Salzburg: The Hills Are Alive with the Sound of Mozart

Onto Salzburg, land of mountains, Mozart, mountains, The Sound of Music, and oh yes, mountains. Salzburg is a beautiful little city nestled in between hills that give way to the Alps (!), and it is probably best known as the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and as the home of the Von Trapp family. For me, though, it reminded me of Innsbruck, which is where I fell in love with Austria three and a half years ago. So where Vienna disappointed, Salzburg enchanted.

Looking over the River Salzach to the Monchsberg ("berg" meaning mountain). The castle-looking building on the left is the Museum of Modern Art, and the one lower down the mountain on the right is the Augustine Brewery.


View of Hohensalzburg (Salzburg Fortress) on top of the Monchsberg from the city square. Clearly, people in Salzburg heard about the crazy statues in Bratislava and so decided to build their own.


The Big Man himself - Mozart is absolutely inescapable in Salzburg, even though he himself found it a stifling place to be. He moved to Vienna when his career took off and hardly ever looked back.


Mozart's birth house, which is now a museum overrun by tourists. Seriously, I was almost bulldozed by one very eager group. But the museum has a cool collection of Mozart artifacts, including a violin that he played on as a child. It also offers an interesting look into the Mozart family, all of whom were musically inclined, but of course Mozart's sister couldn't do more than teach piano because God forbid, she was a woman.


Climbing the Monchsberg, where we saw gorgeous views of Salzburg. Such a beautiful city.


View of Hohensalzburg from further down the mountain at Richterhohe. The fortress was built between 1077 and 1681 by the ruling archbishops of Salzburg - each one made some kind of alteration or addition, which accounts for the mixture of architectural styles in the building. It is the largest completely preserved castle in all of Europe, and we climbed the watch tower to see:


MOUNTAINS!!!!!!!!!!!! I mean, normal levels of excitement. The big mountain is Untersberg, and it's the mountain where they filmed Julie Andrews singing "The Hills Are Alive," and the Von Trapps escape over the mountains into Switzerland. It's not the actual route they took, however, as Germany lies just on the other side of this particular mountain!


Confession: I could hear Bilbo Baggins in my head saying, "I want to see mountains again, Gandalf, mountains!" the entire time I was in Salzburg. Much as they tried to beat it out of my head by blasting Mozart and The Sound of Music incessantly.


The famous pavilion where Rolf and Leisl sang "You Are Sixteen Going on Seventeen." It was built specifically for the film and has since been moved to its present home at Hellbrunn Palace. Unfortunately you can't go inside of it anymore because an 80 year-old woman attempted to play Leisl and go hopping from bench to bench, and she broke her hip. Also, it was miserable and pouring rain!


The wedding church in Mondsee, a village in the Lake District outside of Salzburg. This is where the interior of the wedding scene was shot for the movie, but not where Maria and Captain Von Trapp were actually married. Their real wedding took place at Nonnberg Abbey in Salzburg, where Maria was also a novice. The exteriors of the wedding church were shot at another church, but filming crews got into trouble for putting up swastikas without permission and they had to move to this church.


The interior of the wedding church, where Maria walked down the aisle.

So unfortunately our Sound of Music tour was very wet and miserable, and we didn't get to see very much. Our tour guide drove us through the Lake District, which is supposed to be absolutely stunning, but it was so foggy that we literally could not see the mountains that I know were looming up ahead, just teasing me. We stopped in the tiny village of St. Gilgen's, where Mozart's mum was born, to admire the alpine scenery that we couldn't see and because we hadn't gotten our daily dose of Mozart yet, and then ended the tour in Mondsee, where we combatted the grey weather with delicious, hot apple strudel.
So although the weather didn't cooperate, we enjoyed ourselves and we got to see a lot. I really, really want to return to Salzburg in the summer when the sun will be shining. But yeah, that's the last installment of our trip! The next day we flew back to London, and I experienced air traffic for the first time. I had never seen another plane fly by in midair - they give off black exhaust, none of this white, puffy jet trail business. So I was looking out the window, clutching the arm rests with white knuckles because I hate flying, when I saw black smoke billowing up on the horizon. Sarah turned to me and said, "Are those... Death Eaters?" Thankfully we were not attacked by any Harry Potter villains, however, and we made it safely into London, where we were greeted by more clouds and rain. Sarah and I got back to Norwich and just collapsed at UEA, very glad to be back.
I was surprised at how much I missed England while I was gone. I think that I definitely needed a break from its eccentricities, but as we encountered obvious anti-tourist prejudice in Central Europe, I started to miss the famous English politeness more and more. When we got on the plane in Salzburg someone said, "Cheers!" and I was very excited. So this trip was perfectly timed - I got back to England ready to forgive all of its inconveniences and to have a great second semester. And so far it has lived up to my expectations! Although we miss Laura a lot, the person who moved into her room was actually my next door neighbour from uni last year, which was unexpected to say the least, but a nice surprise. I keep expecting the Doctor to show up because there are two parts of my life that are never supposed to have touched, but there don't seem to be any galactic ramifications yet. So the past two weeks have been full of readjusting, going out with my lovely flatmates, enjoying visits from great friends, and getting into the swing of classes again. Normal living business, but very enjoyable! I'm going to start traveling again soon, though, but I needed a break for a bit. I learned a lot planning this trip, and I feel like I grew up quite a bit. I never thought that I would be navigating airports by myself, let alone navigating public transportation in different languages and planning an entire trip. And yet I did - I think that this is the kind of education that I'm really receiving this year. Yes, I have my amazing King Arthur class, but I'm learning how to travel and to do the things that I want to do, not to mention shaping my world view by encountering different cultures and ideas. A global education, indeed.

Okay, I Buy Ticket: Vienna

So, I may have taken a week-sized break from anything productive, such as continuing to update my blog. To be fair, I have made extensive plans to be productive, but I seem to be failing on the execution. I think it's because the grey skies of England are slowly eating my soul away, and because I only have class two days a week, which sounds good but in reality it means that boredom is also eating my soul and I now have no motivation to do anything. I had a dream last night that I got my jobs at Dickinson back, and I was so excited because it meant that I had something to do on Thursday. But fear not, I plan to stare this week down, full of resolve, and get things done! This means everything from applying for summer jobs, finding volunteer work, working on my Robin Hood paper, exploring Norwich, reading those books that I've always wanted to but never seem to have the time for, and planning more trips. Oh, and watching three seasons of Doctor Who, which is the activity that seems to have taken precedence right now. Argh. As Ron Weasley would say, I need to sort out my priorities.
Okay, time-languishing rant over. I have lots and lots to look forward to, and I had an absolutely wonderful week. Sarah and Caitlin came to visit from Durham, and we had such a good time!!! I love my friends. But I'm supposed to be telling you about Vienna! Fear not, I have not forgotten. We finished our bagels and bade an unceremonious goodbye to Bratislava on the coach to Vienna. I was very excited when we crossed the border, because I could actually start to recognize words in German, such as "Sparkasse," which means bank. I was so proud of myself. We checked into our hostel in Vienna, where we got a sunny yellow room all to ourselves! It was very nice, although I was looking forward to rooming with half of Australia again. Sarah and I headed to a traditional Austrian restaurant for dinner (we did not mess around when it came to food), where we discovered an amazing dessert called kaiserschmarren, which is a caramelized pancake covered in powdered sugar and served with stewed plums. It is delicious!
Full of caramelized pancake, we began our explorations of Vienna the next day. The weather was foggy and gross, so that was a little upsetting. I could have stayed in England if I wanted grey mist, Austria! But the weather did not stop us from finding adventures. Beautiful buildings ensued as soon as we got off the metro:


Neue Hofburg, part of Hofburg Palace and home of the Austrian National Library.



The State Hall in Hofburg Palace, which used to be the library. It was built for Emperor Charles VI (the subject of the statue), and the pamphlet calls it a "jewel of profane baroque architecture." I think there's a bit of mistranslation going on there, but Sarah decided that this was the inspiration for the library in Beauty and the Beast. Also, just so you know, the sculptors were named Peter and Paul Strudel.


Yes, really! Complete with Mozart blaring from the speakers.


Karlskirche, or Saint Charles, which has lovely ceiling frescoes that can be reached via this:


An architecturally sound, safe contraption chilling 35 meters above the ground. You take this elevator up to a platform that I swear is just resting on the base of the dome, and then YOU HAVE TO CLIMB STAIRS ON TOP OF THIS RICKETY MADNESS!!! It was so scary. I'm pretty sure that I lost a few years off my life.



Sign on top of the rickety madness. Anne has translated it for me, but I don't believe her. I know that it says "The structural soundness of this platform is nonexistent. Safety is uncool."



The Belvedere, once the summer residence of Prince Eugene of Savoy. Today it's an art museum that houses a large collection of pieces by Gustav Klimt, including "Judith" and "The Kiss." I have also decided that I want to make this my summer residence.


Hofburg Palace, home of the Hapsburgs.


Stephansdom, or Saint Stephen's Cathedral. I climbed the South Tower, which you can just see over the tiled roof mosaic of the double eagle standard, the coat of arms of both the Holy Roman Empire and later the Austrian Empire.


I am still puzzled by this sign - does it mean that heterosexuality is frowned upon in this part of the city?


Trying the famous Sacher Torte at the Sacher Hotel, one of two places in the entire world where you can get the real thing. It's a Viennese specialty - chocolate cake made with rum and apricot preserves, with a layer of marmalade, cased in dark chocolate. For the cheaper British alternative, try Jaffa cakes.


Schloss Schonbrunn, Maria Theresa's summer home. Sarah has decided that she is going to establish residence here.


Overlooking Sarah's back gardens. They're quite lovely.
So that's a quick pictorial tour of our time in Vienna. We also visited the Sigmund Freud Museum, but I did not take pictures there. Vienna is a beautiful city, but it wasn't my favourite part of the trip. It kind of just felt like another big city, and I kept forgetting where I was. We also encountered some very rude people, which was certainly off-putting. Waitstaff at restaurants would blatantly ignore us, and we had to get up and do a jig to attract enough attention to order our food. Sarah and I sat at dinner once for four hours just because no one would acknowledge us. We clearly didn't fit in, but we weren't being obnoxious and we were very polite. I would have thought that people in cities that depend on tourism for a large part of their annual income would have been a bit more welcoming. Needless to say, I was thrilled to escape Vienna for Salzburg and for the mountains. That's right - there are hills, and they are alive.

Bratislava - Bless You?

The next stop on our trip was a last minute addition - Bratislava, the capital of the Slovak Republic. The Slovak Republic has only existed since 1993, I believe, as it was part of Czechoslovakia before that (see what they did there with the names? Pretty nifty stuff). But Rebecca wanted to see the land of her ancestors, and Sarah and I just wanted to see places, so we set off on a 7 a.m. business class coach (so nice!) from Prague to the quirky city of Bratislava.
Unfortunately we left the sun in Prague and didn't see it again for the rest of the trip, and the coach station is not usually the best part of a city, so Bratislava did not appear to best advantage when we first saw it. Its aspects improved as we got closer to the old city centre, however, and its quirky charms kind of snuck up on me. As we were on a a native food kick, we had our first Slovak meal at the Slovak Pub, which, you guessed it, serves traditional Slovak food. After finally convincing the server to take our order (she was not pleased that we wanted to order food, not quite sure why), we dug into real, authentic perogies.
This means that they were not battered and fried, as Dickinson seems to feel is necessary, but served with bacon, sheep's cheese, and dill sauce. Good stuff.
After lunch we set out to get our explorer on. Bratislava is very small, so we were able to cover most of the touristy things in one afternoon, especially since everything was closed for Epiphany. We discovered some delightfully colourful buildings (which made a very nice contrast against the grey weather. Looking at you, England) and some very unique statues.


Sarah and I felt right at home, although we were puzzled that we had never seen this stop on the Tube map before...


Our first real stop was Bratislavsky Hrad (Bratislava Castle), which was closed. But it was here that we got a lovely view of the city and found...


Svatopluck! He quickly became our new favourite hero and the mascot for our trip. Many legendary stories were written about him.


Aforementioned lovely view of Bratislava. You can see the New Bridge over the Danube River in the distance - it looks like a spaceship.


Quirky statue 1: Napoleon. He burnt down Bratislavsky Hrad when he swept through, so they built him a cheerful statue. Weird? Yes.


Quirky state 2: Schone Naci, a local dandy who lived in Bratislava in the early 20th century.


Quirky statue 3: Rubberneck, which is apparently the world's only statue sticking its neck from a hole in the ground. Yeah, because we really needed one of those... Anyway, he's been decapitated twice by rogue drivers, so the good people of Bratislava gave him his very own Man at Work sign.


St. Elizabeth's Church, most aptly nicknamed "The Blue Church."

Sites not pictured: the narrowest building in all of Central Europe, which is 130 cm wide and is home to a kebab shop, and other eccentric statues. I'm glad that we stopped in Bratislava, especially since it's somewhere that I'll probably never return to, but I'm also glad that it was only a one-night stop. We came, we saw, we had really good bagels, and we talked to a really nice young woman while eating our bagels. She studied abroad in New York, and she was telling us all of the other places that we should see in Slovakia. They sound amazing - if only I had the time and resources to travel everywhere. But it was not to be on this trip, and later that day we were in Vienna! More to come on that later. Right now, I have to get ready for my lecture on Chartism in Victorian Britain. Whee. I guess that will balance out the sheer, unadulterated awesomeness of my King Arthur class.
Before I head off to what promises to be a thrilling afternoon, though, I have to recommend one especially delightful piece of British culture. The BBC did a modern adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, entitled Sherlock. It's a three-part miniseries on Masterpiece Theatre (and I do love Masterpiece Theatre very, very much), and it is fantastic! It stars the delightful Benedict Cumberbath as Sherlock, and Martin Freeman (soon to be appearing as Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit - so excited! Less excited for Richard Armitage as a dwarf king, but we'll see how that goes) is Dr. Watson. They do a great job, it's really well-written, and just fun to watch. Also, a good way to procrastinate for 5.5 hours! So there you go, your recommended British cultural export of the day.

Czeching In

Dear everyone,
I am still alive and literate, but I've been procrastinating on updating this because there's so much to write about, and you know how I tend to wax verbose on good writing days. So I shall try to make this succinct, yet interesting and informative - a worthy challenge for any fledgling writer. Also, just to warn you, I just reread Pride and Prejudice for the gazillionth time, so if I start to sound like I'm writing from Regency England, well, that's the reason.
So I have returned from my Continental adventures with pictures and postcards, full of delicious and incredibly unhealthy food, and with a new appreciation for England. This kind of crept up on me, especially since I left the United Kingdom greatly annoyed with its general inability to accomplish anything without stepping on its own feet. I started keeping track of points after Sarah and I landed in Prague. For instance, there were about three inches of snow on the ground at the airport, but our plane still managed to land without issue. Point for Prague. We received correct and helpful instructions to our hostel from a gentleman at the airport. Another point for Prague! Our tram drove on the right side of the road. Five points for Prague! Sarah and I successfully navigated a bus, the metro, and a tram in Czech without getting us lost once. Point for us! By the end of the first day, Prague had five points, Sarah and I had one, and England had a disappointing zero. The next day, the sun shone in Prague, so all of England's chances at a comeback were completely ruined, as Prague gained eighteen thousand bonus points. When it comes to desserts, however, a most important category, there's a draw: Prague has hot chocolate that is out-of-this-world good, but England invented Cadbury. Enough said.
Back to Prague, which is a beautiful, beautiful city.
We arrived in the city around dinnertime, and unfortunately Rebecca was down with a violent cold/bubonic plague, but Sarah and I investigated a Czech pub for food. We tried some Czech specialties, including garlic soup (like French onion but with an extra zing and the ability to ward off vampires), unidentified varieties of pork, ham, and potatoes, and the aforementioned hot chocolate from the dessert gods.
Rebecca was still out of commission the next day (plague does that to you), but Sarah and I got ourselves to Starometske namesti, the old town square, to catch the Sandeman's New Prague Tour.
Yes, the same tour company that I have found and loved in every other city that I've visited! Seriously, they're amazing - go forth and take fun tours. It was a beautiful sunny day (although it was FREEZING), and we saw many delightful sites around Prague:

Astronomical clock upon which it is absolutely impossible to tell the actual time of day. It was built in the fourteenth century, and on the hour the skeleton on the right, representing Death, shakes his hourglass and all of the other figures, representing various sins, begin to shake, rattle, and roll, and the Twelve Apostles appear in the windows on top of the clock. To finish this grand display, which tourists block the entire square for, the little gold bird makes a sound that sounds like a cross between a balloon being deflated and a cow being strangled. It's quite something.


Communist architecture - it was really interesting to learn about what life was like in a former Eastern Block country.


The Estates Theatre, where Mozart premiered Don Giovanni and many other operas.


Franz Kafka, Prague's darling. This is only a recent development, as Kafka's work wasn't translated into Czech under the communist regime.


The Old New Synagogue in Josefov, the Jewish Town. The name comes from a mistranslation, but this synagogue is supposedly home to Rabbi Low's golem (large creature made from clay, as opposed to Gollum). The rabbi created the golem to protect the Jewish people of Prague, and it supposedly still resides in the attic here.


Charles Bridge.

Sarah and I also went through the Jewish Museum in Josefov, which was really interesting. There was an art exhibit of drawings that Jewish children did at Terezin, a concentration camp just outside the city. The Czech Republic was the longest-occupied territory during World War II, and Terezin was used as the "model" concentration camp. The Nazis photographed the people held there and made it seem like they were being treated well. In reality, Terezin was a holding camp, and people were sent from there to death camps further north in Germany and Poland. Really sobering stuff. We also got to walk through the Jewish graveyard, which has hundreds upon hundreds of gravestones all piled on top of each other. Basically, the city government wouldn't give the Jews more land to expand their graveyard, so they kept piling in more earth to house another layer of bodies, and they would put the old headstones on the top layer, so there are literally centuries worth of headstones piled into the graveyard.
We shivered our way back to the hostel after a lovely day sightseeing, had more delicious food at the Czech pub from the previous night, and settled into our room full of Australians.
The third day of our trip was not as sunny as the previous day, but we headed up to Prazsky Hrad, or Prague Castle. Hrad is Czech and Slovak for castle, and it is one of two Czech or Slovak words that I picked up traveling. The other is namesti, which means square.
The coolest part of the castle is St. Vitrus Cathedral, which is the gothic-looking, spiry bit. The church itself is beautiful, and Sarah and I climbed to the top of the South Tower to see some amazing views of the city.
So beautiful! We spent the afternoon at the castle, where we were forced to take a hot chocolate break in order to warm up our fingers. Don't you hate that? That evening we decided to take in some culture and to take advantage of cheap student tickets, and went to see Carmen at the National Theatre. I have to say, not really a fan. I'm glad that I went - I mean, when else am I going to be able to say that I saw an opera in Prague? But it was really strange. The orchestra was phenomenal, but the plot was excessively over the top. I think that I just couldn't take it seriously. Someone would sing beautifully for about five minutes, and the translation would inform me that they had spent all of those notes remarking, "There are strange people in the square today!" Necessary? I'll just say that it certainly wasn't what I expected, and I'll have to see another opera in order to determine if it was just Carmen that I didn't like, or if it's opera in general. I kind of want to see The Magic Flute now.
So those are our adventures in Prague! The next morning saw our very, very early departure for Bratislava, Slovakia, but that will have to wait for another post because I want dinner.

Kerfuffle (n.) - a commotion or fuss

Yes, dear readers, kerfuffle. England is a giant kerfuffle. For the country that produced William Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, Jane Austen, and Harry Potter, you've really got to wonder sometimes.
My family made it safely to Norwich, bringing with them not only their delightful selves but also my winter coat, homemade cookies, and this wonderful new vocab term, which they picked up in Cambridge. I of course got the flu and couldn't make it to Cambridge, but after three days of bedridden misery during which the housekeeper probably thought that I had died, I discovered that the cure for the flu is actually Cheerios and A Very Potter Musical. Who knew? Anyway, tangent. Back to the narrative at hand!
The crazy woman running through the streets of Norwich to the train station on the 23 December was in fact me. I wasn't supposed to be running, but let me take this moment to explain some of the possible scenarios that pop up when you try to be timely and efficient in England. (Yes, another tangent. Sorry about that.) It's like If You Giva a Mouse a Cookie, gone terribly wrong:
1. You go to the post office with the simple idea of mailing a Christmas present to your best friend in the States. You bring a box loosely taped, with her address in the appropriate place and your return address written in the top left corner. So far so good, yes? You bring said box to the counter and the postal worker tells you to put it on the scale before staring at it skeptically and asking, "You're going to mail it like that?" in the tone of a snarky postal diva. A little taken aback, you still trust the postal system and reply, "Well, it needs a bit more tape." He quickly interjects, "We don't have tape here. Oh, and is that the return address? You should probably write that on the side, otherwise they might get confused and send it back to you." Then he returns to whatever menial task he was doing while you stand there, dumbfounded that the post office a) does not have tape and b) employs people who might confuse the return address with the sendee address. What? So you end up buying a role of tape, taping the package so tightly that your friend will need dynamite to open it, writing RETURN ADDRESS in all caps on the side of said box, and handing the package and the tape to the postal worker, telling him, "Keep this for the next American who will expect this establishment to have tape."
2. You go to your friendly local SpecSavers to get another referral to the NHS eye clinic, since you missed your last appointment while you had the flu and the gentleman on the phone refused to let you reschedule without another referral even though you used your best "please take pity on my, I'm sick and pathetic" voice. After explaining this story to three different people at SpecSavers, a kindly contact lens specialist sits you down and gives you a complete eye exam instead of a referral. This is very generous of him and he assures you that you're not going blind, but that you might, but you don't actually need to go to the clinic, but you might want to, but you shouldn't have to unless you feel pain in your eye, but it might be safe to check anyway, and why don't you make another appointment for ten days from now? This means that you end up sprinting down Prince of Wales Road and are five minutes late to the train station, even though you planned to get there thirty minutes ahead of time and even brought a book for that purpose.*sigh*
Eventually I made it to the train station and to my family, which was too many kinds of wonderful to put into words. They had just come from a delightful day in Cambridge, and we got them checked into the most amazing bed and breakfast in the world. Seriously, if you're ever considering a vacation to Norwich, stay at the Arrandale House Guest Lodge on Earlham Road. Maurice and Olga, the owners, are the most delightful people in the entire world, and that is not an exaggeration. He's Irish and she's South African, so everything is this awesome hybrid of two cultures. Also, the place is gorgeous, and they serve amazing breakfasts. Kyle stayed with me at UEA, but we went for full English/Irish breakfasts every morning with Mom and Dad. We tried black pudding (tastes like haggis) and even had Christmas morning champaigne with Maurice and Olga. They would come and talk to us and forget about taking our breakfast orders because they had so many interesting stories to tell.
Our adventures in Norwich included eating delicious sticky toffee pudding next to a party of drunken senior citizens wearing paper crowns at the Wig and Pen pub, seeing most of Norwich's major historical sites, watching the Christmas episode of QI, and attending a midnight Christmas Eve service at Norwich Cathedral. The cathedral itself was absolutely beautiful with all of the Christmas decorations, and it was a very nice service. It was an Anglican service with the bishop and everything, so very different from what we're used to at home. And their Christmas carols are different! Same words, different tunes. I was most distressed until we got to "Joy to the World," which thankfully remained the same. Change is fine, but I am a stickler for Christmas traditions, including the melody of "O Little Town of Bethlehem." We spent Christmas day in our pajamas, just relaxing and doing not much of anything. It was lovely just to be with my family.
We celebrated Boxing Day, the origins of which are up for debate, by taking a very early coach to Bath, which is probably my favourite city in England. We ran into a bit of a kerfuffle over the directions to our bed and breakfast, however. I swore that we had to go one way, but Dad thought that we had to go the other way. We took a short cut recommended by one local, which proved to be the long way around, and then took a wrong turn upon the advice of another local. After dealing with British signage and directions for the past four months, I managed to not say, "Told you so," when Dad's way proved to be the wrong one. So we lugged our suitcases all over Bath and learned an important lesson: never trust a Brit with directions. Ever. Our bed and breakfast, once we located it, proved to be very nice. Most everything was closed due to Boxing Day, so we got dinner at a local pub and then retired early to watch marathons of Friends, which seems to be all that they show on TV here. The room that Kyle and I shared had a gigantic wardrobe in it that clearly leads to Narnia, and a shower that we could not figure out. I mean, the controls look like something from Doctor Who. Since I left my sonic screwdriver at UEA, we gave up and asked for help the next day. So, irony of ironies, we could not figure out how to bathe in Bath (don't worry, we got it the next morning).
We walked into the centre of Bath the next morning and walked around Bath Abbey, which is beautiful. Bath is such a pretty city, even though the weather was grey and dismal while we were there. It's also a very manageable city - everything is centrally located and it's very easy to get your bearings. I dropped Mom, Dad, and Kyle at the Roman baths since I had already toured them (check September's blogs for my first trip to Bath), and headed to the Assembly Rooms and the Fashion Museum. The Assembly Rooms were the place to see and be seen in Georgian Bath, and it's where many of the social gatherings take place in Northanger Abbey. See, you thought that I just connected everything to Harry Potter, but no! I can do it with Jane Austen, too! The Fashion Museum, which is in the basement of the Assembly Rooms, was really cool, and they had some very ugly clothes as well as an exhibition of Princess Diana's dresses. It's amazing how loved she is in this country, even now. The Assembly Rooms themselves were beautiful - there's the Octagon Room, where card games and whatnot would take place because everyone in Georgian England gambled, the tea room where refreshments would be taken in between dances, and then the ball room where the actual dancing happened.
My family very much enjoyed the Roman Baths, and Mom and Dad even sampled the delightful waters of Bath. Cheers! After a hasty lunch we embarked on a tour to Stonehenge and the surrounding countryside. It was freezing and we couldn't walk all of the way around Stonehenge because there are no shovels in this country so no one had cleared the path, but it looked very cool in the snow! After defrosting in the van, we set off to see some thatched cottages in teeny tiny villages, and then we visited the lovely village of Lacock. The entire village is a National Heritage site and it still looks like the quintessential nineteenth-century English village. There are no wires above ground, and if it weren't for the cars in the streets you would think that you had gone back in time. Film companies love Lacock, and it's been used in Cranford, Steven Spielberg's upcoming film adaptation of War Horse, the BBC's extremely long and ill-cast Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth (he wasn't the ill-cast part. And this is just my opinion - I know that there are many Austen purists out there who uphold this adaptation as something sacred. Please don't hurt me), and... Harry Potter!!!! I know, Jane Austen and Harry Potter in the same place. It was a Christmas miracle. Lacock has been used as Hogsmeade and as the Potter's house in the first movie.
Our busy day ended with dinner at Jamie Oliver's restaurant in Bath, and then Kyle and I found a television special on the 50 most annoying people/things/events of 2010. Some highlights included: Paul the Octopus, Sarah Palin, snow, and everything to do with the World Cup. About half of the team made it onto the list separately, the coach made it, and the entire team was the number one most annoying thing of 2010.
The next day also dawned grey and misty, but we took a walking tour of the city and got to see the Royal Circle and the Royal Crescent, the number one real estate locations in Georgian Bath. This was a good opportunity for me to realize how much useless knowledge I have amassed about life in Jane Austen's day. After lunch in a pub, we wandered around the city, seeing all of the things that we hadn't got to the day before, including the Jane Austen Centre, a store called FCUK (yeah, it required a doubletake), and the amazing Minerva Chocolates. This looks like something out of Chocolat, and it was amazing. They make their own chocolates in the store, and everything is so good! I'm already planning my midlife crisis, and it looks like the inside of that store. Or the cupcake truck. I've got time to decide still.
The late afternoon and evening were taken up by the coach ride to London, where we stayed right off of Brick Lane in the East End. I won't torture you with more London history, but if you'll recall, the East End and specifically Brick Lane, is home to most of London's Bangladeshi population, and it's an area with a very checkered history. Think prostitutes, Jack the Ripper, etc... I loved it. In a couple of years I think that the area will have been swallowed up by the financial district at Canary Wharf, but for now it's a really vibrant area with amazing food. And the fence opposite our window was plastered with fake newspaper headlines that read "Gollum to Wed Using 'Precious.'" I mean, does it get cooler than that?
I'll leave most of our time in London to my parents, who swear that they're going to make a picture slideshow and put it on our television to show people. We did cover a lot of ground, though: Westminster, the Churchill War Rooms, Picadilly Circus, Oxford Street, SoHo, Chinatown, the Tower of London, Tower Bridge, Borough Market, the South Bank, the Globe, Millennium Bridge, St. Paul's, Westminster Abbey, Abbey Road, and the East End. Whew! Lots and lots of walking! I managed to not get us lost ever, and I was very proud of how well I knew my way around. Point for me! We also took full advantage of Sandemans New London tours, which I cannot recommend highly enough. Sandemans is the company of Ninja Scot and the tour that I took in Dublin, and their London tour was just as good as those in Edinburgh and Dublin. If you're going to a major city in Europe, definitely check them out - they're fantastic. We did the Royal London tour around Westminster and then the Grim Ripper tour in the East End. I spent that entire tour scanning the area in case anyone tried to jump out at us while we were listening to stories about Jack the Ripper. I learned my lesson during the ghost tour in Edinburgh! But the only people who intruded were a couple of drunken boys outside of a pub. We actually spent a very quiet New Years Eve because a) everything in London closes around 5 on New Years Eve, b) we didn't want to stand outside for hours waiting for fireworks in the cold, and c) we had to get up early so that my family could get to Heathrow. So no stories of our amazing night out in London, but that's okay.
Trying to find somewhere to eat that night taught us an interesting lesson, however. Everywhere stopped serving food incredibly early so that their employees could clean up and get out to their own celebrations, which, while extremely invconvenient, is very nice if you think about it. If enough of the bars close, however, I'm not sure where these employees were planning on going, but that's okay. It was just so different from what we are used to in the States, where New Years is a huge night for restaurants. America tends to cater towards the individual moreso than the U.K. does - we expect to be able to go out and do or get whatever we want whenever we want, but employees in England expect to be able to sleep and enjoy their nights like everyone else, meaning that there's no bus or Tube service in the days surrounding Christmas, restaurants and stores are closed, and people stop caring about the almighty dollar for a few days. It was an adjustment. (This is not to say that England doesn't do other, really stupid things, like not letting you pay with a credit card to get into Westminster Abbey after 4.30 in the afternoon, or only selling eye drops for conjunctivitis but not other eye infections. Seriously. I cannot buy medicated eye drops here because I don't have pink eye, so no one is licensed to sell it to me. Oh, England... *seethes quietly*).
Anyway, minor inconveniences aside, it was a great vacation and it was so, so good to see my family. I may or may not have started crying in the middle of the Tube station after sending them on their way to Heathrow the other morning. It seemed like they just got here, and I was not ready to say goodbye yet! Six months is a very long time. I am definitely looking forward to it and I'm confident that I'll enjoy it, but I miss my family.
I'm taking a break from England for the next two weeks, however, and heading over to the Continent to see Prague, Bratislava, Vienna, and Salzburg. It's my Christmas present to myself. I hope that you all enjoyed the holidays, and Happy New Year!!! I wish you all the best in 2011, and good luck sticking to those resolutions! Mine are to think more positively in order to laugh off all of the silly things that England does, and to put others first more. Blogs are a very self-absorbed medium, as I expect all of you to read and care about my ramblings and adventures, so that might be more of a face-to-face thing. Unless you all create blogs, in which case I will endeavor to read all of them!

Happy Christmas!

Dear America, land of hope, freedom, and efficient snow-clearing road crews,
I write to you as one clinging desperately to hope like a character in that Will Smith movie where he is the only human left alive after the rest of the world is turned to zombies. All of my British flatmates have left campus and I am left to wander the quiet flat, huddling for warmth and comfort with the five other Americans in the building. It’s a sad, lonely place America. If you are reading this, please send people who will be able to help Britain realize that three inches of snow is no cause to shut down all airports for three days, and Ranch dressing because I really miss Ranch dressing.
If you’ve read the news recently I’m sure that you’ve seen how badly Britain has managed to embarrass itself in the face of the “snowpocalypse” currently sweeping the country. Everyone who was trying to fly home for the holidays was stuck in London for five days because no flights are coming into or going out from Heathrow. Gatwick, the little airport that could (unless Dublin is involved) sent out just over one hundred flights today and landed about the same number on the second day, but most airports were completely shut down because it’s cold. Even the Tube was shut down. The Tube is underground!!!! How can it be closed because of the weather??? What is this madness? As I was complaining to my flatmate before he left, he said, “Oh, it’s the annual airport shutdown.” I was incensed and yelled, “You mean to tell me that this happens every year????” I am seriously beginning to question how Britain is a modern, civilised country, never mind how it managed to control the largest empire in the nineteenth century. But now, five days later, most Dickinsonians are home or at least in flight, and my parents and brother have arrived in England! Apparently Mr. David Cameron heard me when I threatened to have very strong words with him if they were delayed – I know where he lives.
Okay, rant over. Life is good, and a little (or a lot) of inefficiency will only slow me down temporarily. *deep breath* Anyway, my first semester in Merry Olde England is over! It went so fast, I’m not really sure what happened to it, but I know that it was amazing. Like all semesters, it finished in a flurry of paper-writing and procrastinating. But fear not, I only resorted to listening to Josh Groban Christmas carols on the last night, and all papers were done, revised until the ink positively bled from the pages like Tom Riddle’s diary in The Chamber of Secrets (my New Year’s resolution is to not mention Harry Potter more than once a day, and if I go over I have to pay a two-pence penalty that my flatmates will use to buy a pint at the end of the year. Ha, they underestimate my willpower), and turned in. Huzzah! In the midst of finals, however, there is always time for fun and interesting cultural experiences.
On Tuesday night I attended my first-ever, and hopefully my last-ever, pantomime performance, which is apparently a time-honoured Christmas tradition for English children. For anyone who has not been so lucky as to see a pantomime, it’s a very interactive show, so one of the characters will lose something, like his pet mouse, and ask everyone in the audience to shout “Mousy mousy!” whenever the mouse reappears on stage, which British children will eagerly shout even when said mouse has not actually made an appearance. And whenever the villain comes out, everyone boos, et cetera. You get the idea. We saw Jack and the Bean Stalk, which for some reason involved a circus and many renditions of “Nelly the Elephant.” It was terrifying. Just when I thought that it couldn’t get any more ridiculous, Jack tried to look soulful and broke out into “Hero” by Enrique Iglesias. Yes, this really happened. Then, just to prove that they could, the trolls did the “Thriller” dance. I am still emotionally scarred – I can’t write about it any longer because it’s too painful. I’m sorry.
On a much happier note, we had a lovely Chranksgivemas dinner on Thursday. Trusty flatmate Joe and I braved the cold to head to the grocery store and stock up on Thanksgiving essentials, then we concocted a Thanksgiving dinner to the best of our ability. Have I mentioned that we don’t have ovens in our kitchens? They’re a fire hazard. So we ended up grilling balls of stuffing in the chip pan because the convection oven was taken up by candied yams, but it actually worked surprisingly well. I just told everyone that we always grill stuffing balls in America, and it was totally fine. So Joe and I managed to whip up mashed potatoes, candied yams, stuffing, rolls, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, gravy, and deli turkey without any major catastrophes, and it all tasted good! Definitely a Christmas miracle.
Our celebrations kicked off with a dramatic reading of the Chranksgivemas story, written by Joe especially for the occasion. I don’t have his exact wording, but basically the holiday began as follows:
Santa and the pilgrims were making the brutal crossing from England to the New World, but they ran out of food and had to eat all of the reindeer. Santa was so depressed that he threw himself overboard into the icy sea. Fortunately, Benjamin Franklin (Joe’s American history is a little bit skewed here) saw what Santa did and raised the alarm, so George Washington (because he was also on the Mayflower) dived into the Atlantic and saved him. Sadly for George, he lost his teeth, but he did save Santa. For ever after, when asked if he had saved Christmas, George would reply, “I cannot tell a lie – I did that thing.”
Dinner then began with lots of food, Christmas crackers, and traditional Chranksgivemas carols by Lady Gaga and Cee Lo. We all had a really good time, and it was a great way to just be together and relax after exams and papers. I had told Amy about my family’s Thanksgiving tradition of going around the table and saying what we’re thankful for, and she suggested that we incorporate that into our celebrations. So over our second course of mulled wine and minced pies, we actually had a really meaningful time to say how grateful we all were to be living with so many wonderful people. It was so nice, and it was the perfect way to end the semester. I don’t know how I got so lucky, but my floor is absolutely amazing, and I’m so happy to be living with them. Unfortunately, it was our last flat time before Laura left us for the sunny and wonderful land of Australia, but I cannot think of a better way to say goodbye.

So I’m sending the warmth and love from our Chranksgivemas celebrations to you for Christmas. I hope that you are all well and that you’re able to share the holiday with people you love. I miss you all terribly, but I’m thinking of you and wishing you a very, very happy Christmas!!! (Favourite Christmas memory of the year: talking to my dad on Skype and him exclaiming, “We get to say 'Happy Christmas' this year!!!!”) Love to all!

The Great Blizzard of 2010

'Tis true, I am writing to you from a country paralyzed under a grand total of - are you ready? - half an inch of snow. It's been flurrying on and off since Thanksgiving, and the Brits are going absolutely bonkers. I woke up one morning, looked out my window and thought, "Oh, a layer of frost!" England thought, "AAAAAAH!!!! Close all of the airports! Delay as many trains as possible! Cancel classes! Go into hibernation!!!!" Basically, this is what happened. Now, to be fair, the Brits' fear of inclement winter weather is only crippling whereas their fear of fire is absolutely paralyzing. But you would assume that a country that has been settled and dealing with winter for some three thousand years, give or take, would have learned how to cope with a flurry. This is not the case. There are no snow plows in this country, and shovels seem to be scarce. The great British solution to slippery sidewalks is to dump a ton of salt at the top of the sidewalk and hope that people will walk over it and track it along with them as they go, thus melting more ice. Maybe it's just because I'm a New Englander, but this seems incredibly inefficient and silly, and therefore, British. I love snow, though, and it was lovely to walk around Norwich looking at all of the Chritmas lights as snowflakes drifted gently down from the sky. There's something so quintessentially English about it, which is ironic because it doesn't usually snow here until January or February, and then it's not very much at all.
What else has happened since I last wrote? We had our Dickinson Thanksgiving dinner, which was full of wonderful food, so everyone ate too much. It wasn't like being at home, but it was really nice. I had to correct my flatmates, who believed that Thanksgiving is the day that we celebrate killing all of the Native Americans. Oh dear. Buddy Jesse and I are organizing a "Chranksgiving" dinner for our floor next week, which is basically going to be Thanksgiving dinner (with cold-cut turkey sandwiches because we're poor college students) with Christmas crackers and decorations split between turkeys and Santa Claus. It will be excellent.
The day after Thanksgiving, Buddy Jesse, Laura, Amy, Mel, and I set off on what we believed to be our Dublin adventure, but what actually turned out to be our Gatwick Airport adventure. This was in the midst of the Great Blizzard of 2010, so Dublin Airport just up and closed, which meant that we sat in Gatwick Airport for a very long time instead of frolicking through the streets of Dublin. Sad. Thankfully, the airport did reopen, so we arrived in Dublin exactly as the sun was setting. Again, sad, although sunset over the River Liffey was beautiful. Just a side note: there was hardly any snow as we were coming into Dublin. I think that the airport was just trying to screw us over.
Laura's friend from Belfast met us at our hostel and was nice enough to show us around Temple Bar (cultural center of Dublin, full of restaurants and pubs that all advertise "Live Irish Music"). Fun fact: he is one of two Irish people whom I met in Dublin. The other was our tour guide. I met more Irish people in Scotland. End fun fact. We had a pint at a pub actually called Temple Bar, which was a really fun place.
Later that night, fighting travel-induced grouchiness and sleepiness, we ventured out to a random pub and just happened across an amazing pub band comprised of three moderately attractive and very talented Irish men. They were really good and played a lot of popular music, although I must say that it was slightly surreal to sing "Born in the U.S.A." in a pub in Ireland, surrounded by people who were not in fact born in the U.S.A. In the middle of one song the singer went into "Let it Snow," which is when we realized that big, fat flakes were actually falling outside of the windows. It was really beautiful, and Amy and I got it into our heads that we could get stranded in Dublin for another day. Basically, we had watched too much P.S. I Love You, because in hindsight this would have been expensive and terrible. Basic necessities, such as eating and drinking, are amazingly expensive in Dublin. This might be because Ireland has no money right now, but I didn't either by the time that I left.
The next morning dawned sunny but absolutely freezing, and there was just under an inch of snow on the ground. Dublin is a beautiful city, and Mel and I took advantage of the morning to take pictures and window shop. That afternoon Amy and I shivered our way through a walking tour by the same company who did the amazing Edinburgh tour. We learned a lot, but there are no fun stories like Ninja Scot or Mission Impossible bagpipers to report. Irish history is very bloody and very sad, and the contest over their national identity is still going on, so they haven't reached the point where they can laugh at themselves like the Scots can. When the Irish insult England, they really, really, really mean it. But Dublin does boast some very fascinating history and some famous literary figures such as James Joyce and Oscar Wilde. Oh, I do have a fun fact from the tour, actually. The harp on the Guinness logo (which is not French, Grandma, sorry to break it to you) is the harp of Brian Boru, which dates to the fourteenth century and is one of the few gaelic harps left in existence. It's a very important Irish symbol, and when the Irish Republic was declared in 1947 the new government wanted to use the harp as the national emblem. Well, Guinness had already trademarked it, so the government has to use the mirror image. Random picture: Trinity College.
We left Dublin the next day around noon, so I spent a grand total of 46 hours in that fair city, several of which were inside the airport. Not nearly enough time! There's so much more that I want to see. It was like when I came to Europe with USYE and we did a marathon tour of six countries in nineteen days - taster sessions, all of them. I would really like to see more of Ireland, as well, and I must test my Irish/Hollywood theory. In romantic comedies, whenever a young American woman goes to Ireland, she inevitably gets lost or her mode of transportation fails her somehow, leaving her lost in the gorgeous Irish countryside. Then, suddenly, the most beautiful man in existence comes along with his endearing accent and helps her out, and he plays guitar and is too nice to be real, and they fall in love, experience a little bit of adversity, and then get married and live happily ever after. Amy and I plan on conducting a very thorough and scientific study of this phenomenon in the spring.
Alas, I feel that I can procrastinate no longer - final papers are calling. I must away, back to my analysis of motherhood as a means of bridging social and racial gaps in condition of England novels. Thrilling, isn't it? Good luck with finals to everyone back home! Listen to some Christmas music.