Greetings from Glasgow! Today is my last day in the city, so I'm taking shelter from the rain in the Mitchell Library to write this post. It seems crazy, but it was 10 times easier to get a library card here, where I'm staying for 4 days, than it was to get on in Texas, where I've lived for 3 years. What gives?
I should start by saying that I don't know why I chose to spend the weekend here rather than in Edinburgh - but I'm glad I did. On Sunday morning, I met a fantastic couple at a Baptist church down the street from my hostel; they are in international student ministry, and who knew, but I'm an international student here ;-) So they took me home for lunch and I ended up staying for dinner. It seemed crazy to find myself having a backyard lunch with a couple from Scotland, a writer from Seattle, and 4 horticulturists from the Czech Republic.
From the exterior, Glasgow seems quite forbidding; it's always overcast, everything seems huge, and it's all too easy to find yourself in a dangerous-looking neighborhood. But I've quite enjoyed my time here all the same. The vastness of the buildings and streets is beautiful as well as daunting; when I finally saw the wide sweep of the River Clyde, I couldn't stop taking pictures. There's a park near my hostel called Kelvin Grove, where I ran for an hour along the river, hardly aware that I was in a city at all. And the best part of Glasgow by far has been the people: the couple that took me in and the Australian and American friends I've made at the hostel. The other night, four of us stayed up drinking and talking until 3 am like we'd known each other forever. It's crazy and unexpected - but that's Glasgow.
Wednesday, 17 June 2009
Sunday, 14 June 2009
Saffron Walden and the Dreaming Tree
This post is the Where are They Now? edition of my Cambridge experience. As I described earlier, someone set fire to my hostel on my first night in town. When I returned to the hostel the next day to find out about alternate accommodation, I was told that the nearest hostel was in Saffron Walden, a little town 40 minutes south of Cambridge.
Initially, I was disappointed to not be staying in the city center. Still, I did as I was told and hopped on board a bus bound for - what was the name again? Pulling into the town almost an hour later, I could not believe its beauty and its quaintness: the streets were steep and narrow, hedged on both sides by medieval-style thatched roof cottages and local shops. My hostel turned out to be the oldest inhabited building in the town, built in 1402. I'm afraid I must refer you to my photos (picasaweb.google.com/erinmwaller) to really see what that experience was like.
I was so enchanted by what I saw of the town from the bus that I immediately unpacked my running shoes to jog out and see more more. I haven't a single picture from this run, and yet it is this that I'll take from Saffron Walden. I headed out along the main road that leads into the town, pursuing the Audley End House, a manor house I'd mistook for a castle on the drive in: sweeping green grounds, a pond, stately yellow stone. Then it was all countryside - that vast English countryside with hills rolling on forever. I detoured (trespassed?) down one of the farm roads, cutting across fields and creeks and, at one point, a fence. I felt like I was in a Runners World's photo shoot: Rave Run in Saffron Walden. And all this blessing, all this green because my hostel caught on fire.
The title for this post comes from the DMB song by the same name, which I listened to for the first time on this run; along the way I saw a likely dreaming tree standing tall and alone in the middle of the field, with the sun setting behind it.
Initially, I was disappointed to not be staying in the city center. Still, I did as I was told and hopped on board a bus bound for - what was the name again? Pulling into the town almost an hour later, I could not believe its beauty and its quaintness: the streets were steep and narrow, hedged on both sides by medieval-style thatched roof cottages and local shops. My hostel turned out to be the oldest inhabited building in the town, built in 1402. I'm afraid I must refer you to my photos (picasaweb.google.com/erinmwaller) to really see what that experience was like.
I was so enchanted by what I saw of the town from the bus that I immediately unpacked my running shoes to jog out and see more more. I haven't a single picture from this run, and yet it is this that I'll take from Saffron Walden. I headed out along the main road that leads into the town, pursuing the Audley End House, a manor house I'd mistook for a castle on the drive in: sweeping green grounds, a pond, stately yellow stone. Then it was all countryside - that vast English countryside with hills rolling on forever. I detoured (trespassed?) down one of the farm roads, cutting across fields and creeks and, at one point, a fence. I felt like I was in a Runners World's photo shoot: Rave Run in Saffron Walden. And all this blessing, all this green because my hostel caught on fire.
The title for this post comes from the DMB song by the same name, which I listened to for the first time on this run; along the way I saw a likely dreaming tree standing tall and alone in the middle of the field, with the sun setting behind it.
Thursday, 11 June 2009
Cambridge: You're like coming home
Cambridge has probably been my most-anticipated destination of the summer - looked forward to beyond Prague, beyond Venice, more even than Paris. What, you ask, does this college town have to offer that the major cities of the world lack? Simply memories.
When I was 15, I spent a month studying at the University of Cambridge with a program for high school students. The summer was amazing: for the first time, I was studying with students who were bright and interested in what we were learning; I met people and made dear friends from all over the world; and mostly, I fell in love - with the city :-)
So when my bus deposited me in Cambridge, I could hardly wait to leave the area of my hostel behind and make my way back to Magdalene College. I put on my running shoes, not just because I wanted the exercise but because I literally didn't think I could stand to get there any slower. As I was running past a pub toward the city center, I saw a sign for the England v. Kazakhstan World Cup qualifying match, but even that only held me for 10 minutes. I watched my boys score their second goal, then was gone again. Finally, slowing to a walk, I was back on Magdalene St., walking past where Garfunkel's used to be, past Cafe Uno, over the bridge... I slipped into the private entrance to the college as another student walked out. I had arrived.
When I was at Cambridge in 2003, I studied Creative Writing, and my contribution to our literary magazine was a vignette describing my moment of arrival in England, in Cambridge, the overwhelming sense of finding myself, my home, in this foreign place. And returning to Cambridge ultimately felt quite similar: it was like coming home, but not a home you live in day-to-day. It was the feeling I get when I drvie back to Buford and in the midst of nostalgia recognize that this is no longer where I live. I was a visitor in Cambridge, a tourist; for all my knowledge, all my memories, that's all I was: a girl standing, heart tight, in a place she had once lived.
When I was 15, I spent a month studying at the University of Cambridge with a program for high school students. The summer was amazing: for the first time, I was studying with students who were bright and interested in what we were learning; I met people and made dear friends from all over the world; and mostly, I fell in love - with the city :-)
So when my bus deposited me in Cambridge, I could hardly wait to leave the area of my hostel behind and make my way back to Magdalene College. I put on my running shoes, not just because I wanted the exercise but because I literally didn't think I could stand to get there any slower. As I was running past a pub toward the city center, I saw a sign for the England v. Kazakhstan World Cup qualifying match, but even that only held me for 10 minutes. I watched my boys score their second goal, then was gone again. Finally, slowing to a walk, I was back on Magdalene St., walking past where Garfunkel's used to be, past Cafe Uno, over the bridge... I slipped into the private entrance to the college as another student walked out. I had arrived.
When I was at Cambridge in 2003, I studied Creative Writing, and my contribution to our literary magazine was a vignette describing my moment of arrival in England, in Cambridge, the overwhelming sense of finding myself, my home, in this foreign place. And returning to Cambridge ultimately felt quite similar: it was like coming home, but not a home you live in day-to-day. It was the feeling I get when I drvie back to Buford and in the midst of nostalgia recognize that this is no longer where I live. I was a visitor in Cambridge, a tourist; for all my knowledge, all my memories, that's all I was: a girl standing, heart tight, in a place she had once lived.
Monday, 8 June 2009
Hostel on Fire: Get me my pants
I interrupt the normal rhythm of my blog to tell what is hopefully the most dramatic story of my trip. For a more objective account, check out the Cambridge News article at: http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/cn_news_home/DisplayArticle.asp?ID=423394
This past Saturday, I was showering on the second floor of the YHA hostel in Cambridge when I began to smell something funny. As I dried off, I looked all around the shower stall, trying to imagine where on earth such an awful, acrid smell could come from. I was suddenly convinced that my running clothes, hanging from the hot water heater, had caught fire, but this was not the case. Then a worse suspsicion crept materialized in my mind: outside my shower stall, some creepy foreign guy (like the two I'd already met) was no doubt smoking a cigarette and waiting, creepily, for me to come out. I held my towel and toiletries close to my chest and braced myself as I opened the door. The bathroom was empty, but the smell was worse.
As I reached to open the door that led back onto the hall, the fire alarm finally sounded. Great clouds of white smoke hung about the ceiling, as did a swarm of flies, apparently driven out from wherever they'd been by the smoke. I walked (it didn't feel quite as dramatic as it seems now) down the stair and out the building, where a tour bus had just pulled up and a bunch of people were unloading their stuff. Two women ran by warning that it was "a legit fire" and calling more people out of the building.
And that's how I found myself standing on the corner of the road in Cambridge with bare feet, wet hair, and nothing on but a thin cotton dress.
A crowd began to form across the street from the hostel: the just-arrived tour group, people who'd been in their rooms, the kitchen staff (still with chef hats on), an unfortunate man wearing nothing but a bright yellow towel. The firetrucks sped in and began unwinding the hoses. All we could see from outside was black smoke coming out of a second floor window, just below my room, and the human drama unfolding along the street.
One man tried to get his wife (an elderly woman) to come down from the 2nd floor, where she was standing at the window talking to him as the hostel evacuated. "Close the window and go down the stairs," he yelled up at her. "What did you say?" she asked, trying to open the window further to hear him. [talking to them this morning, I found that he had actually locked the door behind him as he left the room earlier in the day, leaving her to sleep off her jet lag]. Unbeknownst to me, two members of the hostel staff were being carried out on stretchers, having passed out as the went up the stairs to get more guests out.
Just then, two very down-to-business Aussie women ran around from the other side of the building, calling to the fireman who was trying to rescue the old woman, that there was a man trapped on the other side, banging on the door. When the fireman seemed slow to respond, on of the women got an ax from I don't even know where, and tried to take it around to the other side; a wrestling and shouting match began between her and the firemen as they tried to convince her to let them do their jobs. Eventually, the whole cluster of firemen, Australian women, and the yellow-towel man ran around to the backside (leaving the old woman straddling the window ledge, one foot in the burning building and one on the ladder). I went around to watch as the civilians dragged the trapped man (ironically, one of the creepy guys I'd met earlier) out a second floor window and onto the roof while the fireman axed away obliviouly at the door. They were crouching over the man, trying to resucitate him, when the yellow-towel man yelled "Get me my pants!" Someone tossed up a pair of shorts, which he grabbed, whipping off his towel to put them on.
As the drama finally subsided, I walked back around to the crowd, finally conscious of being cold. Southern girl that I am, I wondered why no guy had offered me his jacket. As though he'd heard me, one of the guys from the tour group suddenly turned around and insisted that I take his blazer; meanwhile, several of the older women from the group gave me a bag for my little pile of belongings and flip-flops for my feet. They turned out to be from a Christian school in St. Louis, touring for a couple weeks around the U.K. There were 16 in total, half high schoolers, half parents and teachers, and one very in-charge British woman named Francis who was their tour guide. 10 minutes after the alarms went offm, she had already found alternative accommodations for all of them just down the road. These kind people not only insisted that I come with them: they took me out to dinner, gave me a hotel (!) bed to sleep on, and walked me back to the hostel in the morning. Had I not been able to get my stuff out of the hostel, I think they would have taken me with them back to London.
We couldn't get up to the hostel that night, as the police had roped it off as a crime scene. (On the news, the fire has been labelled arson). When I was finally able to go up the next morning, I got to see the charred second floor and the hole in the ceiling where the fire had begun - four feet away from the stall where I was showering and worrying about creepy foreign men.
This past Saturday, I was showering on the second floor of the YHA hostel in Cambridge when I began to smell something funny. As I dried off, I looked all around the shower stall, trying to imagine where on earth such an awful, acrid smell could come from. I was suddenly convinced that my running clothes, hanging from the hot water heater, had caught fire, but this was not the case. Then a worse suspsicion crept materialized in my mind: outside my shower stall, some creepy foreign guy (like the two I'd already met) was no doubt smoking a cigarette and waiting, creepily, for me to come out. I held my towel and toiletries close to my chest and braced myself as I opened the door. The bathroom was empty, but the smell was worse.
As I reached to open the door that led back onto the hall, the fire alarm finally sounded. Great clouds of white smoke hung about the ceiling, as did a swarm of flies, apparently driven out from wherever they'd been by the smoke. I walked (it didn't feel quite as dramatic as it seems now) down the stair and out the building, where a tour bus had just pulled up and a bunch of people were unloading their stuff. Two women ran by warning that it was "a legit fire" and calling more people out of the building.
And that's how I found myself standing on the corner of the road in Cambridge with bare feet, wet hair, and nothing on but a thin cotton dress.
A crowd began to form across the street from the hostel: the just-arrived tour group, people who'd been in their rooms, the kitchen staff (still with chef hats on), an unfortunate man wearing nothing but a bright yellow towel. The firetrucks sped in and began unwinding the hoses. All we could see from outside was black smoke coming out of a second floor window, just below my room, and the human drama unfolding along the street.
One man tried to get his wife (an elderly woman) to come down from the 2nd floor, where she was standing at the window talking to him as the hostel evacuated. "Close the window and go down the stairs," he yelled up at her. "What did you say?" she asked, trying to open the window further to hear him. [talking to them this morning, I found that he had actually locked the door behind him as he left the room earlier in the day, leaving her to sleep off her jet lag]. Unbeknownst to me, two members of the hostel staff were being carried out on stretchers, having passed out as the went up the stairs to get more guests out.
Just then, two very down-to-business Aussie women ran around from the other side of the building, calling to the fireman who was trying to rescue the old woman, that there was a man trapped on the other side, banging on the door. When the fireman seemed slow to respond, on of the women got an ax from I don't even know where, and tried to take it around to the other side; a wrestling and shouting match began between her and the firemen as they tried to convince her to let them do their jobs. Eventually, the whole cluster of firemen, Australian women, and the yellow-towel man ran around to the backside (leaving the old woman straddling the window ledge, one foot in the burning building and one on the ladder). I went around to watch as the civilians dragged the trapped man (ironically, one of the creepy guys I'd met earlier) out a second floor window and onto the roof while the fireman axed away obliviouly at the door. They were crouching over the man, trying to resucitate him, when the yellow-towel man yelled "Get me my pants!" Someone tossed up a pair of shorts, which he grabbed, whipping off his towel to put them on.
As the drama finally subsided, I walked back around to the crowd, finally conscious of being cold. Southern girl that I am, I wondered why no guy had offered me his jacket. As though he'd heard me, one of the guys from the tour group suddenly turned around and insisted that I take his blazer; meanwhile, several of the older women from the group gave me a bag for my little pile of belongings and flip-flops for my feet. They turned out to be from a Christian school in St. Louis, touring for a couple weeks around the U.K. There were 16 in total, half high schoolers, half parents and teachers, and one very in-charge British woman named Francis who was their tour guide. 10 minutes after the alarms went offm, she had already found alternative accommodations for all of them just down the road. These kind people not only insisted that I come with them: they took me out to dinner, gave me a hotel (!) bed to sleep on, and walked me back to the hostel in the morning. Had I not been able to get my stuff out of the hostel, I think they would have taken me with them back to London.
We couldn't get up to the hostel that night, as the police had roped it off as a crime scene. (On the news, the fire has been labelled arson). When I was finally able to go up the next morning, I got to see the charred second floor and the hole in the ceiling where the fire had begun - four feet away from the stall where I was showering and worrying about creepy foreign men.
Saturday, 6 June 2009
London: It's Not Always This Nice Here
After concluding my vacationing with David in Venice, he went on to Rome and I returned to London (I love saying "returned" as though I live here...). Now the real mission of my summer begins: ethnographic research on the British school system.
And that's how, on Wednesday, I found myself getting off a train at the Virginia Water station, about 40 minutes southwest of London. TASIS: The American School in England doesn't seem like an obvious place to begin my research, but it turned out to be a great transitioning point from the American curriculum I've grown up with to the British system that still feels unwieldly and foreign (practice saying A-levels, 6th form, and worst of all GCSE's in a casual way). I arrived in the midst of the last day of the year for TASIS and thus had upperschool exams and lower school picnics forming the backdrop to my interviews. (As to what I'm finding, what I'm learning, I might need a separate blog for that :-)
London has been...rainy, characteristically so, I guess. Compared to the other cities I've visited, London seems so much more a part of the work-a-day world; my favorite experiences have been times when I felt a part of that world: riding the tube home, reading The London Paper, shopping for groceries at Waitrose. My hostel is nestled in Swiss Cottage, a beautiful area just enough removed from the smog and the congestion of downtown. There's an amazing park, Hampstead Heath, just up the road. I went for a run there yesterday and the panorama of London took my breath away (or maybe that was just the climb ;-)
The title for this post comes from what a Vodafone salesman said after asking how I was enjoying the (then sunny) weather. "It's not always this nice here," he explained.
And that's how, on Wednesday, I found myself getting off a train at the Virginia Water station, about 40 minutes southwest of London. TASIS: The American School in England doesn't seem like an obvious place to begin my research, but it turned out to be a great transitioning point from the American curriculum I've grown up with to the British system that still feels unwieldly and foreign (practice saying A-levels, 6th form, and worst of all GCSE's in a casual way). I arrived in the midst of the last day of the year for TASIS and thus had upperschool exams and lower school picnics forming the backdrop to my interviews. (As to what I'm finding, what I'm learning, I might need a separate blog for that :-)
London has been...rainy, characteristically so, I guess. Compared to the other cities I've visited, London seems so much more a part of the work-a-day world; my favorite experiences have been times when I felt a part of that world: riding the tube home, reading The London Paper, shopping for groceries at Waitrose. My hostel is nestled in Swiss Cottage, a beautiful area just enough removed from the smog and the congestion of downtown. There's an amazing park, Hampstead Heath, just up the road. I went for a run there yesterday and the panorama of London took my breath away (or maybe that was just the climb ;-)
The title for this post comes from what a Vodafone salesman said after asking how I was enjoying the (then sunny) weather. "It's not always this nice here," he explained.
Tuesday, 2 June 2009
The Days are Longer in Venice
On this holiday weekend in May, Venice has been filled with tourists, and for good reason - Venice is inescapably beautiful, even with the crowds. From the top of each of the 400+ bridges in the city is a postcard-worthy view; half-way through our first day, David finally had to ask: was I going to take a picture of every one? My options seem clear to me: either take hundreds of pictures to remember the city, or move here. I prefer the latter.
Potentially my favorite thing about Venice is the lack of cars. Throughout the rest of the world, we have carved out pockets of carless spaces, parks and plazas and such. But here there's an incredible sort of independence to be found in walking, especially since Venice is so small that you could walk from one end to the other in less than an hour. Most of our time here has been spent in such roaming: ducking into sidestreets and impossibly narrow alleyways, stepping off the cobblestone walks into pastry shops or private gardens. And here, as in Prague, flowerboxes seem to be a mandatory addition to every windowsill. I honestly believe they must always be in bloom.
By a fantastic stroke of luck, the weekend we chose to visit Venice happened to be the weekend of the city's largest "boat parade:" Vogalunga. Rowers, canoers, and kayakers from all over the world swarmed to Venice to compete in the 30 km race around the island. As a coxswain, my heart was warmed by the sight of spandex and oars, and I loved getting to watch all the different styles of rowing and types of boats. Screw Head of the Charles; Rice Crew should row here.
The title of this post comes from astrological fact and also from our first day in Venice, when we arrived by bus at 5 am and explored until past nightfall.
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