Paris

Well, this is it. My last night not only in Paris, but in Europe. Tomorrow, and actually in less than twelve hours, I'll be on a plane back to the US. This will most likely be the last post of this blog, unless the journey home is so eventful that it requires a post itself.

I got into Paris late Friday night, and found my friend's flat without difficulty despite the late night. I've been sleeping on her convertible couch, but it's been completely fine. She actually even has something of a view of the Eiffel Tower; only the top, of course, because there are buildings in the way, but quite a good location.

My first actual day in Paris, my friend and I went for a picnic in the Buttes Chaumont park, which was quite nice. I actually fell asleep for about an hour, making that the fourth park and fourth city in which I have fallen asleep -- London, Hamburg, Salzburg, and now Paris. Traveling is exhausting.

Saturday night I actually spent at the opera, seeing The Valkyrie, the second part of Wagner's The Ring of the Nibelung cycle. It was not at the actual Paris Opera house, but the Opera Bastille, a much more modern looking building, and of course it was sold out by the time I got there for all the seats so I had to get a standing ticket, but the standing ticket was not as bad as I'd been thinking it would be. There were backrests for us to lean against, or even hop up and sit on if necessary, and there was no one behind me for me to block if I did sit, so I frequently did. It was actually surprisingly comfortable, because I could stand if I needed to stretch my legs, and sit if I needed to sit, which is more than I'd got for any other theatre. And considering this was a show lasting five hours, I very much appreciated it.

I definitely enjoyed it, even though it was in German and I couldn't see the posted subtitles, not that subtitles would have done me any good because they were probably in French anyway. I still got quite a lot of the story, and looked up the summary later, but it was really good. Of course I was expecting that from Paris, but I'm glad my hopes were not disappointed. I actually like opera. Who would have thought?

Sunday was my day for Versailles, because Versailles was the one thing I knew I wanted to do when I decided on Paris as part of my trip. The day was more overcast than sunny, but that did not deter me, nor even the slight rain of the morning (early in the morning there'd even been a thunderstorm). There was no rain once I got there, at least. The line for the tickets was ridiculous, but I dutifully queued up and got my ticket, one for the palace and one for the gardens.

I did the palace first, and spent about two hours there. That was now the fourth royal residence in Europe I've seen, from Charlottenburg in Berlin to the Residence in Munich to Schoenbrunn in Vienna, but wow, there's a reason people tried to model things on Versailles. Every room I went in had ceiling paintings, most of them were quite full of gold, and the Hall of Mirrors was gorgeous. And this not even touching the grounds.

Because I spent the rest of the day on the grounds. Fountains everywhere, and because it was a weekend they were turned on and playing music for a couple hours in the afternoon. So many different groves and statues and avenues...I got rather a lot of pictures there. Amazing. I only left when it was just about to close.

I had dinner, then went back to my friend's flat, where we watched a movie. I slept in, because I am trying to screw up my sleeping schedule a bit for tomorrow. Hopefully I will get little enough sleep tonight that I will need a nap tomorrow afternoon, on the plane. I certainly do not want to be awake the entire time I'm traveling, because the time I get back to Reno will be roughly twenty-four hours after I'm going to try to get up tomorrow. That will be a lot easier to endure if I can sleep on the plane.

My only plan for today was to take a boat ride down the Seine. What I ended up doing was just walking to the boat, which was across the Seine and down a bit from the Eiffel Tower, which is within walking distance of my friend's flat. I did get a picture of it, and I'm glad, because my camera's battery was about ready to die the entire day and I couldn't find the charger. Hopefully I will be able to find it when I finally get to unpack everything.

Anyway. I took the boat ride, then walked up to the Champs-Elysees. I took a picture of the Arc de Triomph from a distance, but I wasn't intending to get closer, because I'd decided to go to the Ile de la Cite, which is in the opposite direction. I had crepes when I got there, because I've always wanted to have crepes in France, but while it was good, the best crepes I've had were actually in Galway.

After crepes, I went to Notre Dame. Outside it a family asked me to take a picture of them, and they must have noticed my American accent when agreeing, because they asked me where I was from, and when I said Nevada, they said they were from California. And not just from California, but from Chico. Chico! Small world. I walk around Venice with a girl from Seattle and take a picture in front of Notre Dame of a family from Chico.

I went inside and got a few pictures, and after that went to the Saint Chapelle. I've seen so many churches on my trip, but I'd heard about this one's windows, and wanted to see them. I spent the last of my cash getting in, and wow. Those are definitely the most amazing stained glass windows I've ever seen, in any church or out of one. Most of the walls were windows, and apparently they tell stories from the Bible, but I do not know the Bible well enough to know the stories the windows depict.

After the Saint Chapelle, I walked along Pont Neuf, then headed to the Opera house because I'd forgotten to get a picture of it the first time I was there, and then from there I headed to Place de la Concorde, with its fountains and obelisk. There my camera died. Hopefully it took the picture of the obelisk, but I'm not sure.

I was tired by then because I'd been walking for most of the day, so I headed back for my friend's flat. On the way I bought her a bottle of champagne, which by complete accident (because I certainly don't know the difference) ended up being a rather good one. I'm glad, because she's been awesome enough to have given me a place to sleep and most of my meals for free, and I wanted to give something back. Her boyfriend even cooked a really good French meal for me tonight. She appreciated it, at least.

So, tomorrow I leave for home. I have my ticket for the metro and the bus to get me to the airport, so all I have to do is get there, check in, and make it to the plane. Then I change planes in New York, and then Dad picks me up from San Francisco. Eight hours on a plane, then six hours on a plane, then four hours in a car. It's going to be a rather long day, but it's just one day, and then I'll be home.

I can't believe how quickly the time has gone by. It seems just a few weeks ago that I was getting settled in London, but now it's over. It doesn't feel like I've been four months away from America.

I learned so much on this trip, though I think I won't know how much I really learned for quite a while yet. Still, I think it's definitely time for me to go to bed on my last night in Europe.

Nice

I'm in Nice. I had to take five trains to get here from Venice and I was a bit nervous because the last time I had to change trains several times I got stuck overnight in the middle of nowhere, but this time I managed it perfectly. There was almost a snag because I was supposed to leave Milan fifteen minutes after getting there, and the train from Venice to Milan was a few minutes late. The train started moving before I found my seat, but I did make it, and all the rest.

My hostel in Nice is great. Free internet, free towels, and even free wine. Red wine, so not my favorite, but maybe in France I'll develope more of a taste for it. Heh. Maybe.

I got here at about five, so the first thing I did, after dropping off my stuff, was to go looking for a swim suit. Unsurprisingly, there are a lot of clothes stores in France, but none of them had a big selection of swim suits, much less ones I liked in my size. There was a mall, but none of the stores there were any better. It was getting late and I wasn't sure how late shops were open here, so I was afraid I might have to leave my swim suit for the next day, but finally I found something most like a department store at home, with an actual swim suit section, so I finally found something. It also had a grocery section, so I got enough food to last all my meals here but one, and for less than twenty euro.

I met some people in the kitchen/lounge area while making my dinner and talked to them for awhile, and a few hours later they invited me to go to the beach with them. It was after midnight, and I'd been up since before seven that morning, but I agreed, very glad that I did find a suit that day. So now I've been swimming in the Mediterranean after midnight, when the water was cool but not as cold as the Pacific, and I very much enjoyed it. The beaches in Nice are all rocks, not sand, so I did not enjoy that part, but I still had a great time.

I'd been basically intending to spend my days in Nice at the beach, but some of the people from the midnight swim invited me to go to Monaco with them the next day, and I agreed. How many chances am I gonna get to go to the second smallest country in the world, second only to Vatican City? We took a bus there, which was only one euro and half an hour each way. First we went to the Monte Carlo Casino, but there was a ten euro entrance fee for the casino proper and none of us wanted to pay that when we weren't going to gamble a lot. There was a smaller building off to the side with only slots and video roulette. The others gambled a bit, but I sat at a table near the bar and watched tennis on TV. I might have also gambled a bit if there had been tables and blackjack, but I had no interest in slots or roulette. I also really don't want to lose what money I have left. I've gambled in Vegas, and now I've been in the casino at Monte Carlo, and that's enough for me.

After that we really just wandered around. We tried for awhile to find the aquarium, but it was proving elusive, and eventually we just decided that it was getting late enough that we wouldn't have enough time there to be worth spending the money to go in. So mostly we just walked around the harbor and looked at the fancy yachts, and the fancy cars (one of the people there was a big car buff and he kept exclaiming at how amazing these cars were, and how one or two weren't technically even available for sale yet, which I guess says something about how stinking rich the people in Monaco are), and also the amazing scenery, because wow, the French Riviera is gorgeous. I knew it would be, but still, wow.

When we got back to Nice I went to the train station to try and make a reservation for the night train today, but the ticket machines were all in French and the ticket counters were only for trains for the day. That seemed weird to me, but I figured I'd just get my reservation today. Hah. I tried to do that this morning, and the night train tonight is all full. I had to make a reservation for an earlier train that gets into Paris late tonight, but I emailed the friend in Paris I'm going to stay with and she said it's all right if I get there early.

This did mean that I had less time for the beach than I'd wanted, so I went back to the hostel and packed myself lunch, and finally went to the beach. That was nice, once I found some fairly comfortable positions on the rocks. I spent several hours there, and I think I managed to avoid getting sunburned.

My train leaves in about an hour, and then tonight I'll be in Paris, my final stop!

Austria and Italy

I feel rather perpetually behind, but I've been feeling too tired to write a long blog post catching up. Let's see how well I do today.

Salzburg is easy to finish off, because my third day I just went to the old town (across the river Salzac from the new town), wandered around a lot, then went back to the Mirabel gardens for awhile and hung out. I did very much like Salzburg. Small enough to walk around in, but gorgeous countryside, bigger cities pretty close by, and still things to do.

The next day I left for Vienna. The countryside was not quite as beautiful as Munich to Salzburg, but still quite pretty. When I got out of the train station in Vienna, I got a bit lost trying to get to my hostel. I found the right street, but ended up going the wrong way down it. I knew the hostel was supposed to be close by, so when it felt like I went too far I turned around and decided to go back the other way, and then I passed the train station...and there it was. Definitely the closest I've been to a train station, even in Munich, or here in Venice. I felt a bit silly for having gone the wrong way, but at least I did find it.

After I checked in, I went to the Sigmund Freud museum, which was the building where he lived and practiced while in Vienna. It was small but interesting. I really prefer specialized museums unique to specific places to bigger art galleries or ethnology museums that I can find in almost all the cities I've been to so far.

After the Sigmund Freud museum I took a tram around the Ring Road, which is a ring around the center of the city and shows off a lot of its attractions, like the Hofburg Palace (and everything in it, including the Spanish Riding School and the Vienna Boys' Choir), the Museums Quarter, and the Parliament. Very cool. Lots of impressive buildings. I especially liked the Parliament building, though I think it ranks after Westminster in terms of impressiveness. So far the parliaments I've seen in order of impressiveness are London, Vienna, Berlin, then Edinburgh, but I'm looking forward to seeing the Paris government buildings.

I spent the rest of the day wandering around, though it was raining and I got rather wet. Still, after Tacoma and London I'm pretty used to that, and it didn't bother me too much. My hostel gave me a map that included sights and restaurants/cafes they liked, so for dinner I decided to go to this pizza place that was advertised as cheap but good. And it was cheap but very good, but even better, the pizza was the size of a medium at home, rather than the one-person pizzas that are mostly what I've seen in Europe, so I had some to take back for lunch.

The next day I went to the cemetery, which seems to be a tourist attraction for two reasons: the famous people interred there, including the composers Mozart, Schubert, Brahms, Strauss, and Beethoven, and the sheer impressiveness of the headstones. That's a word that I'm using a lot in relation to Vienna, but it really fits. Many of these graves were just so elaborate, filled with carvings and statuary...I didn't get many pictures, though. I did of the composers' graves (at least, the composers I recognized), but I didn't feel right about taking pictures of random graves, no matter how pretty and/or impressive they were.

I spent the rest of the day at Schoenbrunn Palace, which had been home to Empress Maria Theresa, and then later to Emperor Franz Josef I, and as befitting an imperial residence, it was...impressive. Hah, there's that word again. Likewise with the gardens, or even more so. Those are definitely the biggest gardens I've seen, with a lot of tree-lined lanes, fenced-off green areas, manicured flower beds, fountains, including a huge one in the middle, a mock Roman ruin, an obelisk, and a maze area, and those are just the places I went to. There's also a zoo and some other things I didn't get to, because it took me a couple hours to see the things I did. There was an adorable little train going all over the park, but I didn't take it. I did do the maze, though, which was fun, though fairly small.

This was Vienna, a significant city for music, and I did want to see something before I left. At Schoenbrunn I saw advertisements for Mozart's The Magic Flute at the marionnette theatre, so I got a ticket for that. And while it was marionnettes and not people on stage, I thought it was very well performed, and I enjoyed it very much, even though it was in German and I understood at most scattered words here and there. I still managed to get most of the story, at least. I'd been dubious about opera ever since that production of A Midsummer Night's Dream in London, which no one in my group liked, but this I really enjoyed. I think I'm going to see if I can go in Paris.

The third day I went and took pictures of some things in the center, like the Hofburg Palace and the museums and the Parliament. By the Hofburg Palace there's this statue of Mozart and in front of it is a grassy area with a flower bed in the shape of a treble clef. That was pretty cool. Also, I went to the Opera and took a tour of that. It was very cool, even if I wasn't going to be seeing a performance there. But I was glad that I saw The Magic Flute, even if at a marionnette theatre and not the Opera, because I haven't heard of the ones that were playing while I was there and I'm glad I at least knew something about the one that I saw.

My hostel offered free pasta in the guest kitchen, so I had pasta for dinner, then went to catch my night train to Venice. Twelve hours, gah. At least I was able to sleep through most of that, so it wasn't too bad.

I got to Venice at about eight-thirty in the morning, and this is seriously the most confusing, illogical city I've ever been to. I definitely got lost trying to find my hostel, but that's because the address on the hostel website, which I'd used for googlemaps, was outdated. Apparently what I'd needed to do was go across the first bridge I saw and down the street, and there it was, a good two minutes from the train station. Instead I wandered across Venice with all my luggage for forty-five minutes, until finally some helpful Venetian managed to get me to the original address, and someone there directed me to the right place.

But then I got to my hostel, which is the most adorable place ever. My room is like a little apartment, with its own tiny kitchen. It has an outer door and then a courtyard and then my room, and there's another courtyard out the window, and it's really cute. Definitely a nice place. Anyway, I dropped my stuff off and, armed with the map given to me at reception, wandered out into Venice.

Maps are the most useful things ever. Venice has a ridiculous number of long dark alleys it tries to call streets, but thankfully I have a good head for maps, so once I had one, I had no problem getting around. The guy at reception marked this loop that would take me to most of the sights in the city and then back around to the hostel, so that's what I did the first day. I didn't really go in anywhere, but I saw the Rialto, and the Piazzo San Marco and Basilica di San Marco, and quite a lot of churches. This city has the highest concentration of churches I think I've ever seen.

Day two I went to Murano, a little island just off Venice proper, because that's where the famed glassmaking is. It was an adorable place in itself, but somehow I managed to spend four hours there just looking at the glass. In some shops, the shopkeepers would just be casually shaping glass behind the counter. I've been to the Tacoma Glass Museum several times and have seen people making glass before, so I didn't spend that long watching, but Murano had so much more variety than the museum gift shop in Tacoma. Unsurprisingly, hah. But yeah. Beautiful glass.

After that I just looked around Venice some more, then went back to my hostel and talked for about an hour with a roommate from Brazil. I went for dinner after that and had a caprese salad, because that is one of my favorite salads ever and I enjoyed having on in Italy. Then I just went back to my hostel and stayed in the common room for awhile, talking to people. At around nine some people were really hungry and decided to go for pizza, and I went with them but only had a couple slices. Just spent a lot of time talking to my fellow travelers.

Today one of my roommates and I decided to catch some sights together and also find me a dress, because I've been wanting to go dress-shopping. We took the bus (basically a ferry, because of course people don't drive here, they walk or take boats) down the Grand Canal, which was very pretty, and got off at Piazzo San Marco. We decided against going in the duke's palace because it was expensive, but the Basilica was free. She couldn't go in because she was wearing shorts and sandals, but I had jeans and proper shoes so I went in. And of course I would expect this from a basilica, but it was definitely one of the prettiest and most impressive churches I've been to. The floor was all mosaic and the ceiling all gold and pictures, and though we're not supposed to take photos I did anyway.

I found a dress I liked after that, and it wasn't very expensive, so whoo! Something nice to wear in Paris, especially if I do manage to get to the opera. Now all I need is a bathing suit for Nice, because I didn't bring one, and then I think I'll be done with accumulating things, for which my luggage will thank me, I'm sure.

I have five mosquito bites right now. I will be very pleased if I manage to make it out of this mosquito-ridden area with only five.

I made seat reservations for my journey to Nice, which will be something of a hassle. The Eurail timetable I have implied that there's a train from Venice to Nice, but apparently there's not just one. I have to take five trains tomorrow, three of them for less than half an hour, so that'll be...fun. At least once I get to Nice, I'll have just the train to Paris left. And then, just the two flights home.

I have very much enjoyed going to all these different places, but traveling so much is tiring, and not being settled in one place for longer than three days at a time. I was happy in London, but though I definitely appreciate everything I've done since getting to the continent, I will be happy to go home.

Salzburg

Right now I'm in Vienna, though tomorrow I take a night train to Venice, so I suppose this was my last full day in the German-speaking countries. I can now recognize some amount of German, even if this is limited to things like "exit", "price", and various things having to do with trains. Pretty much the only thing I've consistently been able to actually say is "thank you very much", though.

To catch up from my last post, for some of my last few hours in Munich, Maddy and I went to the Augustiner-Brau brewery for dinner, and we sat in the beer garden, and I had one of those huge liter mugs of (very good) beer. Well, Munich is well-known for its beer and beer gardens -- of course I couldn't leave without properly experiencing that! :p We just sat there for a few hours and talked, which was a nice relaxing way to end what had been a fairly intense day.

On Monday she went back to Hamburg and I left for Salzburg, which I guess is even closer to the border of Germany than Reno is to California. But anyway, I checked into my hostel there, and went to watch The Sound of Music, which I guess they were showing once or twice a day there. XD I did manage to watch that movie most of the way through all three days I was there, but I think I'm gonna be at saturation point for The Sound of Music for awhile after that and the tour I did.

I went for a walk around the city in the afternoon, but by that point I was rather tired and just wanted to spend most of the day relaxing in the hostel, so I did. Of course, that's when my power cord decided to die, so there went the reliability of my favorite relaxation method. Once of my roommates was kind enough to let me charge my computer on her cord, so I could still use it in Salzburg, but once I got to Vienna I had to use the hostel's computers because my computer's dead now. Bother. This means that I can't charge my iPod, can't charge my Nintendo DS, and can't transfer pictures from my camera to my computer. Thankfully, I haven't used my iPod since I last charged it, so hopefully it'll be fine for the plane rides home, and I still have over 300 pictures left before the memory card on my camera is full, but I'm going to have to be careful with all three things now.

For my second day in Salzburg I wanted to do the Sound of Music tour, and there was a deal going on with doing that and a tour of the salt mines close by, so I decided to do that. I would have rather done the Eagle's Nest or Bavarian Lakes tours, but they didn't have the deal with the Sound of Music tour. And it ended up being just as well, because the salt mine tour took me almost to the Eagle's Nest, so I could still have a rather amazing view of the Bavarian Alps, and I saw three different lakes with the Sound of Music tour, so I was very pleased with my choice.

For the salt mine we ended up actually going back into Germany. We were only a few minutes out of Salzburg when the tour guide pointed out where the old border post was, which I guess is gone now because of the EU. He dropped the salt mines group off at the mine, and we had to get dressed up in miner's coveralls; I got someone to take a picture of me in mine. We went into the mines, which were fairly cool. Whenever we had to get to a lower level we took a miner's slide, which I enjoyed, and at one point we took a barge across a small lake and they did light shows across the water. The mine is still a working mine, but they've really figured out how to appeal to tourists, I guess.

After the salt mines the bus picked us up again and we went to go pick up the people at the Eagle's Nest and stopped at the parking lot below it for about ten minutes, which is where I got some amazing pictures of the Bavarian Alps. Then we went for lunch in Brechtresgaden, a small, picturesque town, and then went back to Salzburg just in time for the Sound of Music tour in the afternoon.

One of the first things our tour guide there mentioned was that there was actually a bar (of sorts) on board the bus. Then he asked us a trivia question, saying that the first person who got the answer right would get a free beer, soft drink, or bottle of water. And of course I only mention this because I was the one who won. The question was what was the name of the mountain Maria is on in the beginning of the movie, when she only mentions the name once, also in the beginning. I haven't actually seen the very beginning of the movie in a long time, but I knew the answer because it was the main big mountain in Salzburg and my salt mines tour guide told us the name, so I only had to remember from the morning, not from the movie.

It was a pretty cool tour. We stopped by the lake that was supposed to be near the von Trapp villa, except that apparently the lake and the house where it was filmed are not in the same location, so filming scenes that involved both the back of the house and the lake must have been fun. We saw the gazebo, where our tour guide told us that people aren't allowed inside it anymore after an 82-year-old woman broke her hip trying to dance like Liesl and Rolf did. We also headed out of town to Mondsee, which is where the cathedral where Maria and Captain von Trapp got married is, and on our way there is where we passed all the lakes. We had some free time in Mondsee, so I saw the cathedral and then went down by the lake and stuck my feet in for a while. That was so nice, because my feet are starting to form blisters, even though I've only been wearing my most comfortable shoes.

The tour was over when we got back to Salzburg, and I went to the Mirabel gardens for a picnic dinner of stuff I bought at the local supermarket. The Mirabel gardens are very pretty, and also where they filmed most of the scenes for the Do-Re-Mi song, so I got lots of pictures of places I recognized from that.

I'm getting pretty tired now, so I'll finish up Salzburg and talk about Vienna either tomorrow or in Venice.

Dachau

So, probably the most important thing to mention right now is that one of the most annoying things that could have happened to me, computer-wise, just did. Yesterday my power cord stopped working, which means that whenever I use my computer, my battery will run down. Right now a kind roommate is letting me use her power cord, but I can't count on that everywhere. This means I save my battery for when I really need it and only use my hostel's computers. I haven't exactly been spending all my time on the internet lately, but this means even less than usual, so I will probably be even less punctual (than usual :p) when answering email and updating this blog.

Anyway. Sunday was my last full day in Germany, and I spent a lot of it at Dachau. I'm...not really sure what to say about it. My tour guide asked us on the way there to think about why we were going -- why, when we could have done so many other things in Munich, we decided to go to the site of a former concentration camp. There were rather a lot of different answers for me. I've seen so many Holocaust exhibits and memorials since coming to Europe that I wanted to see one of those camps with my own eyes. They're so important to Germany's history that it felt wrong to leave Germany without seeing one when I had the opportunity. The tour guide said we could have gone to a beer garden or something more cheerful, but I felt that I couldn't just see the happy things and ignore the horrible. There was even a bit of feeling about how I'm mostly German, even though we've been American since before the National Socialists came to power, and it feels sort of like a part of my history, even though my only German connection is really in my ancestry. I don't know if I can explain better than that, but in any case, I really felt like I had to go to Dachau.

But I still don't know what to say about it. I was there, but I wasn't THERE. I could see the "work will set you free" sign on the gate, but not know the despair of the people working in the camp and not being set free at all, except in death, until finally the war was over. I could see the outline of the "no smoking" sign in the administration building, put there as a taunt to the prisoners who were not allowed cigarettes, and the shelves in the barracks for inmates not allowed to have possessions to put on those shelves, but I can't even imagine what they felt and what they went through. I have no personal framework for that. And of course I'm glad that I have no personal framework for imagining, much less understanding, but I could only feel the dimmest reverberating echo of their anguish as a visitor sixty years later, and it still only seems slightly more real to me. I saw it, and was horrified, and incredulous that this could have existed at all, but I could not be there as they were there. I do not regret that, and yet I do. I don't know.

I saw the gate, and the roll call square, and the administration building, and the barracks. The bunker built only for torture. The watchtowers and the fence. The road to the crematorium, and the plaque bearing the words "think about how we died here". And I saw the vibrantly green grass and the trees with branches thick with leaves, and wow was that incongruous, except that the Nazis used that to their advantage, because in the beginning the world could not believe the horrors happening there.

I'm just about done with my time on this computer, which is just as well. Let this post stand on its own. I'll talk about the rest of Munich and Salzburg in my next post.

Auf Wiedersehen, Deutschland!

I'm in Munich now.  My computer is having difficulty with the hostel's wireless again, so I'm writing this now and will post it when I get the chance.

It's hard to believe I'm most of the way through my trip to Germany.  I have tomorrow here in Munich, and then I leave for Austria on Monday.  Wow.  Anyway.

Day two of Berlin was spent partly doing things and partly trying to get places.  Though it was not so much that I got lost as that I underestimated how long it would take me to get places.  The first thing I did was go to Schloss Charlottenburg (Charlottenburg Palace, named after the first queen of Prussia, Sophie Charlotte), which is at the end of what would have been a very pretty drive had it not been raining and muddy and full of puddles.  I explored the palace for a few hours, which I think is actually the first stately home I've been to in Europe.  Well, I've been to castles, but most of them have been in some sort of ruin.  Charlottenburg did get bombed during WWII, but they've recreated the rooms that had been destroyed.

Charlottenburg is also apparently known for its gardens.  I did spend some time there, but it was raining, and I would have gotten more pictures, but my camera was about full up.  So after I was done at Charlottenburg, I went back to my hostel to dump pictures from my camera to my computer.  By then it was mid-afternoon, so I decided to take one of those bus city sightseeing tours, so that I could decide what I most wanted to see the next day and to see something of what I did not have time to go see ordinarily.

I enjoyed the bus tour.  Outside the Jewish Museum is the most random statue ever, of Superman plummeting towards the ground...and his head getting splattered.  I went back later to take a picture of it, because that was a big-time eyebrow-raise.  Also, somewhere along the river Spree is this stretch of Wall that's left over, that people have painted on, and now it's the longest open-air art gallery in Europe.

On Wednesday I went to the Reichstag, their parliament building.  In the middle of it there's this dome where you can climb to the top and have a great panorama of the city, and it's free to the public, so I decided to do that.  It was quite a long queue, though, and the guy behind me was wearing a shirt making a Nazi joke.  I didn't say anything, but I was inwardly raising an eyebrow and thinking, wow, that's in such good taste.  Seriously, wearing a shirt making a Nazi joke in Berlin?  To the parliament building?  Probably the only worse place to wear such a shirt would be Poland.  At least once we got into the building the guards made him cover it up.  And it was a nice view of the city, but it would have been nicer had the sky not been so cloudy.

After the Reichstag I had a bratwurst for lunch on Alexanderplatz, then went to Checkpoint Charlie.

I found myself...surprisingly emotional.  I mean, I was barely two when the Wall opened, so it's not like that had such personal relevence.  But I don't think I ever really appreciated how important the World Wars and their aftermath were until I got to Europe.  The World Wars are such a part of the national consciousness of both Britain and Germany, and I knew a lot of objective facts about them, but being here really brings it home, I guess.

The Brandenburg Gate, which I saw my first day in Berlin?  Big-time national symbol?  Was in the middle of the border no-man's-land when the Wall was up.  This hugely important symbol was shut away where no one could get to it.  I walked through it like it was nothing, but thirty years ago I couldn't have done that.  It's amazing to be there and really realize that.

Checkpoint Charlie had so many details of people's escape attempts from the GDR, and along the Tiergarten were crosses with the names of people who died trying to cross the Wall.  I saw so much, and found myself feeling so much as well.

Anyway.  After Checkpoint Charlie I went for a boat tour along the Spree, which I enjoyed.  It was very scenic, and had lots of information.  Apparently Berlin has more water and bridges than Amsterdam, Venice, and Paris combined.  I never would have guessed.

That was basically it for Berlin, and that evening I took the train to Hamburg.  The first thing I learned about taking trains in Europe is that while I don't technically need seat reservations with a Eurail pass for most of my trips, they are a good thing to have.  At least then I will be able to go to my seat and not need to find a non-reserved one, with my bag blocking the aisle and many people (including train staff) not speaking English.  And plain seat reservations, as opposed to tickets, do not cost very much (around five euro or so, from what I've seen), so I think that will make things easier.

I did get into Hamburg fine, and met Maddy at the station.  It was almost ten at that point and I was getting tired, so we just went back to her place, talked to her landlady for a bit, figured out what we wanted to do the next day, and went to bed.

I only had one day in Hamburg, but it was enough, even though apparently Hamburg is the second biggest city in Germany.  We went to the archeology museum, which was interesting, though only in German, so I mostly just looked at cool things and knew nothing about them.  We stopped by the planetarium because I thought a shop in a German planetarium would be a nice place to get something for Linda, but they had a measley shop, so we left soon.  Then we had lunch and went to the ethnography museum.

Museums in Germany have given me a new appreciation for London museums, because most of London's are free.  I miss that.  It was a big incentive to actually go to them.  But since I've been getting burned out on museums, having to actually pay for them is an excuse not to go. :p  Of course, I have been to the ones I've been most interested in, but I definitely miss the free ones in London.

After the ethnography museum, we went to the lakes, where I ended up taking a two-hour-or-so nap in the sun.  I don't seem to have burned, but though it was nice, I don't want to make a habit of that.  And I definitely need to get some sunscreen before I go to Nice, and preferably before I go to Venice.

Maddy and I took the night train from Hamburg to Munich, which was not as bad as I'd been dreading.  I remember I couldn't really sleep at all on the flight to London, and I only reserved a reclining seat on the train because that was cheaper.  I managed to sleep fairly well on it, though.  Enough so that even though I woke up at 5:30 this morning and it's 8:30 at night, I'm still showing no signs of crashing.  It was quite cold, though.  What I think I'm going to do is get a beach towel before my next night train (Vienna to Venice).  A beach towel can do triple duty as beach towel (for Nice), regular towel (because I've been renting from hostels), and blanket.  Now I just need to find where to get one.  I might try to get to a department store tomorrow.

We got into Munich at about eight this morning, dropped some stuff off at the hostel, then wandered to Marienplatz, Munich's central area.  Marienplatz has this building that looks like it's an old church or small castle, but is actually the town hall, and was only built in 1908, just built to evoke that sense of actual age.  From there we walked up to the Munich Residence, which is where the rulers of Bavaria lived until 1918.  That was pretty cool, though extremely big and I got a bit lost more than once.

We went for lunch at the Viktualienmarkt, aka the food market.  Very impressive place, rather reminiscent of a Renaissance Faire.  It has that same press of people, many of them drinking and carrying beer around, with so many different stalls selling both food and crafts, and just a general faire-type feel.  I had German beer in Munich and thoroughly enjoyed it, both because it was as good as I'd expected, and just for the experience of drinking German beer in Munich.  I may not be able to be here for Oktoberfest, but at least I have that.

After lunch we checked into our hostel.  Hostels like this are a lesson in booking far enough in advance, because all I could find for both nights was a 40-bed dorm.  That's not that bad, but the bathroom doesn't have very good showers (just a row of stalls with curtains covering them), so while I think it's doable, it's definitely not ideal.  It also does not have a very comfortable lounge area in the lobby, very few power outlets, and is currently having internet issues.  Sigh.

This afternoon we took a three-hour walking tour of Munich.  I mostly enjoyed it, and learned a lot, but at the moment don't want to talk a lot about it because my feet and legs are still hurting. XD  Maybe next time I post I'll have a bit more detail, because it really was very interesting.

Munich is currently going crazy because of football.  There were so many people on the street today, singing and drinking and preparing themselves for the match going on right now, which is apparently the final for some big European cup and Munich is one of the teams (Milan is the other).  So though the hostel people called someone to do something about the internet, they don't think he'll come because he's probably busy watching the game.

Tomorrow we're going to Dachau.  This is not really something to be excited about, but I am glad I'm doing it.  I wouldn't feel right about leaving Germany without having seen a concentration camp.  I expect tomorrow to be a fairly depressing day, though, and not just because it's my last day in Germany.

Guten Tag!

Hello from Berlin! My computer is being temperamental about the wireless in my hostel, so I'm using one of the hostel's computers, with its freaky German keyboard. Y and Z are switched around, I have no idea where the at symbol is, and I have to press the shift key to get to an apostrophe. It's even weirder than the British keyboard, which I thought disconcerting enough.

The semester is now over. I finished and turned in my last paper and we had our end-of-term tea party. I had my last dinner with my host mum, and my last day out in London, where I finally saw the Changing of the Guard (though not from a very good spot, as I'm guessing most of the action took place behind the gates of Buckingham Palace, and I wasn't close enough), and ate my lunch in a park near the Victoria Embankment, took some more people to the Doctor Who shop and small museum, then finished my paper and wandered around a bit before seeing Legally Blonde, my last show in London. It was a lot of fun, especially seeing how things get adapted from movie to musical. I very much enjoyed it.

Saturday was when I left for Cardiff with some friends, fellow Doctor Who fans. Getting to Paddington, however, was a public transportation fiasco. The bus that goes right past my homestay either came too early (meaning more than five minutes early, which I really don't think buses should do) or just didn't come at all, so instead of taking ten minutes to get to the station from which trains run frequently, I had to walk twenty minutes to get to the station from which they do not run as frequently. One was leaving just as I was walking up, so I had to wait ten minutes for the next one. Then when I got on that, there was a defective train at the next station, so we had to wait for that to leave. When I got to Baker Street, the next line I'd intended to take wasn't going to Paddington at the moment, so I had to take the longer route. I left the house at 7:15 for an 8:45 train in what should have been plenty of time because Paddington is fairly close, but I ended up getting to the station just as the train left. Then I had to buy a new ticket all together, because the one I had was for that particular train only. At least my friends waited for me and we got to Cardiff together.

Our hostel was not very far from the station (though that's not really saying much, since Cardiff is small enough that we could walk from the north end to the south in just over half an hour), but it was an awesome place. Best hostel I've been in. I'd originally booked us three beds in an eight-bed dorm for twenty pounds a night, but somehow we got a three-bed private room without a difference in price. Really nice place.

From the hostel we walked down to the Doctor Who Museum, near the Millennium Centre and Cardiff Bay. The museum was very cool, having original props and costumes and just some really neat stuff. Then we hung around Roald Dahl Plass for awhile, looked out on the bay, got a lot of pictures. But Cardiff is small and there is really not all that much to do, so we went back to the hostel for dinner, and for watching the newest episode of Doctor Who as it aired. That was pretty awesome, to watch the show in the place where it's filmed.

Our hostel had a pretty nice bar, so we stayed there for a bit, then went to an O'Neill's (chain Irish pub). Around midnight I was feeling tired and wanted to go to bed, but my friends are more into partying and they stayed out later.

Sunday was a pretty lazy day. We slept in (them more than me), then walked around Cardiff on a Doctor Who tour of the places where it was filmed. It was pretty cool to walk around a place and recognize it from the show. Then we went back to the bay and took a boat ride around the bay. Hah. 'Boat ride' sounds so tame. The boat basically sped us around the bay at roughly 85mph, including taking us in tight circles and riding the waves so hard we got jostled. I was not expecting that, but it was very fun.

We went back to the hostel and watched a movie in our room until dark, when we went back to look at the Millennium Centre and Roald Dahl Plass all lit up at night, which was quite cool. But again, not much else to do, so we went back to the hostel for an early night.

Monday we took the train back to London, then I went back to AHA to pick up the stuff I stored there, and we met again at Victoria station for the train to Gatwick, since my friends were going to Amsterdam from there. I got on my flight to Berlin, which was thankfully a very easy flight, and got here and made it through customs (easiest customs ever--they didn't even ask me how long I was going to be here), then caught the train into the city center and made my way to my hostel.

Berlin is smaller than I'd thought, because today I walked across what looks like about half of it. My hostel is near Alexanderplatz, and I walked from here to the Brandenburg Gate and Potsdamer Platz without difficulty. The Brandenburg gate is very cool, and I got some pictures of bits of the Berlin Wall at Potsdamer Platz, and saw the Memorial for Murdered Jews in Europe. Right above the memorial is the Field of Stelae, tall rectungular concrete blocks set out in rows and columns. I walked into them, and they got gradually taller, and I felt like I was walking amongst rows of sarcophagi. Very appropriate, but also very creepy.

Tomorrow I intend to go Schloss Charlottenburg (a palace), the Reichstag (Parliament building), possibly up the TV Tower for a view of the city, and maybe for a boat and/or bus tour around the city. I'll figure out the rest from there.

It's been very interesting being here, alone in a big city when I don't speak the language. Everyone I came across in Oslo spoke English, and I was with someone then, but not everyone speaks English here and I've been having to get around and figure things out completely by myself. I've been fine so far, but it's definitely an experience. At least English is a Germanic language so there are some things I can figure out, Austria also speaks German, and Italy and France are Italic languages which I have some familiarity with. It may take a bit of time, but I can figure things out!

Semester's End

Last day of school today. I just finished my last final. I have one paper I need to write tonight and email to my teacher tomorrow, but otherwise I'm done with this semester. The end-of-term tea party and the paper, and then I'm free...

Anyway, playing catch-up again.

Sarah and I slept in in Olso and didn't leave the hostel until nearly 11, but after spending the night before in the airport, we rather needed the sleep. I had my leftover pizza for lunch, and then we headed back to City Hall and the fjord, because we wanted to take a ferry over to the Norwegian Folk Museum. We were supposed to buy our tickets on the ferry, but we accidentally avoided paying by sitting on the deck outside. We didn't realize until the way back that the guy checking/selling tickets only did it inside, because we sat inside the way back. Except at that point we didn't have enough cash for a ticket, of any denomination (they would have accepted Euros or pounds), we just had credit cards. And the ferry people ran the ferry continuously and couldn't wait for us to go find an ATM, so...we used the ferry for free. We would have been willing to pay, but you know, I can't say I'm sorry we ended up not having to.

The Folk Museum was pretty cool (and paying for a ticket in was where I used the last of my cash). It was an open-air museum, with Norwegian buildings ranging from several decades old to about eight hundred years, the church. In one of the houses they were making traditional lefse, which is a sort of slightly sweet flatbread. Sarah told me I had to try it, so I did, and it was really good. Sarah also told me that around the end of November/beginning of December, PLU (her school, and also in Tacoma) hosts this kind of fair thing and people come who make traditional lefse, so I think when that comes around I'm going to go to PLU and get some.

Sarah has a Norwegian friend named Even who came to Oslo at two to spend time with her and show us around. He took us to the opera house, which I wouldn't have thought of going to, but it was really interesting. Not a traditional building at all -- it sort of reminds me of the Scottish Parliament, but mostly in the sense that what seems like it should be an old traditional building is instead really interesting modern architecture. The roof of the opera house in Oslo was this long slope, so we just walked up the roof to the top and looked out on the fjord again, which was quite cool.

After that we took a tram to the sculpture park, which was...interesting. It was very pretty scenery, and a beautiful day, but all the statues were of people, and all of them were naked, and not even in sculpture sections of museums have I been surrounded by that many fake naked people. For the most part they did not come across as sexual despite the nudity, but I really don't think I have any way of describing them without it sounding sexual, so I think I'll refrain and just show the pictures I took.

That was really about all we could think of to do for Oslo, so it's a good thing we were only there for two days. The three of us just ended up going back to the main shopping street of Karl Johans Gate and finding a nice spot by one of the fountains to sit around and chat. I ate the last of the food I brought, and then we took the bus back to the airport of Rygge, where we spent the next ten hours.

I got even less sleep on Saturday night than I did Thursday, though we got to the airport in enough time for me to have gotten more. It just took me a long time to get so tired that I could fall asleep even there. Also, around two in the morning this girl and her friend from Turkey came in, and we just started chatting about being students traveling. I enjoyed that, even if it meant even less sleep.

I was up at five, which was not fun, and on the plane not long after six. What was nice, though, was that all the scheduled passangers got on quickly and so we were able to leave early, and get back into London half an hour before scheduled. We were then able to catch an earlier bus back to Baker Street, and therefore I managed to get home by ten, rather than eleven. I started laundry, and then I took a nap.

The election here has finally resolved itself. David Cameron of the Conservatives as new Prime Minister, and Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats as Deputy Prime Minister, with a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, the first coalition in decades. It's too bad I'm about to leave, because this would be fascinating to watch play out first hand -- men of two different parties as PM and Deputy PM! Especially considering they're the right-wing and the further-left-wing parties! I'm going to have to keep up with what's going on when I go home, because this is just too interesting. I got to watch Gordon Brown give his resignation speech live, and go to see the Queen and recommend she ask David Cameron to form a government, and dude this was just so cool.

I got my final papers done in enough time for me to spend two evenings this week seeing shows. Last night I saw Avenue Q, which was awesome. Absolutely hilarious. I think it was pretty obvious who the Americans in the audience were, though, because there were some things we laughed at that most of the people there didn't. In the final song, they started listing things that were "only for now", and I was amused when one of the things they listed was Gordon Brown. This was the first show where that was not applicable, because it was last night that he resigned. Still, I very much enjoyed the show, even if it was in London and not New York. I just hope it's not too prophetic, because this time next year I'll have a BA in English...

My finals are done, now, though, and almost all of my preparations for Europe. I have booked all of my hostels, and have also added up how much all of the hostels will cost me. What's left over in my bank account will be used on food, inner city transport, and seat reservations on trains (I may not have to pay for a ticket, but I still will need reservations for many trains, but plain reservations are a lot cheaper than tickets), and of course souvenirs. I've got one suitcase packed, then tonight I'll pack up a box to send home, probably by sea because that's cheaper and I don't really need it to get there sooner than the three weeks or so it'll probably take. Then I can do the last packing, because on Saturday I leave with friends for Cardiff, and only on Monday will I leave the UK.

I...don't want to think about it right now. I've been making all these plans for Europe, but trying not to think about the reality of actually being there. I mean, I'm looking forward to it, but it means the end of my big semester abroad. I'll confront the reality later. For now I still want to pretend I don't have to leave in just a few days. Sigh.

Busy Week

This has honestly been my first chance to update since Monday.  Wow, my week has been full.

Saturday was Brighton, which was lovely.  Weather reports warned that it was supposed to rain, and it did...for the first half hour.  After that it was sunny for the rest of the time we were there.

The train ride on the way down might have been the best, and also the geekiest, train ride I've ever had.  It's only an hour to Brighton from London, but my friends and I passed the time playing Shakespeare and Fantasy Twenty Questions.  And for Fantasy Twenty Questions the sources we focused on were Harry Potter, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and Narnia, so I kicked serious ass.  On the way home we added Disney to the mix, and I kicked ass at that too.

My Novels teacher lives in Brighton, and she said she'd show us around, so we met her and her excitable Dalmatian puppy (she couldn't get a dog-sitter) at the train station and she gave us a tour.  We followed the May Day Parade for a bit, and then she showed us the Royal Pavilion, the sumptious Indian/Oriental-style palace where George the Prince Regent kept his unofficial wife, apparently.

From there we hit the beach.  It had been raining, but seriously, once we got to the beach, the rain stopped.  It was awesome.  The beach was very rocky and not sandy, so it was not as comfortable to lie on, but we still spent quite a bit of time there.  There was also a carousel on the beach, which four of the five of us decided we had to go on -- we were the only adults there unaccompanied by children. :p  I enjoyed it, though.

We went to lunch at Brighton Pier, and I had fish and chips.  The very first time I've had fish and chips since coming to England, too -- and also the last.  It wasn't...bad, but it didn't have much taste, even when I added vinegar.  But at least I've finally had it, and it was by the seaside, too, so I'm satisfied.

After lunch we went shopping.  Well, I window-shopped.  Some of the others bought stuff, but there was nothing I wanted that would fit me, so I didn't get anything.  We also just walked around and listened to the street performers, but I think the main attractions of Brighton are the beach/seaside and the shopping.  We were done with the shopping, so we went back to the beach for awhile.

We went to a pub for dinner, and I have chicken tikki masala with naan.  It is a mark of how good Indian food is in Britain that I could order it at a pub, of all places, and still have it be very good.  One of the others ordered a whiskey and coke, and we got onto the subject of whiskey, and I somehow managed to be the expert on the subject there.  (Well, maybe it's not too surprising, since I was the only one there over 21.)  This made me want whiskey, so I ordered some, and I actually prefer my whiskey neat rather than mixed with something.  But the others were curious about the taste of plain whiskey, so I let them have small sips.  One made a rather hilarious face, but another actually spat it out.  What a waste of good whiskey! :p

After dinner we went home.  I went to bed, and actually slept very well.  I'd been getting an ear infection, which, after the horrible one of last year, made me very nervous.  I was going to try and see a doctor just in case, but then it just started going away on its own, which was a big relief.

Sunday and Monday I just spent on classes and homework.  Three papers due next week, and three finals.  Gah.  I really prefer having either a final paper or a final exam, not both, especially when the final exam is essay questions.  Oh well, though, since I think I'm pretty well prepared for the tests at least.  I still have two essays to finish.

On Tuesday the entire program went to see Macbeth at the Globe.  The Globe!  Macbeth!  I hadn't been looking forward to standing for three hours, but it wasn't as bad as I'd been anticipating.  I enjoyed the performance.  Some of the others didn't like some of the choices the director made, but I hadn't minded.  I was right in the front, almost in the center, and I just really enjoyed the experience.

Wednesday was spent on classes, figuring out some stuff for Europe (oh, Mom and Dad -- I got the Eurail pass), and writing one of the essays.  I finished the essay Thursday morning, so I didn't really have time for the changing of the guard or the national history museum, so I'm going to try for those next week.  The changing of the guard I especially want to see.  Anyway, I think I've got my exact dates for Europe figured out, for when I'll be in each city and when I'd be better off taking sleeper trains and so on, so that's a relief.  I think on Monday I'll try to make hostel reservations.

Thursday I spent on finishing the essay and doing research for another, then class, and then a show.  Sarah and I were going to spend the night in the airport before our flight to Oslo this morning, because trying to get there in the morning would have been such a hassle.  But we had to leave pretty late, because Sarah had to see Midsummer Night's Dream for the Shakespeare class, and I decided that since she had to see a show, I might as well use the time to see one as well.  I did Billy Elliot again, just because I love it.  Wow, do I love it.  I'm definitely going to try and see the movie when I get home.

Yesterday was also election day in Britain (it looks like the Tories got the most seats but there's a hung parliament, which means they only got a plurality, not an outright majority).  Martin had told us that there'd be broadcasting of election results in Trafalgar Square and against Big Ben, so after my show was over I went to Parliament Square, but there was no broadcasting.  I met Sarah there, and we decided to check out Trafalgar Square, but there was likewise no broadcasting.  It made me very sad, because I'd wanted to watch it, and thought it would have been so cool to see it in Trafalgar Square or against Big Ben.

We had to take an hour-long bus ride to get to Stansted Airport, and Sarah made reservations for one in the morning, because she wanted to make sure we had enough time to get to the coach stop.  I understand that, but I wish she'd gone for the midnight time slot, because we found the bus stop by then, and then had nothing to do.  Things close so early in London -- there were no pubs or bars open or anything.  We basically had to wait outside in the cold for an hour, and I was tired by that point, so I was trying to sleep on a hard wood bench, but it wasn't working out too well because I was so cold.

We made it to Stansted by two, but check-in and security weren't open then, so we passed the night on a hard cold floor in the lobby area.  I drowsed for three hours, but that was about it.

I woke up by about five-thirty and we checked in and went through security, but we still had another couple hours to kill before we even found out what gate we were, so I went on my computer, but not on the internet because I would have had to pay.  We finally made it to the airplane and I dozed some more on the flight.  It was thankfully only about two hours.  That was the first time I've flown since coming over here, and I don't like it any more than I ever have.  I'm really not looking forward to the flight home from Paris.

We had to take another hour-long bus to get from the airport in Rygge to Oslo, but we got to our hostel at about one.  I'd brought some food for my lunches for both days (definitely a good idea, now that I've seen how expensive food is here), so I ate lunch and went on the computer for a bit while we waited for check-in to open.  Then we checked in, dropped our bags off in our room, and went out to explore Oslo.

We'd decided on an easy day today, because both of us were exhausted (honestly, I'm surprised I've managed this long).  We wandered around the shopping area nearby, and I got a European plug adaptor.  From there we went up one of the main streets towards the royal palace, seeing sights such as the Domkirk (church), the University of Oslo, the National Theatre, the Hard Rock Cafe Oslo, the parliament building, and just some great pedestrian areas.  We took some pictures of the palace when we got there, but there wasn't really much else we could do, so we stopped in for a drink at the Hard Rock Cafe and then moved on to look at the fjord.

Right by the fjord, at least the part we went to, was an old fortress and castle, so we explored that a bit.  The castle was closed by then, so we didn't go in, but we actually saw rather a lot of the fortress grounds, and got some great pictures, and saw some guards in funny uniforms standing and marching around, so that was cool.

Sarah had brought food for her dinners, but I really only had room in my backpack for lunches, so I went to find dinner.  Wow, things are expensive here.  Much more so than England and even Ireland.  I really hope that the rest of my visit to Europe has prices more similar to England than to Norway, where a medium pizza cost almost thirty dollars and a glass of pepsi almost six.  But the good thing about getting pizza is that I now have leftovers, so I can have leftover pizza for lunch tomorrow, eat the food I'd brought for dinner, and then not have to pay more.

We came back to the hostel after dinner, since both of us are quite tired, though Sarah more than me.  So now I'm online, have finally had time to properly update this thing, and will probably go to bed in a few hours.  It's nine-thirty here, but it's still light out!  Considering how far north we are, I would have figured it would have gotten dark already, but apparently not.

Anyway.  Tomorrow we're going to take a ferry across the fjord to the Norwegian Folk Museum, meet one of Sarah's Norwegian friends who will show us around more, and then go back to the airport in the evening to spend the night there for a six-fifty flight Sunday morning.  Hopefully I'll be able to sleep better at Rygge airport than Stansted.

I love living in London and I think the tube is marvelously convenient most of the time, but gah it's awful on weekends.  Weekends are when they do engineering work, and of course I understand why they do weekends -- it'd be even more disruptive during the work week -- but doing anything on weekends can be a real hassle.  There was my Easter adventure, and this weekend is another Bank Holiday (for May Day), and there are closures on almost all the lines in my area.  I'm going to Brighton tomorrow and figuring out rail replacement buses and what exactly are the lines I can use is being a bit of a headache.

Anyway!  The semester is winding down, and all of my assignments but the final papers/final exams are done.  I have two weeks left in London.  Two weeks!  How did that happen?  I can't believe how quickly this semester has gone by.

So I'm trying to finish up the touristy stuff I want to do.  Yesterday morning we went to the Imperial War Museum for a class, and after that I had about four hours of free time before my next class so I went to the National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery.  I went to art museums of my own free will!  Honestly, it was mostly because I thought I should, but I did see some Leonardo da Vinci, Michaelangelo, Monet, Rembrandt, and Van Gogh (for people I've actually heard of), and some of those famous paintings of Queen Elizabeth I and Henry VIII and Queen Victoria and so on, so that was pretty cool.  Next week, probably Tuesday, I'm going to watch the changing of the guard, and I think Thursday will be the Natural History Museum.

On Tuesday my history class went to do a tour of Lord's Cricket Grounds and to see part of a cricket match.  So now I know a bit of the history of the game, and I got to see the Ashes, and I watched some cricket, but I still don't understand it very well.  Pretty much the entire time we were watching the game, we had to ask our teacher what was going on.  Now there are a few things I can get by myself, but for the most part I still need an interpreter.

My plans for this weekend had originally been Dover and Canterbury today, Brighton tomorrow, and Oxford again on Sunday.  But then the friend I'd been going to Oxford with couldn't go anymore, and other people said they were going to Oxford today, so I decided to skip Dover and Canterbury and do Oxford today and have Sunday free.  Though it's just as well, because Sunday will be not so much free as spent getting some final essays out of the way so I don't have to worry about them during the week or when I'm in Norway.

I very much enjoyed Oxford, especially because I got to do what I wanted to do, rather than what had been scheduled as a school trip.  I caved in and bought an Oxford sweatshirt, and we went back to lunch at the Eagle and Child, and we went to Blackwell's Bookshop, which sold a lot of rare books I could not afford no matter how much I wanted some of them (1851 Emma for two hundred pounds!).

Part of my reason for going back to Oxford was because I really wanted to take a boat on the river, and happily the friends I was with also wanted it.  Originally we got a punt, because it seems like punting in Oxford is rather traditional, but, um, we failed.  Well, mostly I failed.  I volunteered to actually punt the boat, but wow is it harder than it seemed.  I just couldn't figure out how to get the boat to move forward.  And then we couldn't really try to change punters because we thought all that moving around would make at least one of us fall out.  I did get a picture of me attempting to punt, though.

We ended up using the paddle to get back to the dock, after only twenty minutes of our allotted hour.  We didn't want to waste our money, though (since we paid for the hour), and we still wanted to go on the river, so we used a paddle boat instead.  Much easier.  One friend steered while the other friend and I paddled, and I think we got our money's worth there.  Great scenery, a boat we were actually able to handle, and a good time all around.  And when we got back to the dock, the boat handler told us we hadn't failed with the punt as badly as some other people have -- we at least managed to get ourselves back to dock, rather than him having to go rescue us.  So despite the blip at the beginning, I had a good time in a boat on the Cherwell, and I am pleased.

After that we went to see Magdalen College, which is where C.S. Lewis taught, and we were supposed to pay three pound fifty but we actually only paid one pound because it was a rainy day and the porter gave us a discount for weather, which was really nice of him.  Then we went to Merton College, which is one of the colleges where Tolkien taught, and we were supposed to pay two pounds but the porter there said we could just go in.  Right after lunch I'd gone to see St. John's College, because it was free to visitors, so I got to see three of Oxford's colleges for only a pound, which was awesome.

There were no specifically Tolkien-related things for us to see at Merton, but it was still pretty awesome to walk the same ground he walked, and though it was very rainy, it was also very pretty.  We also saw some students playing croquet, so that was pretty cool.  I don't think I've ever seen people actually playing croquet before.

My friends had to get back for dinner with their host family, so we left after Merton.  I loved Oxford, though.  Beautiful sights, and such history -- it would have been so cool to have gone to school at Oxford.  Maybe if I decide to continue my education later I'll try for a doctorate or something at Oxford.  Heh.  We'll see how that goes. :p

Brighton tomorrow!  It's supposed to rain even worse than it did today, but there's going to be a festival and parade for May Day, so I'm still really looking forward to it!

Happy St. George's Day!

The past week or so has not been excessively interesting, except for weekends and the volcano in Iceland.  

The Iceland volcano, which I'm not even going to try to spell or pronounce, has been more applicable than just reading about it in the papers.  Martin, our program director and teacher of one of our classes, had to go to Portland, OR two weeks ago for some AHA conference.  He was supposed to be back this past week, but...volcano.  So he got stuck in Portland, we had no class on Monday, and had to get a substitute in on Wednesday to talk to us about Britain's political parties and the leaders' debate from last week.  We're not sure when Martin will be back, but it should be by Tuesday, at least.

Last Thursday I saw Wicked!  That was one of the shows I'd really been wanting to see, and it was really good.  I did like Billy Elliot better, but I'm definitely glad I got the chance to see Wicked as well.  It also made me want to watch The Wizard of Oz again, and maybe read the book at some point.

Last weekend I met two friends from the internet, one for dinner on Friday, and one, a closer friend, I met in London on Saturday and then went to Southampton, where she lives, on Sunday.  She'd warned me that Southampton wasn't very interesting, and it really wasn't, but I saw bits of Southampton castle scattered around (it's in ruins and the town grew up around it), and she showed me her university, and it was just really nice to get out of London and visit a friend in a nice, non-touristy English seaside town.  I found it very enjoyable, even if we did spend a lot of time sprawled on grass talking.

On Thursday I watched the second leaders' debate with my host mum.  These debates are between the leaders of the three main political parties, Labour, Conservative, and Liberal Democrats, the men who would be Prime Minister if their party gets the majority.  Gordon Brown of Labour is PM now, but what's sort of funny is that his main rival, David Cameron of the Conservatives, pushed for televised debates because he's young, photogenic, and speaks well; he thought he'd do especially well compared to Gordon Brown.  Well, he did -- but I reckon he didn't account for Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats, who have been a minority party for the past century and are unexpectedly being a force in this election.  Nick Clegg is also young and photogenic, and he speaks even better than David Cameron, so the general consensus is that he's won the past two debates (there's one more), giving his party a big boost.  I guess that one backfired in David Cameron's face. :p  I'm really loving being here for the British election.  It's so interesting!

Anyway, this weekend was, of course, Stratford-upon-Avon, for Shakespeare's birthday weekend and also St. George's Day (St. George is England's patron saint, so it's a bit of a holiday).  We got into Stratford yesterday, which was Shakespeare's actual birthday, and checked into our B&Bs, which were so much better than hostels.  Too bad I can't afford to do B&Bs for the rest of my time in Europe, but oh well, hostels are fine.

First we went to Holy Trinity Church to see Shakespeare's grave, and then we went to see Shakespeare's Birthplace.  Normally people are not allowed to take pictures inside the house, but because it was his birthday, we were allowed to, so I got some pictures of the house.  They were also giving out free samples of mead in the garden, and that was pretty good.  I'd never had mead before.

Stratford was, by the way, particularly gorgeous.  Friday was warm and completely cloudless, and all the Shakespeare houses we visited had big gardens, and wow the flowers were beautiful.  Tulips and daffodils and lavender and sweet pea and more flowers I couldn't even begin to name.  Spring in England is gorgeous, and Stratford is particularly picturesque.  Absolutely wonderful.

After Shakespeare's birthdplace, we went to New Place, which is the last house he bought and the one in which he died, so we went from his birth to his death in about half an hour.  But apparently the original house he bought was demolished around a century later and another house built very close to it, so when we were there they'd actually dug up half the garden as an archeological site.

We had free time after that until our play that evening, so we went for dinner at The Dirty Duck, which is the pub where the RSC likes to eat.  Which reminds me, we passed that pub on our way to Shakespeare's birthplace, and right as we were passing, actors playing Helena and Demetrius from Midsummer Night's Dream burst out the door to do their first scene in the woods together.  Random unexpected Shakespeare for the win!  We stayed until they finished their scene.

After dinner, we walked by the Avon for a bit, then went to the theatre.  It had a gift shop, so I browsed a bit, then saw the most perfect tote bag.  It's Shakespeare as a tube map.  There are different lines of, for instance, lovers, and villains, and fathers and daughters, with character names as different stops, and there are different intersections and clever services.  Like Ophelia offers riverboat services and Richard III has disabled access.  Such an awesome tote bag, and very much a souvenir of both Stratford and London, so I got it.

The play we saw was King Lear, which was really good.  We had front row seats, so we could see very well (even at some of the points I didn't necessarily want to see so well, like when Lear stripped down to almost his underwear).  Great play.  I've heard random bits of the story but had never actually seen it or read it before, so I'm glad I finally have.

This morning we really only had one thing on the schedule, visiting Anne Hathaway's cottage.  That is one play with another set of absolutely beautiful gardens.  In the garden they also had a gigantic birthday card for Shakespeare, which I both signed and got a picture of.  Inside the cottage we were sadly not allowed to take pictures, even though it was still the birthday weekend, but it was still quite interesting.  Tour guides gave us little lectures about what life would have been like for the Hathaways in Tudor England.

We had free time after Anne Hathaway's cottage, so most of us went to see the birthday parade.  That was pretty awesome.  We got a good spot near the end at the Holy Trinity Church, and saw a very long line of schoolboys carrying flowers for the grave, and a marching band, lots of random groups dressed in period clothing, and this group of middle-aged men dancing with bells strapped around their shins and waving handkerchiefs in their hands.  Really great stuff.

It was another gorgeous day, so after the parade we just sprawled on the grass in a park by the Avon and caught some sun.  Got a cheap lunch at Sainsbury's and just drowsed in the park, because Stratford is really quite small and we'd already done what there really was to do.  I stopped by the church again to get some pictures of Shakespeare's grave covered in flowers, but no one else in my group came with me.  I'm not sure why.  You can go to Stratford any day of the year and get a picture of Shakespeare's grave, but only on one weekend can you get it covered in flowers, so I'm pleased about having that.

Now I'm back in London.  I'd been going to go back to Oxford tomorrow, but the person I was going with said she can't afford it right now, and we made tentative plans for next Sunday, when we hope she can afford it.  And I don't want to go by myself, since I want to get a punt on the Isis or the Cherwell and that's not really something I can do by myself, so I hope she will be able to go or there's not much more point in me going back unless I can find someone else to go with me who wants to punt down the river.

I've made some tentative plans for next weekend.  Friday I want to do Dover and Canterbury, to see the white cliffs of Dover and Dover beach (mostly because of the poem) and I think it would be awesome to catch an Evensong in the Canterbury Cathedral.  Saturday I'm going to go to Brighton, because there's a festival starting there and also one of my teachers lives there and said she'll give us a little tour.  Sunday is either Oxford or free.

Tomorrow is unexpectedly free and my weekends from now on are going to be pretty busy, so I think tomorrow I'm going to try and get ahead on schoolwork.  With the added bonus of not spending any money!  Always a good thing.

Playing Catch-Up

Now for the rest of the past week and a half, which, though interesting, has not been quite as eventful as spring break.

Got all my midterm grades -- As and A-s on everything, which makes me feel a lot better about my unrevised papers.  Unless my teachers get ridiculously stricter for subsequent assignments, I think this semester will continue my straight-A streak.

On Wednesday one of my classmates got a care package from home that included a box of Cheez-Its.  There were only a few of us in the room at the time, and she let us have some, and oh, Cheez-Its.  God, I miss American snack food.  I found something generally cheeto-like to munch on, but I really miss goldfish.  If anyone wants to, you know, send me a care package, then I will love you forever if you send me some goldfish.

On Friday we had a group excursion to Oxford.  I enjoyed it, but I would have enjoyed it more had I been on my own and able to do the things I was most interested in doing, so a friend and I will be going back next Sunday, after Stratford-on-Avon and Warwick.  Anyway, we took the coach there, which was only about an hour (God, this is such a small country), and first we went to the University Museums, where I saw dinosaur skeletons and shrunken heads.  After that we did an audio tour of the Bodleian Library, and then we had about an hour for lunch.  About half of us went to the Eagle and Child pub, which is the pub where JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis and the rest of the Inklings would meet, so that was pretty awesome.

After lunch we went for a tour of Christ Church College and Cathedral, including the dining hall and other bits where parts of Harry Potter were filmed, then finished the trip off with the Ashmolean Museum, where I saw King Alfred's Jewel.  (Which was the only thing I was really interested in.  I've been getting rather burned out on museums, I've seen so many this semester.)

There were several things I wanted to do but didn't get a chance to, like touring Tolkien's colleges and getting a punt down the Isis or the Cherwell, but that's why I'll be coming back.  I'm also debating getting an Oxford sweatshirt.  It would be awesome to have, but I generally don't like wearing memorabilia of colleges I don't attend.  Well, I'll think about it before I go back.

I've been missing a lot of the books I had to leave at home, so on Saturday I went to the big Waterstone's on Piccadilly and spent half the day there just reading, and it was wonderful.  Then I came back to my homestay and watched Doctor Who as it aired on BBC1, for the first and possibly the only time.  I've never seen Doctor Who as it aired before (well, it's only possible in Britain), so I was very happy to be able to do that.

Sunday I went with a friend to see Alice in Wonderland in 3D IMAX.  It was more expensive than I like for a movie (though I think I've been spoiled by working at a theater and seeing movies for free), but it was so worth it because my friend actually invited me.  In the beginning of the program I always had to invite myself to things or just go alone, but now people have finally started inviting me, and it's great not being the one to have to make the first move all the time.  Definitely worth a movie ticket.

Though speaking of invitations, another friend told me last week that she was going to Norway in May because she found a ten pound round trip plane ticket.  She asked me if I might be interested, and I said I'll think about it, just send me the information.  So she did, and though the ticket prices went up a bit since she got her tickets, I found that I can go to Norway for $40.  I can't even go from Reno to Tacoma for $40 (flying or driving, considering how much gas it takes), and that's in the same country!

So I decided I'm going with her to Norway in May.  It's the week before the program ends, the 7th through the 9th, and I'm getting pretty excited about it.  I mean, I'm really looking forward to traveling after the program ends (really looking forward), but I'm just going to Western Europe.  And because I did my spring break in Ireland, I'm spending pretty much my whole time abroad in Western Europe.  Which is awesome, of course, but Scandinavia is a different region, with different history and traditions.  I really couldn't pass this chance up, so in May I'll be spending a couple days in Norway.

Today I had a history presentation on Canada in World War I, and I think it went pretty well.  My teacher said I went into a bit too much detail on the battles but that I was very thorough, and he was nodding through most of the presentation, so I think I'll get an A or A- on that.  Next week I have a paper due for that class, but I need to find some more research on my topic, so I think I'm going to do that tomorrow, because I'm going to have a busy weekend.

Tonight I'd been intending to see Wicked with some friends, but a couple said tomorrow night would be better, so I guess I'll be seeing Wicked tomorrow.  Instead, the friend I'm doing Norway with and I decided to see a movie tonight since her phone service gives her 2-for-1 movie tickets on Wednesdays and student prices made it even cheaper -- I paid about three pounds for a movie ticket, which is probably the cheapest I've ever had, not counting the free ones.  We saw Kick Ass, which I very much enjoyed, though it certainly earned its R rating (for violence).

This weekend I'll be meeting two different internet friends.  I'm meeting a more casual one for drinks on Friday, and then I'm spending the weekend with my close friend from Southampton.  On Saturday she'll be coming to London, and then on Sunday I'm going to Southampton.  I can't wait!

Murphy's Law

I'm almost all caught up from spring break.  The final leg is one big long story of Murphy's Law in action.

The initial error was definitely mine, but the consequences gave me a sharp lesson.  See, my train from London to Holyhead had been one train doing the whole trip, but on the way back from Holyhead to London I had to change trains twice, once in Chester and once in Crewe.  The train from Chester got into Crewe about half an hour before my next train was set to leave, so I found out what platform I needed and went there.  At about 8:30, still fifteen minutes before my train is supposed to leave, a train arrives at my platform.  It's Virgin Trains, which was the train I needed, and it was at the right platform -- the only issue was that it was too early, but I've seen trains arrive at a platform and just wait for twenty minutes before.

What I should have done is look at the departures board, because then I would have seen that this particular Virgin train was going to Manchester, not London.  I didn't, though.  I just assumed that the train was going to wait a bit, and got on.  I realized my mistake moments later when the train started moving, but by then it was too late.  I didn't even know where this train was supposed to be going.  I hoped it was the same general direction, so that I could just get off at the next station and still catch my proper train, but that hope was dashed when I did get to the next station, Wilmslow.

At Wilmslow, I went to the security station and told the guard I think I got on the wrong train; I needed to get to London.  He informed me that I had indeed gotten on the wrong train, because I was now halfway to Manchester.  Furthermore, by this time the train I should have been on was already gone, and it was the last train of the night going to London.  There I was, stuck overnight in a place I couldn't have pointed to on a map.

This would have been bad enough, but what was worse was that I had plans the next day.  I had my ticket for Star Wars in Concert, which I really wanted to get to.  It was at three, but getting there would have been complicated because the Jubilee line, which would have taken me right there with only one change, was down for planned engineering work over the holiday weekend.  The route I had mapped out involved different lines and replacement buses and would have taken nearly two hours, but that wouldn't have been a problem if I'd been home on Sunday and could have left early enough.

Instead, I had to spend my Sunday getting back to London, getting from the train station back to my homestay to drop off my stuff and get my ticket for the concert, and then getting there in time.  The security guard in Wilmslow said that I could stay the night in Manchester and get a train that would get in around 1:30, which would not have given me enough time, so that was out.  My other option was to go back to Crewe and get a train that would get me in around 12:30, which would be cutting it close but would still probably be all right.

I bought a train ticket for the next morning, and went back to Crewe.  Once there, I asked the station personnel for overnight options.  They did say I could stay the night in the station, but I'd have to sleep in the waiting room, and when I got back to London my host mum said that's what she would have done, just to save money, but I couldn't.  Stay the night alone in a train station in a foreign country?  I wouldn't have been able to sleep, and not just because all I had was the floor, short benches, or chairs.  And I seriously can't function when I don't get enough sleep -- I probably would have bungled getting home even worse than I already had.

Crewe, being in the middle of nowhere, didn't have any hostels, and I hadn't meant to be there so I didn't have any research on places to stay, and had to rely on the station people for recommendations.  The place they directed me to was fairly close, but one night was fifty pounds (at which I winced, but what other options did I really have? I didn't know where else to go), and they did not have any internet access.  No business computers, no wifi, and no open internet cafe anywhere nearby.

This just made things even worse, because my host mum was expecting me home that night.  I'd accidentally left my paper with her phone number in my room in London, so I thought the only thing I could do was get into my email account and fish out my roommate's number, call her, and have her explain to my host mum what happened.  Unfortunately, though, no internet.  I made it clear to the receptionist that I really needed this (all the while thinking, what kind of hotel doesn't have any internet access at all in this day and age?), so he sent me one of their employees with an iphone he was willing to let me try.  No dice, though -- couldn't get into my email.  I was basically stuck hoping my host mum would call me so I could explain, but I didn't know when.  I wasn't supposed to get home until around midnight, so it would have to be after that, but I just wanted to go to bed.

I waited for a bit, but finally decided to just take my shower and go to bed, and just answer if it woke me up.  But then I couldn't figure out how to turn the shower on.  There was a bathtub I could turn on, but I couldn't find anything for the shower.  So I had to go to bed without taking a shower, which always makes me feel uncomfortable.

My host mum did text me in the middle of the night, waking me up, but I did feel relieved at being able to explain a bit of what happened and that I'd be home the next day.  I did not sleep as well as I would have at home, but I did get enough sleep to function, and far more than I would have gotten had I stayed at the train station.

I got to the station bright and early, and this time made sure of the train's destination before boarding.  Unfortunately, the train encountered delays along the route.  It left Crewe at 9:17 and was supposed to get in to London at 12:32, but it managed to get there at about one instead, and I was almost despairing.  I could have made it to my concert on time if I'd left my house around one, but I was still at the train station and needed to get home, and had to take circuitous public transportation back.

I made it home at 1:40, where my host mum was a marvel.  After wanting to cry at finding out there was no way for me to get there by public transportation that wouldn't get me at least an hour late (and the show was only two hours, so I would have missed at least half of it), she found me a cab that could get me there in an hour.  It was more expensive than I would have liked, but I'd been looking forward to this concert for weeks, and really wanted to get there, so I paid it, and I got there only fifteen minutes late.

It was Easter, so the show wasn't full, and I got my seat upgraded so I could sit closer.  The concert was basically music from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra set to a theme montages from the films, narrated by the actor who played C-3PO.  It was so awesome listening to the Imperial March played live, and the theme music, and so much more that I recognized and loved.  Live!  Exactly what I'd been waiting for.  I did not regret rushing to get there.

I especially did not regret it after seeing how long it took to get back home.  Had the Jubilee line been working, it would have taken me forty-five minutes.  Instead, it took two hours and fifteen minutes, which really emphasized that I could not have taken public transportation to the show without missing two-thirds of it.

But I got back, and ate dinner, and spent time online, and went to bed, peaceful in the knowledge that Monday was a bank holiday and therefore I could spend it doing absolutely nothing.

The Craic Was Mighty

Thursday morning we left Galway for a tour of Connemara, which had some really awesome scenery.  For such a small country, Ireland is a lot more variable than I was expecting.  The beautiful coast and the rolling green hills I was expecting, but then there was the Burren National Park, and Connemara, which had stretches I could have mistaken for the Nevada desert if I weren't looking too closely.  The plants were different -- I didn't see sage, and saw a lot of this grayish-green thing I'm not sure what it was -- but the hills and the dirt and the general landscape just looked so much like Nevada.

I...wasn't really all that homesick on seeing it, though.  This was about an hour, hour and a half away from Galway, so some people had been taking naps, and when we got to the most Nevada-looking part, Sean was all "Wake up and look at the landscape!  Isn't it beautiful?"  I looked at the landscape and was thinking less of "I miss Nevada" and more "I've seen enough of this at home.  What happened to all that funny green stuff?  I want more of that." :p

We stopped at a town called Killary, which was home to the only Irish fjord, so I got some pictures of the fjord.  That village was also where the movie "The Field" was filmed, apparently, and we went to the pub where all the pub scenes were filmed, which seemed to be very proud of that because it had "The Field" paraphernalia all over.  That pub also apparently made really good Irish Coffees (coffee with whiskey) and Bailey's Coffees (coffee with Bailey's), but I didn't have any because I don't like coffee, and it's just as well because some people said later that having alcohol that early upset their stomachs.

We had lunch in Westport, then went to Croagh Patrick, the mountain from which St. Patrick is said to have banished all the snakes from Ireland.  (Heh.  Our first day, Sean told us that story, then said that Ireland never had any snakes in the first place.  Banishing the snakes is supposed to have been Patrick's miracle, and you need a miracle to be a saint, but since Patrick didn't actually banish the snakes, he was never actually made a saint, which I did not know.  The Irish took him for their patron saint because he's the one who converted them to Christianity, but he's not actually a saint.)  Anyway, the mountain is a pilgrimate site now, and on some day in August is basically the official time to make the pilgrimage so tens of thousands of people climb the mountain on that day.

Sean wanted us to climb at least partly up the mountain, but I only climbed to the pilgrimage base, where there's a statue of the Virgin Mary.  I wasn't the only one not really interested in climbing, though, so several of us hung around the base for awhile and took pictures of the bay, since it really had an awesome view.  It wasn't really much of a hike, though, since Sean really only allotted about half an hour to it, so we were on our way soon enough.

We also stopped at the Famine Memorial by Croagh Patrick, which was depressing.  Well, of course it was, since it had to do with the Famine, but it was this metal statue of a ship crawling with skeletons.  And Sean told us about the Famine, and how people died not just of starvation in Ireland but of conditions on the ships they were emigrating in, which is why the memorial is a ship with skeletons, and it was just...depressing.  Apparently when he was Prime Minister, Tony Blair acknowledged to the Irish that the Famine was preventable, which is so sad.  Two million Irish died or emigrated, and it could have been prevented.  That's just horrible.

It also really makes me want to know the British side of things, what a Brit would say to the version of history Sean told.  I mean, I don't think Sean was lying or exaggerating, but I want to know how the British would tell the story.  I think I'm going to corner my history teacher at some point and ask him.

We stopped at this lake where the waters looked black, which is Sean's favorite place in Ireland because he said he's never seen it look the same twice.  The landscape was very impressive.  There were also sheep wandering across the road.  I am so amused at how many sheep I saw in Ireland -- probably more than I saw people, really.  

Our last stop of the day was at Kylemore Abbey, a huge mansion across a lake.  Very picturesque.  After that, we headed back towards Galway, getting in around six.  Sean told us about this restaurant on Quay Street famous for its mussels, so we went there for dinner, and they really did have very good mussels.  Mmmm.  I love shellfish.

After dinner we went across the street to a pub playing live music, where I got my last half-pint of Guinness in Ireland, plus some sort of blackcurrant cordial to offset the bitterness.  I liked the Guinness with blackcurrant much better than regular Guinness, so I'll have to see if that's just an Irish thing or if I can get it that way at home.  The music was not Celtic, sadly, but the band on when I was there was basically playing covers to classic rock songs from CCR, Johnny Cash, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and more like that, so I still enjoyed it.

In Ireland, there are two days out of the year where alcohol is not allowed to be sold.  I think one of them is Christmas (could be wrong about that though), but the other is Good Friday, and the prohibition started at midnight.  Technically, at least.  We were still in the pub at midnight, but the bartender said they were just closing the downstairs bar and keeping the upstairs one open until they closed for the night.  I wasn't interested in drinking more, though, and I was getting pretty tired, so we just went back to the hostel.

Friday was our last and easiest day of the tour.  We had free time in Galway until 2:30, and then we were just going straight back to Dublin.  Sean mentioned a museum in Galway, but it turns out that was also closed for Good Friday, so oh well.  Mostly I just spent my morning shopping.  I got a hat made from good Irish wool, because I've seen so many sheep in Ireland that I couldn't resist getting something made from them.  I also got a really pretty necklace and earrings in Celtic designs made of silver and inset with Connemara marble, so I was very pleased with that.

I met up with my friends at this crepe place for lunch, and oh, crepes.  It's been so long since I had a crepe.  They were so good.  I definitely need to get crepes in France.

Mid-afternoon we left for Dublin, and just went straight there.  We got in at about five, and thus ended the tour.  But even given things like my mud mishap at Blarney Castle and me getting sick, I'd had such a great time.  I'm so glad I decided to book a tour, because it was exactly what I'd hoped for and more.  I wanted to see more of Ireland than what I thought I'd be able to find on my own, which I think I did, and I learned so much Irish history and mythology, and I made some great friends.  That was so wonderful.  I fell pretty much immediately into a group of friends and we just stuck together the entire time, even getting dinner together that last night in Dublin because we weren't quite ready to be done yet.  I just started using my Facebook a bit more, and this tour is exactly why.  I want to keep in touch with these people.

Anyway, I checked into my hostel, and of all random things, met two people from my program there.  I hadn't even known they were going to be in Ireland for midterm break.  Apparently they spent a few days in Wales and then went to Dublin, and they were checking out just as I was checking in so we didn't do much more than say hi, but it was still a very amusing coincidence.

The next day I wanted to sleep in a bit, since my ferry wasn't leaving until 2:30, but I still woke up around eight.  I decided to spend a bit of time online before going out into Dublin, but I should have spent less time online, because I ended up not having as much time to do things as I'd hoped.  My plan was to start the furthest from my hostel and then work my way back towards it (since I left my luggage there), so I'd wanted to do the Old Jameson's Distillery, Dublin Castle, and Trinity College, but I ended up actually only having time for the Old Jameson's Distillery, where I volunteered to be a whiskey taster and got a certificate for my troubles. :p  I did enjoy that, but I would have liked a bit longer in Dublin.

Two of my fellow whiskey tasters were this couple from Sweden, and we got to chatting.  We hit it off pretty well, and they invited me to lunch with them, so that's what I did.  I liked them.  The husband had studied abroad in America when he was a student, so it was really interesting, discussing what it was like being American and studying in Europe, and vice versa.

Around 1:30 I caught a taxi to Dublin Port.  I technically could have walked, but I'm rather glad I didn't, because my map showed the route to be deceptively short and easy, and I might well have gotten lost and taken forever had I decided to walk it, but a cab was only five euro.  So I was in Dublin Port, and from there I left Ireland.  Already I missed it.

In case my subject line is confusing, "craic" is pronounced like "crack", and it amuses me (and Sean, and my tour) to use it.  Craic is Irish slang for basically something like fun/enthusiasm/great times.  "Having great craic" or "the craic was mighty" is basically saying that awesome things are happening and you're having a great time, which is really my trip to Ireland in a nutshell.

This post is long enough and I'm getting tired, so for next time will be the travails of my trip back to London and what's been happening the rest of this week.  But there was Ireland, and though it was expensive, I would so love to go back some day.