so yet again way too long between posts...
Last Sunday, I picked up Mr. Andy Butler from the airport and helped him get to Bath. Ditched him the next day to go to all my classes (and a wine tasting seminar...) On Tuesday we departed Bristol airport for Dublin with about 6 other Americans most of whom are studying at Bath too. We rented a pretty nice apartment (meant for 5 people, shared by 8-10) just across the river from the temple bar district. After a short time wandering, we began drinking and bar hopping. Dublin was absolutely packed and in a celebratory mood getting ready for St. Patrick's day. Sampled my first guinness and decided its not bad at all... I might even like it better then beer. Just not the sort of thing you can chug. Well, I did see it done, but only by the Irish. The next day, we somehow managed to wake up and make it outside by about 10:30am.... INSANE! To get really good spots for the parade. But the parade didnt start until a bit after noon, so too much waiting. The parade had a bit of a different style then those I've seen in America. Mainly fewer floats and more groups of children dressed up in costumes, walking, and beating on all sorts of instruments. A lot of the groups were from America - mainly high school marching bands and bagpipe groups. After the parade and a break, a few of us went to the Guinness storehouse, did the tour, and imbibed our free pint of extra cold on the 7th floor with a panoramic view of Dublin. The second night of drinking began, and the entire city was overloaded. Every bar was packed full. In the second to last one we ran into a group of 3 irish policemen who seemed incredibly entertained by the guys in our group. Ended up hanging out with them and getting good stories until about 4am that night. Woke up early again to fly back to Bristol and spend the rest of the day asleep.
On Friday, Andy and I went to London for the day. Coerced him into seeing all the sights and walking across a bit more then half of the city. After dinner went to see "Fame" the musical. Definitely a good show, and I tried my best to remember some of the moves that could possibly be converted to cymbal visuals... haha. The next day I made sure that he made it onto a flight back to the US and returned to Bath via London. Enroute I got to see a huge security alert/bag blown up at Gatwick airport as well as walk by the huge protest march in London. Many group protesting everything from the one yr anniversary of the US invading Iraq to Israel to Blair/Bush to white power to the apparent colonization of Cuba, Venzuela, and Brazil. Lovely to see the communists, anarchists, and hippies all coming together like that....
At any rate, I've been recovering from the week and getting ready for the last week of classes before 'Easter holidays.' Don't worry too much if there is not another update until mid-April since break is 3 weeks long!
Sunday, March 21, 2004
Tuesday, March 09, 2004
Sunday, March 07, 2004
Well this past week has been quite an adventure.
On Tuesday I participated in a pub quiz - quite a common thing over here. My team of 5 came in second and won 75 pounds despite my terrible showing in the nature/science category (I mean, really, they did NOT teach us in bio that a group of frogs is called an army!) At any rate that was enough to get me 15 pounds and our team invited back to some sort of 'championship round' pub quiz in May.
Early this week, I also convinced one of the American guys to hitchhike to paris with me. This is not quite as random as it first appears - the university of bath has a group called RAG which is basically a charity organization and raises money in many different kinds of ways. The link describing the hitch is here: http://www.bath.ac.uk/~su4rag/events/hitch/ Think along the lines of Bowling for Big Brothers, Big Sisters type of a charity fundraiser. At any rate, we are supposed to have 50 pounds each of sponsership. This would not have been quite as much of a problem if we had a) decided to do this a month ago instead of the week before and b) we actually knew people here in Bath. As it is, since neither of us have check books, we couldn't write them a deposit. We did spend a lot of time on Wednesday and Thursday wandering around and bothering people for a pound or two, but there is really no chance of us making all the money. Ah well, we will try our best for sure, but as the only two random international students that did the hitch, hopefully they wont get too mad if we dont quite get 50pounds each.
So anyway, the hitch! Started on Friday morning.. way way too early. Got to the uni and signed out around 7:45am. We were given these bright red t-shirts reading paris hitch 2004 and info for when we were in france. With giant red t-shirts on, Les and i proceeded to the hill down from campus. In retrospect, I am still amazed at how fast we were able to move while in England. We actually caught a ride down the hill, and then after about 10 min of walking towards the M4 motorway got a hitch all the way to Reading. Driver was Dave - a mechanic at the Porsche factory in Reading. Did a pretty steady 110 mph all the way there - a measure of how much people here ignore the speed limits, but are more polite drivers in general. Dropped off at the roundabout, we made a sign to get to the M25 that goes around London. Couldn't have been more then 10-15 min when we got picked up again by Mike and Mandy in a BMW. Leather seats and driving a stead 90 mph, they even took us around the M25 to a spot they thought would catch any traffic going from London to Dover. Mike, retired, had had a rather important postition at Disney and got to spend some time Eisner bashing. Incredible how nice the people were that picked us up. Well, unfortunately, the spot was not as good as anticipated since it was kindof hard for people to stop and it seemed like no one was going to Dover. And it had started raining a bit too, but we were under a bit of an overpass which helped. A little over half an hour trying to get a ride, we were reconsidering our strategy when a lorry driver pulled over for us. Our third ride was a french guy who spoke very little english but who was going all the way to the ferry docks in Dover. Lorries are slow, but we were happy just to have been picked up. He dropped us off right where we entered to get on the ferry. On the ferry, we ran into two other groups doing the hitch. When we phoned into the university of bath to tell them we were leaving the country, we found out we were the first batch to make it to the ferry, and since Les and I had left last, we were technically ahead of everybody. Trouble was that it seemed like no one was going to Paris from Calais, or even to the highway that leads toward Paris. After scouring the boat, one of the groups got an ok from a family in a car that barely had room but would take them all the way. Although they told us not to get off the ferry at Calais without a ride, we thought we might have to do just that. There was an English lorry driver, however, that was going within 45km of Paris, and was nice enough to let all four of us that were left squish into his cab. Quite an entertaing 3.5 hr drive with Steve - got to dispense with some of the stereotypes of Americans, and generally have a good time with Steve and the other team. Steve had to drop us off when he turned off of the A1 and this happened to be just past a toll in the road. Now we had problems since it was getting dark, it was nearly impossible to get any of the cars to see our signs, there were now 4 of us instead of 2 groups of 2, and hitchhiking is illegal in France. At any rate, we spent an energetic 20 min trying to get a lorry or slow car to stop when some of the road-crew workers came by and told us that we had to stay farther out of the road or the police would arrest us. As we re-grouped on the side of the road, a bus just happened to pull over... A miracle for sure! Turns out that, there had been about 3 teams on the ferry from Dover that went an hour after ours and that the only way close to Paris had been in this empty bus that the driver Neil was taking to Charles de Gaul airport. The driver had just happened to see our shirts and pulled over to make the bus half full of paris hitch people. At the airport, only 25 km from Paris, we almost gave into the temptation to take the bus or train into town like a couple of the teams. But to do this proper, we had to hitch a ride at least to somewhere we could catch the metro. We headed to one of the arrivals terminals and stood outside near the lines of taxis. Every single person that was getting in a taxi we asked... or at least pointed to the french phrases that were in our info packet - for a ride. In a surprisingly short amount of time, a french guy agreed to let us hop in on his taxi. His English seemed relatively basic, and I'm sure that didnt fully grasp what the heck we were doing, but it was a ride into Paris! After a flat tire on the way (it would only happen to us you know) we were let out right at a metro stop. Then it was just a matter of getting to the Eiffel tower - no problem! We signed in at about 12.5 hours or so. Not bad at all really. The people with the fastest time ended up being the team that caught the one car going to Paris when we were on the ferry. Probably beginners luck helped a bit too... We had made it to paris in 6 rides, and some people had had 6 rides just trying to get to Dover. Turns out that by 2:30am on Saturday, all but 3 teams had made it and they were all going to spend the night in Dover.
So dinner, and then a night in a hostel. Yesterday was spent walking - from the Bastille near where our hostel was along the river via Notre Dame, the Lovre, and the arch de Triumph to the Eiffel Tower. It can be quite hard to kill 14 hours without spending tons of money. Around 7, we headed back to the Tower and met with quite a large group from Bath that was just hanging around. Went to the grocery store to get some celebratory 92 cent wine (!!) cheap alcohol at last! And everyone spent the remainder of the time in Paris boozing it up in the vicinity of the Eiffel Tower. After the group photo, we finally got on the coach for the ride back around midnight. Caught the 6am ferry to dover, and arrived back in Bath around 10 this morning. Well, as that is the longest post EVER I'll just end it by saying I'll try to update the photos soon.
On Tuesday I participated in a pub quiz - quite a common thing over here. My team of 5 came in second and won 75 pounds despite my terrible showing in the nature/science category (I mean, really, they did NOT teach us in bio that a group of frogs is called an army!) At any rate that was enough to get me 15 pounds and our team invited back to some sort of 'championship round' pub quiz in May.
Early this week, I also convinced one of the American guys to hitchhike to paris with me. This is not quite as random as it first appears - the university of bath has a group called RAG which is basically a charity organization and raises money in many different kinds of ways. The link describing the hitch is here: http://www.bath.ac.uk/~su4rag/events/hitch/ Think along the lines of Bowling for Big Brothers, Big Sisters type of a charity fundraiser. At any rate, we are supposed to have 50 pounds each of sponsership. This would not have been quite as much of a problem if we had a) decided to do this a month ago instead of the week before and b) we actually knew people here in Bath. As it is, since neither of us have check books, we couldn't write them a deposit. We did spend a lot of time on Wednesday and Thursday wandering around and bothering people for a pound or two, but there is really no chance of us making all the money. Ah well, we will try our best for sure, but as the only two random international students that did the hitch, hopefully they wont get too mad if we dont quite get 50pounds each.
So anyway, the hitch! Started on Friday morning.. way way too early. Got to the uni and signed out around 7:45am. We were given these bright red t-shirts reading paris hitch 2004 and info for when we were in france. With giant red t-shirts on, Les and i proceeded to the hill down from campus. In retrospect, I am still amazed at how fast we were able to move while in England. We actually caught a ride down the hill, and then after about 10 min of walking towards the M4 motorway got a hitch all the way to Reading. Driver was Dave - a mechanic at the Porsche factory in Reading. Did a pretty steady 110 mph all the way there - a measure of how much people here ignore the speed limits, but are more polite drivers in general. Dropped off at the roundabout, we made a sign to get to the M25 that goes around London. Couldn't have been more then 10-15 min when we got picked up again by Mike and Mandy in a BMW. Leather seats and driving a stead 90 mph, they even took us around the M25 to a spot they thought would catch any traffic going from London to Dover. Mike, retired, had had a rather important postition at Disney and got to spend some time Eisner bashing. Incredible how nice the people were that picked us up. Well, unfortunately, the spot was not as good as anticipated since it was kindof hard for people to stop and it seemed like no one was going to Dover. And it had started raining a bit too, but we were under a bit of an overpass which helped. A little over half an hour trying to get a ride, we were reconsidering our strategy when a lorry driver pulled over for us. Our third ride was a french guy who spoke very little english but who was going all the way to the ferry docks in Dover. Lorries are slow, but we were happy just to have been picked up. He dropped us off right where we entered to get on the ferry. On the ferry, we ran into two other groups doing the hitch. When we phoned into the university of bath to tell them we were leaving the country, we found out we were the first batch to make it to the ferry, and since Les and I had left last, we were technically ahead of everybody. Trouble was that it seemed like no one was going to Paris from Calais, or even to the highway that leads toward Paris. After scouring the boat, one of the groups got an ok from a family in a car that barely had room but would take them all the way. Although they told us not to get off the ferry at Calais without a ride, we thought we might have to do just that. There was an English lorry driver, however, that was going within 45km of Paris, and was nice enough to let all four of us that were left squish into his cab. Quite an entertaing 3.5 hr drive with Steve - got to dispense with some of the stereotypes of Americans, and generally have a good time with Steve and the other team. Steve had to drop us off when he turned off of the A1 and this happened to be just past a toll in the road. Now we had problems since it was getting dark, it was nearly impossible to get any of the cars to see our signs, there were now 4 of us instead of 2 groups of 2, and hitchhiking is illegal in France. At any rate, we spent an energetic 20 min trying to get a lorry or slow car to stop when some of the road-crew workers came by and told us that we had to stay farther out of the road or the police would arrest us. As we re-grouped on the side of the road, a bus just happened to pull over... A miracle for sure! Turns out that, there had been about 3 teams on the ferry from Dover that went an hour after ours and that the only way close to Paris had been in this empty bus that the driver Neil was taking to Charles de Gaul airport. The driver had just happened to see our shirts and pulled over to make the bus half full of paris hitch people. At the airport, only 25 km from Paris, we almost gave into the temptation to take the bus or train into town like a couple of the teams. But to do this proper, we had to hitch a ride at least to somewhere we could catch the metro. We headed to one of the arrivals terminals and stood outside near the lines of taxis. Every single person that was getting in a taxi we asked... or at least pointed to the french phrases that were in our info packet - for a ride. In a surprisingly short amount of time, a french guy agreed to let us hop in on his taxi. His English seemed relatively basic, and I'm sure that didnt fully grasp what the heck we were doing, but it was a ride into Paris! After a flat tire on the way (it would only happen to us you know) we were let out right at a metro stop. Then it was just a matter of getting to the Eiffel tower - no problem! We signed in at about 12.5 hours or so. Not bad at all really. The people with the fastest time ended up being the team that caught the one car going to Paris when we were on the ferry. Probably beginners luck helped a bit too... We had made it to paris in 6 rides, and some people had had 6 rides just trying to get to Dover. Turns out that by 2:30am on Saturday, all but 3 teams had made it and they were all going to spend the night in Dover.
So dinner, and then a night in a hostel. Yesterday was spent walking - from the Bastille near where our hostel was along the river via Notre Dame, the Lovre, and the arch de Triumph to the Eiffel Tower. It can be quite hard to kill 14 hours without spending tons of money. Around 7, we headed back to the Tower and met with quite a large group from Bath that was just hanging around. Went to the grocery store to get some celebratory 92 cent wine (!!) cheap alcohol at last! And everyone spent the remainder of the time in Paris boozing it up in the vicinity of the Eiffel Tower. After the group photo, we finally got on the coach for the ride back around midnight. Caught the 6am ferry to dover, and arrived back in Bath around 10 this morning. Well, as that is the longest post EVER I'll just end it by saying I'll try to update the photos soon.
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