Edinburgh Rocks

I finally got around to scanning and editing the Polaroids from our trip to Scotland a couple of weekends back. We were only there for a Friday night, but that gave us enough opportunity to explore and get a taste of Edinburgh, which is perhaps one of my favorite cities in the UK. I was a bit biased, I'll admit, by the warm sunshine and blossoming of spring, but the city itself has a great vibe. The buildings and city layout have a unique mix of classical, Gothic, and post-modern elements, and with golden gorse-covered hills and cliffs on one side and the Firth of Forth on the other, it feels like an epic place to be a student or even just a tourist-pedestrian.

A highlight of the trip was our walk along the Salisbury cliffs outside the city and our scaling to the the top of Arthur's Seat on Friday evening. Likewise, the next morning, we took an enjoyable "philosophical walking tour" of Edinburgh, which pretty much meant tracking down the grave of David Hume (Scotland's most well-known philosopher) and the building named after him on the University of Edinburgh campus. Hume Tower, where the Edinburgh philosophy department is located, was empty due to it being Saturday morning, but we did a sort of non-hostile break-in (walking past reception and riding the elevator up) to the academic offices. We checked out their billboards, their course offerings, and I appropriated some information on the philosophy Honours program, just in case.

We finished things up with a tour of the unique new Scottish Parlaiment building, designed by Enric Miralles. The Scottish Parliament was reestablished in 1998, after nearly 300 years of unification with the English Parliament. The relationship between this two bodies is still in the process of being evaluated and provides, I think, a unique model of nation-statehood, especially with the Scottish Parliament's international outlook on things. And besides, the building is wicked cool--although at first I thought it was a bit tacky, as we walked through its asymmetrical, abstractly-modeled hallways and conference halls, I came to love it and almost felt like moving in. I never thought I'd say something so positive about anything related to politics.

THE PHOTOS:



| left: John's umbrella couldn't handle the wind atop Arthur's Seat
| right: re-enacting Creed music videos on the hike up

Spring Break in Polaroids

I thought, now that one of my essays is done, that it was about time to post the first fruits of film from our travels. It's too expensive here to develop all the rolls of 35mm film I used, but maybe this week I'll get one done, you know, just to make sure they worked. Without further ado, then, 20 Polaroids in chronological order (click to expand):



| left: literary walk--near Charles Dickens' house (and T.S. Eliot's office and Virginia Woolf's house, etc.)
| right: St. Paul's Cathedral, looking foreboding



| left: sleet in Paris, in front of this tower thing
| right: Glamour Portrait #1: musical in front of some important building



| left: Glamour Portrait #2: John and Mallarmé at the book vendors along the Seine
| right: Glamour Portrait #3: Melody doing it Italian style



| left: group performance art at Centre Pompidou (choreography by Jenn and Mel)
| right: letter-writing and book-reading in Hotel Altona



| left: Glamour Portrait #4: Brad at Versailles
| right: last night in Paris: bad hotel, sleep deprivation, poor humour



| left: Hans-Morten's miniature guest loft in Sandefjord
| right: group shot in Bergen with Trine, Anne-Marte, and part of a stone admiral



| left: mid-hike, cold hands, overlooking foggy/rainy Bergen
| right: first morning in Reykjavik: ducks, ducks, ducks!



| left: Glamour Portrait #5: Sean, John, and Leif Ericson in front of Hallgrimskirkja ("Hallgrimur's Church")
| right: wind in the bell-tower of Hallgrimskirkja (I look like a troll from Norway) with Ana's apartment in the background



| left: John at Geysir hot springs
| right: my personal favorite--lounging in the moss beside boiling springs



| left: Sean peering over the ledge at Gullfoss
| right: first annual rock toss at a random crater

Goodbye Lava Fields, Hello Minster Bells

It feels strange that a few hours ago (I guess 14 is more like it), John and I were wandering the pre-dawn streets of Reykjavik, lost on our quest to find the bus terminal and somehow led astray into some sort of shipyard. As the time of our flight drew nearer and we only seemed to be getting loster and loster, I flagged down a car for directions. In a wonderful turn of events, the driver of this car, a bouncer at a local club who was just getting off work, offered to give us a ride to the airport. He was very friendly, spoke excellent English, and even has a friend from Michigan. Without him, who knows where we'd be right now...

Our last two days in Iceland were tip-top, and progressed a little bit as follows: we ended up borrowing Sean's neighbors car for a trip through... the countryside? Well, whatever you call the brown grass and dramatic mountains with intermittent lava fields and craters, that's what we drove through. Our first stop was *ingvellir (I'm not sure how to make my Latin type the write characters), the site of Iceland's first legal and government meetings around 900 AD. There we walked through a rift valley along the mid-Atlantic Ridge, where the American and Eurasian tectonic plates converge. It was interesting to stand in a no-man's-land, not technically on either, or any, continent. After that it was off for Geysir and its surrounding field of boiling hot springs and bubbling cave-pools. Geysir itself, the second highest geyser and the namesake of all geysers, only actually functions during or immediately after volcanic eruptions, and so we had to settle for its smaller sibling, Strokkur.

After that, Sean let me take over driving for a while, and I had the pleasure of cruising past mountains and lava fields and farm houses in a snazzy little European auto. Or maybe it was an American model? I wasn't really paying attention to that, I guess; I just got a rush from driving for the first time since January. Our next stop was Gullfoss ("Golden Falls") on the river Hvitá. The falls are actually at a right angle from the turn of the river and disappear behind the cliff walls (especially with banks of snow and ice jutting out over the edges of the rock), making it seem as if the river simply disappears into a crack. But when we got up close, it felt a bit dizzying to be literally face-to-face with such a huge torrent of water. Away from the coast in Reykjavik, winter was still just beginning to recede, and so the mist and spray from the falls were a bit freezing. We scrambled around on some rocks and grass to take pictures, and then headed back to the car for our ride home. However, we passed a crater on the way--a collapsed magma chamber, as the sign explained it--and we felt compelled to stop and toss some igneous rocks towards the pond at the bottom of the pit. On the ride home, we listened to various Icelandic music to match the scenery and I balanced on the edge between rapt appreciation of the landscape and napping.

For our last day with Sean and Reykjavik, we took things easy, strolling around town, visiting shops but not buying things, and chatting in coffeeshops and restaurants. At one especially hip coffee shop, the ladies from the musical group Amiina stopped by. But they didn't seem to recognize us. I guess that's okay. We spent the majority of the evening post-dinner at another public pool, relaxing in the seawater pool or spring water or the steam room or the graduated hot tubs or the plain ol'... pool--whatever we fancied. After a few days of such leisurely evenings, I can see why a lot of Iceland people seem healthy and fresh, and why the city feels so safe. Maybe hot tubs are the best deterrents of violence? At any rate, I wouldn't mind if these sorts of public pools caught on in York or Grand Rapids.

I'll admit, I've done a little bit of splurging on food since getting back into the UK. I never thought England would feel cheap, but it's nice to buy a sandwich or a coffee without guilt (with less guilt, at least...). After nearly a month of being away from York, it was familiar but strange to return. We navigated around town effortlessly for a change, with the church bells ringing in our arrival. It felt, of course, like we had just left the day before, but I could see the passage of time in the daffodils blooming along the city walls or the progress of construction sites around the college here. It's nice to feel a little permanence and security again, and although I'm exhausted I got motivated with the help of a little coffee, unpacked my luggage, rearranged my room, and nested myself in for the next 5 weeks or so. Life would be great if it were not for the surplus of academic work waiting for me here. I calculated the amount of words I need to write in the next month but stopped from fear and anxiety at about 10,000. For now though, sleep-sleep-sleep.

Reykjavik, Clear and Blue

After withering away for two days in a horrible but cheap hostel in London, John and I discovered (really, it was my fault) a ridiculous and by far the most expensive mistake of our travel experiences thus far. We showed up at the airport a day after our scheduled flight, and had to pay a small fortune to make it to our rendezvous with Sean. But, we're here, and we are enjoying the city, the language, the people, but not so much the high prices. Thankfully, it's a bit more affordable than Norway, but that's not saying much. We've been eating cheap food from 7-11, 10-11, and 11-11, and Sean's been getting us cheap Skyr and bread from his friends that work at bakeries. We try to enjoy the free and affordable experiences, like browsing the records at 12 Tonar, sitting on coffee shop porches, and looking through galleries, boutiques, and of course, tourist shops.

We've spent our first two days here wandering the shops of Laugavegur, the pedestrian paths around city hall and the University of Iceland, and the walkways along the harbor. Yesterday, we climbed the windy bell tower of Hallgrimskirkja, the highest man-made point in Iceland, and looked out over the city and ocean and natural scenery, and then at night went out to watch the drunk people wandering out of the clubs and bars just before sunrise. We've been trying to keep up our authentic Icelandic experience by spending substantial amounts of each day in the hot-spring heated public pools. Tonight, we progressed through the graduated hot tubs and ended up soaking in a small pool of sea water until the sun had set and the pool closed (around 10:OO PM now that spring is under way here). On the walk home, the Northern Lights were especially visible, and I had a bit of a stumbly walk home looking up at the sky and still feeling light-headed from our time at the pool.

Tomorrow, we're borrowing Sean's neighbors car and doing a driving tour to see a waterfall, the Geysir, the Blue Lagoon, the Continental Rift, etc. etc. Hopefully, there will be some lava fields and bubbling mud puddles along the way. The weather so far has been uncannily beautiful: relatively warm and sunny, sunny, sunny. Sean says the wind has even taken a break since we arrived. We've probably gotten more sun the past few days then the entire semester in England. Maybe this won't be the coldest, grayest, and rainiest spring break ever after all.

In A Nutshell: Sunny Sandefjord, Bergen Rain, A Waterfall!

My commitment to blogging seems to have completely lapsed while in Norway. I guess we just had too beautiful and busy a time in Bergen to make time for the internet; or, more truthfully, I was just too lazy to keep up with things. But, we have now returned to what John calls "the hustle and bustle" of London for a brief spell before we go on to our final spring break destination, Iceland, and so I should be in the mood to do some posting. What follows is a revisit to our time in Norway. Hopefully, it will help me forget about my horrible surroundings here at the cheapest hostel in London. We've so far spent most of our time here sleeping.

Our first evening in Norway was spent with Hans-Morten and his wife and family in Sandefjord, which turned out to be an all-round wonderful experience. They made us dinner and coffee and gave us rides to our various transportation destinations. I think we got more sunshine in those few hours of walking around the harbor than we had gotten since Easter break began. We stayed up late talking to Hans-Morten and his wife about their kids and their boating adventures and politics and other things. The next morning, we left early for our cross-country train trip, which was to say the least, absolutely wonderful. I hadn't seen good stretches of mountains since last spring break, and I must say that Colorado has nothing on the snowy Norwegian peaks. I was tempted to jump out and join all the skiers that were taking the train ride with us, if only I had more than my sweater and hat to stay warm.

We made it to Bergen in time for supper, and Trine and Anne-Marte kindly met us at the station. It turns out that, along with Mari and Susanne, they had the whole evening planned out for us, with dinner and a concert to attend. We all ate together, and it felt like a reunion for us YSJ exchange students. It started snowing soon after our arrival, and a bit had accumulated by the time we left for our concert in a literally cave-like venue. The opening act wasn't all that enjoyable, but Truls and the Trees was definitely a step up. The venue itself was gorgeous, and walking home through the snow I felt a bit wet and cold but also a bit in love with Norway.

The rest of the weekend was a blur of coffee cups, sleeping in later than intended, and sporadic trips around town. Like in Paris, we mostly gave up the tourism game and just walked around, enjoying woolen products, markets, parks, old buildings and churches, and of course, the surrounding mountains and fjords. Especially since it was so expensive for us Americans, we tried to live cheaply. As a cup of coffee cost us about $5 and a pizza about $50, we decided to eat as much cheap cheese and bread as possible. Shopping in second-hand stores, though, we found some good deals, and I left Norway with nearly a complete outfit.

The day before Trine and Anne-Marte left for Ireland, we decided to hike up one of the seven surrounding mountains. As could be expected, it was freezing and rained the whole time. We got to the top too cold and wet to enjoy our picnic, but the sights were wonderful, and I guess our experience would qualify as an authentic Bergen hike. The next day, our last full 24 hours in Norway, we took the train to meet Susanne. She drove us through the mountains, which may have been even better than the train ride, and I got a bit carried away taking pictures. John and I were supposed to buy these awesome green jumpsuits from the farm-supply store, but they were a bit expensive, and so I decided to buy a t-shirt with the same logos attached along with wool socks and a hand-woven sweater from the second-hand shop. She then took us to visit her home village, which was beautiful. The sun came out again, and we stopped on bridges and back roads to enjoy the sites. Eventually, she pulled off next to a waterfall, and John and I scampered up over the rocks and moss like little boys, smiling and yelling and taking pictures while dusk just began to set in. It was a wonderful last evening experience! Susanne fed us porridge and put us up for the night, and we finally got to meet her fiancé, perhaps our first male Norwegian friend. The next, John and I showed up at the airport 6 hours too early (thanks to a type of mine), but after a rather boring afternoon, we made it back to our hub city of London to get some sleep before Iceland. We leave tomorrow! (Some guy just told us that Iceland is even more expensive than Norway... great...)

Snow Again

I'm sitting in the airport at Torp Sandefjord eating Läkerol lemon candies from the duty-free shop. We managed to make our shoe-string of connections this morning (even the Ryanair flight was great--I believe the nicest plane people I've met yet) and made it from the streets of northern Paris at dawn to London for breakfast and now are in Norway for Lunch and the next few days. Our host Hans-Morten picks us up here in about an hour, after he gets off work, and then tomorrow morning we take the train cross-country to Bergen. Flying in, we got a glimpse of the coast scattered with islands and ice, and now the grass outside the terminal has a nice white blanket. It's the first snow I've seen since leaving GR in January. Lucky me, you say? I think I'm going to go build a snowman.

Vivez bien! (a day in reverse)

We just checked into the Hotel Altona, near Gare du Nord. It's a bit of an "informal" racket they're running here, with overbooking rooms and shuffling people around. For tonight, a least, we have a new room with a gorgeous, clean, newly-remodeled bathroom, TV, and a balcony overlooking the street--I would say it's almost a suite. We'll have to see how the room we get transfered to tomorrow compares. We've spent the evening here since dinner relaxing on the balcony, writing letters, and brushing up on our French via a strange movie about French colonies (this instead of spending more money we don't have on a trip to the cinema). Tomorrow morning we're off for Versailles, La Basilique du Sacre Coeur in Montmartre, and already our last night in Paris. So soon! It's strange to think, though, that we're not even halfway through with our Easter break. It feels as if we've already experienced so much.

Earlier tonight was the decadent climax of our hedonistic time with Mel and Jenny, on the floor of Katherine's apartment. I believe the final summary of our meal included 5 types of cheese, 4 types of bread, 3 types of grapes, a gigantic deluxe salad, 2 kinds of fruit juice, and a desert of tea and 5 varieties of chocolate with sweet bread and caramel confiture. We all became somewhat euphoric by the end, and wine wasn't even needed for us to writhe on the floor. Mel and Jenny left to catch their train back to Rouens, so we cleaned up our mess and washed the dishes, which isn't such a chore when you pretend that you're living in a flat in Paris.

Our time the past few days at Josh and Katherine's was wonderful. Katherine seems to us the quintessential French woman, a journalist (perhaps?), a bit saucy but kind, intellectual, and a bit of a smoker. She lives with two black cats and her apartment is lined with books and potted plants, and our conversations were smattered with stories of her travels travels to the United States and Poland and her friends in Morocco. Before our feast on the floor, after we gave her our goodbye gift of flowers and a group Polaroid, she sat us down with peanuts and white wine for a final chat. Having this sort of laid-back inside glimpse into everyday life here makes it seem so feasible and reasonable to live here. It's been a much different experience than our time as tourists in London.

After all of our failed efforts to get into museums this weekend, we were finally met with success. Our afternoon was spent at Le Pompidou, the museum of modern art here in Paris, looking at paintings by Miro, Kandinsky, and Picasso, and an interesting collection of sculpture and videos. The building itself was great, too. J'aime l'art moderne et d'avant-garde. C'est très intérresante.

Paris, Je T'aime

It's Monday morning after our first weekend in Paris. It's been a bit of a round-a-bout adventure (we keep showing up to museums and restaurants and monuments right as they are closing), but we've managed to see some of the sights so far. So far it's been cold and rainy, even hailing respectably-large chunks our first night. It seems that we're here for one of the last cold spells in France before spring sets in. Really, for all the bad wrap/rap(?) that England and London get for bad weather, Paris doesn't seem to be any better. This weekend in Paris felt a lot like cloudy GR, except the temperature and precipitation shift drastically every half hour.

Saturday morning we headed straight to the Eiffel Tower and then walked through the gardens there toward the military school. We criss-crossed back and forth across the Seine to see some of the more impressive buildings and then walked up the gardens to the Louvre. The rest of the evening we circled Notre Dame cathedral, browsed the shops on Ilse De Louis, and then wandered through the Latin quarter until getting a late sushi dinner.

Yesterday (Sunday), we slept in late and had an extended, deluxe breakfast of fruit, potatoes, toast, pastries, herring, and other treats thanks to our hosts Josh and Cathrine. We headed off to the Musee D-Orsay, but it was closed, so we scurried on over to attend evening Easter mass at Notre Dame. It was a beautiful service, but was strangely a bit of a spectacle with tourists crowding in and out of the building mid-service and snapping pictures during Communion. We then had more failed activities as we arrived at the Pompidou museum of modern art (it was closed) and then to a jazz club (the band played while we were eating dinner next door), but all in all it was a nice evening out. Josh, Melody, and our new friend Jen have been kind and parental tour guides, translating for us and navigating our underground journeys on the Metro.

Brad, John, and I are trying to decide how this compares to our time in London. I'm honestly kind of crazy about the place so far. I'm sure it's still my imagination running wild, but I feel somewhat at home here. At least, I'm drawn to the cafes and good food, the lines of gorgeous books lined up for sale along the river, the streets and buildings and overall vibe of the place. It's more my stle than the posh, refined, and clean haven that is London, and I think maybe London has more to offer to me than even London. We're heading off for some museums this morning. Hopefully, we will fare better than last night. Eventually, our tour guides will leave us, we will check into our own hotel room for a few nights, and it will be interesting to see how we survive on our own in sweet Pair-ee.

London in Summary: New Jerusalem or Whited Sepulchre?

Just as yesterday I described the Westminster Abbey as a collage of British culture into a possibly religious image or icon, so the city of London is a very cosmopolitan medley, a microcosm of world culture, admittedly disproportionate but well-represented nonetheless.

I've kept snapping a steady ration of pictures, but not for this blog. Who knows when I'll get them developed, maybe sometime next summer?

The Cabinet War Rooms, a themed museum which visited yesterday, were dramaticized and made British-family-friendly enough to gloss over any horrors or questions concerning warfare. For instance, the attached bookstore featured play tanks and trinkets, as could be expected, but I saw no representation of what I would consider the reality of the situation, the reality of our world being at war. You would never see Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five" in a gift shop like this.

Likewise, a good deal of monuments around the city, ornate and ancient, imply the story of British imperialism and what came (and continues to come) with it.

It's in no way a clear choice between William Blake's nationalistic utopian vision of Christ's England or Joseph Conrad's indictment of the darkness surrounding the Thames in Heart of Darkness, but perhaps some sort of reminder of the potential of both extremes in city and national life, in historic monuments and ecclesial stuctures, in all things of this world.

London: Day Two

Today was another busy day, mostly playing the tourist game but hopefully escaping that into something more worthwhile. John and I started the day off a little bit earlier than the rest of the group (a miracle for me, I can assure you) in order to take a literary walk around the Bloomsbury neighbor in which we are staying. It was really just a nice stroll through the surrounding streets, squares, and gardens, with the added benefit of seeing such sites as T.S. Eliot's office, Virginia Woolf's childhood home, or one of Dickens' houses, often marked undramatically with a small plaque on the wall.

After this, we met up with the rest of the group to go to St. Paul's Cathedral. One of the tallest buildings in London, it was exhilarating but a bit exhausting to climb the more than 400 spiral-staircase steps up to the "whispering gallery" in the central dome (designed to transmit whispers along its curved, circular surface from one end of the walkway to the other) and the even higher outside galleries that overlook the city. Winding through the passageways and countless spiral staircases, I felt a bit like a tourist being led to slaughter, but it was worth it for the beautiful view. All this description fails to mention the incredibly lavish nature of the entire building, from the classical two-tiered pillars in the entryway to the murals, paintings, stonework, collage, and engravings on the interior. It's almost too rich and dense of a scene for me to be able to describe it, so suffice it to say it was an interesting contrast to some of the more austere abbeys and such that we've visited. I can see something in all this decoration that could turn people away. Anyways, we finished our visit here with a walk through the crypt to see memorials and tombs to Lord Horatio Nelson, Florence Nightingale, and William Blake.

After a tasty but expensive lunch at Pizza Express (mint-avocado salad and veggie pizza being a nice change from constant Indian cuisine), we were off to the London Tower. This site proved to be a bit of a disappointing headache. Perhaps the most touristy of our destinations thus far, the experience felt a bit empty and even annoying, which is a shame considering the structure is supposed to be the oldest standing fortification in Europe (from William the Conquerer in 1066) and that it has such a rich and dramatic history. After waiting through a long queue reminiscent of a US amusement park, we got to see the crown jewels of England, which may be the most extravagant and valuable collection of items I've ever witnessed. Surrounded by boisterous French elementary students and royal guards with machine guns, it all seemed a bit ridiculous in the bigger scheme of things. Perhaps that reveals my American, un-monarchical background, but the ethical status of such wealth (and the history, tradition, prestige, power, etc. that come with it) seems at least questionable to me. In the famed White Tower, London's historical armoury, was stockpiles of ancient guns and weapons. All this type of thing interested me little, and I got a bit claustrophobic amongst all the gawking bystanders, so I eventually found our group and persuaded John to flee with me across the river Thames to the Tate Modern art gallery.

We got some great pictures crossing the London Bridge and enjoyed a short walk through some of the quieter corners of downtown London. The Tate Modern is a fascinating structure in and of itself, standing along the river as some sort of ex-industrial warehouse structure. The visiting exhibit of Duchamp, Man Ray, and Picabia unfortunately cost 11 pounds (as with most museums and galleries in London, admission to the Tate Modern is free, which I think says a lot about the priorities of British culture, a lot of good, that is). However, we got to see the unique Turbine Hall space as well as the general collection of expressionist, surrealist, minimalist, vorticist, etc. etc. work. I think I most enjoyed seeing some more of Joan Miro's work, which has been a growing fascination for me since visiting the MOMA in New York an autumn or two ago. John and I left the Tate in time to catch the rush-hour underground train to the Westminster Abbey in order to attend the Archbishop of Canterbury's third and final Holy week lecture. I'm not sure I enjoyed or valued this one, on faith and history, as much as last night's, but the following question and answer time was very good indeed. John got his question answered first of all, so props to him.

I'm not used to doing so much during the day that I can't be bothered to have a good time after 9, but it feels good in a productive sort of way. Tonight, another well-needed sleep, and tomorrow, Oxford!

London: Day One

Our first full day in London proved to be very eventful. We started things off at the Westminster Abbey, site of the coronations and burials of English monarchs for hundreds of years, as well as being a bit of a national graveyard. There I was able to rub shoulders with Chaucer, Darwin, Handel, and Queen Elizabeth, among others. Or at least, I got to see their graves/tombs. In the south wing of the nave, “poet’s corner” as they call it, we walked above Tennyson (we saw his school yesterday, today his final resting place), Coleridge, Dickens, Eliot, and dozens of others, as well as a variety of memorials to the likes of Shakespeare, Blake, and Gerard Manley Hopkins. On a whole, the church seems a pastiche of British culture: science, the arts, politics, aristocracy, and the cultural mind in general are all assembled beneath the stained glass and gothic detailing. I guess the question is whether this presence is a sort of corrupting infiltration of the church or a wrapping up of a whole society’s life into the sacramental tradition of a physical Church. That is, do the national monuments within the church indicate a less-than-sacred foundation for the building, or do these plaques and engravings catch the stained-glass light and somehow become washed in a rich, illuminating presence?

After the Abbey, we walked past Big Ben and the gorgeous buildings of Parlaiment to see the Cabinet War Rooms and Winston Churchill Museum, which provided an intimate, and therefore more interesting, look at the usually uninteresting (to me, at least) subject of humans killing one another. We headed down Whitehall, grabbing a relatively cheap but tasty sandwich for lunch, to the super-sizedTrafalgar Square--the British seem to have a thing for statues of dignified-looking males atop large pillars. After a whirlwind tour of the last 800 years of painting in the labryinthine wings of the British National Museum, John and I headed for the Blackwell publishing book outlet, being overwhelmed by the possible ways of blowing our food stipend. On the way back through Trafalgar Square, we tried to talk to a local, but somehow he talked at us instead of to us, asking if we had seen a play and mentioning something about getting a few “appropriatements” with which to engage some oppressive water, at which point we left this strange character alone and questioned our own sanity.

On our way to Buckingham Palace, we passed through a crowd of people centered around a rather out of place car parked before a movie theater. A spectator informed us that Prince Charles was about to make an appearance, so we waited around for a bit to catch our first physical glimpse of the British royal family. I snapped a few pictures (along with several hundred other camera flashes) in the silent 20 seconds it took for him to exit the building, wave to the crowd, and be off. Lucky us, stumbling into the path of royalty. Having the taste of monarchy fresh in our mouths, we decided to finish our walk down the mall to Buckingham Palace. St. James Park along the mall was quite inviting, with its fine-trimmed gardens and weeping willows, but the palace itself was a rather bland disappointment, literally grey and gated off from passers-by, except of course through small entryways guarded by heavily-armed police and the postcard-worthy royal guard.

I was pleased to learn last night that the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Reverend and Right Honourable Dr Rowan Williams, is delivering lectures at the Westminster Abbey for the first three days we are in town, it now being Holy week. Tonight’s lecture was on faith and politics. I don’t feel like summarizing or analyzing what he had to say, but suffice it to say that I was somewhat surprised, pleased, and ultimately encouraged to see someone of such religious and political prominence say the things that tonight he said. His lecture was nothing new or groundbreaking, but a solid overview of things that are near and dear to my own growing understanding of these issues. To hear such views represented in a semi-public, official church setting was, as Jamie later noted, a nice model of public intellectual engagement. Afterwards, we managed to shake the Archbishop’s hand, offer some obviously unnoteworthy expression of gratitude, and be on our way back to Pickwick Place.

Now I’m back in our room, sore again and more tired than yesterday. I guess we’ll see if I’m even still alive after three more weeks of this. Not so bad for our first 24 hours in London, though: Prince Charles, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Chaucer. Tomorrow morning is the Bloomsbury literary walk and another full day of playing at tourism. Who knows what could happen?

Come on Cambridge, Pick it up Picadilly

We had a grey, rainy day in Cambridge followed by a headache and a half of train transfers and transport cancellations. My knees and shoulders are a bit sore from being out of shape and carrying an overstuffed pack all day. Also, I pinched my finger in something and have one of those horrible little blood-blister things going on. Nonetheless, I'd say it was a worthwhile journey.

We ate lunch at an Indian place and then took a walking tour through King's, Queen's, and Trinity College. It was a bit touristy (admission gates at every college courtyard), but we got to see portraits and statues of King Henry, Isaac Newton, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Francis Bacon, etc. etc.--all alumni of the Cambridge institution. The buildings, courtyards, and stained glass were all exceptional. Many of the buildings were built before the Europeans even knew about the Americas: meeting halls from 500 years ago, fountains from the 1600s, a church from the 1100s (in use until a few years ago). We ended our tour in the downtown market, surrounded by a mix of international tourists armed with cameras and umbrellas alongside suave and cocky academic types. After purchasing avocados, we headed over to the University library to see their John Milton exhibit. It was nice to see first editions of his work, original manuscripts of poetry, and other artifacts, for example... William Wordworth's copy of Paradise Lost? Yeah, that will work for me just fine. We took a bit of a walk, finding the Orchard Tea Gardens to walk in the footsteps of Virginia Woolf and Wittgenstein. It was muddy, though, and hardly beautiful, other than the schizophrenic swans.

I hardly want to detail the following confusion and train mess-ups. A disreputable bum reported that someone somewhere jumped in front of a train and threw off the entire London train system--I suppose the factuality of that account will be verified or otherwise by the BBC tomorrow morning. Anyways, we're now checked in to the Pickwick Hall hostel, I believe near Bloomsbury. John, Brian, and I are sharing a room on the top floor (Brad counts 101 steps) equipped with sink, mini-fridge and microwave, plenty of space, and a decent garden view. The hostel has some nice recreational space, a full kitchen, and a decent mini-library. Not a bad location to spend our first week of Easter Break.

I'd say it's about time for bed.

A Departure, An Arrival

It's Sunday afternoon. The sun is shining through my window, and the bells from the Minster are cascading off in the city center. I just finished a big load of laundry (my room is now a jungle of dripping clothes) and am trying to tie up some last-minute loose ends for our Easter break trip. Tomorrow morning we take the train to Cambridge for the day, then on London to settle in for the week. Our itinerary looks roughly like this:

Monday, March 17 - Friday, March 21: London area (Thursday in Oxford)
Saturday, March 22 - Wednesday, March 26: Paris
Wednesday, March 26: Torpe, Sandefjord (outside of Oslo)
Thursday, March 27 - Monday, April 1: Bergen
Monday, April 1 - Wednesday, April 3: back in London
Wednesday, April 3 - Tuesday, April 8: Reykjavik area

This being the first multi-country trip we've planned, I'm a bit worried about all of the practical things (like getting from Paris to London to Norway in one morning), but we'll be able to recover from such stressful moments during the train from Oslo to Bergen "over the roof of Norway." Or maybe Easter morning in Notre Dame? In the least, I'm excited that I managed to fix the good ol' Canonet today (all it took was a Q-tip, some turpentine, and a little patience), so I'll be able to actually document some of these things.

The last week or two in York have been an interesting blend of stress and relaxation. Working on trip plans, catching up on schoolwork, and maintaining my steady stream of extra-curricular reading. I came up with a to-do list of things to accomplish and places to visit and trips to take before leaving York, but John thinks that's just over-planning. I guess we'll see how much of the list is even possible to complete in the five weeks we'll have in York after Easter break, what with classes picking up and final papers being due then. I'm sure a handful of blog-worthy things have happened in my life since the last post, but now all my mind is on is the upcoming adventures, the Tate Modern in London, Indian food, Versailles, the Lutheran cathedral in Reykjavik, Norwegian sweaters, etc. etc. I hope to make a few brief posts while traveling, but I guess we'll see how that works out.

Goodbye for now!



| above: a view from my window at dusk