'You Give Me Fever'

Dear readers,
I am writing to you from a land once again paralyzed (this seems to happen to England quite a bit, actually, which is concerning), this time not by any natural phenomenon, but by a much happier occasion - the Royal Wedding. Yes, Prince William and Kate Middleton are finally tying the knot tomorrow morning at Westminster Abbey, and the country is caught up in wedding fever. Case in point: when I walked into the Learning Department at Norwich Castle this morning, there were William and Kate paper dolls on the table, along with a commemorative mug and postcard. Granted, these had been purchased as gag gifts, but the frightening part is that they are manufactured at all. All of the storefronts in Norwich are displaying an unusally high number of Union Jacks, as well as various wedding paraphernalia, and the newspapers seem to be ignoring actual news stories in favour of publishing the seating plan for the wedding. This is highly unusual for England, as such displays of enthusiasm and patriotism are generally not done here. It's funny - the English are infamous for not exhibiting a great deal of emotion (which I have found to be largely untrue on an individual level, at least among the younger generation) except when it comes to the Royal Family. Princess Diana inspired massive public affection even before her death, and many analysts of popular culture point to her funeral as the watershed moment for the breakdown of the traditional stiff upper lip. Check out the BBC's take on the issue here: . Now people are getting uncharacteristically excited for the wedding between William and Kate, to the point where there are people camping out on the Royal Mall in London in order to catch a glimpse of the royal couple on their way to Westminster Abbey tomorrow morning. You'll be happy to know, I'm sure, that Prince William has just paid them an impromptu visit.
The wedding has actually done some good in giving people something positive to focus on, rather than the fact that the rest of the world seems to be going to hell through natural disasters or political upheavals, and according to my supervisors at the Castle (except for the one who is boycotting the wedding), it has brought the nation together. I'm just amazed by the media circus surrounding the event. Maybe amazed isn't the right word - coming from such a huge celebrity culture, I'm not surprised by the amount of attention that the wedding has received, and I'm glad that it's focused on the Royal Family instead of say, a reality television star who has no claim to fame, but whom the American media seem to love anyway (Jersey Shore cast, I'm looking at you). It's just astounding how invested people can become in someone else's life - it's as if the obsessive tendencies of middle school girls have enveloped the nation. If I was Kate Middleton, I would be absolutely terrified. For the record, though, she seems to be bearing everything extremely well, and there is a very high public opinion of her. So I wish William and Kate all of the happiness in the world, as well as some well-earned moments of privacy together to celebrate their marriage.
I have not been spending my entire holiday following the Royal Wedding, however. In fact, today is the first day that I've really thought very much about it. I have been busy travelling and working on papers. Yes, while the rest of the country is caught up in wedding fever, I am caught up in paper-writing fever, which is slightly less enjoyable. I'm sure that you don't want to hear about the papers (and I don't want to think about them, frankly), but I don't have time to do a proper update on my travels (which were amazing), so I will give you a teaser for now. It might be my latest column for The Dickinsonian, but hey, that's the best that I've got right now. More to follow after my papers are finished in about a week and a half!
Twenty-four hours before writing this column, I was in an airport in Zadar, Croatia waiting for my flight back to London after an amazing ten-day trip through Italy and Croatia. It was one of those trips that I never, ever saw myself taking – sure, it would be nice to see Rome and maybe soak up some sun by the Adriatic Sea, but things that cool and exciting are not supposed to happen to people like me. They are for glamourous people who are not constrained by a student budget and who do not have pasty white skin that burns to a crisp the instant they step into the sun. When the opportunity for such a spring break trip presented itself, however, I grabbed it immediately, hoping that reality would not catch up with me until much later. My travel buddies, three fellow Dickinsonians, and I had an amazing time and we got to see and do so many incredible things. We also learned quite a bit, and I am going to share some of the most important points that we picked up.
1. It is possible to eat well in Italy on a student budget. Markets are especially good in the heroic quest to spend as little money on food as possible – we would buy a loaf of bread and apples for breakfast, which cost us about two euro in total. Asking tour guides or hostel-owners for recommendations is also a good plan, as they can point you in the direction of restaurants that serve good food at reasonable prices.
2. Ask for student discounts. Many places do not advertise these discounts as they want take both your wallet and your soul from you, but flashing a university ID can work wonders. At the Vatican Museum we got student tickets for half of the listed price, leaving us with plenty of gelato money for that afternoon.
3. Speaking of gelato, it is perfectly acceptable to have gelato for lunch six out of ten days when you are travelling.
4. Those language classes that you had to take to fill a distribution requirement might someday save you from having to spend the night on the streets of Rome and being kidnapped to work in an international prostitution ring (yes, I saw Taken). After our hotel reservation was cancelled without prior notice in Rome, my friend used her Dickinson language skills to explain our plight to a delightful little Italian hotel-owner named Pasquale who spoke no English whatsoever. He took pity on us, found us a room for two nights, pointed out all of the sites to see on our map, and gave us free breakfast and cappuccinos in the morning. At the end of our stay, he told us that he felt like he was saying goodbye to his babies (at least, that’s what Sarah told me he said.) In such a situation, it is appropriate to email your language professor and thank her profusely.
5. British people drink very weak coffee – our first Italian cappuccinos came as a great surprise.
6. Sometimes it pays to look like a tourist and follow the tips in a travel book. After queuing (that’s British for standing in line) for two hours at the Uffizi in Florence, we decided to heed the warnings in Let’s Go Europe! and wake up early to beat the lines at the Vatican Museum. After waking up at 6 a.m. we arrived before the masses of tourists and got right into the museum – by noon the lines were stretched half way around Vatican City.
7. Waking up early in general, although painful, is worth it. Apart from thwarting queues, you might just get to watch the sun rise over Croatia while taking a ferry to an island with white pebble beaches surrounded by blue mountains and turquoise waters. It is in the realm of possibilities.
8. Go to Croatia. Seriously.

Do You Speak W(h)ale?

Hello, dear readers. Happy April! Spring has come to England, and it is absolutely beautiful (sorry everyone on the East Coast. One day you will know a time without snow, or even bipolar temperature changes). Daffodils are everywhere, the trees are starting to unfurl their first leaves, there are at least eighty dogs frolicking in the park at any given time (this might be a bit of an exaggeration), and the birds are chirping at one o'clock in the morning (this is not an exaggeration - it's just bizarre). Before I get into the travel adventure part of this blog, I just want to share the first verse of a beautiful poem. I wish that I could take credit for finding it, but I was led to it by a friend (even though I'm the one who took the nineteenth-century poetry module last semester. Ahem.).

'Home Thoughts from Abroad'
Robert Browning

Oh, to be in England
Now that April's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm tree-bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England - now!

It might not be Browning's best work, but it captures pretty well what I'm feeling being here to see spring work its subtle changes to the landscape.

But onto travel adventures! So the Dickinson crew has been doing a lot of travelling this semester since there are only thirteen of us now - much more manageable than twenty-seven or however many of us there were last semester. A month ago we took a long weekend in Cardiff, the capital of Wales. For any science fiction fans out there, you may know that Cardiff is one of the prime filming locations for Doctor Who, and it's where Torchwood is supposedly located (speaking of science fiction/fantasy, this is going to be a fantastic month - the new series Camelot just premiered on Stars, starring the amazing and incredibly talented Joseph Fiennes as Merlin in what appears to be a very dramatic retelling of the King Arthur legend. The new series Game of Thrones, with Sean Bean and Harry Lloyd, is going to start on HBO in the middle of the month, and then Doctor Who returns on Easter. Nerds of the world, rejoice!). I must admit, I'm not terribly up on my Welsh history (everyone else, rejoice!), although I can tell you a great deal about the beginnings of the Welsh Church around the fifth century, as well as the heroic tradition in Celtic literature and its impact on the Arthurian legend. As I'm guessing that you really don't want to read that, however, I shall refrain. I do know that Cardiff wasn't really an important city until the coal industry became big. It's right on the south coast of Wales, so it did serve as a trading port, which is probably why the castle was built early on, but it doesn't have the history of a city like Edinburgh, say. Anyway, I'll stop rambling and just get to the pictures, shall I? I feel like you as the reader are going to start brandishing cutlery and yelling, 'Get on with it!' Monty Python style (which I got to watch for class last week. I know, my life is awesome.).
We arrived in Cardiff in time to enjoy a beautiful, sunny afternoon. Everyone else promptly passed out at the hostel to recover from our 5.30 a.m. departure time, but Stephenie and I decided to start exploring the city. We headed to the National Gallery and went for a wander around Bute Park.


There were daffodils everywhere, which was lovely because they're so sunny and happy-looking and they're one of my favourite flowers. Turns out that the daffodils are one of two Welsh national symbols - the other is the leek. Why? Not sure. But Saint David's Day (the patron saint of Wales) had just passed, so if there weren't enough real daffodils, there were daffodil decorations everywhere.


We also found an abundance of stone circles, which the ever-informative Lonely Planet tells me are from the Victorian period, not the ancient Celts. The Victorians were very fascinated with the past and a great deal of their art seems to be looking back to a nostalgic time of pre-industrial community with nature, etc. I'm pretty sure that this is actually the Stone Table where Aslan was sacrificed in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, however. Yes, I know, I'm making ridiculous literary references again. You should be used to it by now.


Cardiff Castle shining in the beautiful late afternoon sun. Much more of this to come!


Steph and I spent a fair amount of time trying to locate medieval priory ruins that were in the park - they were a bit of a let down. I conquered them no problem.


The next day we had playtime at Cardiff Castle, which was all kinds of delightful.


There was a trebuchet, pronounced 'tray-bucket,' obviously, none of these outrageous French accents, just hanging out on the lawn, asking us to go be silly. Here we see Jess and Stephenie assuming the positions for a classic, musketeer-type duel, while Sarah and I prepare for the less conventional wizard duel.


Here's the gang in the castle keep, which was built by the Normans in the 1080s and then replaced with this stone keep in the 1130s. So yes, I did a bit more than just play on the lawn. Not much more, mind...


Yes, that Arthur. There was a sort of lineage of Welsh kings around the library in the castle apartments, which were restored in the Victorian period (again, that Victorian nostalgia and romanticizing of the past). The first written accounts of King Arthur come from the Welsh Mabinogion, a collectiion of heroic tales, and historians think that, if Camelot did exist, it was in Wales. Alright, miniature literature lesson over, promise (but, I mean, really, isn't this stuff cool?).


And, because we were in a castle and because we're awesome, Sarah and I had to duke it out k-niggit style in the gift shop. Dear Mom and Dad, aren't you glad that you sent me here to have mature learning experiences?


We headed to the other side of the city to check out the Doctor Who: Up Close exhibit after indulging our inner children at the castle all morning. Here I am with the Tardis, waiting for Matt Smith to come whisk me away to a different planet (although I'm actually quite fond of this one, so I plan on staying for a while).


This is the latest addition to my collection of weird signs in the U.K. I'm sure that there's some deeper meaning from the show of which I am ignorant, but I like to think that this one means that if you take a nap, Zeus will smite you with a thunderbolt.


Cardiff Bay

That's where my photographic record comes to a close - we spent our last day in Cardiff venturing from coffee shop to coffee shop, with a stop at a pub for lunch (where our server looked like Colin Morgan in Merlin - such a King Arthury trip) doing coursework. All of the pubs have signs saying something along the lines of 'Brains served here!' or 'We love Brains!' But never fear, Cardiff is not a city full of zombies - Brains is the locally brewed beer. Why it's named that, I cannot tell you. British rationale - who knows. I'm really glad that we got to see Cardiff, but I think that three days was a bit too much time. We did everything that we wanted to do in two days, hence our marathon coffee stint. I would have loved to see more of Wales beyond the city, but methinks that will have to wait for a future trip to the U.K.
More travel adventures coming your way soon, hopefully - we went to Edinburgh about a week and a half ago, and that was amazing. Edinburgh is probably my favourite city that I've visited, and I enjoyed my second trip there just as much as my first! But I hope that things are going well for everyone reading this, that spring is working on springing, and that you're remembering to seize the day. I'll be buried under books and papers for the next four weeks (minus ten days in which I'll be cavorting around Italy and Croatia), but I'll be in touch soon!