Live Through This and You Won't Look Back

Ahoy, mateys!

Tomorrow, I embark on a whirlwind tour of Europe. 19 days, 5 countries, 6 cities. I could not be more excited. Or terrified. I'm traveling with 4 friends that I met here on exchange and it's going to be an amazing experience.

We're hitting London first, and Meggo has graciously offered to put us up for the four nights we're there. I'm really lucky that she's in London this semester, because not only is it going to be great to see her (and Kevin!) but she has also agreed to show us the sights and take us to all the cool insider places that only someone living in London could know about.

Here's our schedule from there on out:

1 April: to Berlin!
4 April: Prague
7 April: Cesky Krumlov (which, our sources say, is the new Prague)
8 April: Vienna (for coffee and chocolate cake)
12 April: Budapest (hot springs, here we come!)

This trip has been in the works for a LONG time, so I'm thrilled it's all really happening. I can't express how absolutely lucky I am to have the means to do this much traveling while I'm over here. Hopefully spring really is here and the weather will be lovely.

While I'll probably be checking in here and there, I won't be taking my laptop with me so the likelihood of any real updates happening in the next few weeks is slim. I WILL, however, be updating you up the wazoo when I return, so there's something to look forward to. Additionally, if anyone is interested in seeing ALL of my photos when I get home, let me know. I'll happily show you all of the ones I've taken but not posed, though it will probably take us about a month to get through them all.

I'm also really psyched that my parents will be visiting right after I get back from my trip! I can't wait to show them all the lovely sights of Glasgow. After spending so much time away, it'll be so nice to get to wander around the city again. It will also be nice to see some familiar faces. Constantly meeting new people and making friends takes its toll! I'm excited to spend some time with people who ALREADY know me! Speaking of people who know me, now is your chance to give my parents all the presents/care packages that you want to send me ;)

Where, you might ask, do I have room for class in all of this? Well I am DONE with classes, and I have 3 exams to go before my semester in Glasgow is really over. My exams in April are not going to be so great, considering that I am going to have approximately 2 days to get ready for each of them. But then I have nearly 3 weeks to prepare for my last exam at the end of May. And then home I come. Time is going by so quickly here it's unbelievable. I'm used to short semesters because Middlebury has 12 week semesters as well, but this is something entirely different. Whenever I think about coming home, I want to dig my heels in and stop time from moving so quickly. Of course I miss everyone from home, and I look forward to heading back to Midd in the fall. It's just terrifying how little time I have left here, considering that the first three months FLEW by without me even noticing. Which is obviously a good thing, because it means I'm having a good time here. But still, I wish classes weren't over and that I wasn't getting so close to coming home. It's going to be really hard to leave all the people I've met here.

So, I'll leave you with all my love and affection. To prove this, I am attaching a video of Joshua Radin performing Closer at King Tuts Wah Wah Hut last Friday night. No, your eyes do not deceive you, I really was front row center. He smiled at me during Vegetable Car. I'm kind of a big deal.

Time Is On Your Side

I was doing so well with updating this right after fun things happened for a little while, and now I'm getting a bit more lax about it! Jessie just reminded me that I hadn't written about last weekend yet. My apologies, because I know you've all been waiting with bated breath.

Last weekend I went to AMSTERDAM. It was a trip organized by my housing complex, so a lot of people who live near me went, as well as several of my friends who live around here and a few who live across town. Amsterdam isn't that far from the UK, unless you go by bus/ferry. Which is what we did. So, at 2pm last Thursday, 300 students climbed aboard 2 double decker buses, and off we went into the sunset (er, daytime?). Drive Drive Drive. 12 hours later, we arrive in Dover in the south of England. No that wasn't a typo. 12 hours. Unfortunately, the white cliffs of Dover are not so white at 2 am. Anyway, we got on a ferry--bus and all--headed for Calais, France. A few hours across the channel, and off we got. Still in our bus. Our bus from the UK, which is designed for UK roads, which are the exact opposite of cars in America and Europe. Do you get what I'm going for here? Our driver is on the right side of the GIGANTIC bus, but we are also driving on the right side of the road. Yeah. Terrifying.

Anyway, he seemed to do a pretty good job (well, they, since there were two drivers per bus). Through France we went, stopping in Belgium to refuel. So in the span of about 15 hours I had touched ground in Scotland, England, France, and Belgium. Insane. It's kind of like when people from the Mid West come to New England, and they're shocked that in 3 hours you can go from Vermont to New Hampshire to Massachusetts since they couldn't even get to the border of whatever massive state they live in by then. Except with countries.

Another EXTREME difference about this bus trip was that every single person on the bus was drunk. I'm talking hammered, trashed, wasted, etc. On the bus. A moving vehicle, with probably several hundred open containers on it and windows the size of, well, bus windows. My group of friends was the only group not drinking, because we had no idea that this was acceptable. And honestly, I'm pretty sure it's not legal. But no one even thought twice about it. We marveled about how they could even stand up on the ferry after drinking for a solid 12 hours without stopping. Then we saw the line of people outside of the bus, throwing up. Everything was clearer then, and we were pretty happy we weren't among them.

We arrived in Amsterdam at 8 or so the next morning, about 2 hours ahead of schedule. Our hostel wasn't anything special; large, with a particularly angry staff. Since we were early, only about half the rooms were ready. Fortunately, mine was among the half that was good to go, and I was able to go upstairs and change, wash my face, brush my teeth, lament my terrible hair, etc etc. Then it was out into the city!


I feel like I often go event by event in these posts, and it probably gets a little confusing. Since we did a lot of wandering around, looking at cute canals and tiny buildings, I'm going to format this post with the main places we hit first, and then comment a bit on the city itself:

1. The Anne Frank huis. This was one of the most interesting things I saw in Amsterdam. It's not just the annex where the Franks hid with their friends, but a museum filled with information about Anne and her life and things about the war. The whole thing led up to the annex, which is kept empty just like the SS left it after discovering the people hiding there. As you walk through, it's so strange to think that people could actually survive there without leaving. It's so dark and small. There are still clippings and photos on the wall in Anne's room, which she put up to make the place feel nicer. All through the museum, quotes from her diary are written on the walls where they fit with what you're seeng. Descriptions, information, etc. It makes the whole experience much more moving, and it reminds you that what you're seeing is the real thing. At the end, there's a display case with the original diary in it. I don't know why, but I really wasn't expecting to actually see it. It's easy to just think of it as a book that you read in middle school, and you forget that it's actually a little girl's diary. Very moving. Definitely worth a visit if you're ever in Amsterdam. We were lucky that we went there first, because when we left the line was wrapped around the building.
2. Dam Square. One of the main tourist spots in Amsterdam, we wandered off to Dam square by following a road of clothing stores. It's got your typical European tourist city attraction: human statues/people dressed up like movie characters (in this case, it was Darth Vader and the Mask). It's very pretty, but kind of overwhelming because of all the people. The royal palace is there (I think?) as well as Madame Toussauds, in case you need to look at wax people while you're in Amsterdam.
3. The flower market. This place has a name, but I lost my map with all the little tourist attractions labeled, so I can't remember what it is. I was super excited to go here, because I love flowers and I was hoping that there would be a good selection even though it's only March. At first, I was sorely disappointed. Everything we saw when we went in was silk! About to lose hope, I wandered towards the back of the first stall, only to find that THAT is where all the real flowers are kept. It was very very beautiful. They have all sorts of funny things there, like cactii (sp?) and cannabis "starter kits." Hilarious.
4. Rembrandtplein. This was another square, much smaller than Dam square and skirted by pubs and cafes instead of Madame Toussauds. There were artists set up, peddling their wares, as well as musicians (like an accordian player!) playing all around for the entertainment of the people sitting outside the cafes. There's also a lot of greenery which was nice. We sat in a cafe and had an Amstel Bock, which is a beer from Holland. Not my favorite, since I don't really care for beer, but it was pretty good and definitely better than Heineken.
5. I AMsterdam. This is a silly sign, but I really like it. Pretty self explanatory and I'm sure you've all seen it before in pictures.
6. Van Gogh Museum. I spent a really long time in here and everyone I was with had to wait. Oops. Van Gogh has never been my favorite artist, but I really enjoyed seeing his work from start to finish. It changed SO MUCH from the first painting to the last. There was also a special exhibit which had Starry Night, his most famous painting. We were lucky, because I think it usually belongs in New York City and it was on loan for awhile (which seems wrong but whatever). I actually missed it the first time around, because of the way I looked at the museum (first floor through third, then went down to the basement where the special exhibit was, and didn't realize it ALSO had three floors!). But my friends laughed and guided me back to the right place. People were not very nice in this museum. They were kind of pushy.
7. Red Light District. We started at the Sex Museum, which I thought would be fun and kitschy but by the end was a bit much for me. There were pornographic photos in there from 1890! Good God! Then we wandered around the streets of the district. Honestly, I had heard about the whole women standing in windows thing. It still didn't prepare me for the reality. We saw SO MANY women, and we saw a whole lot of rooms that were occupied (in the middle of the day, even!), and we saw money exchange hands a few times, too. It was a super intense experience. Obviously you aren't allowed to take photos, for privacy reasons. I heard that you shouldn't even have your camera out, because they'll just take it from you. And if you try to take a photo of one of the girls specifically, they'll honestly throw a cup of urine on you. Intense. But totally valid. Needless to say, I left my camera safely tucked away.
8. Vondelpark. A very pretty park near where our bus picked us up to go home. Didn't have much time to walk through but I saw the entrance and had a short walk around. It was very pretty, and made me feel like spring was coming.

So those were the main sights to see in Amsterdam. I'm sure we missed a bunch of things, because we honestly just wandered around. They made ME navigate for a lot of it, and fortunately I didn't get us terribly lost. Other than these sights, we had a good time hanging out with the people we traveled with, many of whom we didn't know beforehand. There was a pub night the first night we were there, but we were too exhausted to enjoy it much, so we went to bed pretty early. Saturday night there was a pub crawl, which ended up being a lot of fun. Unfortunately, because there were so many of us we rented out entire places at a time, so there were no local people to mingle with. Oh well. That's what you get for traveling in such a large group. We also experienced STROOPWAFELS which are these amazing cookie/waffle/maple syrup deliciousness that I don't really know how to explain. They sold them for very low prices pretty much everywhere. Chloe told me there was a guy who made them fresh, but we didn't get the chance to find him! Next time I'm in Amsterdam, though...

I shall leave you with a happy picture, designed to induce happy thoughts until we meet again:

In Pieces

RIP Griffin iPod headphones. Thank you for making it through the 19 hour (EACH WAY) trip to Amsterdam before biting the dust. The lack of speaker on your right side makes it look like you've been decapitated. I always appreciated that you came with specially small sized ear thingies.

In other news, I'll post about Amsterdam at some point.

Trip to the Emerald Isle

Note: I wrote this post on either Monday or Tuesday, and just now realized that I hadn't posted it yet. So, my apologies, and here you go:

I spent this weekend in the beautiful (and expensive!) Irish city of Dublin with four of my lovely friends.


We flew out of Glasgow Prestwick airport on Thursday night. I've never encountered an airport that is MORE sad and derelict than Binghamton Regional, but Glasgow Prestwick might come close. It only does RyanAir flights, a budget airline that is incredibly cheap but involves riding in planes that were built circa the Paleolithic Era (ok, I don't really know when that is, it will be super embarrassing if THIS is the paleolithic era...whatever). Also, the flight attendants are forced to wear these absolutely awful outfits. They're bright blue and they come down to the mid-ankle. They look like bathrobes. The best thing about the flight to Dublin was that it was only a little over 30 minutes long. It actually took us longer to GET to Glasgow Prestwick from my flat (about 1.5 hours counting walking, the subway ride, and a busride!) than it took to get to Dublin. But arrive we did, and we were exhausted. We had wanted to go out for a bit after we put our stuff away in the hostel but it didn't really seem worth it, since we were getting up for sightseeing about 6 hours later.

The hostel was pretty nice, clean white sheets and a FULL IRISH BREAKFAST included in the price. So we got up and were fed eggs, toast, cereal, baked beans, hash browns, coffee, and some of us had sausage and bacon as well (when they realized I was vegetarian, they gave me an extra egg!). The coffee left something to be desired, but I'm cool with it so long as it has some caffeine.

Out we walked into Dublin. We were in a really good location, just off O'Connell street, so there was lots to see. It was a bright sunny day to start off with (though it got rainier as the day went on...but we're used to that!) and so we strolled down O'Connell, peaking into touristy shops and generally enjoying the city. Here are some photos taken on O'Connell street (you can see what a nice morning it was):


Above is a statue of O'Connell, with a bird on his head. Below is the Post Office (obviously).


And here's one from the bridge, from which you can see the Ha'Penny Bridge and the River Liffey:


Close by was Grafton street, the main shopping district in Dublin. We toured around, and saw all these beautiful flower stands (mind you, it was February!):


Then we met up with a family friend of Shauna's, who works for the Dublin Tourist Department. She took us out for coffee at an adorable French creperie, and then lavished us with Dublin-tourist treasures. We got passes to go on a hop-on, hop-off bus tour that took us all around the city whenever we wanted. The buses came about every 10 minutes, so whenever we were done with a sight, we could just hop on and off we went. It was extremely convenient and the trip would've cost LOADS more if she hadn't helped us out. She also gave us passes that got us in to many attractions (ie, the Guinness Factory, all the churches, etc) for free! So we had four of each of these passes, and five people traveling. Splitting the cost of one ticket to each attraction 5 ways meant we did a lot more than we would've otherwise.

After we said goodbye to Joan, the woman who'd helped us out (and planned to meet up for dinner!), we went walking around the city a bit more. We passed through St. Stephen's Green, a beautiful park near Trinity College. Again, lots of flowers and general merriment.



From here, we walked towards the political buildings, which are all grouped together. The prime minister in Ireland is called the Teasioch, pronounced tea-shock. The National Art Gallery was just around the corner, and we popped in for a visit. Unfortunately, we didn't have all the time we wanted to tour the gallery--it's huge and we only had two days in Dublin! So on we moved to Trinity College where we saw the Book of Kells. This is probably the oldest thing I've ever seen. They have a really cool museum there, where you learn all about how the book was made and what the symbols and pictures mean. It was incredible! At the end you go into a dark room where two of the books (it's a multivolume book, which we didn't quite get until just then...) are on display. They also display another book or two, and these books are rotated so that whenever you go it's a different one. Definitely one of my favorite things in Dublin.

Back on the tour bus, we traveled to Christ Church. On the way, we met a group of French tourists. They wanted us to be in their video of Dublin, so they filmed us each separately. When the guy with the camera got to me, he said "Oh! You must be the real Irish one!" because of my hair. Since English was (clearly) not his first language, he didn't notice my American accent. I played along, telling him that I was just showing some friends around the city (in the most American accent I could possibly muster, of course). Christ Church was beautiful, even though the clouds were gathering at this point and it had started to sprinkle a bit. We wandered around the grounds, but decided against going in:


Next, we went to St. Patrick's. Briana and Alyssa went in, but Crystal, Shauna, and I decided to explore the area around it. We took a peek inside first, of course. While we were outside, we stumbled upon the oldest library in the UK! When people went there to look at books in the old days, they had to sit in little cages and the books were chained to the wall so no one could steal them. Very intense. I probably would not have done much reading...

But I may have done this:


Yum, flowers.

Next up was the obligatory visit to the Guinness Factory. Pretty much the only reason for going is the "free" beer, and the fact that the bar at the very top has some of the best views in Dublin. This just in: I really don't like Guinness...

We rushed off to the Temple Bar district to have dinner with Joan and her 22 year old son Simon. It was a pretty fancy place with tons of gourmet pizzas (ok, so it wasn't THAT fancy) and Shauna and I split one with artichoke hearts, asparagus, and black olives. DELISH. Wandering around Temple Bar district was fun afterwards, but it was just so crowded that we decided not to go in to the actual Temple Bar. Oh well, I think I can live without that one. But it was a cute area:


The fun continued on Saturday, when we went to Kilmainham Gaol. We had to wait about an hour for the guided tour to start, so we snooped around the museum connected to the gaol. It was a really cool place, filled with all sorts of memorabilia, particularly from the 1916 Easter Rebellion leaders who were kept and executed at the Gaol. I don't know a lot about Irish history, so it was very educational. The Gaol itself is terrifying. They kept men, women, and children there! Definitely worth a visit if you're ever in Dublin.


Outside was a really nice memorial to the 14 leaders of the Easter Rebellion who were executed at Kilmainham:


We needed something a bit lighter afterwards, so we headed to Phoenix Park. It's the biggest enclosed park in all of Europe! Very beautiful, and again shocking because it was so green and the flowers were already out. Crystal spent most of the time there searching for clover, but she never found any. Alas, we didn't have enough time to visit the zoo that's part of the park. Someday...


Back to the city, we split up to do a little shopping. Shauna and I wandered around the windy streets of Dublin, looking in all the fun boutiques. Very kitschy. But we didn't stop for long because it was almost time for the Six Nations Rugby game! Ireland was playing England, and Dublin was CRAZY because of it. We finally found a pub about 45 minutes before kick off, and the game was excellent. Ireland won 14-13. Everyone laughed at me because I knew the words to the Irish rugby song, "Ireland's Call" (thank you, MCWRC).

At 7:30, the game was finished, so we headed to Subway for some "cheap" dinner. Shauna had never been to Subway before. At first she didn't really get how it worked, but then she got the hang of things. She loved it. I was a little disappointed that we didn't do something less American, but honestly ever Irishman I've ever met LOVES SUBWAY and Simon was in charge of finding us somewhere to eat. So I guess it was a real Irish experience? Simon and his friend Neil took us to a pub where lots of Trinity students hang out afterwards. It was fun, but crowded and expensive. We're always complaining about spending money in Glasgow--if I were in Dublin this semester I'd be broke already!

Phew, this has been an incredibly long and potentially boring post. Oh well. Check back again for more adventures, same bat time, same bat place.