Travels

I apologize for the recent drought; I've been busy. In an unpleasant turn of events, I had to actually submit class work last week, a pair of essays, and they completely overtaxed my atrophy-afflicted word-muscles. Also, I've had basketball practice, which I'll probably post about in the somewhat near future, and I've been traveling, which I'll post about now:

-Paris was the first European city I've visited outside of England. After overindulging with the team the night before my trip, following a gut-wrenching two-point loss to a team from Oxford (but not the Oxford, I don't think they have a team) I managed to miss my train the next morning. I caught the next one, but only after frantically under-packing and failing to write down directions to the hostel, making for an exciting and thoroughly unintelligible half hour at the Gare-du-Nord train station before I got a hold of my buddy Rob.

Paris gives the impression of being one large palace; the buildings are all made of the same white limestone, situated along these wide avenues, all with the same windows, roofs, with all the floors at the same exact height. The people do walk down the street with their noses aloft, but when I actually spoke with a few Parisians, I found them to be quite nice, and not nearly as disdainful of Americans as one might expect. I mean, I took pains to not be the ugly American, though my every attempt to speak French was met with a mildly exasperated response in English:

"Ou est la toilette?"

"In the back, to the right side."

"...thanks very much."

The food met my astronomical expectations - falafel, croque monsieur, crepes, le vin, le pain et le fromage, all were killer. One ends up not feeling so bad about ordering wine with every meal when it's cheaper than water. Though they drink a lot more beer in France than I would have expected - Kronenbourg is their staple, sort of a sweeter Heineken with a hint of lemon. I ended up smoking nearly a pack of cigarettes while I was there, and I don't even like cigarettes. It's just what you do - the bars and cafes all spill out onto the sidewalks, and everybody is just puffing away constantly. I learned later that one of the bars I went to on my first night there was none other than the one where recently-canned fashion designer John Galliano said these things. I did the other obvious tourist things as well - the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, the Catacombs, and Versailles, all of which were pretty neat.

-Ireland surpassed my expectations, which, admittedly, were not terrifically high. I've never been so totally enthused about my Irish ancestry the way many people are. I think it's partly because of my hair, and the readiness with which people label me Irish, and partly because Ireland itself has always been, well, sort of a backwater. Historically the Irish have been the Chicago Cubs of geopolitics, trading one oppressor for another for the better part of three millennia. Like the Cubs, nearly all of its successful homegrown talent found success elsewhere - James Joyce, JFK, the Duke of Wellington. Millions of Irish didn't emigrate because it was such a great place to live.

That said, I was really impressed by the modernity of Dublin's airport. The recession hit Ireland particularly hard; as I discussed with the tour guide who was leading our student group, the Irish made the same property-speculation mistake as Americans, but without the luxury of being able to print money to cushion the blow. In the few years before it, however, they had the second-highest GDP per capita in the Euro zone, which is no mean feat.

As our tour bus drove from Dublin to the west coast, I was struck by the beauty of the Irish countryside. Its lush, rolling green hills reminded me of Oregon, if Oregon had been divided into sheep pastures with mossy slate fences for a thousand years. The Cliffs of Moher were pretty neat, as were the various ruined castles and abbeys we saw. I liked Dublin quite a bit too; it's a sharp contrast with London, less dense, hectic and cosmopolitan, but far more welcoming and unpretentious. The Irish people were the same way, warm and eager to chat where Londoners are often distant and reserved. We took a walking tour of the city, which didn't take that long due to its size, and spent the rest of the afternoon at the Guinness brewery. People like to say that Guinness tastes better in Ireland than anywhere else, and while I attribute that judgment to the placebo effect more than any real qualitative difference in flavor, a pint in the brewery's rooftop bar with a panoramic view of the city did taste pretty damn good.

-Amsterdam is so far my favorite European city, and not simply because of the coffeeshops. The coffeeshops are great, don't get me wrong, but there's so much more to Amsterdam than the opportunity to smoke spliffs in a restaurant setting. Their existence is indicative of the overall attitude of the Dutch: tolerant, liberal, and capitalist. Really capitalist: the Dutch invented the asset bubble, after all, and had an impressive array of colonies for such a tiny little swamp of a country.

In many ways Amsterdam is the epitome of what Americans think of when they think of "Europe", a tourist Disneyland equal parts quaint old-world and Ikea-Legoland. The 17th-century city core is surrounded by very modern, creative architecture that's all geometric and curvy in ways that surprise and delight. Trams, canals, and one-way cobblestone streets abound. The bicycle, however, is the dominant mode of transit, and nearly every street has dedicated bike lanes. This is especially dangerous for the intoxicated American tourist, who must avoid four or five unique and unfamiliar hazards at each street crossing. Strangely, nobody wears bike helmets, though I was told that on average only nine cyclists are killed each year.

The beer there is incredible. Ordinarily I find Heineken weak and skunky, but the 'domestic' version is a lot tastier, and has a lot more subtlety in its hop character. The local ales, however, blew it away: rich, spicy, well-balanced and usually about twice as alcoholic as Bud Light. A bustling brewpub near the apartment of my gracious hosts, Megan and Harrison, had daily offerings of different beers brewed on the premises. At one point when ordering a round, I saw a tiny little blonde head toddling behind the bar until he was scooped up by one of the bartenders and carried out of sight. A young girl who could have been his older sister was making rounds of the patio outside, shyly collecting empty glasses.

A note on cuisine

England is renowned for its distinctly bland and unimaginative cuisine. The default answer to the question “name an English dish” is, for most people, 'fish and chips', or in American parlance, fishsticks and fries. I've had it once or twice here, and found it soggy and inferior to what you can get at Ivar's.

But England does not totally deserve its culinary reputation. I think a lot of it stems from their failure to give dishes appealing names: mushy peas, egg-in-a-basket, toad-in-the-hole (seriously.) The latter is a breakfast sausage in a bun, with gravy – not bad. Egg-in-a-basket is simply toast and a fried egg with the advantage of both being fried together, in butter. Mushy peas aren't nearly as repulsive as they sound; in fact, they have their own sort of salty deliciousness. They eat a lot of peas here, actually, and carrots too. After my first week here eating exclusively fast food and scrambled eggs, I went to a proper restaurant, craving some green veggies; the 'vegetable side' turned out to be boiled carrots and cabbage. Corn is called 'maize' and locals sometimes reveal their misunderstanding of its properties by putting it on pizza.

The English Breakfast isn't bad, partially because it's always really big. It involves a toad in the hole, a roast tomato, eggs, toast, and beans. You know those Heinz baked beans, in the retro-blue can, that people in America stopped eating sometime during Andy Warhol's career? Very popular here, along with Heinz mayonnaise, which is similarly retro-packaged. If you've seen Pulp Fiction you know that they put mayo on their fries here, which is pretty good, actually. Though the bacon, strips of which are termed 'rashers', is weirdly both thick and stringy.

But there are some definite bright spots. Meat pies abound, especially in pubs, and they usually come with stewed meat and potatoes and veggies in a buttery crust with some gravy to pour over the top – chicken pot pie meets beef bourguignon.

The foreign cuisine here is awesome as well, and only partially for its exotic variety. There's a place near campus called Brick Lane, a somewhat famous strip of South Asian restaurants and shops where restaurant promoters will try to lure you in with meal deals as you walk past – naan, curry, entree, two pints for ten pound! Free jasmine rice also! Three pint! I haven't managed this yet, but my flatmate recommended trying to get two of these guys into a bidding war. The little fast food places offer a bizarre mix of burgers and fries, 'dixie chicken', and halal (the Muslim equivalent of kosher) lamb and chicken kebabs.

Perhaps most fascinating to me is the beer. The market is very different – for one, they don't tend to sell cases larger than a dozen cans or bottles. And almost everything comes in a tall pint-size can; I have yet to see a twelve-ounce (or whatever metric equivalent) can of beer, although they do have bottles. The pricing is really interesting; what we tend to think of as upscale imports, such as Heineken and Beck's, cost less than Budweiser, which is very popular. Stella Artois and Grolsch occupy the PBR niche, and taste worse than they do at home. A Guinness will cost about as much as a Bud here, which is as hilarious as it is excellent. Brits also drink a lot of hard cider; 'Strongbow' is the biggie. It comes in tall cans and 1-liter plastic bottles, which get consumed by a demographic roughly equivalent to drinkers of malt-liquor 40s back home. I've begin to become acquainted with British Ales too, which tend to be fairly light, smooth, mild and creamy, like blond versions of Guinness. I'm personally inclined to beers with bolder flavor, but they have their own merit.

There are a number of stereotypical English delicacies I haven't yet sampled. Tea and biscuits, for one. Black pudding is another, and I don't think I will. It's got this menacing black-purple color which offers visual confirmation of its ingredients. I have had hot cross buns, but was disappointed to find out that the cross is not made of frosting, and that they taste sort of like spicy fruitcake. But, I'm going to Paris next weekend, so maybe I'll have a more uplifting post on cuisine in the near future.

Watching Football (real football)

In London you have few options for watching the NFL: you can try to stream it from one of those shady websites, and watch a stuttering, pixely feed with commercials in Swedish, or you can go to one of the handful of restaurants and bars that shell out for the transcontinental broadcast. For last week's game, I chose the latter, and researched a bit to find out what my best bet was. I ended up choosing Bodean's in Tower Hill, an-American-style barbecue restaurant, instead of the Sports Cafe, which I've been told is a garish misconception of the ESPN Zone located in the most tourist-saturated part of London. By the time my buddy Garrett and I get there, it was 14-0 at the half, which was only a minor letdown because I was more than a little afraid that the Bears would get utterly embarrassed.

Bodean's was surprisingly similar to your standard American barbeque joint, complete with the pink, pig-shaped neon light in the front window. It was fairly packed for a Sunday night; we stood until we found a decorative whiskey barrel to perch on. I ended up getting a cheeseburger, which wasn't bad and wasn't great, and a couple pints of Coors light, which, being an exotic import, cost £4.50 apiece. After a few plays, it was apparent that the makeup of the crowd was about 80-20 groaning Chicagoans to whooping dairy-staters, which makes sense if you think about it. The most vocal Packer fan was, predictably enough, a short, stocky guy wearing a baseball cap and glasses and a faded green-and-cheddar sweatshirt proclaiming Packer dominance of the NFC in 1997. There were a few curious, eager Brits at the bar as well, who were impressed by my terse assessments (how did you know that would be a holding penalty? How did you know that wasn't a catch? You're right, this Collins fellow seems hardly able to throw.)

I felt bad dragging Garrett to this place to pay exorbitantly for crappy beer and watch a team he didn't care about lose eternal bragging rights. On the bright side, I don't really think I can stomach a Packers-Steelers Super Bowl, so I won't have to do this again.

One of my first nights at Queen Mary, I collected the beer cans covering my desk, put them into the empty plastic shopping bags I had saved from my trip to the grocery store, and carried them to the communal kitchen, where I presumed I would find the recycling bin. Alas, there was none – because they don't recycle in the UK.

Ok, not technically true, but they hardly recycle, and they don't make it easy. My flatmate told me that there was a recycling dumpster somewhere on campus, behind some building, so I for the time being left my bags of cans on the kitchen counter, from which they disappeared after a few days, satisfactorily absolving me of environmental sin.

Europe is caricatured by both ends of the political spectrum almost as a 'bluer' continent, what with their public healthcare and their failure to demonize the poor. After all, their green parties actually elect representatives (although, to be fair, this is more a consequence of having proportional parliamentary representation instead of the American winner-take-all system – but still). Such is my surprise that nobody I've met gives half a shit about recycling – or, really, they all give precisely a half-shit, most of them expressing a sort of “oh, I suppose I ought to, but I don't” sort of attitude, as though it were, say, flossing.

This discovery forced me to consider how much the Pacific Northwest has rubbed off on me in my time at college. Growing up in Illinois, my household had always recycled, and it was easy to find bins for plastic and glass at my schools. When I moved to Washington, I was a bit taken aback by the zealotry of environmentalists. Recycling was not nearly enough – what about composting? What about water conservation? What about unplugging your charger from the wall every single time you unplug your phone or computer? I admit, I became a bit of a reactionary. Someone would scold me for not removing the obviously recyclable sleeve from the obviously not-recylcable-but-in-fact-compostable coffee cup I had casually tossed into the trash, and I would respond with a question about their estimate of how many recyclable coffee-cup-sleeves worth of jet fuel get burned by the military C-17s that fly over campus every day. I'd purposely replace compact-fluorescent bulbs with incandescent ones, although honestly, I did this mostly because the light is so much more pleasing.

The Californians and Oregonians were quick assume that it was the Midwesterner in me that couldn't resist trashing the planet, that because I was not from the Progressive Coast of America Where People Are Enlightened, I was blind to the consequences of my irresponsibility. I liked to reply that, like those on the opposite extreme of the political spectrum, their propensity for moralizing sort of undermined their support among the politically moderate; that their agenda amounted to 'enviro-gelicalism'. I became a reflexive contrarian, dredging up freakonomic arguments that recycling is potentially bad for the environment because of how much energy it requires, or that global warming is probably a good thing, in the long run. But what is one to do when surrounded by puritanical vegan types who give serious consideration to the argument that not having children is an environmentally-praiseworthy choice (because we're preserving the environment for whom, exactly?)

And yet, here I find myself, segregating my paper waste and beer cans and fretting about the volume of water the toilet flushes, like some sort of simpering idealist.  My time here so far has thrown into sharp relief the exceptional (though exceptionally self-righteous) environmental consciousness of Northwesterners. And as long as we're simpering... It's helped me learn something about myself too!

Queen Mary and the East End

An Israeli acquaintance who was visiting the United States for the first time once told me that his favorite thing about America was the space – how much of it there was. We sat in a circle around the fire pit in my backyard and he gestured admiringly at the lawn, the distance between the houses, the small patch of woods in back, explaining that in other countries, people are packed much closer together.

I was reminded of this observation as I rode the bus to Queen Mary, University of London, where I'll be studying for the semester. It's on the East End of London, which has traditionally been known as the 'dodgy' part of town, although gentrification has taken its toll, to an extent; about a half mile east of campus is a trendy neighborhood with a teeming but awesome open-air market and some cool art galleries and pubs. The area directly surrounding campus is historically an immigrant quarter, originally inhabited by Jews and Italians and more recently by South Asians and Africans – Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Lebanese, Indians, Somalis. Walking down the main road in front of campus you will pass swarms of people of every skin tone, wearing business suits, or slim slacks and bright scarves, or religious raiment; it's not unusual to see these in various combinations as well. The neighborhood is more multicultural than a McDonald's ad. From what I can tell, economic stratification in the UK doesn't fall along ethnic lines to the extent that it does in the US.

All up and down the street are various little storefronts, groceries, a number of pubs, neon-flashing 'mobile' phone stores, and, oddly, fried chicken joints. There are literally a dozen little immigrant-owned fast food places within three blocks, all selling burgers, fries, chicken wings, and excellent lamb kebabs. It boggles the mind that they don't compete each other out of business, although their plenitude is probably part of why they're all pretty cheap; a kebab, fries (chips) and a Coke (which, thank God, is as ubiquitous here as it is in America) will run you maybe three pounds.

The campus itself is sort of self-contained, and very different from the surroundings. Passing the front gate one is greeted by a baffling mix of architecture, from the white-columned, neoclassical Queen's Building to the curving, wood-slatted postmodern dorm where I'm living. It's a nice set up – I have a decently-sized single in a suite, complete with bathroom and mini-fridge, and I share with my nine 'flatmates' a spacious, well-appointed kitchen that's cleaned daily by staff, which is sweet.

Getting around London is a breeze between the Tube (subway) and the buses, most of which are, in fact, red and double-decker. The Underground is surprisingly easy to navigate, and the different lines are well-integrated and clearly marked. Another British rhetorical delicacy: instead of telling you to watch your step as you board the trains, the female voice on the tube intercom requests that you “please mind the gap”. That's not to say that they won't shut the doors on you if you dither on the platform. In another example of their brand of mild yet pointed sarcasm that I've begun to really appreciate, each station has a sign on the wall warning you to please not interfere with the doors closing. On each there is an illustration of a hapless stick figure caught between train and platform, and in small writing at the bottom are the words “192 accidents last year.”

My only real complaint about the tube is that it shuts down after midnight, so by the end of the evening you sort of have to be sober enough to find the right bus, or to at least realize when you get on the wrong one and then get off and flag down a taxi and explain where you live to the cabbies, who are, in general, more jovial than I expected. Trains and especially buses are crowded – when riding the local “bendy bus” back from the grocery store, I usually find myself packed in, standing, steering my shopping bags through and around a sea of people, most of whose heads come up to about my shoulder. It struck me the other day that in the event of a global pandemic, there's probably no worse place to be than the London Underground. Suburban sprawl might be an ugly, unsustainable blight on the planet, but at least it lets you avoid breathing in the same tubefull of air as fifty strangers.

first impressions

(I apologize for the tardiness of this first post. I've been making a scattered notes since my arrival, and only now am I consolidating them into readable entries. More to follow soon.)

Heathrow Airport supposedly took the title of 'world's busiest airport' from O'Hare within the last decade or so, and I think it must have achieved this by becoming even more byzantine and sprawled. It's surprisingly similar to O'Hare in other ways – it has the same faint sort of grimy, mechanical airport smell, the same uneven off-white wall paneling and fluorescent light – like what seemed sleek and contemporary in maybe 1978. I got off the plane and speed-walked for about twenty minutes through mostly empty and halfway renovated hallways, earnestly following the posted signs to the supposed baggage claim. In the first of what I'm sure will be many brief rhetorical asides on this blog, 'baggage claim' in the UK is instead 'baggage RE-claim', a minor distinction which nonetheless reassuringly suggests that here, you do in fact have some right to reunite with your own luggage. In the US, it often seems like the onus is on you, the rugged individual, to strike out and claim your bag in the unsettled wilderness that is airline customer service.

First stop turned out to be customs, where, having long-legged past most of my fellow travellers over the trek from the terminal, I beat the rush by ducking under most of the Disney-style roped 'queue' and sidled up to customs (Brits are big on queues, I have learned). When I addressed the customs agent, I was relieved to hear my own voice sounding as flat and American as when I left – I don't plan to acquire any sort of accent while I'm here. I have no doubt it would sound affected and that people whom I respect would mock it right out of me within an hour. After a ten-hour flight of overhearing chatty British couples and reading names like 'Westminster' and 'Glastonbury' in my Rick Steves' guide and trying to imagine how people whom I might ask for directions would actually pronounce them, I became worried that my actual voice had acquired the same English inflection as my mental one had. My other anxiety, about some sort of unforeseen bureaucratic slip-up which would put me right back on a plane, was quickly assuaged by the disinterest of the customs agent. After assuring him that yes, I was a student, and that, no, I had no intention of seeking employment during my stay, my passport was stamped.

A train and cab ride later I arrived at my residence hall in the part of London known as Chelsea (ahem: The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea), where I was to spend two days before Queen Mary opened. I told the cab driver to keep all ten on a nine-pound fare, and the degree of his gratitude seemed to confirm what I'd read in the guidebook about nobody tipping in the UK. I'm glad I didn't have to stay at the study abroad program's residence hall, a tall but unremarkable building on King's Road; the two-person rooms were smaller than my single at Queen Mary, and the surrounding area is a bit much. By that I mean expensive and sort of touristy, with everybody walking around in buttoned-up pea coats, shopping bags in hand. King's Road was the manifestation of everything I'd expected wealthy London to look like – a busy, narrow street with three-story brick buildings in all different shades and with myriad old-world architectural flourishes, fashionable multi-ethnic people, cars driving on the wrong side, lots of trendy little boutiques, quaint chimneys galore.  The streets are laid out in a sort of drunken spiderweb rather than a grid, with the major roads leading more or less towards the financial district, known as the "City of London".  The side streets are more residential, lined with what look like 19^th or early 20^th century row houses, all with high, prim fences, really narrow sidewalks in front, and about two or three high-end sportscars per block. The traffic thing is more disorienting than you'd expect, not because it's so hard to remember to look right instead of left, but because you have no intuitive understanding of the traffic patterns which normally would allow you to anticipate where a turning car might come from. I'm embarrassed by how helpful I've found the “look right” and “look left” signs painted on the pavement at crosswalks. But I've been here a week, and I still haven't gotten hit.

welcome

Hello reader,

 Thanks for stopping by my travel blog, which I will use to detail my adventures this semester in London and elsewhere.  I'll try to update frequently, probably with longer weekly posts and a few short snippets interspersed.  The first real post will be up soon, once I find myself able to sit still for an extended period.