Keep Calm and Carry On

It's been a wild last few days in London.
On Saturday morning I walked out to Waterloo Bridge to say one final goodbye to this city that I've been lucky enough to live in for the past fifteen weeks. Snow was pouring from the sky, making a picture-perfect setting on the Thames. Looking back, it was a dumb decision not to bring my camera. Then I went back to the apartment, took my suitcases, and hopped a tube train to the airport. After almost four months of exploring, I was heading home. Or so I thought.

The tube whisked me under central London and emerged from the tunnel, cruising past the suburban landscape of London's outer boroughs. Three stops from the airport, the train stopped at Hounslow Central. It did not move again. There was a signal failure. All passengers had to exit the train and catch a bus a few blocks down. I grabbed my bags and left the train, but forgot my umbrella.

The 111 bus doesn't stop too far from Hounslow Central tube stop, but it seemed like miles away when the sidewalks weren't shoveled and there's snow and ice everywhere. Eventually, with two bags in tow, I arrived at the bus stop, where a bus with a destination sign reading "Heathrow Airport Central" promptly pulled up. Unfortunately, the bus was extremely crowded and I had to carry my bags to the upper deck, but since this would be my last ride on a London double decker, I didn't mind. The bus slowly wound its way through the snow-covered streets of the London suburbs, passing cars that had spun out on the slippery streets and miserable-looking Londoners trudging through the wintry weather.

Just a few stops short of the airport, an automated message told everyone to exit the bus. It was still snowing. I didn't know where I was, but I figured another bus would come along shortly. It didn't. I started walking in the same direction the bus had been traveling. I had left my apartment four hours before the flight was scheduled to leave in case something went wrong, but I was starting to get nervous. I left enough of a buffer for one thing to go wrong, not two or three.

After a very long time of running through the London sidewalks in the snow, I reached the barbed wire fence that bordered the outer edges of the airport. I didn't hear any jet engines running, so I thought flights must have been delayed for the snow. Still, with my luck, I was nervous that mine would be the one flight that left on time and it would leave without me.

The right bus finally arrived. It was extremely crowded. My drenched shoes made a puddle on the floor. The bus stopped at the airport just twenty minutes before my flight was scheduled to leave. I pulled out my passport and boarding pass, grabbed my bags, and ran for the check-in counter, dropping my passport in the process. When I arrived at the terminal, there was a massive crowd of tired-looking travelers sitting on baggage. Some were near tears. It was at this moment when I realized I lost my passport. I began to panic.

I tried to retrace my steps and find the passport, but the mob of passengers was so thick I could not get through to where I had just walked and I could not see the floor. I pulled out my credit card and paid an insane $23 for WiFi use at the airport. I thought I would never see that passport again, so I looked up information on the US Embassy to find out how to get another one. The US Embassy opened on Monday at 8:00 AM. It was 5:30 PM on Saturday. I called my parents and told them I didn't have a passport.

Unfortunately, I was too frazzled to take a camera out in the airport and capture the sight of thousands of stranded passengers bunking down on the floor for the night, so here's a picture someone else took of the scene.

I sat on my suitcase, where a stranded Canadian girl asked me how I got the WiFi. I told her the price was too high, but I was desperate. She told me her flight was canceled, saying 'about' ['aboot'] and 'out' ['oot'] with a Canadian accent. I bit my lip to stop myself from smiling. Then I waited in a line at the information booth, where a good person, for whom I am very thankful, had picked up my passport and brought it there for safe keeping. Passport in hand, I was ready to check in and go home. The flight had not left yet due to the snow, so it was possible I could still make it home.

Almost immediately after I arrived at the check-in area, it was announced that my flight was canceled. The airport was closed because of the snow storm. NYU study abroad students were all around me now, many of them very distraught. I was happy to have my passport and hung around the airport. All trains out of the airport were stopped as well, so no one could return to central London. The hotels at the airport were full. The airport was full, so full that the police were making people wait outside in the snow and ice because allowing any more passengers in would be a fire hazard. Those lucky enough to be inside the terminal curled up and went to sleep for the night. The NYU students and I sat on our luggage and waited, lost and unsure of what to do.

Eventually the tube re-opened. Unsure where else to turn, we hopped a train back to the apartment and asked to be allowed back into the dorms.

Emotions ran high back at the apartment, where everyone was frantically trying to rebook a flight. Everyone, myself included, have been booked on several flights these last few days and have spent several hours on hold on the phone with airlines trying to rebook flights. It has been nearly impossible to leave this country for days, and today is the first day things seem to be clearing up, even though there are a number of delays at all airports. There are few empty seats on the planes that do fly out. My current plan calls for catching a flight tomorrow (Thursday, five days after my scheduled departure) to Orlando and then dashing to catch a connection into Hartford. It will be a hectic day.

There's an article about all of this here.

Despite all this chaos, I have had high spirits through this whole experience. While my friends have been panicking, crying, and frantically calling parents, I have been enjoying a few extra days in London in between the long phone calls on hold with Virgin Atlantic. I know I am lucky to have a place to stay, since many have been sleeping on the floor of Heathrow since Saturday night. I am lucky to have been studying in London, since many travelers got trapped in Heathrow trying to make a connection for days with no luggage and no place to sleep, as all hotels are full.

Since the flight was canceled, I have been taking advantage of my extra days in London. I've had a great time this entire semester, so I don't see why things should be much different now. No one else seems to share my good attitude, however. I am surrounded by angry students who just want to get home. While I understand their frustration, I won't let their negativity ruin my good time.

When I left for London, I wanted an adventure. I never expected an adventure like this.

Like a box of chocolates

"I'm pretty tired. I think I'll go home now."-Forrest Gump

Wish You Were Here

Big Ben, one last time. Love the lighting on this one.

I took my last final this afternoon. I am free.

Now I have a few days to enjoy London and see everything one last time before I go home on Saturday. It's soon. I'm excited to go back to the United States, but not nearly as excited as I was to leave.

Last week I was sick. Yeah, it was bad. And I thought I was going to make it through the entire semester without getting sick once. Who did I think I was kidding?

Last week I also made a list of everything I wanted to do before leaving London that I hadn't done yet. I've been doing the things on that list, like going to the Tate Britain museum and visiting the Christmas festival at Hyde Park, and now the only thing left to do is walk across the crosswalk at Abbey Road.

Thursday of last week was when I was sickest. It was also the day of the protests. Thousands of students who are angry over the conservative government's removal of the price cap on public universities stormed Parliament Square, clashing with police and making international headlines. The UK's public universities are now the most expensive in the world. On Friday, when I passed Parliament Square on my way to visit the Tate Britain, the area was a fence graveyard, and mangled metal fences were stacked five feet high all around the square, litter thrown in between them, as a result of the unrest the day before.

Last week was my last day at the SHINE school. The class gave a formal thank you, complete with a card, and the teacher really seemed to appreciate my help. I was sad to see the class go, since, despite the awfully early morning, SHINE has been one of the best parts of this European experience. I've been stocking up on Cadbury chocolate and thinking about how I'm going to pack all this stuff and take it on the plane. It won't be long now.

Leaving Europe... for the weekend.

This morning I woke up at 5:15 and I'm not sure why. When I woke up, though, I heard a bunch of men singing in Arabic in the distance. In Muslim countries, men are called to the mosque to pray five times a day by a raspy horn that sounds throughout the respective city or town. I guess 5:00 AM must be one of these times, as these religious songs went on for another half hour before quickly dying out. It was very different being in a place so devoted to religion. But different is what I wanted-and expected-when I decided to visit Africa for the weekend.

Marrakesh, Morocco is a lively city in northern Africa. It's made of narrow pathways surrounded by buildings made of clay with stalls selling traditional clothing and hats and jewelry and hookah qalyans and all sorts of other interesting trinkets. One man even carved me and my friend a good luck charm out of wood with his feet and then wrote our names on it in Arabic.

Stop sign in Arabic.

At the center of Marrakesh is Djemaa el Fna, the main square. The square is always filled with activity. During the day, snake charmers control their cobras and acrobats perform stunts. At night, the food stalls open, sending smoke toward the clear, star-filled night sky as the cooks serve up chicken and beef on skewers peppered with Morocco's famous spices.

Me standing at Djemaa el Fna.

Yesterday we rode camels around a park at the edge of town. The camel was tall and the ride was bumpy, but it was a unique experience. In the park there was a pond filled with these giant fish that liked eating the bread that the locals fed them. There were also a lot of really small, cute kittens that looked hungry, so we fed them. I didn't expect cats to be part of the wildlife in Morocco!

Cat in front of a market stall at Djemaa el Fna.

One of my favorite sites on the internet, darkroastedblend.com, features a photo series called "Lords of Logistics," which shows odd, excessively elaborate solutions to seemingly simple problems such as moving large loads from one end of a less-than-developed town to another. Sometimes, in less developed areas of the world, these homemade feats of engineering are the only ways to move people and goods around. In Marrakesh, it was not uncommon for three or more people to be seen riding on one dirty, old motorcycle. Donkeys pulled carts on the exhaust-filled streets alongside the old taxis and cars. To tourists, these seem like relics leftover from an earlier time before trucks and mass transit. The people of Marrakesh, however, see these as regular means of transport.

Two people carrying a large load on a motorcycle.

I miss Marrakesh's weather. It was 75 and sunny yesterday, in sharp contrast to London's consistent 35 and overcast.

This evening I rode a bike for the first time in a month. The 'Barclay's cycle hire,' the city's bike sharing program, opened to non-UK residents on Friday. I rode under the Oxford Street Christmas lights. It was nice to feel the rush of the city from the seat of a bicycle for a change, even though it's chilly now.

Freedom from Want

Yesterday was not Thanksgiving. Not in London, anyway, where everyone just went on with their daily lives without any indication that the last Thursday in November was anything special. It's a bit strange not being at home on a major holiday like Thanksgiving. Sure, I've done it before. When I was in high school I was out of the country traveling with my family for more than one Independence Day. Thanksgiving's different, though. It's a big deal at my house, so it's weird missing it.

In order to keep up with the American spirit, however, my friend who lives across the hall roasted a turkey and invited me to join him in a Thanksgiving party. Ten of us American students gathered around a way-too-small kitchen table. We all shared what we were thankful for and feasted on the best turkey amateur college students can make. It wasn't home, but it was close. I suppose this isn't all that unique. Anyone who migrates to another country seems to want to keep the traditions of their homeland alive, which is why we hear about holidays like Chinese New Year.

I called home via video chat, where all my relatives gathered around a computer where it was Thanksgiving and updated me on what was going on in Connecticut. It made me happy that Thanksgiving was the only major holiday I'd me missing while in London.

These past couple of weeks I've been enjoying London. I went to see Oliver, the musical based on Oliver Twist. I rode the bus over to Portobello Road Market and ate enough really good food to keep me full all day.

It's been cold, by London's standards. It doesn't get below freezing that often in London, even in the middle of winter, but it's November and it's been well below freezing at night. There's talk of snow in the next few days.

I don't want to leave London in three weeks because everything's nice here and I like the city. But I want my American holidays back.

I Tend to Think of Myself as a One-Man Wolf Pack

The train from Prague to Berlin passed through really pretty countryside. Through the Czech Republic it followed a river, and occasionally the route would pass a picturesque little village with brightly colored houses built into the side of a hill. After crossing the German border, the train pulled away from the river and passed fields and more old, pretty houses. But this was not Berlin. Berlin was something different.

Berlin Holocaust Memorial. It's abstract, but it certainly feels eerie when you're walking amongst all these stones.

The British can stop complaining about how hard World War II was on their country. Berlin was leveled. Razed. Completely destroyed. Almost everything in the German capital was built in the last few decades, since 90% of the buildings in central Berlin were destroyed during World War II. It's the closest to the Far East I'll get for a while, with Berlin's glass office buildings and new cityscape, so the part of me that wanted to study abroad in Hong Kong is temporarily at ease. But Berlin is more than endless new developments that have gone up since the war. Determined to learn the history of this city, I took a free walking tour that was advertised in the hostel. The story of Berlin is really interesting. There are odd diagonal brick strips in the streets where the Berlin Wall stood just 25 years ago. The Holocaust Memorial is a rather abstract piece of art that is designed simply to make viewers remember Germany's terrible past.

Close-up of the art on the Berlin Wall's East Side Gallery

All around are reminders that Berlin has endured a tough past, through Hitler's Third Reich and the Soviet occupation of East Berlin. The East Side Gallery is the longest stretch of the Berlin Wall still standing, and it's decorated with paintings from artists from around the world.

The Reichstag, home of the German Parliament. It was built in 1894 but was destroyed by a fire in 1933. It wasn't restored until after Germany was re-unified, but it re-opened in 1999 to hold the German government.

Berlin was nice, but I would have liked to see older parts of Germany. There was art everywhere: In stores, on the sidewalk, and even in this odd sculpture market I walked into on my first night there that sold strange sculptures and jewelry. The city was clean and the people were friendly. And I didn't go into one of Berlin's famous techno raves once, not that I wanted to anyway, because this city had so much more to offer.

The final stop on my fall break tour was Paris. It's cliche and I've done it before, but that's part of the appeal. The first time I went to Paris, I was thirteen. I didn't like it. Maybe because it was the first place I had ever been where English wasn't widely spoken, maybe because it's just what I expected and nothing more, but I remembered hating Paris and I wanted to see if my opinion would change if I saw it again. Things looked bleak as my plane landed in a cold rainstorm.

Musee d'Orsay, an art museum converted from what used to be a train station.

I liked Paris, though. Didn't love it, but it was pretty and people were friendlier to tourists than I remember. My hostel was located right near the Sacre Coeur, a large cathedral set up on a hill with sweeping views of Paris. I went to the museums, of course, but the one painting I wanted to see in the Louvre, Portrait de l'artiste sous les traits d'un moqueur, was not there. Does it look familiar? The museums were a good way to escape the cold and rain that hung around Paris during my stay, but for the brief dry moments I was able to walk around, climb the Eiffel Tower, and eat some crepes.

The Eiffel Tower poking through the Paris rooftops at night. It shines a bright beacon into the sky.

By the end of the trip, I was exhausted and ready to head back to London and sleep in my own bed instead of a hostel, but I was glad that I had gone to Paris. Mostly, I was anxious to just spend time with people again after traveling solo for so long. Paris was better than I thought it would be, even though it was far from the best place I'd seen all week (Still Vienna). I'm ready for more London now, though. I love this city.

Like a Rolling Stone

Vienna's City Hall.

"Do you know where the nearest docking station is?"
A man had spotted my Vienna Citybike, which I had rented with the municipal bike sharing program, and he seemed unfamiliar with this part of town. I was stopped in front of the Vienna City Hall to take a picture of the building, struggling to use the handlebars of the bike as a tripod. It was around 9:30 on a Saturday night.
"No, I'm not from here, sorry," I replied, wondering how he knew I didn't speak German.
"Ah, so you're not a Wiener. Welcome," the man replied in English, but with an Austrian accent that hinted that English was not his first language. No, I'm not a Wiener, but I wish I was. Vienna is a fantastic city. My desire to live there is apparently reflected in the happiness of the Viennese, as the city frequently tops quality of life surveys conducted to compare cities around the world. All the buildings are beautiful, the people are friendly, and the city is lively during the day and at night. Even on Sunday, when all the stores are closed, the people of Vienna come out to walk their dogs (Because, it seems, everyone in Europe has a dog) or grab coffee on Kärntner Straße, Vienna's main shopping street.

Mozart lived here!

The colorful roof and sharp spires of Stephansdom

It's a fun city to walk around in, taking in the frankfurter stands and pretty mosaic patterns on the buildings and the giant museums and palaces that take up quite a bit of space in this culturally rich city. Vienna is home to one of the world's oldest Ferris Wheels, the Wiener Riesenrad. Hofburg Palace, home of the president of Austria and former home of the Hofburg Emperors, is enormous. The palace has been the Austrian government headquarters for over 700 years. Stephansdom is a giant cathedral right in the center of Vienna with a very colorful roof. Vienna's beautiful sights and lively people just might make it the best place I've been so far on this trip.

Prague is a long train ride from Vienna. Four hours after racing through the dark Czech countryside, however, the city lights were glowing out the window, and I knew I was close.

Typical Prague street in the old part of town.

Prague gets a lot of hype. Both professional travel writers and just regular adventurers sharing experiences online call its beauty almost fairytale-like and encourage others to see this great city, which, like Budapest, but to more of an extreme, has quickly become a colorful tourist destination after being part of the USSR for so many years. People I met in the Vienna hostel all agreed that Prague is very beautiful, one backpacker even called it her favorite destination in Europe.

The Prague Astronomical Clock, made in 1410, was considered cutting-edge technology when it was built. Now I can't even figure out how to use it.

Without a doubt, Prague is beautiful. Old Town Square is home to a 500-year-old, still-functioning clock that I still haven't figured out how to read and the old town hall and a church, all of which are pretty. The Prague Castle offers magnificent views of the city from across the river, in a similar fashion to Budapest.

Prague castle up on the hill.

It's all really pretty, with the small streets and red roofs and vendors selling food cooked over an open charcoal fire in the square, but I don't think it's the best place in Europe. Souvenir shops dominate many of the streets in the Old Town section, and tourists don't feel as welcome here as they do in Vienna. Prague is nice, Prague is pretty, but Prague just isn't as good as everyone says it is. And the exchange rate of 17 Czech Koruna to 1 US Dollar makes for some tough math.

Go East, Young Man, and See Another Country

It's Christmas time already in London. Without Thanksgiving setting the boundary between the rest of the year and Christmas, the lights go up and the sales start right after Halloween's done. And it was even warmer in London this week than it's been in a month.

A tram stops in front of the short-distance train station in Budapest.

It's fall break, so I have over a week to escape this madness. NYU in London dorms are empty and everyone's off traveling around Europe. My first stop was Budapest in Hungary. Budapest was a part of the USSR until 20 years ago, and it shows. On the train ride into the city from the airport, I rolled by Budapest's ugly suburbs. Block after block of poured concrete buildings lined the streets, a reminder of a tense time in history that didn't happen all that long ago.

Budapest's city center is very different from the suburbs. It's very beautiful, with colorful buildings and the famous narrow Chain Bridge near the large and elaborate Hungarian Parliament building. Budapest is divided into Buda, on the western side of the Danube river, and Pest on the east. Pest is where the city center is, but in Buda there is the Castle, a neighborhood that sits on top of a steep hill that offers great views of the entire city below.

View from the castle in Buda.

Street with colorful houses near the castle in Budapest.

The Budapest hostel is the best hostel I've stayed in so far, partly because of its intimate setting in a small 100-year-old apartment building and partly because of the people I met there. On the first evening, I met Mohamed, a man in his late 20s who had been invited to Europe (I can't remember which city) for a major peace talk conference that his friend was helping organize. Mohamed said that as he was planning his trip to the conference, he decided that he might as well take three months off from work and travel more. He had been everywhere, born in Syria, raised in The Hague, and currently living in Detroit when he's not traveling Asia, South America, or Europe. He had tried all sorts of jobs after college and hasn't really found anything he likes yet, but he said that all the jobs he's had have provided interesting experiences and insights on the way people live. He sounded like he had experienced more in the last fifteen years that many people experience in a lifetime. Now THAT'S living! Back at the hostel, I met Seth, a Toronto native, just a couple of years older than me, who had come to travel Europe for sailing competitions. Seth was seated talking with a few students my age from Slovakia who were visiting Budapest for a few days on a long weekend, and a couple of Swiss men in their thirties. Seth was talkative, fitting the 'friendly Canadian' stereotype, and everyone else was responding in English at various skill levels. When someone asked where the time zone jumped an hour forward when traveling east, Seth proudly announced, "The man who invented time zones was Canadian!" complete with a small fist pump of pride. The Slovakians instantly refuted this, insisting that time zones were a product of Magellan's expedition around the world, obviously a European idea. I had always thought time zones were conceived as a way of keeping American railroads running on the same schedule in the 1800s. The proceeding argument did not reach any conclusions, except I did realize that each area of the world has its own version of history and, while the phrase "history is written by the winners" is tossed around a lot, one culture's view of who the winner is might differ from another's.

Sex and French Fries

Brussels: Dessert forever!

Brussels from Atomium

Waffles. So many waffles with chocolate and strawberries and Nutella whipped cream. As soon as I arrived in Brussels on Thursday night, I was anxious to eat some good food. Brussels is one of those places that shuts down early, though, so the only place open was one lone counter that looked like it served a local brand of fast food. Belgium is famous for its frites, or French Fries, which ended up being the perfect food to eat at midnight after a long Eurostar train trip from London. These were some good fries, oily and hot and perfect. The Belgians take pride in the fact that, despite the misnomer, French Fries were invented in their country. Gift shops stocked shirts and aprons that say "It is a Belgian invention, so we shall call it 'French Fries'" with a picture of a cone full of fries, because frites are served in a paper cone in Belgium. The next afternoon, I had a real Belgian Waffle from an upscale cafe near the Grand Palace. This was no ordinary waffle. It was warm and not too sweet and just plain delicious, with chocolate dripping down the sides.

Atomium

There are other things to do in Brussels besides eat, of course. Atomium is located on the edge of the city, the remains of the 1958 Expo, the first World's Fair after World War II. It's a really cool structure, designed to look like giant atoms. The inside is an exhibit on the world's fair, with models of all the old pavilions Everything looks very 1950s, with the futurist look.

Brussels' Grand Palace. We couldn't go in because it was closed for a special event.

Mannequin Pis is one of the most famous landmarks in Brussels. Yeah, it's a statue of a kid peeing.

The European Union headquarters are in Brussels, but by the time I arrived at the EU Parliament building the last (and only) tour had already passed. The presence of all of these important government buildings makes Brussels feel like Washington DC, as my friend who was traveling with me noticed. As well as having all the government buildings, Brussels also closes down really early, just like Washington. Shops began closing down for the night at 5:00, and by 8:00 the city is eerily quiet. We passed very few people on the way back to the hostel. Everyone in the city appeared to be sleeping all the time.

Brussels has great food and it's nice, but it feels empty and boring for tourists. It'd be a nice place to live, but I'm not sure I want to visit there.

Amsterdam: Prostitutes, marijuana, and really beautiful canals
I'm hesitant to write that I should have studied abroad in Amsterdam. Almost a year ago, when I was deciding on where to study abroad, I had narrowed my options down to Amsterdam and London, and eventually chose London. Amsterdam was so nice that, for a second or two, I though I might have picked the wrong city. I arrived after midnight after a three-hour ride in on the train from Brussels. The city was still filled with energy, and I got a milkshake from Febo, a fast food place that sells hamburgers from vending machines.

Amsterdam's canals were really pretty.

Amsterdam looks way better during the day, though. The trees that lined the canals all had yellow leaves, since it's the end of October. All the buildings are pretty. Houseboats are parked alongside the canals. My friends and I rented bikes and pedaled slowly along the canals. It was more leisurely than the London and New York biking I've done, since Amsterdam moves at a more casual pace. The museums all had huge lines stretching out of them, but we found enough to do without seeing Anne Frank's house and waiting line. We ate pancakes for lunch, which the Dutch put meat or cheese or vegetables in and eat as a meal. I quickly realized that there is much more to Amsterdam than the vices it's famous for, and it's really a nice place even for people like myself who don't like to indulge in the drugs they sell at the Magic Mushroom Gallery, although 'free samples' signs next to lines of mind-altering powders for snorting are certainly not an everyday sight. And this is all just normal for the people of Amsterdam, who, it seemed, rarely indulged in drugs or prostitutes.

The place where we got pancakes for lunch

The red light district at night is definitely something unique. Sure, there are other red light districts in Europe, in places like Brussels and Frankfurt, but none get as much hype as the one in Amsterdam. Groups of rowdier American 20-something males cheered on a friend who had dared to step inside one of the blacklight-illuminated doors and paid for a session with one of Amsterdam's famed prostitutes. Smoke poured from the coffee shops, which are more famous for serving up marijuana than serving coffee. The area was filled with other tourists, but it was a slice of Amsterdam's liberal, honest culture.

The houses all looked like this!

The language barrier in Amsterdam was smaller than the language barrier in London. When one of the students in the SHINE classroom asks me to use the 'loo,' it sometimes takes me a minute to translate the phrase from Cockney to American. In Amsterdam, every single person I encountered spoke English, and the accent was easier to understand. The Dutch were very friendly, and I did not feel like I was being treated like a tourist, as I did in Italy and Spain.

When it was time to go to the train station, which had the most bikes I'd ever seen parked in front of it (one guidebook estimated that there are about 7,000 bikes parked there on most days), I almost didn't want to head back to London. The train back was the only time I saw the Dutch countryside during the day. It really is filled with tulip fields and windmills, but the tulips aren't in bloom on Halloween. Amsterdam is one of the more interesting places I've been. It's famous for its hedonism like Las Vegas, but it has the charm of San Francisco and the anything-goes attitude of New York. Beautiful, lively, and edgy, Amsterdam is like no other place on earth.

I didn't see any bull fights...

If I had that many [frequent flyer] miles, I'd just show up at the airport, look up at one of those big destination boards, pick a place and go.

-Up in the Air

On Thursday, it looked like there was a pretty boring weekend ahead. I had no homework to do, and, except for a small cultural festival in my neighborhood, there was nothing to do. By Friday night, I was in Madrid.

Madrid has lots of hills.

Originally, I had not planned on going to Madrid, since everyone goes there and I don't really want to go to a place that "everyone goes" to. But Thursday I rolled out of bed with nothing to do and began poking around the websites of Ryanair and Easyjet, two low-cost airlines that operate out of London, but there were no cheap fares. I wasn't looking for anything in particular, I just wanted to go somewhere, even if I had never heard of it before. And so, I clicked on Ciudad Real. The flight was 58 pounds each way, about $92.

Ciudad Real, as it turns out, is in the middle of nowhere. The ground was completely dark all the way down to the airport, making it hard to tell when we'd land in Spain. It's a tiny city, and the Ryanair flight I booked was the only jet airplane that flew out of the airport, which was just built in 2008. The airport's lone duty free store looks like a scene from some apocalyptic movie since it's completely empty. About 100 people pass through this airport every day, and it felt dead.

No one really flies into Ciudad Real and stays there unless that's where they live. Spain's great high-speed rail service runs the 99 miles between Ciudad Real and central Madrid in under an hour, making the airport a good alternative to Madrid's main airport.

A woman named Leanne sat next to me on the crowded bus from the airport to the train station in Ciudad Real. She was in her thirties and talked with the mouth of a sailor. She was nearing the end of a journey from her home in Wales to Madrid for the weekend with two of her friends. Like the bed and breakfast owners in Blackpool, she had been to the United States once before, but not to see New York or Hollywood or the Grand Canyon, but to go to Disney World and soak up some of America's entertainment. When I asked what I should do while I was in the United Kingdom, she replied, "nothing." I still can't figure out if the British really don't like their country or if it's all just an act, an unspoken British code to pretend to hate the country in order to protect the good parts from foreigners.

Spanish band playing in Plaza del Sol.

Statue of a bear and a tree, the symbol of Madrid.

Madrid itself was beautiful. It was almost midnight when I stepped out of the train station, but Plaza Sol, the square near my 'Hostal' where I stayed, was just beginning to come to life. Plaza Sol and Plaza Mayor are home to the best street performers I've ever seen, including some who looked like they were levitating or falling or headless. (I still can't figure out their secrets.) Sunday morning at the 'Rastro,' Madrid's biggest market, I watched teenagers buying shirts bearing images of American culture, including t-shirts and belt buckles featuring The Nightmare Before Christmas and Green Day and other icons. Madrid's cafeterias are great for solo travelers. In these restaurants, diners order at the counter and sit in a bar-like setting on a stool at a counter until the staff brings out a sandwich on a baguette, still warm from being fresh from the oven.

Metropolis building on Gran Via, Madrid's Broadway.

The museums of Madrid were excellent. The famous Museo del Prado featured countless 500-year-old paintings, but the most interesting exhibits I saw were at the Reina Sofia. This modern art museum had a room full of newspapers from September 12, 2001, all of which had haunting pictures of the burning World Trade Center on the front. The newspapers were from all over the world, published in English, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, and Mandarin. There was also another room, arranged by the same artist (Hans-Peter Feldmann), with 100 photographs. The first picture was of a newborn baby. The last picture had a frowning old lady in it. Each picture in between represented a year in life, from birth to ninety-nine. After I looked at each portrait, I stood in front of the 20-year-old's picture. His was one of the only faces with a smile. I looked to my left and noticed that the pictures only stretched to the corner of the room, from nineteen down to newborn, a distance short enough so I could make out each individual photograph. Then I looked to the right, and saw the long line of photos stretching all the way to 99. I felt young.

I Hate You, Bike Thief

Yesterday I went outside, helmet in hand, hoping to go for a bike ride down Regents Street. When I opened the front door, it was raining, so I went inside. When it stopped raining, I picked up my helmet again to see if the weather would hold out this time. But again, I had to turn around and go inside because my bike wasn't there. Even though it was in much-less-than-perfect condition, some thief had clipped its lock off the post and taken it away. Again, I rode the elevator upstairs and put my helmet down. I went outside to walk to the West End instead. It was slower, but I stopped to look in some stores and even found a book written by the professor who teaches my Monday night class. My walk looked like this. At least I hadn't invested much money in the bike (Or the lock, but I guess that goes without saying) and I got to take it to Manchester and Liverpool and Blackpool and I definitely got my £75 worth.

This is where I used to park my bike. Note the absence of bicycle.

It's been a pretty dull weekend. Today I wrote a long essay about immigrants in Britain over the past 150 years. Friday I went to the Docklands Museum with a class for the third time.

Thursday, however, was a lot of fun. I went to York, a really old English city. Old York is different from New York in every way. It's small and slow-paced and quaint. It's so old that it had an old wall built by the Romans that people can walk on. I felt like I was walking on a mini Great Wall of China. Then there's the castle, built in 1068. The castle just looks like a little round thing on a hill, but it does have little slits for shooting arrows out of like in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and it's incredible that it's survived a thousand years. York's town center is home to the Shambles, a street that used to be filled with butcher shop but now houses gift stores. Shambles looks like something from a movie with its 500 year old storefronts. Google named it the most picturesque street in Britain earlier this year, and it's not hard to see why. The second floor of all the crooked buildings hangs over the street for a really old-time feel. York is also home to a giant cathedral called York Minster. It feels as big as St. Paul's or any major cathedral in Europe. It completely dominates the little Tudor shops below, casting a big shadow on the rest of the city.

Old Roman wall.

Shambles

Now that I know how cool York is, I'm ashamed to admit that I wouldn't have gone there at all if it weren't for the National Rail Museum. For someone who likes trains, this museum is amazing. For those of you who don't like trains, well, I guess it's good you stayed home. This museum was really cool, it had the actual Hogwarts Express used in the movies, a Japanese bullet train, and railcars used to bring royalty around the country. I want my wedding here. Part of the museum was converted from an old cargo dock/shed on the railroad, and it's really pretty. It has the glass ceiling like most British rail stations have. The museum's set up elegant tables underneath, and visitors can eat dinner in an antique railway station. Since renting out Grand Central Terminal isn't really an option, the rail museum is a great place for a wedding.

Really long name of some place in Wales.

This is where I'm getting married!.

My train to York left from Kings Cross Station. It was then that I realized that Platform 9 was barricaded with automatic gates, and only ticketed passengers are allowed in. I guess I'll never find out I'm not a muggle.

My life here is starting to look like Homer's when he was in New York.

The trees turn yellow in the fall here, too.

I've fallen into a sort of routine here in London. Not that I'm bored of it yet, but I've been here long enough so it feels like going to class, getting homework done, volunteering at the SHINE school, biking to a new market for lunch each Sunday afternoon, and walking down to the Thames on a clear night are things I've done for years.

Chapel at King's College in Cambridge

I've been staying around London recently, largely because throughout the first half of October I have class on Fridays. I don't have the luxury of four-day weekends to travel into Europe right now, but I'm taking advantage of this by taking day trips. Saturday was spent on the school-organized Cambridge trip. Cambridge is a college town that feels very small. With one of the world's most famous universities with some of the world's greatest thinkers as alumni, Cambridge would be a fun and beautiful place to go to school. After I finished the guided tour of the town, some friends and I shopped around in the stores that lined the street and got some lunch.

Punting on the river in Cambridge. The boats move by a pole that's pushed off the bottom of the shallow river by the guy standing up, a process called punting.

Cambridge University is famous for, among others, Watson and Crick, Stephen Hawking, Isaac Newton, and Francis Bacon

Street in Cambridge with shops and hardly any cars.

I've still been getting around London, too. We've had great weather so I've been taking walks around the neighborhood, and today for one of my architecture classes I went over to the old docks in East London. The warehouses are not used for industry any more, but they make a unique neighborhood of apartments built on a quiet canal. I also saw the Shard, a giant skyscraper that will be the tallest building in London when it's finished.

London on a clear afternoon

January is still far away, but I'm in the process of picking classes for next semester. Seeing every class I've already taken laid out on the planner made me realize how I'm not that far away from the end of college. I'd probably feel better about all this if I hadn't read this depressing article about unemployment amongst people in their 20s yesterday.

Haven't written one of these about London in a while.

I'm not a big fan of the 'study' in study abroad. This weekend I stayed in London because I knew I wouldn't read 100 pages and write the two essays I had to get done if I went off to explore the European continent. Even with the work, I took time to see more of London. I went to the National Gallery, where there's lots of pictures of people I've never heard of (And a few that I have-Charles Darwin, Paul McCartney, and Winston Churchill among them), as well as some nice Renaissance and Impressionist exhibits. One exhibit was photos taken just this spring of British immigrants to New York City. It was interesting to read about the things they missed about the UK and what brought them to New York. Many were quoted missing British humor but loving the concept of the "American Dream"-the ability to start with nothing but aspirations of fame and fortune and realistically hope to achieve these dreams. Some mentioned that Americans heard their accents and immediately made the British feel welcome. I would like to see an exhibit like this of Hispanic or black immigrants and read about their experiences in New York. I think it would be different.

Sunday morning I went to Spitalfields Market. It is very expensive for a market, but it did have some nice things. Friday I took a 20 mile bike ride out to the Northwest area of London, a place called Edgeware. Located at the end of the Northern Line on the Underground, Edgeware is a middle-class residential area. Think of it as London's equivalent of the outer areas of Queens in New York-a generic neighborhood on the outskirts of the city.

Last Wednesday I started volunteering at an Islington elementary school. I love it! The students are great. While some of the boys in the class are disruptive (The teacher has an aid or two in class at all times helping out), the students I was working with are really sweet, although I had forgotten how hard scissors are for seven-year-olds! They all have wonderful accents, although in their eyes I'm the one with the accent. One boy asked if I was from South Africa. I guess the ties from Britain's empire days still exist, since both the students and my own professors seem to mention the former colonies often and they seem to be the countries the British know most about. Today I went to the school again to volunteer.

Last night I went to see Blood Brothers, a musical running in London's West End, a slightly-less-glitzy version of New York's Broadway. The story of two twins separated at birth was, I thought, quite good with funny dialouge and top-quality singing. Everyone I went to the show with hated it, though. They said the humor was of poor taste and the plot was boring. Maybe I'm the one with weird taste.

It was sunny and warm today. It's been raining in the northeastern United States for days. London gets less than half the annual rainfall of New York. Your mind is blown.

Because going to London and saying you've seen England would be like going to New York and saying you've seen the entire United States

The internet is powerful stuff. This weekend, while I was staying in a bed and breakfast in Blackpool, I was talking to the man who owned the house about a British TV show called Top Gear, which features road tests and crazy stunts done with cars. The show is very popular in the United Kingdom (The security guard in my dorm even watches it through the windows of the TV room) but has not made its way to the United States yet. As we talked, the man mentioned an episode that I had watched on Youtube a while ago, before I even knew I was coming to London. It was great to make that cultural connection with him. Internet piracy is making our world smaller.

Blackpool was beautiful. It used to be the place to go to the beach for the weekend from anywhere in Britain, but in the past few decades it's gotten less attention because Ryanair can fly you to the coast of Spain for so little money. Because of this, it's retained a lot of its old-fashioned charm. In Blackpool, three piers extend over the beach, each with games and small rides and great views. At low tide, you can walk out for about 1,000 feet onto the beach below, which slopes very slowly into the Irish Sea. Blackpool was one of the first towns in the world to be wired up with electricity, and it still shows today. At night, the Illuminations festival, which runs through November, lit up the streets with lights strung across the street and on the sidewalk for miles, as if Christmas were coming early. Old double-deck streetcars ran along the waterfront, Britain's oldest continually-function tramway. Even though the beach is nice, it was cold, getting as low as 40 degrees at night. I'd like 1928 better if it were warmer.

Before Blackpool I had been in Manchester for one night. Famous football team, old industrial revolution history, but nothing to really see. Don't go to Manchester. It's not too exciting. The Museum of Industry was interesting, but that's about it.

Liverpool, on the other hand, was quite nice. Famous for being the birthplace of the Beatles, I biked out of the town center to see Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane beneath the blue suburban sky. Back in the city center, I went to The Cavern, the club that was active in the 1960s where The Beatles were discovered and many other musical group, including The Who and Queen, performed. The entire street The Cavern's on, actually, was dominated by live music on Saturday night, and the sounds of numerous guitars could be heard pouring out of the half a dozen or so venues on the street.

Britain outside of London was, like the United States outside of New York, less exciting and quieter. On the train ride up north, I passed a number of farms with sheep and cows. The center of all three places I went was dominated by an outdoor car-free shopping area. It appeared to be the local hangout for high school kids in each place. Even though these shopping areas featured all chain stores, it seemed to be a nicer solution than sticking Wal-Mart and Costco on the side of a busy road for retail.

This weekend was the Durham Fair. It's the biggest event in town that happens every year, and this is the first time in at least fifteen years I haven't gone. I knew this day would come sometime, when I'd have something bigger and better to do than head home for the weekend and enjoy popcorn, llama shows, and seeing old friends. Traveling around Britain is fun, but I did miss the fair this weekend. I'll go next year.

In Liverpool there was a modern art gallery. On an old wooden table in the museum, surrounded by paintings and sculptures, was a red binder. Inside, people had written all kinds of words of encouragement, drawn smiley faces, and shared funny stories. One man wrote a poem for his wife.

I love you so much

You light up my life

I'm so glad I met you

And made you my wife

And when we're both older

And wrinkly and gray

I'll love you as much

As I love you today

It made me smile.