So we decided to move on to Sutton Hoo, which we thought was just a short bus ride away. We were sitting there at the bus stop, waiting for the 71 bus, when what I can only describe as an Australian bush van came careening to a halt in front of us. I didn't even realize that it was a legitimate bus until I saw the numbers on the back - 71. I just burst out laughing so hard that I started crying, boarded the bus with tears streaming down my face, and then held on for dear life because I thought that I was going to die. It was ridiculous. Steph and I were keeping an eager eye out for Sutton Hoo, and as we flew past it I pressed the stop button. Now, on most buses the driver waits for the next legitimate stop and then lets you off the bus. Not the 71 - the driver screeched to a halt and left us on the side of the road, so we had to wade through waist-high grass to get to Sutton Hoo. Oh dear. Then we had to take silly pictures by the sign, of course, so all of the motorists stared at us. We were those tourists.
We finally made it to the actual site of Sutton Hoo (had to walk by a farm first), which was interesting even though there wasn't a whole lot to see. Archeologists still don't really know why Sutton Hoo was used as a burial ground, because there wasn't a settlement on the site. But it was clearly a very honored burial ground for either the Angles or the Saxons (archeologists aren't sure about this either, although the text at Sutton Hoo buys into the idea that it was Anglian. The scholarly debate is between two kings - the Anglian king Raedwald and the Saxon king Sigehberht, whom I refer to as Redwall and Sherbert, respectively). Because East Anglia changed leadership between the Angles and the Saxons so many times, it's difficult to determine who was in power at the time that Sutton Hoo was created. Regardless, it dates from the seventh century, right around the time that Christianity was spreading throughout England. Sutton Hoo is famous because it contains two huge ship burials, one of which still contained a vast treasure, including the Sutton Hoo helmet now on display in the British Museum.
This find was monumental because it demonstrated that the early East Anglians were much more sophisticated than archeologists believed, namely because of the influence of other cultures on the burials. Coins from Merovingian France were found in the burial, and the very idea of the ship burial came from Danish culture, so there must have been trade between those two regions and East Anglia (no similar burials have been found elsewhere in the country). The find also legitimized Beowulf as a sort of anthropoligical record of Anglo-Saxon culture. Today you can see the burial mounds, which have been reconstructed following extensive excavations in the late 1930s. Not much to look at, I'm afraid, but the historical significance is huge. 
Following our adventures at Sutton Hoo, Steph and I got back on the bushwhacker van to return to the center of Woodbridge and catch another bus back to Ipswich. Well, we got on the right number, but it was going the wrong way. We only realized this after we got out of the city and saw a lot of fields, so I swallowed my pride and my panic and went up to the busdriver. The conversation went kind of like this:
me: "So, we were trying to get back to Ipswich, and we obviously got on the wrong bus. What do we do?"
busdriver: *blinks*...silence... "You wanted to go to Ipswich?" *bursts into laughter*
I was not encouraged, espcially when he pulled the bus over because he was laughing so hard. True story. It turns out, however, that he was very nice and that he got me to find the humour in the situation. His was the last bus of the day, so even if we'd gotten off to wait for the bus going the other way, it would just be him on his way back to Ipswich (finally), so he told us to just stay on the bus and keep warm. To make a long story short, we made it all the way to the North Sea, saw quite a bit of scenic Suffolk countryside, and then saw it all again! During our 3.5 hour adventure on the bus I got a lot of reading done for class, and the driver would frequently glance into his rearview mirror and say something witty such as, "Any of this look familiar?" or, "So you were 40 minutes away from Ipswich, but now you're an hour and 40 minutes away!" and my personal favourite, "Oh, I can't believe you did that - you made my day!" He seemed to take quite a liking to our misadventure, so he actually dropped us off right in front of the station, a special trip, with a warning to us to get on the correct train. Oh, wonderful busdriver, I am forever indebted to you!
I never thought that I would be so happy to see Norwich as I was after that trip. Steph and I treated ourselves to a wonderful Italian dinner at a restaurant in city centre, including an enormous ice cream sundae drenched in amaretto. Completely necessary. I didn't make it back to my flat until 11:30, when I did some reading and then fell into bed, only to be woken an hour later by screaming outside. Normally I can sleep through such outbursts, but this time someone was screaming my name. It took a few miinutes for my groggy brain to comprehend that Amy was under my window yelling for me, and that it was Alessio yelling, "She's ignoring you!" before breaking into Lady Gaga. There was no going back to sleep after that, especially when Alessio proceeded to run up and down the hallway shrieking, "Fire hazard! Fire hazard!" while throwing toilet paper everywhere. Oh flatmates, I love you.
On Tuesday I decided to get lost more locally, so I took my Norwich A to Z (pronounced zed here) and a walking route that I had gotten from the city website and wandered downtown Norwich. It was much more successful than the previous day's adventures!
The rest of the week was pretty quiet. Four of my flatmates went home for the weekend, and it was on the cold and rainy side. On Saturday morning we had our last walking tour as a giant, obnoxious group of 27 Dickinson humanities students. Professor Qualls assigned each of us a site in Norwich, so we had a lovely four-hour tour in the raw, wet weather. Huzzah! But I do love the city, and we did see some cool spots, including a street that was used in the movie Stardust. After our epic tour we all went back to Professor Qualls's house to have a wonderful lunch, and I ended up playing Apples to Apples with his son. It was an excellent way to spend a rainy Saturday afternoon!
So whereas it's been relatively quiet for me, it has been a fairly dramatic week in European politics. The coalition government in the UK announced huge budget cuts this week, combined with higher tuition fees and a rise in the pension age. As with all budget cuts, there's a lot of debate over who the cuts will affect the most. There haven't been the outward reactions in Britain that there have been in France (BBC News had an interesting editorial on the French strikes and the American way - ) because the Brits don't really seem to get riled up by much. They grumble and then carry on, although Nick Clegg, the Lib-Dem deputy prime minister, has spoken out over unlimited increases in tuition fees and welfare cuts, both of which are part of the budget cuts. What I don't understand is the inefficient way that the wellfare state is set up - it's not dependent on economics. As far as I can muddle it out, all families, no matter how wealthy they are, get money from the government for their children. Similarly, all people over a certain age receive a larger heating allowance than younger groups. This sounds nice, but it means that millionaires are receiving government support when they are perfectly capable of paying for their own heating. This makes no sense to me - I feel that it would make more sense to base services on income. I don't claim to have anywhere near a perfect understanding of the situation, however. We'll see what happens.
November has turned into travel month, so I should have many exciting adventures to report to you soon! And Happy Halloween!
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