Amsterdam, Part 2

I'm trying to think where I last left off.

Okay, so we were staying relatively near the Central Station, conveniently bordering the red light district. Or not convenient, depending on your view on things (I was not really a fan, I must admit). After dropping of our things we went out in search of food, just wandering around in alleys trying to find a place that looked decent. And by alleys I suppose I mean roads. Everyone rides bikes in Amsterdam because there's just no place to actually take your car. It's honestly amazing that anyone would even attempt driving there. So about two canals later we are walking along and start seeing the infamous women of Amsterdam in their windows. This wouldn't have been too weird except I wasn't expecting to see them. And to suddenly find myself so close to them. I should also note that in this particular neighborhood, the majority of people on the streets (by far) are men. And groups of men. Lots of groups of Englishmen as far as I could tell (I'm pretty sure there were more Brits in that part of town than Dutch people, by a substantial amount). So yes, there were women standing in windows with little red lights above them. Some looked bored. I felt bad for them.

Eventually we found food in the form of an Argentinian restaurant. There are a lot of Argentinian restaurants in Amsterdam. They outnumber Dutch places at least 10 to 1. But we went there and it was basically a meat and potatoes enterprise, but it was quite tasty. After dinner we managed to take a very long confusing walk through the city over some more canals to, well, I don't know where we were exactly, but it was much less seedy. We went into one place and there were two other people in there. They asked where we were from. They were from Seattle (although one lived in Everett). What are the chances. Anyways, a bit later in the evening, back in the seedy part of town I couldn't help but notice that my purse had managed to disappear. So then we got to go to the Dutch police station. By the way, they carry guns. And they all speak English!

That was my first evening in Amsterdam.

Amsterdam, Part 1

I've made it back from Amsterdam, and believe me, this was no small feat. The fact that I am in England this evening is a bit of miracle in many ways. But let me start at the beginning.

I left Southampton at noon last Friday and headed by train to Gatwick Airport via Clapham Junctions, which is this giant train station on the outskirts of London. Gatwick is basically the busiest single runway airport ever. There is a plane taking off or landing approximately every 30 seconds. Maybe more often. Anyways, you can't really go anywhere until your gate is announced, the gate is announced about 30 minutes before take-off, it takes 20 minutes to get to the gate, and by then the gate is closing. It's not an ideal system.

The flight was barely over an hour and upon landing you couldn't help but notice the pure and utter lack of ground gradient in the Netherlands. It's completely flat for as far as the eye could see, interlaced with rivers and canals, so it looked like a couple inches rainfall would cause mass flooding. So, we landed and at first every single sign in the aiport was in English. Then the Dutch sort of started wading itself in. And Dutch is one funny, funny looking language. It's best described as looking as if someone sat on their keyboard and called it a day. At customs they had two lines, EU passports and all passports (so EU could go in either line). I was pleased as punch because my passport got stamped and the EU folks got no such love.

Schipol Airport (as it is called) is very large and located somewhat outside the city, so you get to take these bizarre looking double-decker heavy rail trains to get into Central Station (in Dutch 'Centraal Station'). It was around this time when I realized that there is such a thing as Dutch people, and they are somewhat normal. They are slightly nordic in appearance, with a fair proportion of the blonde persuasion, but they sound kind of German. Oh, and as far as I could tell, every single one of them can speak perfect English.

I'll leave it there for the first installment. I recommend frequently returning, as things got rather interesting my first evening.

Third Currency

I'm off to Amsterdam today! This whole additional country is a bit difficult to wrap my mind around, especially in terms of currency. I went to the post office the other day and paid for euros with pounds, all the while in the back of my mind trying to figure out how many dollars it was. Although I must admit that I have for the most part stopped trying to figure out how much everything costs in dollars. It's just a bit too depressing. Of course, the flights were paid for in dollars but quoted in pounds, the place we are staying is in euros, and I'll get paid back for the flights in pounds and pay back the hostel in pounds. I assure you it's very complex.

Speaking of complex. And speaking of speaking. I'm a slightly worried by the fact that I don't speak a word of Dutch and they seem to have unnaturally long, complex words. Everyone probably speaks better English than me, but it still would be somewhat reassuring to at least know a word or two.

Now it's time for a quick bus ride, a long train ride followed by a shorter flight, a one hour time change, and an as-yet-undetermined ride away from the airport in Amsterdam. Oh, I'm flying out of Gatwick. New airport! Oh, and it's a BA flight. I have always been 'world traveller' on BA flights, but now I'm 'euro traveller'. It's totally like I'm European. Except I'll have to go through the special line at customs. Whatever.

Due to the mini-break, I won't be updating blog again until Tuesday. Hopefully this absence will be made up for by good tales from abroad.

Squash & Pancakes

Yesterday was Pancake Day. This is what some consider to be mardi gras, but there are no Catholics in this country so they just think this is a random pancake-eating day. This is exciting for the English as they do not normally consume pancakes as we do in America. Their idea of a pancake for pancake day is also not the same as ours. They are basically crepes. And they put sugar and lemon juice on them. This does not sound particularly appetizing to me, but this is what they do. Perhaps because they do not have the maple syrup. There also seems to be a bit of intrigue surrounding the thick delicious American pancake. I get the impression that they would consume these, but are not quite sure how to create them without them turning into crepes. Seeing as pancakes are one of the very few things that I actually can make, this sort of amuses me.

Speaking of food, when I was preparing for Kelly and MA to arrive I did a sprint through the grocery store. While not literally a sprint, it was pushing the limit. Anyways, because I came across it before I came across the juice, I got some squash. Squash intrigues me. It's basically concentrated quasi-juice (I think the orange squash is 13% fruit), and comes in all kinds of fruit juice-like flavors, and is in a bottle and you would drink it straight if you didn't know better. Instead you pour some into a glass and then just add water. While not of the highest quality, it is a tasty little drink. I think I may just be in it for the novelty at this point, but it is frequently consumed by other people and seems rather prevalent. I may be driven to try other flavors. But there is an equal chance I will never bother to buy any again.

Kelly & MA re-enact Winchester

I took Kelly and MA to Winchester yesterday. At times I got the distinct impression that they weren't that wild about it. On the plus side, however, we did get a traditional Sunday roast at a pub in town. It was much better than my first English roast. This one entailed roast beef, carrots, cauliflower cheese, roasted potatoes, cabbage, and what was apparently swede. Oh, and a Yorkshire pudding was involved as well. Tasty. In the evening time I took them down to Oxford Street to meet a couple of my English friends. Here is Kelly's impression on things:

I don't know why Mango thinks we didn't enjoy Winchester, there were many exciting things there. Even Gnorme enjoyed himself. I have to say the Sunday roast was fab, especially all of the cabbage related vegetables. YUM! I enjoyed the English chaps as well. I have to acknowledge that at least two are not imaginary! Well, I have to say goodbye to this blog for a while, London calls. :)

But she still thinks the third is imaginary! Totally not my fault!

Kelly & MA check out Southampton

I took Kelly and MA on the whistlestop tour of town yesterday. While I saw whistlestop, that isn't necessarily true. There really isn't too much to see. What did Kelly think?

Kelly says:

Well, there were some nice old world style elements to town. Some remanants of wall and such. I really enjoyed my Marks and Spencer sandwich, brown bread, chicken, avacado and bacon. As well as my parsnip crisps. Fab! Oh, and Margo has introduced me to the world of the tunic, well, I think I've only met her part way on the British fashion. We're going on another adventure today. Cheers! K

It must be said that I indeed have gone tunic. They are everywhere. I got one at topshop yesterday and I'm giving it a whirl today. However, it is not particularly long, so it's not too full-on English. Or so I like to think. Perhaps I am only kidding myself.

Kelly & MA!

Kelly and MA came into town yesterday. It was a very exciting moment. Needless to say. They arrived in the late afternoon, so there was not much showing around of town. We went to a few pubs of varying authenticity and I had them eating potato wedges with the little wooden quasi-fork. Here is Kelly's take on things:

I haven't met any of Margo's "friends" yet. They might just be a figment of her imagination. Well, either way I'm excited to see some container ships today and some large industrial buildings. That's the way Southampton flows. I'm currently drinking out of a large England Stabucks mug, I think I just might be a native!

That's all I'm going to let Kelly write for today. I will indeed show her some containers and other industrial buildings today as I show her around town. I will also show her old English things and those stores on every single high street in the country. And my friends do exist. They just won't meet them until Sunday.

The Brit Awards

The Brit Awards were on television this evening and I watched them. So, the Brit Awards are the English equivalent of the Grammys. It's a two-hour live show where they give a bunch of rock stars a lot of liquor and hope something goes awry, interspersed with live performances. Categories include 'best international male' (aka, non-British male) and 'best British single', and more things along that line.

Miraculously, I recognized the host of the show, having come across him on a silly question-asking show back in December, so I knew that despite looking like a rocker-type, he was really a comedian. I cannot tell you his name, but I can tell you that he wasn't particularly funny and many of his jokes fell flat. The winners of the first few awards were all obviously drunk, which was not as amusing as one could hope. Live performers included Amy Winehouse (that Rehab song is way popular), the Killers, Oasis (they got the lifetime achievement type award so they actually closed the show with a 4-song set), Take That (90s boy band that Robbie Williams used to be in, went away for a while, but are back now and very popular), the Scissor Sisters, and Corinne Bailey Rae. Awards were won by the Killers, the Arctic Monkeys, the Fratellis (I don't think there stuff has really been released in the US), Justin Timberlake, Amy Winehouse, and some other people. I suppose one could look these things up if they were curious.

The real point of interest is that people are allowed to curse more on British television. Someone slipped in the s-word, for example. This is apparently okay. You can also say the f-word if there is a warning before the show. One can also show more nudity. However, they don't like it when people shoot each other. The English seem a little wary of guns.

And there is a second soap opera in this country. There is the Aussie-imported Neighbours, and the local Hollyoaks. Can I tell the difference? Not really. Is there a difference? Yes, the money looks really funny on Neighbours because it's Australian.

University Challenge

There is a long-running television program in this country called University Challenge. Essentially it is a tournament where each university sends a team of unnaturally smart people to answer unnaturally difficult questions. And it's on tv and people watch it. So being the quiz-minded people that we are, a few people from my course attended a quiz on campus last night that was to act as the first round of finding the University of Southampton team for the show. Each team could consist of five people, but they all had to be from the same school (I am in the school of Civil Engineering and the Environment). Because we are a bit sad, we only had three people. And we didn't do that well, but that's beside the point. Each team got to nominate one person who will then be called back in a few weeks for another round of questions, from which the team will be formed. As I completely lack British general knowledge, I obviously opted not to be this person. There were only about 20 teams, and 5 people go on the program, so odds are pretty good. Should be interesting. Plus it was only 50p per person to enter and you got one free drink (wine or soft drink) and they gave us free doritos.

They do have doritos in the country. And they are the same doritios we know and love, but they have given them different names. I can't recall what they all are at the moment, but nacho cheese is called tangy cheese (they seem to have a slightly different understanding of the word nacho here, but I don't really know what it is exactly). Cool ranch is also present, but who knows what they call it. Cool ranch just doesn't seem to translate as a flavor name.

My progress of getting the English hopelessly addicted to Starbucks is going well. Next I need to convince people to order things with skim milk.

Also, please notice that I have added a link on the left to my public gallery on picasa for convenient photo viewing. If I'm feeling clever I may add additional links there, but right now I can't think of anything.

Bath

I went to Bath today. My original intention was to go there the week before Christmas but then I decided to go to Oxford instead. And then I was going to go after Christmas but it was really cold outside. So I went today.

The first thing that struck me when I got off the train was that I remembered how to get to Bath Abbey from the train station. And then I was surprised and how many other random places were familiar. Perhaps what was stranger was that so many of the more well-known sites, such as the archy bits, were not so familiar. So I walked around a bit and actually went into the abbey because I hadn't been before. I did refrain from going to the baths again, but did a quick sweep of the gift shop.

So Bath was really cute. One thing I really enjoyed was the fact that, aside from the cute rows of buildings and cute little alleys, they had non-chain stores. And cute ones at that. Most of these towns have all the same random English chains that are no particular deal in Southampton, let alone when you see them 200 times all over the place. But this place had lots of cute shops and little restaurant places. Like, I would go there again just to go shopping. I took a little stroll along the river Avon, which has some cute scenery but was overwhelmingly brown. It started to look like imminent rain so I bolted for the train station relatively early (3:15), but could have easily spent more time looking at the shops. And then the train was 45 minutes late anyways. The announcer lady was 'extremely sorry for the severe delay'. Normally they are just 'sorry for the delay'. Nice to know they can step it up a notch when need be. I wonder how late a train will have to be before they start passing out hot chocolate.

Decembrists

I've just gone to see the Decembrists. First of all, it's impossible to explain what it's like to hear someone talk, in person, from the same corner of the universe as you when you have not done so for 5 months. Second of all, it was way good!

The concert was held on campus, in one of the student union buildings in a quasi-large room. Luckily, it was surprisingly packed. When arriving on campus, I was surprised to find the student bar closed 'for private concert'. Quite frankly, it didn't occur to me that this could be Decembrists because I didn't think anyone else was going to it, but alas, it was (the student bar and the concert venue are in the same building). So, I forget the name of the opener. The doors were at 8, went in around 8:45, and heard three songs by the opener. I think the word 'lavender' was involved, but that's all I recall. Anyways, in the announcer intro for the Decembrists, they specifically said 'Portland, Oregon's' decembrists, and I was so excited. So excited. And they even talked like Americans (which shouldn't be a surprise, but it was really unnaturally refreshing). The concert was good, but that's not really the point. The point was that there were people besides me, in Southampton, claiming to be from Oregon. Not just Oregon even, but the west coast. And that is not the norm. So it kicked ass.

Other than that, and the fact that it was good, pretty much like any other concert you would go to. There were Americans when I left, however, at the pay phones. One said to the other 'what's the name of our hotel?'. If I hadn't been desparate for a bathroom, I may have stopped to chat.

New Forest

I took my firs sojourn into the new forest yesterday. The thing you have to understand about the new forest is that it is neither "new" or a "forest". It does however, have oodles and oodles of wild ponies.

The "forest" essentially covers a large stretch of land to the west of Southampton up until somewhere east of Bournemouth. It does have parts containing forest, but it also has quite a few marshlands, quanit villages, random open areas, an oil refinery, and beaches. Bost turning in last essay yesterday, I went and checked out some of these beaches. While cold, it was pleasantly sunny. And of course, I got excited whenever I saw any of the famous ponies. If you buy a house in the new forest, you also technically buy a chunk of the ponies. I can honestly say I don't quite understand what goes on, but parts of it are cute and it is a bit scenic. I have some pictures I'll put up, but it may have to wait a day or two because I've got a long day of learning ahead of me today.

It snowed last night. There had been rumors going around that it might, but having grown up in the northwest I have learned to dismiss these sorts of things as imaginative tales to get your hopes up, plus I guess it like never snows here because it's on the sea. But I open up the curtains this morning and boom, ground, pavement, roofs, all covered with snow. Appears to be melting fast, but should make for a treacherous walk to campus.

Kettle & Times

You know those little box sets of kitchen items you can get when you go off to college? The ones that always have a coffee maker and a toaster? They have those here, only instead of a coffee maker there is an electric kettle. For some reason, one does not make their tea here on a regular stove-top kettle (on a "hob"). Right now in my kitchen (used by six people), there are three of these kettles. Which is especially miraculous because only one of these people is actually English. When you are at other peoples' homes and they are making tea, you never get the warning call that it will be done in a moment. I think it actually requires sitting there and watching. I do not understand this appliance. You can't even make ramen in these kettles. Speaking of appliances, I must grab my coffee.

There is an episode of friends where Rachel buys a bunch of items from Pottery Barns and has to pretend all of the items are antiques, telling Phoebe things are from "colonial times", and when asked what other times there were her best answer is "times of yore". A) It is sad that I know that. B) It is sad because it is true. In America we are somewhat without defined 'times'. This is primarily because we are a wee, sprightly young country that doesn't get bogged down with these sorts of mundane details. Here on the other hand, they have actual defined 'times'. Those most frequently mentioned would be 'Roman times' and 'Saxon times', and everyones more recent favorites 'Elizabethan times' and 'Victorian times' (note: kings are not worthy of getting their names added to the word 'times', they have eras and periods, like the 'Edwardian era' and the 'Regency period'). While I sometimes get the impression that no one really knows what any of these thigns mean, this does not make it any less impressive that they exist and still manage to be relevant on a recurring basis.

I hear the Colts won the Superbowl. This occurred in my sleep, so I'm not sure if it was a good game or not. England beat Scotland this past Saturday at rugby. Apparently we are pleased, but it seems like a country of 50 million people should be able to beat a country of 5 million people. Do we consider it a triumph when we beat Canada at anything? Eh?

Mini-sigh of relief

I had my last exam on Tuesday. Although last seems like a bit of a stretch when there are only two to begin with. While I made it out alive, it was a disturbing experience. The test ended at 11:30 and in quasi-celebration, everyone opted to have a beer with lunch at the post-grad/faculty bar/eatery. Apparently this was found to be odd, because the Polish woman who helped me, goes 'is it a boozy lunch?', which needless to say highly amused me at the time. My response: 'yes'. It was a pick 3 questions out of 5 exam and they all covered material that we never touched on in class, which would have been even more disturbing if I hadn't been expecting this based on the old exams. No clue how I did, but I still feel like I did well on the first one. Perhaps they will balance each other out.

However, there are still two pieces of coursework to go. And neither one is interesting. So after managing to stay out of the library for two days straight, I am back in again. But in a bold twist, I have moved from the first floor to the third floor, so it's really quite different. A parallel universe, if you will. I will most liekly be here a lot the next few days, trying to figure out which road surface to recommend for an imaginary roadway to minimise noise levels and looking for case studies of how ITS is helping improve the freight industry.

Oh, and this rugby tournament thing. It's called 'six nations', but England, Wales, and Scotland are three of them. Is that not cheating? Like, seriously. The other three are Ireland, France, and Italy. So its pretty random. I may watch the England game on Saturday, so we'll see how that goes.