Hello, London

I have been riding the struggle bus all day on how to start an assignment for my travel writing class, so I have decided to write this instead. Dear reader, you are a procrastination tool. I'm just using you. I know it hurts right now, but you'll heal in time. I hope. Either that or I'll be leaving a trail of broken hearts in my wake. Oh, well.

This weekend, I re-explored London. I set myself a goal after spring break to go to some more of the places in London that I hadn't been yet, but with a cold and a voice that cracked so viciously it would have felt at home in a puberty video, I didn't get too much wandering done during the week. My knock-off NyQuil and I did spend a lot of quality time together, though. This weekend, however, I sounded almost normal and my dear friend from school, Casey, was visiting, so we struck out on the streets of London.

We began with an egg hunt. It's the Diamond Jubilee in London, you see, and there are giant eggs scattered throughout a few different parts of London. I like to imagine the queen, disguised as the Easter bunny, hopping throughout the city at night with a basket full of eggs half her size. I am sure that is not how the eggs are hidden, but don't ruin the mysticism of Easter for the children.

In any case, we started out at Covent Garden, which, despite its proximity to my flat, I had never visited. There were about twenty eggs hidden there, according to the egg map I had printed off, but as we wandered in and out of the Piazza, we only located about a dozen. But we managed to find the most important egg: the dinosaur one.

They even put a ceratopsian dinosaur on it. Because that is the coolest kind. Ever.

We continued our egg hunt in Trafalgar Square, where we found two eggs before seeing Big Ben's clock tower in the distance. I led Casey there to take in more of the conventional attractions of London. After a bit of a tour of that area, we made our way back to my flat, stopping to check out a few more eggs on the way.

Saturday I had yet another optional field trip to Cambridge. Oh, the pomp! Oh, the silly rules about grass! Sure, they've churned out more nobel prize winners than any other institution as I was reminded of at least three times on my visit, but when will they figure out that grass is meant to be walked on? By everyone. Not just the fancy people with fur lined degree robes.

I am sure I am not the first person to say such things. Or surreptitiously step on the grass. I know, it's not as bad ass as peeing on a McCain Palin campaign sign, but it's just as irresistible. When people tell me not to touch things, it makes me want to touch them even more. Which brings us a bit ahead in chronology to the British Museum.

It was my third visit to the British Museum because it's monstrous. I still haven't seen everything in it. But they just have ancient relics hanging around with nothing to stop me from touching them except signs that say I shouldn't. There I have resisted because the British Museum has more legitimate reasons for me not touching their old, pilfered possessions. Half the statues are already missing penises. The museum is protecting the few phalluses they have left from dicks like me.

All penises and grass prohibitions aside, Cambridge was beautiful - mostly because of the weather, which actually hung around all weekend. I was able to give Casey tours of London on foot Friday and Sunday without a coat. Sunday we went to Harrods to marvel at the ridiculous shit rich people waste their money on, stopped by Buckingham Palace, which I had not been to yet, and made our way the aforementioned British Museum before Casey had to catch her bus back to Wales.

I came out of this weekend with my sense of London geography reaffirmed and a pair of sneakers that have finally been broken down by all the walking. I take comfort in the fact that one of their final adventures before being lost to the ravages of travel was stepping on the grass at Cambridge: one last taste of victory.

The Fatherland

I occasionally find the smell of cow shit welcoming. Now, if I had a choice between manure and pies or cow excrement and dryer sheets, I would choose the latter in both cases. I'm not entirely deranged. Maybe it has to do with some of my favorite people living in places that are often rife with the odor of methane, but as I rode through Switzerland with my family and the faint whiff of farming feces would drift by, I found myself, though I wouldn't say filling my lungs with the pungent smell, at least letting the scent tickle through me.

I began my adventures in the fatherland, very early Wednesday morning without any traces of cow smell in the air. My night bus pulled into Zurich at five in the morning. I was somewhat alert despite being kept awake for the last hour of the ride by two passengers behind me who thought it was a good time to have a conversation in Slovak. I disagreed. After an hour of passive aggressively moaning at the people behind me, I got off the bus in an empty Zurich.

Early morning confirmation that I was, in fact, in Switzerland

After wandering around for a few hours waiting for things to open, I stumbled into a Starbucks for the free wifi and an extremely expensive hot chocolate. Normally, my visiting such a place would not be of note. Certainly there are things to be said about my half successful attempts at Swiss German. I shall not say them. Instead I will focus on the fact that when I told them my name was Jes so they could write it on my cup, I was later handed a hot chocolate with a Jes with only one s. I gave them no indication of how I spell my name. The Swiss just get me, man.

The rest of the day included a visit to the Landesmuseum, which is the Swiss National Museum, and a bit of a tour of the city from my cousin, the filmmaking monk. At the end of day, he took me to the train station so I could make my way to Ruswil, where I was staying with my aunt and uncle. Armed with mental images of the maps my uncle had sent me, I arrived in Ruswil without much difficulty. With a belly full of raclette, I gratefully fell into bed to catch up on sleep after my night bus adventures.

The next day, I went to Luzern with my aunt and uncle. We wandered around the old city, went to an old church, and had a snack on a cafe/boat called with Wilhelm Tell. We also went to see the Lion of Luzern, which I distinctly remember being very excited to see when I went Switzerland when I was twelve.

As almost anything one reads about the lion will tell you, Mark Twain described my dear lion friend as "the most mournful and moving piece of stone in the world." Unfortunately, Twain wrote that in A Tramp Abroad and not in Innocents Abroad, which I have to read for one of my classes. This sad fact means I likely can't use the lion to sidetrack us from discussion. Pshaw!

My final day in Switzerland, we went to Bern. I had a visit with some more of my family that spoke English, with the exception of my cousin's ten month old son, who could not speak. I am not usually a fan of the midgets, what with their crying and pooping and generally not being as in control of themselves as cats while still being less cute, but I will concede that my cousin's kid was actually pretty cute. Not like my cat, or anything, but okay.

After a lunch of Alpen Macaroni, which is one of my all time favorites, I went into Bern with my aunt and uncle. We went to the parliament building and then went to hang out with the bears. By which I mean we watched them romp in their hillside enclosure. Stephen Colbert has taught me of the dangers of bears, no matter what my mother thinks about how cute they are.

Saturday morning I flew back to London from Switzerland with probably more chocolate than I should have. Fun fact: the Swiss eat more chocolate per capita than any other peoples. So really, the lumps of chocolate I just consumed while writing this was just me doing my part for the fatherland.

What a Difference a "K" Makes

My brain is currently thinking mostly in nonsense words. Most of the time when I imagine myself speaking in a different language and I run out of words, my mind switches into Spanish and fills out my thoughts that way. But now, on this overnight bus from Bratislava to Zurich, my mind can't even manage that. Perhaps it the overload of hearing Slovak while mentally practicing my Swiss German, but I have begun formulating nonsensical syllables instead of real thoughts.

But yes, that mythical time known spring break has begun. In fact, at this point it's nearly half over. Rather than head to Ibiza or some other popular beach destination where I could flash my tits at foreigners, last Friday at around three in the morning I began my journey to Slovakia. I almost ended up at the wrong airport in London (Stansted instead of Luton) and almost ended up at the wrong town in Slovakia (Stiavnicka instead of Stiavnica) but by some fucked up happenstance, four buses and one plane later I met my friend Andy at the bus stop in Banska Stiavnica, Slovakia.

Now, as I fill myself on food and drink of indeterminable ingredients and awkwardly apologize to the passenger behind me for not being able to speak Slovak as he tries to engage me in conversation, I have found the time to at least begin updating my blog without the aid of internet. I have also found the time to write incredibly long sentences.

Stiavnica is beautiful in an odd sort of way. Perhaps the flatness of London and the overwhelming wash of gray there has colored my perception of other places, but the hillsides and jumbles of pastel houses along with the glorious woods that occasionally lined the roadside seemed incredible. From different places in Stiavnica you can see both New Castle (built in the late Middle Ages to protect the town from Turkish raids) on the hillside and the skewed cement housing build by the Soviets. Rather than attempt a complete account of my adventures there, I've selected a few (hopefully) more interesting moments to capture my time there.

New Castle

Saturday, Andy and I were in a neighboring town at a cafe with Andy's friend Norbert Sr., who has very strong if not altogether clear political beliefs that apparently include high opinions of both Glenn Beck and the United States in the late nineties. Go figure. While sipping away at my green tea, I learned that the day before there had been a rash of political violence in Bratislava. I was suddenly glad that I had at least found the right buses from the airport to the bus station and hadn't ended up near parliament the day before. I continued to drift in and out of focus on the conversation, and I was especially jarred out of it when the strains of “Sexy and I Know It” started washing out of the speakers over the restaurant.

Sunday, Andy gave me a more complete tour of Stiavnica than he had managed to give me Friday night after I arrived. There are a lot of clock towers that look strikingly similar in the center of Stiavnica, but Andy pointed out one in particular.

“It's quarter to three. What's wrong with that clock?” Andy asked as we looked up at it.

“Uh, well the hands are kind of shaped like penises,” I replied, true to form. “But I wouldn't say that's something that's wrong with it necessarily...”

12:27 beneath the cock clock.

Andy smiled and said he'd noticed that first too but led me away to continue our tour. I'd apparently get a better view of the clock once we were by Old Castle.

“Okay, it's ten after three now,” Andy said. “What's wrong with it?”

I couldn't figure it out. The hands were pointing at the Roman numeral three and the Roman numeral two. I shrugged and gave up. The minute hand and the hour hand are apparently switched, with the short arm for minutes and the long hours. The story goes that the master clock maker had been drunk when it was time to assemble the clock, so his slightly less drunk apprentice was put in charge and messed it up.

Monday morning, as Andy had to teach, I was unleashed on the streets alone with only my stupefied smile as a means of communication. After a vaguely awkward encounter with a supermarket clerk when trying to buy a nutella filled croissant, I made my way up to New Castle. After several windy minutes up by the old structure, I headed back down into town and wandered around the campus of the Mining and Forestry Academy, which was the first technical university and is now wonderfully overgrown.

After Andy got out of school, he began cooking a Czech goulash for dinner, and we headed out to a tea house. The tea house has 150 kinds of tea (we counted) and also offers hookah for those who are so inclined. Andy and I each settled for some tea and drank our respective pots of it as some boys at a table nearby struggled with their water pipe. Something may have been wrong with it, but, and I think this is far more likely given their giggly nature, something may have also been wrong with them.

That about brings us up to today, especially given how long this entry has already become in my word document. With this update at least vaguely taken care of, I can turn my attention to trying to practice a bit more Swiss German. Or – and this is more likely – I can doze off while trying to ignore what appears to be a dubbed movie about snakes, warriors, and Angelina Jolie.

Lovespoons!

Yn llawen a wnaf kydymdeithon ohonawch.

I don't remember many Welsh words from the class I took last year. We weren't learning it to speak it, and I have had little occasion to use it. Rarely do I find myself in social situations when it would be appropriate or useful to yell "pack of dogs" or "table" in Middle Welsh. But the above phrase, while it merely looks like a deranged string of typos, essentially means "I make companions of you in gladness." It's not much more useful than the other words I have retained, but does provide for a nicer opening than a random Welsh phrase related to stag hunting or conquest.

In any case, my class went on yet another optional but paid for day trip on Friday, this time to Cardiff, Wales, hence the rather lengthy discussion of Welsh vocabulary that preceded this. When we got off the train, I heard one of my classmates say, "Okay, this definitely isn't English," as she looked around at the signs. Of course, the signs all had English translations on them, so the vaguely harried tone I sensed in her voice was probably an overreaction.

We began our day at Cardiff Castle, which is the product of several different time periods and peoples. To the original Roman fort, the Normans and the Earl of Bute added a keep and a Victorian mansion respectively.

The normal keep part. For any Brice watchers out there, you can just make out my professor climbing the steps.

In World War II, part of the outer wall of the castle was used as a public air raid shelter. It's now eerily dark and filled with cobwebs along with a few reconstructed scenes from life in the tunnel. Apparently posters of carrots were very popular in air raid shelters because there were several posters featuring this lovely fellow, who was desperate to dance and be eaten.

After the castle, we wandered out into Cardiff to markets and stalls near the castle. And I discovered lovespoons.

I love spoons. I have several dear friends that are wooden spoons. Felipe, my first wooden spoon friend, spent many years slung through a loop on the shoulder strap of my backpack helping me collect strange looks. I also love spooning. Hell, I invented a game called the spoon olympics, which is three events of pure spooning fun. How could I not love lovespoons?

Lovespoonery has only been traced back to the seventeenth century, but was believed to begin before that. Men would carve spoons with designs to give to women they sought to woo. The designs the suitor chose to carve were meant to symbolize different things. As one might expect hearts symbolize love. Bells are for marriage. And, perhaps most appropriately, links of a chain are meant to show how many children a couple has together. Womp.

The lovespoons weren't only meant to show love and whatnot through the symbols, but were also a way suitors could show the fathers of eligible young women that he was a skilled craftsman and could provide for a family. Now, I don't need anyone to prove their craftsmenship to me through spoon carving, but I do firmly believe that spoons are the surest way to a woman's heart.

They're also useful for eating soup.