Scotland to the U.S., U.S., do you read me?: November 2009

Last Sunday (Nov. 15), I returned from a 10 day journey through England, France, and Germany, accompanied by John and Juliana. In order to spare myself the tedium of relating each day chronologically (we took a train here, then we did this…etc.), I’ll give an itinerary below, then reflect on certain instances and comment on the trip as a whole.

Here’s what we did:

Friday, November 6

--Took a train from Leuchars station to York. Stayed in York Youth Hostel 2 nights.

Sunday, November 8

--Train from York to London Kings Cross. Stayed in Astor Hyde Park Hostel 1 night.

Monday, November 9

--Eurostar train from St. Pancras Station to Paris Garde du Nord. Stayed in St. Christopher’s Youth Hostel 2 nights.

Wednesday, November 11

--Train from Paris Garde de l’Est to Frankfurt. Stayed in 5 Elements Hostel 2 nights.

Friday, November 13

--Train from Frankfurt to Berlin. Stayed in Grand Hostel of Berlin 2 nights.

Sunday, November 15

--Flight from Berlin to Edinburgh. Boarded train to Leuchars. Return to St. Andrews.

OK, here’s what happened:

We started our journey in style, traveling first class to York. The tickets were actually a couple pounds cheaper than the regular coach seats. We were served tea and coffee, and it rocked. On the whole, our experiences on the train were great; all the trains were more or less on time, we encountered no problems with overbooking, and the compartments were clean and comfortable.

We arrived in York in the early afternoon, so we leisurely made our way to the hostel booked by IFSA Butler for the weekend. On the way we stopped by the river to eat a picnic lunch of the food I had been saving all the previous week expressly for this trip. Food became part of my accoutrements, it seems, for the entire trip; I could always be counted on to carry at least 3 pieces of fruit, biscuits, rolls, peanut butter, and anything else I could save from breakfast, if it was served in the hostel. I was introduced to the term, “opportunivorism,” by Juliana; it summarizes well how we lived for the week, shaving costs by eating out of grocery stores and hostel breakfasts.

York was a blast, really exceeding my expectations. After checking in at the hostel, John, Juliana and I headed for the National Train Museum, which was both free and located relatively close to the hostel. With childlike zeal we wandered through locomotives, giant steam engines cutting impressive profiles in the dark hangar. The following day was filled with more sightseeing (part of the York weekend included a York pass, giving us free admittance to many of the popular sites). We did York Minster in the morning. Spectacular. Larger than I expected, with a history dating back to the ancient Romans. They also had a great set of gargoyle heads on display and impossibly large and intricate stain glass windows.

We visited the Jorvik Viking Center (smelled of Viking. We took a ride in blue capsules that moved past animatronic Vikings at .5 mi/hr.) Went through the Shambles (inspiration for Diagon Alley of Harry Potter) and grabbed a sandwich at Mr. Sandwich. Took a boat ride on the river; it was freezing. Warmed up at the York Castle Museum. It was the most eclectic collection of exhibits I’ve ever seen housed under one roof. You walk from an exhibit on death motifs in Victorian England into a gallery of English fashion into a collection of children’s toys throughout the ages into a replica of a Victorian prison into the 60s. Literally. My memories of the place are a little out of joint. The lack of coherence definitely kept you on your toes, though.

We struck out from York, pleased to be blazing our own trail now. Negotiating London proved a little difficult, as we didn’t have a metropolitan map and relied largely on our intuition (and the occasional help from a metro map or random stranger) to find our hostel. We found it, only to be told that we couldn’t check in for another half an hour. While we waited in the lobby, Nathan showed up (we had agreed earlier to meet that afternoon), and he and I got sandwiches to eat in Hyde Park. Walked to the Victoria and Albert Museum (equally eclectic, but perhaps more dignified?). Walked back to the hostel. I met up with John and Juliana and we did a walking tour of the London sites: Big Ben, Parliament, London Eye, Trafalgar Square, 10 Downing St., Buckingham Palace.

I woke up in London on Monday morning feeling nauseated. I knew something was wrong, but not wanting to admit anything, either to my companions or myself, I packed up and set out with John and Juliana for St. Pancras Station, which is about a 4 mile walk from our hostel. The cold air felt good, and I thought maybe I’d get over my nausea. I took some ibuprofen and focused on getting one foot in front of the other. We got there, picked up the Eurostar, and set out for Paris. That ride was a nightmare for me. John and Juliana assured me that it was the most dignified vomiting they had ever seen.

We arrived in Paris, and I was feeling a little better, so we walked to our hostel, which was another bit of a hike. After checking in, I told the both of them that they should go see the city, and I would sleep for the rest of the day, in hopes that I would be better by tomorrow morning. I did get better, it turned out, but not before I got much worse. I can honestly say hands down that that night was the worst I’d ever felt in my life.

Sparing you, dear reader, unnecessary details, suffice it to say that I was surprised and happy to recover from this flu with such expediency, and I was able to join my companions the next day for a great walking tour of Paris. Pere LaChaise! The cemetery was one of my top highlights of the trip. We visited Chopin’s and Oscar Wilde’s graves, and besides, it is a beautiful, disquieting, grey, quirky, grandiose, marvelous place. The sepulchers sparkled with strange workmanship and amusing fad fashions. American cemeteries are positively Puritan compared to the Pere lachaise. The sky was atmospherically a pearlescent grey and the air dry and crisp. Fabulous.

Then, we walked and walked and walked, stopping occasionally to eat a bit out of our bags. We saw the Louvre (though it was closed on Tuesdays, and we couldn’t get in), the Eiffel Tower, and Notre Dame. Notre Dame! Another highlight, and possibly my favorite of the trip. A Mass had begun when we arrived, so we were able to participate in a French Mass! In Notre Dame! Ah, I can’t get over it. Although I couldn’t understand the readings or the homily, the Mass was textbook, and I followed along well. I received communion in Notre Dame! Whoa!

After, we waited outside for Juliana’s Smith friend, who arrived and took us to the Latin Quarter for dinner. Her friend was delightful, with a subtle sense of humor, derived from her articulation and mastery of vocabulary. And she spoke French, which we were all grateful for. John and I walked back to the hostel, and Juliana joined her friend at her host family’s house for the night.

The following morning, John and I walked/ran to the Louvre, walked/ran through a wing in the Louvre, then ran back to the Garde de l’Est to catch the train that would take us to Frankfurt. We were in the Louvre! You can get in free with a student ID, which is a good thing, as we only had an hour to see a museum that can probably house 5 Smithsonians. But wow! What a mind-boggling collection! We saw part of the Mediterranean ancients, some of the Americas and Africa, and some of the early Renaissance Italians. I wanted to see the Dutch, but we couldn’t find them.

The train to Frankfurt was far more pleasant for me, having made a full recovery. The German countryside and mountains are beautiful, shrouded in mist and punctuated by tiny mountain towns of timber-frame houses and church steeples. Frankfurt is such a wild contrast to Paris, which is positively flamboyant and aesthetically radiant. German cities are far more sober and sensible, with their grid layouts and modern skyscrapers. We arrived in the evening, well after sunset, and navigated the “strasses” with a little anxiety, none of us educated in German. We found our hostel without too much trouble, however, nestled among the neon signs advertising “SEX Inn” and “Babes babes babes!” We were in the red light district of Frankfurt!

John set out to find the WWII airfield the following morning, leaving Juliana and I to explore the city (on foot, once more). In the afternoon, we visited the Frankfurt Architecture Museum, which was quite interesting, particularly the Ben Willikens exhibit. He is a German artist who depicts rooms emptied of all colors and contents. His most famous (that’s relatively speaking) work is DaVinci’s Last Supper. There was also an exhibit on TV towers and their (largely political) significance throughout the world, and a pretty basic exhibit on architecture through the ages, with models.

The hostel was probably my favorite thing about Frankfurt, and that’s mostly because of our roommates. The first night we shared a room with a quiet, male student from Berlin and a late-20-something Colombian man. The student kept to himself, but Fernand was interested in talking to us. He had spent the year working in England to improve his English, and he was taking a month-long tour of Europe before returning to Colombia. He was relieved to leave England, he told us, because he missed amiability and fresh fruit, both of which are in short supply in the UK. So we joked for awhile about the shortcomings of the British, and he told us about his childhood in Colombia and his girlfriend. He was really curious about us as well, so we all got along very nicely.

Fernand checked out the next morning, and he was replaced by this American black man, who lived in Malta with his Maltese wife that he had met on his travels while in the Navy. Tim was a riot; we spent our second evening talking about American fast food, his travels (particularly his experiences in Dubai), family, high school, Obama, and the intensifying powers of the f-word. Oh man, he was so funny. I wish we had gotten his contact info, just for the sake of a Christmas card or two.

Berlin was strange. We arrived a few days after the anniversary celebrations for the fall of the Wall. I don’t know if there was any necessary correlation, but the city was practically empty. Well, there were people meandering about, and some traffic, but the city is so sprawling and modern, with wide sidewalks and streets, that there was never a concentration of people anywhere. It was a surreal sensation; it felt a like walking around a movie set.

We saw a portion of the Wall that remains standing. It now serves as a gallery of murals, by artists all over the world, largely peace-, overcoming-, unity-, international cooperation-themed. We visited a couple of museums, wandering through exhibits largely in German, and walked the dark, misty city. When recalling Berlin, that’s what I envision: darkness and mist. Even our hostel was impermeably dark; the fluorescent lightbulbs didn’t do much to dispel the sense of unending night. I realize this is a very unforgiving review of Berlin. I think by this point, we were tiring of travel, of living out of backpacks and eating cold food and making exchanges in languages we didn’t know. I exaggerate; we did have a great time and learned a good deal, but I think our experiences in Berlin would have been far more enjoyable if we had had a guide, someone from the city who could reveal the vitality of the city. As it was, we were at a loss for what to do.

The flight back to Edinburgh was uneventful, though it was my first experience with Ryanair. It was perfectly fine, excepting perhaps the incessant voice over the intercom, offering sales of food, drinks, cosmetics, perfumes, etc. We were a captive audience for 2 hours to a steady stream of consumer goods. I suppose they have to make their money somehow; a 20 pound flight is a little hard to come by.

Now, I’m back at St. Andrews, attempting to cram 6 weeks of classes and exams into 4, so that I can get back to Ohio for Christmas and the start of spring semester at Kenyon. I will be returning to Kenyon in the spring, for all those whom I haven’t told. My reasons for leaving are numerous, but primarily I am returning because I see no further benefit to staying for a full year, and as I have a higher estimation of a Kenyon education than of St. Andrews, I am saving myself some stress and some money by coming home. For now, I’ll enjoy the Christmas season here in the UK, and spend as much quality time with the friends I’ve made here as I can. Thanksgiving is this week, and I’m crazy excited. All of my friends, including the British ones, will contribute to a feast of epic proportions.

I hope all is well, and enjoy the holiday. I’ll be home soon.