Yuka

I think my holiday travels this year were an exceptional experience. As such, I found it hard to summarize and describe in any kinds of usual blog entries. Instead, I decided to write a short piece that, I think, captures one aspect of the journey in a fictional form (though based on real events). This is in many ways an experiment for me, as I have only really written a story once before in my life (an unfinished one, at that!). This story is a very clear combination of fact and fiction and I especially feel strange about describing Gustave and me in the third person as well as the way we act. Hence constructive criticism is appreciated. So much for the introduction, here goes...

Yuka loved running. Especially after things thrown by humans. Especially after the yellow rubber ball that was covered in pimples and squealed if squeezed. She loved the thrill of chasing down that ball (or a twig or a stone or a cone, anything, really), snatching it up from the ground or out of the air and then triumphantly trotting back to the human with the catch in her mouth. She loved the sound of the wind in her ears and the pebbles under her feet as she ran down her prey in the yard of the orange plantation she lived in.

The plantation consisted of several orange-tree fields tucked in between two rocky hills and a walled compound consisting of a house, yard and a pool. Apart from Yuka, this compound was inhabited by her Owner, his wife and their two children, though one never knows if Yuka thought of them that way. There was also a cat, but it was fairly boring: it either wailed to be let in the house and fed or was gone God knows where. It was just a little smaller than Yuka and she liked to chase after it occasionally or wrestle with it.

Other humans were constantly in the compound, coming and going. Yuka tried to make all of them throw her something at least once. She would follow them around with whatever object she wanted to chase (usually it was the yellow ball), set it on the ground as soon as they would stop or sit down. Sometimes she even nudged it in their direction with her nose with a facial expression, that showed utter longing and anticipation. If it so happened that one of the humans gave into her pleas and picked up the object to throw it, Yuka would focus on the human's hand while trying simultaneously to predict in which direction the object will be thrown. As soon as the object left the human's hand, the dog would take off after it as if upon its successful retrieval depended the fate of the free (and maybe even the not so free) world.

Yuka's obsession with retrieving things was so strong that she could follow humans around for a very long time no matter where they were going, because she never abandoned the hope that someone might throw her something.

When two new strangers arrived at the compound late one night in the Owner's van, Yuka was asleep. The next morning, however, she submitted them to the same treatment as all the inhabitants of the compound, permanent and temporary. She noticed right away, that these strangers were unusually tall, taller than most of the other humans she saw in the compound. One had long black hair, walked around barefoot and seldom spoke. The other had reddish hair and wore glasses.

Both strangers, to Yuka's delight, seemed to enjoy playing with her from the start. Even though their enthusiasm waned slightly after she had retrieved various objects several dozen times in a row, they still were considerably more eager to oblige her with a throw or two than the local humans, those being a bit jaded in this respect.

Of the two, the stranger with the long hair tended to spend more time with Yuka. He would pick up her yellow ball, get a few huge steps head start, and then hurl it as far as he could, which tended to be limited by the bushes and the walls of the compound. Yuka for her part would race to where the ball fell and bring it back to the stranger, then the procedure would repeat. During one of these throwing and retrieval sessions, he tried to pet her. She dropped on her stomach and squirmed a bit. She did not like being touched. It reminded her of her previous owners, the ones she had before she was taken in by the Owner of the Plantation.

As for the red-haired stranger, Yuka saw him walk out through the main gate one moonlight night and, as was usual for her, followed him. He started walking up one of the hills around the plantation, stopped for a second to exchange some phrases with the other stranger and the Owner, then continued walking down the path that led westwards from the farm. Yuka followed.

To be continued...

How I went to Bremen and discovered I am NOT to be trusted with letters

I wake up on a Tuesday, drag myself out of bed around ten and am given three envelopes. To my surprise I recognize these as letters containing postcards to my relatives that I dropped off in a mailbox in Bremen the day before on my way to the train that would take me to Konstanz. They were supposed to be at least half-way over the Atlantic ocean by now, and yet here they were, once again in my hands.

A friend told me that if I placed a postcard in an envelope, thus giving it the status of a letter, it would arrive at its destination much faster than a regular postcard would. I needed this increase in delivery speed because I was under pressure to produce some sort of paper trail to mark my year abroad. I had not exchanged any snail mail with my family since the beginning of mystay, hence they were getting a bit impatient about it. I decided that a weekend in Bremen was as good an excuse to start producing the paper trail as any.

One might wonder why I was in Bremen in the first place. A high school classmate of mine from Russia is studying on exchange in Tampere, Finland until the end of December. I had not seen him for four or almost five years, not counting the two days we hung out in Sweden in the beginning of October, and calculated, that this past weekend was our only chance to meet up before he disappeared again behind the "iron curtain" of the Russian border.

And so we decided to meet up half way, which for him meant flying south for a couple of hours and for me - riding a train north along the Rhine. This ride I undertook for the first time on Friday, boarding the train to Karlsruhe (no matter where I go from Konstanz, it always seems to start with the Karlsruhe train!),  changing there and continuing through places like Mainz, Frankfurt am Main, Köln, Düsseldort, Dortmund, Hannover... over 8 hours in a train all-in-all.

Luckily for me I had books (I swear, I think I went through half of the Finite State Morphology textbook as a result of this journey), homework, Chopin and Queen along to keep me company. As if that was not enough, I completely accidentally ran into Fiona, a friend from the September course at Konstanz who was on her way to visit a friend in Bonn and happened to be taking the exact same trains as I (the saying "the world is small" should really be incorporated somewhere in the description of this blog). Thus the journey was really not as bad as I thought it might turn out to be.

However bearable or at times even pleasant, the ride was long, and I arrived in Bremen late Friday night, met up with my friend and headed over to a hostel where he had already checked us in. The whole time I could not help but notice how much colder it was in the North. Whereas in Konstanz I could get away with wearing a shirt, sweater and jacket, here I would need at least one more layer to barely stay warm. I was a bit apprehensive about spending most of the next day outside walking around the city.

The next morning we took a tram to the center of town and started out at the main city square. We first tried to have a look inside the Dom, but it was closed for service and we were told to come again at 14:00. We then tried the City Hall, but that turned out to be completely closed on weekends.

Nikita and the
Bremer Stadtmusikanten

As usual, my visit was about as planned as an improvisation comedian's routine. From that it follows that we didn't let these initial mishaps dampen our spirits and instead took some pictures with the Bremer Stadtmusikanten, then in front of the exuberantly decorated City Hall (that has SPQB engraved above one of its entrances... Senatus Populusque Bremensis) and after that with the Roland. We then listened to some fellow play a piano right in Roland's shadow.

That morning and in fact throughout my whole visit I kept noticing how much more clear and understandable the Bremers' German was. I have been told several times that in Konstanz and in general in the south the local accent strongly deviated from Hochdeutsch, but it never dawned on me how distinguishable this difference was until I heard the people in Bremen.

A street in the Schnoor district.

Once we were semi-done with the central square, we decided to visit Schnoor (the main museum and tourist district of the city) and then return to the Dom around 14:00 for a second attempt to get in that church.

We had read about at least three museums located in Schnoor: the Toy Museum (Spielzeugmuseum), Antiquity Museum (Antikenmuseum) and the House of Bremen History (Bremer Geschichtenhaus). They were our goals. As it turned out, they were hard to find ones too. The Schnoor consisted of several blocks of small Bauwerk houses all separated by tiny-tiny streets and alleys, some barely wide enough for two people to squeeze through.

We found it surprisingly difficult to orient ourselves in this labyrinth, walked around in circles for quite some time as a consequence and managed to wander past all of the museums at least once and even trespass (by mistake, of course) on some dude's property. This dude was very polite and understanding, however, and led us back out to the Schnoor.

Finally, we found the Toy museum. It turned out to be a small private collection (three one-room floors of old toys) located above a toy shop in one of the small old houses. The owner of the shop said her boss had started the museum when she realized there were toys she didn't want to part with.



As can be seen in the photographs of this museum, the majority of the collection was comprised of various sorts of Teddy Bears, dolls, trains and a plethora of various semi-broken toys. There was also a guitar with one half of her strings broken and the other half tuned to what sounded a bit like a pentatonic scale. And then on our way down we noticed a couple of African masks (at least I thought they were African, I'm sure some anthropologist would know for sure) hanging on the wall. Since this was clearly a place where one could touch everything, I took one off the wall and tried it on. It felt very cozy... just like the museum itself, the kind of a quaint place one would prefer to visit with a male friend, so as to avoid the exalted expressions of adoration which women for some reason are prone to produce when visiting such places.

We then wandered across the History Museum, where we were told again to come back at 14:00. From the museum staff we found out how to get to the Antikenmuseum and decided to pay it a visit in the free time that we had till 2 pm.

post-modernist stairs...

This Antikenmuseum was located in a street of small post-modernist houses and of course we had passed it by at least once before during our wanderings without noticing. It contained two rooms of (mostly) Athenian and Corinthian vases and a highly talkative ticket lady (who must have been by extension also a guide). We chatted with this lady perhaps longer than we spent actually looking at the vases. Our conversation (it was more of a lecture actually) wandered a bit, most of what was mentioned had to do with Olympic games, methods of producing vases and the difference in clay between different regions of Greece. Some other topics did remain in my mind though.

... and buildings

It turned out, the museum was originally a private collection and its owner, an archaeology enthusiast bent on digging out vases, was only eventually persuaded by friends to open the collection to the public. It also turned out that the lady herself was from Eastern Germany and remembered the Russian occupation troops as extremely polite, helpful but fearful people.

This fellow was just "chilling" in this position
in the cold for two days in a row.

At that point it was time to go to the Geschichtenhaus and we did so. There we were met by guides dressed in old-fashioned clothing who proceeded to give us an acted tour through the city's history. As a result of the tour my unflattering opinion of the Habsburg dynasty was strengthened, I realized that I didn't mind the taste of good coffee as much as I thought I did and learned that some of the most well-known characters in Bremen history were a poison-murderess and a tobacco swindler.


What amazed me in the two last museums was the amount of brochures and papers we kept being given. I believe at the end of the day I was carrying around a map of the center of Bremen (albeit a touristy one), a brochure from both the Antikenmuseum and Geschichtenhaus and several miscellaneous advertisements for events and places to visit in Bremen. All of this just for paying the entrance fees at each of the museums.

Inside the Dom

The end of saturday was uneventful: having arrived at the Dom too late, we missed opening hours by five minutes and were forced to return to the hostel. We then talked a lot about this and that, having decided to visit the Dom and the Weser Stadium the following day.

Bremen riverbank in the fog.

Sunday turned out to be considerably colder than Saturday and we only managed to see the Dom (a very nice piece of Gothic architecture), wander through a park and then trek over to the stadium. In addition to the cold by early afternoon the city was covered in fog. I tried to keep my spirits up by joking that this fog must be from Konstanz and it took one day for it to catch up to me in the north. Jokes do not generate warmth, however, and after braving the icy cold for several hours we retreated to the hostel and spent the rest of the evening talking.

Weser Stadium looks like a spaceship in the fog.

On Monday we got up around 8 am, headed to town, breakfasted on chocolate croissants and some delicious but alas indescribable cookies (sometimes I sincerely wish I was better at depicting food) . Nikita then took a tram to the airport while I found some postcards and then a post office. In said post office I dealt with the cards and put them in stamped envelopes, so as to send them out right before I got on my train. As the reader might remember, I was told letters go faster than postcards and seeing as my family was getting impatient, time was of the essence.

More foggy Bremen.

I then realized I had almost forgotten how properly to address a physical letter. Where does one put the destination address? Where does the return address go? I had no internet access, the post clerk was away from her desk and my train arrival time was getting nearer and nearer  the longer I pondered and scrambled around in my head for a solution.

Sometimes I think the quality of a decision is inversely proportional to the amount of time one spends panicking about it. When one deliberates in peace and quiet with no pressure, that is a whole different matter. However, when one is faced with a decision that needs to be made in anything similar to the "now or never" circumstances, it seems like the first gut instinct is the way to go and any further hesitation will only drift one in the direction of the worst decision possible.
I do not always subscribe to this theory, but sometimes it seems highly attractive.
Given that I had about 15 minutes till my train (even though the station was next door, I did not know exactly how far away the right platform was), I panicked and stalled, then decided to fill out the envelopes according to what I remembered of the American way of addressing letters. Naturally, I remembered it in reverse order and placed my German address as the destination and my relatives' American addresses as the return ones.

It should have come as no surprise to me then, when on Tuesday morning I received all three of the letters I sent from Bremen. At the time it did.

So cozy inside the mask...

Londinium II

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.

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.

Caity Standing in front of
the boyscout camp sign.

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.

The long winding road...

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.

The horse path that we mistook for the Pooh Trail

Lone Pine and Heffalump Trap at last!

This we thought were Roo's Sandpits.
They were not marked, so I guess we will never know for sure...

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.

One final glance at the setting sun from the 100-Acre Wood.

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.