Monday, February 16, 2009
Resurrection!
Well, blog #2 didn't really happen for reasons that probably aren't worth writing... but blog #3, my life in the UK, is now underway and hopefully destined to be more successful. Feel free to follow me over there and just ignore the fact that nearly three and a half years have passed between postings...
Saturday, October 29, 2005
The traveller finds a home
My blog is woefully out of date and I apologise to any/all readers who have been waiting with bated breath for the next installment of Maryka's Great Travelling Tales... well, you can breathe properly again (and stop bugging me about when my blog will be updated) because I'm back! But since this page is getting quite long -- after all, when I do write, I tend to barf out a lot of stuff -- this post will be the last of Maryka the Nomad. I've created a new page for Maryka the Nederlander, as you can see from my main blog page (also another for photos, when I figure out how to put them into a few albums). So check the new one for future updates.
Just to bring some closure to my travels through Holland (last time you heard from me, I was experiencing lovely and provincial Emmen), here's a not-quite-brief rundown on what I've been doing the past six weeks. After spending about ten days with Gerjan and Lucie, I headed out on the road -- well, more accurately the rail -- to travel around the country and pick a place to live that appealed to me. In a roughly clockwise direction:
Just to bring some closure to my travels through Holland (last time you heard from me, I was experiencing lovely and provincial Emmen), here's a not-quite-brief rundown on what I've been doing the past six weeks. After spending about ten days with Gerjan and Lucie, I headed out on the road -- well, more accurately the rail -- to travel around the country and pick a place to live that appealed to me. In a roughly clockwise direction:
- Nijmegen, the oldest city in the Netherlands and the only place I went where there were no canals, only the swift-moving River Waal reminiscent of my upstream paddling days on the Peace River in Alberta during the Mackenzie Expedition. This is because Nijmegen is located towards the southern part of the Netherlands and actually has some elevation above sea level. They are currently rebuilding the Valkhof tower from medieval days as part of Nijmegen's 2000th birthday. Very nice city and the hometown of the Van Halen brothers, what else can I say?
- 's Hertogenbosch, aka Den Bos, a small but very quaint old triangle-shaped town with canals threading throughout and a very cool open-air "markt" where vendors come to sell everything you can think of. Also the largest church in the country, Sint Janskathedraal. I really liked Den Bos though it wasn't quite big enough for me to live, but I'd love to go back and spend more time there.
- Middelburg, biggest town in Zeeland, which is the southwestern-most province in the Netherlands made up of several fingers of land poking into the sea. This is the area where the great flood of 1953 obliterated most of the land and devastated the people, and where the Dutch created the Delta Project to control the sea for future storm swells. The centre of Middleburg is completely surrounded by water with many bridges that open twice an hour on a rigorous schedule for various sailboats and other tall watercraft. The hostel I stayed in was just out of town in Domburg and was in 13th-century Kasteel Westhove, a real castle complete with moat!
- upon reading that Rotterdam, where the "old-world appeal" of the Netherlands was "consciously kicked to the curb" after World War II (according to one of my guidebooks), I was left wondering what to expect and doubting whether I'd like it. Surprise, I found I liked it quite a bit and spent some time pondering why exactly that was. In contrast with most cities (even Toronto) where old majestic buildings are flanked by newer ugly ones, Rotterdam is full of interesting experiments in architecture, civil engineering, and social planning where somehow the weird-looking buildings don't look bad or out of place but rather quite cool and classy. Before I saw Rotterdam, I never really put a face to the name "post-modernism", but now I get it. Plus it has the wonderful Museum Boijmans van Beuningan, where I discovered I really like surrealist art.
- 's Gravenhage, aka Den Haag, aka The Hague, the political centre of the Netherlands and home of the Canadian Embassy. I spent a day or so bumming around the city, then headed out of town to suburban Wassenaar to visit and stay with Lucie's sister Carry's family. With husband Bert as my advisor and son Erik as my guide, I spent a day biking through the dunes to Madurodam and Scheveningen beach (I'm embarrassed to admit I didn't even know the Netherlands had dunes and beaches before this) and had a great time. In fact, since then I've visited Wassenaar again, this time on my own bicycle. Erik is considering running the Rotterdam Marathon with me next spring, or at least I'm currently twisting his arm over it.
- Leiden was my next stop, mostly because I thought it might be a good spot to live, given that it's a hearty university town. But the combination of a terrific rainstorm that soaked me and my backpack, and all the nose-in-the-air students around town kind of turned me off. That said, it is a very pretty town with a cool 8-storey "molenmuseum", one of those old-fashioned Dutch windmills restored to full 18th-century detail. I missed the Keukonhof gardens while I was there, so I will be going back at some point, probably in the spring.
- Utrecht was the place where I had an inkling I might want to live... and when I arrived I figured this was pretty much it. In fact, I was so convinced that I spent my entire three days at the hostel searching for a place to live and I did absolulely no touristy stuff whatsoever. Basically, Utrecht is not too big and not too small, has a big university but is not dominated by it, is home to the biggest railway hub in the Netherlands, is within about 40 minutes of Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Den Haag, and has a really nice feel to it. I managed to find a room to rent in my few days there, which was nice because then when I left, I could with a carefree mind enjoy my days in....
- Amsterdam. Originally I wasn't going to visit it on my tour, figuring it was worth a visit of its own, but after I scratched Maastricht off my list, a few days opened up for Amsterdam and I'm glad I went. It really should be a country all on its own because it is so different from any other place in the Netherlands. The layout of the old and new towns follows a series of concentric canals (more than in Venice, apparently) with dozens of narrow streets filled with tourists, tourist shops, and more tourists. The Red Light District has a candidly open and unaffected attitude towards sex and prostitution, and coffee shops abound with an almost pure and natural sense of belonging. In some ways, I think a place like Vancouver could learn a lot from Amsterdam; at the same time, I understand why Dutch people who live anywhere but here are weary of the constant appeal of "sex and drugs" that somewhat defines their country for the rest of the world. Still, Amsterdam is a place I will visit again, if only because I haven't seen all the museums yet.
- After leaving Amsterdam, I stopped for a night at the house of Marloes and Oscar, Lucie and Gerjan's oldest daughter and her boyfriend, in Heerhugowaard. The next day I got the tour of the military airport control tower where Marloes works as an air traffic controller in Den Helder. After lunch at the base, I was off to Leeuwarden via bus, which took me over the dike built on the Zuider Zee, now the IJsselmeer freshwater lake. Leeuwarden is in Friesland, and I felt I should see it because that's the real heritage of the Sennema name. It was worth it just to see all the shops and streets with names ending in -ema or -sma, which denote them as Frisian. There's even a Leendert Sinnemastraat, named for a man from Friesland who died in the war resistance. I'm thinking when the weather gets cold, a little visit with my skates to Leeuwarden is in the cards, maybe if I'm lucky this will even be an Elfstadentocht year?
Monday, September 19, 2005
This is Lucie (left, in yellow), me, and Eva (right) visiting the schoen huis at the Veenpark near Emmen. Veenpark means "peat park", as the area was once covered by a few dozen feet of peat, now a museum. Lucie is my dad's cousin (their mothers were sisters), and taking the photo is Lucie's husband Gerjan. Eva is their daughter. The Grevinks have graciously welcomed me into their home, and over the past week answered my many queries about the Netherlands, all the while patiently translating for me and being my first teachers of the Dutch language.
Ik begrijp het niet...
It's been approximately 20 years since I took on the challenge of learning a new language (the high school Latin and university Ojibwe classes don't count, seeing as one of those languages is dead and the other I never heard spoken outside my classroom), and I had forgotten how hard it really is. In the French classes of my grade school, at least the teacher spoke slowly and with a poor accent; here in the Netherlands, everyone's words are a blur of guttural g's and ch's and strange-sounding vowels. I can barely read the Dutch subtitles flashing across the screen when the TV show is an English one, let alone figure out which Dutch word means what. I've learned that German shows are even worse, as the spoken words in German are suspiciously similar to the written Dutch ones, and this conspires to create some nasty habits in my already-laughable pronunciation -- ich bin ein Berliner, anyone?
According to my gracious hosts, my Dutch is improving every day, but to me some days feel like I'm sliding backwards. It's true that I already have a vocabulary of a few hundred words, though only a handful of them naturally fly off my tongue ("please'' and ''thank you'' being the ones I can recite in my sleep), it's true that I can make up short Dick and Jane sentences at will and usually to the laughter of those around me, it's true that Dutch is very much like English and I'm constantly surprised to ask "what's the word for...?" and hear that it's pretty much exactly the same as the English one, tongue-tying pronunciation aside. I can read bus-stop ads and newspaper headlines and street signs and get the gist of what they mean, but it's the everyday conversation that's the killer. How can these words on paper sound so different when they're spoken aloud? How can I never get the accent on the right syllable when I try a word for the first time? And how can I not remember that "ij" is ah-ee and "ui" is ehh with your lips pursed as in oo, and g is hchch like you're clearing your throat except when before n or in some arbitrary word when it's actually pronounced as an English hard g? Getting these sounds to be second-nature is proving to be the hardest part of learning to speak Dutch and there are times I despair that I will always sound like an English-speaking person mangling this new language, never a truly native speaker.
All angst-ridden prose aside, I am enjoying it here quite a bit and even the daily language grind is fun because the Dutch are wonderfully adaptable and accepting people. So many of the English-like words in Dutch are there because they really are English words, adapted into Dutch over the years. There's none of the chest-thumping "courriel" versus "e-mail"debate as in France, or constant dubbing of foreign TV shows and movies like in Germany. The time and energy spent by other countries protecting and glorifying their language is simply spent speaking and living it here in the Netherlands. And from what I can see, it's a popular and thriving language, spoken by people who would rather look outwards to the rest of the world than inwards at themselves. I think this attitude shows why such a tiny country has survived as it has, through wars and floods and ever-changing world powers. The people just go with it, and get on with it. I had always wondered why Den Haag was the seat for all things international in the world, and why Maastricht was the place that the treaty for the European Council was created. But now I know.
According to my gracious hosts, my Dutch is improving every day, but to me some days feel like I'm sliding backwards. It's true that I already have a vocabulary of a few hundred words, though only a handful of them naturally fly off my tongue ("please'' and ''thank you'' being the ones I can recite in my sleep), it's true that I can make up short Dick and Jane sentences at will and usually to the laughter of those around me, it's true that Dutch is very much like English and I'm constantly surprised to ask "what's the word for...?" and hear that it's pretty much exactly the same as the English one, tongue-tying pronunciation aside. I can read bus-stop ads and newspaper headlines and street signs and get the gist of what they mean, but it's the everyday conversation that's the killer. How can these words on paper sound so different when they're spoken aloud? How can I never get the accent on the right syllable when I try a word for the first time? And how can I not remember that "ij" is ah-ee and "ui" is ehh with your lips pursed as in oo, and g is hchch like you're clearing your throat except when before n or in some arbitrary word when it's actually pronounced as an English hard g? Getting these sounds to be second-nature is proving to be the hardest part of learning to speak Dutch and there are times I despair that I will always sound like an English-speaking person mangling this new language, never a truly native speaker.
All angst-ridden prose aside, I am enjoying it here quite a bit and even the daily language grind is fun because the Dutch are wonderfully adaptable and accepting people. So many of the English-like words in Dutch are there because they really are English words, adapted into Dutch over the years. There's none of the chest-thumping "courriel" versus "e-mail"debate as in France, or constant dubbing of foreign TV shows and movies like in Germany. The time and energy spent by other countries protecting and glorifying their language is simply spent speaking and living it here in the Netherlands. And from what I can see, it's a popular and thriving language, spoken by people who would rather look outwards to the rest of the world than inwards at themselves. I think this attitude shows why such a tiny country has survived as it has, through wars and floods and ever-changing world powers. The people just go with it, and get on with it. I had always wondered why Den Haag was the seat for all things international in the world, and why Maastricht was the place that the treaty for the European Council was created. But now I know.
Sunday, September 11, 2005
Tioraidh an-drasda, Breatuinn
This is my last day in the UK before undertaking the next leg of my journey in the Netherlands. Still don't have this packing thing down pat, I keep changing how I organise everything hoping to hit upon something that works! But I did survive my 10 days on the road in England and Scotland not having lost or forgotten anything important (losing my mind doesn't count, especially when in crowded rail stations, and forgetting my manners is par for the course once in a while). It was surprisingly freeing to be beholden only to my backpack, no car or phone or permanent address -- this is something I've never really experienced before and I have to say I liked it. Not that I want to be a nomad for the rest of my life, but I should really do this "backpacking" thing more often.
Scotland was a wild and woolly place, full of "heery coos"(as our thickly-accented guide would say, the rest of us would say Highland cows), lush green hills and always the hint of rain if not driving gales. After spending a few days in Edinburgh, I jumped on a three-day tour of the Highlands with 15 other people and was pleasantly surprised to be part of a really good group, with people from five different continents ranging in age from early 20s to mid-30s. We drove from Edinburgh north on the first day, stopping at a range of historical and natural Scottish landmarks and our guide was a walking Scottish history book, at least the kind they teach in Scotland; I suspect the English view of history is quite different. This did not surprise me, though, because after years of watching Willy on the Simpsons I fully expected to get a passionate, proud, and slightly cranky member of the Independence for Scotland brigade -- after all, the brochure promised "real Scottish guides!" One thing he did do well was tell stories, and we heard a lot of great tales of battles, clan feuds, legends and fairy, oops, faerie fables. No need for a television on our bus as our guide single-handed entertained us the entire time with his vast knowledge of Scotland's culture and environment.
Our second day was spent on the Isle of Skye, once home to 40,000 thriving clan Highlanders, now down to less than 10,000 folks eking out a living through tourism (the number one industry there), whisky, and of course sheep. But it is a magical place, with its craggy peaks, paths worn down over thousands of years of use through the hills and the ever-present peat underfoot. Despite the fact that literally every bed and breakfast or "guest house" we passed had no vacancy, we ran into very few tourists and that helped retain the perception and atmosphere of Skye as a wild and natural place. Some of our group were not the best prepared for the off-road walks we did up the slopes of the countryside, but they soldiered on and were rewarded with wonderful views of the sea and islands around us. On the roads and in the towns, all the signs were bilingual with English and Gaelic; even in the supermarket the aisles were marked with Gaelic. The attempt to keep the this dying language alive, however, was most noticeable in the aisle with chocolate and pop: "seoclaid" and words that translated as "drinks without alcohol".
Our third day we returned to Edinburgh, checking out Loch Ness on the way, which was right up there in the kitschy tourism department with Buckingham Palace and Big Ben. I did get to see the monster, albeit the large plastic one residing in the pond beside the visitors' centre. We arrived back in the city in time for dinner and the next day I headed out on my own again, flying back to London and taking the train to Ipswich where I am now organising myself for Holland. There awaits another adventure, to be sure, but hopefully one that's easier on the wallet! Britain, for all its charm and culture, is what everyone warned me it would be: expensive. If I came back here to live I'd definitely need a great job to pay the bills.
By the way, the title of this posting is Gaelic for "farewell, Britain".
Maryka
Scotland was a wild and woolly place, full of "heery coos"(as our thickly-accented guide would say, the rest of us would say Highland cows), lush green hills and always the hint of rain if not driving gales. After spending a few days in Edinburgh, I jumped on a three-day tour of the Highlands with 15 other people and was pleasantly surprised to be part of a really good group, with people from five different continents ranging in age from early 20s to mid-30s. We drove from Edinburgh north on the first day, stopping at a range of historical and natural Scottish landmarks and our guide was a walking Scottish history book, at least the kind they teach in Scotland; I suspect the English view of history is quite different. This did not surprise me, though, because after years of watching Willy on the Simpsons I fully expected to get a passionate, proud, and slightly cranky member of the Independence for Scotland brigade -- after all, the brochure promised "real Scottish guides!" One thing he did do well was tell stories, and we heard a lot of great tales of battles, clan feuds, legends and fairy, oops, faerie fables. No need for a television on our bus as our guide single-handed entertained us the entire time with his vast knowledge of Scotland's culture and environment.
Our second day was spent on the Isle of Skye, once home to 40,000 thriving clan Highlanders, now down to less than 10,000 folks eking out a living through tourism (the number one industry there), whisky, and of course sheep. But it is a magical place, with its craggy peaks, paths worn down over thousands of years of use through the hills and the ever-present peat underfoot. Despite the fact that literally every bed and breakfast or "guest house" we passed had no vacancy, we ran into very few tourists and that helped retain the perception and atmosphere of Skye as a wild and natural place. Some of our group were not the best prepared for the off-road walks we did up the slopes of the countryside, but they soldiered on and were rewarded with wonderful views of the sea and islands around us. On the roads and in the towns, all the signs were bilingual with English and Gaelic; even in the supermarket the aisles were marked with Gaelic. The attempt to keep the this dying language alive, however, was most noticeable in the aisle with chocolate and pop: "seoclaid" and words that translated as "drinks without alcohol".
Our third day we returned to Edinburgh, checking out Loch Ness on the way, which was right up there in the kitschy tourism department with Buckingham Palace and Big Ben. I did get to see the monster, albeit the large plastic one residing in the pond beside the visitors' centre. We arrived back in the city in time for dinner and the next day I headed out on my own again, flying back to London and taking the train to Ipswich where I am now organising myself for Holland. There awaits another adventure, to be sure, but hopefully one that's easier on the wallet! Britain, for all its charm and culture, is what everyone warned me it would be: expensive. If I came back here to live I'd definitely need a great job to pay the bills.
By the way, the title of this posting is Gaelic for "farewell, Britain".
Maryka
Saturday, September 03, 2005
Gardyloo
I'm sitting in a hostel in Edinburgh right now, I couldn't get a private room (it's the end of festival season and things are really booked up here) so had to settle for a four-bed dorm. Having lived by myself for about five years now, I don't really relish the idea of sharing a room, but maybe it will be good for me -- force me to socialise a bit or at least learn people's names. Generally I'm happy to just come and go, merely waving at fellow hostellers, but that's not obviously the best if you want to meet people. But truthfully, I'm pretty happy just doing my own thing and I don't miss the social interaction too much. Hmm, what does this say about me? (rhetorical question, don't answer!) I guess I just prefer to be in control of my social interactions, I hate it when people try to engage me in conversation when I'm not interested. So hopefully the four-bed dorm thing works out. At worst, I'll be in earplug land for the next three nights.
There's a guy playing guitar right next to me as I'm on the computer, free music to type to! The hostel environment reminds me of summer camp, all free love and happy people and sleeping in bunk beds. I'm feeling a bit old for this kind of thing these days and from the looks of the crowd here, I actually am a bit old. Edinburgh is a funny place, a little more rough around the edges than London (and that makes me wonder what the hell Glasgow must be like, Edinburgh's supposedly more earthy cousin) and lots of action on the streets of the rowdy variety. In the daytime, it's all kilts and bagpipes and shop after shop proffering wool scarves and tartan skirts to the middle-class tourists, each storefront hiding a huge shelf full of Scotch whiskey at the back. At night, it turns into a city of youngsters prowling the streets in their low-cut jeans and belly shirts, shouting from the top of a double-decker bus and scuffling on the sidewalks, cursing in that thick Scottish brogue. I have to laugh when I hear them; having been a teenager myself during the Mike Myers years on SNL, the Scottish accent is more quaint and funny to me than anything else. I suppose the day that a pack of these teenagers tries to swarm me for my moneybelt, I'll feel differently.
Otherwise, Edinburgh is a jumbled mess of modern and old and really old. Buildings have been built on top of other buildings, buried beneath or still part of the current-day structure, depending on what worked at the time. Tonight I did a tour of a 17th century "close", which were a series of narrow passageways perpendicular to the main street that held long 8-storey buildings where people lived (think of long farm buildings like greenhouses, lined up one next to the other, then translate that into tall buildings). The term "gardyloo" comes from the old days when people would throw the contents of their toilet bucket out the window to run down the street into the lake; as a look-out-below, they would yell that word (bastardised from the French "gardez l'eau"). Some of these closes still exist, albeit with modern plumbing, and it's fascinating to see how all these people could have lived in such narrowly spaced and tightly contained squalor. The plague of the mid-17th century originated in Edinburgh in these closes, and it's no wonder it wiped out such a huge part of the population. See the following link for more interesting stuff on closes: http://www.ebs.hw.ac.uk/MaryKing/welcome.html
Tomorrow, it's off to the famous castle on the hill here, followed by a visit to the Museum of Scotland. The weather has been holding out admirably, which meant I spent most of today outside enjoying the sunshine as I climbed up the bluffs at the eastern end of the city for a wonderful view. This can't last, being Scotland, and I'm taking advantage of it while I can!
Maryka
There's a guy playing guitar right next to me as I'm on the computer, free music to type to! The hostel environment reminds me of summer camp, all free love and happy people and sleeping in bunk beds. I'm feeling a bit old for this kind of thing these days and from the looks of the crowd here, I actually am a bit old. Edinburgh is a funny place, a little more rough around the edges than London (and that makes me wonder what the hell Glasgow must be like, Edinburgh's supposedly more earthy cousin) and lots of action on the streets of the rowdy variety. In the daytime, it's all kilts and bagpipes and shop after shop proffering wool scarves and tartan skirts to the middle-class tourists, each storefront hiding a huge shelf full of Scotch whiskey at the back. At night, it turns into a city of youngsters prowling the streets in their low-cut jeans and belly shirts, shouting from the top of a double-decker bus and scuffling on the sidewalks, cursing in that thick Scottish brogue. I have to laugh when I hear them; having been a teenager myself during the Mike Myers years on SNL, the Scottish accent is more quaint and funny to me than anything else. I suppose the day that a pack of these teenagers tries to swarm me for my moneybelt, I'll feel differently.
Otherwise, Edinburgh is a jumbled mess of modern and old and really old. Buildings have been built on top of other buildings, buried beneath or still part of the current-day structure, depending on what worked at the time. Tonight I did a tour of a 17th century "close", which were a series of narrow passageways perpendicular to the main street that held long 8-storey buildings where people lived (think of long farm buildings like greenhouses, lined up one next to the other, then translate that into tall buildings). The term "gardyloo" comes from the old days when people would throw the contents of their toilet bucket out the window to run down the street into the lake; as a look-out-below, they would yell that word (bastardised from the French "gardez l'eau"). Some of these closes still exist, albeit with modern plumbing, and it's fascinating to see how all these people could have lived in such narrowly spaced and tightly contained squalor. The plague of the mid-17th century originated in Edinburgh in these closes, and it's no wonder it wiped out such a huge part of the population. See the following link for more interesting stuff on closes: http://www.ebs.hw.ac.uk/MaryKing/welcome.html
Tomorrow, it's off to the famous castle on the hill here, followed by a visit to the Museum of Scotland. The weather has been holding out admirably, which meant I spent most of today outside enjoying the sunshine as I climbed up the bluffs at the eastern end of the city for a wonderful view. This can't last, being Scotland, and I'm taking advantage of it while I can!
Maryka
Sunday, August 28, 2005
London and beyond
I've been here 11 days now and it's time I wrote down exactly what I've been up to, before it all becomes a blur. It's already happening: as I go through the photos on my digital camera (1 gigabyte card, holds 550 photos and I'm up to 150 now) I'll draw a blank of what something is -- thankfully they are all in chronological order, so that helps!
The first few days after I arrived were spent in East Anglia, specifically Suffolk county, which is the area my grandparents grew up in. The town itself, Ipswich, is quite sizable by Canadian standards, around 200,000 people, but seems a lot smaller because like most English cities it has extremely narrow streets and packed together houses. Not until you head out to the suburban countryside do you see any large houses or even any driveways. And still nothing on the order of a typical north-of-Toronto million dollar ranch-style home, the land is just too expensive. The houses themselves tend to be "closed-concept" on the inside; every room has a door and many times the doors are closed to conserve heat. Houses go up rather than across, and the more densely populated the area, the taller and narrower the houses. In fact, the place I'm staying in Brighton right now is about 550 square feet over three storeys with a very steep spiral staircase leading from one level to the next -- not the thing you want to try and navigate in the dark when you've had a few drinks! But I digress.
While in Suffolk, I saw a few local historical places like Lavenham (a once-booming wool trade city of the 1500s) and Kelsey (where almost every house has a thatched roof -- I will post pictures of these marvels later). Also, we visited Cambridge with the wonderful King's College Cathedral, ancient Queen's college square and punters on the River Cam. Unfortunately, it was quite a rainy day when we were there, so we didn't try punting -- best saved for good weather, judging by the people in the boats cowering under their umbrellas.
Last Monday, I left Suffolk for London, where I stayed for several nights. London is amazing, for anyone who hasn't been there -- it's intimidating and intimate all at once. Since it's August and school is still out, I got a fairly cheap room in a University of London dorm for £25 a night including breakfast, which would normally be a steal by London standards. The bombings that took place in July have really hurt the tourist economy, however, so there were better deals to be had in bed-and-breakfast type places. Since I was only spending about eight hours a day in my room, I figured I'd stay where I was. Later after walking by a memoriam to the bombing victims a block from my dorm, I realised that the bus bomb had exploded quite close to where I was staying, and the Tube bomb that had gone off in the middle of the tunnel between stations happened to be between the two stations closest to my street -- Russell Square and King's Cross. In fact, in my room I could hear the distant rumbling of the Tube as it went by underground. Weird.
As crude as it sounds, the tourists staying away from London in droves really worked in my favour as all the major attractions I went to were very quiet -- no lineups ("queues" as the Brits would say) and lots of time and space to enjoy myself without being driven out by some annoying American tourist family. The only place that really struck me as overly touristy was Buckingham Palace and the changing of the guard, which was insanely busy. Cops on horseback yelling at the crowd, adults sitting on other adults' shoulders, a few thousand digital cameras being held up high above the heads of the crowd as people tried to get the smallest glimpse of the men in red with the funny hats. Note: get there two hours early if you want to get a good spot to see! But otherwise, places like the Tower, St. Paul's, Westminster Abbey and the museums were fairly quiet.
While in London I had great weather, so I spent much of my time walking, walking, walking. I walked both sides of the Thames from Westminster to the Tower Bridge, saw all of Oxford Street and the Strand, did much of the London Wall walk (following the markers that point out the old Roman wall built in the first century AD, or at least what's left of it) and just generally was on foot everywhere I went. When it did rain, I headed indoors to see the Museum of London and some of the indoor markets (Covent Garden being the most popular), and saw a show at the Old Vic, "The Philadelphia Story" with Kevin Spacey. The tickets were cheap and like much of London this summer, easy to get. A side note about the show: one of the major players was a guy I had met working on that terrible TV show "Zoe Busiek: Wild Card" last fall, he had been a guest star for an episode. Just goes to show that theatre really doesn't pay that well!
Once I figured I had well overspent my budget in London, I decided to move on and down to the city of Brighton, in county Sussex on the south coast about an hour from London. I arrived here yesterday afternoon to brilliant sunshine and many, many people frolicking on the beach (though not that many in the cold Atlantic Ocean) since this weekend is a "Bank Holiday", England's version of Labour Day weekend. The long weekend meant that quite a few Londoners were down for a mini vacation of their own, but luckily I have a cousin who lives here permanently (and who is proving to be a goldmine of information about leaving Canada abruptly and moving to Europe, as he did 12 years ago exactly what I'm doing now). He was kind enough to offer me his girlfriend's house, as she is out of town until the middle of next week.
So here I am in the most interesting house I've ever stayed in: tall and narrow as I've described, but with the front door opening onto a lane about three feet wide. It took me about three trips to the house yesterday with Wayne to be able to remember where exactly it is, it's so well-hidden from the main streets. Not that the main streets in Brighton are much bigger, but this house is really tucked away. This is good and bad -- last night the revellers from the local pubs walking down the lane forced me to pull out my earplugs from my backpack in order to get a good night's sleep. On the good side, there are about five pubs within a two-minute walk of this house, two of which are seventy feet down the lane and flank the opening on either side! The English pub culture is something I've become attached to already, as evidenced by the many beers I had last night.
The weather has remained bright and sunny (maybe that's how Brighton got its name?), so after a giant English breakfast this morning, I mainly hung around, walked the streets and checked out some stores, then spent some time shopping for food to last me a couple of days. I plan to go for a run along the beachfront in the evening and enjoy the setting sun and the crowds of people clogging up Brighton's version of a midway, the pier that juts out into the ocean. Thankfully, it's not entirely Atlantic City as there's no casino. Being about the latitude of Edmonton, southern England has gloriously long twilights and tonight will be perfect for walking around and soaking up the atmosphere.
M.
The first few days after I arrived were spent in East Anglia, specifically Suffolk county, which is the area my grandparents grew up in. The town itself, Ipswich, is quite sizable by Canadian standards, around 200,000 people, but seems a lot smaller because like most English cities it has extremely narrow streets and packed together houses. Not until you head out to the suburban countryside do you see any large houses or even any driveways. And still nothing on the order of a typical north-of-Toronto million dollar ranch-style home, the land is just too expensive. The houses themselves tend to be "closed-concept" on the inside; every room has a door and many times the doors are closed to conserve heat. Houses go up rather than across, and the more densely populated the area, the taller and narrower the houses. In fact, the place I'm staying in Brighton right now is about 550 square feet over three storeys with a very steep spiral staircase leading from one level to the next -- not the thing you want to try and navigate in the dark when you've had a few drinks! But I digress.
While in Suffolk, I saw a few local historical places like Lavenham (a once-booming wool trade city of the 1500s) and Kelsey (where almost every house has a thatched roof -- I will post pictures of these marvels later). Also, we visited Cambridge with the wonderful King's College Cathedral, ancient Queen's college square and punters on the River Cam. Unfortunately, it was quite a rainy day when we were there, so we didn't try punting -- best saved for good weather, judging by the people in the boats cowering under their umbrellas.
Last Monday, I left Suffolk for London, where I stayed for several nights. London is amazing, for anyone who hasn't been there -- it's intimidating and intimate all at once. Since it's August and school is still out, I got a fairly cheap room in a University of London dorm for £25 a night including breakfast, which would normally be a steal by London standards. The bombings that took place in July have really hurt the tourist economy, however, so there were better deals to be had in bed-and-breakfast type places. Since I was only spending about eight hours a day in my room, I figured I'd stay where I was. Later after walking by a memoriam to the bombing victims a block from my dorm, I realised that the bus bomb had exploded quite close to where I was staying, and the Tube bomb that had gone off in the middle of the tunnel between stations happened to be between the two stations closest to my street -- Russell Square and King's Cross. In fact, in my room I could hear the distant rumbling of the Tube as it went by underground. Weird.
As crude as it sounds, the tourists staying away from London in droves really worked in my favour as all the major attractions I went to were very quiet -- no lineups ("queues" as the Brits would say) and lots of time and space to enjoy myself without being driven out by some annoying American tourist family. The only place that really struck me as overly touristy was Buckingham Palace and the changing of the guard, which was insanely busy. Cops on horseback yelling at the crowd, adults sitting on other adults' shoulders, a few thousand digital cameras being held up high above the heads of the crowd as people tried to get the smallest glimpse of the men in red with the funny hats. Note: get there two hours early if you want to get a good spot to see! But otherwise, places like the Tower, St. Paul's, Westminster Abbey and the museums were fairly quiet.
While in London I had great weather, so I spent much of my time walking, walking, walking. I walked both sides of the Thames from Westminster to the Tower Bridge, saw all of Oxford Street and the Strand, did much of the London Wall walk (following the markers that point out the old Roman wall built in the first century AD, or at least what's left of it) and just generally was on foot everywhere I went. When it did rain, I headed indoors to see the Museum of London and some of the indoor markets (Covent Garden being the most popular), and saw a show at the Old Vic, "The Philadelphia Story" with Kevin Spacey. The tickets were cheap and like much of London this summer, easy to get. A side note about the show: one of the major players was a guy I had met working on that terrible TV show "Zoe Busiek: Wild Card" last fall, he had been a guest star for an episode. Just goes to show that theatre really doesn't pay that well!
Once I figured I had well overspent my budget in London, I decided to move on and down to the city of Brighton, in county Sussex on the south coast about an hour from London. I arrived here yesterday afternoon to brilliant sunshine and many, many people frolicking on the beach (though not that many in the cold Atlantic Ocean) since this weekend is a "Bank Holiday", England's version of Labour Day weekend. The long weekend meant that quite a few Londoners were down for a mini vacation of their own, but luckily I have a cousin who lives here permanently (and who is proving to be a goldmine of information about leaving Canada abruptly and moving to Europe, as he did 12 years ago exactly what I'm doing now). He was kind enough to offer me his girlfriend's house, as she is out of town until the middle of next week.
So here I am in the most interesting house I've ever stayed in: tall and narrow as I've described, but with the front door opening onto a lane about three feet wide. It took me about three trips to the house yesterday with Wayne to be able to remember where exactly it is, it's so well-hidden from the main streets. Not that the main streets in Brighton are much bigger, but this house is really tucked away. This is good and bad -- last night the revellers from the local pubs walking down the lane forced me to pull out my earplugs from my backpack in order to get a good night's sleep. On the good side, there are about five pubs within a two-minute walk of this house, two of which are seventy feet down the lane and flank the opening on either side! The English pub culture is something I've become attached to already, as evidenced by the many beers I had last night.
The weather has remained bright and sunny (maybe that's how Brighton got its name?), so after a giant English breakfast this morning, I mainly hung around, walked the streets and checked out some stores, then spent some time shopping for food to last me a couple of days. I plan to go for a run along the beachfront in the evening and enjoy the setting sun and the crowds of people clogging up Brighton's version of a midway, the pier that juts out into the ocean. Thankfully, it's not entirely Atlantic City as there's no casino. Being about the latitude of Edmonton, southern England has gloriously long twilights and tonight will be perfect for walking around and soaking up the atmosphere.
M.
Saturday, August 20, 2005
Culture shock?
This is my first post to my new blog, so bear with me. I'm here in England now, specifically East Anglia, county of Suffolk, in a suburb of Ipswich called Shotley Gate. It's right on the coast, about 100 miles northeast of London. Suffolk supposedly has the least precipitation in all of Great Britain and after the rain I experienced today, I can see how that fact would make it appealing to live here.
More to come when I can take a breath; right now I'm still fighting jetlag by trying to go to bed at a reasonable time (almost 1am here and I'm wide awake...)
M.
More to come when I can take a breath; right now I'm still fighting jetlag by trying to go to bed at a reasonable time (almost 1am here and I'm wide awake...)
M.
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