An American Lakeside

There’s an oak tree leaning over the bank that’s ornamented for Christmas by a single, orphaned fishing lure that hangs in its bright yellow ugliness.  I wonder how the child felt when he lost it and how the father felt when he fixed the line.  Their disappointment and frustration don’t belong in the same word as mine.

In the reflection of the lake a lone goose flies, the waves make it leap forward in tiny little accelerations and then slow before bounding again.  Miraculously it knows to fly around the leaves, pine needles, and bark floating in the water.  The same waves make the limbs of a pine shuffle up and down in a disjointed dance from the ’20s.

I go to the end of an unfinished pier, carefully now because the top planks are still on the bank.  I sit.  The soles of my shoes touch the top of the water and I am immediately repulsed by the layer of mud and road oil that seeps out like piss from a diaper.  It spreads in a disgusting film across the top of the lake and I loathe myself for the ugliness that I’ve brought.  Even the beauty of skipping stones across this made the geese retreat.

The ugliest duck ever born swims by, its face and beak afflicted with red, lumpy, fleshy gout and its body feathers looking like a horrendous green, black, and white Christmas sweater.  The green has a sickly shine.  The spots on its white neck have no rhyme, scattered like flea bites.  I haven’t seen this eyesore of nature since I was here a year and a half ago.  We laughed at it instead of sympathizing.

Pieces of it all

I feel bad that the one day that I took Jonathan Coates along with me to find a softball game there weren’t any willing to take us.  I have a feeling that he might have thought I was making it all up and just walking around the park instead.  I regret having never rejoined the first guys I played with (the middle aged men who did round robin hitting with about 6 people), but they never sent me an email about the next time they’d meet. 

One day I heard children climbing along the stone wall at the back of our lot talking very loudly.  I crept up and surprised them, telling them that they’d get caught if they kept making so much noise while they crossed over properties.  I also told them to be careful of our fox.  I think they turned back.

When I came back from Dublin on my own it was getting dark, and I was saddened by this because I couldn’t see the countryside; instead there was the same darkness there would be if I were riding a bus in Georgia.   The sunset was pretty though, and there was this cool bit where the bus went through a tunnel and on the bus’ TV the tunnel’s light flashed by like flourescent meteors.  I filmed it in the hopes of including it in my short film on paranoia in the London Underground, but I never got around to that.  If I go back I”m doing it; Sierra will help.

Walking across cities at night and alone is as dreary as it sounds and lacks the adventurous aspect I thought it would inspire.  I did this with Paris and Belfast because I was too cheap for transportation; Paris was bearable but Belfast was just depressing.  In Paris I stopped along the Seine and laid down along its edge because it was a suprisingly clear night and I could see many of the stars.  I looked at them for a long time thinking of how I looked up at the same stars from the edge of the sea at Ocean Isle Beach and wondered why I had a waterside stargazing fetish.  A couple of French students came up to ask if I was ok, I said that I was fine and explained the stars best I could; we ended up talking politics, the smaller but less English-spoken of the two made a theatrical representation of Blair being Bush’s puppy.  They liked the Doors and the Killers and some other American bands.  Some Frenchman came by to sell us drugs but I said that I was fine.

Glimpses of an Era

You might have noticed that after my trip to Ireland I became very lax with my account of this trip.  What trip to Ireland, you ask?  Well, your ignorance of my trip further illustrates my shortcomings as a journal keeper.  I’ve decided that for the sake of trying to remember this trip I’m just going to write down memories as they come to me.  My previous reformation attempt failed miserably, as you’re well aware, and at this point I just want to try to keep any memories of my travels that my mind can manage to pull back together.  This approach is a little reckless and I risk repeating myself, but I think it’s better than nothing.

I think the next time I do this I’ll discuss my meeting with Kirn (although everyone’s already heard this one), my befriending of Seyfo, the last day of softball I had in England, and my final day of wandering in London.  Hopefully I’ll be nice to everyone and not do it in free association.

Even in Cambridge there was an episode that I think that I forgot to mention, and that was back when I was doing a good job with this thing.  One evening Martin got wind of an upcoming band that was playing in pub somewhere in Cambridge that we had never been before.  For some reason I showed up later than everyone else; I’m not quite sure why but I can almost guarantee that it wasn’t because of an excessive amount of studiousness.  Anyway, the Eurotour was still going on at the time and we managed to take over a huge corner over by the corner near the large television and watch a great deal of it before heading back to where the band was playing.  It was something like 5 pounds to get in, and the band was enjoyable.  We had a good time.  And… that’s the end of the story.  Now that I think about it these entries will be more for my benefit than anyone else’s, and I apologize.  If history tells us anything, however, it’s that the closer an account is to its event the more reliable it is.  Memories are tricky things. 

We were in Ireland for three days, and the middle day was spent exploring Dublin.  We took a bus up there early that morning and split into groups to rove the town, I stuck with Myra and Tulsi (from Burlington, no less) and we did this hop-on hop-off bus tour since we figured we only had one day to see it all.  The guy who sold us the ticket was the most stereotypically Irish person I ever met.  I sort of wanted to stick with him all day, but not enough to do so.  We took it to Stephen’s Green in the middle of town and explored that a little bit and when we got back on I made a friend.

The bus had this funny these little audio plugs into which you could put complimentary headphones and listen to some guy describe what you were passing by in between snitches of catchy Irish fiddle music (eat culture, dirty tourist!), and I had trouble with it at first due to the multi-language nature of the thing.  I’m not going to lie; I listened to German for awhile.  Anyway, this French girl beside me helped me with the settings so that I could hear it in my own tongue (it was on channels, imagine that!) and enquired me in the most broken of English where she could get a new battery or something for her camera.  She was very nice, but I had no idea where to go to do that, much less how to tell her how to get there in French.  Despite her cute politeness, I was of no help and got off the bus when Myra and Tulsi did at a castle in the town. 

The castle cost money to get in and was sort of a castle – eighteenth century add-on hybrid, so we elected not to participate.  Dublin is enough fun to be explored for free.  However, as we turned to leave the castle there was Elly, the French girl from the bus.  It turns out that she was travelling alone and had no real plan for the day, so we decided to let her tag along with us and get a broadened understanding of French culture.  We spent much of the day on the bus, mainly because Myra and Tulsi fell asleep at the front and failed to inform their companions further back about it (why are we doing a second lap of this city?  I’ve already seen the Guinness brewery… is Myra drooling on the front window?).  It was still fun until the rain came; Elly and I enjoyed looking the city over and sneakily changing the language channel of eachother’s audio tourguides so that when the generic music ended the other would be listening to Russian or Japanese.  We did get off the bus once to try to get into a Cathedral (St. Patrick’s, perhaps?) but it wanted money as well so we aborted that religious shell. 

Once we departed the bus for good we found Elly a place to renew her camera or whatever and then went to a pub to eat dinner.  On the television was a wonderful game that I eventually recognized as Gaelic Football.  It’s a fascinating mix of soccer and American football that had too many rule variations of both for me to give a full account here, but I’ll give you a sample.  You could run with the soccerish ball in this game, but you had to dribble it as you ran along, and dribbling involved dropping it every third step and kicking it back up to yourself.  Beautifully bizarre.  County Tyrone was playing County Cork, and although I was going for Cork I’m pretty sure that it got devastated. 

After that Myra and Tulsi headed for the bus station to go home, but I wasn’t quite done with Dublin yet.  I hadn’t walked along the city’s River Liffey yet, and I wanted to do that before I left, so Elly and I did that for a good while before I checked her into her hostile and came back to Belfast myselt.  Elly had said that she was going to visit Belfast the next day, but I never ran into her again.  She was taking an apprenticeship to become a chocolate maker in Toulouse, and I hope that the candy business is treating her well these days.

Gus, Kim, Richard, Celia, Caroline and I all went to see a comedic theatrical version of Hitchcock’s “The 39 Steps” one night after having Spanish food, and it was enormously fun.  The theatre was underground in a building bordering Piccadilly Circus, and periodically you could hear the rumble of the tube as a subway went by in some other part of the bowels of the city.  That was the same that others in our group went to see the London opening of “The X-Files.”  They should have sold off those tickets to freaks with money.

One day before our big cookout I became determined to buy softballs and find a bat of some sort so that we could play softball as a group, so after finding out that the sports center near our house was an exercise complex and wandering the streets around Belsize Park a bit, I took the tube into town to wander.  Oxford Circs was my goal, but I had severe trouble fiding it and eventually tried to follow signs to a lesser market that also proved elusive.  In the end I took a solitary walk around Hyde Park and admired the plants, bridges, pigeons, bike trails, and gardens before coming out the other side to wander around some part of London until I found a tube station suitable for taking me back.  I never did find softballs.

The Joker’s Pencil Trick meets Gibson’s Flagpole Trick

I haven’t talked about it very much, but I am in fact taking classes here in London.  That may be surprising news to those of you who have picked apart grammatical and spelling mistakes in my unedited posts, but I am a man of surprises.  Anyway, my first couple of assignments were due yesterday so nothing exciting happened on Sunday besides research and Batman.

Sunday was a very hot day so when those of us who were excited about “The Dark Knight” said that we were going to see it, those of us who were excited about getting into air conditioning joined up faster than you can say “where’s Katie Holmes?”  It was an awesome flick; much darker than the first one and taut enough to give me a headache as soon as the credits started, but it was well worth it.  Excellently cast and well played, although I did feel a little bad that the air conditioning was broken in our screen.  That was unfortunate. 

Back at the house I worked on my paper until 1:30 AM when baseball came on channel 5.  The Red Sox were playing the Yankees, so I watched them have at it until the 3rd inning when I fell asleep with a 4 run lead.  Lester was doing a fine job pitching and the hitting lineup was working its typical magic. 

On Monday my day was taken up entirely by paper writing except for an interlude in which we visited Parliament.  Our tourguide had purple hair, but she was nice so I wasn’t mean to her.  She had a long speech at different places in the building, and after each one she always asked if anyone had questions.  In my mind I kept on imagining us having this conversation:

“So does anyone have any questions?”

“Yes, I have one.  Why is your hair purple?”

“Prepare to be deported.”

But the tour was very neat.  I liked the statue of Churchill and his arch that survived the damage done during the Blitz, and the statue that got damaged by a silly Suffragette who chained herself to it in the 1920s was amusing.  The Thatcher statue was approrpriately scary.  Unfortunately we weren’t able to see the House of Lords because that morning they’d had a significant pipe burst somewhere and there was severe water leakage/damage, several million pounds worth apparently.  That’s what happens when you’re the useless house in any self respecting democracy (if only they hadn’t passed that legislation to abolish the plumber’s union).  Since the House of Lords was closed we’re each getting a 12 pound refund, so tomorrow a few of us are going to splurge on English culture by watching a comedic stage adaptation of “The 39 Steps.”  I love that movie and can’t tell you how excited I am about it.

Once we finished there I came back and worked into the night on a paper about a Labour MP named Jim Dowd and a Conservative MP named Iain Duncan Smith.  They were interesting, but I can’t say that the biographies I wrote for them were the best of my life. 

After class this morning I took a long nap to catch up on sleep a bit and then did my laundry so I could be sanitary and less girl repellant.  After that I decided to celebrate the end of my first couple of assignment by being as American as possible, so I had a dinner of three cheeseburgers and finally, at long last, watched “The Patriot” on the projector.  It was epic, as usual, but this is the first time I’ve seen it since Heath Ledger’s death, so it was also a little strange and sobering. 

Oh, I don’t remember when this happened, but at some point during the past week a tipsy guy tried to buy my hat from me on the tube.  He said that he wanted it because he was going to a festival and it looked like a festive hat, and I could have turned a pretty nice profit on it by selling it to him for 15 pounds, but I couldn’t do it.  It wasn’t that I’d feel bad taking advantage of him; I’m just too attached to the hat at this point to just send it away.  I mean, it was with me all through Paris and much of London… I dunno.  I’m a softy.  Maybe too much Stanley or Davis in my Martin veins.  That is all.

At Least I Got to See the Cam Again Before Jack the Ripper Got Me

When I got up on Friday morning I wasn’t feeling like a million dollars, and I definitely didn’t feel like a million pounds (which is twice as good as a million dollars, get it?).  I felt more like sort of like bumming around the house for the day or something, but everyone else was going off to Cambridge for the day; I think that only one girl was going to stay to work on her papers.  So did I stay and work on the papers like a responsible adult?  Holy Socrates no!  I didn’t come here to just sit in this townhouse, so I decided to see Cambridge one more time before I left and sort of act as a tourguide for everyone. 

Because we were in a group the round trip tickets were 11.50 pounds, and we set off down on the train without mishap.  It was an amusing ride because even though most people wanted to sleep, the express train never moved slow near other trains or tunnels, and we encountered both almost as many times as the Washington Nationals encounter last place in their division (who are the Nationals?  Oh yeah, that team that no one wants to buy).  I was reading for my part, but it was fun to see Celia’s rest get terminated by the screaming trains and the air pressure change of tunnels.  Once we arrived I got to act as the tour guide and got everyone down to the center of town (yayyy Go Josh) with the good old green and from there we headed for the river.

I’m a huge fan of punting at this point, and so the eight of us who wanted to try our hands at it signed up with the guy and started pushing ourselves down the river four people to a boat.  Since I’d done it before I acted as the instructor and let the others in my boat give it a try (Chivalry: dies).  Kim pushed for most of the way and nearly got destroyed by a low hanging tree, but besides that she did very well.  On the way back Caroline did a good job as well until the growing current from the dam started to mess her up.  We’d rented the boat for an hour and would have to pay another 12 pounds if we went over, so when the current made Caroline turn the boat all skewy with eight minutes left, it was time to stop playing games.  I took the reins (or pole) and using my gondolier skills manuevered us through the fighting current to slide us into the port.  We did indeed get in and pay in the last minute of our hour, and I labelled myself the closing pitcher of the boat, while Kim was the starter, Caroline the mover, and Gus the relentless paddler (the retro-paddling was especially fun).  The other punt wasn’t quite as fortunate; it had a little trouble getting the hang of it and in the end they had to get into port through Richard just paddling it forward canoe style using his Trinity power. 

After the punting we walked through the town a bit to see the entrances to the colleges and visit St. Mary’s Abbey (I think that’s what it’s called; the church near the colleges with the large tower), and we had a couple of people head up the tower before they realized that you were supposed to pay 2.50 pounds, and while we waited for them we figured out where people wanted to go and asked important questions about the Abbey.  Like how tall it was (503 fox yards high).  I was pretty thirsty, so when everyone decided to head for the market I thought that sounded good, but once inside I did my own thing and got seperated.  I got a good deal for some plums though, but after I’d eaten the five of them I was thirsty again, and everyone had left the market. 

While I was walking along the market edge an old lady called to me while she was pushing her grocery cart along, and when I turned she asked if I could help her push her cart up over the curb so she could get into the market.  I did without any trouble and although she said she didn’t need anymore help I was glad that she came along.  I was still a little under the weather and had found myself alone again, but knowing that by coming to Cambridge I had found myself in a position to help out a nice old lady made the trip more worth it to me.  I should have recommended the plums to her, but I didn’t think of it.

I roamed the town from there, walking across the green and over by our old place on Warkworth, and down to the shops behind it.  I went into the Marks and Spencer that I had visited on my first day in England and bought a two liter of cheap soda.  They cashier looked at me weird, even when I was able to give him perfect change before he’d said it out loud.  I like not having sales tax, just not 50% income tax.  With my soda in hand I made my way into an Oxfam Charity shop where I rummaged through the books for awhile, thinking that if I had to ride the train back to London on my own I might as well have something to read.  I eventually came across a set of autobiographical stories written by Alec Guinness, and I snapped that up fast as the Sundance Kid interviewing for a job in Argentina (“Can I move?”  “Move?  What do you mean, move?”).  Alec Guinness, in case you’re not familiar, is most famous for his role as Obi Wan Kenobi in the original Star Wars Trilogy, but he had quite an impressive supporting actor career in addition to that.  He was the stubborn British officer in “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” an Arabic tribal leader in “Lawrence of Arabia,” and some general in “Dr. Zhivago.”  Anyway, as a poor kid in a one parent home he really came a long way from where he started and had a long spiritual journey along the way, eventually converting to Catholicism.  He passed away in 2000, so I suppose he’s enjoying himself with Skip Prosser right about now.

That was an elegant digression, from a more civilized age.  I read a few chapters on the green before finally deciding that everyone had taken off, so at about 6:30 I headed out for the train station.  Everyone had headed out, but I didn’t know that at the time and so waited until 7:00 in case they showed up.  They didn’t, so I pulled out my ticket to head home.  Unfortunately, I’d let the ticket get wrinkled in my pocket a bit and it was rejected by the ticket machine.  No problem, right?  I’ll just show it to the ticket taker and he’ll let me through.  False.  As a group ticket the taker guy insisted that I have the other members of my group with me when I used it, and he insisted on this even though I explained that we’d gotten seperated and that they’d already gone.  To no avail.  He was obstinate and I was tired, so I went outside to think it over.  I could get my hands on a bike and ride it alongside the train tracks to get back or climb the bus station fence to catch my train, but neither of those sounded promising.  I ended up paying for a one way single back to London, and I’m sad to say that it costed more than my defective round trip ticket.  Side Note:  the wrinkled round trip ticket is now on the floor of the Cambridge station, were it was cast after being ripped to small shreds by a frustrated and poorer Joshua. 

On the train I failed to read Alec Guinness, instead opting to sleep.  Once back at the house I cooked myself a huge dish of pasta with sauce mixed with cheese to make me feel better.  It was delicious and I slept well.

On Saturday a majority of people were going on a day tour to see Bath, Windsor Castle, and Stonehenge in one fell swoop.  I didn’t really want to see Windsor or Bath going by someone else’s watch, so I stayed behind with Gus, Tulsi, and Renee to see what adventures we could find.  Renee had the idea of going to Greenwich, and it sounded like good idea to me so we grabbed the tube and went on our way.  We were out to just sort of take an easygoing leisurely path there, which was fortunate since the DLR that runs out to Greenwich was closed.  We got off the line at the stop called Limehouse and started walking towards Canary Wharf, which we knew was an important station on the way to Greenwich.

Now, there was a Rail Replacement Bus service that we could have used to get out there, but that would’ve been too easy.  As it turns out, Limehouse is in the sketchy east end of London that people typically don’t stop in and Jack the Ripper operated in some 100 or so years ago (he’s not operating today, Myra), and we sort of got this feeling from the seedy quality of the shops.  A faded store front entitled “The Emporium” with its spray painted pictures was my personal favourite.  We made our way towards Canary Wharf, but following road signs actually led us down into a parking deck below Canary Wharf instead of directly to it.  With a little exploration we got up to it and finally found the Thames.  All of the trademark buildings that I navigate were in the opposite direction as normal.  East side represent, oh yeah.  Evidently Greenwich was still a hefty trek, an entire time zone in fact, away, so I went down to the bank to explore our options.  There was a ferry service where you could ride up the Thames to Greenwich for 2.50 pounds, and since I’ve sort of wanted to sail on the Thames for awhile I decided this was a good thing.  We were the last on board so Gus had to move some guy’s manpurse out of the way in order to sit down, but the ride was alright and made us realize just how far and miserable a walk would have been. 

When we got into Greenwich the Royal Maritime Museum was closed (14 minutes late) as was the Queen’s House, so we made our way into the park behind them where there was rumoured to be Roman Ruins and the Greenwich line.  First we got a human triangle picture that was made very funny my misunderstandings about pockets and Gus’ inability to pay attention to us instead of a low flying blimp (Gus:  “How often do you see a blimp fly that low?”  Tulsi, while precariously perched on top of Renee and I:  “Guuus!!!”).  We went up to the Royal Observatory to look over Greenwich and see the green laser that marks where time was invented before I asked the gift shop guys where the Roman Ruins were. 

Shopkeeper:  “Ruins?  In Greenwich?  Noooooo…”  [Laughs as Joshua leaves] 

There were ruins there.  The map said so, you stupid gift shop guy.  For the trip back we had our act together a little bit more; we smoothly took the Rail Replacement Bus down to– oh wait.  It was going the wrong direction so we ended up down at the end of the line at Lewisham instead of Canary Wharf (the side of the bus said Canary Wharf!).  A big rude lady didn’t hesitate to inform me of this, actually.  (Joshua, to the bus driver: ”Is this bus going to Canary Wharf?”  Rude Lady: ”NO, THIS IS LEWISHAM!  YOU’VE GONE THE WRONG WAY!”  Joshua:  “K thanks.”).  Come to think of it, Greenwich was plagued with rude people and misleading labels.

Anyway, we got to a part of the DLR that worked and then took the tube back home without a hitch, so mission accomplished.  Everyone got back from their Bath/Windsor/Stonehenge tour pretty exhausted and full of stories, but that’s for their blogs.  I can’t even keep up with my own stuff here.  I’m just glad that Limehouse was quiet and Jack the Ripper stayed below ground.

Reinventing My Time Deficit

As most of you have probably noticed, I have developed a pretty severe deficit in my blog keeping since about July 4th.  I slacked for a time and have struggled to keep up every since, and from this point on I plan on adopting a new strategy to overcoming this time debt that I owe myself.  I mean, I just now finished writing about events that happened about two weeks ago, and if I keep that up there’s a lot I’m going to forget.  Thus, I propose a new program.  We’ll call it the New Whig Debt program and it will involve me writing an entry about that past day or two before going back to Paris and writing an entry about distant events.  This way I can isolate the period that’s far back in the past and chip away at it without creating more of a deficit.  If you can’t tell, I’m now in a Political Science class and am throwing around an obnoxious amount of government speech. 

Yesterday was a very active day.  After class, which unfortunately did not feature an appearance by the fox living in our backyard, I eventually decided that I wanted to go for a run.  A bunch of people were heading out to the Tate Modern museum, but somehow I wasn’t in the mood for modern art and wanted to go exploring somewhere instead.  I eventually settled on taking a run down on the Thames River and rounded up three others who were feeling the same desire as me.  Originally I wanted to take the bus down there because it was so beautiful outside, but the complexity of taking buses made us opt for the tube.  Johnathan (Dr. Coates’ son), Tulsi, Myra, and I took a pretty circuitous route to reach the Thames, but once we did we ran along it with the eagerness of college students along a river in the summertime (imagine that).  We ran down the Vauxhall Bridge where the Thames path ended, and since I’d come so far to run on the Thames I mentally decided to just run as far as I really wanted.  Thus, after I’d turned around and run for awhile, I spotted a landmark in the far distance and decided that it would be my endpoint.  The endpoint happened to be the ever classy Tower Bridge that’s seen during the credits at the beginning of “101 Dalmations” (don’t think I don’t see all of you rushing off for your dusty VHS tapes).  Johnathan ran at a quicker pace than I did, but I was more consistent than he was, and once he stopped to buy some ice-cream I was off on my own into new territory.

The Thames path departs from the river at times because of buildings built right up on the bank, but that was fine by me.  I mean, I had to stop pretty often to avoid collisions with silly fellow pedestrians, and I think that those breaks were offset by the lengthy little detours that I had to make into the city around buildings that refuse to respect personal river space.  There was a Royal Navy ship of some importance parked out in the Thames, and I was impressed to see it considerig that the British economy thrived under Blair without tax increases in large part due to his dismantling of large portions of the British Navy.  I mean, they only have one carrier left and all of their submarines are rented from us, so yeah.  This ship is probably on its way out.

Anyway, there was a very neat castle on my left as I approached the bridge, but I didn’t really get a chance to catch its name.  At least it’s not hard to find, at any rate.  Once I finally reached the bridge I ran over it and back, gawking the entire time at its nifty towers and the view of the river it provided, and I gazed up so much that I almost ran into yet another pedestrian even though there were yards of space on either side of him (“HELLO!”  “Pardon.”).  I ran the long scenic walk back to Embankment station, but since none of my crew were there I figured it was safe to assume that they’d headed back to the Worrell haven.  Once back I showered and ate, and since there was plenty of daylight left Johnathan and I went to Regents Park to hunt down a softball game of some sort. 

There were droves of games going on which made us excited and hopeful at first, but we quickly found out that there were only droves of games  because they were all made up of city companies playing against each other, ie. we couldn’t play without being employed by them.  It was unfortunate, but at least they provided entertainment.  I swear, we got to one game that we just sat down and watched because every rule of the game was being broken at every conceivable turn.  People were counted out when a base was tagged without a force play, runners ran on foul balls, hitters chose which hits they ran on, etc.  It was mayhem and very, very amusing to watch.  I can’t detail how absurd their game was, and it was made even more so by the fact that they’d all been drinking the entire game. 

Anyway, after being entertained by that drunken athletic display for awhile, Johnathan and I headed back to the house in disappointment.  The view off of Primrose Hill made me feel a little better about things because it’s such an impressive view of the city, and once back we all headed out to The Washington to relax at the pub for awhile.  Afterwards I once again failed to watch “The Patriot” on our huge projector, but I’ll get around to it one of these days.  Then you’ll see.

Euros are Monopoly Money

In switching to a single currency and international trade agreement that will eventually bring about the Apocalypse, Europe should have come up with bills that felt more legitimate and looked less like, well, Monopoly money.  It feels fake, looks fake, and lacks distinguishing characteristics besides the crazy designs.  I half expected to find a huge pile of Chance cards sitting under the Arc de Triumph and 200 dollars (I’m sorry, did I say dollars?  I meant Euros) waiting for me under the ever elusive Eiffel Tower.

The second day that I was in Paris, however, felt more like the Go Directly to Jail; Do Not Pass Go and Do Not Collect $200 block.  It was a nice day, there were just perturbing glitches along the way.  Glitch number one was the jackhammer outside my hostel window that woke me up.  My window didn’t quite close all the way, so I got up a little earlier than I had planned and went down for a complimentary breakfast of bread and condiments.  I ate about my body weight in bread, actually, and while doing so made friends a brother and sister from Austrailia who were traveling Europe together.  They were having a great time and I can only hope that someday one of my siblings will find the warmth in his or her heart to fund such a venture with me (wink).  It was nice talking to them, and I remembered our brief encounter in the days ahead because it became difficult to find anyone who spoke my language; the Austrailians were my final discourse for a good three days.  That’s a long time for a long winded fella.  Anyway, they let me know that they’d found a cheap hotel that you could get a room in for 67 Euros that was near Jim Morrison’s cemetary.

One of the hostel workers pointed out where other hostels were located because hers was full, but she warned me that the others were probably full for the weekend as well.  When I enquired as to why, she informed me that the upcoming Monday was Bastille Day and that a lot of people were in town for the celebration.

Great slopes of Zeus’ mountain!  In town for Bastille Day!  What luck!  In my mind I envisioned impassioned French fold of both sexes going beserk and reenacting the even by ripping apart some random building in town (perhaps the same way that the Fire Department burns condemned houses?), but the more immediate result of the holiday was that there was almost no housing to be found in any hostels.  I got a room for Monday night at one, but that was all.  I had three nights with no planned home.

I knew that the improper response to such a predicament would be to get upset over it, and so I found a park bench and decided to consult my printed airplane ticket to see if it had any housing advertisements on the back or anything.  It was also a sort of inventory of my available resources, but this inventory brought about the third “do not pass go, do not collect 200 Euros” of the day.  When I looked at my ticket, I noticed that the date on my return was Thursday the 16th instead of Wednesday the 15th.  In academic terms it read more like noon on the 16th, the day that classes started instead of the 15th when we were directed to be at the house to settle in and prepare for our first day of class.  Online I had chosen that return because I saw that it left at noon instead of 6:00 pm, not noticing that it was noon a day late.  Misfortune preys on the procrastinatory.

So I set up a rough order of business.  First up was finding a home besides that adopted by the numerous vagrants I saw sleeping on benches and doorways.  I could get my nifty hat stolen doing that, so that was out of the question.  Second was going online to easyjet.com and seeing if my ticket situation could be remedied, and third was contacting home in order to let the outside know that I hadn’t been run over by a rogue jet or dismembered in a rowdy hostel brawl. 

So that was the list, but first I needed to unwind.  The wave of unfortunate events that had come upon me had gotten me a little bit down, and I felt that any decision I made at that moment wouldn’t turn out to be the right one, so I decided to unwind a bit with a walk up to Jim Morrison’s cemetary.  It’s called the Pere Lachaise Cemetary (according to Wikipedia), and I could not believe how elaborate and enormous this cemetary was.  It would have been well worth a visit without Mr. Mogo Risin’, what with its cement and stone tombs, statues, and walk in memorial shacks.  Some graves had intricately designed little huts on top that you could walk inside, and there were hundreds and hundreds of them.  I mean, there were so many elaborate graves in this thing that it was walled in and had labeled streets running all through it.  I found Jim easily enough by indiscreetly following groups of English speaking people, but after that I let myself get lost in the vast graveyard and wandered aimlessly through the streets of the dead, fascinated by the different designs and decaying intentions.

Once out of Pere Lachaise, I decided to hit some of the larger monuments and all on the east end of Paris, not really because I cared too much about the monuments but because I knew that there would be neat things to see along the way to them and it’s better to have an amount of direction in one’s trekkings.  I went to Republique first and enjoyed waiting until the light and promptly crossing about eight lanes of traffic to the statue in the middle of the enormous roundabout.  From there I went to the Bastille site, which disappointed me because it didn’t offer any tours of the infamous prison (Get it?  There weren’t tours because the French revolutionaries tore it down in a fit of collective starvation?  It’s funny because, because it’s… nerdy).  There was monument with some Liberty angel looking girl on top, and I spent a little time there making jokes in English about how the Revolutionaries couldn’t construct a democracy stable or resilient enough to resist first mass violence and then authoritarianism.  No one yelled at me because I didn’t say it in French.

At that point I felt that I had formulated a plan of sorts.  67 Euros seemed like a huge amout to pay for one night of sleep, but I couldn’t just invite in a stranger to split the cost, so I decided to split it by only booking it for the night after next.  That way if I found a better price I could book it for that night and Sunday night, and if I didn’t I could just spend the night in a well lit well travelled area and stay awake until I crashed in my 67 Euro room the next day at noon.  So I found the hotel and booked my room for Saturday and went off in search of an internet cafe.  A nice old shopkeeper helped me locate one (he laughed a little since it was only two doors down from his shop, but the thing was in French and didn’t include “internet”), and I spent my 30 minutes on their crazy messed up French keyboard trying desperately to remember that most of the vowels were in weird places while navigating easyjet to revise my flight plan.  I went to change it and submitted my alteration, and although the status said “unconfirmed,” it insinuated with a note above that it was only unconfirmed because it took 30 days for these things to be archived.  That sounded good to me, and there was all I could do anyway, so I wrote an email home to make sure everyone knew of my safety.  I did not write in my blog, but I should have.  Alas.

With a sense of accomplishment and security I left the cafe and decided that I was a little burnt out on the part of eastern Paris that I’d spent my entire day on, so after eating a dinner of KFC and freshening up a bit in their restroom, I headed north on Rue de Magenta to explore towards a neat Cathedral that I’d caught glimpses of the preceding day.

So up Magenta I went.  The design and architecture impressed me as it had the day before, but it grew a little repetitive because they boulevard layout of the city makes much of it feel the same with its acute street corners and apartments of equivalent height.  It was still neat though because there were new things to distract me from my course and explore a little bit.  As I got up near the hilltop cathedral I came upon a small hotel on Rue de Barbes that caught my eye, and since I’d been walking awhile I decided to stop in and see what their rates were just for kicks.  Luckily there was an English speaking worker in the office of Hotel de France (sketchy name, I know), and as soon as he informed me that I could get a single room for 30 euros I snatched it for that night.  The pack, after all, had weighed heavily on my shoulders all day and I was eager to set it down in a secure location. 

The room was just right.  It fit all of my sleeping and hygiene needs, and later that night I explored its television selection to find out what shows successfully crossed the pond into France.  Surprisingly “My Name Is Earl” made the list, as did “Sex and the City,” which is sadly less surprising.  Relieved of my burden, I headed uphill towards the Cathedral, which was called Basilisque de Sacre-Couer, and it was at the top of an immense hill that overlooked much of the city.  Sacre-Couer was the most magnificent place that I visited all day, it had everything that a place could aspire to; impressive and ornate outside architecture with an impressive, intimate, and reverent interior that demanded respect.  I was lucky to have arrived when I did; just as I finished looking around the inside a man came by to escord everyone outside.  I didn’t mind at all; the view from the vista of the basilisque was breathtaking and looked over more of the city than most postcards I expect (still no Eiffel Tower, evasive punk).  I stayed there and admired the view and the cathedral until it started to get dark, at which point I started down the hill to my cozy hotel.  On the way down I decided that it was time to be stereotypical and so I stopped in a cafe and had a glass of wine with a plate of cheeses.  I only liked one of the three cheeses, but they provided enough bread for it to be a filling experience.  I’m not very partial to wine, I think I’ll just substitute cranberry juice or something in the future.  It’s tastier.  The waitress treated me very well because since I was alone she thought that I was lonely, and this turned into a pattern in restaurants throughout Paris.  I think they all thought that I was somesort of distraught romantic who’d just undergone a heartbreak, and so there was lots of bread.  If only they’d provided me with a Tina Fey, then I’d have been set.

The Eiffel Tower Isn’t Real

For the first three days that I was in Paris I figured that the Eiffel Tower was an figment of the French government’s imagination in order to foster tourism when the City of Light was bringing in the numbers anymore.  The recent proliferation of electricity and lightbulbs probably brought down their figures in that respect, so they sent out drawings and photographs of an imaginary structure to bring in unsuspecting tourists.  A crafty French myth.  Anyway, I wrote an entry in my notebook the night I arrived in Paris, so I’ll just copy it here, without the clever bit about the Eiffel Tower not being real, because I’ve already used it.

Much to the dismay of my debit card and the general stress level of my life, I was a tad procrastinatory in making my travel arrangements for Paris.  Like, the day before the night I left procrastinatory.  Long story short, I booked my flight Wednesday afternoon and the most affordable flight was at 6:00 the next day.  In the morning.  In an airport 20 or 30 miles out of town.  Thus, no sleep for Jeeeosh.  I spent the night trying to feel my way there using the complex bus systemand wishing that beggars didn’t chill near bus stations.  it would’ve been easier/less stressful if buses had arrived when they said they would (I’m lookin’ at you, Bus 139 in Trafalgar Square; I really didn’t need to lose those 50 minutes).  And Lisson Grove, you really whould be called the Lisson Grove stop inead of Lisson Road, but it’s ok.  Missing Lisson whatever meant accidentally traversing abbey road, so it was fine.  I managed to make my plane by the skin of my teeth, mostly due to the efficiency with which I got through security; I had my belt off coat off, hat off, camcorder out, phone out, and ipod out before I even got to the trays.  Oh yeah that’s right.

On the plane I saw beside a very reserved Indian couple and behind a not-so-reserved British smooching couple, so I started on my reading for next session in order avoid the resulting awkwardness.  I’m sorry to say that I somehow missed seeing the English Channel, but I did see lots of pretty French countryside down below.  The countryside actually tricked me.  the little roads crossing it and periodic villages made me think that at the airport I’d be able to just walk out of the airport and walk to Paris, De Gaulle being some distance out of town.  But alas, in my rush I hadn’t even taken the time to scope out De Gaulle on Google’s sketchy satellite world map, and over the course of two hours of exploring tis terminals, halls and parking lots I found out that there was no legal way to walk out of the place.  And hopping fences in an airport is a good way to get killed these days (even in France there are rifles), so I jumped on the first available bus that would let me on, which turned out to be a Paris Disneyland Resort Shuttle down to the bus station (it was free, the only price I had to pay was the te pain of being crammed in with excited French children with French hip hop playing on the radio).  It took me to the bus station, where I took the first bus to Paris (I was tired of stupid De Gaulle), and incidetally it was a bus for the Paris Opera.  an hour later, after nodding off periodically in my seat, we were there and I abandoned the opera in search of food.  I also wanted to find a bookstore because the Paris guidebook I’d snatched from the Worrell House library only had two useful phrases, “I would like…” and “how much does this cost?”   And no dictionary for the words in between.

I heard that Parisians knew Englis and would use it if you just tried to speak French, but the ladies at the cafe (and indeed most Parisians) simply let me suffer as they tried to derive meaning from my mutilated words and phrases.  it’s ok though; the important thing is that their ATMs are multilingual.  As I ate I mapped out a route to the hostel Sierra recommended, and so began my trek.

I travelled in a northeast diagonal from the opera, getting first to Rue de Lafayette and then getting over to another street whose name I don’t remember, and walking the long route that I made for myself was definitely the highlight of the day.  It took two hours to do and I had a huge amount of fun strolling along at my easy Mebane pace and viewing all of the gorgeous architecture and neat sights, both obscure and prominent.    I’m not sure what most of the cooler building were, but tomorrow I’m going to retrace my way back to the center of town and revisit some neat stuff.  There were about as many classy cafes as people, and fortunately I found a bookstore early on where I bought a helpful dictionary.  I quickly taught myself how to say “English, sorry,” an dcontinued on with my huge backpack.  the phrase came in handy enormousely with every harasser on the street who tried to talk me into buying something or donate to a cause ( assume that’s what they were talking about); being a unilingual american is the perfect excuse not the talk.  I think that I look like a sucker because about eight people tried to talk to me during my trek.

I only wandered off of my course a couple of times, and when I finally got the snazzy hotel they gave me a single for 35 euros.  I promptly found my way to the room (this was at 2:00 pm) and passed out until I took my shower at 11:00.  I can’t believe how classy Paris has kept its buildings; the apartments and allstill have a distinctive 19th century look that didn’t cange until about one and a half hours into my two hour walk, at which point some kid tossed an empty coke can down formhis apartment to the sidewalk below.  there’s a peaceful little canal running by my hostel by which I’ve found a bench to jot all of this dow before reading for class a little more.  Tomorrow I plan on heading back into the city and maybe walking along the Seine for awhile.  Or maybe looking up those buildings.  Or maybe reading in a park somewhere.  Only time will tell, and I have five days of it.

More War, Some Spam, and a Bit of Thai.

It would be unjust of me to mention that my zeal for the Imperial War Museum was not an isolated case.  Matt and Martin loved the place as well and accompanied me on a return trip there on the 8th to finish up our wars and all.  We actually started later than planned because of universal post-class naps, and as a result we only got to go through the Holocaust portion and touch on the air war and war art sections before being rather forcefully escorted out (we took a bit of evasive action in an exciting effort to stay longer.  I figured they’d never find us in the Vietnam section since they hadn’t sent any force there 35 years ago [insert laughing track]). 

Once they finally got us out of the museum of our collective dreams, the Elephant and Castle tube station took us for a ride that felt more like a section of Alice in Wonderland played backwards than an actual tube station.  The crazy tiles and impossible tunnels that led nowhere were pretty frustrating, and I’m never going back there.  It was infuriating.  But we did get to the tube at long last, and Martin departed us to go catch Spamalot at the theatre.  I had planned on going, but I was a little tired and hungry to go to a show.  Unfortunately I didn’t pass this news on to anyone, and they bought me a ticket anyway, as I found out upon my return to the house.

And so London so Joshua operating on all cylinders and burners.  I grabbed some raw potatoes and cheese for sustenance and bolted across town lest the money spent on my ticket be wasted in a sad show of miscommunication.  I made it in time by the skin of my teeth, and I’m happy to say that the show was a hilarious experience.  I mean, some of it was a little redundant because I know Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail pretty well, but they added quite a few new elements and songs that made it fresh and enjoyable.  The theatre was almost classy and ornate enough to make the thing worth going to alone.  After the play I crashed.

The ninth was our last day together in the Worrell House, and I’m afraid that I spent much of the day holed up in my room writing a final paper for Dr. Moss and putting together a plan for my life during the five days between sessions.  I mean, the break snuck up on me in a bad way and it wasn’t until Dr. Moss asked me what my travel arrangements were during class that it really occurred to me that I didn’t really have any yet and I needed to get some.  Thus, orbitz and easyjet became my friends.  I spent a good amount of time checking departure times from various London airports desperately trying to snag the cheapest of the cheapy, but at least three times my purchase was interrupted because someone else bought the ticket out from under me and left me alone in the cold.  This drove me to worse and worse flight times, and eventually I settled on a flight leaving Luton at 6:00 the next morning and a return flight that came back at 12:00 on the 16th.

Now, the issues of where I would live and how I’d get out to the Luton airport were still up in the air (Luton is about 30 miles outside London, and tube doesn’t open until 6:00), and on top of that I still had to pack all of my things.  Even so, I wanted to spend my final evening with my new friends in a way that would do them justice, so I had a nice peaceful dinner of Thai down near Camden and walked along the canal that runs up to Regents Park before finishing up the details of my departure. 

Everyone was gathered for a last hoorah in the conference room, and as I organized all of my things I spent a little time saying goodbye and all before heading out for good to Chalk Farm station.  It was 1:00 by then, so I figured I’d be fine using the tube since it closes at 2:00.  This was not the case.  It was closed, and so I resorted to a bus system that I was not really familair with but was determined to conquer.

It went fairly smoothly except for two details.  My journey depended heavily on my taking Bus 157 to a random station somewhere, and it took it a nerve-wracking 50 mintues to arrive.  I was enormously concerned about its tardiness, but it did finally show after much pacing and song humming.  On 157 I learned an important lesson about how random stations tend to not be always be announced over the loudspeaker much less stopped at, and if this happens then you end up at the end of the line and have to wait 10 minutes for the next bus to begin.  It’s depressing.

157 did eventually get me to where I needed to go though, and for 14 pounds I got a round trip ticket on the Greenline coach to Luton with a full hour left before takeoff.  And so the late night bus hunt that took place in a world darkness ended and the plane flight into a sky of light began, ironically to the City of Light.  It is at this point that this a chapter ends and another begins.  The bus segment of my trip, my first session at the Worrell House, my term with Shakespearian comrades, was definitively ended.  The next day would bring a page of a different colour.

A Study Abroad Birthday Miracle

So July the 6th was a day marked primarily by me not being able to move due to the severe soreness suffered from the preceding day.  It was a less than memorable day, but in a way reminiscient of the day that preceded Game 6 of the 1975 World Series (the arguably greatest game in baseball history was preceded by a day of damp Autumn rain).  I’m sure that I cooked and ate and breathed and failed to write in my blog, but besides that who cares?

July the 7th, 2008, was a day of glory.  As soon as the other guys and I had fed ourselves we lit out for the Tate Museum, where we viewed impressive old epic Victorian paitings that took up entire walls, passed through 17th century boredom paintings as quickly as possible, and took our good time taking in the modern stuff.  I was particularly impressed by an odd piece that had a sleek metal lump fitted into an old wooden set of stocks; its mixture of the archaic with the new sort of mirrored the way that we try to put together our society now, fitting the old classy woodwork with the efficient featureless machines of our leisure.  Like the computer I’m typing on, for example. 

We left the Tate in time to head over the Imperial War Museum, but Martin got hung up by a museum interrogator and ended up getting us caught in London’t first monsoon in nine days.  It was actually pretty fortunate, because since the downpour hit as soon as we left the museum we were able to recognize its relentless nature immediately and made a beeline for a cab.  I was saddened by this development since I was proud of the fact that up until then I had managed to get around in Britain without getting in a single car or van; restricting my travel to buses, trains, and the tube.  It was more than necessary, however, and so I took the first cab of my life to the coolest war museum in existence. 

The Imperial War Museum was where my birthday began to become spectacular.  The place was absolutely packed with relevant, everyday artifacts from every war Britain’s been involved with since 1900, and to stand there in the presence of an actual version of Britain’s first tank, a Spitfire, and P-51 Mustang, a 2-man minisub, a Panzer, and the funny little tank that Humphrey Bogart drove in Sahara was absolutely mind blowing.  I haven’t had that sort of light ecstasy since last winter when we beat Duke.  I mean, it was all right there.  It was amazing.  We made our way through the submarine section, the Battle of Britain section that concentrated on civilians’ lives during the Blitz, and the WWI section.  The Blitz section had neat replicas and all, but I think that the distinctive artifacts from WWI were more impressive.  I mean, the French metal glove that had a long bayonet length spike coming out of its fist was pretty unforgettable, as was the German’s more tree-disguised lookout post and the various forms of body armour.  The trench reenactment section was pretty spot on and chilling, and I left at closing time with the acute knowledge that I would not be able to continue my life until I had returned and finished that museum. 

After the museum we continued the birthday celebration with a meal before our play, and I decided to finally be stereotypical and have my fish-n-chips.  I had them, and they were good, although there was no Rio to be found.  Only inferior Fanta.  The meal hit the spot though, and after it Matt, Martin and I hurried on over to the Globe for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. 

The play was wonderfully well done.  I mean, the weather was touch and go with the rain during the first half, and Martin and I were a little stupid with our consumption of the scalding hot chocolate, but it was almost as stellar as EHS’s performance back in my high school years.  I can’t really tell you how hard it had me laughing for much of the time, and I knew the play already.  I mean, it was stellar.  Oh, and the actor playing Demetrius was under the weather so one of the fairies had to fill in for him for the night with script in hand, but he was just wonderful.  I mean, he didn’t even have to look at the script until the very last scene a couple of times, and at one point he actually used it as a prop and shoved it into the hands of another character.  I think he was actually better than Lysander.  Anyway, I enjoyed it immensely and recommend it to anyone in London who gets a chance to spend 5 pounds on it.  A few weak-saucers said it was too long, but the longer I’m laughing the happier I am.  Some people are just impossible to please.

After the play I sat down and dried off for awhile and was treated to my favourite music in the conference room until my great Worrell comrades shown themselves to be the cream of the stellar.  They purchased a cake and tub of ice cream to celebrate my 22nd year, and I was truly surprised by their thoughtfulness.  I mean, a party wasn’t really counted on or necessary but it was, in the end, a great deal of fun and I’d like to thank all of those who went out of their way to make it happen.  Great times.  Even if questionable youtube characters did show up.

The birthday was right on the money, and with the help of my friends and American doctors I’d like to have many more like it.