To the End of the Empire!

Good news: I successfully navigated public transportation to get from Norwich to Durham, and I didn't get lost once! I'm getting better at this. Before I go into my travel adventures, however, I have to tell you about the Ale Festival! Such an exciting week.
On Thursday the lovely Anna came to visit from Finland, where she is spending the semester. This is one of the things that I love about Dickinson - my friends are all over the globe now and it makes us sound so worldly and impressive to say, "Oh, my friend from Finland is popping in for the night..." Anna was en route from Edinburgh to London, and since half of our class is in Norwich, she stopped off here. It was so good to see her! To show her some true Norwich culture, we headed to the Ale Festival that was running all last week.
It was held in what used to be a church, which seems kind of sacreligious, but a lot of medieval breweries were actually run by monks, so I guess that it wasn't that bad. And there were signs everywhere saying that throwing up was strictly prohibited. Very practical, these British. There were over two hundred different types of ale, and that was only in the first room. I didn't make it to the room with all of the local brews. Anna and I favoured the cider corner, which was significantly smaller, but there were helpful little charts that explained the differences in various ciders. The ales, not so much. We basically went by which brews had the coolest names - Beowulf, Titanic, and Dark Side of the Moon were winners in that category. I didn't actually like any of them, but that's okay because the people-watching was excellent. There was even a full orchestra to serenade the ale-drinkers. For the truly romantic and devoted, there's a Valentine's Day ale fest coming up in February.
This was also Halloween weekend, and I must admit that I really missed New England. I love October at home - the beautiful fall colours (I have to practise British spelling, otherwise I get points taken off on my essays. Everything is supposed to be anonymous, and nothing screams "AMERICAN!" like forgetting the extra u. Also, chicken wings), the crunchy leaves (they're just soggy here), the brisk air, and the smell of fall - woodsmoke, spices, pumpkin, and a crispness that I can't quite describe. Also, Halloween here isn't really a big deal. The cut-off for trick-or-treating is around ten years old, and it's hardly commercialized at all. People here also don't put a lot of thought into costumes. I saw countless people wearing ripped t-shirts and jeans with red paint streaking their faces and slapped in handprints on their clothing. It was budget-conscious, I suppose, but it also made it seem like an army of zombies had taken over UEA from Thursday night on.
BUT that is not important. What is important is that I journeyed into The North (this is literally what the road signs say: North - this way. Thank you?)to the fair city of Durham to visit the wonderful and amazing Sarah and Caitlin!!! It was such an amazing weekend, and looking back it was kind of surreal. I'm in England, and I traveled to another part of England to visit two of my best friends, and it was completely normal. Dear life, you are amazing! So I set off bright and early with my backpack, feeling a bit like Frodo Baggins setting off from Bag End (minus the corruptive jewelry), to catch the 5:45 bus into town. I traveled through some beautiful country - East Anglia is really flat and green, but driving through the edge of the Peak District and Yorkshire I saw postcard shots of rolling hills with bubbling rivers, framed by autumn foliage. It was absolutely stunning, and Durham is a really pretty town nestled in the hills of the North Scotch Corner. It's coal-mining country, the site of the miner's strikes during the Thatcher Era, so it's Billy Elliot country. Also, the Geordie accents are so cool.
Sarah and Caitlin met me at the bus station, and it felt so normal to be with them again! They took me out to Klute, which is supposedly the worst nightclub in Europe (so says Wikipedia). I didn't think that it was that bad, although they played really cheesy music - the Hansens, Grease, you name it. If it was ridiculous and popular in the nineties, they played it. We had a lot of fun, though!

The next day was our great adventure to Hadrian's Wall, which you would think would be easy to find. It's not. The British have this thing about signs - they can't be helpful for some reason. We took a train to Haltwhistle, a little town in the middle of nowhere, and hiked two miles or so to a nature path that should have led us to the wall. There were plenty of signs in the town, but once they led us into the wildnerness they disappeared. Awesome. So we wandered around sheep pastures for a long time!
They were very beautiful sheep pastures - it was exactly what I imagined hiking through the English countryside would be - but we were still lost in sheep pastures, which is sort of an odd feeling. Finally we found an elderly gentleman smoking his pipe in one of the fields, and he gave us directions. Fun fact: not only are English signs terrifically unhelpful, there is an astounding number of walls in the countryside. Trying to find one ancient-looking wall is like trying to find Waldo in a room full of people wearing red and white stripes. Oh my goodness. Finally, after about 802 fakeout walls, we found Hadrian's Wall. It was across from the pub, obviously. It's just that the pub was in the middle of nowhere.

But yes, we made it, and it was so cool. We were literally standing on the edge of the Roman Empire at its height.
Emperor Hadrian ordered the wall built between A.D. 122 and 128, supposedly to separate Roman Britain from the heathen Scots and Picts in the North (who were actually native Britons pushed out by the Romans, but that's okay). Really, it's more of a status symbol for the Romans - it displayed the power and breadth of their empire. The wall is 73 miles long and once stretched all of the way across the neck of England, from Carlisle to Newcastle. Every Roman mile there was a border crossing called a milecastle, and the Romans actually issued passports (the first in history) to their citizens in Britain. This way the wall also helped to establish greater control over Britons under Roman rule. Even though not much of the wall is standing, the visible remains are still impressive, rising up from the rocky outcroppings and hills. It was a great trip, and the countryside was so beautiful. Very Middle Earth. What I really loved was the complete lack of tourism. For such an incredible historical landmark, there was hardly any marketing, and we could actually stand on the wall. It's just become part of the environment - another piece of the rugged northern countryside.


I also got to see Durham Cathedral, where the Venerable Bede, Saint Cuthbert, and Saint Aidan are buried.
It's a beautiful cathedral, and the cloisters were used as one of the corridors in the sixth Harry Potter film. Quite exciting! Most of all, though, it was just so wonderful to see Sarah and Caitlin, because no matter how many new friends you make, nothing can measure up to being with the people who really know you, especially when you're in another country! Although when I got back to my flat, I found all of my flatmates up waiting for me - Jesse even brought her pillow and duvet into the hallway to camp outside my door, so that was an excellent welcome home. I felt so loved this weekend!
I actually had to go back to doing work after that, but the travelbug has taken hold. November is the month of many travels: I'm off to Nottingham and Sherwood Forest in search of Robin Hood this coming weekend, then I'm back for a few days before heading to Edinburgh for the rest of reading week. Then I think that I'll actually be here for more than a week before going to Dublin. It's completely surreal - when did my life become this amazing? I was skyping with my best friend today, and she said, "You're actually living your dream!" And I realized that she's absolutely right. I'm doing things that I've always wanted to do, like hiking along Hadrian's Wall. And it's a complete whirlwind and I know that I'll be exhausted come December, but I want to see everything that I can, and I may never have this opportunity again. It's so incredible, and I'm determined to take advantage of as much as I can, to suck the marrow out of life, as it were. As John Keating tells his students in Dead Poets Society, "Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary."
Even while I'm wandering all over England, I still miss all of you! Happy Bonfire Day!