The Whirlwind Begins: Venice

Dear Grandpa (and anyone else who happens to stumble across this),

I know that I have been most remiss in updating about my travel adventures lately, of which there have been many, so I am going to try to remedy that by beginning the narrative of my spring break adventures. I had the fantastic opportunity to take a once in a lifetime trip through Italy and Croatia with Sarah and Caitlin, two of my housemates from Dickinson, and it was incredible. We hit eight cities in two countries over ten days, so we were just on the move all of the time. We got to see so many amazing things and just had a blast the entire time.

Sarah and Caitlin had been travelling for almost four weeks already, so I was meeting them in Florence on Friday evening, after having a day in Venice. I booked a flight from London bright and early - 6:30 a.m.! My odyssey therefore began very late on Thursday night, when I caught the midnight thirty coach from Norwich to Stansted Airport in London. This was the first time that I had ever done any significant travelling by myself, and I was really nervous about it, actually - it's one thing to go with friends, but when you're flying from one country where you don't really live to another country where you definitely don't live and don't even speak the language, then spending the entire day by yourself in that country before figuring out the train schedule in order to meet your friends in a different city entirely, it's a little bit daunting. And have I mentioned that I'm a terrible flyer? So it was with some anxiety that I got on the coach, which turned out to be the loneliest ride of my life. But I made it to Stansted around 4 a.m., when the airport was just opening, and eventually made it onto my flight. If you've never waited in a queu for Ryanair at 4:00 in the morning, surrounded by grumpy travellers who are complaining about luggage restrictions and the fact that there is only one person checking passports for the massive queu of people trying to catch planes, you should - it builds character. My plan to deprive myself of sleep so that I would be too tired to be anxious on the flight worked - I fell asleep about half way through and woke up just as we were passing over the Italian Alps, which were absolutely beautiful. I think that's when I knew I would be okay: I could do this. After that I started feeling rather pleased with myself.

The feeling continued when we landed and it was sunny and warm, even at 9:30 in the morning. All thoughts of sleep vanished in an instant as excitement overtook anxiety. I struck up an acquaintance on the bus from the airport into Venice, basically because I kept asking the guy sitting next to me all sorts of deep and meaningful questions, such as, "Is this seat taken?" and "This is going to Venice, right?" It didn't take long for me to notice his decided lack of accent, so I asked him where he was from, and the ensuing conversation went something like this:
me: "Where are you from?"
Lorenzo: "California. What about you?" (Strange but true: every American you meet abroad is from either California or Connecticut.)
me: "Connecticut (see?). So are you here on holiday, then?"
L: "Well, I'm meeting my parents here tomorrow to travel with them, but I study abroad in England."
me: "Oh, me too! Where do you study?"
L: It's this kind of random city called Norwich."
me: *stares*

Travel Buddy Lorenzo, as he shall henceforward be known, and I wound up spending most of the day together, as neither of us had a real plan of attack for the day, and it was much nicer than spending the day alone. We decided to just wander the streets in the general direction of the Piazza San Marco and see what we could find. This turned out to be a great plan, because Venice's streets are absolutely impossible to navigate. They are narrow, twisting, and not marked on any maps. Some end abruptly in canals, some narrow down into nothingness, some go in a square, so it's easier to not even try to follow any kind of course. The brilliant thing that Venice has done, however, realizing that this poses something of a problem for tourists and anyone who has not lived in the city for at least five years, is to put up yellow signs every few hundred feet that point you in the direction of the major attractions, such as the Piazza San Marco, Ponte de Rialto, the train station, etc. It's a great system - as long as you generally follow these signs, you'll get where you want to go, but you'll get to explore the maze of Venetian side streets as you go. And Venice's streets are worth exploring. Everywhere you turn looks like a postcard, and there are gorgeous buildings just hidden away.


This was our first proper view of Venice as we crossed the Ponte Scalzi from the train station, which is in the westernmost bit of the city. The views kept getting better, believe it or not. Everything that I remembered about how beautiful Venice is from four years ago has definitely held true.


Obligatory tourist photo, courtesy of Travel Buddy Lorenzo.


Scuola Grande San Giovanni Evangelista, one of the gorgeous buildings that we literally stumbled upon after wandering in circles for about ten minutes trying to figure out how to keep walking without having to go for a swim in one of the canals.


The beautiful Ponte de Rialto over the Grand Canal.


The beautiful view down the Grand Canal from the beautiful Ponte de Rialto - so much beautiful.


Piazza San Marco - you can see the Basilica di San Marco in the centre of the shot, and then the campanille (bell tower) on the right.


Some of the amazing ceiling mosaics in the Basilica - the entire building looked like this, but no photographs were allowed inside.


The courtyard of the Palazzo Ducale, or the Doge's Palace, home to the Doge and all of the governing bodies of Venice during the Venetian Empire. Incidentally, it is also home to the largest oil painting in the world, and to the famous Bridge of Sighs, which was unfortunately being renovated while I was there, so it was surrounded by bright blue tarp.


Gondola ride, anyone?

Travel Buddy Lorenzo and I hung around the Piazza San Marco for a while - we got gelato for lunch and sat in the sun, talking, watching the other tourists, and generally just enjoying the fact that we were in Venice. He went on to continue exploring after lunch while I stayed in the Piazza to knock off some touristy things before I had to leave. A friend had recommended the Doge's Palace, so I wandered through all of the various chambers of the complicated Venetian government. It was absolutely beautiful, and by the time that I was finished there it was high time to meander my way back to the train station. So, following the amazingly helpful yellow signs (you know, England, you should really take note here, given your own issues with clear signage), I trotted my way back across the city, enjoying the gorgeous views all the way. I've only explored Venice on the very surface - my total time there over two visits probably amounts to about twelve hours - but as far as first impressions go, it is one of my favourite cities. It's just so beautiful and has so much character. So, so worth a visit, and a return visit. I'm really glad that I didn't cut that part of my trip out in order to meet Sarah and Caitlin earlier, because it was the perfect start to my trip. And I proved to myself that I can travel on my own - I can get myself from A to B without any major catastrophes, I can make friends with fellow travellers, and I can have one of the best days in my recent memory.

I made it to the station in plenty of time to catch my train to Firenze (Florence - I was confused, too). I wish that I could tell you about the beautiful Italian countryside that we passed through, but I fell asleep as soon as the train started moving, and woke up just as we were coming into Florence. Sarah and Caitlin met me at the train station, and we spent the rest of the evening catching up on life and on sleep, which was much needed as we were going to explore Florence the next day!

One Hell of a Week

A close reading of the title will reveal at least two possible interpretations: 1) that the week has been hell because I have been doing nothing except writing three large and important papers (true), and 2) that it has been an astonishing week in terms of world events (also true). I had to do a triple-take on Monday morning when I was perusing the BBC headlines online and saw that Osama bin Laden had been killed. Even after I had read the news article properly, it didn't sink in. Ten years brought to a conclusion in a single night - it's unreal.

As good liberal arts students engaging the world, Travel Buddy Jesse (just arrived to Norwich from a semester in India) and I discussed our feelings concerning bin Laden's death over pancakes and tea (I'm a converted tea-drinker now). I was still working on absorbing the news, but I was not feeling any of the wild enthusiasm that seemed to be buzzing around Facebook. My news feed had exploded with people celebrating bin Laden's death - Dickinson seems to have gone absolutely mad, and judging from the YouTube videos and the campus-wide emails following Sunday night, things got out of hand. I understand that the actions of a few students who acted out inappropriately have reflected negatively on a much larger number of students who maintained their self-control and had more thoughtful reactions. But the drunken revelries and swinging from lamp posts that have popped up on YouTube, and especially the slandering of the ROTC program, are extremely disappointing. We are so much better than that Dickinson, as we proved earlier this semester when we succeeded in forcing the administration to review the school's sexual assault policy. After being removed from campus for a year, hearing about behaviour like this is upsetting.

And it's not just Dickinson - that's just close to home. The fact that people were gathered in the streets chanting, "USA! USA!" seems really disturbing to me. This is not the Olympics - it is the death of a person. Again, I understand that there is an entire spectrum of reactions, and the actions of people on the news do not represent most of the nation. I also understand that this person was the most wanted man in the world, that he masterminded attacks that killed thousands of people and broke apart thousands of families, for no other reason than his hatred of America. But to celebrate his death in such a loud, enthusiastic fashion strikes me as inappropriate.

First of all, bin Laden's death does not mean that our problems with terrorist groups are going to come to an end. I am not trying to diminish the military's accomplishment in any way, but I don't know how much this is going to change the War on Terror. The primary figurehead is dead, yes, but just a few days before bin Laden was killed the Taliban announced their spring offensive, and now the entire world is on alert for retaliatory attacks. The issues that bin Laden stood for still exitst. Secondly, I see the death of Osama bin Laden not so much as a victory but as a signal of a failure to reach any kind of cross-cultural understanding. It was a failure on the parts of both groups to step out of a narrow mindset in order to understand the persepective of the other side, and both sides resorted to violence. The past ten years have perpetuated dangerous stereotypes both about Americans and about Muslims. We saw this when we visited a mosque in London at the beginning of our time here - the man who was supposed to be talking with us assumed our complete ignorance of Islam, and we were unable to enter into any kind of fruitful dialogue. There is still so much work to do, and I am worried that the rowdy celebrations that have graced the news in the past few days are going to reflect badly on American culture. After all, what does it say about us that we meet the news of a death with chants and confetti?

This question comes partly from the fact that I've spent the past nine months living in a country that, although it tolerates Americans, seems to think that we're all crass, loud, and either like former President George Bush or the cast of Jersey Shore. One of my friends derives great joy from posting videos of stupid Americans on my Facebook wall (think Jay Walking, then multiply it). During the first few weeks of my time here, one of my flatmates (who is now a wonderful friend) said to me, "Wow, so not all Americans are stupid, then." I was both a little bit flattered and a lot a bit disturbed, and it made me reconsider the image that America projects to the rest of the world: we are the biggest, baddest kid on the playground when it comes to international politics, and then we broadcast trashy shows such as Jersey Shore or The Real Housewives of No One Actually Cares Where . No wonder the rest of the world has such a warped view of us.

The rest of the inspiration comes from my recent musings on various codes of conduct. I've been working on a paper arguing that Sir Thomas Malory's canonical text Le Morte d'Arthur is actually a critique of King Arthur for failing to establish a successful code of behaviour for the Round Table, eventually leading to its ruin. (Yes, I reference King Arthur when I discuss current affairs. He's a legendary hero - part of his role is to act as a vehicle for modern ideals and anxieties. And yes, that is the thesis of another one of the papers that I'm working on, although that one is about Robin Hood.) Arthur in Malory's text resorts to violence, as well - "Might over Right," as it is sometimes referred to. Other medieval texts, especially romances, also criticize this approach and advocate instead the code of "Right over Might." I think that this breakdown applies equally well to America - we seem to be a nation of Might over Right, and historically that is not sustainable.

I do not want to sound un-American, and I really do hope that Osama bin Laden's death can bring some peace to those families who lost loved ones in the September 11 attacks. But being removed from the country for so long has made me think a lot about America's global image, and I do not necessarily like what I have found. In Britain, there was no rioting or crazy celebrating at the news of bin Laden's death (at least, not that made the national news). Even this country's latest day of celebration, the Royal Wedding, was met with a proper measure of dignified excitement. It was a big deal. A really Big Deal. But nothing got out of hand, and everyone conducted themselves well - as the commentators on the BBC live coverage said, it was a great day to be British. Part of this was the famous British reserve that is definitely still present in the Royal Family even if it is decreasing elsewhere - Kate Middleton was actually praised for her reserve throughout her relationship with Prince William - but part of it is common sense, I believe, and the realization that just because people are celebrating does not mean that they have to make complete idiots of themselves. After all, the entire world was watching. While I think that the pomp, circumstance, and solemnity that surrounded the Royal Wedding was a bit much, I think that there is a valuable lesson to be learned about public conduct and public image.

I'm sorry if I'm sounding like an ex-patriot. There are a number of things that I value about America - our Constitution, our education system, our efficiency, our ability to deal with snow quickly and effectively, our diversity as a nation - but part of the whole study abroad experience is supposed to be gaining a better awareness of your own country and how it has affected you. I am undeniably an American - my accent says so, my passport says so, my world view says so. I grew up as an American, and it is where I come from both physically and philosophically. It influences the way that I see the world and the preconceptions that I have, but I have realized this year that it does not have to define me. This really dawned on me when I arrived at London Stansted Airport from Croatia. The customs officer asked me what I was doing in England, stamped my visa, and said, "Welcome back" as he handed me my passport emblazoned with the gold eagle on the front, declaring me "American! American!" He acknowledged that this was not my only defining characteristic, however - he saw that I was a student, a traveller, someone out to see the world, and he was welcoming me back to the place that I have called home for the past nine months. I can change the way that I think about the world, I can change where I am going from here. America is my past and it influences my present and will continue to influence my future, but it does not dominate that future. I can disagree with my country, and I do not always have to be proud of it.

Alright, I'm done for now, promise. My next update will follow soon - my papers are due in on Monday. I just gave myself a break today because I finished all of my drafts (huzzah!!!!). But I'll post about happier things next time, like Venice!

'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!

Let's Hear it for (Regular) York

Dear adoring public (otherwise known as Mom, Dad, and Grandpa),
Yes, yes, I know. I am a terrible, terrible blogger, and I apologize. In my defense, however, my quest to fight off the boredom of the five-day weekend has started to work! This is mostly because I have actual work for my classes, which is a nice change. So I've been reading and working on papers and presentations, continuing to fail grandly at archery (I hit the target more than the floor last week! This is definite progress), I've started yoga to counteract the stress of archery, and I am now in my third week of volunteering at Norwich Castle.
The interior of the Castle is part art museum, part Norfolk history museum, and the learning department does a lot in terms of activities for school groups and families, so I help with different activities and do some preparatory work behind the scenes. It's actually really, really fun. My first week I was there for an Ancient Egyptian themed day, so I spent my day helping eight year-olds make Egyptian collars out of bits of paper. They were excited once they realized that I was American, and I heard lots of stories about cousins, friends, etc...who moved to the States. Last week I was at the museum for an Ancient Roman/Iceni day, so all of the interpretors who I met were dressed either in plaid and blue face paint or in togas. It was great.
I was allowed to follow one of the groups in the morning in order to observe some of the activities. Their first stop was with a woman dressed as an Iceni chief, and she got them to think about how the Iceni lived compared to how we live today, and told them about the Roman oppression of the Celts. As an overarching idea for the day, the kids were supposed to be thinking about whether or not it was fair for the Romans to tax the Iceni so harshly - they took half of what the Iceni grew, raised, or made. The kids had never been exposed to this part of the story before, as the Romans are the ones who wrote history, and they portrayed the Iceni, as well as other Celtic peoples, as uncivilized barbarians. It was really interesting to see where the kids ultimately placed their loyalties. One little girl, fresh from learning about the Roman tax, told "Brutus," the Roman soldier who led the next rotation, that he and his people should just go home because the Celts were perfectly well off without them, thank you very much. He looked bewildered for a moment, but recovered quickly and said, "Kids, I'm going to tell you something about life: it's not fair. You want to know how to make it more fair? Get a sword."
This past week I was at Strangers' Hall, which is a beautiful Tudor hall that has served as a home and meeting place, and is now a museum. We had a group of nine year-olds down for a Tudor day, and they learned all about feasting, dancing, Tudor dress, and weaving. As I've mentioned before, Norwich was England's second city because of the weaving trade that grew up here when the "Strangers" came from the Low Countries. They used Strangers' Hall as a meeting place (fun fact: they also introduced the canaries that gave their name to the Norwich City Football Club) and brought their weaving technology with them. The kids were supposed to imagine that they were Strangers in Norwich in 1565, and during the day they learned about how different people in Norwich would have reacted to them. It was a really, really good program. I helped with the costumes in the morning, so I played lady-in-waiting and laced girls into bodices and petticoats, and then in the afternoon I helped with the craft activity, which was making paper looms and weaving. I had a great time, actually, and I got to spend the whole day in this beautiful Tudor hall, where ten year-old me would have had a field day letting my imagination run wild.
I love working with the kids, and I think that it's so important for them to see history brought to life like this. It's the difference between reading a Shakespeare play in English class and seeing it performed. The interpreters are great, as well. They're so dedicated to teaching students - most of them are former educators - and our lunches always involve several cups of tea and a chat about something historical, such as whether the Romans really were too oppressive and what they contributed to Britain. It's an indulgence for my inner history nerd.
So, excuses aside, we have now come to the travel adventure portion of the blog! The Dickinson Humanities Program, under the sometimes misguided leadership of Professor Qualls, who this time led us through several inches of mud instead of sticking to dry roads, ventured forth in the very early English morning to York. York is a beautiful city, made even prettier by the fact that the sun was shining. Quick historical rundown for you, brought to you by the fine people at Lonely Planet. York was originally home to a Celtic tribe that was then pushed off their lands by the Romans in A.D. 71. Gotta love the Romans. They used York as a garrison and Emperor Hadrian, of wall fame, used it as a base for his northern campaign. It was a very important city - Emperor Constantine was crowned in York in 306, which is pretty impressive. The next few hundred years are a bit of a hot mess - some Anglo-Saxons happened - and then the Vikings took York in 866. They renamed it Jorvic (from the Roman Eboracum) and made it the capital of their trading empire for one hundred years. The next major development in York's history was the arrival of the Normans, when the charming, gentle-hearted William the Conqueror up and torched the city and much of the surrounding countryside in an effort to show northerners that he was boss. Nice guy. The Normans then set about rebuilding York in the twelfth century, and eventually it came to be the beautiful city that it is today.

York Minster, which is the largest medieval cathedral in Northern Europe. It was built between 1220 and 1480 and is second in religious importance only to Canterbury Cathedral. Don't worry - you'll see more of it!


Turns out that Guy Fawkes was born here!


This is part of the Roman garrison that stood at York, as indicated by the red stripe, because apparently the Romans liked that kind of thing. The sarcophagi are also Roman. The Roman wall was then built up by medieval residents, and it's now one of the most complete medieval walls in the country.


The ruins of the Abbey of St. Mary's.


Our tour guide took us along the medieval town wall for a bit - here we are on Robin Hood's Tower. The poor guy had no idea what he was getting into. He told us that there was no reason for the name, but he did not count on having me in his group, or on the fact that I had been reading Robin Hood: A Mythic Biography on the train that morning (it's for a paper, I swear!). So, dear readers, I will enlighten you so that you will be less ignorant than my tour guide. The early Robin Hood ballads of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries actually have Robin's home as Barnsdale, a village in Yorkshire. He frequently meets people coming from York and goes there himself sometimes. His location isn't cemented as Nottingham until later.


Check out these awesome flying buttresses shining in the late aftenoon sun. We climbed the tower in York Minster to see some stunning views of York at my favourite time of day.


What we could see lookiing North - the Yorkshire moors and the Kilburn Chalk Horse! You can't make it out in my picture of the actual landscape, and I could just barely see it, but it was there!


The Shambles, probably the most famous street in York. It used to be the butchers' street, apparently.


Because I strive to put Lord of the Rings references into everything that I do.


The Jorvic Viking Museum, where you could smell real Viking smells! Not that I have the most discerning nose in the world, but to me it smelled like my brother's room after he gets home from basketball practice. I'm just saying (sorry, Little Man). We were all a little bit punchy by this point, and Stephenie bought runes, which we proceeded to read at lunch.

All in all, it was a very successful trip to York, and we had a great time. By a happy chance, Caitlin and Sarah chose the same day to visit York from Durham, so we met up for dinner and a pint, which was a blast. York is an absolutely gorgeous city, and definitely worth a visit.
I know that I've been a horrible blogger of late, and there is much that I have to catch up on still. But now that things have kind of taken off and I've been doing more, time seems to be moving so much quicker. It's gotten to that point where things are happening too quickly, and June seems so much closer now than it did even a few weeks ago. I'm starting to think about what will happen when I have to leave everything that I've built up here, and it's absolutely terrifying. This has been the most amazing year of my life, and there is still so much to look forward to and so much living to be done before June. I just wish that I could press the pause button, because I do not want it to end. Everyone says, "Oh, don't think about it - you have time!" That's all very well and good, living in the moment and all that, and I do try. But it's impossible to ignore that niggling voice in the back of my head. It's made me think, though - society makes it impossible for us to really live in the moment. Even now, when my professors, family, and Global Education office are all telling me to live for the present, I still have to worry about summer jobs, classes for next year, accomodation, thesis topics, graduate school - how am I supposed to stay in the moment with all of that accumulating behind me? It's hard - a kerfuffle, one might even say.
But I have tried really hard this year to appreciate every day and to live in the moment as much as I can, and this is honestly the happiest that I've ever been. In that vein, I'll leave you with some wise words from John Keating in Dead Poets Society:
"Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary."
It's not easy, but this year has shown me that the extraordinary is there, even in the little moments. We just have to find it and shut the door on all of the pressures that want to tear us away. At least for a moment.

Taking a Turn down Intellectual Avenue

So far my quest to stave off the monotony of the five-day weekend has gone as follows:
runs: 2
summer jobs applied for: 1
Robin Hood books read: 1
clubs joined: 1 (archery - I'm really trying to get into the Robin Hood experience, as I think that it will be beneficial for my dissertation. So far I have really shown the floor who is boss. The target, not so much.)
pub quizzes participated in: 1
movies viewed: 3
So, as you can see, it's an ongoing quest. The good news is that I am now very caught up with my world news, and I attended a free lecture the other day. Adrian Holliday, Professor of Applied Linguistics at Canterbury Christ Church University, gave a talk on "Cultural Understanding in a Globalized, Unequal World." As someone who a) has nothing to do on Thursdays and b) is very interested in other cultures as well as information processing in a globalized and digitalized world, I decided to check it out.
Professor Holliday made some very interesting points. He discussed how, even though we have access to so much information about different parts of the world in this age of digital information, our quest for cross-cultural understanding only addresses the shallow differences between different ways of life: festivals, foods, religious practices, etc. . . We divide people easily into groups based on our definition of culutre, and this can oftentimes mask racism or other prejudices. This tendency is actually stereotyping to the extreme, as we tend to ignore the fact that individuals are not defined by their cultural backgrounds. For instance, the protestors in Egypt are not defined by the regime that they recently succeeded in ousting, and I have spent the past five months trying to convince my flatmates that not all Americans are defined by former President George Bush and his administrative decisions or speeches.
Professor Holliday made the point that Westerners as a whole tend to be especially guilty of generalizing other peoples using a sort of “us versus them” mentality, and that we consider “modernization” and “Westernization” to be synonymous. This means that accepting Western ideals of democracy and fast food industries are factors that make a country “modern.”
After declaring this notion absurd, Professor Holliday said that Westerners have no right of ownership to things such as the English language, Western art, or even McDonald’s, because other people around the globe adopt these as part of a global heritage and “colonize” them for their own use. It makes sense: Americans have colonized English so that the language that I speak at home is very different from what I speak here, which would be very different from what an English-speaker in South Africa would speak. Where I disagree with Professor Holliday is the issue of material exports such as McDonald’s. I have always considered McDonald’s to be a metonymy for Europe’s view of America: supersizes, fake meat and lots of grease. But of course there are McDonald’s and other fast food chains everywhere here, and Professor Holliday seems to believe that this is not the result of Americanization, but of European countries adopting these chains for their own cultures. I’m sorry, you can try to disguise McDonald’s as a cafe, but it is still McDonald’s, and you can still get American fries there, even if they’re called chips. I’m sure that it’s also a lucrative business – a large percentage of travellers are American, and they’re drawn to the familiarity of the golden arches because it’s something that they know and recognize from home. The same holds true for Starbucks – I went into a Starbucks in Edinburgh, Scotland, and 90 percent of my fellow customers were American. It’s like having little American embassies everywhere.
It’s an interesting thought: is there such a thing as Americanization, or, as Professor Holliday believes, do other countries just adopt American or Western practices and colonize them to fit their own ways of life? And if other parts of the world adapt features of our culture, what do we colonize from other peoples? Is it balanced? It’s something to chew over while I avoid Starbucks like the plague in favour of restaurants that I can’t find at home. If I'm ever on the run from British authorities, however, I plan on fleeing to the nearest Starbucks, because they will harbour me as an American citizen.
Because that was a little on the deep side, here's another British cultural export: Mumford and Sons. They're an awesome band, and they just did an awesome performance on the Grammy's last night. Definitely worth checking out!

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.