Chris’ Pan-European Christmas Tour: Fit the Last: Oxford and London, England

Wherein Chris gets off at the wrong bus stop in Oxford, wanders through a variety of superbly excellent book and music stores, sees a copy of the Medea with handwritten notes by Milton in the margins, eats Thai food at a Japanese restaurant in London’s Chinatown and walks along the Thames.

The England portion of the tour began well enough, if one considers that portion of the trip to begin with take-off from Istanbul. Otherwise it was a beautiful ending. In either case, we chased the sunset for three hours, and that flurry of brilliance which normally passes in mintues was drawn out for hours above the clouds. Absolutely wonderful. The presence of Stardust as the in-flight movie, only maximized the amount of perfection achievable in economy. Good thing, too because the next few hours were going to be miserable.

The first hint of the problems that lay in waiting came when I finally made it through the line to passport control, and the lady looked disapprovingly at my card and lack of address in England. I told her I would be staying with a friend at Oxford, and she made up some address for me, but the problem remained. I didn't know precisely where Emmett lived. But this shouldn't be a problem. I'll meet Emmett at the bus stop and all will be good because plans never ever go wrong. Then the bus driver asks me where I want to be dropped off. Apparently there is more than a single stop in Oxford. Having forgotten to recheck the message from Emmett before departing, I am at a loss for words. He suggests High Street. It's my only real choice. Unfortunately, upon my departure, there is no Emmett there. I half-heartedly try to follow the bus and those that follow at 30-minute intervals to try and see if there are any further bus stops. Eventually I run out of buses. It is now pushing eleven on New Year's Eve, and I have been wandering Oxford for hours and no idea what to do now since everything is closed. So I pay the police station a visit. After convincing the officer on duty I was not drunk and that going ome was not an option, the patheticness radiating off me finally convinces him to suggest a hostel, and that is where my luck begins to change. By all rights, the hostel should have been locked down, but some guy, completely out of his mind on some artificial chemicals, is propping the door open, flagrantly ignoring the 'Please do not smoke on the stoop' sign. When I discover that the computers in the lobby require a pound and that my last piece was spent on chips, the same guy gives me a coin before going off into the corner to play his acoustic guitar. From a quick check of Facebook and correlation with MapQuest, it is only a hop, skip and twenty minute walk to Emmett's house. I get there some six hours after first finding myself in Oxford.

The rest of the trip proves far more relaxing. The next two days in Oxford include walking the grounds of one of the colleges and passing by and through places of such interest as an exhibition of Milton with early editions of the various works and a copy of the Medea with his notes scribbled in the corner, the place where the Inklings used to meet (Eagle and Child? Lamb and Rod? Something of that sort, anyway.), and the Pitt River Museum, a museum in the style of the Victorian Age where various artifacts that caught the fancy of explorers were thrown together in glass cases and given no more labeling than 'Religion' or 'Transportation.' I liked Oxford. It had Blackwell's, simply the best bookstore I have ever seen. Also, it was comfortably sized and none too busy, though that may simply be a result of the post-New Year's timing.

Then there was London. Unfortunately, London was simply too big and expensive for two days and a student's budget. Too big for a month, come to think of it. The banks of the Thames are great, and we covered a lot of the city, making it into the National Gallery and Tate for a few hours on the second day. The thing is, it was nothing more than a tasting, a quick overview to give me an idea what I would like to do were I to come again. It's frustrating.

Chris’ Pan-European Christmas Tour: Fit the Third: Istanbul, Turkey

Wherein Chris discovers a city entirely unlike any other he has yet visited, partakes of a culinary tradition he was entirely unfamiliar with, and observes multiple aspects of Muslim religious culture firsthand for the first time.

I find it funny to remember the anticipation I was coming into Istanbul with. For a solid week, I had spoken nothing but German except for a few select sentences in English, once to try and demonstrate a Texan accent to my hosts, for a solid week. Istanbul, the farthest I had ever been from the States, was going to be my language break. Mostly that’s true. Very random guys on the street struck up conversations with me in English, and I didn’t need to bother with German at all. However, I did struggle to pronounce anything in Turkish. Literally, I think it took me two days to start pronouncing the name of Sara’s university consistently. Boğaziçi? More like Bowazeechee.

Istanbul, though, is the most interesting city I have encountered in my travels thus far. At first I thought of it as bulging, straining at the seams. Down the main street my hostel (the absolute nicest of all my hostel staying and named Chambers of the Boheme to boot) additions built on the second and third stories of the buildings leaned out into the streets, and at no time, despite staying atop a pretty good hill and taking a bus a fair distance to the airport, did I ever see the edge of the city. Neither was it uncommon to see half-destroyed buildings support the new ones sprouting up, as if the builders were too impatient to wait for proper demolition and just wanted to get on with it.

Now, though, I think a better word is vital, a liveliness propelled by the impressive contrasts at work in the city. On my first evening, Sara and I burned our way through one of the chicer malls I have known. On my last day, the bus took us past the partial ruins of the walls which once surrounded Constantinople. The aforementioned street is in Taksim, one of Istanbul’s trendier districts, one where you can only find chain stores. The streets at midnight were packed to an extent I have seen the main walks in Munich packed only during the height of the holiday season, and the women wearing headscarves were definitely in the minority there. Later during my stay, we took the ferry to Eyüp. In between visiting the tomb of a companion of Muhammad and prowling through the cemetery that dominated the hillside, we walked the market street. There it was not uncommon to see women in the entire no-hands-and-only-the-smallest-part-of-the-face black outfits. It was fascinating.

Then there were those things which were completely new to me. First, the food. Turkish food is amazing, börek fighting for a spot at the top of the list. The street food is more plentiful than any I have known, and they do some tricky wonderful stuff with cheese and yoghurt. Appropriate recipes and ingredients will be found and then cooked.

Besides the tomb, I saw entered my first mosques. Blue Mosque is kind of an impressive one to start with. Seeing the thing from the outside, I was expecting maybe three stories. No, the entire thing was hollow and quite beautiful, especially the calligraphy.

Istanbul is a city to return to, at least in twenty years or so when the subway begins to resemble an actual system instead of two lines that do not connect. Maybe it will have found a way into the European Union by then and be able to fill that nice, little, expectant space above the TR on the license plates with the rings of stars.

Chris’ Pan-European Christmas Tour: Fit the Second: Cadolzburg, Germany

Wherein Chris bums off (very) distant relatives, is treated most generously, enjoys foods which his palate was not sufficient to fully enjoy, and consumes more alcohol in a 24-hour period than he ever partook of in the United States.

Despite this being my first Christmas outside of the United States and away from my parents and sisters, I still manage to spend it with family, albeit family very distantly related through my grandfather. I spent most of my time with his cousin and his family, and visited one of his sisters and her daughters a few times. At least I had met them before, once when I was in seventh grade and my grandparents took me to Germany for the 95th birthday of a great-grandfather and great aunt and again before beginning my semester in Munich.

I am convinced that Moni, the wife of my grandfather’s cousin Georg, was a maid in a previous life but a bad one and her punishment was to shuffle back on to the mortal coil and do the maid duties but this time because she wants to, and she has dragged her family into it. They were incredibly generous and refused to ever believe that I had eaten enough. Quite literally I felt like the fiancé in My Big Fat Greek Wedding. “Hast du Hunger?” “Nein.” “Möchtest du dann ein bisschen Tee oder Brot mit Käse?” “Nein, danke. Ich bin sat.” “Lebkuchen? Plätzchen?” At least I could understand their Frankish dialect better this time around and actually keep a conversation in German.

Anyway, the schedule is hectic. I arrive late on the 23rd and basically go straight to bed (after tea, bread and cheese). By the time I get up Christmas Eve morn people are rushing to finish preparing for the many dinners that are coming and still checking to make sure that I am perfectly all right and all possible needs and wants are satisfied. Family and friends come for a visit, and other family and friends are visited by us. Thus begins the drinking. Evening comes up, and we attend a Lutheran service and head out to another relative’s for Christmas Eve dinner. Hang out there for a while, enjoying their Super-Bio, homegrown everything, before tagging along with younger cousins to a club. Have my first Cuba Libre and sips of a Vodka Bull, terrible drinks, and get to bed around 4:30. Wake up on Christmas, and this time we’re serving lunch. In total, the drinking amounted to six glasses of champagne, a glass of 1988 red wine, schnapps, and the aforementioned long drinks. I guess the rum balls count, too, but I don’t remember how many of those I had.

By the end of it all, I’m exhausted. Good thing the general energy level dips then. I wander Cadolzburg some, my grandfather’s hometown, and shoot some pictures. It’s a very cool town, small enough that you can circle it in an hour or two and the streets in the town center, built around a castle dating back to the 30 Years' War are cobblestone.

Funny(ish) story. On the 27th, Moni gives me a ride to Nuremberg, so I can catch a direct train ride back to Munich. Wandering around after buying a ticket, I see that there is a train leaving for Munich a half hour than the one I originally intended on taking. I jump on. Unfortunately, it arrives a half hour later, cutting my already limited schedule to unpack, wash laundry, repack and recheck my flights before leaving to catch the plane to Istanbul down to two hours. It was a rush, of a sort.

Chris’ Pan-European Christmas Tour: Fit the First: Ischgl, Austria

Wherein Chris experiences for the first time true alpine skiing, realizes that the hills of Minnesota did not adequately prepare him, improves and bites it hard enough on the final day to require a trip to the resort doctor.

The invitation to join the family of the foreign-exchange student who lived with my family last year was first extended when I visited them in Dresden in the fall. I declined the invitation at first, unwilling to accept such generosity, but when I finally got around to planning what I would do with my two weeks of Christmas vacation and decided that a full week of my German relatives was too much, I took that answer back.

I am bleeding glad I did. For four days I got to hang out with decent people and speak a lot of German in Ischgl, Austria at a ski resort large enough (300 or so kilometers of piste I believe) to stretch into Switzerland.

Keep in mind now, my only previous skiing experience was at a small ski resort two hours from my house in Minnesota. I’m fairly the height of the building I’m living in here in Munich is comparable to some of the hills there. Also, I think the last time I actually did downhill skiing there was some five years ago.

Fortunately, it appears that skiing resembles riding a bike in that you never forget how, even if the difficulty is a bit more. No ski school for Chris this time around. Of course this means I fell somewhere between five and fifteen times on the first day. I know I fell at least five times earlier in the day, but on the last one, the one which ran from the highest point to the very bottom, I lost track. An these were proper falls too. Not slipping on a flat part. These were bite-it-and-slide-ten-meters-before you-slam-your-elbow-down-to-keep-from-finishing-the-slide-at-the-mountain’s-base falls. Amazed that I somehow came out of it all without any bruises. At least I improved. I don’t think I could have taken many more days of that punishment, and the others, far more accomplished skiers than I, were probably tired of waiting for me. Fell only three times on the second day and once on the third (and that was on the glare ice at the very bottom of the run where everyone had finished their own runs). Only twice on the final day, but that last fall was bad enough to send me to the resort doctor. Even though I was able to walk there, they still sent me to a town doctor to make sure my spine was okay because of the pain I was complaining of. Fortunately it turns out only to be a strained muscle in my neck. I have the X-rays to prove it. Thank God for free European health care.

I would have been happy to simply be there, even if skiing were taken out of the equation. It was absolutely beautiful. It occurs to me that mountains covered in snow should be cold and threatening, but I did not find them so. Cresting that first mountain and catching my first glimpse of the range was a view worthy of taking one’s breath away. The sky, too, was perfectly clear, a relief after the month of overcast in Munich and all the better to see the blue. I hear it’s a different blue, richer and deeper, than that you see from sea level. I believe that.

Last Night!

Here it is--my very last post from Ireland (excepting possible extreme boredom later tonight). I leave for home in about 10 hours to embark on the longest day of travel that ever existed. But it will all be worth it when I get home to family and snow just in time for Christmas! I am very excited to go home, but I absolutely love Ireland, and I hope to someday come back to Cork. If any of you ever get the chance to go there, you should defnitely take it!

What have I been doing for the past few weeks? Surprisingly enough, mostly schoolwork. I had tons of essays to write, and I just finished up the last one yesterday. Two weekends ago, Stephanie came to visit me and we went to Kinsale, which is a very pretty town on the coast. Also, it is supposed to have excellent seafood. I tried some fish, but honestly, it all tastes the same to me.

Last weekend Andrea^2 came to visit, and we had tons of fun. We went shopping around Cork one day, and the next day I made my third trip to Blarney, which was as pretty as usual. Luckily, we visited Blarney on the day that they had their Christmas festival, so we got our picture taken with a terrifyingly huge snowman, drank mulled wine and ate mince pies, and got to hear some quality Christmas music. It was a very good last weekend for me.

Merry Christmas and happy holidays everyone! I am looking forward to seeing most of you in a few weeks at Gonzaga, and for those that I won't see, continue tearing up the globe and come back with some great stories for us!

Much love,
Anna

Ta barbarone gar doula panta plen enos

Hopefully all of you who are interested have had a chance to read what happened to me in Paris. If not, it's the next post down, and you might want to start with that one for some context. From Paris, though, I hopped on a train headed to Strasbourg, which I found absolutely marvelous. It was a beautiful city, filled with lights that I admired during my stroll by the river. It seemed like most of the town was out, walking around and talking despite the cold. I had a strange idea that this was the kind of place I would like to retire to, though I'm not sure what prompted that idea. I spent a good three or four hours just wandering and looking around, before settling down on a bench in the station where I started memorizing my first declension in Greek. This was, though I didn't know it, one of the last tranquil moments of the next few days.

The real story begins, as such stories often do, with a drunk German in the Strasbourg train station.

I was on the platform, trying to get on the train to Vienna, when this big, drunk guy starts ambling into my path. I instinctively try to maneuver out of his way, but with that amazing drunk sense, he manages to run right into me. He instantly starts to lean on me, shifting his weight so that I'm suddenly supporting most of it. He mumbles at me in German while I try to get him to sit down, lay down, or something so that he's no longer on top of me. He, however takes this as an attack. He suddenly goes from eloquent drunk to angry drunk, marking the occasion by punching me right in the gut. It hurt; it hurt a lot, but I did have the satisfaction of seeing him shake off his hand in pain. Anyway, he decides not to mess with me anymore and I make it onto the train.

I was reeling somewhat in pain from being punched, but I at least had a good night's sleep to look forward to. Given the pain caused by the guy's rings, I figured it would be a little difficult for me to just drop off to sleep, but I thought I could make it work. I made it to my compartment, and found I was sharing it with two other men. One, I found out instantly, spoke English and German. The other seemed to speak a little German, but later I heard him talking on a cell phone in what I guessed was Hindi. The first man was very enthusiastic about the trip and was telling both of us all about it. To make sure both of us got the gist of his stories, he translated every sentence between English and German. The other man and I, who couldn't communicate at all, shared a look at one point which clearly said, "Why won't this schmuck just be quiet?" So, both of us, in our respective tongues, told him politely that we needed to sleep. "Sure" he says. "I have some work I have to get done anyway." And he pulls out his laptop. I figure that I've slept next to people typing before, so I relax as much as my bruised stomach will let me. However, I immediately find out that this man is completely insane, as he narrates what he is writing the whole time! I asked him three times to quit talking while typing; each time he apologized and agreed to stop, and each time a moment later he would start it up again. When he got off, the other man and I shared another glance that transcended languages.

The train was late to Vienna. This was bad for many reasons. First, it was bad because I wanted to look around the city, but only had twenty five minutes at the station. It was also bad because this was where I had been planning on withdrawing some Euros to pay for the visa into Turkey, something which I neglected to do, which will cause unfortunate consequences later. Anyway, instead of being able to walk around the city, I rush to reserve a seat on the train to Budapest, and get on without much trouble.

The ride between Vienna and Budapest had no problems. I mention this now because I realize that unique aspect after the fact.

Hungary, I noticed somewhat to my surprise, did not use the Euro. This kept me from simply withdrawing a good amount from an ATM to use in anticipation of the visa for Turkey. No big deal, I thought. I'll just withdraw a certain amount in the local currency and change it. First, though, I decide to take a walk around the city to stretch my legs; given the two train rides and the delay on the first, I had been sitting pretty much for the past fifteen hours.

For the most part, Budapest wasn't bad. I got some food at a very American-like mall. Budapest reminded me, in fact, of an American city more than any European city I have seen. Partly this is because many of the buildings are brand new, while others are falling into disrepair around them. Also, it seemed like there were advertisements for Western products everywhere. I kept seeing advertisements for a Disney movie in Magyar, which is incredibly surreal. I was heartily enjoying myself for a couple of hours, and my stomach wasn't hurting nearly as much, but problems were ahead. I was searching for a certain cathedral I had seen on a map when I was confronted by some guy who was blind in one eye. I'm not sure if that's an important detail about his life, but he was certainly using it to try to intimidate me. He talked at me rapidly in Hungarian, so I just said "no" noncommittally, trying to walk away without even noticing him. He doesn't accept this. He starts to follow me, asking, "English? Deutsch?" and I keep saying no, and am now looking for a place to walk to away from him. I notice, incidentally, that there is a bulge in one of his tight sleeves which looks to me suspiciously like a large knife. So, in a fit of rather desperate genius, I say, "hablo espanol, tu hablas?" which seemed to stop him in his tracks and gave me an exit.

I continued to head around the city, thinking that my problems in Budapest were over. At one crosswalk, though, I saw a reflection in a passing bus: I noticed that the same guy was now following me around. At this point I was slightly worried, so I made my way back to the train station, only stopping to note that the Bureau de Change was closed, and in a creepy area outside the station to boot. I was tired, and figured I'd be better prepared to deal with it in Bucharest. Since I didn't want to go out of the train station, and since Hungary has seemingly not invented public benches, I waited for three hours standing, half asleep, in that cold station because some crazy nut in Budapest disliked me at first sight. I made it onto the train, found my seat, and practically collapsed.

I thought, reasonably, that I would at least get some sleep on this train ride. Not so. For the first five hours some Russians decided they were going to throw a party in their compartment, with music blaring and people conversing loudly in machine gun Russian. I think I could have slept through the noise, but the fact that they came to my compartment every ten minutes or so inviting me to have some cocaine with them was a little distracting. This was especially true because it was the same guy every time; he must have been so high that he forgot that he had just asked me the same thing. At about one in the morning they passed out, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

About this same time a Romanian family came on board and decided to share my compartment. When they came in, I cursed silently, but I figured that this man, woman, and child would want to sleep immediately. What I found out, though, is that Romanians don't sleep. All of them, including the seven (ish) year old kid spent the whole night talking as if I wasn't there. As soon as they found out I couldn't speak any Romanian, they kept chatting away as if they were the only ones in the compartment. They did drop off eventually, around seven in the morning or so, so at least I got some sleep.

Also, my good luck when it comes to weather decided to play its part. While I have hit heavy rain or snow in Ireland, Germany and France, apparently that is not enough to satisfy whoever doesn't like me upstairs. The main route to Bucharest was snowed in, so they had to go around. This meant I would be late, again.

Here comes the good part of my story. I make it to Bucharest station. I find that, being late and with the time zone change, I have fifteen minutes before the train to Istanbul leaves. I've slept three hours maybe in two nights. I don't speak a word of the language. I still need Euros for the visa. I take a deep breath and plan a course of action. First, I get money from the ATM, and change it for Euros. I ran into the Change, pretty much thrust the money in the womans face saying, "Euro. Euro." She looked at me like I was insane, and very casually started the transaction. I felt every second tick by, as she took her time to make sure I received the right amount. Turns out the Romanian currency is worth more than the Hungarian: I pulled out nearly two hundred Euro. Running out of there left me about ten minutes, so I ran to the ticket counters. When I got there I nearly despaired. There were massive lines, no discernible order, no handy sign saying "International Tickets" or its translation, and, if my experience with my fellow passengers and the lady at the Change was correct, no desire to engage in communication with anyone who didn't speak Romanian. Alright, I thought. The train to Istanbul couldn't be very crowded, and I had seen a man on the train to Vienna buy a ticket on the train itself. I figured, I already had a ticket, all I needed to do was pay for a reservation. If anything, they were so lax in these Eastern European countries, they wouldn't care at all. So, I got on board and relaxed thinking that all my problems were over with. I had a ticket, I had money for a reservation and the visa, I didn't have any reason not to sleep; in something like eighteen hours I'd be in Istanbul and would at least have a friend who knew her way around.

The conductor comes nearly immediately. I give him my ticket. He accepts it, but obviously wants more. I offer him money. I believe he thinks I'm offering him a bribe, which I would have done if I thought it would help. He decides, though, to use me as an example to other passengers who want to the bend the rules, and literally pulls me out of my seat (luckily I had the foresight to grab my luggage) and pulls me to the door. I think for a moment that he will just push me out of the train while it is moving, but he kindly waits until the train stops at the next station before pushing me out.

Here I am, then, alone, tired, starving (I didn't have a chance to get breakfast, or indeed much of a dinner) with no reception on my cell phone and still no perceivable language skills in the middle of nowhere, Romania.

I think, as best I can, of what my options are. There is nothing around the station for as far as I could see. The old men sitting on the bench look decidedly sketchy, and since there wasn't a schedule saying when the next train back would be, I decided I was probably better off just walking back to the only place in Romania I knew, following the tracks. My best guess, by how fast I walk, was that it was about three miles. By the time I got there, I made an accounting of what my options were. I could try to find a hostel, food, and a reservation for the next train to Istanbul, but in my condition, I didn't think it was very likely I would succeed at doing any of those things.

Anyway, I called it quits. I grabbed a taxi, got to the airport, noticed that the flight to London Heathrow had been delayed, bought a ticket and the rest, well, you know what they say.

Needless to say, I made it back to Oxford with no problems. By now, I've pretty much recovered, and I've begun second guessing myself. The lines were long at the ticket counter, yes; but they were moving pretty quickly and I probably could have made it back in time. Or maybe finding accommodation wouldn't be hard at all; after all, most places have hostels right near the stations, and from there it wouldn't be that hard to get food, etc...

The gist of this is, I'm really disappointed I didn't make it. On the other hand, despite getting punched in the stomach, being stalked by a crazy guy with a knife, being kept up all night by three sets of crazy people, and getting into a tussle with a railway conductor, I think I made it out of there relatively undamaged. Maybe next time.

The Haunt of Ultime Fauchelevant

This post is admittedly ill-conceived. First, it is late in coming, since it's been nearly two weeks since I first arrived in France. Secondly, Chris has already written about what we did, so this will be derivative at best. Still, since I was there for some time after Chris left, I still think it will be worthwhile to talk about what happened then. Also, as some of you may know, I ran into some adventure on my way to Istanbul, and in the spirit of a good action novel, I'm not going to tell you about it in this post, since I have enough to say about the old home of Fauchelvant and Pontmercy.

Paris, I found after a few days of touring it, is very similar to London. This realization did not hit me all at once; it came upon me slowly as Chris and I saw the various highlights Paris has to offer. I found I kept comparing them to places in London, and as I have a certain affinity for that city, I usually found myself arguing for London's superiority. The metro is nice, I would think, but the Tube is far better; cleaner, more efficient, and more navigable. The Louvre is incomparable, yes, but really, it shouldn't be compared to any one of London's museums; the way it was conceived, it should really be matched by both the National Gallery and the British Museum. So I thought, until I realized London could take care of itself. If the Notre Dame is more grand than St. Paul's Cathedral, so be it; and if the Arc de Triomphe is superior to Nelson's column, well, look who won in the end!

On my first day without Chris, I began by walking from the hostel to Notre Dame. To say I was blown away was an understatement. I knew going in that Gothic architecture was designed to draw one's eyes to the ceiling, the better to draw one's mind to God, but I had no idea that anyone had pulled it off so effectively. Besides, there is a grand difference between knowing that and actually feeling your eyes drawn higher, until your gaze rests upon a magnificent stained glass window, and while your body is cold you find that your mind has just become frozen, and you can only catch your breath and gaze in wonder. Everything about the cathedral, the size, the architecture, inspired to me to be quiet and be still in the same way St Paul's inspired me to want to sing. It was, to be grossly literal, impressive.

From Notre Dame, I wandered. I noticed something interesting, if not fairly obvious: the farther I got from the Notre Dame and the other attractions the shabbier the shops and houses became. I was still in a commercial district, but I thought it showed how reliant Paris is on tourism. I haven't really noticed whether or not this is true in London.

Eventually, my wanderings led me to the Jewish quarter and the Latin quarter, the latter being mainly comprised of students. The surprise I got was not that these two areas so close to each other were so different but that both places could be so intricate and self-absorbed. The fact that I could see three ancient rabbis discussing (I think) Leviticus in Hebrew and not ten minutes later see some students sitting in front of the Pantheon talking about a date one of them had had made me realize that these two groups probably had no need to interact with each other at any moment in their lives.

I considered this at some length while I walked back to my hostel from the quartier latin. On the way, I realized that this was the real similarity between London and Paris; their eclectic giganticism. One cannot really think of either London or Paris as being a single city, but only as a set of unconnected districts within spitting distance of each other. I would grow tired of this quickly, I thought as I passed a random and tourist filled department store. It would be the worst of both worlds: of being in a self-involved small town and being in an anonymous big city filled with tourists that would me feel like an animal in a zoo.

Past the department store, my surroundings gradually changed. I passed out of the (very) commercial district and came into a more residential area. Mothers shepherding children replaced people struggling with shopping bags. It was getting dark, but I could see children walking home in groups of twos and threes. Everyone around me was speaking French rather than German or Japanese or English. I stopped in a grocery store, and I realized that there is something a little strange with speaking a foreign language in such a place. If I had heard someone speak English in that grocery store I would have noticed; I would have raised my head to look at the speaker and we probably would have shared a connection: we don't belong here. Where I was walking, there was none of this.

Turning the corner after the grocery store, I found a main street lit up with Christmas decorations. As I looked at a giant snowflake, I thought to myself, I could live here. This is the true heart of Paris. This place, where children walked at night without fear, with grocery stores and real Christmas decorations twenty minutes and a lifetime outside the Paris of tourists, this could be a place to live. I felt like, if not for me, then for someone, this place could be a home.

Ein Wochenende in Paris, während dessen es viel geregnet hat

Got back to Munich from a weekend in Paris this morning. Almost made class too, but the airport bus took twice as long as normal to get into the city because of morning traffic. Scooting into class a half hour late is not really acceptable, so I had to visit the doctor and make some vague complaints to get a valid excuse for missing class. Kind of pathetic. But this post is not about that. It is about the trip.

Paris is beautiful, and I am not simply speaking of the monuments that get so much (deserved) play on the postcards. Yes, there is a fair amount of graffiti and street cleaners do not manage to keep everything so tidy as those in Munich (though I find it hard to believe any could manage that), but within the central city at least, I do not know where one could find anything ugly, much less plain. There just seems to be this pride in not allowing anything to be common. Every apartment building has wrought iron fences on the balconies or stone designs running along the sides. It is something else and wonderful to walk through.

Only managed to hit up the Louvre this trip, but the four odd hours spent in there were not enough. First was by myself on the free Friday, and the second was with Emmett, just kicking off his Continental Train Tour by arriving in Paris on Saturday evening, on Sunday (first Sunday of the month means free access to all museums). At first we attempted to visit the Musee d'Orsay, but the line was insane and dedicated line workers were trying to organize it a little bit. Popularity probably has something to do with fewer free days than the Louvre, which is always open to those under 18 and the unemployed. Fun fact. Saw the triad of biggies in the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory of Samothrace. Was more impressed, me at least, by two interpretations of Cupid and Psyche and one marble statue called "Veiled Woman."

Other highlights: walking down the Champs Elysees when all the Christmas lights were on, visiting the Sacré Coeur for the view both inside and out, seeing the Eiffel Tower sparkle, strolling along the quai and considering the best way to break into various wedding parties, working our way past numerous sex shops and live shows to pass the Moulin Rouge, and crossing Pont Neuf, like Jason Bourne at the end of the first movie.

Not sure how many of you know this, but this was not my first trip to Paris. Just after graduating from high school, I went with my French class. Also, the fact that I have four years of high school might be a surprise. What was a surprise to me though was that I actually remembered enough French and could speak with enough of an accent that I did not immediately come off as some idiot tourist. For example, when the doorman at the very nice hotel came to kick Emmett and me out from underneath the awning and back into the torrent, he did not reply in English when I asked "Oú est le Métro?" Until I just stared blankly at his French, that is. Quick point, weather was insane. Constant rain in the evenings, and some major wind gusts that took out more than a few umbrellas. Weather has actually bad enough to deter us from walking back to our hostel and just using the Métro instead.

Now all there is to do is anticipate visits from Stephanie and Sara and plan my Christmas vacation.

Tschüß.

Munich

While last weekend was an adventure in Ireland, this (marginal) weekend I spent perusing Chris and Molly's city of residence. Owing to some scheduling and price hassles, I flew in Sunday morning and left Tuesday, so I managed to come over right in the middle of their classes. While I only have fond memories of having classes every day to remind me what it is like, I understand the amount of hassle it requires to take in a visitor, especially when you have more mundane things to occupy your mind. So thanks again, guys, for all your hospitality despite the circumstances.

Making what seemed to be the best of two bad decisions, I decided to try to stay up to catch my 4 A.M. bus to the airport rather than trying to get some sleep and risk missing the alarm. As a result, my only sleep that first night came from about an hour on the bus to the airport and an hour and a half or so on the plane. Perhaps because of these circumstances, I mistook the directions which had been given to me by Chris and got off at the wrong bus stop: the main train station in Munich. For many people this would be reason to start panicking, but given that I was quite tired, I wasn't too worried about it. Apparently other people were, though. I received a call from Andrea, still in Oxford, relaying Molly's worry about me. Having received this call, I decided it was a better plan to just wait in the train station rather than get on the U-Bahn where I would lose reception and have Molly really worried. So, for about an hour I waited. When Molly finally did call me, she gave me the same instructions I would have followed without her. While I can't speak German, I can navigate underground trains. It's like music and karate: an international language.

Having finally arrived at Molly's apartment, the three of us (with Chris) decided on our next course of action; it was a decidedly somber next step. Visiting the reconstruction of a concentration camp is not supposed to be a light and fun outing. The only thing it made me do was think; admittedly something more difficult having only had two and a half hours sleep. The exhibit in the museum segment was entitled: "How did the Nazi party come to power?" but that is at once nearly trivial and yet beyond a museum's ability to answer; this is especially true when coupled with the companion question of Dachau: "How could a modern nation, with all its benefits, systematically, coldly, cruelly, calculatingly murder millions of people who had not lifted a finger against it?" Even Stalin had (or imagined he had) better reasons for his great purges. The holocaust was simply an absolute and needless destruction. While I do not believe that there can be "no art after Auschwitz" as Adorno maintains, I found the art pieces designed as a memorial at Dachau were repellent to me. I wondered why; then I realized that the form of Dachau matched its function. The camp was lifeless: the buildings all at cold right angles, the grass decaying and dying, the paths open and without scale, the guard towers anonymous and forbidding, the wall blank, the empty expanse open to bitter winds. Adding artwork was like putting perfume in a coffin, in order to mask the smell of death, but more than that: to add scent in order to reanimate the body with a little life. This memorial did not need artwork to display its emotion. The camp was enough, as a kind of anti-art meant to make one dull and to deconstruct the person within. After experiencing that, I can add my voice to those who say, nie wieder! Never again!

The next day, I slept in. After having some more problems with finding places on the U-bahn thanks to Chris, we decided to just take a look around some German bookstores before heading to the primary entertainment of the night. The bookstores, I have to mention, rekindled my desire to learn German after I learn ancient Greek. Chris and I met Molly coming out of class at this point, and we went and had some truly German food: sausages, sauerkraut, and a beer; Bavaria at its finest. After this, Chris and I headed to the Rodrigo y Gabriela concert.

Rodrigo y Gabriela, for those who do not know, are a pair of acoustic guitarists who got sick of their heavy metal band and traded in their electric guitars for nylon stringed guitars when they realized they could do more tricks with them. They are probably most famous for their cover of Stairway to Heaven, something to check out on Youtube if you have not. They are two of the finest and most creative guitarists I have ever heard or heard of. They have created an ideal musical situation, with Gabriela playing rhythm guitar in a style I believe to be truly unmatched (she just as often plays percussion on the side of her guitar as she does her incredible strums on the strings) while Rodrigo plays lead with ample nods to his heavy metal roots. Both of them have invented (as far as I'm aware) techniques; but then they are experts at these techniques as well. While many of their songs are not structurally or harmonically impressive (not that that always produces good musical results) their technique is beyond masterful, and is pulled off with a hint of sprezzatura which can only be found in those who truly love and have invested thousands of hours into their instruments. On the one hand, seeing them was slightly depressing: I have so far to go, still! On the other hand, it was inspiring. I want to be able to play like that someday, in a different style, sure, but with their finesse, confidence, and technical ability. More inspiring, still, was the fact that Rodrigo threw his pick out into the audience after the first set and it practically fell into my hands.

Tuesday came with a trip around Munich's historical and traditional shopping center. The markets were fantastic, but I'm not sure how willing I would be to get on the U-bahn every day to get fresh fruit. Apparently, Molly and Chris need to get on the U-bahn anyway, just to get to the grocery store. Personally, I would prefer smaller and more local shops, but everyone has to live somewhere.

Upon my arrival in England, I got another reason why I'm studying at Oxford. I was at passport control in Heathrow, which has very negative connotations for me, and the young lady at the counter was asking me whether I was a resident studying in England. I replied yes, I was studying at Oxford. As she stamped my passport, she asked me what I was studying, and I replied that I was taking tutorials in philosophy and history. Her eyes went wide for a moment, and she said, under her breath, "wow," before waving me through. I only hope that the grad schools I apply to have the same reaction.

For now, then, I just have one more paper to write before I meet up with Chris again; this time it will be in Paris. From there, I'll be taking the train to Istanbul to visit Sara. I'll be on the road a lot, which always tires me out; but I'm pretty sure it's worth it.

Ein deutsches Thanksgiving

We, being myself, Molly, the other members of JYM and more than a few visitors, celebrated Thanksgiving yesterday. Yes, I know that is was a day late, but we were making due. People had classes on Thursday, and the lack of Saturday classes permitted a holiday level of drinking that might otherwise be avoided on a weeknight, helped along by a generous preparation of Glühwein, which is, as far as I can tell, mulled wine.

Amazingly enough for over twenty college students working mostly independently of one another, the dinner was pulled off quite well. Yes, the original plan was to start dinner at 4:30 and was pushed back to past 6 because of the turkey cooking team's realization the morning of Thanksgiving that they the grocery shopping team had bought them two turkeys and there was only one oven, but that worked out. Other people, unprepared for how long some recipes would actually take, came in late and the food still all ended up being warm and tasty. All of the standards were there too. The ingredients for mashed potatoes and and stuffing were easy enough to pull off, but canned cranberries and pumpkin pie mix had to be brought back from the States by a JYM student who went back for a visit this past weekend. Finding a reasonably-priced and sized turkey apparently was a bit of a feat, but Molly was more in on that than I. Otherwise, my contribution was two plates of cornbread (quickly becoming one of my favorite recipes because of its ease, speed and variability) and the gravy. Very happy with my first try at gravy. A little thick, yes, but it looked a lot like gravy. That was helped greatly along by the impartation to me that the secret to a good roux, the butter/flour base of gravy, is to stir in only a single direction.

Personally I most enjoyed the opportunity to share Thanksgiving with our four German visitors and single Estonian, especially since two of them are majoring in American studies. (I hear that over a 1,000 students are enrolled in that institute. Who would have thought?) The whole idea of a holiday is often quite different from its practice, and Thanksgiving does have the distinction of being a very American holiday.

For those returning to Gonzaga, I hope these last fews weeks of the semester do not prove too stressful. Otherwise, I'll be seeing most of you in a little under two months now.

Tschüß.

An Irish Thanksgiving

Hello all,



I see that Emmett has already written about our exciting adventures together last weekend, so I don't need to go into that, except to say, here and now, that Emmett has said he owes me dinner senior year. It's in writing now; it's official, since he is bailing out on his chance to cook for me when I go to Oxford because he is going to Paris with Chris. :-(



I was full of trepidation about spending Thanksgiving away from my family for the first time EVER, but it turned out okay. My favorite roommate left for Amsterdam on Wednesday, so I thought I was going to be doubly lonely, but one of the American guys that lives next door had his parents visiting, and they QUITE generously offered to cook a nice turkey dinner for all of the family-less Americans. All in all, there were 21 people crammed in one apartment. It was intense. I, of course, brought forth the Idaho pride and provided mashed potatoes. So, not a bad Thanksgiving overall. I even found football (U.S. style) on TV! (Ooh, side note. Apparently Irish people also call "European football" soccer. They have their own sport called Gaelic football, and I suppose that 3 versions of football was too much for them to handle.)



Today I wandered downtown to look at the Christmas lights (very pretty, even though they haven't turned all of them on yet) and finally get started on my souvenir shopping for my family. It is officially Christmas season! That, coupled with the fantastic cold and joy that shopping brings me, put me in a good mood, the one I usually associate with Christmas. :-)



Tomorrow my friend Doug is coming to visit for a few days, and I'm very excited about that. Next weekend I am going to visit Andrea at Oxford, and we are going to see Wicked in London!!!! Prediction: Andrea and I will be hard pressed not to sing along to all of the songs.



I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I miss you terribly.

Love,
Anna

On Aqua Vitae and plain Aqua.

Since Chris, Molly, and Anna seemed to have so much fun visiting each other in Cork and Munich, I've decided to join in the excitement. This weekend I visited Anna in Cork, and next weekend I'll go bother Chris and Molly in Munich. Then I'll be traveling pretty much until Christmas break, so I won't be able to really return the favor of having my schedule being disrupted and getting behind on my work. Sorry guys...
I must admit, I had rather romantic expectations for Ireland. I'd never visited before. Looking back, that seems strange, but since the opportunity was there, it was something I couldn't turn down. I had an image in mind of small villages with people speaking in Gaelic, playing violins at the pubs at night, and lots of green rolling hills before you got to the silvery blue sea. Perhaps there are parts of Ireland like that, just like there may be parts of England where people still wear monocles and speak snootily on every subject. Cork, however, seemed to me to be just like England; even the different accent didn't throw me off, since it was about as different as a Cornwall accent.
The flight over was a little exciting. Flying on Ryanair, I have a vague hope that my chances are better for sitting next to someone who is interesting and hygienic, rather than the usual people who seem to take over half my seat and snore the entire flight. This trip, I managed to avoid that problem. Instead, a few minutes after being seated, I found a sharp pounding in the middle of my shin. The source of the pain was a foot attached to a three year old girl, quite precocious and energetic. After a little while, her mother noticed and put an end to this quickly. She apologized, I said it was nothing, and figured that would hopefully be the end of any interaction between us. What I found instead was that she was the source of my cleanliness when her daughter decided to vomit upon landing. I took her wet wipes appreciatively, and again waved off her apologies. She wasn't the one who needed to apologize to me.
Everything was uphill from my arrival. Even the pouring rain which greeted me (thanks again for putting up with that, Anna) was better than the plane. Though it seemed like it would last forever, the rain just meant I had a chance to learn a new card game. After quite a while, the downpour receded. Anna and I decided it would be worth the risk to go visit a couple of the local drinking establishments. The first was large enough so that it didn't seem crowded, but the second place was packed shoulder to shoulder. The drinks, however, was very good. The Guiness was, in my opinion, superior to the export product, and Anna introduced me to a local beer, Murphy's, which is one of the better beers I've ever had in my life. Too bad it's only made in Cork and not likely to be found in England.
The next day we visited the Jameson Distillery. It was an interesting trip. I didn't ever even think about the difference between fermentation and distilling was, but, after the visit, I can even tell you the difference between Irish whiskey, American whiskey, and Scotch. The highlight of the visit was at the end, where they took volunteers to be whiskey tasters. After a slight moment of indecision and fear, I raised my hand and was hustled off to a separate table with three other people away from the rest of the group. There they gave us samples of three different kinds of Irish whiskey, Scotch, and Jack Daniels'. They do indeed have very distinct tastes. After I picked up my certificate labeling me a qualified whiskey taster, Anna and I were both starving, so we found the cheapest fast food place in town and had wings and chips. It was funny going from sophisticated to dirt poor in a matter of minutes.
That evening the rain continued. It was raining when I got back to Oxford as well, so instead of blaming it on the fact that I'm living in the British Isles where it rains a good portion of the year, I'm going to say there's a good chance I'm a rain god, like the Douglas Adams character. Perhaps places with droughts will pay me to visit them; alternatively, perhaps vacation places like Malta will pay me not to visit them. I can see lots of opportunities here. Still, the rain kept us inside for the rest of the evening, so it mean playing more cards and watching The Usual Suspects, a brilliant movie.
My visit was far too short. Someday I'll have to go back to Ireland and take a good tour around the country, but for now, I suppose it's enough to say that I've been to the homeland at last.

Pas de francais

Well, this week was insane. I'm so tired today. I'm definitely not ready to take on another week. I need another weekend. School was long this week. I have a paper for all my classes that was either due this week or is due the next. I hate writing and the fact that it's all in French doesn't help.....

But on a more fun note, I finally went out of my French speaking region. I ventured into Bern and got earfuls of Swiss German which made me feel really lost and confused as to how in the world I was supposed to get food anywhere because my German consists of nothing and even if I could speak haut dutch it wouldn't have made too much difference to the Swiss. Wandering through some of the street markets I'd catch a handful of French every now in then and was glad to hear that 'cause it felt like home. I did manage to somewhat communicate and in buying myself this dang awesome hat. I must say it was funny though because I went with an English speaking friend and we spoke in English to each other, but whenever confronted by the others we would switch into French, although we realized our English would probably be understood more than our French, oh well.

In Bern, we went to the Einstein museum. It was dang sweet and worth the high toll that they exact out of you for entry. I was sad I didn't know German because although the exhibit was in German, French and English all of Einstein's notes and papers were in German. It would have been fun to understand them besides the occasional math formula. My friend (completely non-math orientied) gave me such a strange look when I tried to explain my excitement over the law of sines that I kept the rest of my math and physic joys to myself. It was too bad she didn't want to discuss red shifts and relativity.... Other than that we placed tourist and took a lot of random pictures and saw the other stuff in the city, but it was so dang cold. In feranheit (I'm getting used to Celcius, it's getting hard for me to think of regular temperatures, 1 is just easier than 37) is was 26 degrees out and I've decided winter is not the best season to go exploring, although I'll undoubtably do it some more. But it was an amazing train ride home because seriously all of the country looks like a postcard. And with the alps in the background all covered in snow that look fake because they are too pretty and too perfect (although most of the time there's too many clouds to see them) I don't know what could be better.

Ein Wochenende in Irland

Anna visits Munich last weekend and gets to play tourist in our adopted city. This past weekend Molly and I get to repay the favor for three nights. Head over Friday morning and wake up bleeding early Monday morning, only to wait an additional two hours in the airport because a replacement crew member needed to be flown in from Dublin.

First up, Cork and Ireland and general impressions of such. Cork and Ireland, in their great similarities to Spokane and the United States, provided a break from Munich, Germany and not merely through the language. Yes, I have been greatly enjoying the urbanity and cosmopolitan nature of Munich and the related opportunities to see my first opera and ballet, but it can be overwhelming, too far removed from my past experiences. Getting into Cork and seeing streets lined with stores that I could actually afford to shop at was a relief in some ways. There was such a sense of vitality in the streets too. When we went out in the evenings, whether on a pub crawl (Tried two different stouts over two nights. Absolutely vile drinks that were a struggle to finish. Also the awareness that bars packed to capacity and blaring music that forced you to shout though the person you want to talk with is next to you are not my place was strongly reinforced) or whatever, the sidewalks were full of passing groups families and groups, very rarely plugged into their iPods or talking on cellphones.

Saturday, we went to Killeagh at my request. Hearing that I was going to Ireland for the weekend, a cousin of my mother's sent me a list of names of distant family who still might be around Killeagh, the town my Irish relatives swarmed out from. Looking for the relatives was a bust. Talked to random strangers, visited the post office and looked through the baptism register of the local church, all to no avail. Still, despite that particular failure and Molly and Anna's need to repeat "Kill-a Queen" every half hour, I liked Killeagh. A lot like my hometown in Baudette, small and the people knew each other. In the cemetery, I spoke with a couple, and they pointed me towards some people who knew the O'Neills and McCarthys, general directions and all. After totally missing the turn, I knocked at a random house, and they were able to set us on the right path again. Another benefit of visiting Killeagh? We got to see the countryside. Get to miss that living in Munich coming on two months, and it was the Irish countryside, which has its own undeniable charm.

We made our way over to Blarney Castle and its famed stone on Sunday. It's a huge tourist attraction and has some small notoriety as the "most photographed building in Ireland." Kind of wary of that at the beginning, but I really did enjoy the visit. Avoided kissing the stone because I hear that the locals whiz on it regularly (and a morning washing is definitely not enough to make me want to put my lips on it), but the castle was cool, had a very different feel from those I have visited in Germany. The grounds were absolutely great. Ireland has a pretty strong tradition of mythology, and it is not difficult to understand why after seeing that place. The rock formations and caves and thick brush were something out of a fairytale or Lord of the Rings.

Taking it easier for the rest of the month. Heading over to Heidelberg on Saturday to catch a Bloc Party concert and then remain in Munich for the rest of the month. Gives me time to start up my essays.

Wo ist Anna?

Hey all,

I went to visit Molly and Chris in Munich this weekend, and it was my first venture out of Ireland in over a month. I've been getting kind of used to living in the atmosphere of small-town Ireland (even though Cork is about as big as Spokane) but it was fun to get back into a big city and experience a completely different European experience than I've been having.

I finally found my way to Chrolly (Yes, I really am too lazy to type Chris and Molly) after a terrifying experience involving me missing the airport shuttle, not knowing any German, and my cell phone not working in non-Ireland countries. But I made it, and I didn't even break down crying in the U-Bahn, which is something I'm quite proud of. Friday we went and looked around the university and other cool places in Munich. I'm a big fan. I generally like big cities, because whenever I go to a new one, I think it's my favorite that I've been to, and Munich was no exception. Friday night we went to the opera and saw Marriage of Figaro and I understood none of it, but it was still quality entertainment and I feel more cultured now.

Saturday was the best part--we took a day trip to Salzburg and saw all kinds of cool stuff! I really liked the narrow streets with high buildings on both sides and the cool architecture, but my favorite event of the day was when we found a park based on the Magic Flute and played there for over an hour. The slide was my favorite part. Or maybe the tire swing type things.

Sunday we went to mass (in German!) and then an art museum. That night we watched a movie which I'm pretty sure beats out Hackers for the title of "Worst movie ever". I got back to Cork this morning and Chrolly is coming to visit me this weekend, so I have to make sure my hostessing skills are up to the challenge!

Sadly, I had to write my very first paper since May this week, which was very depressing as it is putting a damper on my 6-month long vacation from hard-core school work, but I know I cannot complain about that when all my Gonzaga buddies just had midterms.

I hope all is well back in Spokane or scattered across the globe, my dear friends.

Love,
Anna

Oxford

This is an account of one of the more surreal days I've had in Oxford.

I was sick, and had been for several days. I was also running out of cash so I thought I would force myself out of the house and to the bank in order to get some. I barely remember the walk down; my head was fuzzy and my breathing was about the same. Every three steps or so I was reduced to hacking coughs. That, plus the fact that I was wearing one of my heavier jackets in order to retain some semblance of warmth, probably was the reason several people stopped me and offered to buy any copies I had of Big Issue, which is the magazine homeless people sell around here.

Most of the walk to my bank is generic English town. There are lots of little grocery stores, cafes, newsagents, and bicyclists. It could even be some place in America, somewhere on the east coast but without the massive snobbishness, and with a far more diverse selection at the farmers market. Still, there is not much that makes you think you're in the city that grew up around the oldest University in the English speaking world.

Oh, except the Clarendon printing house of Oxford University Press (go look at any books you have which are OUP: if they say Clarendon St., then that's the one near me), which is about two minutes walk from my house. But that hardly counts.


About fifteen minutes walk in, I've gotten to the part of the city which actually looks like a University, probably because it is. My bank, however, takes me away from the beautiful Bodleian library and Trinity college, my own. Instead, I turn down the market street, which is typically English. It is the widest street I've seen in Oxford, but it's closed off to traffic. It is full of actual stores: a couple of bookstores, music shops, and a department store, but also several banks. Today, though, it is particularly crowded. There are usually several street musicians plying their trade around this area, including a guy on the bagpipes whom is the best I've ever heard. Today, near the end of the street, by my bank, there is a full salsa band. I cursed the fact that I was sick, because at that moment I had a wild urge to ask the next passing woman for a dance, but it would have taken too much energy.

Actually, perhaps it was just as well I was sick.

I withdraw my money and I start heading back. Instead of pushing through the crowd this time, I stay close to the edges and try to sneak past them. I notice, however, that there are people there set up with stands, looking like they have things to give away. As I never pass down something free to read, I head over there. The first one turns out to be a stand for the local communist party. I laugh, and start to move on, but I notice the title of one of the pamphlets: "Communism: The Only Viable Future." Feeling like I needed some amusement and actually being somewhat interested in how they sweet coated a "Scientific expression of History" I took it and started to move on. I was stopped mid-step by one of the communists taking my arm.

"It's seventy pence," he said.

The wracking coughs that I produced signified for him to repeat his statement.

I was astonished. The communist party was reduced to selling its pamphlets: it was making money on production, it was betraying its proletariat ideals, it was gouging the price of cheap literature. I had to buy it. I would have paid pounds for that experience. As I took out my money, he asked me where I was from, and what I was doing in Oxford. I told him I came from Utah, and he said it was "One of the more exotic parts of the States." I told him I was studying in Oxford for the year, and he insisted that I sign up for their e-mail list. I really couldn't think of any reason to refuse. Now, of course, I think: If I ever run for office in the U.S., this would probably work against me. On the other hand, I'd really like to see one of their meetings.

Anyway, after that, the next stand was a Muslim proselytizing. I didn't get into nearly as long a conversation with him, probably because I mentioned I needed to just pop round the corner and buy some whiskey, but I would love to come back to talk to him. I did take his pamphlet, though, and I'm proud to say that Christian tracts are much, much worse. I don't believe it's an art form meant to be perfected.

After that, I decided that the previous events had cheered me up so much I was up for a little studying, so I went to Trinity college's gardens (absolutely gorgeous, by the way) to read the book I had brought in case of such an eventuality. I read for perhaps an hour when I was overshadowed by two men who were waving a camera at me. I wondered at what kind of shot that would produce before I realized that they wanted me to take a picture of them. I did, they thanked me ("shih-shu, shih-shu") and I got up to leave. On my way out I realized I was at a university, at a college within that University, that regularly had tourists show up and want to see the sights that were the grounds where I am studying. It gave me a little shiver down my spine.

After that, I walked back and took a nap. All in all, a good day.

Random Encounter

So life in Switzerland is never dull. It's just been very busy and interesting.

So this week I've been trying to finish working out the problem with my visa. I been sent to one person after another and who knows where the end is. But Thursday I was in downtown Lausanne getting lost (as is normal is the city with crazy skinny curvy streets that change names every block or so it seems) trying to find the Office of Population. I guess I was pretty obviously lost cause this guy stops and asks if he can help me. And I'm like I'm trying to find this building and I had the address and he's like okay I'll help you out. So we walk around and find the building, but just my luck, they are already closed for the day. Everything closes so early here it's obnoxious. I don't know how anything gets done. No so then this guys continues to talk to me and follow me as I'm trying to go shopping to grab some bread and other stuff for the night. All of a sudden he's like I want to give you something for letting me talk to you. And I like, k, this is strange, but yeah.... So he takes my hand and takes off the diamond ring he is wearing and gives it to me. I'm like no, no, I can't take that and try to give it back to him, but he's like I'll just throw it into the street if you don't take it, it means nothing to me. And I'm still like no, I can't have it, and through confusing French that I don't quite understand I end up with it. Then going k I need to get away from this strange person, but no matter which way I go he's still just going along following me and talking to me where I have to stop him every few words to get him to explain what in the heck he's saying, trying to be somewhat annoying so that it's a very interupted conversation, but he's still there. Eventually as I'm getting down to where I actually kinda know the city he's like, oh no come this way cause there's a grocery store right along here that you can go to, and being me, I'm like okay, so we go and I can see it and I try to go to go get my stuff, but then somehow I'm not quite sure what was said, end up not going in and somehow still walking with this random person. He was very nice and patient, but I'm like this is strange..... So then as we pass all these little cafes, he's like come have a drink with me and I'm like no I don't drink. I don't want a drink. After being asked for the millionth time, I'm like fine, I'll have a coke. So then he orders me a drink and doesn't get one for himself and I'm like k what's up with that? And he explains that he's a Jew and that today is one of there fast days. So I'm sitting here drinking this coke with this strange person that is trying to get me to trust him, and I'm just trying to figure out how to get home without him following me there. So, yeah, basically this guy follows me around for two hours before I lose him and that only because he had to make dinner for his friend, and I'm was finally like no, I'm not going to go eat dinner with you. So I finally get to do my shopping and go home, but that's was not until after he's bugged me about what I was doing Friday night cause he wanted me meet him again. I told him I already had plans, so he's like what are you doing Saturday? And again I already had stuff planned to do, so I'm like k, I'd rather not see you again. But then he's like what are you doing that you want to do instead of see me? (Basically anything or even nothing...) But so I told him every Friday I go to Yverdon-les-Bains for a religion class with some friends. So he's like well what are you doing Saturday then, and I told him I was meeting up with some people from school to go to Geneva and I didn't know when I was leaving conviently or when I was getting back. So the crazy guys like, well I'll come with you to Yverdon Friday, and I'm like great.... I couldn't say no, so since he had my cell number he was going to call me so that we could go together on the train cause he didn't want to go with the people I knew in their car....

So I made it home, hoping that he really wouldn't want to come Friday, but overwhelmed and crazy and kinda freaking out and just out of my head. I was like what in the world am I supposed to do with this diamond ring? Cause it's real, and seeing that the guy was wearing an Armani suit, and some kind of designer shades and he'd explained that he had a lot of money, I don't know what to do with the thing. It's pretty and all, but yeah....

So why I gave this guy my cell number I don't know, but he called my incessantly Saturday night. It just makes me laugh. He was definitely infatuated with me and the more he called the stranger he got in my head. Till I'm like with guy is psychotic. I'm like there is no way I'm meeting him alone Friday night and I'm going to try dang hard to figure out how to not ever meet him again.

Friday, he again called incessantly, and so I found some other people to ride the train with. But Fridays I meet with my Tandem partner until six at school and then meet up with Serge at 6:45 at school to go to Institute. So as soon as I was done, I hop on the metro to get downtown to the train station. I buy my ticket and then take off for the track cause I'm not sure if I'm going to make the train. All thoughout this time, this guy, Joseph, is calling me cause he doesn't want to miss me. I'm just trying to not miss the train and meet him just as I'm getting on board, figuring that I can find Eric and his sister once I'm on the train. So I get on and the train leaves and Eric calls to see if I made it on, I told him it did, and he's like okay I'll come look for you. So Joseph's like come sit down and I'm trying to explain that I'm trying to find my friends, but there is a definite language barrier, and I don't know if he's just choses to not understand what I'm saying or not. So Eric calls again cause he realized that the train were on is two separate ones hooked together so you can't walk the train from end to end and of course we are on separate ones. Luckily the train ride was only like a half hour, but I'm not interested at all in this guy and he just doesn't get it.

So we get to Yverdon and I'm so relieved to see Eric and we walk to Institute, but no one but me knows the strange story of this guy and how I really don't know him at all, and I can't quite explain that with him right there and talking with people later, they all just assumed that I'd known the guy for forever. So we go to class and it was fun and amusing and Joseph had a good time cause he told me that he wanted to come with me every week afterwards, and I like this just isn't working cause I'd really rather never see this guy again in my life. So left at like 10:30 to go home earlier with some other girls cause I didn't want to end up alone with this strange man, and I didn't want him following me home, so I figured even though I had no clue where these two other girls lived I'd just follow them until they got home and if this guy was still following me I'd just stay with them. But luckily after waiting forever for missed buses and being close to downtown, he left, and I'm was relieved to finally be able to tell them the strange story and try to figure out where in the world I was and where I was going so that I could eventually get home.

So since then I haven't run into the guy although he keeps calling and texting me incessantly and wants to try to get me to meet him somewhere.

So that's my random story of the week.

Hope your lives aren't quite as exciting

Stephanie

Ein Wochenende in Dresden

Upon the generous invitation of the family of the foreign-exchange student my family housed for a few months last year, I spent last weekend in Dresden. Considering its history of the fire bombing in World War II and position within Eastern Germany (and a major flood just five years ago) I guess I was expecting something like how Prague was described by a few friends. Maybe a nice city center but otherwise lacking in areas you, as a tourist, would want to visit. I was very wrong. The city is gorgeous. Not in the same grandiose way of certain Munich streets but amazing just the same. In the first place, the city is more open. Unlike Munich where it is unusual to see more than a quarter kilometer because some new building is rising up to obstruct your view, Dresden is less dense. Kind of nice, especially considering my hometown. Also, all the destruction visited upon this city has just lead to the construction of new buildings. Generally beautiful and lacking in age related wear, though the prevalence of graffiti does mar many. Not to say Dresden lacks in the classic. The city was a king's seat and is the government center of modern Saxony. The famed Opern and Zwinger and Frauenkirche were all rebuilt as they originally were.

Visited the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, a gallery of paintings by European masters around the time of Renaissance, while there. I am sure you're all familiar with that picture of the two cherubs, mildly bemused/ bored expressions upon their faces? Saw that. Also learned they are only a smaller part of a much larger picture with the Virgin Mary flanked by two saints. Passed through a room of paintings by Peter Paul Rubens, all of them a good deal larger than me. Very nearly floored by the sole Jan Vermeer I saw. And I did not even visit the entire gallery.

Should these descriptions inspire feelings of jealousy, I offer this anecdote as a mediator. Sunday morning I get up early. The father tells me to take a left from the house and walk down to the river. If I look right, towards the smoke and across the river, I'll see the church. After Mass, breakfast will be ready. Of course he tells me this in German. The family has only been talking to me in German all weekend, and I think, no problem, I've been understanding them well enough so far. Well, after I finally figure out which left he was talking about and make it to the river, the church bells are ringing. Makes it easier to find the church, but I have to hurry. Turns out it is a Lutheran church, but Catholic churches are in short supply in this part of Germany. I roll with it. After the service I make my way back to the house and learn of my mistake. Breakfast was not quite ready, so I was supposed to just take a fifteen minute walk or so, enough time to check out the river and make it back. Then breakfast would be finished, and we would go to a Catholic church they had found online. Yeah... Oops. Sorry about that.

Still, two days and one night was not enough time in Dresden. Too bad getting back is going to be a long shot.

Something Exotic in Gaelic Here...

Hey Honors Pals,

It's been a while since I put an update on here about life in Ireland, and after reading Molly's post about German beer and boys, I was quite inspired to write.

I have been going to classes here for about two weeks, and (cross fingers) I expect that they should not be nearly as challenging as what I'm used to. They all seem interesting (except for my class on Irish Local Politics--yuck) and my I am in love with my Art History professor, mostly because he has the most amazing Scottish accent I have ever heard. The lack of school work and class time has left me much time to explore Cork, enjoy life, and yes, spend a lot of my time going out to the pubs. I heard that Ireland drinks more alcohol per capita than any other European country, and after three weeks in Ireland, I believe it! But don't worry about me, I plan on coming back home with my liver mostly intact.

Cork is a really great city, and there are lots of opportunities for smaller trips around Cork and around Ireland too. The Irish bus and train system is very extensive, so you can get about anywhere in the country you want to go to. My first weekend here I went to the Blarney Castle and kissed the Blarney stone, and yesterday I went to the small port town of Cobh to see the last port of call for the Titanic. Next weekend I am planning on taking a two-day trip up to the Aran Islands, which are supposed to be one of the most beautiful places in all of Ireland. I am loving it over here, but I do miss a few things and people from home. I hope you all are having a great time, either in Spokane or in assorted exotic places abroad!

Slan (Which I think is Gaelic for goodbye)

Le commence d'ecole

My long, long vacation has finally ended. I'm back to real life as a student with homework again.

Monday I finally had my first class. It was a little overwhelming to jump back in to the swing of things. Especially since I'm a week behind almost everyone else because I couldn't start classes until I'd finished up some testing. What actually surprised me was how well I could understand my professors. Just being here in the midst of everything and having random conversations with people, I felt like my knowledge of French was very weak. Trying to communicate with people has been very frustrating and difficult, but as time is passing it is becoming easier, although I probably sound really weird to them because my vocabulary is so lacking. I was trying to say 'trail' and the best way I could in French was 'the little road on the mountain that goes up to the top.' Yeah, it takes me forever to say anything because I have to describe the one word that I don't know.

Tuesday and Wednesday, I spent all day at school, going from one class to the next. This semester I'm only studying at the school of French as a foreign language (EFLE) so I have exciting classes like, Overview of the written media, a grammar class for 7 hours a week, Introduction to linguistics, phonectics, introduction to french and french speaking culture, Translation from English to French, and my favorite... methodology of studying a foreign language at university. So overall I have 20 hours of class a week, so hopefully enough to keep me busy. I'm not quite sure how homework goes here, but there is definitely less of it. I'm already missing math and physics classes, but they don't offer any of those at UNIL.

Friday I didn't have any classes, so instead of doing my homework, like I probably should have, I went shopping. I live close to two good sized malls, and can't help but wander over there. It's kinda funny cause all the malls here have grocery stores in them. My problem is I would love to spend all my money on their great shoes and coats, but I do want to travel some while I'm over here and so I have to save my francs for that.
\n\u003cdiv\> \u003c/div\>\n\u003cdiv\>No, but it's fun to have classes and to study at EFLE because for the most part there are the same people in most of my classes and we all don't speak perfect French. It's fun to see the diversity of people that have come to Switzerland to learn French. Unfortunately, the people I talk to the most are the Americans and the British. It is easier to speak English to get to know people, but I really am trying to just speak French at school and hopefully meet more non-English people.\n\u003c/div\>\n\u003cdiv\> \u003c/div\>\n\u003cdiv\>Yeah, the people here laugh at me cause I'm not at all used to the petits-bissoux, the little kisses on the check that you do with people you know. I'm like k, you're invading my personal bubble here, and I'm not sure if I know you, but I'm trying to get more used to it cause that's the way things go here. Maybe I'll get more accustomed to it so they don't always tell me afterwards, if they speak English, it's a european thing.\n\u003c/div\>\n\u003cdiv\> \u003c/div\>\n\u003cdiv\>Yeah, so life here is good. It's beautiful and still green. The temperature is still around 65 F. But it's funny because you'll see people here all bundled up in heavy coats and scarfs and boots, and I'm like this is still good enough weather to wear shorts. I wonder what they'll do when it actually gets cold.\n\u003c/div\>\n",0]
);
D(["ce"]);
//-->


No, but it's fun to have classes and to study at EFLE because for the most part there are the same people in most of my classes and we all don't speak perfect French. It's fun to see the diversity of people that have come to Switzerland to learn French. Unfortunately, the people I talk to the most are the Americans and the British. It is easier to speak English to get to know people, but I really am trying to just speak French at school and hopefully meet more non-English people.

Yeah, the people here laugh at me cause I'm not at all used to the petits-bissoux, the little kisses on the check that you do with people you know. I'm like k, you're invading my personal bubble here, and I'm not sure if I know you, but I'm trying to get more used to it cause that's the way things go here. Maybe I'll get more accustomed to it so they don't always tell me afterwards, if they speak English, it's a european thing.

Yeah, so life here is good. It's beautiful and still green. The temperature is still around 65 F. But it's funny because you'll see people here all bundled up in heavy coats and scarfs and boots, and I'm like this is still good enough weather to wear shorts. I wonder what they'll do when it actually gets cold.