a little learning is a dangerous thing ...

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Just Because It's Awesome

Last night's Guillemots gig was one of the best live performances I've seen so far. I know I tend to be over-effusive when describing shows (I must be easy to please when it comes to indie) but Fyfe Dangerfield (best rock name ever), the lead singer and mastermind behind the band, is actually a musical genius. He played multiple instruments while blowing away the crowd with his massive voice, and except for a a few rowdies near the front, earned the entire audience's undying love. I was impressed.

I then met up with Francesca and a few of her friends for her birthday at a club called Oceana to dance away on the light-up dance floor, disco-style. Good times were had.

And, just because I feel like it, here's that classic alternative Canadian anthem that we all know and love... makes me want to jump on a plane today instead!


Monday, May 26, 2008

The Rolling Hills of Skipton

The papers are being sorted and the books are being sold. I'm piling up clothes and taking down posters and although it's unavoidable, it's still bittersweet.



The organizer in me is elated at the prospect of cleaning house, but it's a bit daunting, so to take off some of the pressure induced by the official confirmation that I'm flying home this Friday (the 30th), Tasha, Anna-Mari, Silke and I made a quick trip to the green fields of Bolton Abbey in Skipton, West Yorkshire yesterday.



Bolton's been a functioning Christian worshiping place for 850 continuous years. You couldn't ask for a more peaceful (and pastoral) setting, either: sheep and cows roam freely around the abbey's boundaries and the land connects to a picturesque stream. Combine that with the children and their parents spending the morning outside on the walking trails, and it's classic Yorkshire: quiet and home-y. We enjoyed having some tea, seeing the abbey ruins and walking the farmer's fields just behind them before heading home to Bodington for a quiet Sunday night. Ah... serenity.


Tonight is Francesca's 21st birthday, so we're heading out to celebrate with her. Before that though, Christian and I are checking out a Guillemots show at Leeds Met University... I have a link on the righthand side of the blog page to Guillemots' MySpace-- the band's incredibly talented, and I'm SO excited to see them live. I waffled a bit over buying the tickets this close before going home, but decided I couldn't miss the opportunity... I have no idea when they're coming to Canada! I'll have an update soon to let you know what I thought :).

I'm so happy to be coming home so much earlier than expected... four days! xx

Monday, May 19, 2008

'Twas a Dark and Stormy Night...


I have a confession.

I'm an English Lit major (sometimes masquerading as an MIT student) and am supposed to be well-rounded in my lifelong reading experience. I've tackled many a classic that I wasn't quite ready for (I still haven't slogged through Catch 22 or Great Expectations, despite the looks of horror I get from my classmates), but out of the realm of books that I, as a twenty-year-old female student of literature, should have read, there are a few gaping holes. One, for instance, is The Devil Wears Prada. Another is Wuthering Heights.


WH is one of those towering pillars of British iconography that most people can discuss if it came up in conversation. Just because of its cultural status, I can kind of tell you the plot and the themes, and most definitely the setting. I think I've read the first few chapters, but I fell prey early on to Emily Bronte's heavy-handed dose of melancholy and high emotion. It didn't grasp me the same as Jane Eyre or anything by Jane Austen did, but I was aware of its literary value--hence the attempt at joining the 19th-century emo lit bandwagon.

However, the romanticized nature of the book still means something, so when Tasha and I found ourselves roaming the wild moors of Yorkshire yesterday under dark grey clouds and a strong wind, it felt pretty amazing to be standing on the actual Wuthering Heights.


We rode into the town of Haworth, possibly the quaintest dwelling in England, on what we saw as pretty much the Hogwarts Express. A real '40s diesel train! And the conductors were dressed in costume! Plus, to top it off, the town was indulging in a healthy display of WWII nostalgia for its annual 1940s Remembrance Day weekend, so there were plenty of soldiers and old-fashioned dancehall ladies wandering about artfully placed sandbags and yelping newsboys. It was like walking onto a film set for Swing Kids.



We got to explore the Brontes' home, where all four of the surviving children grew up and composed their famous works of art. Charlotte, Emily, and Anne all wrote novels while their brother Branwell was a portrait artist; even their father published papers on theology. Sadly, none of the four reached the age of forty, all dying before their father. They spent most of their lives living in this small house, in a tiny town in West Yorkshire.


But you can see where they got the inspiration for their grand plots: after tea among a crowd of infantrymen, Tasha and I took a six-mile walk up to Top Withins, the building where Emily sat and contemplated the story for WH. There's a sense of isolation up there that's oddly affecting; how can such a famous story have taken place in such an unassuming (though remarkably beautiful) place?


After walking in the Brontes' footsteps for a day, we caught the last steam engine train back to the little town of Keighley before heading back to Leeds. Our sore backs and tired legs made us acutely aware of the effects of soft student life... although it was well worth the climb to see one of the most famous literary settings of all time.

Saturday, May 17, 2008

All Good Things Come To An End (Soon)

I'm not sure whether this end-of-term limbo is more like the sadness at the end of summer camp, or more like the tingling of fear at graduation. I've never been to summer camp (just ask Mom) but of course I know the process: you're homesick, then you adjust, and then you're attached. It makes it hard to go home.


(Tasha and I at the Clapham House formal dinner)

But I guess after nine months of going to another school, getting on the flight home is going to feel like graduating from a one-year master class in New Experiences. The anxiety of exams is the same, and the tinge of sadness at people leaving one by one is just like at home, but there's a layer of permanence to these goodbyes that I don't want to even think about. The re-adjustment of coming back home is nearly the same as when I came over: a week of gladness, followed by a few months of aching to be back in a place I really do love. And then back to the comfort of being home with my family and friends.

I'm maybe putting the cart before the horse here, because I have three weeks to go before coming home. But my mind's started to wander to questions of how to bring nine months of stuff back home and when I begin my summer job, rather than plans for a trip to some far-flung European capital. So I guess it's time to start that oh-so-bittersweet process of looking back over the past year, a few weeks early.

We finally heard from Bryan and Lisa, who were in Italy for a week and are now heading to Switzerland... they sound like they're having a blast taste-testing gelato everywhere and roaming ancient ruins. Here's to a fantastic time in them German-speaking countries, and I REALLY hope Bryan (and Lisa, too!) go bungee-jumping in Interlaken! How amazing would that be? Take many, many pictures!


(above: Pete and Lisa on a balcony at Chenonceau; below: mmm gelato!)

I'm off to postpone revising for my exam in order to go for a walk and/or plan a day trip with Tasha tomorrow to Haworth, where the Bronte sisters grew up. There are still treasures in Yorkshire that I don't want to miss!

This past week I didn't do much else except study for my Romantic Lit exam (it went well) and go out to celebrate that and the gorgeous weather with Christian and our new friend Ollie, who was in one of my seminars and is coincidentally going to Western next year on exchange. The passing of the torch begins!

xx

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

How Nice, A Day in Pisa!


May 8

Our passage to Nice was a marathon. All of the direct trains to the coast were booked solid, so we were forced to change trains three times, in Bourges, Lyon, and Marseille respectively. But we made it in the end, reaching our hostel (the same one we stayed in in December) around 9:15 pm.


While Nice is admittedly absolutely gorgeous, if you're not interested in modern art or medieval ruins, there's not that much to do except lie on the beach. However, this is generally an agreeable alternative, so we lay on the stony shore for about three hours sleeping or watching French people and a few pasty tourists roast in the sun. My own pale British Isles skin, accustomed to the short days of Canadian winters and the rain of Yorkshire, couldn't take the heat. I have a new lobster-red sunburn to prove it.

We kind of meandered up the mountain (or huffed and puffed, actually) to see the view and then went back to the city centre for gelato before calling it a day. Unfortunately, we had to suddenly catch a night train to Pisa instead of a morning one (again, due to sold-out trains) and had to lose one night's payment at the hostel. But it was unavoidable, and on the bright side, we have an extra day in Pisa. It's been gorgeous weather, as well, so we're pretty consistently relaxed and enjoying ourselves :).

May 9

A night spent in a train compartment with strangers is never necessarily pleasant, but the faint hope of a few hours of sleep was dashed pretty early on when I realized I was in a different car than the others. There were four American girls in my compartment, thankfully, although the atmosphere went downhill shortly after midnight when the Italian conductor loudly charged them fifty euros each for different mistakes on their Eurail passes. It's too bad-- where most conductors would've given them a break, this guy fined them to the full extent.

Pisa seems to exist solely to support its most famous tilting, ineptly built medieval structure: the much-ogled Leaning Tower of Pisa. First of all, I agree with Bryan's immediate reaction to the bell tower; as we emerged from the mini-city of vendors clustered around the base, Bryan looked up at it and said, 'But I thought it was in a field.'


True, Bryan. So did I. But in fact, the tower's just the main attraction of an entire cathedral and baptistery, and leans only metres from the nearest street. The mass of tourists with raised arms and strained smiles, pretending to hold it up for the camera, however, make for another obstacle entirely. I can't criticize them, though... we did it too!

(Pete, breaking the illusion ;))

I fly home EARLY tomorrow morning back to Leeds. In an interesting twist (to me, at least), we can actually walk to Galileo Galilei Airport-- it's ten minutes from our hotel. What? That's amazing. And Bryan, Pete and Lisa have insisted on walking me there at 4 am, which I appreciate so much. I'll miss them a lot as they continue on their travels to Rome, where Pete flies home, and then Austria, Switzerland, and Germany.

We came, we saw, we conquered: I just had one of the best weeks of my life seeing some of the most beautiful countryside in the world, with three of the best travel-mates (and friends) I could ask for.


Have an amazing final two weeks, Bryan and Lisa!

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

The Royal Touch


(Pete, Bryan and Lisa on the bank of the Loire in Tours)

Having just one full day in the valley, we went on an all-day castle tour in a bid to see as much as possible. I'm glad we did, too; the chateaux are notoriously hard to access without a car, so we fully appreciated the transport in our careening VW van. The first chateau, a smaller building called Azay-le-Rideau, was lovely; it sits on a small river and shows the marks of the many different generations it has seen since the 16th century. We had time for a quick walkthrough before driving through the lilac-dotted countryside to our second castle of the day, Villandry.

(above: Azay-le-Rideau)

Villandry is known more for its stunning gardens than its castle, and it shows. From a moat teeming with fish to geometrically designed, thematic hedgerows to a serene man-made lake, it's the quintessential French 'backyard'. It even had the same designer as Versailles. Along with its herb garden (unchanged since medieval monks began it), the castle retains a sense of time standing still that seems to be native to La Vallee de Loire.


After lunch we arrived at the stronghold of the town of Amboise. The lordly chateau has guarded its people from atop its hill since the eleventh century and has housed royalty as well: from Charles VII to Francois I, who grew up in the castle. It was Francois who was a great patron of his time; during the French Renaissance, he championed free thinkers and even lured Da Vinci to spend the last three years of his life tinkering away at the nearby manor of Clos Luce.



(above: le Chateau d'Amboise; below: drawings swaying in the trees of Da Vinci's grounds)

Although Da Vinci is buried in the chateau d'Amboise's tiny chapel, his last home is far more venerated by current admirers. The house has a special exhibit about his life and works, but when we visited we surreptitiously slipped into the manor's extensive grounds instead. The quiet woods are split in two by a small river, and spotted with Da Vinci's myriad inventions: everything from his preliminary drawings for a helicopter to his plan for a water-pumping machine have been realized in the 21st century by IBM (using materials of Da Vinci's time) and subtly placed among the trees. I'm not sure how Da Vinci would react if he knew his plans were put into action by a multinational technology company, but I guess he worked for the late medieval equivalent, the kings and queens of Europe. He'd understand.


After some free wine-tasting (and wine-buying) in the cool basement of the chateau and the visit to Clos Luce, we were off to our last chateau, the classy domicile of Chenonceau, 'le chateau des dames'. The 'women's castle' is a white monolith straddling the River Cher, accented by manicured French gardens and a leafy, tree-lined avenue. It was owned and added to over the centuries by a series of female proprietors, starting with Diane de Poitiers, the mistress of King Henry II. She added the famous arch, the galerie, over the river that connects the castle to the far bank. Later on, Catherine de Medici moved in and ruled France from its tiny library until her son was old enough to take over. After she died, it passed from woman to woman until about the mid-19th century.


The surprisingly small number of rooms bear the marks of a woman's touch-- elegant bedrooms are balanced with intricately carved stone staircases and the tour-de-force galerie. The chateau is significant to French history not only because of its royal origins but also for surviving the French Revolution and for its role in the 20th century World Wars. In WWI it served as a makeshift hospital and in WWII, as a passageway from occupied to free France; if you walked in one door of the galerie from occupied France, you could slip out the other into the free zone.

But that was it for the day...our chateau-hopping at an end, we had some Italian for dinner and are getting ready to leave the canola fields of the valley for the stone beaches of Nice tomorrow. I really, really hope this isn't the last I see of this part of France, though. It's too beautiful to miss.

Monday, May 12, 2008

Le Paris, C'est Joli....Prenons Un Tours?

Paris, May 3

It was such a fantastic feeling to see Bryan and Lisa waiting at our Paris hostel when Pete and I walked in Saturday night. We celebrated our joyous reunion with dinner and a few drinks before walking to the Eiffel Tower with Matt, a BC native we met on the metro. It was a beautiful night, too-- the grassy areas around the tower were full of people picnicking and drinking wine, punctuated by young children running and through the checkerboard of blankets. You could smell and see and hear the reason why Paris is so special-- proven by the relaxed crowd and the oohs and aahs that broke out when the tower suddenly lit up with a million twinkling bulbs.


The next day we booked it to the Louvre first thing to take advantage of the Sunday free admission. Unfortunately, so did every other tourist in Paris, so we had to see the Mona Lisa through a screen of camera-wielding crazies. She kept a serene watch over her bustling audience, though, as we continued on and spent half the day taking in the other beautiful exhibits.


Now having seen one of the two sights I wanted to see, we had lunch behind the Tuileries and then headed to the second, Pere Lachaise cemetary. Pere Lachaise is probably the most famous graveyard in the world; not only because of the thousands of people buried there, but also for its numerous famous inhabitants. The one grave I wanted to see? Oscar Wilde, writer, socialite, and wit. His grave was one of the newer ones in a far-flung corner of the cemetery but nonetheless, it was covered in lipstick kisses and messages of admiration. Who knew a 19th century poet could inspire so many people, and so much so that they would make a pilgrimage of sorts to his final resting-place?


With Bryan commandeering the search, we also managed to find Moliere and Jim Morrison with, miraculously, no map in hand. It's extremely confusing to navigate PL's winding paths (especially with its haphazardly numbered sections) but we found Morrison's tucked away in one of the older parts behind a couple of giant tombstones, surrounded by a small crowd of the musical faithful. Moliere had likewise attracted some onlookers, although his monument was a bit more elaborate.

So having accomplished a very full day, we contented ourselves with a simple dinner and prepared to leave early the next day for Tours. All of us are happy to be going (despite Paris's many attractions and our amazing hostel) but especially Bryan and Lisa, who've been in the city for five days already.

Tours, May 5

We left the hot streets and tourist throngs of Paris behind today to train it to Tours, in the Loire Valley. We had originally booked a hostel 40 km outside the city but upon arriving and seeing the difficulties in getting there and back, we promptly cancelled and booked the last room in a Best Western. Thankfully, Bryan managed to get all our money back from the first hotel. He used his gruff voice; no problems after that!


The rest of the day we walked around Tours, a quiet mid-sized city with tons of history. For centuries French kings lived in and around it, seeking to escape the chaos of Paris in the leafy countryside along the Loire River. Remnants of the city's former glory spot the city centre; we went into the half-12th century and half-Gothic Cathedral St-Gatien and got an interesting impromptu tour from a local volunteer. The church's vivid original stained glass windows tell Biblical stories in frank, clear way: comic strips for the medieval crowd. Afterwards, the four of us wandered the charming old town and bought baguettes and gelato-- you know, your typical backpacker's dinner ;).

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Two Pints of Guinness and a Packet of Tim Horton's Donuts

'Tis a drowsy Sunday afternoon at Bodington as students slowly come back to life after Sports Day and the Bodington Summer Party yesterday. Hoots, hollers, and cheering could be heard all of Saturday as kids celebrate the end of classes and procrastinate studying for exams. I was content to zone out completely after getting back from a long journey home from Pisa, where I've just left Bryan, Lisa and Pete. We had a fantastic week chateau-hopping, which I will definitely write about in the next few days... but for now, here's the story of Pete's all-too-brief stay in Britain!
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April 24

As I got back to Leeds and another week of classes, Pete took the opportunity to spend a day and night in London. I really didn't want him to go by himself, but it was unavoidable, and Pete seemed happy to go off on his own. So he got himself on a 5:30 am bus to London ready to explore the city!


(Pete and I with Ellen, Jean and Johanna on our mini-pub crawl!)

Two days, multiple kilometres of walking along the Thames, and a random trip to Soho later, Pete was back and after a mini-Otley Run (pub crawl) with some of my Canadian friends, we left for Ireland for a few days of Guinness-tasting and sightseeing. I had a great time revisiting some of the places in Dublin I had seen in January and Pete loved the down-to-earth atmosphere Dublin offers. He visited the Guinness factory as I walked around in the rare sunshine, watching the Irish enjoy the nice day. I also finally got to see the statue of Oscar Wilde I'd missed the last time (he was as delightfully smarmy and languid as I imagined) AND I randomly found Tim Hortons donuts in a downtown Tesco's! We inhaled them (yep, it'd been a while since I'd tasted a proper Canadian pastry) right before visiting the National History Museum (where we saw tons of Celtic and Viking history as well as actual preserved bog-people), strolling the famous shopping area of Grafton Street, and wandering St. Stephen's Green.


Early the next morning, after spending the previous evening in Temple Bar, Pete and I caught a bus to Belfast. Northern Ireland is one of the places I had wanted to see but thought I wouldn't make it to--so we were both happy to pull into a city that's surprisingly vibrant despite its violent past. The divisions are still clearly visible; when we went to see the famous murals on both the Falls (republican) and Shankill Road (loyalist), we had to return to the city centre in between to avoid the Peace Line that splits them. We walked for what seemed like forever to reach the Line, a dismally high wall that stretches for a few kilometres.


(Above: a hopeful message on the Peace Line; below: a broken-off mural on the Shankill)

Pete and I had the murals to ourselves on a quiet, sunny weekday morning. The murals, painted on the sides of neighbourhood houses, function as vivid memorials to the fallen and encouragement to the current generation still dealing with the conflict. Despite the peace treaties though, it can still get tense during the summertime national holiday. And the peaceful suburbs sleeping through a bright spring day don't disguise the shattered church windows around the corner or the creepiness of the painted marksman whose gun follows you everywhere.


We ended the day in the city centre, whose City Hall had the obligatory Ferris Wheel as well as a nice, relaxed vibe. Then it was off to the airport for me, and off to the hostel for Pete :).


April 28

Although I reluctantly left Pete once again to finish up classes back here in Leeds, he was quite content to take his flight to Edinburgh and spend about three days in the Scottish capital. When he got back on Friday afternoon he had tons of stories, especially about his hostel (which was across the street from Edinburgh Castle) and his day trip to Sterling Castle, the old stomping grounds of everyone's favourite Scottish hero, William Wallace.

Friday night we met up with Erin, Matt, and Matt's visiting friends from home, Rob and Gordon. In a strange and awesome turn of events, we found out that Rob was in Bryan's class at Waterloo and knew Richard as well-- what a crazy small world! Despite all the trading of travel stories, we didn't stay too late because we flew out to Paris at noon the next day and they were going to Amsterdam at 7 am. But it was fantastic meeting them... Matt talks about his buddies all the time ;).