Click here to view "Jenna's Semester Abroad" -- Follow this link for pictures from my travels abroad as indicated below each entry in this travelogue, then click on the album you want to view and "View as slideshow."
Click here to view "Jenna's Photos" -- Follow this link for picture from my life at home.
July 6th
I am now firmly settled back into the U.S. and have been meaning to write this final entry every day, but still find it very difficult. It really seems as if I've been in a different world while my life here was paused, and now life in England has been paused while I resume life here. I look at all the pictures from my time abroad in disbelief that I was so far away at so many different places. My perspective of life and the world now has another entire dimension added to it. What has always been very normal and commonplace to me now has additional dimensions of what is thought normal or completely bizarre or nonsensical by people in different countries. Every day there's some little new added factor to my thinking brought to light randomly by something someone says or something I see. I enjoy sharing these little gems of knowledge with whoever might be around, but to summarize or list them here would probably make them seem very trivial and irrelevant, like an inside joke where someone tells you, “Oh, guess you had to be there.” It's been very hard to answer the question I've been hearing so much, “So how was England?” I've been giving everyone a stock answer of “Very good” and its variations, which is inadequate but summing up 5 very packed months for casual conversation is impossible. It really helps when people ask specific questions that I can then elaborate on, not just a wide, general inquiry.
Leaving Leeds was sad and exciting and I was amazed at how vividly I remembered my journey to Leeds back in January. I had flights from Leeds to London, London to Frankfurt, and Frankfurt to Philadelphia. I had a window seat and it was cool to fly over France, the English Channel, England, Wales, the Irish Sea, Ireland, then the huge expanse of the Atlantic Ocean before finally getting my first view of the U.S. in 5 months, the coast of New Jersey. I have since been busy unpacking, doing a major house cleaning, seeing everyone again, and finding a job for the summer. I am creating another collection of photos at the same link listed above to continue sharing my photos, so please continue to check those out. I'm so glad I was able to share this experience and can't thank everyone enough for their support and interest. It really meant a lot to me and made my time abroad more enjoyable. So until the next time I decide I strike out into the world . . . Cheerio!
--Pictures posted: My Favorite Photos and New Collection called "Jenna's Photos"
Sunset at home in Pine Grove, Pennsylvania
June 11th
Early Saturday morning, Steph and I took a train to London, where she stayed to wait for her family, who were arriving on Sunday. I continued on to Lewes, a small town near the village of Rodmell, where Virginia Woolf's vacation home Monk's House is located. My guidebook recommended the 3-mile countryside walk to Rodmell, so I went to the information center at Lewes for directions to the trail. I could have taken a bus there, and early in the morning I had assumed I would, but the weather was ideal and the hike didn't seem like much of a challenge. I'm very glad I decided to walk there because it has become perhaps my favorite experience in England. What could be more English than a walk in the Sussex countryside? So I tramped along the River Ouse, passing cows, sheep, and many stiles. But first, the walk, visit to Monk's House, and visit to Knole the following day perhaps need a bit of explanation of why they are significant to me.
In my senior year of high school, I chose Orlando by Virginia Woolf as novel to analyze throughout the year and write a final paper about for my AP English class. I loved the novel, which takes place over 300 years and includes the main character changing from a man to a woman, with changes in writing style appropriate to the changing time periods and changes in thought and habits by Orlando as a man and a woman. It sounds bizarre and it is, but that's the simplest explanation. The subject of the novel was based on Virginia Woolf's lover Vita Sackville-West. I'll include this section on Woolf's personal life from Wikipedia for more information:
"Virginia Stephen married writer Leonard Woolf in 1912, referring to him during their engagement as a "penniless Jew." The couple shared a close bond... They also collaborated professionally, in 1917 founding the Hogarth Press, which subsequently published most of Woolf's work. The ethos of Bloomsbury discouraged sexual exclusivity, and in 1922, Woolf met Vita Sackville-West. After a tentative start, they began a relationship that lasted through most of the 1920s. In 1928, Woolf presented Sackville-West with Orlando, a fantastical biography in which the eponymous hero's life spans three centuries and both genders. It has been called by Nigel Nicolson, Vita Sackville-West's son, "the longest and most charming love letter in literature." After their affair ended, the two women remained friends until Woolf's death." (link to Wikipedia)
My final paper drew the parallels between Woolf and Sackville-West in real life and how she incorporated them into the novel. Through all this research, my interest and esteem in Woolf grew and continues to grow, and made Orlando my favorite book that I continue to reread and discover new wonders. The walk to Rodmell was significant because Virginia Woolf committed suicide by drowning herself in the Ouse near Monk's House. It was pretty tremendous to walk through that beautiful countryside and think of what had happened there.
"Dearest, I feel certain I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don't think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came. I can't fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can't even write this properly. I can't read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that - everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer.
I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been.
V." --suicide note left to her husband Leonard
Monk's House was charming, but poignant as well. In Woolf's writing room in the garden they have photographs of the Woolfs and their friends (known as the Bloomsbury Group and including many well-known writers, poets, and artists, such as E.M. Forster and T.S. Eliot) at Monk's House, which gave the setting a bit of a haunted feeling. Monk's House was used as a summer or vacation home to get away from their main residences in London. The hostel that Pat and I stayed in was in the Bloomsbury neighborhood in London, but none of their residences there have been preserved. After relaxing a bit in the garden, I got a taxi back to Lewes, where I then got a train to Dover.
My luck with the weather began to wear out by the time I reached Dover in the evening, so I didn't attempt the walk to cliffs outside the city. I just walked along the waterfront until it started to drizzle, then made my way back to the train station. On a nice day the cliffs would be more striking, so I'll have to take a ferry from Calais to Dover some day to get the full effect. I spent the night in Canterbury and walked around the city in the morning, but, like Dover, the weather was dreary and there wasn't much to see. I had hoped to visit the famous cathedral where the site of Thomas Becket's tomb is located. It was his shrine that the pilgrims in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales are going to, but the shrine was destroyed by Henry VIII. The cathedral didn't open until later in the afternoon, however, so I continued my journey to Sevenoaks, where Vita Sackville-West's family home Knole is located.
Being the home of the Sackvilles, Woolf uses Knole as the basis of Orlando's home and I was fascinated by how intricately she incorporated it (click here for more information on Orlando). I could write an entire research paper on Knole in Orlando, but I'll avoid doing that here and just state my wonder at how masterfully Woolf wrote Orlando. Knole is one of the largest private homes in England and is said to have 365 rooms, 52 staircases, and 7 courtyards, but no one has confirmed that except for there being 7 courtyards. It was owned by archbishops until Henry VIII purchased it as a hunting lodge. He wouldn't have very good hunting nowadays because the deer are unbelievably tame and eat right out of people's hands, much like squirrels, pigeons, or seagulls anywhere else. It was a royal residence until Queen Elizabeth I gave it to the Sackvilles, who have owned it ever since. Woolf was often a guest while Vita lived there and it figures greatly into Orlando. The walk through the grounds to the house was beautiful and I then took a tour of the house, which was beautiful and had me agape at all the details of it in the novel. I brought my copy of Orlando along with me and began reading through it on the train to Staplehurst, where I was going to visit Sissinghurst, where Vita Sackville-West and her husband had gardens and her library and study. I couldn't find a bus or taxi near the train station, however, and was tired and sore, so I decided to just head back to London early. My train to Leeds didn't leave until 9:30 p.m., so I went to Kensington Gardens to read and relax in the beautiful weather. This was also fitting because London is very prominent in Orlando. I continued to read through it tracing London over time and all of the Knole references. When that was done I headed towards King's Cross, had dinner, and was soon on my way back to Leeds.
I couldn't have found a more fitting last excursion in the UK. I came here largely because of my love for the culture, its film, theater, literature, and history, and this trip was profound in my love of Virginia Woolf and English literature in general. Laying on the grass in Kensington Gardens, I realized how sad I am to leave jolly ol' England. It has given me the opportunity to see and learn so much that there is no way to neatly sum it all up. I've had 5 months of subtle yet profound growing up by removing myself from my family, friends, and familiar surroundings. I'm very eager and excited to return to all that with a renewed vigor and appreciation.
--Pictures posted: Monk's House and Dover, Canterbury, & Knole
June 6th
That's right, everyone, June! I can't believe it. May has ended in a flurry of exams and traveling, and now I'm about to enter my last week in England. But much has passed since my last entry, so it's now time to catch up before looking forward. The Tuesday after returning from London Steph and I spent a day in York. The first thing we noticed when we approached the city was a large ferris wheel, so we headed there to get a nice view of the city. York's most famous landmarks are its city walls and York Minster, a massive cathedral, and we got a nice view of both. The wheel is part of the National Railway Museum, so we looked at some of the steam engines and such before heading into the city centre. We shopped and had lunch before joining a free walking tour in the afternoon. Our guide was an elderly man who had a tendency to turn towards whatever he was talking about and not to the group, but was very knowledgeable and led us on a slow, meandering route around the city. The city dates back to Roman times and, thanks to its walls, has a long, preserved history, though nothing particularly exciting. It was much like Chester and was a good city to spend a nice day in.
I then had my last final exam that Thursday for my atmosphere class, which I believe went well. It was very low on my list of worries that day, however, because my rail pass for Germany, Czech Republic, and Poland hadn't arrived yet and we were leaving for London right after my exam. Luckily the package was at least in Leeds, though it wasn't delivered to me because our residence office, where packages are delivered, was closed. Steph eventually had to go to the DHL depot in Leeds to pick it up for me while I took my exam. There were various complications along the way, but everything worked out in the end and that was all that really mattered. We were very relieved to finally be on the train on our way to London, where we spent a very short night in a hostel before heading to Stansted Airport for our early flight to Frankfurt. It probably would have been wiser to just head straight from Leeds to the airport, but it was nice to have a bed and a shower before a long day of traveling. Frankfurt was merely a cheap flight destination, and we immediately left for Munich when we arrived.
Being my second time in the city, I was able to show Steph the main sights and once again enjoy the magic of Bavaria. We arrived in time to see the glockenspiel chime at the Town Hall, something Pat and I were unable to catch. For about five minutes different figures in the clock moved and danced for a pretty large crowd that had gathered. Pat and I did most of sightseeing around the city at night because of our day trips from Munich, so it was nice to see things during the day. I couldn't resist visiting the Hofbrauhaus again and Steph had no objections and we weren't disappointed. I'm positive I saw the three old men Pat and I sat with at a table neat the band! Schnitzel, weissbier, and a giant pretzel amongst the oom pah pah made us feel right at home. It was still a really nice day so we went to the Englischer Garten after our meal. It's Europe's largest metropolitan public park and provided a very nice stroll with lots of waterfowl, dogs, etc. to keep us amused. We slowly made our way back to our hostel, stopping for ice cream along the way. Since I had already been to Munich and we only had a week to travel, we set off for Prague the next day.
It was interesting to head into Eastern Europe; the houses, buildings, and towns definitely change as you head east. We had a pretty long train ride, but Prague was a more-than-worthy destination. Despite all the warring that has affected the Czech Republic, they've rarely resisted and so managed to avoid destruction of their cities. Our hostel was outside the city centre and unfortunately provided us with very poor directions, so we had a nice adventure in Czech in order to find it. After that we went to a local movie theater in hopes of seeing the new Indiana Jones movie, but we had missed it's last show time, so we then pursued our other object of finding a place to sit outside and have a drink. The only place nearby was called Little Las Vegas. We went inside and approached the bar, only to both be astounded by the fact that the woman next to us at the bar was topless. She had her arms crossed so at first I thought she just had a scanty top on, but alas. We got our beers though (Czech beer is renowned) and settled at a table outside where we vented our amazement and amusement. We're still not sure what sort of place it was or what that lady was up to, but it was a hysterical welcome to Prague.
The next day we headed to Old Town Square to start our exploration of the city. While waiting for a free walking tour we had lunch, went inside the Church of St. Nicholas, and watched the astronomical clock chime. The tour was a good way to get around the city, though our guide wasn't the best. It can be followed best in my pictures. We were exhausted by the end of the tour and I had my first sunburn of the trip. Prague doesn't have a particularly monumental history, but the city is gorgeous and has a different flavor than my travel around Western Europe. Krakow was in a similar vein. After another day of traveling on. let's say, vintage trains, we were the amongst the Polish. I'll note here that the Czech Republic and Poland do not use the euro and still have their own currencies, the Czech using crowns and the Polish zloty. Crowns confused me because there was only one unit so things would cost 550 crowns, for example, almost like something costing 550 cents instead of 5 dollars and 50 cents. The exchange rate was good though, so those were inexpensive days of travel for us. Both cities have rich Jewish history that was violently interrupted in World war II, but I would particularly want to return to Krakow to further explore that part of its history. We spent the morning at Wawel Castle learning about Polish royalty and history, then took a sightseeing bus tour to see the rest of the city. It was another beautiful day and gave me my second sunburn. The Jewish quarter Kazimierz and old Jewish ghetto were the most striking parts of the city. If you've seen the movie Schindler's List, it is centered around Krakow during the Holocaust. Oskar Schindler's factory is still there, though we didn't get a chance to visit it. Another reason for a return visit would be the food! We had amazing meals of kielbasa, pierogies, good Polish beer, even an after dinner shot of cherry vodka.
In the evening we boarded an overnight train to Berlin, which was a new experience. We were in a compartment with two other people, a mother and son, but luckily we were on the bottom couchettes so we didn't have to climb up and down all the time. It was pretty cramped, but surprisingly cozy. We arrived in Berlin at about 8 a.m. and were able to check into our hostel, get showers, etc., before starting our day. I would have liked to take the Third Reich tour with the company that did the free walking tour Pat and I went on, but it wasn't offered that day. It was Steph's first time in Berlin, so we decided to do the free walking tour again. It was nice to learn about the city again and from a different guide (Donald from Canada), so I learned a few new things. If you ever need a tour of Berlin though, I think I'm now qualified. It was another beautiful day, unlike the cold and rain of my last visit, giving everything a brighter look and me another day of sunburn. After the tour we headed to the Berlin Zoo. There were very few people there, so we were able to wander around and leisurely look at all the animals. I was amused by the German animal names. The zoo is also the home of Knut, a polar bear born at the zoo in 2006, abandoned by his mother, and raised by zookeepers, causing international controversy. He's now a grungy teenager and doesn't attract the crowds like he did as a cute cub. I haven't been to a zoo in a long time and was glad Steph wanted to go even though it isn't particular to Berlin.
The next day we headed to Frankfurt for our flight back to London, where we missed our bus to Leeds and had to wait for the 11:30 one that doesn't arrive in Leeds until 5:30 a.m., so I was very, very glad when I finally got to my flat. Since then I've been watching movies, reading, and taking care of business to prepare for my departure from the UK. On Tuesday I went to Manchester with Steph to see Flogging Molly, an Irish punk band. That was a fun night out. Now the only tasks remaining are closing my bank account and packing. The residence office has bins where you can donate things to charity, so that's convenient for the things like bedding, etc. that I bought here. This weekend is my last trip after so many. Liverpool seems so long ago! I'll be traveling around Kent and Sussex, starting in Lewes and Virginia Woolf's former home Monk's House. I'm then heading to Dover to see the famous white cliffs before going to Canterbury, where I'll spend the night. After seeing the famous cathedral there, I'm then going to Sissinghurst and Knole, famous houses and gardens associated with Virginia Woolf. With nice weather it should be a beautiful trip for my last outing around England. I'll be sure to write about it next week and start drawing some conclusions to my time abroad, which I'm sure will become more clear after I leave. Camp Dragonfly, the children's grief camp at Camp Swatara that I participate in, is this weekend and I'm very sorry to be missing it, but I send everyone involved lots of love and fun!
--Pictures posted: York, Munich 2, Prague, Krakow, Berlin 2
May 19th
Since my last entry, most of my time was spent writing a final essay for my EU Environmental Policy class, then studying for final exams in that class and environmental economics. The EU paper and exam were on Monday and I think both were successful. For the exam we had to pick two topics out of eight possibilities and write two essays, but the lecturer had basically given us the topics already so I had two prepared and just had to write them out. My environmental economics final was on Thursday, which was a choice of two questions out of four. It required a bit more studying and was more worrying than the one on Monday because there was a greater possibility of questions, but I had no problems. Now all I have left is a final this Thursday for my atmospheric science class. It is a multiple choice exam, so I'm not quite as worried as I was for essays and open questions like the other ones. I'm not sure when or how we receive our grades (or marks as they say here), but I think I've done quite well.
On Monday evening Steph and I decided to go to the Leeds United football (soccer) match because it would be something to experience while we were here. We didn't buy tickets in advance though and decided to just see what they still had. The only tickets left turned out to be not side-by-side and a bit more expensive than we were willing to pay, especially if we'd be sitting in front or behind each other, so we just decided to hang around for a bit then head back to the city. We stopped in the stadium bar for a drink and got some food from vendors, enjoying the general excitement and observing the hardcore fans with their wigs, body paint, and other costumes. It was fun even without actually seeing the game, and we were both tired anyway so we figured it was probably best that we didn't have to endure the whole game.
Immediately following my exam on Thursday, I got a train to London to meet my friend Amanda, who is in Thespians with me at PSU but is studying in Dublin this semester. Pat and I stayed with her while we were in Dublin for St. Patrick's Day. She was in Paris for a few days then came to London, where I agreed to meet her and spend a few days. I arrived late Thursday evening and met her at our hostel, where we planned for the next day and soon went to bed. In the morning we went to Victoria Coach Station and got a bus to Stratford-upon-Avon, which about 3 hours away. I was glad to finally make it there and pay my respects to one of England's most renowned citizens, William Shakespeare. We saw his birthplace and learned about his life and career, then had lunch at the White Swan Inn. I finally had fish and chips and shared afternoon tea with Amanda. We then went to Holy Trinity Church, where Shakespeare and his family are buried. Like the Zentralfriedhof in Vienna, it was awesome to be so close to the remains of such an epic figure in history. Some of the houses of Shakespeare's wife, children, etc. can also be toured, but most of Stratford is devoted to shops thanks to all the tourists it attracts. We headed back to London after seeing his grave because we had tickets at the Globe Theatre that evening. Pat and I toured the Globe in March, but I was so glad to get back there to see an actual performance. Amanda and I got standing yard tickets for A Midsummer Night's Dream. The tickets were only 5 pounds and, though we had to stand the entire time, it was fun to be right at the edge of the stage. The play was amazing and hysterical. There were a lot of young people in the yard with us, probably a high school group trip, and it was great to see them so engrossed in the show and surprised to find it so funny and amusing. It's a shame that so many people find Shakespeare tedious and boring when they are forced to read it in school. It's definitely meant to be alive on stage. It's definitely amongst my favorite experiences in England.
The next day we went to Westminster Abbey, an awesome memorial and resting place of so, so many awesome people. I was awestruck by Elizabeth I's tomb and had so many "wow" moments it's hard to keep track of them. We weren't allowed to take pictures, but Wikipedia has a listing (click here). We also went in the Abbey Museum, where they have many a collection of oddities from coronations and burials. I was most struck by the remains of Elizabeth I's funeral effigy (click here for more information on effigies). Only the torso and corset remained, but it was startling to see how almost mutated her figure was from a lifetime of wearing a corset! Her waist was so tiny it looked like she would have easily snapped in half. It's eerie to have these figures brought into an actual reality. After touring the abbey, we headed to Leicester Square to see what discount West End tickets were available. I was very glad to learn that Amanda was willing and happy to go see the new Gone With the Wind musical, though she had never seen the movie or read the book. I have done both many times and it's probably my favorite story, so I had faith I would enjoy the musical as well. We were able to get front row seats for the evening performance like Pat and I had for Les Miserables. We then had lunch before heading back to Westminster Abbey for Evensong, which is free and open to the public. I haven't been to church in a long time, but experiencing a service in Westminster Abbey was phenomenal. The choir and massive organ in that vast, beautiful building, surrounded by the greatest figures in British history... It earns a place in the best experiences of my life.
After Evensong we headed to the Tower of London and Tower Bridge, which Amanda hadn't seen yet. After walking around there for awhile, we went back to the hostel so I could get my bags to head straight to the coach station after Gone With the Wind to get my bus back to Leeds. We then went to Covent Garden (setting of My Fair Lady, though it's very different today) and relaxed there for a bit before heading to the New London Theatre. Our seats were once again obscenely close to the stage, which protruded into the audience with the actors often entering and exiting through the house. The show only opened in April, so it was fun to see the original London cast. I enjoyed it a lot, though I'm not sure I see it becoming a crazy smash hit. The songs were enjoyable though, and the scene where Atlanta burns involved some amazing technical theater. After the curtain call the actors who played Scarlett and Rhett called a couple onstage and the man proposed, so that was adorable to see. I then had to leave and rush to the coach station. Amanda and I parted on the underground. She went back to the hostel to get her bags and then headed to Stansted Airport to fly back to Dublin. I made it to my bus with about a minute to spare. I sat with a man from Nigeria who was a bit of an oddball, but we weren't getting to Leeds until 5:30 a.m., so he eventually stopped talking and fell asleep.
This week I have my last final exam on Thursday. I'm going on a day trip to York tomorrow. It's very close to Leeds and has been recommended by many people, so Steph and I have been wanting to go there. Then after my exam on Thursday we're heading straight to London and our flight leaves early Friday morning to Frankfurt, Germany. Our itinerary is: 23rd- Frankfurt to Munich, 24th- Munich to Prague, 25th- Prague, 26th- Prague to Krakow, 27th- Krakow to Berlin, 28th- Berlin, 29th- Berlin to Frankfurt and back to London then Leeds. It will be June before I know it! My sister Ashley graduated from Penn State on Saturday, which I unfortunately had to miss. A big congratulations to her!
--Pictures posted: Stratford-upon-Avon & London
May 4th
So now that the Europe adventure has been fully recorded, it's time to bring you up to speed on life in Leeds. Classes ended on Friday and now I only have an essay and 3 exams left in my academic career at Leeds. The essay will require the most time and is all I have planned for this week. Not very exciting, but then it's over. All of my lecturers went over what to expect on our exams and I foresee no real problems with those. Outside of class, I went to see the production of Parade and it was good. It was interesting to see a British interpretation of post-Civil War Georgia. I talked to some Backstage members and was given a mug as a gift for my efforts. I also got a certificate as a prize for "carrying an entire show almost on her own." Very nice of them and I'm glad I worked with them while I was here.
Last Saturday I went on a trip to Conwy and Chester with the international office. Conwy is a town in Wales, so it was a convenient opportunity to go to Wales. Both are more towns than cities and it was easy to see both in one day. Conwy is a small fishing town with a few little tourist attractions. My friend Steph and I were happy to just walk around and have a cream tea at a cafe. We also visited the smallest house in Britain, which is quite small. It was then a short ride to Chester, a walled city with a strong Roman history. The red stone reminded us a lot of Reading, PA, which was interesting. We walked on the wall around the city, an easy way to see most of the sights. We left the wall for a bit to walk around Grosvenor Park, which has a tiny railroad and some interesting ruins. We then decided to go to the Dewa Roman Experience to learn more about the Roman history of Chester.
We thought it might be designed more for children, but the woman at the door assured us adults found it fun too, so we were up for it. The tour was automated so the woman didn't come with us and just told us to enter, where we found ourself standing next to what looked liked the hull of a ship. Inside the ship was a creepy mannequin and a voice telling us we were sailing to England, etc. It was pretty dark and eerie because we were alone. Another door opened automatically unexpectedly, giving us quite a scare. We were then in a large, dark room with several different mannequin scenes, which we ran through to get to a better lit room where they showed a slide show presentation. It was really creepy to be the only two people with all these mannequins and things. Downstairs was an actual archaeological dig site that was well lit and much less creepy. We amused ourselves by reading the signs in ridiculous British accents before going to a hands-on room, which was probably the best part of the day. There was a suit of armor to wear and a miniature catapult that you could fire little stones from. After completing some of the other little stations, it was time to start heading back to the bus and to Leeds. It was a fun day trip and my first excursion since returning from Berlin.
With the coming weeks being devoted to essays and exams and my quickly approaching return to the U.S., I've been planning a few last trips. I'm going to London on May15th-17th with my friend Amanda, who Pat and I stayed with in Dublin. She hasn't been there yet and I've wanted to go back, so that will be a fun couple of days. We'll hopefully be able to see a show at the Globe, take a day trip to Stratford-upon-Avon, see another show on the West End, and perhaps go into Westminster Abbey. Then on May 23rd-29th Steph and I are going to Munich, Prague, Krakow, and Berlin. I'm very happy to be going back to Germany and look forward to Poland and the Czech Republic with new challenges of languages, culture, etc. When we return from that, my trip back to the U.S. will be only two weeks away. Over the weekend of June 6th, my last in England, I want to travel around Kent and Sussex to see various places associated with Virginia Woolf and places like Dover and Canterbury. The details of that will soon be settled. June 15th will be here before I know it with all of that to keep me busy.
Very exciting things are happening back in the U.S. as well. Thespians chose Once Upon A Mattress and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat for our mainstage shows in Schwab Auditorium and Little Women for a production at the Boal Barn Playhouse. I've also been elected president of Thespians! Very exciting! I will have a very full year with interesting new responsibilities, but I think it will be my best yet. I'm also looking for a summer job in or around Pine Grove, so if anyone comes across anything please let me know. Anything will do! These last few weeks will be interesting as I start to detach myself from England and reattach to the U.S., but I'm looking forward to it so much. With returning to the U.S. heavy on my mind, I was looking through my photos and decided to post some from the past few years that I thought would be enjoyed.
--Pictures posted: My U.S. Life and Conwy & Chester
May 2nd
Our last train ride took us from Munich to Berlin through the lovely fields, forests, and towns of Germany. We made it to our hostel without any problems. It was a recently opened hostel and probably the nicest one we stayed in on our trip. After enjoying our room for a bit (Europe has given us a love and appreciation of duvets), we made a quick dinner that was slightly interrupted when a girl burned something on the stove, setting off the fire alarm and bringing the fire department. We then set off into the city to go to the Reichstag, home of the German government, which is open in the evening. Seeing the Brandenburger Tor and the Holocaust Memorial along the way, we eventually made it to the Reichstag and after waiting in line and going through security, we were taken up to the roof. The building had been more or less destroyed by a fire and bombing in World War II and has been rebuilt to highlight the transparency of the new government. A large glass dome allows you to look down into the main hall of parliament, allowing the visitors and the members of parliament to constantly be aware of each other. Wikipedia has good photos of the building before, during, and after the war (click here). After grabbing a kebab, a favorite fast food in Germany, we went back to our hostel, met the Australian girls also staying in our room, then went to bed.
We decided to take a free walking tour the next day and were so glad we did despite the rainy weather. Berlin is a fascinating city because it's not the most attractive on the surface, being mostly destroyed and quickly rebuilt, but it definitely had the most dynamic and epic history. My photos follow the highlights of the tour. With our tour guide Maria, we started at the Brandenburger Tor, getting a history of Germany and Berlin up to World War II, which was the time of most of the history we would learn about that day. Among the highlights for me was visiting the location of Hitler's bunker where he and Eva Braun took their lives at the end of the war. Like visiting Zentralfriedhof in Vienna, it was chilling to be at the site of something so monumental. He affected the entire world and he died at this one spot on the earth. We also visited the former Luftwaffe headquarters building, which I knew would be of interest to my dad. It is now a tax office, but it is a larger-than-life, intimidating building. Even the door handles were huge and almost five feet off the ground. Another huge aspect of Berlin's history is the Berlin Wall, of course. Very few sections of the wall are still standing, but there are cobblestones around the city marking where it used to stand, surrounding West Berlin like an island in East Germany (click here for more information on the Berlin Wall). Our guide Maria gave us an awesome account of the fall of the wall. The guides on the free walking tours work for tips, so they definitely work hard to make it worth their while. We were very glad to get a live commentary around Berlin because I think we would have been left with more questions than answers if we had just looked around on our own. That night we went to a restaurant called Jules Verne for our final meal in continental Europe: Wiener schnitzel, fried potatoes, and some König Ludwig Weissbier.
The next morning we had to get to Schönefeld Airport and, after waiting for an S-Bahn train that never came and then discovering we should have taken a different one, we got a taxi so we would get there on time. At the airport it was time for us to part with the remains of our snack bag that had served us so faithfully throughout the trip. We were amused by the reminders of where we'd been: water bottles from Ireland, cereal from France, snack mix from Italy, Leibnitz cookies from Austria and Berlin that never lasted very long, a constant, international supply of Pringles. We had a bit of trouble going through immigration because they didn't stamp our passports when we flew into Paris. Pat was grilled by the one immigration officer, which was an amusing train of "Where were you before Berlin?" "Munich." "And before that?" "Vienna." "For how long?..." etc. until it finally came out that we had been many places before Berlin and that the French should have stamped our passports. The immigration officer told us we should have asked them to stamp our passports and we were amazed because you'd think they would have known to do that. We made it out of Germany nonetheless and were back in London in no time, where we went from Stansted to Victoria Coach Station and got a bus back to Leeds. It was a memorable bus ride thanks to a woman and her two young girls, who tried their best to be annoying the entire time, including one of them sitting behind me with her face resting between my seat and the window counting the cars that went passed. When she counted "...38...39...50!" I finally asked her to please sit back and stop.
It was so nice to be back in Leeds in my flat with my own bed, shower, kitchen, etc., but I described life after our trip in an earlier entry. Pat and I were glad to part after being constantly around each other for 4 weeks straight, but sad too after sharing such a monumental trip and having to get back to life as usual. I enjoyed having a close friend here and got back to my life in Leeds with a resigned sigh. It will be nice to have someone at home who also experienced some life in Leeds with me and to reminisce about our trip around Europe. I would like to thank Pat for being a wonderful friend and travel companion. We got through all issues of time, distance, money, and culture with a style all our own. And even though we're both at a very dynamic time in our lives and have many great things ahead of us, we'll always have Paris.
--Pictures posted: Berlin
April 27th
We arrived in Munich after a pleasant journey that once again gave us amazing views of the Alps. Moving away from the mountains though, Pat and I began to be struck by the fact Germany and Pennsylvania have similar landscapes. It's not very surprising (not that it was before) that so many Germans would decide to settle in Pennsylvania. Our journey to Berlin would also show this. Our hostel in Munich was very close to the train station, which would serve us well in our three days there. We arrived at night and spent the evening in the hostel's lounge, relaxing and catching up with life online. Salzburg had been cut out of our trip and used as an extra day in Munich, which was fortunate because we had two day trips that we wanted to do.
The first was a trip to the concentration camp at Dachau, only a half hour from the city. I won't attempt to draw any grand conclusion to our visit because there is no way to even comprehend the atrocities that took place there and at so many other places. We did an audio tour of the grounds and buildings, just learning and recognizing. A thing that sticks in my mind is the convent of Carmelite nuns built adjacent to the camp as a place of spiritual reconciliation and love at a place of so much suffering. It's terrifying and saddening to think that such activities could ever happen and even worse that they are still happening. We spent the entire day there, returning to Munich in the evening to actually see the city and find some amazing German food.
After a brief stop to regroup at the hostel, we headed into the city centre to take in Munich. We had secured the names of several biergartens and beer halls and planned our route to them to see Frauenkirche, Neues Rathaus, and more (better seen in my pictures). After failing to find one recommended place, we found ourselves right outside the other one, the Hofbräuhaus. The crowd outside and view inside of packed tables, huge steins of beer, and an oom pah pah band all meant we had to go inside. My guidebook describes it: "this is as jolly, as festive, and as loud as it gets." We finally found open seats at the end of a table shared with 3 old German men who drank about 3 liters of beer each and banged on the table with their steins when they wanted another. We had an amazing meal of wiener schnitzel, wurst (sausage), kraut, potatoes, and apple strudel, along with liters of Hofbräu. We later declared it one of the definite highlights of our trip. We left after awhile of sitting and talking and finishing our beers, then walked around the city to do a little more sightseeing and help our digestion.
The next day we journeyed to Füssen, a small town in the Alps close to the Königschlösser built by King Ludwig II and his family. It was amazing to finally be in the Alps and not just looking at them from a train. We went to Hohenschwangau first, built by Ludwig's father as a summer residence for their family (click here for Hohenschwangau information on Wikipedia). When you buy tickets you're given a time to report to each castle for your guided tour, and our tour group for Hohenschwangau was full of interesting characters. The family symbol is the swan, so it was everywhere in the castle and one woman found it necessary to point out every swan she saw. Another man had seen a DVD about the castles and kept seconding what the guide was saying or asking questions in reference to it. Our guide was Wolfgang, a timid, bespectacled man who politely took everyone in his stride. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside, but all the rooms had elaborate painted walls of famous legends and heroes and beautiful furniture. Ludwig lived there while his castle Neuschwanstein was being built across the valley so he could supervise its construction. He was the patron of composer Richard Wagner, who visited often, so we even saw a piano that Wagner himself had played. It was around then that Pat and I began to have raised eyebrows about Ludwig and Wagner's relationship, though our guide managed to tiptoe around it. Seeing Neuschwanstein, which was built as a tribute to Wagner's operas, and some later research confirmed our suspicions.
After seeing Hohenschwangau we had a long hike up to Neuschwanstein and took photos while we waited for our tour time. Our tour group was larger this time and had some of the people from our other tour, but was less memorable. Neuschwanstein was by far the most amazing palace we saw (click here for Neuschwanstein information on Wikipedia). We again couldn't take pictures, but every room was absolutely spectacular and was themed after Wagner's operas, including a Byzantine throne room, artificial grotto, and opera hall. Everything was so fanciful and beautiful it was hard to believe that it was built by someone as a place to live. Ludwig died under mysterious circumstances before the castle was completed, so it still remains unfinished. Seeing how spectacular his tribute to Wagner was, Pat and I were sure that Ludwig and Wagner had more than a patron/composer relationship, though the guide was once again very careful to make it seem like that was all. Some research on our own quickly confirmed this (click here for Ludwig II information on Wikipedia). It's such a shame that the life of such a fantastical figure was cut short. After our castle tour we hiked to Marienbrücke, a bridge spanning the gorge behind Neuschwanstein. The hike provided awesome views of Hohenschwangau and the valley, but the bridge was absolutely breathtaking. Not only were we very, very high above the gorge on a narrow bridge with wooden planks that wobbled a bit too much for comfort, but we had the Alps rising around us with Neuschwanstein perfectly planted in the foreground. It was another definite highlight of our trip.
We had another long hike all the way back down the mountain, but rewarded ourselves with another delicious German meal and a pint of König Ludwig Weiss. We met some friendly Australians at the bus stop who were also heading back to Munich. Later on the train we overheard the one girl showing her pictures to someone, but she had retained very little from her castle tours and didn't even remember King Ludwig's name. It was an interesting look at other tourists and we realized how many different experiences come out of these things that so many people have seen. We got back to our hostel late in the evening and relaxed in the lounge on the computer and watching the CNN International coverage of the Olympic torch fiasco in San Francisco. We made plans to take an early train to Berlin the next day so we could get there with enough time to still see some things.
--Pictures posted: Munich
April 20th
Our train didn't leave Venice until the afternoon, so it was late in the evening when we arrived in Vienna. Our journey took us through the Alps, which were spectacular to see. Skiing or hiking in the Alps would be fun, but for this trip it was nice to just look at them from the train. After a long train ride, emerging into cold weather again, and taking the wrong tram to get to our hostel, we were tired and cranky and in need of a good sleep before we took on Vienna. I'll note here that Pat was initially skeptical of the wonders of Austria and Germany (or at least not looking forward to them as much as other places we had been), but that would change dramatically by the time we flew back to London. The landmarks and history of Vienna, Munich, and even Berlin are less commonly known than Paris or Rome, but you realize quickly that you know more about these places than you think. In my four years of German in high school, I learned a lot about the history and culture of Germany and Austria (and more) and was excited to finally see the places that I had only known in the classroom.
We started the day in the city centre at St. Stephansdom, a massive cathedral that has been under construction since 1147. After walking around it and admiring its colorfully tiled roof, we made our way through some narrow sidestreets to visit the house where Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart lived while in Vienna, but were turned off by its high admission price. We also never went to Salzburg, his birthplace, like we had originally intended, though we did pass through it on the train. We planned to stay another night in Munich instead, which was well worth it. We then headed towards the State Opera House to see if we could get cheap tickets for a performance that night. They offer cheap standing room tickets that are sold a few hours before the performance, but we discovered that people were already lining up to buy them and lost our enthusiasm for that plan. We had a memorable encounter with a man selling tickets for one of the many other concerts held in various notable venues throughout the city. He offered us a good student discount, but not nearly enough to meet our budget of about 20 euros combined. He was very eager to make a deal with us and eventually gave me a free ticket to the performance after I joked that he was my cousin, but still wanted to charge Pat 25 for his, which we still had to turn down. I still have that free ticket; a good souvenir for an amusing encounter. A special shout-out to you, Mr. Mentor! By the end of that exchange, we were over seeing a performance and were ready to see more of the city.
Next was Hofburg Palace, which was the imperial residence until 1918 and is now various government institutions and museums. The King Tut exhibit was at the one museum and we were tempted to go see it, but again a steep admission price and the realization that we could probably see it some other time in the U.S. made us pass it by. I would have liked to see the Spanish Riding School, where they train Lipizzaner stallions, but it was closed. Admission to their morning exercise sessions is fairly cheap, so that would be something to see, along with the opera, on a return visit to Vienna. We then decided to leave the city centre and head outside of the city to the Zentralfriedhof, Vienna's largest burial ground, to see the graves of Ludwig van Beethoven, Johann Strauss, Franz Schubert, and Johannes Brahms. We wandered around for a bit, thinking it wouldn't be too difficult to find this famous section of graves, but we eventually had to ask someone and realized we had walked right by it earlier. It was pretty epic to visit the graves of these legendary people, as it's the closest you can ever come to their actual human bodies. We were sufficiently awed and headed back into the city to make our way to the Prater amusement park.
After grabbing some cheap sustenance at McDonald's we went to Karlskirche and then got the metro to Hundertwasserhaus, a social housing project designed by the artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser. It was then just a short metro ride to the Prater with its famous ferris wheel, the Riesenrad (featured in the movie The Third Man...they even offered Third Man tours of Vienna). Outside of the amusement park is a planetarium with a large globe in front of it that Pat and I had fun getting pictures with. The park itself was really neat. Amusement parks in the U.S. don't quite have that skeevy carnival feel, but Prater is basically a permanent carnival and had a bit of a freakshow air to it. We walked around the entire thing to enjoy all the colorful rides, bright lights, and loud techno music that filled the air. Cold, tired, and hungry, we headed back towards the hostel in hopes of finding food. We went to a place recommended in the map the hostel provided called Mozartstube, a night restaurant that realized all of our food and drink dreams. Pat appropriately had his first Wiener schnitzel (though it would not be the last) and I had fantastic goulash with a large bread and potato dumpling, all washed down with Stiegl, a beer from Salzburg. We were in love with Vienna.
We were getting a late afternoon train to Munich, which gave us plenty of time to visit Schönbrunn Palace before we had to depart. Originally a hunting lodge, it was transformed by Maria Theresa (mother of Marie Antoinette) into the imperial palace. We took the audio tour and learned about its various famous inhabitants and the lives they carried out there. Having been to Versailles as well, you could see its similarities, though it was not quite as entirely lavish as Versailles. We then walked around the palace to see its extensive grounds and gardens, but it was a drizzly day with a cold wind so we didn't spend much time exploring. We then bought some groceries and made lunch at the hostel before boarding our train to Deutschland, the final country on our journey.
Germany is an intimidating entry to undertake because it was a very full experience, but I will get around to it soon to be sure. Life has been going well post-adventure. My first week back in class could barely be called that. Pat went to class with me on Tuesday morning, but we were informed that a boy in the class had passed away and that class was canceled. After that sad news, I finished and handed in my final paper for Air Quality and showed Pat the Student Union Building and Riley Smith Hall, which had been closed when we were in Leeds over Easter weekend. I missed my afternoon class, but later found out that the lecturer hadn't showed up anyway and it was rescheduled to next week. My Wednesday class was also canceled because we hadn't had lecture on Tuesday morning, so I was being given a lot of time to relax. Pat was leaving on a midnight bus to London, so we went out to eat for curry for his farewell dinner. It was a good time to draw some conclusions about the trip and just life in general over the three months I've been here. Pat plans to attend law school in the fall and I have this experience and my final year at PSU, so we're both very excited for our new paths in life. But more on that at the close of our trip... We later went to The Eldon for the international student night and a pint before sending him off to the bus station. I soon went to bed in my more spacious room, no longer full with luggage and two people.
Wednesday was spent just hanging around, reading Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (now that I have been in London and Paris) and just settling back into my routine in Leeds. Thursday I had 3 of my 4 classes (one was again canceled). On Friday I met up with Steph to buy tickets for the international office's trip to Conwy and Chester next weekend. Conwy is in Wales, so I'm excited to finally go there. I need to do some planning for any other trips I still want to take while I'm here. I also went shopping in the afternoon for groceries and jeans, since I had worn mine out with 3 weeks of traveling and walking. Yesterday was spent finishing Tale of Two Cities, working on this, and just enjoying my own company. Oh some random things that were forgotten in the shadow of our trip: all 5 rooms in my flat are now occupied. Michael and Benjamin are still here, and a few weeks before break we were joined by Christine from Denmark and most recently by Dana from Italy. The girls finally outnumber the guys in E1.1. Pat and I went to see Cats at the Leeds Grand Theatre while we were here at Easter, but it escaped this record. I've seen the movie and know many of the songs, but it was fun to finally see on stage and it was a fitting show to see right before going to London, where it is set. We quoted the songs many times while we were in London. It was also funny that we then saw Les Miserables before going to Paris.
You may also find it odd that I have so much free time when I'm supposed to be assistant stage manager for Parade, the last show Backstage Society is working on. Before Pat and I left Leeds to go to London, I emailed the stage manager and informed her that I wouldn't be able to work on the show. I was tired from doing Mikado and my life and schoolwork were left in a mess from my lost wallet fiasco and approaching trip. I knew I'd need time to relax after 3 weeks of traveling and with assignments due when I returned. I also realized I wasn't really looking forward to working on the show, even dreading it a little, and that was a clear sign that I shouldn't waste my time and effort. One of my friends studying here from PSU is in the cast and I look forward going to see a performance and being just an audience member. Another theater group is more heavily on my mind: the Thespians! Today they vote on the shows we'll do next year. I can vote in absentia so I've sent them my choices. I'm very excited to hear how that turns out. Next weekend are the elections for next year's officers and I'll be running for president, so I need to write my letter of intent and record it for them to show at the meeting. That should be a fun project. With May just around the corner, my thoughts are turned even more towards home, the summer, and the coming year at PSU.
--Pictures posted: Vienna
April 16th
"We're currently rolling through Germany on our way from Munich to Berlin and I figured it would be a good time to get started on recounting more of our journey. We left Nice early the next day and had a long yet amusing train ride to Rome. We were in a car with a crew of nosy, older Italians who were very involved in everyone's business. I was sitting next to an older lady who talked to me several times even though I clearly knew very little Italian. We had a layover in Genoa where we had lunch and had to function in Italy. We faired well throughout our stay with the basics of hello, goodbye, please, thank you, etc. It helped that almost everyone we had to talk to had some grasp of English. The weather in Italy was amazing and we passed through many picturesque coastal towns as we traveled along the sea. We arrived in Rome at night and made it to our hostel, which was more of a budget hotel. It was within an apartment complex and we were greeted by a teenage girl who disinterestedly took care of our check-in. It was outside of the historic city centre, so we were initially unimpressed with Rome, but looking forward to sightseeing the next day.
In the morning we first headed to the Colosseum. We emerged from the metro station and there it was. It was awesome to see such an ancient reknowned structure. We were accosted by endless guides offering tour deals, but we were happy with just going inside and exploring ourselves. Like many of the things we've seen, I hope to do some reading or watch some History Channel programs on the Colosseum to really put together what I know about it now that I've been there. It would also be fun to watch movies like Gladiator again to really make them come to life. The arena floor was wood covered in straw and sand and is no longer there so the passages below are exposed, where gladiators and animals once were before entering the arena. The surrounding area is also full of ruins, like temples and the Roman Forum. We then walked to the Trevi Fountain, a huge fountain made famous in movies and people claiming to have swam in it. Our next stop was Vatican City. After working our way through a long line through security, we entered St. Peter's Basilica and opted not to pay to go inside, but to walk through the Tomb of the Popes."
I wrote the above entry on April 10th, but had to stop because I started to feel motion sick on the train. Now I am back in Leeds, my essay has been submitted, Pat has departed, and it is time to put more of our travels on record. So back to the Tomb of the Popes... We noticed a large group gathered around one tomb and it was then that Pat, being the Catholic one, remembered that it was April 2nd, the day Pope John Paul II died in 2005, making exactly 3 years since his death. We had noticed that St. Peter's Square was set up with chairs and big TV screens and had wondered if something had gone on earlier in the day, so now it all made sense. It was purely coincidence that we were there that day, but made it a bit more meaningful. We passed by John Paul's tomb and then made our way through the rest of the Tomb. We wanted to visit the Vatican Museums next, but by the time we got to the entrance it was closed. After dinner at a nearby cafe, we decided to walk back in the direction of our hostel and see some more sights. We headed in the direction of the Pantheon, seeing the Castel Sant' Angelo and doing some shopping from various street vendors along the way. The Pantheon wasn't particularly stunning, but the fact that its 2000-year old dome is "a perfect half-sphere made of poured concrete without the support of vaults, arches, or ribs" and is the largest of its kind (from my Europe guidebook) makes it an awesome wonder of architecture. After numerous other piazzas and palazzos, we made it to a metro stop and headed back to the hostel. We luckily had an afternoon train the next day, so we were able to go to the Vatican Museums before leaving Rome. Our goal was the Sistine Chapel and it would have been a bummer not to see it. We moved with the hordes of tour groups through the many galleries, halls, staircases, etc. you must pass through before finally entering the Sistine Chapel. Guards keep everyone hushed and make sure no one takes photos, so after a lot of reverential gazing we left and hurried on our way. Another one of those things I've seen so many times, but it was an awesome sight to finally see with my own eyes. It was then time to head to Venice.
Approaching the city we already knew it would be unlike anything we had experienced. Venice is actually a collection of islands off the mainland of Italy, so our train crossed a bridge before arriving at the station in the early evening. We stepped out of the train station and got our first view of the Grand Canal that winds through the center of Venice. Our hostel was in walking distance from the station, so we got a nice little taste of the city that got us excited for our stay there: streets lined with shops full of Carnevale masks and Murano glass, colorful gelato, the delicious smell of pizza and pasta, and winding side canals. Our hostel, Casa Ai Due Leoni, was located in a charming little square along a side canal. We were greeted by a lively Italian man who always sent many "Ciao"s our way when parting. After getting settled in our room, we left to wander the canals a bit and eventually find a place for dinner. Venice is amazing because there are no cars. It may seem like an obvious statement, but you really notice that there are no roads and no cars and you don't feel like you're in a city at all. We were hungry for pizza, pasta, and wine, and it wasn't hard to find a friendly face offering just that. Gnocchi, pizza with prosciutto, and red wine at an outdoor table made me very happy, followed by a large gelato from a street vendor to enjoy while window shopping on our way back to our beds.
We discovered in my guidebook that Padua was only 30 minutes away and is the location of St. Anthony's tomb, who Pat says is his mom's favorite saint, so we decided to make a pilgrimage to Padua for Bridget. After a short journey we arrived in Padua and realized we didn't have a map, so we were left to follow signs and ask for directions. We eventually made it to St. Anthony's Basilica after a roundabout kind of journey. It was so sunny and beautiful outside that we were glad for the dim, cool interior after our long walk. We paid homage to St. Anthony and I got a finger-wag from a priest for trying to get a picture of his tomb. After touring the rest of the interior, we went back out into the sunshine and made our way back to Venice to enjoy more of its sites. We set out along the Grand Canal on our way to Piazza San Marco on the other side of the city. My pictures show that walk pretty well: lots of canals, gondolas, etc., and all beautiful. We made it to San Marco and enjoyed the sunshine, pigeons, and beautiful buildings around the square. The walk back was also lovely, despite a pigeon pooping on my purse as we left San Marco. I got some shopping done in the evening while Pat relaxed in an internet cafe. We were tired and sunburned, so we spent the evening doing laundry and preparing for our journey northward. In the morning we went grocery shopping to restock our snack bag for the train ride to Vienna. After collecting our bags from the hostel, we relaxed on the steps outside the train station until it was time to board.
I was excited to be heading to a German-speaking country and finally test my language skills, but I'll post this now for you all to enjoy while I work on Austria and Germany. I apologize for waiting so long to update, but I definitely didn't want to just put up hasty entries. I also had an essay due yesterday that I needed to finish, so that took priority while Pat and I recovered. He left last night on a midnight bus to London in order to get his noon flight today, so I now have plenty of time to devote to recording our travels.
--Pictures posted: Rome and Venice
March 31st
I am sitting at the Villa St. Exupery in beautiful Nice, France. I'll take some pictures so you can appreciate the setting. I've been shamefully neglecting writing entries about this grand trip of ours, which has been going wonderfully and keeping us busy. From the start we've had a shifting itinerary, but it's nice to have some flexibility. Once we packed up all of our stuff, we decided to head straight to London and possibly go to Stratford the next day so we could check into the hostel and have a place to keep our bags. It would have been unpleasant to wander around Stratford with all of our bags. London of course offered much to do and we never made it to Stratford, but no worries. I hope to get there before I head back to the U.S. I got my credit card and bank papers in the mail just before we headed to the train station, so that was a stroke of good luck. After waiting for a city bus to take us to the train station that never showed up, we got a taxi and were soon London-bound. With a little work we found our hostel, the Astor Museum Inn in Bloomsbury right next to the British Museum.
Once we settled in we immediately headed to Leicester Square for the TKTS booth that sells half-price theater tickets for the West End (they also have TKTS on Broadway). They didn't have tickets for any shows we were interested in, so we went to the Les Miserables theater to see if they had cheap student tickets. They didn't have any more student tickets, but they had front row seats classified as "slightly restricted view" because you're so close to the stage. We immediately bought them. We had a lot of time before the show, so we walked down to Trafalgar Square, where Big Ben soon came into view. This lead us to the Thames, with views of the London Eye and Big Ben and passing Downing Street, where the Prime Minister lives. After taking pictures and exploring, we ate at a cheap Chinese buffet and then went to theater for the show. A nice retired professor from Norwich chatted with us until we were ushered into the theater. Our seats were so close to the stage we worried about our view but figured it would be fine. We'd seen shows from far away in the balcony, so this couldn't be any worse. After examining the orchestra pit, the show soon began and we were blown away. I know many of the songs from the show and have seen movie versions, but I had never seen the shown before and it was amazing. We were practically involved in the show with the actors often making eye contact with us, the fog and lights drifting off the stage onto us, we were even spit upon by someone singing right in front of us. It's exciting to have seen a show on the West End and we couldn't have picked a better show. Definitely amongst my favorite shows.
The next day we did our London sightseeing on a bus tour, starting in Piccadilly Circus and ending at the Globe Theatre. I'll let my pictures speak for themselves about all that. I enjoyed London's atmosphere. It's on the same level as New York City, but in an older, more jumbled fashion. I like that additional historical component of imagining Queen Elizabeth and Shakespeare in the streets. The Globe Theatre was a fun stop. I hope to go see a play there when their season opens later in April. It's not built on the site of the original Globe but it is close by, and they kept it as close to the original as possible with all the modern safety considerations. Our tour guide gave us a history of the theatre and its reconstruction and explained how Shakespeare's plays come alive in a different way in the setting they were originally written for. Again, I hope to see a show there in the upcoming months to experience this. In the evening we went to Milton Keynes to meet Helen, who generously allowed us to get our rail passes mailed to her house so we didn't have to wait around in Leeds and could start our time in London as planned. After a hurried exchange, we were on our way back to London and to our hostel.
On Friday we had a flight to Paris at 3 in the afternoon, so we checked out of the hostel and went to the British Museum for the morning. They had an interesting Egyptian mummy exhibition that we looked at until it was time to go to Victoria Coach Station to get a bus to Luton Airport for our flight. It rained heavily so it was a good travel day. Pat realized some money problems, so that weighed on our spirits a bit. We decided to cut out Florence in the interest of time and money and it still holds as a wise decision. Arriving in Paris boosted our spirits, of course. We navigated the Metro to our hostel, where we expected another dorm room but were given a private room with a double bed for the same price. This was a welcome break from constantly living around other people. The Louvre has free admission for people under 26 on Wednesdays and Fridays from 6-10pm, so we hustled over there to take advantage of that. By that time we had about an hour to look around, but it was sufficient for us. We saw the Venus de Milo first, then went on a search for the Mona Lisa. There are many signs directing you to her, but we managed to walk down a long gallery and miss the turn into a smaller gallery where she is displayed. At the end of the gallery we realized this, but by the time we turned back they were closing down the area. Saddened that we might miss seeing the Mona Lisa, we tried an alternate route and were successful. After about 3 minutes of gazing, they ushered everyone out of that gallery as well, so it was a very close call. I was able to snap one picture and we were happy with our success. We also saw Delacroix's "Liberty Leading the People," which was fun to see after recently seeing Les Miz. Of course you could spend days and days looking at all the works in the Louvre, but we're not exactly art enthusiasts and definitely do not have that much time. Outside we took a lot of pictures with the beautiful building and inner glass pyramid. Nearby is an Arc de Triomphe, but not the Arc de Triomphe. We took pictures at the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel and it was crossing the road to get there that we had our first view of the Eiffel Tower. At night it is periodically covered in flashing lights and looks like it is glittering. After some more pictures, we went back to our hostel to plan for our full day.
In the morning we went to Versailles, a suburb of Paris, by train to see the famous palace of Louis XIV and home of Marie Antoinette. After waiting in a long line for tickets, we navigated the full rooms with our audio guides. It's a stunning place and every inch was decorated in some way. We saw the famous Hall of Mirrors and the king and queen's chambers. It was neat to walk in the rooms where these historical figures once lived and imagine the angry mob of French peasants storming the palace during the Revolution. When we returned to the city, it was time to see the major sights so we took the Metro to the Eiffel Tower. It was larger than I imagined with its four legs sprawling over a large area. We avoided the long lines to go to the various levels of viewing platforms and were contented to stroll around it. There were some small carousels nearby and lots of ice cream vendors, people rollerblading and street performers. We then walked to the Arc de Triomphe and down the Champs-Elysees, a main boulevard in Paris. I had been getting blisters from my shoes, but by this point I was having odd pains and we eventually stopped for ice cream. We decided against going to the opera house and headed for Notre Dame, which was still a long distance away. The Eiffel Tower was glittering once more so we watched it for a bit and walked along the Seine. By the time we got to Notre Dame we were exhausted and my feet were going to fall off, but it was worth it. I got a priceless picture as Quasimodo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Back at the hostel, I nursed my swollen foot and we planned for our journey to Nice the next day. It feels a bit like the tendons in my foot have pulled apart or something and I have a small bruise on the bottom of my foot, which I think might be from when I broke my one toe and it hasn't functioned quite right since.
We checked out and went to Gare de Lyon, the train station servicing the south of France. With our rail passes we still need to buy seat reservations for some trains, which are usually less than 10 euros. We went to the ticket office to do this and were informed that all the seats for Eurail passes for all the trains going to southern France were booked; we'd have to go the next day. An extra day in Paris is nothing to complain about, but we were ready to continue our journey. After considering various possibilities, including heading to Switzerland, we decided to just get seat reservations for an early train the next day and head back to our hostel for an extra night. We were relieved to be able to get a room there and were once again given a nice double room. It was raining heavily and would have made a perfect travel day, but oh well. I looked into going to visit some sites where my great-grandfather fought in World War I, but they're unfortunately not easy to reach by train and would be best visited by renting a car. Something to look into as a trip before heading back to the U.S. or anytime in the future. My foot was still really sore and walking around in the rain had no appeal, so we decided to take a day off and just relax. We napped most of the day and then went out to eat at a nearby restaurant. We had some interesting seafood pasta dishes that were ok, then went to McDonald's for McFlurries for dessert. We're easy to please. At the hostel we caught up with things on the Internet and eventually went to bed.
Today we headed back to Gare de Lyon and got on our train to Nice with no problems. The 5 1/2 hour train ride took up most of the day, and we got to Nice around 3:30. We had some amazing views of the Mediterranean Sea when the train went along the coast. We took the tram from the train station and then were picked up by a van by the people from the hostel, which is a really nice service. It seems be run by mostly Australians and is very picturesque, as is the entire city. It must be amazing in the summer. It's mostly restaurants, cafes, hotels, and casinos with many wide streets lined with palm trees. It would have been nice to have a full day here to just relax in this beautiful setting, but there isn't much to see otherwise, so it's not a total loss. We spent some time looking for a bank to cash my traveler's checks, but it was getting late so most were closed. That's now a task for the morning. We ate dinner at an American cowboy-type steakhouse because we were hungry for a good meat and potatoes type of meal. It was an amusing experience to be in beautiful southern France with the Mediterranean nearby, eating a buffalo steak and listening to country music. I enjoy experiencing a new country, but it was fun to indulge and be silly. Having only one evening here, we walked around the city a bit and walked along the beach. It was our first experience with the Mediterranean Sea, which is notable. We're now just hanging out at the hostel and I was determined to update this.
Tomorrow we have a long journey to Rome, leaving at 10 am and getting there at 8 pm. Florence would have been a stop along the way to break up the journey, but it'll be another day to rest our feet and spirits and have a scenic ride through Italy. I'll post an updated itinerary at the end of this entry. It's been interesting to discover the different cultures and personalities of each country and I look forward to comparing them all once I've been to Italy, Austria, and Germany. I'll save that for a later post though. Enjoy the pictures!
April
1- Nice to Rome
2- Rome
3- Rome to Venice
4- Venice
5- Venice to Vienna
6- Vienna
7- Vienna to Munich
8- Munich (Salzburg)
9- Munich
10- Munich to Berlin
11- Berlin
12- Berlin to Leeds
--Pictures posted: London, Paris, Nice
March 25th
Our last night in Leeds is quickly drawing to a close. We've ironed out our journey up to Nice. The most complicated part will be getting from London to Paris because our rail passes are not valid in the UK. Tomorrow morning we'll be taking the train to Stratford-upon-Avon, birthplace of William Shakespeare. After spending the afternoon there paying homage to the Bard, we'll get a train to London, check in to our hostel, and hopefully go see a West End show in the evening (the West End is the London equivalent of Broadway). We're in London until Friday afternoon, when we fly from London to Paris. After arriving in Paris, we can use our rail passes to get everywhere else on our journey. We intend to book hostels one week at a time in case our plans are thrown off somewhere. We then plan to fly from Berlin to Leeds at the end of the trip so I can get back to class and Pat can catch his flight home on April 16th. Our itinerary is as follows:
March
26- Stratford-upon-Avon to London
27- London
28- London to Paris
29- Paris
30- Paris to Nice
31- Nice & French Riviera
April
1- Nice to Florence
2- Florence
3- Florence to Rome
4- Rome
5- Rome to Venice
6- Venice
7- Venice to Vienna
8- Vienna
9- Vienna to Salzburg
10- Salzburg to Munich
11- Munich
12- Munich to Berlin
13- Berlin
14- Berlin to Leeds
I'll be taking my laptop and most hostels have free or cheap internet access, so hopefully I'll be able to update frequently and post a lot of gorgeous pictures. One thing's for sure: we'll be very seasoned travelers by the end of this undertaking! Wish us luck : )
--Pictures posted: The Mikado
March 23rd
Pat and I are back from Ireland and using the next few days to get life in order before striking out into the world once more. It's been very busy for the past two weeks, but I finally have time for a full update. I'll start with The Mikado and my lost wallet. I spent some long days working on the show (often 11 am-2 am) and I must have left my wallet lay somewhere in the theatre. I didn't notice I didn't have it until the next day though, and by that time it was nowhere to be found. The theatre is in the Student Union Building, so anyone could have strolled in and picked it up by the time I got there to look for it the next day. It added a whole new level of stress and hassle to my week and things still aren't fully resolved. I lost my US bank and credit cards, my UK cash card, my driver's license, PSU student ID card, and some other minor cards, but the bank cards are the most important. I was able to get cash from my UK bank so I had no immediate problems, but it really affects my travel plans and takes some alternate planning. I have no access to a Visa or Mastercard debit/credit card, which are accepted in almost every country and at basically any ATM so I'll have to carry around cash. My new credit card is on its way from the US, but I don't have a large credit limit so it'll have to be used sparingly. I had my Sovereign Bank account numbers in my wallet, so I had to close my account and open a new one. I'm waiting for some paperwork to arrive so I can sign those and eventually get my ATM card. That card would be the most useful to me but unfortunately it'll probably be the last one I get. I managed in Ireland by exchanging pounds for euros in cash and I'll probably have to do that again for the rest of our trip. I had a panic last Friday night because most banks here aren't open on Saturday and Sunday for me to make a cash withdrawal and I didn't have my new PIN number to use an ATM. Our flight left on Sunday night, so I would not have been able to get to a bank. I investigated using Western Union with my mom but that turned out to be a can of worms as well. I found a Barclays bank downtown that was open on Saturday though, so I was able to get cash and Pat didn't have to lend me money for the entire week. So after a lot of setbacks, I'm just happy to have things on their way in the mail and access to at least my UK bank account.
In the midst of sorting all this out, I was stage managing The Mikado for the Opera Society. My role as stage manager had a lot of tasks attached to it, several of which were added simply because most people in Backstage were exhausted from working on Fame the week before and had no interest in helping out with Mikado. An example list of things that kept me busy: ordering and hanging the backdrop, buying and constructing props (including a noose, bouquets, and lute guitar), painting chairs, draping a table to look like a fancy dressing table, reconstructing a set of stairs that were wobbly, making sure the lighting cues were correct and marking them in a script to "call" throughout the show (I tell the lighting board operator, who has pre-programmed all the lighting states, when a lighting change is approaching and then tell him exactly when to change the lights). I also had a different crew member onstage every night to help, so I had to brief them each night. Luckily there weren't too many scene changes or anything like that. I enjoyed working with the cast and got to know some of them pretty well. After the shows the cast and crew go out for a drink somewhere or eat curry, which was a good way to actually talk and get away from the business of the show. I had some frustrations with Backstage members, but have learned to trust my judgment and not assume that someone knows better than I do. I'm assistant stage manager for Parade, a musical about the South, that happens right after Easter break. My main job will be props, which I have done for a show at Penn State and enjoyed doing again for Mikado.
Amanda arrived on Saturday afternoon and I met her at the bus station. After getting settled in my flat, she went to The Eldon to watch the Ireland vs England rugby match and I stayed to finalize plans with Pat, who was soon leaving for the airport in Philadelphia. We talked through what to expect at the airports and secured a bus ticket form London to Leeds. I eventually went to The Eldon for the end of the match and we had dinner there before heading to the theatre for the closing night of The Mikado. I gave Amanda a tour of Riley Smith Hall (she's a fellow Penn State Thespian) and she helped get everything in order for the show. She eventually took her seat and I went backstage. After the show we had to take everything down and put it all away. The cast was having a house party, which we planned to attend, but strike took longer than expected and we were eager to get home and go to sleep.
The next day we headed for the bus station to meet Pat. He called early in the morning to let me know he made it to Heathrow and was about to go to the Victoria Coach Station to get the bus to Leeds. His cell phone doesn't work here though, so the success of the rest of the trip was unknown to us. We bought lunch and a rabbit cookie for him and settled onto a bench at the bus station and waited. His bus was a little late because of traffic, but no other problems. We went back to my flat to relax for a few hours before we had to go to the Leeds airport for our flight to Dublin. We had no problems until we went through security at the airport, where Pat had to forfeit his bottle of water and his shaving cream because they were too big for carry on luggage. Not an actual problem at all, but we had fun joking about the trip being completely ruined and that Pat would be dehydrated and grow a full beard by the time we returned.
In an hour we were in Dublin, heading to the city centre to walk around for a bit before going to Amanda's place. We walked down O'Connell Street, one of the main streets, and around Temple Bar, an area of pubs, bars, and clubs, where the St. Paddy's Day festivities were already in full swing. It got us excited for the next day. After grabbing some food at a kebob place, we went to Amanda's, which is in a suburb of Dublin called Mill Town in a great little rowhouse. We were up early the next day for the festivities. We met one of her housemates Agatha, who is from Poland, and Mehdi, a French guy who was a guest of Anne Claire, Amanda's French housemate. They were both fun and friendly; Mehdi soon left for the airport to go back to France, but Agatha promised to meet up with us later. We painted shamrocks on our cheeks and donned green bead necklaces before heading into the city to watch the parade. The streets were packed with people decked out in celebratory gear. The parade was beautiful. A lot of performance and arts groups were in it with large colorful costumes and displays. There were also a lot of international marching bands, including several from the U.S. We followed the parade route, stopping at good spots and watching for awhile before walking for a bit more. Afterwards we went to The Bleeding Horse, one of the oldest pubs in Dublin, for lunch before going to the ceili (pronounced kay-lee), which is the Irish equivalent of a barn dance. The one street was blocked off with a stage at one end and everyone was dancing and having a good time. We initially just watched, but then pushed into the middle of crowd and participated. When we had enough of hopping around and being jostled by the crowd, we went to St. Stephen's Green, a large public park. It was much calmer there and worth a stroll around. We were tired by then and eventually got a taxi back to Amanda's. We ate dinner and napped before getting dressed up for a night on the town. Our evening consisted of stops at McSorley's (a calm, fancier place), Flannery's (a loud bar), Cafe En Seine (a beautiful, extravagantly decorated bar), Temple Bar (another raucous pub), and Fitzsimon's (a dance club). It was a fun combination of different atmospheres and we had a really great time.
Tuesday was a day to sleep in and eventually leave Amanda to head to our next destination. We decided to go straight to Killarney because it was a long bus ride and skip Wicklow and Kilkenny because we couldn't find a good hostel in those places. We left Amanda's and headed to the bus station. We got off the city bus too early and ended up rushing the rest of the way to the bus station, but we made it on time. This was the beginning of our long relationship with Bus Eireann, the Irish equivalent of Greyhound. We spent the rest of the day on the bus, eventually arriving in Killarney, a charming little town. We asked around to find our hostel's street and soon found it. It was called Neptune's and proved to be a good place to meet fellow traveler's. We decided to go on a bus tour of the Ring of Kerry the next day, which is a loop of little scenic towns and vistas around the Iveragh Peninsula. Our tour guide was a retired man named Dermot who lived in the area his entire life. He told us a lot about the area and was very eager to chat with everyone and learn their stories. The tour took about 6 hours with many stops along the way. My pictures explain the Ring of Kerry much better than I can in words. That evening we went grocery shopping (almost all hostels have guest kitchens, so making your own food is a great way to save money) and planned the rest of our stay in Ireland. While waiting a long time to use the computer at the hostel, we met a guy named Lance who was staying at Neptune's and going to the same hostel we were going to for the next night for the Cliffs of Moher, so we agreed to meet up.
In the morning we checked out of Neptune's and went to the bus station to go to Blarney. How could we go to Ireland and not kiss the Blarney Stone?! I'll once again rely on Wikipedia to better explain the legend: click here for link to Wikipedia. We had to go through Cork and made it to Blarney by noon. It was a bit of a pain to have to carry around our bags, but we managed. Blarney Castle is the home of the Blarney Stone, which is on the top floor and requires a long climb up a lot of narrow, treacherous spiral stairs. We eventually emerged and joined the line to kiss the Blarney Stone, which was nothing like I imagined. You have to lay on your back and slide headfirst backwards over an opening that drops about 6 stories to the ground. At the bottom of the outside wall is the Blarney Stone. An interesting procedure to kiss it, but a worthy experience. After leaving the castle we looked around the grounds a bit before getting some lunch and the bus back to Cork, where we then had to head to Lisdoonvarna, the town near the Cliffs of Moher where our hostel was. We switched buses in Limerick and ran into Lance, so he became our companion for the rest of the trip. He's from California but studied in Prague, Czech Republic, for the fall and is now in Torino, Italy, for the spring. We made it to Lisdoonvarna later that night. Our hostel was called Sleepzone and was converted from a hotel, so it was really nice for a hostel. A little explanation of hostel life: most rooms have bunk beds for 6-8 people, bathrooms in each hall with several toilets, sinks, and showers, kitchen facilities, and common rooms with couches, maybe a tv and a computer with internet access. In our room in Lisdoonvarna was Jarrett, a guy also from California who is spending the next 13 months traveling and spending each month in a different country. Ireland was his first stop and he already had a lot of great stories to share with us. We spent the night hanging out in the room and talking. We plotted to wake up and go to the cliffs for sunrise, but when our alarm clocks went off early in the morning, we weren't as inspired and the weather was bad. We slept a bit more and eventually left for the cliffs around 9.
Our taxi dropped us off and we walked towards the visitor's center and the paths to the cliffs. The closer we got to the cliffs, the stronger the wind became. Short flights of stone stairs lead up to the highest lookout point with a stone wall as a barrier along the cliff edge for safety; apparently more than a few people have fallen along and off the cliffs when hit by an unexpected gust. The wind blew harder the higher we climbed up the steps. At the top is a tower and a flat area that we walked around for a bit. It was an interesting experience because you could take a few steps, but then had to stop and stabilize yourself against a particularly strong gust. At one point I had to crouch down because I felt like I would be blown over if I tried to stay upright. The Cliffs of Moher are beautiful and the strong wind added to the ruggedness. It was in this atmosphere that Pat lost his balance while skipping down some steps and fell down some stairs onto his left arm and shoulder. He initially thought he was ok but soon realized his shoulder really hurt and he couldn't really move it. I sent Lance for one of the park rangers and tried to figure out what to do. Pat's arm was resting in his lap and it was painful for him to move from that position, so we used his scarf as a sling for some support so he could walk and get out of the wind. We met up with Lance and a park ranger, Cormac, and he took us to first aid where they put his arm in a proper sling. His shoulder looked lower than his right one and he couldn't sit up properly, so we were afraid it was dislocated. They called a local doctor and a taxi to take us there so it could be properly examined. While getting up to walk to the taxi, he felt it spasm and pop and it suddenly felt much more comfortable. We parted with Lance and went to a nearby town called Lahinch, where Pat was examined by Dr. Kelleher, a friendly Irishman. He said it wasn't dislocated and had probably slid a bit out of place from the impact, but had righted itself when Pat stood up. This was all a great relief for many reasons: our flight left that night from Dublin, so we would have missed our flight if he had to go to the hospital for x-rays, etc; Pat doesn't have health insurance, which is complicated in another country even if you have it; and Pat didn't have a dislocated shoulder and only has to recover from a bad fall.
After paying for the doctor's visit and getting a prescription, our Ireland visit quickly drew to a close. We were able to catch the bus we intended to get, eventually making it to Dublin with exactly enough time to get to the airport and check-in. We were very glad to be back in Leeds for a few days. Ireland was a good practice run of navigating buses, finding hostels, and knowing more of what to expect. We can plan our upcoming travels a little better. I'll hopefully be able to write an entry on our plans before we leave on Wednesday. Today we made an Easter dinner and ate with my flatmates Benjamin and Michael, Michael's sister, brother, and cousin who are visiting, and my friend Steph. Michael and his family made some appetizers, Pat and I made a beef roast and vegetables, Steph brought rolls and wine, and Benjamin made an apple pie for dessert. Another interesting meal with a lot to learn and exchange about different cultures. Tomorrow and Tuesday I need to basically write an essay that has been plaguing me and is due at the end of break. We also need to buy our rail passes and book hostels for our journey. Much has happened and much more is coming up!
--Pictures posted: Ireland
March 16th
It has been quite the extraordinary week so I figured I'd post a quick update before dashing off to Ireland in about an hour. I lost my wallet on Sunday while working on The Mikado and it hasn't turned up, so I've spent the week canceling cards, getting new ones, and figuring out how I'm going to finance my upcoming travels. My UK bank card works at certain ATMs that are only in the UK, so it's pretty useless everywhere else. I'm not very eager to carry around a large amount of cash either. I've been trying to use Western Union with my mom but that isn't going smoothly either unfortunately. Needless to say, it's been a Murphy's Law kind of situation at the most inconvenient time. The opera went very well though and I really enjoyed working with the Opera Society. I went to some of their aftershow socials and made some good friends. I'll elaborate on that at another time. I also have some pictures from that to post sometime.
A fellow Penn State Thespian Amanda Ogden is studying abroad in Dublin and arrived in Leeds yesterday. She came to see The Mikado and stayed over last night. Then this afternoon we went to bus station to collect Pat, who arrived without any major problems. Making sure his journey from London to Leeds went well has also kept me busy this week and I'm glad it was successful. It's fun to have familiar faces around. We've been catching up on things, eating some dinner, and packing for Ireland. We leave from Leeds Airport and arrive in Dublin International; the flight's only about an hour. We're staying with Amanda in Dublin until Tuesday. St. Patrick's Day tomorrow! There are all sorts of parades and festivities going on, not too mention all the pubs to be visited. It should definitely be an event to remember. On Tuesday then we'll eventually leave Dublin and head towards Wicklow and later Kilkenny, Waterford, Killarney, Ennis, and Cliffs of Moher. We then fly back to Leeds from Dublin late on Friday and spend Easter weekend around Leeds. We should have the rest of our journey planned by then. Definitely a very busy and exciting time!
March 6th
The pressure is on here in Leeds! With the last week of classes before Easter holiday fast approaching, assignments need to be completed and I have an opera to produce. My essays are slowly but surely being written. It can be very tedious, but it must be done and I will be so relieved when they are finished. The exam schedule was posted today and I have exams on May 12th, 15th, and 22nd, which shouldn't be too bad. Classes end early in May and I only have those 3 exams to worry about until June 15th when I board my flight home. Should leave me a lot of time to go on some more trips to London or wherever. Some people are throwing around the idea of coming to visit and I definitely encourage it. The Mikado has become my pet project and should be a triumph. Everyone has a lot of work to do that week so it's been a bit a scramble to get a solid crew for each night. I've become the entire corps of stage management and spent the afternoon in the workshops in the Riley digging for props, paint, furniture, etc. The directors, Jimmy and Emma, then came to check out what I'd found and discuss what was still needed. They were pleased so all is well. Those festivities begin on Sunday, so that's where my life will be next week.
Last week I went to see Doctor Dolittle at the Leeds Grand Theatre. I've been a fan of the movie musical with Rex Harrison for a long time; my parents gave it to me for Christmas when I was younger. Added to all the Disney movies I sued to watch, it's no wonder I love musicals and theater. I went with my friend Sally from PSU who only knew of the Dr. Dolittle with Eddie Murphy, which is tawdry. We went for curry beforehand, another British staple that I hadn't eaten yet. We deciphered the menu as best as we could and managed to pick delicious dishes. I had a chicken dish paired with rice and naan, an Indian flatbread. Tommy Steele played Dr. Dolittle and was good, but of course Rex Harrison will always be the best to me. I had never heard of Tommy Steele, but apparently he's a well-known British pop star-rock idol-turned-actor type. It was a good show. They included all of the classics from the movie while adding some songs and scenes to give it more of a plot. The animals were all puppets or people in costume, which was some great staging and performance. I'm eager to watch the movie again sometime this summer.
On Friday I journeyed out into the cold, pouring rain to head to Milton Keynes and my HOST visit with Helen (who is now amongst you as a reader of this travelogue...hi Helen!). En route to the train station my umbrella met its end thanks to the wind gusts and I was unable to locate a taxi, so I eventually arrived dripping wet to the station. After toweling my hair dry, I bought my ticket and was on my way. Helen met me at the Milton Keynes train station. We chit chatted on the bus back to her house and she pointed out various landmarks along the way. Once at her house, I settled into the guest room and we prepared for relaxing evening. I was introduced to Grizelda, Helen's 18 year old cat, and Molly, a 2 year old cat that was staying with Helen until her owner returned from vacation. Not having access to a TV, Helen set me up with the cats to watch some shows while she made dinner. Dinner involved borscht (beet root soup), fish breaded with oatmeal, yogurt and raspberries, and a lot of conversation. Throughout the weekend we managed to cover a huge variety of topics: family, heritage, England, America, movies, literature, theater, travel, pets, marriage, food, children... Much to share and much to learn from both sides. After dinner we watched a program on Al Bowlly, another British singer I wasn't familiar with but now am determined to listen to in the future. We also planned what we would do the next day before heading to bed. I browsed Helen's books and eventually settled on "Rivals," a British romance novel that was an easy page-turner. Helen was nice enough to let me keep it and I actually finished it last night. Very good and amusing. Thanks Helen!
On Saturday we breakfasted then headed off to Oxford. We had a memorable encounter at the bus stop with a pregnant woman and her 3 young children who were also going to Oxford. She had been making the journey daily to visit her husband who had donated a kidney to his brother and was now ill in a hospital in Oxford. How she managed it every day, I'll never know. Her baby wasn't very pleased by it and cried periodically throughout the hour and a half drive. Upon arrival we set out for the covered market to buy vegetables for dinner. On the way we walked passed various university buildings like the Sheldonian Theatre and Bodleian Library and went into some of the small shops. The covered market was packed with stands selling fresh meat, fruit, vegetables,
etc. Helen bought cod roe from a fish stand and vegetables to go with the pheasant for dinner. We then went to Oxford Castle and toured the tower, crypt, and prison sections and learned about the long, dramatic history of
Oxford. It's so interesting to learn about the past inhabitants and their stories. After grabbing a bite to eat, we then headed back to Milton Keynes. Our evening was planned by the tv schedule with the movies Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, and Sweet Smell of Success to entertain us. Between movies, we had a dinner of cod roe, pheasant with vegetables, and different cheeses for after. The pheasant was from her friend's game, so we had a nice discussion about hunting and fishing that I of course had much to contribute to. She now knows much about you, Dad. Jane Austen was a happy topic for us, both books and movies, along with film and literature in general. With the cats for company, we passed a very enjoyable evening.
The next day began with a light breakfast and some downtime while Helen mowed her lawn in the nice weather. I read more of Rivals and took pictures of Grizzy and Molly. We then went into the city for dim sum with her son Jonathan and his wife Elona. Dim sum is Chinese breakfast where you order several different dishes and share with each other along with delicious Chinese tea. I can't remember what dishes we had, but they were all delicious. Jonathan and Elona were very nice and easy to talk to, with many questions about my life and
the U.S. Helen and I went to the Milton Keynes art gallery afterwards and looked at a Dutch artist's collection. It had several pieces involving a lot of mussels that we found a bit strange. I enjoyed the one piece though that
was a red canvas covered in rows of hatched egg shells. We soon headed back to her house for a walk around the area with her neighbor's dog Oliver, or Ollie. Helen lives an area called Simpson that has many historic buildings, including some that are listed in the Domesday Book (record of the great survey of England completed in 1086). Several cottages in the area have preserved thatched roofs that are a wonder. Ollie was wonderful to walk, very obedient and never far away. He found a ball that was put to good use throughout the
walk. We also walked along the Grand Union Canal that connects Birmingham and London and runs through Milton Keynes. After our walk we baked some chocolate oatmeal cookies. Our baking was suddenly interrupted by a power outage, however, so we eventually had to make use of a neighbor's oven. The cookies turned out to be delicious, so it was no inconvenience.
I decided to go home that evening so I could have a full Monday without a train trip eating up part of my day. Equipped with Rivals, cookies, and juice, Helen and I parted ways. We established a substantial bond over only a few days and I was sad to leave her. I felt that there was no age gap of note and that we were simply friends. I would like to thank Helen for opening her home and her life to me and being so, so attentive all weekend! It was very refreshing to get away from college life (which seems to be the same no matter where you are) and to be able get a new look into British life. The cultural differences between the US and UK may not be tremendous, but they are different and worthy of a study. Best of all, I had a new experience and made a good friend in the
process.
This week has passed quickly with classes and the approaching opera. Tomorrow I'm going on a shopping excursion to buy various props that we still need. Should be an interesting trip. I've been communicating with the HOBY UK people and trying to work out participating in that. It is over Easter break, so Pat will be here and is interested in participating as well. If he can't then I'll opt out and we can have a few more days of travel. The coordinator said they may have positions for us both though, so that's still being worked out. It would probably be a wonderful experience and, as much as I'd like to travel endlessly, knocking just a few days off our trip will make it a little more within our budgets. Our current main city-to-city itinerary looks something like the following: Leeds, Dublin, Wicklow, Kilkenny, Waterford, Killarney, Ennis, Cliffs of Moher, Dublin, Leeds, Stratford-upon-Avon?, Nice & French Riviera, Florence, Rome, Venice, Vienna, Salzburg?, Munich, Prague, Berlin, Amsterdam, Leeds. A mind-blowing journey that can be will remain so even if some destinations need to be passed up this time around and it all begins in about a week!
--Pictures posted: HOST Visit
February 26th
It seems that I am long overdue for an entry, so I'll make you wait no longer and should have quite a lot for you to make up for it. Last weekend I went to Newcastle on a trip with the international office. They offer cheap, convenient trips (the last one was Liverpool) and I figured that if they were taking us there, it must be a good place. It turned out to be a so-so kind of city. We were dropped off on one side of the Tyne River and had a pleasant walk across a bridge to get to the main part of the city. After climbing a very long flight of stairs to get out of the river valley, we emerged near the Castle Garth, which gives the city its name. The Castle Keep is the main fortress still standing with parts of the walls and other buildings scattered around the surrounding area. The Castle Keep was the main attraction of the day, full of long spiral staircases and stone passageways. The views of the city from the roof were amazing. It was a wonderful place to view the many cool bridges in Newcastle. We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around, seeing the Earl Grey monument and the Museum of Antiquities, which has artifacts from Hadrian's Wall. Hadrian's Wall extends from coast to coast and was built in 122 A.D. to divide the Roman Empire from the barbarians. The eastern end is near Newcastle, but we didn't have a chance to see it. On our way back to meet the bus we walked along the river and across the Millennium Gateshead Bridge, the newest bridge in Newcastle. It's built as two arches connected by cables, one as the support and one as the pedestrian bridge. At each end are two huge hinges and the bridge tilts into the air to allow boats to pass. It's a really neat structure that is a little hard to explain, but my pictures should make it more clear.
Last week passed quickly with classes during the day and Dance Expose at night. Classes continue to go well. I have an essay due the first week of Easter break for EU Environmental Policy and an essay for Air Quality due as soon as break is over, so my goal is to finish those this week. I will have no time to do them over break and would rather not have to set aside time from my travels. Backstage Society has no show to work on this week, and it's a welcome break. The Dance Expose was for a dance society on campus and was a pretty elaborate show for just dancing. They did dance sets that moved through the decades, starting with the 20s and going to the present. Lighting and sound were the biggest parts of the show that needed to be coordinated, along with some props and set changes. I was co-stage manager along with the president of Backstage, Sophie. I'm not particularly fond of any type of "co" position, especially in theater, and it made it a very frustrating week for me. Sophie acted as stage manager in communicating with the directors before and during set up and for the technical and dress rehearsals, then passed the show off to me for the actual performances. This frustrated me because everyone gets used to going to one person to ask questions and get final decisions, and then suddenly it's switched to me who they've had little interaction with, as I had just been working under Sophie's direction. I had to play catch-up very quickly and establish with everyone that I knew what I was doing in the process. The performances went very well, but it was the little blips in communication and "Who do we need to ask questions, Sophie or Jenna?", etc., that made each night trickier than it should have been. Next week is Fame, which I am not crew for because I will be preparing The Mikado for the following week. I have met with the directors already and am going to rehearsal to continue to build our relationship. Hopefully the show will go smoothly because I'll be able to work on it from beginning to end and not start somewhere in the middle.
I've now been in the UK for more than a month and I think I've been experiencing some delayed realizations of being away from home. I wouldn't call it homesickness; it's more like realizing I'm not just on vacation. It's one of those things you don't realize you're experiencing until something makes the feeling go away. Frustrations with Backstage, approaching assignment deadlines, and feeling that I have yet to meet the same caliber people as my U.S. friends have made the glow and charm fade a little. I believe they call it the "disillusionment stage" of culture shock. I'll stress though that I know all of this will only make me grow and that I'm probably just getting impatient. I've had years to develop friendships, while I've only been here for a little over a month. I have had Edinburgh this past weekend to once again remind me of the beauty and breadth of this country and I have this week to regroup and prepare for the many events on the way.
So first there's Edinburgh. Almost everyone I've met here is either dying to go to Scotland or is raving about having been there, so I was intrigued. There's a travel group called Don't Be a Tourist that has cheap trips for international students, so I signed up with my friends Steph, Natalie, and Laura (all from PSU) to go on a weekend trip to Edinburgh, which is the capital of Scotland. We left Leeds at 7 a.m. and had a 5 hour drive, stopping at the Angel of the North along the way. It is a huge steel statue near Newcastle that is a tribute to the industrial north of England. I think it looks like an airplane, which brings to mind the World Wars, etc. We eventually entered Scotland and its beautiful countryside. The craggy, highland landscape is more dramatic than England and has more primitive and barbaric undertones. Edinburgh immediately made me think of it as Bath's evil twin. The Georgian architecture was similar, but the stone blacker and the buildings more cramped. People didn't want to live outside the walls of the city, so they were forced to build up and had some of the first skyscrapers, making it an fascinatingly layered city. Edinburgh is also built on seven hills, so buildings may look like they're two stories from the front, but they actually extend many floors below as you move downhill. Over the weekend I would have experiences at all levels of the city, even those completely underground.
After checking into our hostel, we all gathered for a tour of the city given by Emily, a student there. We started in the Grassmarket, a small common area where there used to be markets, but also public executions. Many were hanged, burned, or beheaded there through Edinburgh's long history. The next stop was Greyfriars Kirk and cemetery. It's the sight of the Covenanter's Prison, which was basically the first concentration camp where the Covenanters were tortured and killed for their religion. The one area of the graveyard is behind locked gates and is where prisoners were stripped and forced to lay face down on the frozen ground surrounded by guards on the surrounding walls, who would shoot them if they moved. We would later go on a ghost tour that took us inside those locked gates! Overlooking the graveyard is the back windows of The Elephant House, the cafe where JK Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book. Across from Elephant House, on the other side of Greyfriars, is George Heriot's School, a high school housed in an elaborate medieval building that is said to be the inspiration for Hogwarts. Greyfriars is also famous for Greyfriars Bobby, the little sky terrier who sat on his dead master's grave until his own death.
We then moved from the Old Town into the New Town, which are separated by gardens and railroads. The Scottish Monument is in that area, which honors Sir Walter Scott, a famous Scottish author who is given credit for romanticizing Scotland and changing the way Scotland was viewed. We also heard our first strains of bagpipes outside the National Gallery and we made a beeline to get necessary pictures with the bagpiper. We then headed for Calton Hill, where the National Monument is located. Awesome views of the city! And it was incredibly windy, which was fun. Right outside the city are the Salisbury Crags and Arthur's Seat, an extinct volcano. It's a really cool mix of landscapes. The rest of the day was spent strolling around the city and taking it in. We went to the Scotch Whisky Experience and went on a tour that is exactly like Hershey's Chocolate World, except about the history and production of scotch whisky. Instead of a candy bar at the end, however, you get to sample whisky. Scotland is also the home of tartan, so we browsed some shops for various tartan things until dinner with our tour at The Elephant House, where JK Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book. A true literary landmark.
After dinner we went on the City of the Dead ghost tour. It was humorously presented and we learned a lot about Edinburgh's dark past of executions, murderers, grave robbers, etc. We revisited Greyfriars and learned more about Greyfriars Bobby, some other notorious people buried there, and the Covenanter's Prison. Things got pretty legitimate when we got to the Covenanter's Prison. We learned more about the prison and then about the Mackenzie Poltergeist that haunts the area and, in particular, the Mackenzie Mausoleum behind those locked gates I mentioned earlier. And we were going into it. To give you an idea of what our tour guide was telling us, here's some information from Wikipedia on George Mackenzie:
"Since 1990, Greyfriars Churchyard has been the site of unexplained events linked in the popular imagination to the ghost of Mackenzie. More than 350 attacks have been reported since 1990. Visitors reported feeling extremely cold or very hot, had the sensation of being held or tugged or their throats being squeezed and some complained later of bruises, scratches and gouge-marks on their bodies. Most attacks and feelings of unease occurred around MacKenzie's Mausoleum. An exorcist, Colin Grant, was brought in to perform an exorcism ceremony. A few weeks later, he died of a heart attack.
Edinburgh City Council closed off that part of the cemetery until an Edinburgh-based historian, Jan Henderson, persuaded the council to allow controlled visits to that part of the churchyard and in turn this developed into a nocturnal guided tour, which became a local attraction. Of the visitors who have taken the tour, over 400 have reported feeling various sensations of being touched, pulled, grabbed or similar and many of them have returned home to find dark bruising and/or deep scratches or their faces, necks, hands, bodies or legs. Greyfriars Churchyard and, in particular, MacKenzie's Poltergeist, have been featured on paranormal TV programmes, including Fox's Scariest Places on Earth and WE's Extreme Ghost Stories."
We were shepherded through the gates down a row of tombs facing the outer wall where guards used to watch the prisoners and into the Mackenzie Mausoleum. The tour group was at maximum capacity, so the entire space was filled. We were kept in there for about 10 minutes while the guide told us more about the poltergeist and its doings. Our stay ended abruptly when one girl on the tour said she wanted to get out, then proceeded to take a few steps before fainting. Whether it was from the paranormal or from freaking herself out in an enclosed, cramped space, who knows. It was still really creepy and definitely a thriller. After the ghost tour we went to The World Famous Frankenstein, a dance club/bar that was a fun place to unwind before heading back to the hostel.
On Sunday we had until 3:00 to see the rest of the sights in Edinburgh. Steph and I first headed to Edinburgh Castle, which had been looming over us the entire time. It is an awesome fortress that is surrounded by sheer rock faces on three sides. Inside the walls you pass through many gates and fortifications on a path that spirals around until it ends in the main courtyard. We joined a guided tour given by a true Scotsman. First is a battery overlooking the New Town, including the gun that is still fired every day at 1:00. Next are some smaller buildings where there used to be pasture and areas for livestock, and continuing up the hill are barracks that are still used to house soldiers. Through another gate is tiny St. Margaret's Chapel, which was built in the 12th century and is the oldest structure in Edinburgh. The huge cannon called Mons Meg is outside the chapel, which was retired and put there to be used for ceremonial occasions. Four buildings form a square around the central courtyard of Edinburgh Castle. One is the Scottish National War Memorial, which started as a World War I memorial that displays books listing the dead; other books were later added to include WWII and continue to the present. Second is the Royal Palace, where the Crown Jewels are displayed and the royal apartments are open. I was amazed to stand at the one window, looking straight down the cliff face, and thinking that Mary Queen of Scots probably stood there at one point. Amazing stuff. Another building is the Great Hall with its beautiful ceiling, its main feature. It is made only with wood and wooden pegs with no nails, screws, or anything, and is basically like a ship's hull turned upside down. We didn't go into the War Memorial or the fourth building, the Queen Anne Building, which has special exhibitions, because we wanted to catch a sightseeing bus to get a more complete tour of the city. Leaving the castle we passed a little boy, probably 2 or 3 years old, wearing a metallic knight helmet and carrying a little sword, toddling behind his mom shouting, "Mom, where's the dragon at?" It was probably the cutest thing I've ever seen.
We then went on a sightseeing tour to get a more comprehensive look at the city and a good commentary on its history. We learned more about things we had already seen and some new, like the New Town and the Palace of Holyroodhouse, which is the official royal residence in Edinburgh. It's one thing I would want to take a tour of if I went back to Edinburgh. After the tour we went to Mary King's Close. It's a street that has been built over and used as foundations for the building above, leaving it and its history preserved. There are several other closes underground, but only parts of them remain. Vaulted ceilings were added to provide structural support for the building above, leaving this oddly preserved underground street. Our guide played the character of a corpse collector during the plague, which had a huge impact on the lives of the people who lived in the tenements of Mary King's Close. We weren't allowed to take photos, but I found this one on Wikipedia to give you an idea of what I mean:
It's another really haunted site, so we learned a lot about the previous inhabitants and the paranormal activity. There was one room that still had nicely preserved walls where you could even make out the floral print on the wallpaper. Definitely a very cool experience. After Mary King's Close I wanted to buy something tartan, so I bought a beautiful cashmere tartan scarf from amongst the many kilt shops. It was then time to return to the hostel and board the bus back to Leeds. I definitely hope to return to Scotland. There are day trips that leave from Edinburgh and take a grand tour of the rest of the country that I would like to go on to see places like Glasgow and Loch Ness.
I'm currently making dinner (tomato cous cous mixed with corn and potatoes baked with chicken...delicious) and will eventually start working on my essays. I went to Mikado rehearsal last night and think I'm going to enjoy working on that show. I got to talk to some of the cast members and they were all nice and fun. I'm not familiar with the show so it was helpful to see some of the songs and scenes, in addition to getting to know more about the cast just by observing them. My flatmate Bora moved out on Sunday to return to Turkey for classes, so we're back down to three. A girl came to look at the flat yesterday though, so we may be getting another new face. I've finally heard back from the HOST program that arranges home stays with UK families and mine will be this weekend. I've been in contact with Helen Boyce, who is in her 50s, unmarried, and lives in Bedfordshire, near London. She talked about going to London to visit some museums or see a show or movie, which is perfect, and she has two cats, which I am excited about because I've been completely pet-deprived. That should be a new, unique experience and I'm looking forward to it.
--Pictures posted: Newcastle and Edinburgh (2 separate albums)
February 13th
This week I feel more settled into life in England than ever. My work with Backstage Society started on Friday and has been filling my evenings. This week's show is the Vagina Monologues, which is performed every year on or around Valentine's Day, known as V Day, raising awareness and money to stop violence against women. On Friday I learned more about the lighting aspect of theater and helped to hang and focus lights. Monday was the technical rehearsal, which took way longer than necessary because Backstage agreed to do this show last minute, so there was little preparation and we pretty much had to gather things as we went. This was probably actually a good thing for me because I got to start from the very beginning and learn where things are stored, etc. Working on a show from a purely technical aspect is new because I'm used to Penn State Thespians where we deal with the entire production. It's an interesting system, but I'm already convinced that it is more efficient to work on the entire production and not to try to sew together the performance with the technical the week of the show. But that is all theater politics, which I won't bore you with.
More exciting is my trip to Bath and Stonehenge over the weekend! Bath is an absolute gem and will very likely be my favorite city in England. Very early Saturday morning, Steph and I set out by train for the south of England. It was a 4 hour journey, which is amusingly regarded as a very long trip here. People are amazed when we shrug it off and inform them that it takes much longer to drive across Pennsylvania. The trip was uneventful, with only a last minute platform switch in Bristol to make us rush around a bit. We arrived in Bath and were immediately in love. The city's Georgian architecture and light stone give it a very European feel, more like Italy or France than damp, dirty England. Northern cities like Leeds and Manchester boomed during the Industrial Revolution, full of dirty industry, while Bath peaked as a popular vacation spot for the wealthy and fashionable in the 18th century. The city is designed to satisfy that social set: beautiful homes and city layout, lots of places to parade around in all your finery, the baths and waters for your health, and gathering places for balls and other amusements. It was fun to visit these places where so much splendor existed. I'm a huge Jane Austen fan, so visiting a city where she once lived and wrote about was wonderful.
We first headed to our hostel which is run by the YMCA to get rid of our bags. After a quick lunch, we headed towards the city centre to find a tourist information building and plan our day. We bought tickets for a hop on-hop off bus tour, which I've done in New York City and enjoy. The Bath Abbey, Roman Baths, and Pump Room are all in the same area and are the first stop on the bus tour, so we went into the Abbey first. It's a beautiful building and the most striking feature of the "Lantern of the West" is all of the windows and light. It has 52 windows for all the weeks of the year and each depicts some biblical scene. We were going to go to the Roman Baths next, but decided to get on the tour bus and see more of the city. Accompanied by an audio guide, we drove passed the Parade Gardens, where people used to walk, display their fine clothes, and gossip. Nearby is Pulteney Bridge over the River Avon, which is lined with shops. We then drove down some particularly posh streets, all the time learning about the history and design of the city. Steph and I decided to get off the bus about halfway through the tour to visit some of the attractions. It was a 24 hour bus ticket, so we could finish the tour the next day. We got off at the Royal Crescent, one of the landmarks of Bath. It is a huge horseshoe of beautiful houses and some of the most expensive real estate. Close by is the Circus, a circle of houses surrounding a park, which is also an example of the beautiful planning of the city. This lead us to the Jane Austen Centre, where we listened to a talk about Jane Austen's life and walked through an exhibit. The special exhibit was the costumes from BBC's recent Persuasion movie, which I recently watched so that was exciting. The gift shop was full of all the Jane Austen merchandise you could ever want, so I bought a tote bag.
We headed back to the Roman Baths and Pump Room because there was still time to experience that before everything closed. The baths were pretty awesome. With an audio guide, you first walk around the upper level of the complex looking down into the bath. Downstairs you go through museum-type exhibits about the Roman history of settling in England, the original building complex, the ceremonies to the goddess, etc. I enjoyed seeing the remains of the original Roman structure, which is now pretty far below the current street level. We're not used to such ancient history in the U.S. Further traveling in Europe will add to that sense of how recent a lot of U.S. history is. The Pump Room is connected to the baths and is a grand room where people used to meet. There's a fountain where they serve water from the Bath spring, which was believed to have medicinal powers. "Taking the waters" was high on my list of things to do in Bath. It wasn't as bad as I expected it to be, really warm with a strong metal taste. We were glad to eat dinner after that to get rid of the metal aftertaste.
For dinner we headed to Sally Lunn's, another Bath landmark. It's the oldest house in Bath and was where Sally Lunn, a French immigrant, made a particularly delicious bread that was used as a trencher. A trencher dish uses bread as the base with meat and vegetables on top of it. I had a pork trencher that was delicious, and we were determined to come back the next day to try the dessert Sally Lunn buns that they serve during the day. Our plan for the evening was a ghost walk, so we eventually met up with our guide outside the Crystal Palace pub. She was fun and chatty, but when it came to paranormal stuff she was intense. No one else showed up, so we had a private tour. The scariest stop was the first one, outside of this building called the Old Boiler Room. I don't remember all of the story behind it, but it was something about a young woman who had been sacrificed by the Romans on that spot and I was adequately spooked. Other stops included an old bath house, The Raven tavern, part of the wall built around the original settlement, and the theater. Lots of resident ghosts and sacred energy type things. It was an exciting way to learn more about the city from a local and to get our heart rates going a bit faster than usual. After that we were exhausted and went back to the YMCA to rest for the next day of adventures.
After breakfast, we got on the sightseeing bus once again to take the complete tour. The weather on Saturday had been great and we were glad it continued on Sunday. Halfway through the tour the audio guide system stopped working, which actually turned out to be a good thing. Our bus driver then gave a live commentary and knew so much about history and architecture. We were amazed that he had been only driving the bus when he gave a better tour than the prerecorded one. We walked around the gardens in the Parade Grounds and had lunch at Sally Lunn's. Our goal was to get a Sally Lunn bun with cream/jelly/assorted dessert choices, but ended up just having lunch there and being too full for the dessert buns. Oh well, my BLT on a Sally Lunn bun was fantastic. After retrieving our bags from the hostel, we boarded our bus to Stonehenge, which was about an hour away. It was nice to drive through the countryside. The guide pointed out various sites along the way and gave us a good introduction to Stonehenge. I'll never forget my first encounter with Stonehenge. We were driving along a road and I was watching a bunch of people walking towards these burial mounds on one side of the road, and then I just glance to the other side of road and bam there's Stonehenge. It took me by surprise, so I was amused. It really is just a bunch of rocks, but to see how big they are and think about how it was constructed and what it might have been used for is awesome.
After about an hour there we headed to nearby Salisbury to get our train back to Leeds. We first went to Waterloo station in London and had to navigate the Tube to get to King's Cross station. I was very excited to try my public transportation skills on the Underground and we had no problems. Once at King's Cross, we immediately headed towards platforms 9 and 10. In the Harry Potter books, the students board the Hogwarts Express at Platform 9 3/4 to get to Hogwarts, their school. King's Cross has embraced this and constructed the platform and what looks like a trolley passing through the barrier. It was an epic photo moment for me.
Life in Leeds is busy with classes, shows, keeping in touch, and making new friends. I enjoy these weekend excursions and am getting more and more excited about the Easter holiday. Almost one month away and only about 4 more months until I'm back in the U.S. This weekend is a day trip to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, which will be a nice and easy Saturday compared to last weekend's big excursion. Scotland will be the next long trip and should be as beautiful as everything else I've seen. Happy Valentine's Day!
--Pictures posted: Bath and Stonehenge (note: I made 2 separate albums)
February 4th
On Saturday Steph and I took a day trip to the Bronte Parsonage in nearby Haworth. We took a train from Leeds to Keighley (pronounced "Keith-ley" as we soon discovered). At Keighley we then had to switch trains, and to our huge delight, it turned out to be an old steam locomotive that operates on weekends. It was very cool to see it chug into the station, where they then moved the locomotive from one end to the other to take us back to Haworth. We took pictures before boarding and got comfortable in our springy seats and wiped some steam off the windows so we could see. We chugged along and were soon in Haworth. After alighting we asked someone in the station the way to the Bronte Parsonage, and then set off up a long cobbled hill that brought us to the main street, where we crossed and continued uphill along a narrow, shop-lined street. Haworth was my first small town experience in England and I definitely enjoyed it. Leeds and Liverpool are great cities, but nothing beats walking along little quaint streets that look like a movie set. It also snowed on Saturday! I woke up and was very surprised to see about an inch of snow outside my window. It continued to flurry when we were Haworth, making it even more picturesque.
We eventually made it to the Bronte Parsonage and took a tour. Each room is set up as they expect it looked during the Brontes life, usually with their original furniture and personal items. The most interesting thing to me was in the dining room where they had the actual sofa where Emily Bronte (who wrote Wuthering Heights) died from tuberculosis. Seeing objects like that really give you an eerie feeling. Their dresses and things also bring them to life, just imagining that that garment was worn by the living, breathing person. Their mother died from cancer when they were young, so they lived with their father, who outlived them all. All of the Bronte children died relatively young. Two sisters died at around age 10, then their only brother Branwell died from tuberculosis in his late 20s. Later that same year, Emily also died from the same illness. Anne, also a well-known author, soon got sick as well, and despite taking her to the coast for treatment, she died and was buried there. Charlotte (Jane Eyre author) went on to get married, but died from complications with pregnancy. Her husband lived into his 80s, but was still outlived by the Bronte father. It was interesting to learn so much about their lives and see their personal objects to go along with it all, such as their dog's collar and Charlotte's wedding bonnet.
After leaving the parsonage we walked around the church and graveyard to take some pictures. The Bronte family vault is in the church, but we didn't go inside. I don't think it's accessible or anything anyway. We then had lunch at The Black Bull, where I had a beef Yorkshire pudding, which is a pastry/bread bowl filled with slices of roast beef and gravy. I'm enjoying hardy British food. We were going to walk out to the surrounding moors which were the source of inspiration for Emily's Wuthering Heights, but we didn't have enough time for the proper hike before we had to catch the train. We window-shopped and made our way back down to the train station, where we chugged back to Keighley and then on to Leeds. By the time I made it back to my room, I was exhausted from a long day of walking, but really enjoyed Haworth and rural historic England.
Michael, Benjamin, and I have been having fun trying to learn how to play the game Risk, which was left behind by the flat's previous inhabitants. None of us have played it before, so it's our goal to learn. Last night we all had dinner with Nona, a girl from the Netherlands who has been here since the fall and knew the people who used to live here. I met her on my first night here and she also knows Michael. We had a good conversation about American college life, movies, traveling, etc. I eventually left to go to a Super Bowl party some guys from PSU organized. They're friends with the owner of the pub The New Inn, and he offered to shut down early and let us have a private party. About 50 people were there, so it was a sizeable event. The game didn't start til like 11:00 and ended around 3:00. There was a handful of British people there and it was amusing to hear their thoughts on American football. Some of them probably know more about it than I do.
Today I heard from my friend Amanda Ogden from Penn State who is currently studying in Dublin. Pat and I will be able to stay with her while we're there for St. Patrick's Day, so that's wonderful. I'm relieved because accommodation is super expensive and packed that weekend. I've already booked a cheap flight from Leeds to Dublin leaving late on the 16th and returning on the 21st. I want to participate in the UK Hugh O'Brian Youth Leadership seminar like I do in PA, but it's the second weekend of break, so I've been fashioning travel plans around that. My current thoughts are Ireland the first week, then England the second week including HOBY. The last two weeks will then be a solid excursion in continental Europe. We could have done a few countries before HOBY and a few after, but that gets expensive and inconvenient and still only leaves about 2 weeks of travel time so might as well do it all in one shot.
The Bath and Stonehenge trip is all set and fast approaching. I've heard great things about Bath and can't wait to see that beautiful city. On the 23rd-24th I'm going to Scotland! We found a cheap all-inclusive student bus tour to Edinburgh. Everyone raves about beautiful Scotland is and I'm excited to experience it firsthand. I'm definitely keeping myself occupied travel-wise. Work with the Backstage Society starts on Friday and is sure to add another dimension to my life here.
--Pictures posted: Haworth
February 1st
February already! I'm very excited for March and it's not so far away now. My Easter holiday is March 13th-April13th and Pat is arriving on March 15th to join me for that break to journey into continental Europe. I've started some heavy research and planning for that trip. St. Patrick's Day is March 17th, so what better way to start our travels than to go to Dublin for that? Some other people I know here are going and we'll definitely be joining them, along with some additional traveling around Ireland. In addition to Ireland and some places in England, it looks like we'll be going to France, Spain, Italy, Austria, Germany, and the Netherlands on a whirlwind train expedition. I think I can confidently say that trip will be the highlight of my time abroad, perhaps even my life.
This week started out slowly but improved quickly. After the excitement of the Liverpool trip, I was quite bored on Sunday and Monday, which made me miss my student life at Penn State. I rallied, however, on Tuesday night and decided to go out to the international student night at The Eldon pub. I was trying to avoid only hanging out with the other people from Penn State, but I realized that they are a good starting point. It was a good night and I had good conversation with some Brits about the differences between the UK and the US. The best thing about the US? Free drink refills! Definitely an interesting conversation. It's also interesting how much they know about US politics and history and how little we know about them. They were all familiar with Hilary Clinton, Barack Obama, and the status of the election, but I can only name a handful of prime ministers. I'm realizing how big America really is on the international stage. America is mentioned at least twice in every class I have, whether it's about L.A. smog, Pittsburgh pollution, or American politics. I continue to really enjoy my classes, especially EU Environmental Policy. I've learned more about the EU in one week than I have ever before. It's another subject Americans pay painfully little attention to and I wish had been talked about more somewhere in my past education.
Another flatmate has joined us here in E1.1 named Benjamin from Paris, France. He's doing an internship with the university and just arrived last night. He seems quite friendly. There's still one empty bedroom; maybe a female flatmate will join us? Luckily living with 3 European guys is very different than living with 3 American guys and I hardly notice it. On Tuesday I went to an information session for the HOST program, which places you with a host family for a weekend somewhere in the UK. It was only 20 pounds to apply, plus travel costs, so I signed up immediately. They'll be in touch with me eventually about available hosts, so I'll be sure to update on where I might be going. I think it'll be a very interesting glimpse into real English home life and I'm excited to just meet new people.
The news that really improved my week came from the Backstage Society and promises an end to my relative boredom. Since I'm new to their organization, I applied for stage crew for the first few shows so I can learn how they operate and get familiar with their theatre, and applied for assistant stage manager or stage manager for the shows later in the semester, when I know the ropes. They emailed on Wednesday with positions, and I'll be doing stage crew for two shows (one starting next Friday already), stage manager for The Mikado in March, and assistant stage manager for Parade in April! I'm glad that they've put faith in my abilities and that my schedule is definitely going to speed up. By the end of Parade, it will be May and time for exams, essays, and the approach of my journey back to the US.
The trip to Bath and Stonehenge has been put off until next weekend. We were able to get better deals and make better plans. Our train tickets are already bought and all we need to do is book our bed and breakfast in Bath. We'll be taking the train from Leeds to Bath, getting there at about 11:30, leaving plenty of time to explore the city and all of its Jane Austen-related history. After spending the night in a B&B, we'll go to Stonehenge on Sunday before returning to Leeds from Salisbury at night. That'll check two major sites off of my travel list. I think London and Stratford-upon-Avon are the next big ones. This weekend I'll hopefully go to the Bronte Parsonage and other things close to Leeds.
So this week has taken many plans and put them into motion, leaving me impatient for them to start actually happening! I was glad to hear from people that they're enjoying this travelogue and my photos. Email at any time and let me know what's happening back in the US or if anything strikes your interest.
--Pictures posted: 2 pictures added to "Leeds"
A drop-down menu on a British train website that really shows some cultural differences
January 26th
Over the past few days, England threw another weather treat at us: wind! It finally stopped raining and then it became unbelievably gusty, so much so that I really thought I was going to be knocked over. I've heard that it was even windier in the fall. Crazy things here! I've also sorted out my classes and decided to drop Meteorology and Microeconomics and add Atmosphere of Planet Earth, which involves some meteorology. My favorite class by far is EU Environmental Policy, so I was more than happy to drop Microeconomics, which clashed on my timetable. Microeconomics can be taught anywhere; learning about the EU while in a member state isn't as accessible. There's only about 9 people in that class and we managed to be pretty international with people from Canada, Germany, Sweden, and England, with me representing the U.S. We've already had some great discussion about environmental policy and the problems associated with it. I think it will definitely have a huge impact on my entire future and thinking about environmental policy, which is exactly what I hoped to gain career-wise from this experience. Interesting fact: I have class in a small building on campus called Botany House, where J.R.R. Tolkien (author of The Lord of the Rings) worked and wrote as a professor at Leeds in the 1920's! Pretty cool.
This morning I was up bright and early to go on a trip to Liverpool run by the International Office. It was a quick 2 hour bus ride to that famed seaport. I was a shameless tourist and brought along my guidebook and camera in order to tackle the city. Liverpool was named the 2008 European Capital of Culture, so there's a lot going on there right now. The bus dropped us off at Albert Docks, a popular waterfront area with museums and shops, but my friend Steph and I headed into the city to buy tickets for the Magical Mystery Tour, a bus tour that went to all the famous Beatles-related sites in Liverpool. On the way to the tourist center we came across many beautiful buildings and monuments, like the Queen Victoria Memorial. We bought tickets for a 2:30 tour, so we had a few hours to explore. We went to the Town Hall, which was hosting a Holocaust exhibit, and explored the beautiful building. We also discovered a pub called the Hog's Head, significant because that is a pub in the magical village of Hogsmeade in Harry Potter. There was no question that we would eat lunch there. I've been really enjoying British foods! At the Hog's Head I finally had bangers and mash (sausages and mashed potatoes). I'm also a huge fan of Cornish pasties (pronounced pah-sties), which are basically the most delicious Hot Pocket you'll ever have. It's a flaky pastry full of a really thick stew of steak, potatoes, onions, etc. I've also had fish pie. No fish and chips or curry yet, but there's plenty of time. I hope to try all the British specialties in my travels. So after bangers and mash and a pint, we saw St. George's Hall and other historic buildings before heading back to go on our tour.
Our tour guide was a true Scouser who actually knows Paul McCartney and played John Lennon's best friend in the movie "In His Life: The John Lennon Story." Oh and it turns out that scouse is a meal that shipworkers used to eat, so they were soon called scousers, which grew to refer to anyone from Liverpool. Though I'm not a huge Beatles fan, I am definitely a fan and it was really neat to visit their home turf and learn so much about them. Our first stop was at George Harrison's birthplace, a tiny section of a row of houses where he was born right there in the front room. We also saw John Lennon's childhood home, then went to Strawberry Field. It used to be a Salvation Army children's home and is now used as a Salvation Army training facility, so you can go and look through the gate at it. Our tour guide had so many interesting facts and anecdotes that I wish I could remember and share with you, but alas. We then saw Paul McCartney's last home in Liverpool, where he lived with his dad and where hundreds of songs were written and rehearsed. It's so neat to see the humble beginnings of genius. Penny Lane is actually a bustling intersection, but the tour guide pointed out the shops that are mentioned in the song (most are different now). I liked his stories about Liverpool's reactions to John and George's deaths, how they celebrate their birthdays, how Paul did a surprise acapella version of "Yesterday" at a George Harrison memorial concert that had the thousands of people there in tears. The tour ended at the famous Cavern Club, where The Beatles played hundreds of times in their early years and where their manager Brian Epstein first saw them and signed them. It's really cool to have been to these places known so well and made famous by such an international musical phenomenon. Every time I hear their songs I can say, "You know, I've actually been to..." Steph and I headed back to Albert Docks to walk around there until we had to board the bus. There's a Maritime Museum and a Beatles Museum, but I was happier going on the bus tour and seeing things. We got some great waterfront pictures.
My first excursion outside of Leeds was a great one and we're already planning more for next weekend. Steph suggested going to Stonehenge, which grew into also going to nearby Bath. We plan to make a weekend of it and stay overnight in either Salisbury (nearest town to Stonehenge) or Bath. We also discovered that there's a Jane Austen Walking Tour in Bath and I am totally excited. This Friday we might also explore some things here in Leeds and close by, like the Bronte Parsonage. That will be nice after a week of starting some real work for my classes. I joined the Backstage Society on Thursday, so I will hopefully be applying for some positions and getting busy with that. When I get bored I have moments of "What am I doing here?" but then I do things like join a society and go to Liverpool and I'm reminded : ) It's hard to believe I've only been here 10 days; I can't even predict what will happen after 5 months.
--Pictures posted: Liverpool
January 23rd
Classes have begun now, adding another layer to my study abroad experience. My current classes are Environment and Economy, EU Environmental Policy, Air Quality, Intermediate Microeconomics, and Meteorology. Environment and Economy seems like it will be interesting, but I'm looking into dropping Meteorology. It's a second level class that I have no background in, so it seems like it will be too much work for something basically unrelated to my major. It would have counted towards my Watersheds and Water Resources minor, but I have a lot of other options for that. Tomorrow I'll have the other classes. Microeconomics currently clashes with EU Environmental Policy, so I'll have to get that sorted out somehow. I want to wait until I've seen what each one is about before making any decisions, though I've already started looking for other classes I could take. Hopefully by next week I'll have a transformed, satisfactory schedule (or timetable, as they call it here). Attending lectures is basically the same as it is at PSU, but there's a lot less in-class time. I have class only 1-3 hours a day, but they expect you to do a lot more outside reading, so the library is next on my "To conquer" list. There's also very few homework assignments, with most of our grade (usual 70%) riding on the final exam or paper. No wonder they offer a lot of services for exam time stress!
Another flatmate moved in on Monday morning, Bora from Turkey. He was here last semester and lived upstairs with all British flatmates, who are renowned for being messy. He was amazed by how tidy everything is here. His classes don't start in Turkey until March, so he's staying in Leeds without taking classes until then. There's still two empty rooms, so we'll see if they are filled by the end of the semester. I'll be perfectly happy if no one else moves in though; less traffic, noise, etc., and more space in the bathroom and kitchen. I bought a good supply of groceries , so everything in my flat life is going well.
I was informed that the backstage work on all university shows is done by the Backstage Society, so I've been in touch with them and am arranging to have lunch with a member to learn more and get started. They said they were excited to hear from me because they need people to run shows, so I'm ready to be very busy! Class, theatre, and traveling should be more than enough to occupy my time here. On Saturday I'm going to Liverpool on a trip through the International Office. I'm excited to start seeing more of England and learning about the wide range of cultures. Liverpudlians (also called Scousers) have the craziest accent, so we'll see how I fair when I encounter that. There's also a lot of Beatles-related things to do there. A trip to Stonehenge is still in the works and I've been combing my England guidebook for other places I'd like to go. I learned that the Brontes (sisters who wrote Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights) lived really close to Leeds. A trip to their home (now museum) and a few other great houses and things in the Leeds area will have to happen soon. It should be a good way to get acquainted with the train and bus system before longer journeys are attempted.
Life here in Leeds has slowed down considerably in the one week since I arrived. Getting myself settled into my flat has helped relax me enormously, and having classes and societies lined up will put me into my usual super busy school routine that I enjoy. The feeling that I live here has replaced the "on vacation" way I was feeling. I put my camera in my bag for tomorrow so I'll hopefully I'll have some city and university pictures to post tomorrow night. The weather has been pretty clear the last two days and I hope it continues!
--Pictures posted: Leeds University and the surrounding area
January 19th
The days leading up to my departure were surreal, and arriving here has been even more so. Mom, Leon, and Pat escorted me to Philadelphia International and left me there to strike out on an over 4000 mile journey. After a tearful goodbye, both happy and unhappy, I went through security successfully and waited for my flight. My very first flight was from Philly to DC and was only a half an hour, so it was a good starter. It was then time for the big journey from DC to London. It took 6 hours, but I jumped ahead 5 hours, so I was pretty confused by the time I entered Heathrow. The flight went quickly; I watched The Jane Austen Book Club, ate an in-flight meal, and slept. Heathrow is a sprawling mess of a terminal, but I managed to navigate it with no problems. I met another guy, John, studying abroad at Leeds from RPI in New York. We compared travel stories and prepared for our arrival in Leeds. It was another short flight to the Leeds-Bradford Airport, where I got my first pounds, got something to eat, then booked a taxi to take me to my accommodations.
The taxi flew along the narrow roads, giving me my first real British experience. The roads are closely bordered by thick hedges, making the trip even more thrilling. It's a general theme here, having everything squashed together. I never realized how used to open space I was. I found the St. Marks Residence Office and got my keys. I wandered around the block to Block E, where two nice English guys helped me get my stuff inside. My building is a collection of flats. You enter the flat, and come into a narrow hallway with the kitchen on the right and bathroom on the left, then bedroom doors fill the rest of the hallway. My flatmates weren't around, so I got into my room and started unpacking. It's a pretty small room that was a little depressing at first, but now I'm pretty fond of it, even with its barred windows. I soon met Hector, another international student from Spain. He informed that he and everyone else was moving out in a few days. They were all here for the fall semester and were just finishing their exams. I eventually met everyone else, who came from Germany, Brazil, and Holland. They were all very nice, but it was odd that they were leaving. I spent my first night unpacking and making my room livable. I also got in touch with other Penn Staters that are here and we made plans for the next day. I didn't have bedding, so my first night was a memorable one.
The next day I met up with Steph, who was in some of my classes last semester and is in my major. We went to the International Office to begin orientation. We went on a city tour, which was very helpful in learning where to shop and do things. I've made several shopping excursions already and my room is pretty much complete. My next big trip is for major groceries. I also learned a lot about the weather and fashion of Leeds on my second day here. It's currently very rainy, which gets very annoying. After soaking two pairs of shoes and constanly having wet jeans, I realized why everyone wears boots with their jeans tucked into them. It supposedly gets drier from here on out, but we'll see. I had two orientation meetings that were helpful in getting to know other international students and giving us something to do while we adjusted. There's about 20 students from Penn State, which I think is the most from one university. It's becoming a joke that everyone is from PSU. In three days I've managed to meet people from a huge range of countries, so I've already done way more than I expected here at Leeds. Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Germany, Holland, France, Spain, Italy, China...to name a few. I'm now eager to start classes and join some kind of organization to get involved with the locals.
I've emailed the Stage Musical Society, which seems very similar to Thespians. They're doing Fame for their spring show, and it would be great to have that to keep me busy. The term starts on Monday, but I don't have class until Tuesday. Until then I need to sort out my schedule, class locations, a bank account, etc. It's a lot, but my to-do list gets shorter every day. I'm glad I'm not dealing with another language on top of it all. My only flatmate (so far) is Michael from Germany, and he asked me to help him with his registration because he's been having problems with it and needs a native speaker. I cleaned the kitchen this morning, and later he mopped, cleaned the bathroom, then was cooking...I think we'll get along! Other people should be moving in, but I'm not sure when that will happen. Next weekend is a trip to Liverpool and we're looking into going to Stonehenge the next weekend, so I'm looking forward to traveling around the country. It'll be fun to meet more English people and have them for guidance. I still feel like a tourist and it's off-putting to know that the moment you open your mouth, everyone will know you're American. I don't think I'll be quite as self-conscious of it when I'm more savvy, and I'm on my way to that!
--Pictures posted: My room in St. Marks Residences
