deck, I couldn't stop smiling like an idiot. Who cares about aching head and fingers and slight sleep deprivation when you're in England? In this case, I had no trouble following the DCR (in song form here), despite that I woke up feeling awful. On a beautiful day in England, it was impossible to stay irritated.

I write to you now from the coach to Bath. The sky is a lovely azure with puffy white clouds and the English countryside rolls by in varying shades of verdant greens. Since we're on a freeway (er...that's not what they're called here, but I've forgotten the proper word), I have a lot of interesting cars to see; in fact, there's a Aston Martin DB9 right in front of us. I've been keeping my eyes peeled for an R8 (my favorite), but no luck so far.

I've been surprised again by how happy I am here. Yes, I know, it's only day 2, and I have lots of time yet to be frustrated, stressed, and homesick, but I really do love this country. Why? Much like with Top Gear, I can't really describe or even identify what it is about this place that fascinates me. Honestly, I'd rather it didn't so much; I'd like to have the same gut-level emotional reaction of excitement about, say, Germany, for instance. But no--it's Britain. I hesitate to even speculate about the possible reasons, since as I run through them in my head, I know that none of them are quite right, or the whole story. But I feel like I could live here very happily, and I feel that way very, very seldom. Maybe it's just idealistic puppy love. We'll see.

I feel I should apologize for the rather uninteresting post, since there's not much yet to tell, but I like to document my thoughts and feelings as I experience them, as much for me as for you. I'm sorry for any boredom you may have suffered. :)

Everything that I've heard about Bath is that it's brilliant, beautiful, and fun, so I shall certainly tell you what I think when I get there. You may even get some pictures if you're lucky!