It was a great but exhausting weekend in London! I will try to retrace most of our journey so it’s almost like you were there along with us. Hope you enjoy!

Saturday Morning

The alarm rang at 2:15 a.m. to wake up and shower so we could catch the taxi to Utrecht Centraal at 3:15. It was the first of many disorienting time schedules we’d keep the whole weekend but there was something odd about having the alarm ring a few minutes after my roommate stumbled in from her night out. C’est la vie, I guess. So, we make it to the station with plenty of time to spare…

… please notice that it definitely does say 3:27 a.m. on the board at the station. Our train is the 4:08 to Eindhoven you’ll see on the second line. We were early, but that’s better than late, of course! Here are our shining faces at this hour of the morning…

and me on the train…

So, dark and early, we set off for Eindhoven. We arrived a bit after 5 a.m. and hoped to find a coffee vendor and sit down somewhere to wait for our 7:10 bus (the first one of the day) to wake ourselves up for the day. Instead, we found a contingent of station police kicking us out and locking the doors behind us (allegedly to prevent homeless people from staying in the station). So, we stood outside in the cold for about 20 minutes before they let us back in (one hour before the next train arrived).

Little did Lucy or I know of the characters we’d encounter outside the trainstation at 5 a.m. but one interesting story was when two (drunk) guys came walking by and one asked us if we had a cup. We thought that was strange and after ignoring them for as long as possible, we finally said that no, we were fresh out of plastic cups. He got a goofy look on his face, pulled out a bag of wine (yes, I said bag) and said “That’s too bad because then I can’t share any of my wine with you!” He then proceeded to pour his own cup of red wine from the bag, drink it with the same goofy grin on his face, while Lucy and I tried to walk the other way. Classy.

At any rate, we caught our bus to the airport and caught the plane to London. Before we knew it, we were being interrogated by the British Immigration Control about the purpose of our stay, why on earth we were living in the Netherlands if we were American, and why I didn’t have my old passport with me. Aaah the joys of traveling…

But we were in! Well, at least in the UK. Now we had to catch a train to central London but that all worked out just fine and we arrived at our hostel, the Astor Museum Inn, right by the British Museum (which is fabulous but I’ll get to that later)…The hostel was really great and it’s in a perfect location if you’re ever in London and need a place near everything.

After lunch, we set off to explore the sites. A collection of the obligatory London photos follows:

The iconic red telly booths…

On the Westminster Bridge over the River Thames in front of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament.

Pestering the poor statue-esque guard whose arm, I’m sure of it, was getting tired of holding that sword…

Hanging out in front of the entrance to Chinatown…

The London Eye…

So after an afternoon filled with checking out the town, we returned to our hostel, changed and got ready for a night on the town. Here I am, in all my rockstar glory, before we head out:

We grabbed some sushi for dinner and then headed over to Leicester Square to check out the scene. The place we settled on at first was a place called Yates’s. It had a nice vibe and lots of places to sit and enjoy proper pints of beer. Given our long day of traveling and sightseeing, however, we had to call it a fairly early night and ended up back in bed fairly early to catch up on some much-needed rest.

On Sunday, we were up and ready to go around 10 so we started off at the British Museum. It was really fantastic. My friends Megan and Juan ended up spending the whole day there when they visited in the spring and now I can see why. There is so much interesting stuff in the collections and below, I have some photos:

The Rosetta stone: the key to unlocking hieroglyphics. Consequently, also a software company for language learning. It’s how I taught myself the first level of Dutch! I highly recommend the software if you’re into learning a new language…I also recommend seeing the actual stone in the British museum!

Also on exhibit during our visit was the Statuephilia featuring six artists with different sculptures. It was really interesting to see these kinds of contemporary works mingling with the old-school works of historical important. I would post pictures of these but I think the website does much better at explaining these works of art. If you’re interested, check it out. The two most interesting to me were the Kate Moss gold statue entitled “Siren” and the larger-than-life portrayal of himself by Ron Meuck. Meuck is actually one I had studied very limitedly before. More information about his work can be found here.

That is Meuck’s self portrait. We also saw plenty of Egyptian art, during which I took liberties to make an ass of myself with a pose paying homage to a certain 80s tune (your favorite and mine) …Walk Like an Egyptian!

Yeah. I did it. I make no apologies

And this one’s for you, Megan and J.I.

I have a lot of other museum pics that you can find on the flickr site. Speaking of photos for friends, this one goes out to Amanda and Katy and all my other Texas friends. If there wasn’t proof enough before, here it is in uncontrovertable evidence: Texas is its own country…

Something we also noticed as we were walking around were some not-so-nice sentiments about the War in Iraq and our good-old-boy president, George W. I know for many January 20 cannot come fast enough, myself included.

That’s from a random signpost walking past 10 Downing Street (the Prime Minister’s residence).

And this is a Times advertisement in a tube station.

On the same token of signage in London, I found such polite signs throughout the trip. I was floored by the way the Brits phrased things so nice and properly. For example, a traffic sign I did not photograph was a detour sign. Instead of DETOUR in all capital letters, the sign suggested there was to be a Diversion. That sounds so much more pleasant than a DETOUR!!! And instead of yield, please

Very sweet! Also, when a register was closed in the museum shop, the helpful and polite Brits want to inform you that

To compare, many closed registers in the Netherlands just say “Gesloten” (closed) or sometimes “Kassa Gesloten” (cash register is closed). One could make the argument that the Dutch are rude, but I don’t think that’s the case. The Dutch are famous for being efficiently to the point and after living here for a while, I am a fan of this short and sweet approach. The London way is nice, but did you really need to put 16 words in the place of one or two? Something to ponder…

At any rate, the rest of our day on Sunday was spent wandering around in the rain trying to find umbrellas before we went to Chiquitos for lunch (on Leicester square). I was less than impressed with the food, so avoid this place if you’re in town. We then went shopping on Oxford street and around Picadilly Circus. I found many bargains and enjoyed the afternoon strengthening the UK economy. It was a bit of a problem to fit everything back into my carryon, but thank goodness for the vacuum sealed bags I bought at Target (mentioned in one of my first posts) because it reduced all of my new purchases into a manageable size.

We went back to our hostel, freshened up, and then met Lucy’s colleague from this summer, Lie Lie, for dinner. We had a great meal and wine before we headed over to a place called O’Neill’s for some beer and revelry. The beer was great, the music was fun, and we met some interesting characters, to say the least. It was a nice way to end our fun weekend in London. Here are Lucy and Lie Lie in the DJ booth taking pictures with the DJ (yes, that was an AyBayBay reference, thankyouverymuch).

Lucy and I stayed out until the wee morning hours as we had a 3:40 train to catch back to Stansted for our 6:55 flight. After a psudo-sketchy taxi ride, we arrived at Liverpool Street Station to wait until the train station opened. There were really no problems from there on out, at least not in the UK. We caught our flight without a problem but when we got back to the Eindhoven train station, we found out our train direct from Eindhoven to Utrecht was a no-go. Instead, we had to hop on a stop train (the slow kind) to Tilburg, connect to a train to Den Bosch, and then from there catch the Utrecht train. It was all Lucy and I could do not to fall asleep standing up, but we made it back to Utrecht in one piece with lots of memories and sleep deprivation as evidence of our London weekend.

I will say, in reflection, I thought it would be a huge relief to be back in a place where English was spoken but I found myself missing Dutch and Dutch people during the trip. I think that’s evidence of where “home” feels like to me these days. Don’t get me wrong, London is an amazing city, but there’s just something about the Netherlands for me…

I caught mostly up on sleep yesterday and have to go to Dutch class and soccer practice tonight. Just an update from the last blog: someone cancelled on the ski trip, so I’m in!!! I am officially excited about the opportunity to ski in the French Alps this January. I also booked my plane ticket back from Columbus to Amsterdam so I’m getting all squared away with travel plans.

This post ended up being longer than I had thought! I better get going now. I hope to have the pictures up on the flickr site soon…I hope everyone’s doing well!!

Tot ziens…

Well hello there! Thanks for stopping by the blog! I thought I’d write a quick post out of my excitement for this upcoming weekend in London…my friend Lucy, who also goes to Washburn Law but is studying in the Netherlands, is coming up from Maastricht, where she studies, to Utrecht this evening after my Dutch class. We’ll probably go check out the night scene in Utrecht this evening and perhaps check out the market or do some shopping during the day tomorrow.

Then, on Saturday morning, we’re taking off for foggy London town! The weather doesn’t look great, but it is about the same as here, so at least there will be a change of scenery with our cloudy, rainy days Some of you might be familiar with RyanAir, but it’s a low-budget airline that flies to smaller airports throughout Europe. We found reasonably priced tickets and a good weekend to go, so we said “why not?”! We fly from Eindhoven to London-Stansted, so this gets a little more complicated as we’ll have to take a train from Utrecht to Eindhoven, then a bus to the airport…fly to Stansted and then take a bus or train into the city. We don’t have any solid plans for exactly what we’re going to do, but we discussed seeing a show on Saturday night and perhaps checking out some museums on Sunday. Our flight back leaves early Monday morning. I’m sure I’ll post pics and details upon my return.

Other than that, this week has been pretty laid back. I had Dutch class and soccer practice (in the pouring freezing cold rain) on Tuesday, comparative law class yesterday, and I have more Dutch class this evening. The research project is off to a good start and I’m still really enjoying my life here in NL! One thing that is kind of exciting is that my soccer club, Odysseus, is putting together a winter break ski trip to the French Alps (Les Deux Alpes) from 2-11 January. I am currently the first on the waiting list, which kind of sucks, but I guess is good if they’re able to get more tickets. Why not ski in the French Alps?! I’ll keep you posted on this as I get more information.

Let’s see, what else? I’ll be curious to watch the VP debates (probably on youtube as I most likely won’t be awake to watch them live). Sarah Palin seems to just be making things worse every time she opens her mouth! This one is probably my favorite…It’s really gotta be about job creation, don’t ya know?! She reminds me so much of the poor Miss South Carolina’s answer during the pageant. The sad thing is Palin is running for the VP of America instead of Miss America…yikes!

And though I don’t fully understand it, I’m trying to watch what the House is going to do with this $700 billion bailout plan after the Senate revised and passed it…what a mess, huh? I can’t even imagine that much money…At any rate, hope everyone is doing well! More to come after the weekend in London!

Well, I have much good news. First and foremost–we have the internet at our house finally!!! It’s so nice to be sitting in the living room and posting from my house. It’s crazy (a) how much I took internet for granted while I had it all the time and (b) how addicted I am to the internet!! But now all is well because I can be connected 100% of the time!

Second and just as important: I had extremely good news from the physical therapist when I met with him Friday. He went through the standard battery of tests to see the integrity of my ligaments just to make sure. After asking me a few questions about when the knee actually hurt, he said I could try to run on it again and play soccer as much as I could tolerate. Friday evening I went for a 5K run and it felt great!!! Our team had training yesterday, so I played in that and the knee felt super. I guess this means I’m back in action on the football field!

Third, and related to the soccer talk–our team had a feestje (little party) last night at which much wine and beer were consumed, lekker (tasty) food was had, and good times were had by all. I, in fact, enjoyed too much wine but going out with my teammates was really fun. Here are a couple photos from the evening:

We had a very nice dinner at one of our teammates’ awesome apartments, played a drinking game with the same idea as Circle of Death (in Dutch, of course), and then went out to a bar afterward. I really am enjoying being part of this team. It’s a great way to meet new Dutch friends, practice Dutch, and (of course) play soccer!

This week ahead is looking like it’s going to be busy. Tomorrow I meet with my supervising professor, Ian, to discuss the research project. It is super that we have internet at our house so I can research from home at my convenience. Have you gotten the idea that I’ve been missing the internet?! I also meet with my physical therapist to touch base after the weekend’s activities. My friend Lucy is coming up from Maastricht on Friday before she and I head off to London for the weekend. Of course there will be another blog post coming soon with details about our upcoming trip.

As always, I hope all is well at home for you all! Tot ziens!