My second raid on London I had to do alone, because Caity was stuck in the dorm reading all the plays of Shakespeare and writing a short story about mice fooling drunk cats. It was a Sunday and I was hoping to get into Westminster Abbey for service. This way I could have a chance to appreciate how live music sounds in that church (always nice) for free (also not bad). My mother pulled off a trick like that when she was in London and her description made me look forward to the experience. Little did I know what was awaiting me. I am getting ahead of myself, however, and should tell the story properly from start to finish.
I got off-peak tickets only for the train to and from London for 16 pounds because I was running a bit low on money. "I'll walk around, get some exercise and maybe see something small and unexpected and be able to stop to investigate it" - I told myself. Upon receiving the tickets I put them in a back pocket of my jeans.
I started the day by walking to Buckingham Palace from Victoria Station, thus having an opportunity to view the royal residence from a different angle. Right before the Queen's Gallery and the back entrance to the Palace there is a underground pedestrian pass. As I descended into it I was met with a strong smell of cheap beer and unwashed human. On the floor of the pass lay two matresses, one of them was occupied by what looked like a pile of rags with a weathered red face slightly protruding from under it. I had heard of the growing wealth disparity in Britain, so I naturally saw some symbolism in a beggar living almost at the doorstep of Buckhingham.
As I emerged from this underpass, I was greeted by a egyptian-style building that houses the Queen's Gallery. I didn't have money to go inside the gallery, so I just walked around some of the halls and browsed the collection of postcards in the museum shop. Having found some very authoritative-looking columns and no interesting postcards, I continued on my way, went around the front entrance to the Palace, cut through Hyde Park and found myself in Kensington Gardens.
Caity said somewhere in these gardens there was a monument to Peter Pan, who allegedly lived in the area. I wasn't particularly interested in a specific goal, however, I just wanted to roam around a grassy area, and Kensington Gardens proved to be exactly the right place for it. It is what in Russia would be called an "English park" with well-tended lawns and sparingly placed trees and bushes.
From the Gardens I saw a tall gilded spire and navigated to where it stood. I came out of the park onto a sqare with a quite sizeable monument to king Albert, that for some reason reminded me of Charlemagne's reliquary in Aachen. Perhaps it was all the gold on the sculptures.
Across the street from this monument was the Albert Hall and some very neat brick buildings. The English like their brick, I have to say, just like they like their classical/empire architecture. I made a semi-circle around the Hall and started meandering through the area behind it, heading gradually in the direction of Westminster Abbey, where I was planning to catch the 3 pm service.
After walking through some extremely posh-looking neighborhoods I happened to pass what I at first took to be a Greek Orthdox church. I stopped and read the sign on it: Russian Orthodox Cathedral of the Dormition - Dioceze of Surozh. I had stumbled upon a Russian Orthodox church! And the main cathedral in London, at that! I of course walked in and for the first time had a chance to see how a romanesque basilica looked as an Orthodox church. My impression was that it was looked less unusual inside than outside.
As I continued to probe my way towards Westminster, I found myself once again at the entrance to Hyde Park. This time I encountered some cavalry Guards on their huge black horses and with slightly ridiculous-looking plumed helmets on their heads. They were peacefully trotting in the direction of Buckingham Palace and, seeing as that was approximately where I was headed too, I attempted to keep pace with their column for a s long as I could. In the process I discovered that an average horses's walking speed is roughly equivalent to a brisk stride for me. Upon reaching the Palace, the troops and I parted: they turned left in the direction of Traffalgar square and I branched off right towards Westminster.
Visiting one church made me late for service in another. I missed the 3 o'clock one at Westminster by an hour and was told by the gatekeeper that there wouldn't be any until 6 pm. Not too much disappointed by this, I decided to hit the road to see the Globe Theater before the service.
As I crossed the Westminster Bridge I saw a demonstration against some health-care reform. "I really should read more newspapers" - I tell myself sometimes.
I then raided the nearby McDonald's bathroom, despite some authoritative signs prohibiting non-customers entrance, and continued along the southern bank of the Thames, a touristy and bustling part of town. There I finally bought a proper map of London along with a candy bar to eat. Food slips my mind sometimes, to be honest, and then reminds of the necessity of its intake in the most inconvenient places.
I made it finally to the Globe, a well-kept-looking bauwerk rotunda, overshadowed by neighboring modern glass giants. Entrance was 12 pounds, I dared not spend that much on a building where I didn't plan to live, so I moped around a bit in the lobby (I seemed to do that a lot during this trip), overheard the ticket sellers discussing their personal finances and went back out onto the windy esplanade.
Having taken the Millenium Pedestrian Bridge to the other side of the river, I strode my way back to Westminster past an imperial river-front, an obelisk 'acquired' from some egyptian tomb (I found it amusing how certain objects and symbols keep getting recycled by humans with power) and erected to honor queen Victoria.
This time I was fifteen minutes early for the 6 pm service and queued up along with a multitude of other foreigners at the entrance. Before we were let in, a slightly desperate-looking priest warned us that this was in fact a service, not a tour, and asked all those planning to take pictures or walk around to come back the day after for an offical tour. Some of the more honest in the queue left. I stayed.
We were then shuffled past the graves of some prime ministers and kings into the central part of the cathedral, where the naves intersect with the transcept. The cathedral was lit only on the ground level and so the gothic roof with its branching arches was full of shadow, increasing the impression of being in a forest. I thought it was a very majestic place, which made what follow the more painful.
For in this majestic place assembled a bunch of foreingers, not all christian and definitely mostly not aglican and these presumptuous people, instead of hearing the beautiful sound of a well-trained choir singing hymns, were asked to sing said hymns themselves, as well as listen to a sermon about life being a pilgrimage. I hope no one will get offended by what will follow. I tried to record only my observations and opinions and this is by no means a reflection on the overal state of the Anglican Church or Christianity of today.
Singing, of course, was a complete disaster. A catholic spanish couple next to me mumbled something very approximately in tune under their breath. A young fellow across the aisle refrained from singing at all. I tried to listen to the first verse and then emulate the melody in it when the second verse was sung. Not having any practice in this tradition, I naturally failed a lot and had to occasionally descend into mumbling and humming, much like my Spanish neighbors. A quick look around the church confirmed my guess that the majority of the 'parish' was experiencing the same problems. One or two actual anglicans with trained voices led the chorus, but they were the meager spots of knowledge in a sea of complete and natural ignorance and incompetence.
After we had butchered a couple of hymns, the nun who led the service read us a sermon based on some passage from the Bible about life being a voyage in an almost tear-inducingly powerless voice. She also thought it relevant to mention then that the abbey had always been a center of pilgrimage in England and that its founder (Edward the Confessor), whose day of birth or death was soon, was also keen on such religious journeys. I believe there was something more to her sermon, but I don't remember it anymore. When she was done, we were asked to torture several other hymns before being ushered out of the cathedral, so that the next group could be let in to, presumably, do the same thing.
I walked out of the Cathedral not very pleased with myself for botching an important to someone else ritual as a result of my desire to be a sly tourist. I then trekked over to Victoria station where I discovered that I had lost my return ticket to Brighton with 4 minutes till the earliest train. I was so upset by this, that without a second thought, purchased a one-way ticket for a ridiculous 22 pounds, missing my train by a minute. As I was waiting for the next train the second thought did arrive at my brain and I realized that I could have saved 4 pounds by buying another off-peak 2-way ticket. I swore a bit to myself at such a ridiculous price arrangement and at my own poor panic-influenced decision-making and boarded a train heading South.
My second day in London, though it began so well, ended on this unfortunate note.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Londinium I
I originally had no idea how far away from London in fact the city of Brighton was. I guess that was not such good planning on my part, but I don't regret this because I got to stay and hang out with a friend, as opposed to being stuck in a hostel in London alone. In fact, I felt like the two days that I spent just walking around London gave me a fair impression of what the main tourist attractions in the center of town looked like. This impression is something that I can further build on if I find myself in the city once more.
Caity and I calculated that the best ticket for us would be an all-day off-peak rail, tube and bus pass for 19 pounds. Off-peak meant we had to travel to London after 10 am and head back to Brighton no sooner than 7 or 7:30 pm (I don't remember exactly anymore). In exchange for that we could use any tube trains or buses during the day inside zone 1. This restriction didn't bother us because all the attractions were located in that zone.
Our first destination was the Sherlock Holmes Museum. We got there from Victoria Station using the Tube. Despite it being "off-peak" the stations and trains were quite full and I was reminded of the good old days when I had to shove my way into a subway train in Moscow. There was something different this time: unusually shaped doors. For some reason in the Tube some trains (I only took one, so cannot speak for all of them) have very low slanting roofs and the doors follow the roof contour, yielding something like this as a result. While this looks cool and extraordinary, it seems quite impractical in the case of much human traffic, because the people left standing next to the entrance have to always be aware of their head (or neck in the case of very tall individuals) getting hit by a closing door. Then, after the doors have closed, they are stuck in a slightly ridiculous posture with head and shoulders bent into the car, following the shape of the doors.
At the time Arthur Conan Doyle was writing, 221 Baker Street did not exist in reality. This address, I believe, was specifically created for the Sherlock Holmes Museum later. The museum itself was primarily an example of a mid or late nineteenth century interior with the majority of the house consisting of a staircase trunk, with a couple of rooms strung around it on every floor (of which there were at least 4), like leaves or some hollow kind of fruit.
We were greeted on the first floor by a sly-looking old man wearing an ascot who, upon hearing that we were from Boston, remarked on the high quality of tea parties in that city. We chuckled at the "compliment" and Caity proceeded to persuade me to be in a touristy picture, holding a pipe and wearing Holmes's hat on my head (can be seen left). We had some Swiss people, speaking their incomprehensible dialect of German, take said touristy picture.
We then went up the staircase to higher floors where we encountered some wax figures depicting some of Holmes's famous cases. Likely an influence of the nearby Madamme Tussaud's, these figures seemed strange to me in a victorian house.We looked at them for a bit, then bummed around the expectedly overpriced museum shop and set out to the Brittish Museum via Regent's Park.
In Regent's park we went along the pond for a while, I fooled a swan into nibbling on my hand by presenting it as if I had bread to give (there was an enourmous number of hungry and hence almost tame water foul there). Then we passed Regent's college, a very posh looking place with a gatekeeper and ID check at the entrance. After that we found ourselves suddenly on the outskirts of the park and not being content with that, ventured back in, made a loop back to the college, and as a result discovered a charming rose garden with an abundance of different species of the flower. Not being a big flower-lover, I can't say I appreciated this find as much as Caity.
After that we exited Regent's Park for the second time and for good. We then turned our steps in the direction of the Brittish Museum, picking up a sandwich per person from Pret a Manger. We arrived at the museum sometime around two or three o'clock, and roamed through the classical antiquity and european section until its closing sometime around five.
I remember finally seeing the barelief "The Battle of the Centaurs against the Lapiths" live after bumping into photographs of it in several books. I was also surprised to discover that heart-shaped ornaments dated to as far back as the 18th or 17th century. I always thought that symbol was invented fairly recently. The last thing I remembered from the visit was us being rushed out by the museum personell through a very impressive quasi-two storey library room built in classical style and containing various rarities besides books. As we were leaving, I gathered from a sign that this room was the orininal museum and the rest of the complex was built around it in order to house more exhibits.
I also (a bit later) made a list of things to see when (or if?) I come back. These include, but are not limited to, the reading room and the egyptian and babylonian sections.
After we were kicked out of the museum (I lived to see the day when I had to leave a museum against my will!) stumbled on St. Paul because the bus that was supposed to take us directly to it happened to unexpectedly end for some mysterious reason at a stop one block away from the church. We were able to find it because one of the steeples was visible from the stop, otherwise considerable wandering would have ensued.I cannot say much about St. Paul's other that it is impressive and that I had the cheesy song 'Feed the Birds' from the movie Mary Poppins stuck in my head the whole time we were around it. Oh, and there was a monument in front of it to a queen Anne, and we could not figure out when she lived or why the monument was erected.
We then bused over to Traffalgar Square, saw the Nelson Collumn, the Olympic Games Countdown Machine (not its official name!) and lots of yet mor classical empire style buildings, seemingly a staple of London architecture.
As it was getting late, we quickly marched to Buckingham Palace, glanced at it from a respectable distance, and discussed what it would be like to throw parties in there. We then walked over to the Parliament Building and Big Ben, the latter turning out much shorter and less impressive than I had imagined from postcards and movies. The amount of detail in the decorations of both buildings was astounding, however. When a nation dedicates so much attention to beautifying their parliament, that says something, I think.
Naturally after seeing the Parliament, we walked around the very well-lit Westminster Abbey. I don't think I have anything of note to contribute to the plethora of different things said and written about the place, so I will limit myself to a dry but sincere "very impressive".
At this point it was eight o'clock and we decided that was a good time to head home. Having trudged to Victoria Station, we boarded a train to Brighton... and fell asleep. I did so somewhat too blissfully and with too much commitment, because I remember being somewhat amazed at being woken up by Caity, who was beginning to suspect that our train had arrived at it's final destination. Our car was indeed suspiciously empty and not moving at all. Unfortunately, it was dark outside and hard to tell what station we were at exactly. I used this as an excuse to attempt to make a case for going back to sleep, but then somehow Caity won (I was not awake enough to remember) and before I realized completely what was going on, we were standing on what looked like the platform of Brighton Station. Luckily for us, there was a train headed to Falmer (our home station) in 3 minutes, so we made it. By Jove, what would have happened, if my arguments had prevailed?
Thus ended the day of my first visit to London.
Caity and I calculated that the best ticket for us would be an all-day off-peak rail, tube and bus pass for 19 pounds. Off-peak meant we had to travel to London after 10 am and head back to Brighton no sooner than 7 or 7:30 pm (I don't remember exactly anymore). In exchange for that we could use any tube trains or buses during the day inside zone 1. This restriction didn't bother us because all the attractions were located in that zone.
Our first destination was the Sherlock Holmes Museum. We got there from Victoria Station using the Tube. Despite it being "off-peak" the stations and trains were quite full and I was reminded of the good old days when I had to shove my way into a subway train in Moscow. There was something different this time: unusually shaped doors. For some reason in the Tube some trains (I only took one, so cannot speak for all of them) have very low slanting roofs and the doors follow the roof contour, yielding something like this as a result. While this looks cool and extraordinary, it seems quite impractical in the case of much human traffic, because the people left standing next to the entrance have to always be aware of their head (or neck in the case of very tall individuals) getting hit by a closing door. Then, after the doors have closed, they are stuck in a slightly ridiculous posture with head and shoulders bent into the car, following the shape of the doors.
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| 221 Baker Street |
At the time Arthur Conan Doyle was writing, 221 Baker Street did not exist in reality. This address, I believe, was specifically created for the Sherlock Holmes Museum later. The museum itself was primarily an example of a mid or late nineteenth century interior with the majority of the house consisting of a staircase trunk, with a couple of rooms strung around it on every floor (of which there were at least 4), like leaves or some hollow kind of fruit.
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| Touristy Picture, courtesy of anonymous Schweitzer |
We then went up the staircase to higher floors where we encountered some wax figures depicting some of Holmes's famous cases. Likely an influence of the nearby Madamme Tussaud's, these figures seemed strange to me in a victorian house.We looked at them for a bit, then bummed around the expectedly overpriced museum shop and set out to the Brittish Museum via Regent's Park.
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| Madamme Tussaud's influence |
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| This is a rare picture of me smiling at a dog |
In Regent's park we went along the pond for a while, I fooled a swan into nibbling on my hand by presenting it as if I had bread to give (there was an enourmous number of hungry and hence almost tame water foul there). Then we passed Regent's college, a very posh looking place with a gatekeeper and ID check at the entrance. After that we found ourselves suddenly on the outskirts of the park and not being content with that, ventured back in, made a loop back to the college, and as a result discovered a charming rose garden with an abundance of different species of the flower. Not being a big flower-lover, I can't say I appreciated this find as much as Caity.
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| Making friends with the swans. Caity's camera died shortly after this picture, so the rest of the day was only documented in written form. |
I remember finally seeing the barelief "The Battle of the Centaurs against the Lapiths" live after bumping into photographs of it in several books. I was also surprised to discover that heart-shaped ornaments dated to as far back as the 18th or 17th century. I always thought that symbol was invented fairly recently. The last thing I remembered from the visit was us being rushed out by the museum personell through a very impressive quasi-two storey library room built in classical style and containing various rarities besides books. As we were leaving, I gathered from a sign that this room was the orininal museum and the rest of the complex was built around it in order to house more exhibits.
I also (a bit later) made a list of things to see when (or if?) I come back. These include, but are not limited to, the reading room and the egyptian and babylonian sections.
After we were kicked out of the museum (I lived to see the day when I had to leave a museum against my will!) stumbled on St. Paul because the bus that was supposed to take us directly to it happened to unexpectedly end for some mysterious reason at a stop one block away from the church. We were able to find it because one of the steeples was visible from the stop, otherwise considerable wandering would have ensued.I cannot say much about St. Paul's other that it is impressive and that I had the cheesy song 'Feed the Birds' from the movie Mary Poppins stuck in my head the whole time we were around it. Oh, and there was a monument in front of it to a queen Anne, and we could not figure out when she lived or why the monument was erected.
We then bused over to Traffalgar Square, saw the Nelson Collumn, the Olympic Games Countdown Machine (not its official name!) and lots of yet mor classical empire style buildings, seemingly a staple of London architecture.
As it was getting late, we quickly marched to Buckingham Palace, glanced at it from a respectable distance, and discussed what it would be like to throw parties in there. We then walked over to the Parliament Building and Big Ben, the latter turning out much shorter and less impressive than I had imagined from postcards and movies. The amount of detail in the decorations of both buildings was astounding, however. When a nation dedicates so much attention to beautifying their parliament, that says something, I think.
Naturally after seeing the Parliament, we walked around the very well-lit Westminster Abbey. I don't think I have anything of note to contribute to the plethora of different things said and written about the place, so I will limit myself to a dry but sincere "very impressive".
At this point it was eight o'clock and we decided that was a good time to head home. Having trudged to Victoria Station, we boarded a train to Brighton... and fell asleep. I did so somewhat too blissfully and with too much commitment, because I remember being somewhat amazed at being woken up by Caity, who was beginning to suspect that our train had arrived at it's final destination. Our car was indeed suspiciously empty and not moving at all. Unfortunately, it was dark outside and hard to tell what station we were at exactly. I used this as an excuse to attempt to make a case for going back to sleep, but then somehow Caity won (I was not awake enough to remember) and before I realized completely what was going on, we were standing on what looked like the platform of Brighton Station. Luckily for us, there was a train headed to Falmer (our home station) in 3 minutes, so we made it. By Jove, what would have happened, if my arguments had prevailed?
Thus ended the day of my first visit to London.
Monday, October 17, 2011
The 100-Acre Wood or My First Hitchhike
I will start with an explanation of why this trip happened in the first place. One of my favorite books in childhood was Winnie the Pooh, the Russian version of it especially, since my dad read that to us regularly before we went to bed. I was never really attached to the movies or the English version because both of these I encountered later in life and by then I had a very set image of what the 100-Acre Wood and all of its inhabitants looked like (and as a result was not fully satisfied by the traditional illustrations or the imagery of the cartoons). I am, however, digressing from my main point which is that for me Winnie the Pooh is a great bright part of childhood.
It is not surprising then, that I was very pleased to find out from Caity, whose dorm I was staying at, that Ashdown Forest, the place that inspired the 100 Acre Wood, was within a two-hour bus ride from us. We decided to visit it during my stay.
On the day that we were planning to set out, Caity had class until 11 am, so we decided to take a bus that left around noon. Then we were going to change buses in a town called Hayward's Heath and ride to somewhere called Wych Cross.
Our troubles started when the first bus was 12 minutes late, making us miss our connection by 5 minutes. At that point we were not too worried about the matter and waited for a little under an hour on the soft lawn of a nearby hospital. We ate the provisions prepared for the day and talked about storytelling.
Our next problem arose on the second bus. As it turned out, Wych Cross was not a bus stop name, but the name of an intersection or a town. We realized this too late and had to get off one stop further away from our destination. We tried hiking our way back, but ended up on some golf course and some private property. It was my first time walking around an actual golf course and I have to say I now understand the appeal of the sport: one gets to wander through neat slightly wooded grasslands without dedicating too much energy or concentration to the sport at hand. This is indeed perfect for business meetings. Caity and I were not there, however, to discuss the faltering economy or a competitor's sudden rise in sales or whether it was worth buying a Ferrari online. We needed Pooh's wood, so we trudged past the golfers onto some seemingly less used path.
This took us to a campsite, where we asked for some directions and Caity posed for a picture with the boyscout signs. The people in the camp office said we were some 6 km or so away from our goal, that we needed to head a bit south-east in order to hit the road that led to Pooh's wood and that we could use their grounds to cut a corner. We thanked them for everything and proceeded to walk, wondering how it happened that we were so far away from our destination.
On the way I noticed that the landscape around us was indeed very similar to what I had imagined of the 100 Acre Wood. The ground we were walking through was mostly sand and as a result the forest consisted primarily of pine trees. Aside from the fact that pine trees are mentioned in several places in Winnie the Pooh, I must mention that pine forests are my favorite kind in general. They usually feature little undergrowth and so one can see further. The pine trees themselves with their long bare trunks and rooflike tops, form a natural collonade and leave one the impression of being in a cathedral.
Another detail that I picked up on was the abundance of ferns. In Winnie the Pooh they (and the fog) were the scenery for the chapter in which Tigger got unbounced. I felt a bit like Rabbit, walking through them and being slightly lost. I mentioned ferns to Caity, who remarked that for her the word was a bit bothersome from a philological standpoint. She pointed out that it can be used as both a countable and an uncountable noun.
After about half an hour we arrived at the Ashdown Forest visitor center (or at least one of them) that was fortunately still open (by then we had been wandering for almost two hours and it was 4 pm). There we confirmed that we were indeed considerably far away from the Pooh Walks (as they were called in the park) and it would take at least an hour to get there. The last bus from Wych Cross left shortly before 7 pm, which meant that we actually had about 15 minutes to spend on site before we had to head back. We decided, however, that it would be silly to turn back now, after we had spent so much time shaking in buses and trespassing on golf courts and boyscout camps.
We thanked the lady at the visitors center and set out to Pooh's wood. The road we walked on was a narrow cement country road with cars speeding by at 40 mph all the time. We saw some fields and forests and hills and even a mansion or two in the distance. The sun was getting lower and lower as we walked on and on. Caity was nervous, not without reason, about us getting hit by a passing car. I was getting nervous, also not without reason, about missing the bus.
Finally, after more than an hour and after scaling a considerable hill, we found ourselves at the start of the trail. At this point Caity had the idea that we could walk the trail quickly, then attempt to hitchhike back to the bus stop. This way we would get what we came here for as well as avoid yet another hour of walking.
We started out on the trail but soon disovered that the hilltop where it started, was covered in little paths leading here and there. Because nothing on the spot was marked and we only had a map from the visitor's center as a guide, we soon found ourselves walking on a horse path seemingly leading in the right direction, but in no way resembling a trail. This path led us to the "Enchanted Place", where we saw the Milne Memorial and confirmed that we had not been on the trail till that point and as a result had missed the Heffalump Trap and the Lone Pine. We retraced our steps towards these attractions and came across a very cozy and unique place. The Lone Pine was a shorter-than-usual tree, whose branches for some unknown reason all split at the very top of the tree and formed a wide cover, very much like a roof. This canopy stretched over a small sand pit in the side of the hill, creating a protected look-out point over the valley below. "This was worth it" - I thought to myself at the time.
We then tried to find the Sand Pits, and seemed to have succeeded in this, though, because nothing was marked, we could never be sure. At that moment I noted that the environment we were in had significantly changed compared to that of our starting point. The sky was now cloudier, the sun much lower and the wind much stronger than over by the golf course. There were still pine trees around, but now they grew scarce and the ground was primarily covered in thistle bushes. This was the first time that I saw Eeyore's food up close and I must confirm that it is as pringly and inedible as described by Milne.
From the hilltop we looked over the hillside that was the inspiration for Eeyore's Sad and Lonely Place. It didn't look that cheerful: lone pine trees here and there with grass and thistles as undergrowth. Especially in the occasional light of the setting sun this did indeed seem quite depressing. It is also possible that our impressions of the place reflected our own worries about the journey home. In any case, we didn't linger there long and headed to the road that would take us back to Wych Cross.
This was the first attempt at hitchhiking for both of us, so we were slightly on edge as we strode down the steep hill and waved down cars. The first 6 vehicles passes us by: a woman with a polite smile in a van, an old lady in an old car, a man driving a Smart car that would not have fit us all, a volvo driver who even signaled with his blinker that he didn't want to stop, and a couple of others who I have forgotten now.
Just as I had given up hope and Caity started describing the type of driver that would in fact pick up two young people on an evening road, a white ford pulled over and a round-faced glasses-wearing gentleman said he would give us a lift. This was an unexpected turn of events for me (I had given up hope) and I struggled to find a suitable topic for conversation as we whizzed along the streets past hedges and oncoming traffic at what I thought were impressive speeds. I told the man about our bad luck that day, he asked where I was from. He was incredulous when I named the USA.
- You don't sound it - he responded.
- What do I sound like? - I asked.
- I would place you somewhere in Mid-Germany - he said.
- Really?
- Yes. I work at a school, you see. We have German exchange students teaching there every year and you sound exactly like them.
We continued to talk about this and that. Caity put in a couple of words and our driver said she definitely sounded American. He himself, as it turned out, worked in a school several towns over managing their budget and was staying at a hotel in Wych Cross, hence could give us the ride. We were at our bus stop in no time (as was mentioned earlier, he drove fast), thus ended our first hitchhike. Not a bad experience overall: we saved lots of time and energy, I was told to my face that I have an accent, we "drove" a car through Britain (as opposed to a bus or train). I have to say that I'm a fan of this style of driving, where only commited people actually get a license and a car (both harder to attain in Europe than in the US) and these commited people speed like maniacs down small streets in small maneuverable vehicles. I have yet to see an accident during my stay and at the same time this kind of driving seems way more fun to me.
The rest of the journey home was uneventfiul: all the busses were on time and empty (on time because they were empty), we got home around 10, consumed some frozen pizza (it's surprising how unfilling it is on both sides of the ocean) and went to bed.
By jove, what a day!
P.S.
All pictures in this (and all other posts about the UK) are courtesy of Caity Gebhard. I am very grateful for her having a camera around and not being shy to use it.
It is not surprising then, that I was very pleased to find out from Caity, whose dorm I was staying at, that Ashdown Forest, the place that inspired the 100 Acre Wood, was within a two-hour bus ride from us. We decided to visit it during my stay.
On the day that we were planning to set out, Caity had class until 11 am, so we decided to take a bus that left around noon. Then we were going to change buses in a town called Hayward's Heath and ride to somewhere called Wych Cross.
Our troubles started when the first bus was 12 minutes late, making us miss our connection by 5 minutes. At that point we were not too worried about the matter and waited for a little under an hour on the soft lawn of a nearby hospital. We ate the provisions prepared for the day and talked about storytelling.
Our next problem arose on the second bus. As it turned out, Wych Cross was not a bus stop name, but the name of an intersection or a town. We realized this too late and had to get off one stop further away from our destination. We tried hiking our way back, but ended up on some golf course and some private property. It was my first time walking around an actual golf course and I have to say I now understand the appeal of the sport: one gets to wander through neat slightly wooded grasslands without dedicating too much energy or concentration to the sport at hand. This is indeed perfect for business meetings. Caity and I were not there, however, to discuss the faltering economy or a competitor's sudden rise in sales or whether it was worth buying a Ferrari online. We needed Pooh's wood, so we trudged past the golfers onto some seemingly less used path.
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| Caity Standing in front of the boyscout camp sign. |
On the way I noticed that the landscape around us was indeed very similar to what I had imagined of the 100 Acre Wood. The ground we were walking through was mostly sand and as a result the forest consisted primarily of pine trees. Aside from the fact that pine trees are mentioned in several places in Winnie the Pooh, I must mention that pine forests are my favorite kind in general. They usually feature little undergrowth and so one can see further. The pine trees themselves with their long bare trunks and rooflike tops, form a natural collonade and leave one the impression of being in a cathedral.
Another detail that I picked up on was the abundance of ferns. In Winnie the Pooh they (and the fog) were the scenery for the chapter in which Tigger got unbounced. I felt a bit like Rabbit, walking through them and being slightly lost. I mentioned ferns to Caity, who remarked that for her the word was a bit bothersome from a philological standpoint. She pointed out that it can be used as both a countable and an uncountable noun.
After about half an hour we arrived at the Ashdown Forest visitor center (or at least one of them) that was fortunately still open (by then we had been wandering for almost two hours and it was 4 pm). There we confirmed that we were indeed considerably far away from the Pooh Walks (as they were called in the park) and it would take at least an hour to get there. The last bus from Wych Cross left shortly before 7 pm, which meant that we actually had about 15 minutes to spend on site before we had to head back. We decided, however, that it would be silly to turn back now, after we had spent so much time shaking in buses and trespassing on golf courts and boyscout camps.
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| The long winding road... |
Finally, after more than an hour and after scaling a considerable hill, we found ourselves at the start of the trail. At this point Caity had the idea that we could walk the trail quickly, then attempt to hitchhike back to the bus stop. This way we would get what we came here for as well as avoid yet another hour of walking.
We started out on the trail but soon disovered that the hilltop where it started, was covered in little paths leading here and there. Because nothing on the spot was marked and we only had a map from the visitor's center as a guide, we soon found ourselves walking on a horse path seemingly leading in the right direction, but in no way resembling a trail. This path led us to the "Enchanted Place", where we saw the Milne Memorial and confirmed that we had not been on the trail till that point and as a result had missed the Heffalump Trap and the Lone Pine. We retraced our steps towards these attractions and came across a very cozy and unique place. The Lone Pine was a shorter-than-usual tree, whose branches for some unknown reason all split at the very top of the tree and formed a wide cover, very much like a roof. This canopy stretched over a small sand pit in the side of the hill, creating a protected look-out point over the valley below. "This was worth it" - I thought to myself at the time.
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| The horse path that we mistook for the Pooh Trail |
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| Lone Pine and Heffalump Trap at last! |
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| This we thought were Roo's Sandpits. They were not marked, so I guess we will never know for sure... |
From the hilltop we looked over the hillside that was the inspiration for Eeyore's Sad and Lonely Place. It didn't look that cheerful: lone pine trees here and there with grass and thistles as undergrowth. Especially in the occasional light of the setting sun this did indeed seem quite depressing. It is also possible that our impressions of the place reflected our own worries about the journey home. In any case, we didn't linger there long and headed to the road that would take us back to Wych Cross.
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| One final glance at the setting sun from the 100-Acre Wood. |
Just as I had given up hope and Caity started describing the type of driver that would in fact pick up two young people on an evening road, a white ford pulled over and a round-faced glasses-wearing gentleman said he would give us a lift. This was an unexpected turn of events for me (I had given up hope) and I struggled to find a suitable topic for conversation as we whizzed along the streets past hedges and oncoming traffic at what I thought were impressive speeds. I told the man about our bad luck that day, he asked where I was from. He was incredulous when I named the USA.
- You don't sound it - he responded.
- What do I sound like? - I asked.
- I would place you somewhere in Mid-Germany - he said.
- Really?
- Yes. I work at a school, you see. We have German exchange students teaching there every year and you sound exactly like them.
We continued to talk about this and that. Caity put in a couple of words and our driver said she definitely sounded American. He himself, as it turned out, worked in a school several towns over managing their budget and was staying at a hotel in Wych Cross, hence could give us the ride. We were at our bus stop in no time (as was mentioned earlier, he drove fast), thus ended our first hitchhike. Not a bad experience overall: we saved lots of time and energy, I was told to my face that I have an accent, we "drove" a car through Britain (as opposed to a bus or train). I have to say that I'm a fan of this style of driving, where only commited people actually get a license and a car (both harder to attain in Europe than in the US) and these commited people speed like maniacs down small streets in small maneuverable vehicles. I have yet to see an accident during my stay and at the same time this kind of driving seems way more fun to me.
The rest of the journey home was uneventfiul: all the busses were on time and empty (on time because they were empty), we got home around 10, consumed some frozen pizza (it's surprising how unfilling it is on both sides of the ocean) and went to bed.
By jove, what a day!
P.S.
All pictures in this (and all other posts about the UK) are courtesy of Caity Gebhard. I am very grateful for her having a camera around and not being shy to use it.
Saturday, October 15, 2011
First police call
Today was my first morning back from visiting friends in Sweden and the UK (more about that in posts to come). I woke up, went for a run, after that started to make breakfast and roaming around the flat, noting things that had changed in my absence or needed cleaning/buying. I happened to look out of my window and notice a man lying under a bench on the grass in the courtyard outside. He wasn't moving and his jacket was undone.
Considering that it was Saturday morning, the first thought that popped into my head was that he had had a "fun" Friday night and had now been lying out in the cold for at least several hours (it was +7 C, not a very good sleeping temperature). I came down to wake him up and see if he needed any help getting home.
At first the man didn't respond at all when I addressed him. When I had tapped him on the shoulder a couple of times, he finally said something very slurred that sounded more like a moan than anything else. I tried tapping again and asking his name, but got the same response as an answer. Having thus confirmed that my knowledge of drunk german was not sufficient to handle the situation and after consulting a bit with some neighbors I dialled 110 and was connected to a dispatcher.
It took some time and repetitions, but he finally understood what and where was going on and said he'd send out something or someone (I didn't quite catch it, but assumed he meant a police car with at least an officer) to us right away. This "right away" proved to be around 5 minutes, though to me it seemed much longer because I was standing over an unconscious human and could not come up with a productive thing to do. One feeble attempt at lifting him was made, but that failed miserably as he had turned into a bag of bones with no muscules providing support whatsoever.
When the policemen arrived, they turned out to me one tall man and one much shorter woman (I remember wondering who plays the "bad cop" in this team). I explained the situation to them, they tried, this time successfully, to get the man to sit up. In the process it was revealed that he had on him an empty bottle of beer and a half-empty bottle of some 40-proof schnapps. The unlucky fellow had been mixing alcohol.
The officers thanked me for the call and said they needed my assistance no further. I went back home and had breakfast. I then looked out of my window and saw that both the man and the police were gone. Here's to hoping all went well for the poor geezer!
Considering that it was Saturday morning, the first thought that popped into my head was that he had had a "fun" Friday night and had now been lying out in the cold for at least several hours (it was +7 C, not a very good sleeping temperature). I came down to wake him up and see if he needed any help getting home.
At first the man didn't respond at all when I addressed him. When I had tapped him on the shoulder a couple of times, he finally said something very slurred that sounded more like a moan than anything else. I tried tapping again and asking his name, but got the same response as an answer. Having thus confirmed that my knowledge of drunk german was not sufficient to handle the situation and after consulting a bit with some neighbors I dialled 110 and was connected to a dispatcher.
It took some time and repetitions, but he finally understood what and where was going on and said he'd send out something or someone (I didn't quite catch it, but assumed he meant a police car with at least an officer) to us right away. This "right away" proved to be around 5 minutes, though to me it seemed much longer because I was standing over an unconscious human and could not come up with a productive thing to do. One feeble attempt at lifting him was made, but that failed miserably as he had turned into a bag of bones with no muscules providing support whatsoever.
When the policemen arrived, they turned out to me one tall man and one much shorter woman (I remember wondering who plays the "bad cop" in this team). I explained the situation to them, they tried, this time successfully, to get the man to sit up. In the process it was revealed that he had on him an empty bottle of beer and a half-empty bottle of some 40-proof schnapps. The unlucky fellow had been mixing alcohol.
The officers thanked me for the call and said they needed my assistance no further. I went back home and had breakfast. I then looked out of my window and saw that both the man and the police were gone. Here's to hoping all went well for the poor geezer!
Saturday, October 8, 2011
It's a long way to London Town
I profusely apologize to my readers for not updating this page for almost a month. Some sort of lame writer's block (lame because I'm not really a writer and hence shouldn't have such problems) took over and its evil spirit kept me away from the blog.
I am, however, back and have quite a bit to tell. The next couple of entries I will post as I write them, which means some of the events described will be out of chronological order. To alleviate this problem, dates of the events will be mentioned in every post.
I am currently writing this out of a computer classroom in a University of Sussex dorm and thus I will start with the story of how I arrived at this location and what things are like here. As I am reluctant to purchase a camera of my own (I think it will be too much hassle trying not to lose it and also a hindrance to interacting with people, a challenge for me on its own), and my friend's camera died during the first day of my stay, this blog entry along with some private notes and memories are all that will remain from the trip.
In the morning of October 5th (a Wednesday) I flew with RyanAir from Baden Airpark to London Stansted Airport. In order to save money, however, I took a train from Konstanz to Karlsruhe the night before and had to spend about 7 hours at the latter's main train station. This stretch of time was actually welcome, because a lot had accumulated on my mind over the past three weeks or so and I had no real opportunity to mill it all over until that night. I also managed to grab a couple of hours of sleep on a stone bench, an extremely cheap and dry croissant from some eatery, two cheeseburgers from McDonnalds (compensation for using their wireless). Overall, putting aside a sore neck and a slightly chilled shoulder (both were fine the next day), it was not as bad as I had expected.
The bus express that was to take me from the train station to the airport was half an hour late, but luckily, there was still enough time to register for my flight. Honestly, I have no idea how I managed to get my backpack through as carry-on luggage. RyanAir has a very strict cabin baggage policy that only allows bags of certain dimensions to be taken on the plane. My guess is that this is to prevent people from taking suitcases with them and not checking them in as baggage to avoid fees. There was an evaluation box set up in front of check-in that allowed one to test if one's carry-on met the dimension requirements. My backpack barely fit into this box all on its own. Then there was the sleeping bag attached to it that did not fit at all. I guess what saved me was that the weight was under 10 kilograms and that seemed to be what was being checked most stringently.
It was my first RyanAir flight but I have to say there was nothing special about it. I chatted with an old German couple headed to London for a pan-England tour ending at York. I listened to Credence Clearwater Revival for about 30 minutes. I stared at the yellow seat in front of me. That was it. The plane set wheel in Stansted and I was on British soil.
I will now digress slightly to say a couple of words about how small I think the world is. Because this particular trip was organized slightly haphazardly and I didn't advertise it as much or as well to my fellow exchange students in Konstanz, I was to undertake my journeys alone. To my surprise and joy, however, I discovered that Susan, a South-African girl from my September orientation was on my train to Karlsruhe and Mikolt, a fellow fencer and also someone I knew from the orientation program, was on the same plane to London. Hurray to my friends being everywhere I go!
I originally was going to take a train from Stansted to Brighton. Upon talking to the ticket sellers, however, I discovered that it would be almost two times cheaper to take a bus to Victoria Station and from there to Brighton. I decided to do that.
The bus I took from Stansted to Victoria came equipped with wireless (very useful for notifying friends about changes in travel plans), seat-belts (apparently, it's law in Brittain to wear them in buses) and a driver possessing a very Brittish sense of humor. He started out by describing one of the stickers on the windows as a "hammer, but not really a hammer... Noone really knows what it is, so I just call it that.", then proceeded to mention a phone number that we could text with our opinion of his driving. He asked that if we had something good to say about him, his name was Paul, if not - Roger.
The passengers on the bus were not quite so jolly. There was an old couple behind me who were arguing about everything possible and mentioning divorce from time to time. Then there was a man who started talking into his phone to some Steve on the other end. There happened to be a Steve on the bus, who, having heard his name, thought he was being addressed and was very put out once he found out this was not the case. He complained for at least twenty minutes about how people answer their phones too loudly in public transportation or how that they answer them at all, or that there are too many Steves roaming the country... I didn't quite understand, because he spoke cockney. Overall, I have yet to hear English used to produce so much miserable and grumbling talk as on that bus ride. Luckily for me, my iPod still had some battery left, so after a while I drowned all of this noise in Dire Straits.
The traffic in London was quite insane and so I got to Victoria station just in time for my connection to Brighton, not with 55 minutes to spare, as the lady that sold me the ticket said. After that it took a more than an hour to get out of London onto the highway headed south.
The long time I spent busing around London let me make some first observations of the city. First of all, it's big and busy, much busier than I thought it would be. The traffic is comparable, I think, to that of New York City, with constant congestion and chaos reigning the streets. The same can be said about the plethora of shops and human characters crowding the streets with their bright (and not so bright) colors.
Secondly, the architecture is almost uniformly of classical (often) empire style. This left me with a feeling of cold grandeur associated with the city in general, similar to the feeling I got from the bus tours of Berlin that I went on between in 2004 and 2006. Another thing I noticed were the rows of townhouses marching along the side streets somewhere into the innards of the megapolis. Their monotonous uniformity made one think of a drearily industrial dystopia.
I didn't really get to see the countryside because in Britain, just like in the US (and perhaps every country that has them), the highways were almost always enveloped in a sheath of trees. In addition, it was four in the afternoon and the day, being cloudy, was starting to turn into night.
I arrived at Brighton Coach Station shortly after half past four and was greeted by chilly wind and rain from the sea and my friend, Caity.
We went to the university of Sussex, a 30 minute bus ride north of the city, deposited my backpack and sleeping bag there, and came back for a short introductory tour of the city. I will give more details about Brighton in a future blog post. For now it will suffice to say that we stumbled around for a bit, mostly looking for cheap dinner. We ended up settling for a 7 pound all-you-can-eat buffet at some Italian place in the center of town, then stuffed ourselves with impressively tasteless pizza and pasta along with some decent salads and boiled eggs. We then went home, to bed.
Thus, after spending 20 hours on the road and using 3 forms of transportation (4, if one counts walking), I began my stay in the UK.
I am, however, back and have quite a bit to tell. The next couple of entries I will post as I write them, which means some of the events described will be out of chronological order. To alleviate this problem, dates of the events will be mentioned in every post.
I am currently writing this out of a computer classroom in a University of Sussex dorm and thus I will start with the story of how I arrived at this location and what things are like here. As I am reluctant to purchase a camera of my own (I think it will be too much hassle trying not to lose it and also a hindrance to interacting with people, a challenge for me on its own), and my friend's camera died during the first day of my stay, this blog entry along with some private notes and memories are all that will remain from the trip.
In the morning of October 5th (a Wednesday) I flew with RyanAir from Baden Airpark to London Stansted Airport. In order to save money, however, I took a train from Konstanz to Karlsruhe the night before and had to spend about 7 hours at the latter's main train station. This stretch of time was actually welcome, because a lot had accumulated on my mind over the past three weeks or so and I had no real opportunity to mill it all over until that night. I also managed to grab a couple of hours of sleep on a stone bench, an extremely cheap and dry croissant from some eatery, two cheeseburgers from McDonnalds (compensation for using their wireless). Overall, putting aside a sore neck and a slightly chilled shoulder (both were fine the next day), it was not as bad as I had expected.
The bus express that was to take me from the train station to the airport was half an hour late, but luckily, there was still enough time to register for my flight. Honestly, I have no idea how I managed to get my backpack through as carry-on luggage. RyanAir has a very strict cabin baggage policy that only allows bags of certain dimensions to be taken on the plane. My guess is that this is to prevent people from taking suitcases with them and not checking them in as baggage to avoid fees. There was an evaluation box set up in front of check-in that allowed one to test if one's carry-on met the dimension requirements. My backpack barely fit into this box all on its own. Then there was the sleeping bag attached to it that did not fit at all. I guess what saved me was that the weight was under 10 kilograms and that seemed to be what was being checked most stringently.
It was my first RyanAir flight but I have to say there was nothing special about it. I chatted with an old German couple headed to London for a pan-England tour ending at York. I listened to Credence Clearwater Revival for about 30 minutes. I stared at the yellow seat in front of me. That was it. The plane set wheel in Stansted and I was on British soil.
I will now digress slightly to say a couple of words about how small I think the world is. Because this particular trip was organized slightly haphazardly and I didn't advertise it as much or as well to my fellow exchange students in Konstanz, I was to undertake my journeys alone. To my surprise and joy, however, I discovered that Susan, a South-African girl from my September orientation was on my train to Karlsruhe and Mikolt, a fellow fencer and also someone I knew from the orientation program, was on the same plane to London. Hurray to my friends being everywhere I go!
I originally was going to take a train from Stansted to Brighton. Upon talking to the ticket sellers, however, I discovered that it would be almost two times cheaper to take a bus to Victoria Station and from there to Brighton. I decided to do that.
The bus I took from Stansted to Victoria came equipped with wireless (very useful for notifying friends about changes in travel plans), seat-belts (apparently, it's law in Brittain to wear them in buses) and a driver possessing a very Brittish sense of humor. He started out by describing one of the stickers on the windows as a "hammer, but not really a hammer... Noone really knows what it is, so I just call it that.", then proceeded to mention a phone number that we could text with our opinion of his driving. He asked that if we had something good to say about him, his name was Paul, if not - Roger.
The passengers on the bus were not quite so jolly. There was an old couple behind me who were arguing about everything possible and mentioning divorce from time to time. Then there was a man who started talking into his phone to some Steve on the other end. There happened to be a Steve on the bus, who, having heard his name, thought he was being addressed and was very put out once he found out this was not the case. He complained for at least twenty minutes about how people answer their phones too loudly in public transportation or how that they answer them at all, or that there are too many Steves roaming the country... I didn't quite understand, because he spoke cockney. Overall, I have yet to hear English used to produce so much miserable and grumbling talk as on that bus ride. Luckily for me, my iPod still had some battery left, so after a while I drowned all of this noise in Dire Straits.
The traffic in London was quite insane and so I got to Victoria station just in time for my connection to Brighton, not with 55 minutes to spare, as the lady that sold me the ticket said. After that it took a more than an hour to get out of London onto the highway headed south.
The long time I spent busing around London let me make some first observations of the city. First of all, it's big and busy, much busier than I thought it would be. The traffic is comparable, I think, to that of New York City, with constant congestion and chaos reigning the streets. The same can be said about the plethora of shops and human characters crowding the streets with their bright (and not so bright) colors.
Secondly, the architecture is almost uniformly of classical (often) empire style. This left me with a feeling of cold grandeur associated with the city in general, similar to the feeling I got from the bus tours of Berlin that I went on between in 2004 and 2006. Another thing I noticed were the rows of townhouses marching along the side streets somewhere into the innards of the megapolis. Their monotonous uniformity made one think of a drearily industrial dystopia.
I didn't really get to see the countryside because in Britain, just like in the US (and perhaps every country that has them), the highways were almost always enveloped in a sheath of trees. In addition, it was four in the afternoon and the day, being cloudy, was starting to turn into night.
I arrived at Brighton Coach Station shortly after half past four and was greeted by chilly wind and rain from the sea and my friend, Caity.
We went to the university of Sussex, a 30 minute bus ride north of the city, deposited my backpack and sleeping bag there, and came back for a short introductory tour of the city. I will give more details about Brighton in a future blog post. For now it will suffice to say that we stumbled around for a bit, mostly looking for cheap dinner. We ended up settling for a 7 pound all-you-can-eat buffet at some Italian place in the center of town, then stuffed ourselves with impressively tasteless pizza and pasta along with some decent salads and boiled eggs. We then went home, to bed.
Thus, after spending 20 hours on the road and using 3 forms of transportation (4, if one counts walking), I began my stay in the UK.
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