Back in the Wilderness

New Hampshire is not all wilderness, despite prevailing beliefs. Once, when I told some teenagers on a playground in Upstate New York that I was from the "mythical land of New Hampshire," they told me that sounded like "some Narnia shit." Kudos to them for reading, I guess.

In any case, I'm back in New Hampshire. Before I even embarked on my final adventures with my parents, I had to bid farewell to Puzzle, the mouse that moved into my flat. But before leaving Europe for good, I was back in London for a final day. It gave me a chance to remember that for a semester I lived in a place that had sidewalks.

I said a last goodbye to the smear of yellow paint in the road near my old flat that looked like a mustache and spent the gray day taking my parents on a multi-mile march through the city. I won't be bothered to give a blow by blow of the sites I walked them by, though I will say that I discovered yet another London rhino in the theatre section of the V&A.

After two bag searches and my very first pat down (I'm glad to report my ticklish side did not come out as my new friend stroked my thighs), I boarded the plane bound for Boston. I won't lie to you and say that I'm really unpacked because the clothes I took out of suitcases are on a pile in the floor by my closet. But I've snuggled the shit out of my cats and driven my eggplant like van, Gertrude. I mowed the lawn with a bandana tied around my face like a bandit in order to try and stave off the allergies. I've gone to my old trivia night and written shamelessly flirtatious messages to Phil, the ultimate trivia host. I am readapting to home. I've said goodbye to London, so all that really remains to do - and do pardon me if this seems rather cliche - is say goodbye to you, dear reader. So, goodbye. I'll miss the way you smell just after midnight...

The Penultimate Post

I have returned (triumphantly) to London. With two new countries under my belt after a whirlwind five days on the continent, I think it is altogether a relief to say that this account shall be far from complete. A relief for you, dear reader, sure. But also for me.

London, Calais, Bruges, Brusells, De Hoge Veluwe, Amsterdam, Bruges(ish), De Panne, Calais, London.

That's the Sparknotes version. On a related note, I would like to point out that Sparknotes is full of procrastination tools as well as often unhelpful synopses. Did you notice how this Sparknotes tidbit is also a bit of procrastination from an unhelpful synopsis? Moving on.

I didn't know a great deal about Belgium before visiting. People told me to try the waffles. Well, good. The one thing I had heard of about Belgium was the one thing I should go do. The waffles were delicious, though. As was the white asparagus cooked in the Belgian style I ordered for dinner the first night without knowing what the were. (They put some scrambled eggs on top. Om fucking nom.)

But food aside, Belgium was delightful and gave me an opportunity to variously practice my French and just not know Felmmish. Bonjour. Je m'appelle Jessica. Je suis un mutoun. No, that is not a prank someone has played on me. I just like to tell people I am a sheep in other languages.

Bruges is a beautiful smaller city, known for its lace. It was hosting some sort of fair with carnival rides when we made our way through, but luckily towards the center, the buildings muffled the screams. (Good to note if you're planning a Belgian murder.)

In Brussels, though surely I could talk about things like the Grand Place, more waffles, and that odd little boy taking a piss, my favorite bit was the Comic Strip Museum. Spurred on by Belgian pride for Herge, the creator of the Tintin comics, the museum offers a brief history of comics, selections of original drawings, and short bios of some of the more famous comic artists, including Herge. Tintin and I have been dear friends for many years. I did not become a fan simply because of the newly released film, although it has given me reason to shout Tintin and point at various objects on my travels, where before when I did that it was simply to confuse metal enthusiasts. My family owns all the Tintin books, save Tintin in the Congo, which is, of course, the only Tintin book with a rhino.

After Brussels, Bernard, Sir, and I headed to the Netherlands to the country's largest national park, De Hoge Veluwe. (At this point it might be useful to mention that I call my parents Bernard and Sir. I am sure I once had complicated but somewhat sensible reasons for doing so, but they have long since vanished.) I wanted to go to De Hoge Veluwe for the nature and because the promise of hundreds of free white bicycles to ride around the park on made my little socialist heart leap. It leapt less when I discovered there was a fee to get in the park, bringing that capitalist drive right back.

This brings up to what I will hyperbolically call the most harrowing experience of my life.

Before going to the park, Bernard, Sir, and I had gone to a grocery store to get some focacia and salami to eat for lunch. After cycling through the diverse landscape of the park, we stopped by a big ass house near a lake to eat. Nearly as soon as we sat down, six ducks had us surrounded. Though not really menacing, their squawks made eating a test of wills. Every so often, Sir would lob a scrap of bread away from us and with a wild storm of wings, the ducks would converge on the bit of food. One of the ducks, a female according to Bernard, remained on the wall behind us for most of the meal, every once in a while one of the male mallards would fly after her and chase her away. Already nervous by having a duck behind me, it took a lot of my courage to focus on peeling another peppered salami slice away from the others and pressing it into my mouth with a hunk of focacia clutched in my hand. A mini-tornado erupted over my head and my hair lifted in great swirls. A small yelp slipped through my lips as the brown lady duck suddenly flew off the wall behind me, dipped over my head and took off across the lake.

Amsterdam was next on the agenda. Yes, I was in the red light district. No, I did not get a prostitute. No, I did not become a prostitute. In fact, we walked through it without my even realizing we had done. Sorry to disappoint.

On the way back to Calais, my parents and I stopped off in De Panne and had a walk along the beach. With sand clinging to my teeth after a spot of lunch, I was ready to wade into the water. I had wanted to go into the water in Dover on my class field trip weeks early as some of you may remember. But now, I stumbled into the water along the Belgian coast to make up for missing out on swimming in Dover.

Two crepes later and a train ride later, I was in London once more for my real farewell tour.

A Temporary Farewell

My official semester abroad ended in a whirlwind of "how much shit that we didn't see in the first 14/15ths of our time here can we see in a few days?" The forgotten London bucket lists from the beginning of the semester reemerged and semi-frenzied plans were made.

I spent some time on Wednesday at the Natural History Museum admiring dinosaur bones and identifying types of rhino. Did you know that there are five types of rhino? There are. I don't think I've mentioned that or my love of rhinos and my love of fun facts pertaining to rhinos despite the title of this travelogue. But I do love rhinos. Especially black rhinos. Which is why people really need to stop killing them under the misguided impression that their horns will serve as boner-boosters.

Thursday involved more markets and some other adventures, which I will come to later. Friday, the last day with my friends in London, we went to Harrods to not buy things and then to the Science Museum, where I had my walking monitored and learned (among other things) that I apparently think like a female. So, good for me.

I'm now in a hotel in Belgium, though. My parents came across the ocean to have a personal tour guide for London and a little extra exploring. Recounts of those adventures should be forthcoming. But for now, however, I return to Thursday night.

As a final farewell for the study group, we had a fancy pants dinner cruise on the Thames. Our professors repeatedly reminded us that there was a dress code that meant we couldn't wear jeans and trainers, so I was officially out of my element. That fact was confirmed even more when I discovered that I would have a palette cleanser between meals. I'd never had a palette cleanser before. Turns out they're delicious. But I suspect I won't be having another for quite some time.

All through the dinner and dancing though, I had my pair of beaten up sneakers in my purse. I was looking clean and polished enough that my history prof had to remark on my lack of ridiculous, monster-related headwear, but my sneakers weren't just a reminder that normally I traffic in being less than classy. Sure, sometimes I doff a top hat and parade around, but given the fact that my aforementioned lady brain comes with a lady body, top hats in my case are rarely seen as an acceptable high class fashion accessory. No, my sneakers had come along, not to serve as a humbling reminder of my casual wear, but to be thrown off a bridge.

Not to worry, they didn't go into the Thames. I didn't want them to wash up with any stray dead bodies that might still be hanging around. (Or, you know, pollute the river.) On one of the walking tours that I have forgotten many details from, Katy, my history professor, took us to Royal Festival Hall across the Hungerford Bridge. A near by public space that has become a skateboard park has contributed a mass of broken skateboards and worn down skateboard shoes to one of the cement supports rising out of the Thames. It has taken on a kind of public art status. I wanted my own shoes, skate shoes from the boys' department, to join their fellow cracked and leaking shoes on the cement circle in the middle of the river.

After the cruise, I made my way across Hungerford Bridge toward the shoe and skateboard cemetery with a few friends in tow. The dome of St. Paul's was glowing in the distance as I tied together the laces of the sneakers I had worn through from walking in London. They needed a eulogy before I cast them off to the cement below us. I once buried a pair of sneakers in the back yard but couldn't remember what words I had used to lay them to rest. When I burned a pair of lucky white and blue socks in a trash can in the cemetery at school I had murmured, "One sock, two sock, white and blue socks," as the flames engulfed the holey footwear. But my new old shoes needed words of their own.

"Dear shoes," I began rather dumbly, "you have been good to me. But London has not been good to you." With that, I flung my shoes off Hungerford Bridge to the eager cement below.

Though it kicked the shit out of my noble pair of sneakers, I will not hold a grudge against London. It has been quite okay to me. And after our adventures on the continent, my family is spending another day in London before I finally turn my new (and all ready ripping) shoes toward home.

The Purpose of Noses

Noses, though most notable perhaps for their role in the film The Fifth Sense, serve many functions in daily life. Example: Noses are like hats for mustaches. It would be weird to see a mustachioed individual (and here and shan't assume that mustaches should only be worn by men) without a nose. Picture Voldemort with a mustache. Weird, right?

Well, on Friday my friends, Tom and Jen, and I had planned a busy day of roaming about a few markets in London and going to the Tate Modern with Amy that evening to see what the art world is into these days. In the morning we headed off to Spitalfields Market first, which is open every day and has craft stalls, old records, and some clothing. It was relatively uneventful, save the mustache necklace I found that was a bit too gaudy for my taste. Between that and the mustache ring I found during my first week in London, I am led to believe that mustache fashion is very big right now. The strange looks I receive when I wear a mustache out on the streets of London seem to contradict that. Clearly, I just don't understand fashion.

After Spitalfields Market, we walked our frozen asses down to Borough Market, which you may rightly remember I already visited during my first few weeks here. We wandered around for a while collecting free samples, but ultimately wanted lunch. Small scraps of bread with various types of olive oil, slivers of cheese, and bits of brownie would not suffice given that we had already walked several miles.

As we started to look for lunch in earnest, the scent of warm cheese hit my nose.

Fun fact: I love cheese. Did you know there is a website called cheese.com? There is. I've visited it sporadically since the fifth grade. You can search cheese by texture! Amazing, I know. But anyway, I am a fan of almost any dairy product, particularly cheese.

"I think I smell raclette," I announced to Jen and Tom. They were unimpressed. I'm going to say it's probably because they don't know what raclette is, but perhaps they do not find sniffing out familiar cheese scents all that spectacular.

Moments later, I had proved my skill. There was a stall selling raclette cheese over potatoes with cornichons and pickled onions.

Look. Some onion people from the Tate Modern. I felt the need for  picture. There were so many words.

"It's the food of my people!" I yelped excitedly as I stared down the melting cheese.

Perhaps I should explain: raclette cheese is part of a delightful Swiss dish also called raclette. This joint name of dish and cheese often proves confusing when I try and explain the cheese phenomenon that is raclette to people.

"Oh, so there's a grill on the table and then you melt the cheese and put it on potatoes. Okay. But what kind of cheese?"

"Raclette cheese. That's the name of the cheese."

"So the cheese is raclette, too? I've never heard of that."

Well, no. It's not super well known. But it is delicious. Which is why I bounced into the queue as Tom and Jen went off to find their own lunches. I don't think they quite understood that I was excited in my nose's ability to sniff out particular types of cheese and in the prospect of eating raclette for lunch.

My nose proved less useful at the Tate Modern. There was an odd bit of art that was simply a large rectangular mirror on the wall. I did not go to look at it. Some woman was fixing her hair in front of it as her significant other stood behind her. So, I could have had my nose become part of art, but I didn't. Mostly because I don't see how that counts as art. Clearly, I understand art as much as fashion.

But I did enjoy the above onion people. They're from an artist called Marcel Dzama, who I actually enjoyed, mostly because he draws weird pictures. Like tree people!

After leaving the tree people behind, I discovered a side room at the Tate Modern that invites guests to draw various things on little scraps of paper with prompts. I choose their surrealist option, which asked me to draw something from my dreams. I once dreamed about an eggplant with chlamydia that was used to neuter pets, which I didn't know how to draw. So I just drew an eggplant with a face.

Yeah, I'm exhibiting my art in the Tate Modern. Not a big deal.

A few years ago, my family grew an eggplant in our garden that had a bump on it that looked vaguely like a nose. We put my mom's glasses on it and had a grand time. My eggplant drawing reminds me more of that than of chlamydia, which I guess is good. So here we find yet another (perhaps very obscure) purpose for noses: helping people not think about chlamydia.

New England Blood

I feel obligated to begin with an acknowledgment of time. Almost two weeks? Yeah. I hope you can move past my neglect, dear reader. If not, well, goodbye. I'll miss you like Captain Hook misses his right hand when it's time to take a leak.

So, the other adventure I promised? Well, what is now two weeks ago, we trundled off on another bus journey to Dover with a stop over in Canterbury on the way.

Canterbury, as any Chaucer fans or students of British literature will know, has a large cathedral. Oh, hoo-fucking-rah! If you are a faithful follower of my slightly sarcastic wanderings, then you will know that I have been to more churches than I can remember. The United Kingdom (and the rest of Europe) has a wealth of cathedrals, abbeys, and whatever else large buildings with stained glass may be called. And I was taken to another.

My professor recommended finding some steps that it is possible to see where the stones have been worn away by the knees of crawling pilgrims. As there was no scavenger hunt provided by the Canterbury Cathedral, I decided to keep my eyes open. My friends and I found them and confirmed they were in fact the steps with one of the cathedral staff.

The stairs found, we descending into the crypt. There were no photos allowed and - even more unfortunately - no talking. I had a giggle fit. I am occasionally prone to them, often at inconvenient times. On a bus to Scotland for example, during a study session, and, every once in a while, in the middle of a class. This particular fit was brought on after my friend, Tom, and I opened a door which turned out to lead outside where a turkey (or something) was pecking around. When I returned to tell my other friends of the turkey sighting, I was simply overcome with emotion. I don't know. But I clapped my hands over my mouth and tried frantically to keep the giggles in as we wandered around the basement. I pulled myself together enough by the time we entered their room of Jewels to notice that a particularly ornate scepter had been crafted by someone named Jes.

After the cathedral, the professors were heading off to some monastery. I was not. My friends and I found lunch and then a bargain store with toys. My friend Amy became the proud parent of two aliens (Ortos and Diplam, I believe) in goo, while I left with some glow-in-the-dark dinosaurs. Canterbury concluded, giggles contained, and the bus boarded, I distracted myself on the drive to Dover with my new dinosaur toys.

I had one goal in Dover: to swim. I had emailed my professor the night before our trip and asked her if she thought there would be a place to swim. I told her that cold water invigorates the hearty New Englander in me. My professor didn't know, but I had packed my swim suit and was ready to plunge into the cold coastal waters.

The plan was to visit Dover Castle and then make our way to the cliffs. We got hopelessly lost. My professor has told us multiple times that she is no tour guide. Up to that point, she hadn't found the need to prove it to us.

We went the wrong way round the castle to an entrance that seemed to be closed. We tried scrambling up what appeared at first to be a path up the hill to the castle, but turned out to be slippery clay with nettles off the side. Met with failure, we wandered along a path in the woods, trying to find the entrance. After a classmate and one of my professor's daughters struggled up another steep incline to no avail, we decided there was nothing for it but to turn back. We walked past the bus parking lot along the road. The castle entrance was just around the corner.

By the time my professor had bought us our tickets, we only had around an hour and a half left. The beach and the cliffs were far away. I stumbled over to an elevated platform where the wind threatened to tear the flesh off my face and gazed down at the water.

I consoled myself by going on tour of the tunnels used to help evacuate mainland Europe in the first weeks of World War II, which were admittedly cool. But not cold like the water I had so wanted to swim in to remind my body what it means to have New England blood.

Stones and Scavenger Hunting

No, the zombies haven't come. I'm still alive, but it has come to the point in the semester when professors everywhere say, "Oh, so those students of mine... they probably need an assignment or two before the semester is over." So I've been doing a bit of that. Which means I haven't yet written about my visit to Stonehenge and Salisbury, even though I've gone on an adventure since then. I'm keeping my other adventure a mystery for now. They say mysterious women are more alluring. Here's to hoping.

So last weekend, we set off from London Saturday morning and headed to Stonehenge. Last semester I took a course called Astronomy and Culture and we studied Stonehenge a fair amount. On certain days of the year, the sun and moon rise over some of the stones when viewed from other stones. Most notably, the sun rises over the heel stone, which is a huge stone set apart from the rest, on the summer solstice. At the end of the term, my professor gave us an "Astronomy and Culture Bucket List" that included going to Stonehenge. Check.

On a related note, I emailed my astronomy professor before heading out to Stonehenge to update him on my bucket list progress. He answered with congratulations and post script saying that I could use my super hero cape (yeah, bitches, I have a super hero cape that I wear around, often to classes when I have exams) to fly across the ocean to the Inca Trial to get that check on my bucket list done too. I'm getting quite the reputation apparently.

As you might be able to tell from the above picture, it was cold, wet, and blustery at Stonehenge, so it was a relief to pile back on the bus and head to Salisbury even if it did mean I could not go try to frolic with the sheep in a nearby field. I was not sure why we were going to Salisbury, except that I supposed it was a town close enough to Stonehenge that we would not have spent hours on a bus just to turn around and go back.

We arrived in Salisbury and were instructed that after lunch, we would be going to the Salisbury Cathedral. I was less than enthused. I have lost count of how many different incarnations of churches I have been in. They all meld together after a while. And though there are occasionally stained glass depictions of Jesus being circumcised with what appears to be a banana, I have acquired so many pictures of vaulted ceilings I could wall paper my room with them.

But there we were, being handed brochures about the cathedral. Underneath the map of the cathedral printed on the inside of the brochure, the words "A monkey, cricket, and cat?" appeared in boldfaced print. Reading further, I discovered that in various places of the cathedral the figures of those animals were hidden. There were brief hints in the brochure, so I set out on my own "I Spy: Salisbury Edition."

The monkey was by far the hardest to find, because as you can tell from this picture, it's just a weird little ball. From the brochure, I was expecting to find a full sized monkey statue peering down at me. Alas! The disappointing monkey was not enough to dissuade me from looking for the cricket, though.

The cricket was much less unsatisfactory. This regal creature adorned the armrest at one end of some fancy pews. While most of the other armrests had pictures of dragons and dogs with angry faces, this slightly crazed cricket stole the show. I like to imagine that if I were a cricket, I would look as cool as this one.

Yeah, that's the cat. It's apparently graffiti that was carved into the stone a few centuries ago by someone that didn't know what cats look like. The cricket still won.

After finding the cat, I learned that Salisbury Cathedral is home to one of the four copies of the Magna Carta that England has kicking around, so I went to admire that before we finished up at the cathedral, got some ice cream, and headed back home to London. As I was getting off the bus, my professor told me she was sorry I didn't get to meet any sheep. Like I said, I'm getting quite the reputation.

"Someday," I answered wistfully. "Someday."

When the Zombies Come

Well, when the zombies come we're probably all doomed actually. I am sure there are a few people who appropriately prepared to battle the swarms of undead, but I am not among them. And I spend a fair amount of time in graveyards and other such places that would be dangerous to be caught if the zombie apocalypse began.  I live on the edge - what can I say?

I spent a lot of my childhood in graveyards. It was not an easy adjustment for a kid deeply enthralled in the world of superstition. While not a true believer, I resented being dragged to various cemeteries across the state of Connecticut by my aunt and mother. The dissatisfaction was rooted in boredom that came with tracking down the headstones of long dead relatives more than an investment in the idea that if I didn't hold my breath while passing (or walking through) a cemetery, ghosts would come after me and devour my soul. But since then, I have developed a fondness for cemeteries. And not in a creepy Ed Gein (almost serial killer, actual gravedigger, and skilled craftsman in the medium of human flesh) way. No, most of my current affection for cemeteries probably comes from visiting my best friend, Maeve, and her family in West Bumfuck, New York, where visiting the graveyard is one of the few things to do. That and the playground, but I already had an affection for those.

I know I've already mentioned (if briefly) my adventure to the big ass cemetery in France that's name is eluding me at the moment. But this weekend, our professor took the very few of us who were interested to Highgate Cemetery. It was opened (if you can call it that - I've never seen a "Grand Opening!" banner above the gate to a graveyard) in 1839 because they had run out of room to bury people within the heart of London. Highgate became quite the fashionable place to be buried. If there's one thing I strive for in death, it's to be fashionable.

It has become quite overgrown. Oh, what the fancy Victorians would think if they saw their graves now! They probably would be pleased to know that visitors must pay to enter the cemetery, though. In the West Cemetery, visitors must be on a tour. There is no wandering. I was also informed by my professor that I could not be weird in the cemetery. Of special note, she told me I should not make sheep noises. I am pleased to report that I succeeded rather admirably at keeping my animal impressions to a minimum.

After a tour of the West Cemetery, we went down to the East Cemetery. Go figure. It had a separate entrance fee. Because why wouldn't it? We were still in London after all. This interesting bit of capitalism makes knowing that Karl Marx is buried in the East Cemetery all the more special. Apparently his grave didn't used to be super impressive, but a few years ago the North Koreans paid to have a crazy ass monument put up.

Now, I don't want to be buried when I die because a) I don't want to become a zombie and b) I don't want to be made into a lampshade by someone like the aforementioned Ed Gein. But if I did want to be buried, I really don't think I would be happy with anything less than a giant bust of my own face on the top of it.

This weekend, I also tried to go to the Oxford/Cambridge goat race. Yes, I meant to write goat. Boat races of fancy-pants rich boys do not interest me as much as speedy goats, but by the time my friend and I had conquered the partial line closures and delays on the Tube, the goat race was over. I did get to see the goats, make friends with a cat, and snap a great picture of a cock.

Then, if I hadn't put myself in zombie danger enough this week, on Wednesday we got a super special tour of St. Paul's because one of the higher-ups there apparently used to teach for the London Colgate study groups. Our stickers even said "supertour," so we were pretty fancy. Our supertour didn't include that many extra stops, but we got to see Christopher Wren's model of St. Paul's, the mathematical staircase, and a small trampoline that they keep hidden upstairs.  I don't know why. We also climbed to the top of the dome, where I managed to take a few pictures before my camera battery died.

Then we descended to the crypt, so I could again tempt fate. Fun fact: Lord Nelson is not a zombie. Yet.