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I'm back. And it's good to be back. I got into the airport at Newark,
and there was this big sign that said "WELCOME TO THE UNITED STATES OF
AMERICA" in sans-serif aluminum, and I though, "yeah, I'm home." It was
really weird how, like, instantly comfortable I felt.
But one way or the other, I had some fun between last post and now. I was in Hamburg with Patrick, which was really tons of fun. We didn't do a lot of tourist stuff (altho we did stay out from about midnight to nine the next morning on the Reeperbahn. Beat that.) but we did a hell of a lot of walking and just hanging out and doing fun things and... it was great. It was a really good way to end the trip, cos I really felt like I didn't need to "deal with" anything, if that makes any sense. There wasn't much to work around or sort out, just cos operating in tandem with Patrick's wavelengths is something that I have no trouble with... If that doesn't sound too creepy and stalker-like. I didn't take any pictures in Hamburg... it didn't occur to me, honestly. Part of that was because of the lack of touristy things - no museums, and only one kind-of church, in direct opposition to the rest of this trip, which has been, like, nonstop churches and museums. And churches that have been turned into museums. But the other part was that it just felt like spending a couple of nights at someone's house; it didn't feel like a "trip," if that makes any sense.
But, so then I had to make it to London. I took the train to Cuxhaven, which is at the mouth of the Elbe (that's the river Hamburg sits on), all told about two hours away. Then from Cuxhaven I had to find my way to the dock - not as easy as you'd think. After asking directions from some people who might have been just basically passing thru, I attracted the attention of a local... I don't know what, fisherman? Construction worker? Anyway, after telling me that the ferries to England left in the morning, not the afternoon and giving me a slight heart palpatation (which resolved itself after he figured out that he'd gotten it wrong and that I hadn't in fact missed my ferry), he, realizing that my German was only barely good enough to understand that a heart palpatation had been previously appropriate, offered to drive me to the dock. Which was very nice of him. So that's what he did, and I got there in plenty of time...
The ferry was called HS Duchess of Scandanavia, and I think it's Danish or something. I had reserved an airline-style reclining chair, of which there were about fifty in the front of the ship; only around fifteen of them were taken, and they were really uncomfortable, so most people wound up sleeping on the floor. Most of the rest of the ship was berths, but the second.. what, deck? was, like, a restaurant, and a bar, and a café and a thing that was supposed to be a nightclub where they had some bad dancers and a terrible band. And it was all outrageously expensive, but that's fine, cos the ticket was, like, £14 or something, so I still didn't wind up spending much money, and I only paid for, like, a sandwich and breakfast.
So, the ferry arrived at Harwich at around ten in the morning. I'd been corresponding via e-mail with a friend of my mother's named Liz who works in London about finding somewhere to stay (because, being the planner that I am, I didn't book a place for the one night I needed to spend in London before my flight), and I hadn't gotten a definitive plan out of her before I'd had to leave Hamburg. So, after I found out that at Harwich International Port there's only one place to get on the internet and that it was currently not working, and then after finding out that there was only one pay phone that accepted credit cards and that it wouldn't do me any good cos my parents weren't home anyway, and after lamenting to the woman at the information desk and wringing her dry of ideas, she finally called a friend of hers in a different office who could log in to AOL for me and check my e-mail and get me Liz's phone number. So then it all worked out. I got on a train at 12:06 that took me into London, I met Liz at work, and she set me up at the International Student House, where I payed £11 for a shared room with nine other people and a working shower (which was a step up from the other hostels I've stayed at). I.S.H. was actually far and away the best deal I had of any of the places I stayed at, so if any of you go to London, I'd highly recommend it. And apparently they're all over the place, too - there's one in New York, I know.
But so then I had an evening to kill, and I set about wandering around... I quickly discovered that I was in an area that I know pretty well (it was on Euston Road about three blocks west from Tottenham Court Road), because it was where I'd done all my walking when I'd been there before, so that was cool. I picked up a copy of The Tin Drum for £5 because I'd run out of reading material, I had a £5 Chinese vegetarian buffet dinner, and hung out in Regent's Park for an hour or so, reading. Then I decided I'd do some more wandering around, and I had another geographical revelation, which was that a bar that I'd gone to before and enjoyed was only about a ten-minute walk away - I'd gotten there on the underground previously, and closed-off transportation like that always throws off my sense of geography. So I went there, and I met a bunch of really cool people with whom I wound up hanging out for most of the night... Notably a guy named Dave, who took me with a friend of his to one of their favorite clubs, which was lots of fun. And then I wound up crashing at Dave's flat at about two in the morning... So I didn't actually stay in the hostel. Not for the night, anyway. But that was fine, cos Dave's flat was a hell of a lot nicer. And he and I clicked pretty well; he's got my e-mail address, and he's a regular at this bar, so we're going to get together again when I'm there in the fall. So now I, like, know people in London. It's cool. It was weird, tho, meeting new people again. I forgot how differently I act when I'm not with G.S. people... it was really like being on a different planet or something, it felt like what I was doing had no relation to reality at all. Very odd.
But anyway, I got to Heathrow uneventfully. They bumped me up to "World Traveller Plus" class, which meant that I got a fancy leg-rest thing and a newspaper when I got on the plane. And then my bag didn't get loaded onto the plane, so they shipped it to us... I actually got in yesterday, but my family were at the shore, so they picked me up at Newark and we just went back to the shore house, cos we had it for one more day. So I had a day on the beach that was nice, but kind of cloudy. Did some more reading. The Tin Drum's not blowing me away yet - I'll give you a further report when I've finished it, cos I'm thinking I'll have liked it a lot by the time I'm done with it. But for right now - Oskar's an irritating little sonofabitch. Next on the list is I am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe - only because it seemed like it would be interesting from all the reviews, and the fact that even tho it's about 700 pages long, it's clearly light reading. Which I think I'll need after Grass... And Mom's pushing me to read Gabriel García Márquez's autobiography, Living to Tell the Tale. I feel like I've had enough Márquez lately, tho... I dunno...
Anyway, I'm home. Come call me and see me and stuff.
But one way or the other, I had some fun between last post and now. I was in Hamburg with Patrick, which was really tons of fun. We didn't do a lot of tourist stuff (altho we did stay out from about midnight to nine the next morning on the Reeperbahn. Beat that.) but we did a hell of a lot of walking and just hanging out and doing fun things and... it was great. It was a really good way to end the trip, cos I really felt like I didn't need to "deal with" anything, if that makes any sense. There wasn't much to work around or sort out, just cos operating in tandem with Patrick's wavelengths is something that I have no trouble with... If that doesn't sound too creepy and stalker-like. I didn't take any pictures in Hamburg... it didn't occur to me, honestly. Part of that was because of the lack of touristy things - no museums, and only one kind-of church, in direct opposition to the rest of this trip, which has been, like, nonstop churches and museums. And churches that have been turned into museums. But the other part was that it just felt like spending a couple of nights at someone's house; it didn't feel like a "trip," if that makes any sense.
But, so then I had to make it to London. I took the train to Cuxhaven, which is at the mouth of the Elbe (that's the river Hamburg sits on), all told about two hours away. Then from Cuxhaven I had to find my way to the dock - not as easy as you'd think. After asking directions from some people who might have been just basically passing thru, I attracted the attention of a local... I don't know what, fisherman? Construction worker? Anyway, after telling me that the ferries to England left in the morning, not the afternoon and giving me a slight heart palpatation (which resolved itself after he figured out that he'd gotten it wrong and that I hadn't in fact missed my ferry), he, realizing that my German was only barely good enough to understand that a heart palpatation had been previously appropriate, offered to drive me to the dock. Which was very nice of him. So that's what he did, and I got there in plenty of time...
The ferry was called HS Duchess of Scandanavia, and I think it's Danish or something. I had reserved an airline-style reclining chair, of which there were about fifty in the front of the ship; only around fifteen of them were taken, and they were really uncomfortable, so most people wound up sleeping on the floor. Most of the rest of the ship was berths, but the second.. what, deck? was, like, a restaurant, and a bar, and a café and a thing that was supposed to be a nightclub where they had some bad dancers and a terrible band. And it was all outrageously expensive, but that's fine, cos the ticket was, like, £14 or something, so I still didn't wind up spending much money, and I only paid for, like, a sandwich and breakfast.
So, the ferry arrived at Harwich at around ten in the morning. I'd been corresponding via e-mail with a friend of my mother's named Liz who works in London about finding somewhere to stay (because, being the planner that I am, I didn't book a place for the one night I needed to spend in London before my flight), and I hadn't gotten a definitive plan out of her before I'd had to leave Hamburg. So, after I found out that at Harwich International Port there's only one place to get on the internet and that it was currently not working, and then after finding out that there was only one pay phone that accepted credit cards and that it wouldn't do me any good cos my parents weren't home anyway, and after lamenting to the woman at the information desk and wringing her dry of ideas, she finally called a friend of hers in a different office who could log in to AOL for me and check my e-mail and get me Liz's phone number. So then it all worked out. I got on a train at 12:06 that took me into London, I met Liz at work, and she set me up at the International Student House, where I payed £11 for a shared room with nine other people and a working shower (which was a step up from the other hostels I've stayed at). I.S.H. was actually far and away the best deal I had of any of the places I stayed at, so if any of you go to London, I'd highly recommend it. And apparently they're all over the place, too - there's one in New York, I know.
But so then I had an evening to kill, and I set about wandering around... I quickly discovered that I was in an area that I know pretty well (it was on Euston Road about three blocks west from Tottenham Court Road), because it was where I'd done all my walking when I'd been there before, so that was cool. I picked up a copy of The Tin Drum for £5 because I'd run out of reading material, I had a £5 Chinese vegetarian buffet dinner, and hung out in Regent's Park for an hour or so, reading. Then I decided I'd do some more wandering around, and I had another geographical revelation, which was that a bar that I'd gone to before and enjoyed was only about a ten-minute walk away - I'd gotten there on the underground previously, and closed-off transportation like that always throws off my sense of geography. So I went there, and I met a bunch of really cool people with whom I wound up hanging out for most of the night... Notably a guy named Dave, who took me with a friend of his to one of their favorite clubs, which was lots of fun. And then I wound up crashing at Dave's flat at about two in the morning... So I didn't actually stay in the hostel. Not for the night, anyway. But that was fine, cos Dave's flat was a hell of a lot nicer. And he and I clicked pretty well; he's got my e-mail address, and he's a regular at this bar, so we're going to get together again when I'm there in the fall. So now I, like, know people in London. It's cool. It was weird, tho, meeting new people again. I forgot how differently I act when I'm not with G.S. people... it was really like being on a different planet or something, it felt like what I was doing had no relation to reality at all. Very odd.
But anyway, I got to Heathrow uneventfully. They bumped me up to "World Traveller Plus" class, which meant that I got a fancy leg-rest thing and a newspaper when I got on the plane. And then my bag didn't get loaded onto the plane, so they shipped it to us... I actually got in yesterday, but my family were at the shore, so they picked me up at Newark and we just went back to the shore house, cos we had it for one more day. So I had a day on the beach that was nice, but kind of cloudy. Did some more reading. The Tin Drum's not blowing me away yet - I'll give you a further report when I've finished it, cos I'm thinking I'll have liked it a lot by the time I'm done with it. But for right now - Oskar's an irritating little sonofabitch. Next on the list is I am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe - only because it seemed like it would be interesting from all the reviews, and the fact that even tho it's about 700 pages long, it's clearly light reading. Which I think I'll need after Grass... And Mom's pushing me to read Gabriel García Márquez's autobiography, Living to Tell the Tale. I feel like I've had enough Márquez lately, tho... I dunno...
Anyway, I'm home. Come call me and see me and stuff.
