How..?

Um, I just dropped my tweezers down this drain.


How is that even possible? Aren't you supposed to use tweezers to extract objects from such a drain under such circumstances? I don't have enough pairs of tweezers for that kind of operation!

My eyebrows will suffer the loss in the days to come.

Oh yeah, so I'm back home in Flers.

A little more better*

...rested.

Phew. It was really nice to get some sleep last night. I'm staying at this really nice, quiet hostel in Edinburgh, and despite the ridiculous difficulty I had in finding it last night, it's actually quite close to the center of town. I'm going on a walking tour in about an hour, and (don't worry, Neely) I plan on checking out the Parliament building later today.

As I breifly mentioned in my last post, I had a long day of travel yesterday. I took the train up from Dublin to Belfast (beautiful), then the ferry from Belfast to Stranaer, then the train from Stranraer to Glasgow, and finally a train from Glasgow to Edinburgh. I (believe it or not) did this on purpose. The last time I was traveling, I was doing a lot more flying, and it got to be a pain in the ass. It 'saves time' to fly, but I hate the lines and the disorganized airports that ryanair flies out of. So I made and epic journey. Here is a map of where I've traveled so far:


View Larger Map

A. Paris

B. London (arrived by Eurostar train, via the Chunnel, which was just dark and unexciting)

C. Leamington Spa (stayed with relatives, arrived by train)

1. Day trip to Warwick Castle
2. Day trip to Stratford-Upon-Avon

D. Holyhead, Wales (arrived by train, just there long enough to catch the ferry)

E. Dublin (arrived on Irish Ferries, cool look out deck for arrival in Ireland)

1. Weekend trip to Kilkenny, Ireland

F. Belfast (arrived by Iarnród Éireann [Irish Rail] train, really pretty trip)

G. Stranaer, Scotland (arrived by Stena Line ferries, nicer interior, but less outside viewing space)

H. Glasgow (arrived by ScotRail, changed trains at Glasgow Central)

I. Edinburgh (finally arrived by train!)

Tomorrow, I'm planning a day trip up to Loch Ness, and Saturday I'll need to get back to Glasgow to catch an early flight out.

Europe is awesome! Hopefully I'll have time soon to write about some culturally ridiculous things I've observed in my travels. Thanks for reading, folks.


*See BSB debut album, circa 1998

Edinburgh

I am so glad not to be wearing my huge, yellow biking backpack at the moment.

I started off the day (early morning) in Dublin, and now I'm (finally) in Edinburgh. I kind of got lost trying to find my bus to the hostel, but the train-ferry combo was the bomb, and shockingly cheap.

More to follow, but only minutes of free internet left at the hostel.

In the meantime, look at this map and try to figure out where I've been in the last week (I'll fill you in later).

Dublin

Hey, folks, I'm in Dublin again, and this time I took pictures! I just can't seem to stay away from the UK (and The Republic of Ireland, unaffiliated), and as soon as I get home to my cra-- I mean, quaint little town in France, there will be much uploading of pictures.

In the meantime, I will tell you that I met some more distant relatives (well, you know, second cousins and stuff), which was awesome, and that I totally fell in love with London and am seriously considering moving there in the not-so-distant future. Although if those customs agents gave me so much shit for a short visit to London, I'm a little worried about the interrogation I might have to undergo for something longer term. But there is totally a temporary work - creative and sporting visa, the juxtaposition of which kind of cracks me up. They're basically like, 'If you want to come to England and be famous, apply here!' I like this requirement the best:

"Before assigning your certificate of sponsorship, your sponsor must have an endorsement for you from the governing body for your sport, which confirms you meet the governing body's requirements to give their endorsement."

Yeah, I like this because it's right in the middle of the combined creative/sports section, and they don't really mention the creative bit. I'm hoping the explicit 'governing body for your sport' part means it doesn't apply to me. Otherwise I'd better brush up on my monologues and get over to the consulate for an audition.

Promised posts to come upon return to life-of-way-too-much-free-time:

1. Cool family members I have met
2. A review of the art in the National Gallery in London
3. Pictures that I have been taking
4. Probably something snide about how everywhere I go, I see at least two French people a day and I always kind of want to punch them for speaking French all the time

I see London, I see Fra-- London...

I am sitting in a very expensive internet cafe ready to share with you (in the next 20 minutes) everything I've learned about London.

1. The British Customs Officers are a mean, nasty bunch. I had to go through customs in Paris before catching that Eurostar train (don't worry, folks, they totally had things up and running again on Saturday after that dire weather emergency), and they had some real, live snotty English people to help me through the process. The woman I dealt with gave me so much shit about the fact that I didn't have the address of where I was staying (even though that would have been like 12 places) and told me it was "grounds for refusal." Then she made it all personal and was like, "If it were me trying to get into America there'd be no argument. You have to know the address." Listen, lady, I'm not the effing INS, I don't make the rules, just let me go on my vacation. And she did. After much further badgering.

2. The Tube. What's the big, fucking deal? I know some (snobby) people who studied in London and were all like, "Oh, the Tube is soooo much better than anything we have in America." There were two lines closed this weekend for repairs, and (as we later found out) both our hostels were located on notoriously slow lines. They're supposed to come every seven to eight minutes, but we often ended up waiting upwards of 20 or 30 minutes. Which leads me to point three.

3. The bus = mostly more reliable than the Tube + lots of things to see out the window + crazy late night adventures. The first time we had to take the bus was on Saturday because the Tube closes at 12:30! On a Saturday! The bus we were actually waiting for seemed to be indefinitely delayed, so we took a different one and ended up having to pay a cab to get the rest of the way home, in the end. But while on the bus (in heavy traffic), a very drunk man fell on (not to be confused with stepping into the vehicle), accompanied by his slightly less inebreated friend. This second guy proceeded to try to speak in many foreign languages with the other (foreign) bus passengers and set A up with some guy sitting accross from her named Mohamed.

Today our bus driver hit a pedestrian. Hit someone. She wasn't bleeding or anything, but we all had to get off and walk the rest of the way into town.

4. Big Brother lives here. The whole damn city is monitored by CCTV, there are cameras in all public areas. [Awesome and relevant photograph of grafiti to be added later]

Added.  I love that this was painted under surveillance.

Now my time is up and I don't want to be charged more than half an hour! But I'm actually having an amazing time. More to follow.

A belated note on Obama

Don't worry, guys, just because I'm in France doesn't mean I've totally lost touch. I know that Obama is the new president, and I even watched the inauguration on youtube after the fact. I tried watching it on TV, but the French dubbing was bad and annoying; I mean, one of the many refreshing things about Obama is the fact that he has a nice voice and that he's an eloquent speaker. I got tired pretty quickly of straining to hear him beyond the voiceover. But like I said, I watched the speech, and he was awesome.

And can I just say that Michelle and Barack are the cutest thing ever? They were totally making eyes at each other the whole time he was being sworn in.

Okay, so, maybe not in this picture, but doesn't she look so proud!

Thank you to Jezebel for this video clip of their first dance at the Inaugural Ball. Are they not just so in love?

And Beyoncé is the shit. She totally brought it, and I totally teared up.

Global Warming, anyone?

So, first I get emails from all of my friends and family around Christmas reporting ARCTIC BLAST 2008, the cold front that hit the Pacific Northwest in December. Keep in mind, when I was a kid (and I'm pretty sure this still holds true), a quarter of an inch of snow could seriously shut down every school district in Vancouver, WA. This is a photo (courtesy of my mom) of her front yard/the street in front of the house.


They got 18.9 inches of snowfall! And then it snowed again in late January. I can't tell you how unheard of this is.

And things are no less bizarre over here. Ten people have died in Spain and France due to extraordinarily high winds, there has been serious flooding all over the south of France, London was shut down on Monday by a cold snap, and it's snowing in Flers. Just look.

Normandie: France:: PNW: USA*

This is extremely unprecedented. Are there really still people out there who don't believe we are in the midst of some serious climate change?

I'm supposed to be taking the Eurostar train to London on Saturday. All of this morning's trains from Paris to London have been canceled. Did I mention that London was totally paralyzed by snow? Like, shut-down-all-the-airports-and-stop-running-trains paralyzed? This had better all be cleared up in the next few days. I'm not spending my vacation in Flers.

*Remember analogies and how many you had to memorize for the SAT? Okay, probably for the GRE, too, I wouldn't know.