Vienna

Vienna was considerably more happy and uplifting of an experience.  I liked Vienna, or Wien, as the Viennese call it. 

 I went there to meet up with one of my best friends from high school, Melissa the bass player (NOT base).  I’d actually never seen one of her concerts, so I was pretty excited that the first concert I got to watch her in was a solo concert in Vienna. 

The first night was great—we did that reunion thing at the airport, that embarrassing running and hugging thing—and then jumped on a train, both trying to talk at the same time, just really excited that we were both in Vienna together. After we arrived into the city, we went straight to a pizza place, which I was thrilled about, seeing as I had been craving pizza for a good month or so (pizza isn’t a huge thing in Britain), and it being a Friday during Lent, the pizza was in the shape of a fish, which was also exciting.  I think the pizza was supposed to be shared—and I ate the whole thing.  Opps.

The next morning was the concert—and it was awesome! Melissa did great, actually everyone did!  It was short—about an hour—because everyone just went for a few minutes each.  But Melissa’s classes/ concert hall is in a freaking palace! Its not fair, she takes classes in this grand building, set with gold and marble, high ceilings, large sculptures and floor length mirrors—and I take classes in a cramped, creaky townhouse.  Oh well.  At least everyone speaks English, and I don’t have to use public transport.  Give and take, right?

Afterwards, we just explored Vienna.  It is a rather pretty city.  I’ve been reading a crime series set in turn-of-the-century Vienna, so I was thrilled to be walking along the Ringstausse and have Melissa say, ‘Oh, that’s the Kunsthistorisches,’ and I’d actually heard of it!  We walked over to Belvedere—a true palace, the palace of the Hapsburgs, or at least, one of them. It was—so grand.  Of course.  The gardens just went on and on.  The palace did too, we just didn’t go inside (it was costly!) an afforded some amazing views when you walked up this enormous hill.

Looking down, I realized that the city was really just piles and piles of glamorous marble, streets and streets of it.  Everything in Vienna is grand.  Excpet for their affinity with stringing wires (for the trams, for the street lights, for electricity), and their predilection for smoking, Vienna is wonderful.

Sunday was just as good.  I had to buy my bus ticket, which was confusing and not helped by my ignorance of German (I can now order tea Schwatz te mit milch bitte! or ‘black tea with milk, please!) but that’s about it.  We wandered around Stephenplatz, where we went inside the grand cathedral.  It never ceases to amaze me when I go to places like Vienna, like England, like Barcelona, and touch the cool stone of the walls that these walls were built 500, 600, 700 or even more years ago.  Before America was anything but a forested, almost untouched piece of land, lived on only be segmented tribes of Native Americans that had no idea that such a building could even exist. It never ceases to amaze me old Europe is.

We took lunch at a charming Café (I had a crepe with cheese, apples, and some kind of jam, it sounds weird, but it was so good!) and then headed over to the Danube, a short train ride away.  Everyone says that the Blue Danube thing is just a myth—and maybe its not as blue as, say, a blue crayon or the sky on a clear day, but I’d still say its pretty freaking blue.  Compared to the Mississippi, its…crazy blue. 

But the evening was the best part—we went to the opera.  I’d never been, but I had high expectations.  It just seemed like such a high-class, aristocratic thing to do—see an opera.  They’re always seeing operas in Victorian books, so I was very excited.  We got there—and the opera house is brilliant by the way—and waited in lie for what seemed like forever (I actually brought a book…) but it was all worth it.  We bought a 4 euro ticket to stand about 7 or 8 meters behind people that paid a god 100 or 200 euros to sit. 

Normally, singing in movies makes me angry—I just want them to get on with the story! (English major in me speaking) But the opera was great!  We had a quick dinner, which was good, it gave us energy to stand for 3 hours—before we settled down to watch the opera. It was crowded (we were basically standing in horse stalls) but it was all part of the experience.  They have these little screens that tell you what they are saying (it was in Italian!) but as not much really happened, and they liked to repeat themselves, I found myself just watching the characters, listening to their voices, studying the scenery.  I don’t know much about operas (or anything really) but I was amazing.  Too bad they died in the end—but hey at least they sang about it!

More Cardiff. 

Okay, so this is the bad part.  Kristyn really wanted to see a hockey game, so we bought tickets to see the Cardiff Devils—which is wayyy more exciting than it sounds. It was pretty cool, even though I know nothing about hockey.  It’s a pretty fast-paced game and really easy to lose track of the puck.  The Devils won, which was good.  The Devils fans also liked to do this thing where they took off their shoes and held them in the air whenever something happened (I was never clear exactly what that entailed…) But so yeah.  The game was fine.  It was what happened before we arrived that was the bad part.

We had to take a bus there.  And the bus, being a typical city bus, took us all over the place, meandering here and there through first nice, and then slowly grimier and grimier neighborhoods as the bus slowly ambled outside of the city.  We came up to a three-way intersection and saw a stopped red car off to the right side (i.e. the wrong side of the road here) and, thinking it hit another car, I looked at my seatmate and said, ‘Oh, that sucks.’  The bus slowed down to swerve around the car and as we passed it, we realized there was a man lying facedown in the road, halfway under the red car.  His jeans were torn, exposing the flesh underneath, and his arms were above his head as if he had tried to brace himself before he fell.  By his side, about 2 meters away, lay a bent, damaged motorcycle.  He wasn’t moving, and a little circle of people had gathered around him in a semicircle.

On the bus, there was a collective gasp as people stared at the man, unable to look away. There wasny any police there, no ambulance.  No one was doing anything.  And we just sat there on the bus, watching the scene outside.  The three rowdy men in the back actually stopped the bus and jumped off to ‘see what was happening’…pretty sick, right? And then the bus turned the corner and he was gone. 

Yet I couldn’t get him out of my mind.  That picture of the man, just lying there, unmoving, with the group just standing around him was burned into my eyes.  It really disturbed me, that feeling of helplessness, that I didn’t—couldn’t—do anything.  For days, I couldn’t get the image out of my mind, instead, sharing it with anyone who’d listen.  What did they tell his family? What was he doing there anyway? Why didn’t they pay better attention? Why do people ride motorcycles anyway, as dangerous as they are? I’m pretty sure that this experience, this image, as fleeting as it was, changed something in me.  I’m not sure what, but things suddenly seemed a little different, life suddenly seemed a more important. 

Thanks to some Google research, I later found out he died right there on the scene.  When the bus drove by, when I looked out that window—he was already gone. 

Caerdydd (otherwise known as Cardiff)

The day started off in madness. 

I went for a run, totally forgetting that the Bath Half was today, so as I popped out of the canal onto the road, I was thoroughly surprised to see throngs of people standing in lines that literally went on for several streets all clutching their numbers.  After breakfast, Sophia and I headed out to the train station to catch the 11:25 train to Wales.  Unfortunately, we forgot about the marathoners.  We spent the next ten minutes shouting things like “banana!” and “clownface!” and “Go dog!” to the various costumed runners. There were also an awful lot of people running for charities, which meant they had to wear really strange outfits.  Like the breast cancer runners—they each literally wore a single giant stuffed boob strapped to their chest (or back…).  It was strange.

After about an hour and a half, we arrived in Cardiff.  It wasn’t a terribly huge, impressive place—in fact, it was rather modern, even plain.  At least, until we got to the Castle.  The Castle was easily my favorite part of the whole trip.  It was so interesting!  The outer wall was impressive enough, but inside it, it was just gorgeous.  There was a huge open space, all green and wonderful.  Plopped in the middle was a still-standing medivel castle.  Off to the side, there was the more modern castle that the Victorians used to live in.

The whole thing started off with a bizarre movie set in modern Cardiff but with “history coming to life” through the centuries.  The modern girl was running around fighting football players turned to medeivel soldiers…odd.

The Victorian castle was pretty nice, mostly because it was really pretty without being over the top.  The rooms were done up nicely, there was an octagon stairwell (that we couldn’t use) the dinning room had a huge table, there was suits of armor in the halls.  My favorite was the library though.  So many books, of course I’d like it!  It was decorated with hand-painted banners bearing the names of the king’s favorite writers.  The only ones I can still remember are Aristotle, Pluto, and Dante.  I guess he was a fan of the classics. 

The medieval part of the castle was really great though.  You had to climb a host of stairs to get to the top, but the view was worth it!  Cardiff may not be the most glamorous city, but it certainly looked nice from above.  The stairs got steeper and steeper as you go through the stone rooms.  They weren’t much to look at now, but the Hugh, the audio-guide man, told me all about the lives of the families that used to live in these tiny rooms with walls as thick as a bank vault.  He also informed me to look at the medieval graffiti and the small hole in the lowest apartment that was apparently the toilet. 

After a delicious little lunch at a local sandwich shop, we headed over to the National Museum via the shopping district.  The shopping district was modern and placeless, but the National History Museum, alongside the courts and the town hall, were very grand and gorgeous.  We went inside the National Museum—but we couldn’t get through it all!  Cardiff isn’t big enough to have separate museums; so there was a whole art section, which included neo-classical, impressionism, sculpture, modernism, and even an exhibit on Buddhism, which I loved because it made me think about my  (hopefully) future Himalayan trek.  I was excited about seeing some Van Gough until I leaned in closer and saw that had painted that view 37 times so its no wonder they have one.  But the museum closed at 4:45, and after spending an hour and a half upstairs, we realized that we only had 20 minutes to see the science stuff.  Sometimes that gets really boring, and it was at first until we turned the corner and entered the dinosaur room.  I wish I got to see more of it, but the guards were literally herding us through the halls to get us out and the only exhibit that I truly remember seeing clearly was the one on prehistoric bugs—including a clump of giant cockroaches and a gigantic spider.  I was so traumatized that my heart didn’t slow down until after we sped through the rest of the dinosaurs, went outside, through the reception of an Indian wedding and were back in the center of town. 

Okay this is getting long, so I will continue this in the next post.

How to Relive Your Childhood...

Being an intern at a museum’s education center is fun!  It’s like reliving your childhood twice a week.  No really, minus the cleaning up afterwards, its spectacular.  In one workshop on architecture, I got to draw a line drawing of the famous Royal Crescent (a big, curvy row of fancy houses for Bath’s upper echelons).  Afterwards, the children all crowded around me and ooohed and ahhhhed, acting like I was freaking Leonardo da Vinci or something.  In another, there was an extra station set up, so I got to paint a box in the style of Mondrian.  (Afterwards, the kids made sculptures with wood scraps, but that’s where I put my foot down.) It ended uo looking more like a stained glass window, but whatever.

Today, the teacher, Chrissie, had this whole class planned out where she told that story about the hen who made bread and none of her friends would help her using little puppets, stuffed animals and various objects to represent the bread-making stages, and then we made bread!  I’ve made bread about twice in my life, so it was a very exciting experience for me!  At the end, there was an extra loaf, so then I even got to try some, and it was sooo delicious!  I did have to have an epic battle with the printer for a solid 30 minutes to get the thing to print out all the pictures of the kids for their little photo memory books, but the bread at the end was so worth it…

Onto St Andrews….the most Posh uni in Britain (or so I’ve been told…)

We took a 2 hour (48 mile) bus ride to St Andrews—probably the smallest  town I have ever seen a university in!  It was literally 4 streets long, butted on one end by this picturesque, rugged, rough Scottish coast, complete with, wait for it, cliffs and a medieval castle!  The university buildings were so old they had that tarnished look to them, dark and forbidding.  And then the quad was straight out of harry Potter…The town itself was pretty cute. Small, mostly dead, quiet, peaceful, friendly. I liked it—but I could never live in a place that tiny!  I don't really like people that much, and I dislike leaving my comfort zone (even though I do, all the time) but I still crave big cities, places with randomness, and long dark streets, able to walk for an hour and a half and still not reach the other side of town.  I like the feeling knowing that no matter how long I live there, I may never know all there is to know, may never see all the sights.  I love that. And that’s not something St Andrews could ever give me.

But that doesn’t matter.  It only matters what Tori likes, and she loved it!  I am not 99% sure will go there, which is cool yet frustrating (I never gave myself the option to leave the States, and I wish now that I did!)

It was dark when we got there, and we had no map, so we were a bit cluesless as to where to go.  But we just ended up asking for directions and found our hotel a few minutes later. After refreshing as best we could (because the French Airline forgot the champagne back in DC, they had to delay the flight and Tori only had 10 minutes to make her connection.  She did, but her luggage didn’t, so all her stuff was lost in France and it took until the next afternoon to arrive) we headed out to find dinner.  We choose a place that was a restaurant/bar, but it was late (ish—about 8) and I keep forgetting that stuff closes realllly early here, so it was already drinking time, and Tori freaked out about the whole bar setup.  So we ended up wandering around until we found a place called Tailend where they sold you two fish and chips dinners for 6 pounds—a pretty kick-ass deal if I do say so myself!  We carted it off back to the hotel and ate the entire thing with our fingers straight out of the greasy box, and we loved every minute of it!  Afterwards, we went to the Vic (short for Victoria—Tori’s favourite) and I bought Tori her first beer, which she hated.  But hey, its an acquired taste, right?  So then I got her a rum and coke (mostly coke) which she managed to drink without grimacing.   Although, she has not gotten the concept that alcohol, unless consumed for a drinking game, a dare/bet, or hurriedly because the cops are coming, is not something you gulp down in two seconds.  You are supposed to drink it slowly, you know, savor it. I think she just wanted to get it all over with, like taking Nyquil or something!

The next morning, we went out exploring. (At least, after we overslept.  At least Tori had the jet-lag excuse—I was just tired). We had the hotel breakfast scraps, and then headed out into the freezing cold Scottish weather.  The town was still pretty cute in the daylight, and now we could see the medieval-ness of it.  Tori wanted to go shopping, but I said no, we had to see the town. So we went to the St Andrews museum , which was pretty nice. It was dead quiet in there, and for such a little place, pretty interesting.  My favourites were a casting of a giant water scorpion that was found just off the coast, and an oddities exhibit that used to be owned by the university.  (These used to be super popular in the 1800s when travelers would bring back stuff that was beyond imagination to the local British people).  After that, we headed out to a lunch date with a current student, but Tori felt unwell and practically ran off back to the hotel to lay down.  Instead, Chelsea and I chatted about living abroad and sipped tea and ate Panini’s.  It was delightful. 

After a nap and some ibuprofen, she felt better, and we met up with another student, Meg, at a local coffee shop, where she and her Swiss friend answered all of my sister’s questions, and I focused on eating a delicious almond tart.  Meg then gave us an extensive tour of the area, including making us aware of the strange (but interesting) superstitions on campus (which was to avoid walking on a certain block on the ground…) She then pointed us to a little Thai place, which was featured on a Gordon Ramsey show—and he even liked it!  It was pretty damn good—though I’ll admit, I got the most unoriginal thing on the menu, Pad Thai as it’s one of my all-time favourites.  But it was sooo worth it! 

The next morning, I had to leave.  My day of traveling started at 5:20 AM (splendid…) and lasted right up until 30 minutes before my class started at 4.  Looong day!  It took 4 trains, a bus, and a nice little walk with my obscenely loud rolling suitcase, but I made it back in time for class.  (yipppeee) Anyway, the best part about the whole day was probably the group of 5 drunk men sipping beers out of pitchers that crowded the little hallway by the bathroom who I left convince me that the button-activated bathroom door was broken.  The station man then came over, did the complicated measure of pressing the button labeled “open” and then looked at me as of to say, “jeez, look how dumb these foreigners are…”  

Edinburgh, Scotland

One thing about Britain is that it does NOT know how to make food. Excepting the wonderful meal, fish and chips, pretty much all traditional British meals vary from weird to unsavory to plain disgusting—and the Scots do it the best.  First off, the Brits do not understand the concept of pudding.  Pudding is supposed to be light and fluffy and chocolaty, but the Brits just add the name “pudding” to any less-delicious dish to make it sound more than merely edible. They seem to think that adding a desert type to a meal makes it yummy! Yorkshire Pudding is a splendid example; since when has pudding involved meat anyway? Pie, too, goes the same way, like Shepherd’s Pie or Steak and Ale Pie.  But the grossest of all is Black Pudding (otherwise known as Blood Pudding). Ingredients: congealed sheep’s blood that ends up looking like dead worms.  Yuuuum.  Haggis to is disgusting.  Its pretty much the Scottish version of the hotdog: sheep liver, lungs, and heart all mixed together (with oatmeal and veggies) to make a dark-colored mush that they expect you to eat.  Good thing I’m on a tight budget and cant afford to eat out!

But anyway, Scotland itself!  It only took a 6.5 hour train ride (which was, in fact, 3 train rides.  Trains are usually awesome because you don't have to drive, you can just sit back and sleep or read and not worry about TSA agents, but here, it was pretty hectic.  They don't tell you which train is yours, they don't number them, and they only put the end station on the departures board. Basically you’re screwed unless you can get some help!) But then there I was, in Edinburgh!  I was only there 2 hours, but it was enough to see that it was a truly beautiful city—it was so blatantly old, but it was all meshed up with the new too, and it worked really well.  And it was so blatantly Scottish—they definitely played on stereotypes, bagpipes, kilts, tartan, and of course, the accents!  The streets were lined with cafes, shops, and people.  Lunch too was well worth the wait, a delicious mixed vegetable Panini (including avocados, something very difficult to find here!) and a gooey, yummy brownie.  And as pain-in-the-butt my little sister can be sometimes, it was sooo great to see her so unexpectedly!  It true that we get along better from a distance, but its also true that getting to spend time with your sister for a few days in Scotland when you weren’t expecting to see her until June at the earliest was awesome! 

The Cotswolds!

I’m still not entirely sure I understand what the Cotswolds are exactly.  Basically, from what I can tell, it’s a region starting in Bath and extending north. It’s a bunch of little hills dotted with medieval-esque little towns hugging the hilltops, connected to one another with a chain of green pastures filled with the sheep that have made the region prosperous for centuries.  In short, it’s a nice place to visit. 

The morning stared off chaotic, with a hugely hungover Ben stumbling down the stairs 10 minutes before we were leaving, looking like he had just been hit over the head with a baseball bat. We managed to somehow get him decent and dragged him all the way to the bus station, literally propping him against the wall while we waited for the bus.  All went well though, and before long, we arrived at the Broadway Tower, a big castle-looking thing on a hill.   It was four rooms stacked on top of one another, flanked by two turrets encasing spiral staircases.  I tried to read the information, but I didn’t get very far because everyone else just ran up to the top for the “view” which, because of an intense bout of fog, didn’t really exist. I did manage to learn that the man had the tower built as a gift for his wife so she could look out her window and see a castle.  I also learned that a man who was set to live there and set up a printing workshop was unhappily surprised to find a stubborn family of squatters living on the property who refused to vacate for months. 

We then walked about a mile and a half down the Cotswolds footpaths through sheep fields and mud puddles, climbing over stiles because gates don’t exist—and felt like straight out of Pride and Prejudice with our “hems 6 inches deep in mud!”  At first, I was kind of grumpy because my hands were really cold and I didn’t know that we were walking so far. But then we started running down a really steep hill and I slipped down it, covering my pants with mud, and decided it wasn’t so bad—despite having to be rushed off to a bathroom with warm water 10 minutes later after my fingers turned a magnificent shade of blue.

Lunch was great! We ate a place called The Mad Hatter (our primary reason for choosing the place…) which was decorated with fantastic Alice in Wonderland murals.  We ate traditional English food (fish and chips….yummm) and I even ate the peas they gave me, despite the deep loathing I have for them.  We wanted to get dessert (we want to try bannoffee pie because of Love Actually!)  but there just wasn’t enough time before the bus was leaving. 

Our last stop was at the Painswick Gardens, a cool little collection of “trails” interspersed with benches, tiny castles and huts, fake sheep (which we wasted no time climbing on!) ponds, fountains, and covered with their infamous little white snowdrops.  Plus, there was a maze shaped like “250” (for the 250^th anniversary) which we had fun running like crazy little children, screaming at the top of our lungs whenever we found one of the goals in the middle of each of the numbers. 

Lastly, we had our tea and cake, which of course was delightful.  One of the other girls opted out of getting the tea and instead got this drink called elderflower cordial, a warm, nearly-clear, sweet drink, which was really, really good—so good that I got a glass of it, and still good enough that we both bought a bottle of it.  Even better, the woman said that because its so strong, you only need to add a little bit to a warm glass of water, so the bottle we got went from 3 or 4 glasses of the drink, to 26 glasses!  Yes!  J