Bought a sofa on Marktplaats.nl (the Dutch version of Craigslist) and need a pick-up truck to transport it? Wrong!
You just need a bicycle and a friend. It works like this: You put one end of the sofa on the back rack of the bicycle and walk the bike. Your friend carries the rear end of the sofa. The man we saw was lucky because he had multiple friends who could take turns carrying the rear of the sofa. Sofa delivery problem solved!
The great UK tour days 6, 7, 8, and 9: Edinburgh.
Days 6 and 9 don’t really count because they were travel days (train from Oxford Edinburgh and plane from Edinburgh to home, respectively).
We emerged from the Edinburgh Waverley train station to discover we had been transported to a Gothic fairytale city with dark spires and buildings perched on rocky cliffs. The sweet bellowing notes of a bagpipe playing the Imperial March floated across a park to us. Thus began our days in Scotland.
The next morning started with scones and coffee followed by trudging to the top of Arthur’s Seat for a panoramic view of the city and surrounding countryside and coastline. Arthur’s Seat is a dormant volcano next to the Queen’s palace in Edinburgh! Next stop was the Hollyrood Palace where we stumbled upon an arrival ceremony for some royalty (not the Queen, but they seemed important). There was a marching band and a bagpipe band all dressed in kilts that took turns playing regal-sounding music. This was followed by meandering along the Royal Mile to the Edinburgh Castle, which is at the top of the other dormant volcano in the city.
We learned some interesting facts about Scotland:
The national animal is the chained unicorn. It is chained so they can harness it’s powers.
At one point the kilt and bagpipe went out of fashion, but fortunately they were reintroduced by Sir Walter Scott.
The Bank of Scotland issues different bank notes than the Bank of England. They are interchangeable in Scotland. Not sure about England.
The great UK tour days 4 and 5: Oxford.
Although the train from London to Oxford is only about an hour (once you get to the right train station), we got to have the proper London underground experience because we unwittingly choose to cross the city during commuting hours. Perhaps not unexpectedly, our tube line was delayed so we had to reroute and survive the crush of people flowing up and down escalators and in and out of trains. Nothing could have made us more grateful to have reserved seats on the quiet train to Oxford.
Once in Oxford, we met up with Hendrik’s friend from grad school, Pavel, who is a post doc in the math department there. He took us to see Christchurch College where many scenes in Harry Potter were filmed and then to the Magdalen College boathouse to go punting. Punting is a peculiar British activity in which one propels a punt (a boat) along a shallow canal using a long pole to push off from the bottom and steer. I thought it was brilliant fun. I think Hendrik preferred the botanical gardens which we visited afterward.
On day 2 in Oxford, our luck with the weather finally ran out and we got to experience the fabled English rain. Fortunately Pavel knew of lots of indoor activities like the Ashmolean Museum, the Bodleian divinity school (where more Harry Potter scenes were filmed), the Blackwell Bookstore (which he claimed was larger than Powell’s), and the Oxford Castle.
We concluded the day with a visit the The Eagle and Child pub where Tolkien and C.S. Lewis used to hang out and the Turf Tavern which is a 13th century pub in Oxford and the site of the gown vs. town brawl.
The great UK tour day 3: more London! In the morning we set out to have a full English breakfast, but when we saw blood pudding was included we chickened out and got the vegetarian version. Then we went to see the view from the Shard, the tallest building in London. Apparently all of the skyscrapers are required to be placed and designed in a way the will preserve lines of sight between important London landmarks (mainly to St Paul’s Cathedral) so they end up having some peculiarly shaped buildings. The Shard is a glass skyscraper that is shaped like, well a shard of glass. I love panoramic views of cities from high up so even though it was expensive, we went for it. We learned all sorts of tourist facts like the London Bridge looks boring and it is actually the Tower Bridge that is the iconic bridge in London and it is not the clock tower that is called Big Ben but rather the bell inside. After wandering through the financial district and stopping by Saint Paul’s Cathedral, we dropped by the Tate Modern and enjoyed their exhibits on media and materials. The modern art highlights included learning about the Guerrilla Girls, seeing a piece made with old TV’s and electromagnets showing Nixon giving speeches, a room with projectors showing liquid crystal slides with rotating polarizers, a huge exhibit made entirely of human hair rope and chrome car bumpers, and a sideways urinal titled The Fountain.
Hendrik on the Millennium Bridge with the Shard in the background and Nancy at St Paul’s Cathedral.
In the evening we went to see The Taming of the Shrew at Shakespeare’s Globe theater. This year is the centennial of the Easter Rising in Ireland and so the Irish director and cast had set the play in 1916 Ireland and reinterpreted the relationship between Katherina and Petruchio as Ireland and England, all the while using the original dialogue with Irish folk music and dance mixed in. We thought it was an amazing performance.
The great UK tour day 2: We took a day trip to Bletchley Park where the British had their code breaking head quarters during WWII. It was originally a Victorian mansion that was converted into an MI6 intelligence facility so it is pretty fun to see the fancy buildings and grounds next to the military huts. We got to learn about how the enigma machines created cyphers and how the British built machines and used code breakers to decipher the transmissions. It was all rather impressive and our tour guide was adorably British. It was especially fun to see everything there after watching the BBC series Bletchley Circle.
This week we are doing a tour of the UK to visit friends from grad school. We ended up with a high concentration of them in Britain so we will travel from London to Oxford to Edinburgh and home again.
Day 1: London sightseeing (photos show Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace). A visit to the British museum to see the spoils of their empire plundering the world (very impressive, but of questionable ethical character). A pub crawl with Nick and Christa to some of the best pubs in London (photo shows waiting for the bus on the way home).
The worst part of living in Europe is the smoking. I swear everyone here starts smoking at the age of twelve and doesn’t stop until they keel over from lung cancer. All of the nice outdoor public places (parks, restaurant terraces, squares, etc) are filled with clouds of smoke. My strategy is always to pick the most upwind seat which usually helps unless the smoke blows in from the next restaurant over. There are some places where smoking is not allowed, like on the train platform but even that rule is not really enforced. At least they have made enough progress to ban smoking indoors.
I think they could use some anti-smoking campaigns of the ilk that were prevalent in the US during my childhood. That lady with emphysema and a raspy voice smoking through a hole in her throat while telling children about the dangers of the cig is something I will never forget.
We’re doing our civic duty: voting by mail and drinking whiskey.
And the even less fun part: filing our FBARs. You probably don’t know this but every US citizen is required to report all foreign bank accounts to the IRS. The penalty appears to be $10000 for every month late you are in filing.
About this time of year, the days get long and (mostly) sunny and all of the restaurants open their terraces. The other expats call this “Terrace Season,” the other season being “Rainy Season.” Yesterday we had perfect terrace weather in Maastricht, 23 degrees C with a slight breeze (yes, we’re back from Budapest now). We enjoyed dinner, dessert, and beers by the Maas. Although the Danube is nice, I have to say we are partial to the Maas.
It already stays light until almost 9pm. Fortunately I have no problem sleeping when it is light out, bit some of my colleagues also call it the season of perpetual sleep deprivation.
Literary side note: I have taken to calling them colleagues instead of coworkers because the Dutch word is “collega’s,” so everyone at work says colleagues. By the time I move back to the US I will have the most peculiar parlance.
The city of Budapest was created when the cities of Pest on the East side of the Danube and Buda on the West side were joined by the Chain Bridge (1849) and united in 1873. Of course the original settlement dates back to before 1 AD. It has a fascinating history including invasions and occupations by the Huns, the Turks, the Austrians, and the Soviets. The architecture in the city is amazing, partly from these varied influences and partly because of an old law requiring 20% of the building cost to be spent on decorations both internal and external.
We spent day 2 on waking tours in both the Pest (pronounced like pesht) and Buda areas. We also ate lots of yummy Hungarian food.
Hendrik at the Matthias Church, Nancy at the Hungarian Parliament building, Hendrik in front of the Buda Castle and the Chain Bridge, and Hendrik about to ride the oldest metro line on the continent (they have to phrase it that way to exclude London).
EisenOrem Adventures 