Even the New Town looks Old

Who’s done a horrible job of keeping up this blog? THIS GUY. I STILL haven’t written about Oxford, oy. Dunno if I’ll get to that, to be honest. Blargh. Not gonna lie, been having too awesome of a time to actually write anything. That and utter laziness. But I digress. Look! A real entry!

Anyway, roughly a week and a half ago, myself and Saiya embarked on a whirlwind tour of Scotland in two days. We took a night bus on Thursday night, from 11 p.m. until 8:30 ish a.m., and arrived on a cloudy morning in Edinburgh, toting our backpacks of stuff. We got a little bit lost but eventually found our way to the hostel, the Castle Rock Hostel in Old Town, Edinburgh. It’s a small, cute little building that’s right across the road from Edinburgh Castle. Legitimately directly across.

This photo was taken from next to the hostel. Yep.

Since we couldn’t get into our rooms for a while yet, we stashed our things and went exploring. We met Sir Walter Scot, up in his little Gothic tower, looked at a LOT of cashmere and wool, and climbed a mountain-hill. Yes, I said mountain-hill. It took some time and effort but the views were absolutely breath-taking. At first we just hung out around the bizarro Greek arch thing that was on top of the mountain and ogled New Town from up above.

Then we climbed to the other side... and were greeted by mountains.

It was beautiful. Just beautiful. We literally just sat there and stared for a while, and I think, for me, it finally sunk in—we’re in Scotland.

Scotland, by the way, is magnificent. I’ve never been in a place with such an infectious joy for heritage. Everywhere you go there are stores selling Scottish things, hundreds of St. Andrew saltires hanging from every window, bagpipers on every other corner—

and just... so much friendship between everyone. The town is extremely walkable, we figured it out in about half a day and we knew exactly where we were going. We wandered the Royal Mile, looking at scarves and pretending to be Scottish. Well, in my case, anyway.

As if you wouldn't buy whiskey with your name on it.

 The museums are all gorgeous and free, filled to the brim with Scottish history that I didn’t realize I didn’t know. Scotland is just kind of glossed over in history (albeit not nearly as much as Wales) and even though I’ve taken three English history courses, I learned more about Scotland in those two days than I have up until that point. In addition to the beautiful museums, we also had beautiful churches and a gorgeous castle on top of a hill, looking out over all of Edinburgh, in all its Gothic glory.

Although the nightlife was something to be desired, it was a really awesome trip. Also, I had haggis. Haggis is quite delicious. And yes, I am aware of what it is. Still delicious. They don’t serve it to you looking like that, and even if they did, well... probably still would eat it.

Haggis, neeps and tatties.

Maybe if I had actually written this after I went, I would have been able to talk more about it. It was beautiful, everything was delicious, the nightlife was... eh but the hostel was nice, at least? But the bus ride was awful. Awful but worth it. 

In Flanders Fields, the Poppies Blow -- Ieper, Belgium

I’m aware I have yet to write about Oxford, but this weekend was just... one of those weekends and I have to write about it now. Meanwhile, I’m listening to the 5^th Season of Doctor Who soundtrack and it just makes me want to go on more adventures.

Anyway, this past weekend I went to Ieper, Belgium with my WWI/WWII class, on a field trip. (Yes, you wish your field trips were this awesome.) We got up at the crack of dawn to leave Harrington Gardens for a 9:30-ish ferry across the English Channel to Calais, France, where we took a bus into the Belgian countryside. We checked into our little hostel on the edge of the city and from there... it began.

The reason for going to Belgium in this class was to see Flanders Fields, where a great deal of WWI was fought between 1915 and 1918. And by a great deal, I mean most. Ieper was a town that happened to be on the edge of the farmland that was used as the battlefield, and was utterly demolished by bombs and shells. Completely and utterly flattened, without even a tree left standing. The city was rebuilt, brick-by-brick, by way of German money, years and years after both world wars had ended, but it was eventually re-built to it’s former beauty.

And what a beauty it is.

We went into a museum dedicated to the battles of WWI, where we followed along the chaotic footsteps of the Great War. It had recreation trenches, fake bombs exploding, and there’s one room where the floor lights up, and you’re standing just inches above body parts, barbed wire, mud and poisonous gas. All fake, of course, but I jumped when I saw a hand poking out at me. It was a beautiful and sobering museum, and my entire class wandered it’s halls in a sort of awed silence at the photos and the stories we were witnessing.

Afterwards, we went to the Menin Gate, which is their Korean Wall, except about seven times as big and about a zillion times more depressing.

This is probably about 1/25th of the entire thing. And there are four of these in the entire city.

They have a ceremony to remember all the people who went missing during the first World War, where they play the European version of Taps and lay poppies everywhere. The entire town shuts down for a few minutes and there’s so much quiet you can hear the canal lapping even though there’s no wind to move the surface. It was amazing.

Afterwards, once we were properly depressed, we engaged in the local culture by drinking Belgian beer and engaging with Belgians. We had eaten a nice, fattening dinner of pasta and cheese at a local restaurant, where pasta was the only thing we could decipher on the menu because it was in Italian as opposed to being in Ducth like everything else was. I’m somewhat convinced Dutch is just a made-up language because it seems to make absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Someone just mashed a keyboard and called it language.

After a very strange night involving Jack the American, fruit-flavored beer--

Sinfully delicious. And cheap.

--and coaster maps, we went on a tour of all the cemeteries dedicated to the fallen during WWI and the battlefields that remained. We were one step ahead of big tour groups, which was thankful because they were slow-moving whenever they caught up with us. We went to a British graveyard, a German graveyard, and an Allied graveyard, all three of which had gigantic monuments and meticulously cared for gardens and greens. We went to a bio fuel plant where, smack dab in the middle, was a preserved trench from 1915, nearly exactly how it was save for the sandbags being made out of concrete for preservation reasons.

 

It smelled horrendous, it was cramped, short, awkward, and around every corner I expected to see a rat or something. I can’t even begin to imagine trench warfare, and I’ve now been inside the very same trench many men’s lives depended on.

The most amazing place we went to, however, was the last cemetery we went to, the Allied cemetery of Tyne Cot, all the way out in the cornfields. It had once been where the Germans were stationed, and where they gunned down hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers over the course of three years, turning the beautiful fields to blood and dust.

It was one of the most incredible sights I’ve ever seen.

And every single time I saw a headstone that said “Unknown Soldier”, I thought of the Menin Gate, and how that soldier’s name was probably chiseled into the wall, never to be placed with a body.

There were several times I thought I was going to cry. You learn about these wars over in the States and they’re a very popular topic to learn about but, seeing it first-hand, in the place it was fought... it’s something else. Standing someplace and looking up at the buildings and thinking “none of this was here near 100 years ago” is kind of terrifying. A city hundreds of years old, built over centuries, developing culture and language, turned to rubble in mere days over what, exactly? It’s the same with seeing remnants of WWII; London has many buildings still damaged from the Blitz of 1940, and the Second Great Fire of 1944.

All in all, Belgium was an amazing experience, and I’m so thankful that this class exists, because I’ve never learned so much about that time period in our world’s history in my life. Ik zal terug zijn, België.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields. -John McCrae, 1915

My Birthday and Other Things We Did This Week

Well, it’s been one week. Just about, anyway. I’m gonna call it a week. And all I’ve learned this week is Goddamnit, I suck at navigation. (Yes, I know I addressed this in my previous blog entry, I swear this is the last time I'm going to complain about it.) Every single time I think I’ve finally understood in my mind where a street ends or a way begins, I get turned around and I’m standing in front of a restaurant with torches on the outside boasting pork in the middle of a crowded street with taxis honking at me.  Speaking of which, the cars here are going to destroy me. I thought Boston was bad; oh, no. I don’t know how many times I’ve jumped back on the curb and stared as a taxi blared around the corner at approximately a gazillion miles an hour with four or five cars close behind. Jesus, London, why are you in such a rush?

We went to Greenwich on Tuesday (aka MY BIRTHDAY), and by “we went to Greenwich” I mean we got on a ferry and were left in Greenwich. But it ended up being fun. I wasn’t all too excited about going, especially because it was rainy, but once we got there, it was beautiful. The Observatory is gorgeous, ancient and so well-constructed, and the Prime Meridian made me feel like a super villain. Like “Now I have BOTH the world’s hemispheres under my feet!” But then I just moved on and other people got to do the same thing.

I don't know why I chose to wear sandals that day.

We saw the Queen Anne’s/Queen Henrietta’s house, which was very pretty. I thought it’d be more of a house museum, with each room set up with period furniture and everything, but it was an art museum because it hadn’t been used as a house in a very long time. LAME. But it was still nice; our tour guide was American, although she had been living abroad for long enough that her accent was a little strange. But she was super friendly. We then went back to Kensington and made dinner and had cupcakes for my birthday, which was awesome. I had told Fallon back in, say, March that I wanted to do something for my birthday with her, but I never anticipated having made so many friends so quickly. Everyone on the program is so fantastic, and so nice. It boggles my mind. Two people bought me cupcakes! And Piper bought me wine!

Protip: It tastes like Franzia. 

It was a great birthday. Regardless of the fact that I’ve almost died via car several times and have gotten caught in the rain, as of this very second, a grand total of seven times since Sunday. I think I missed a couple times in my count, even.

Anyway, in addition to that other stuff I did, today my program climbed a big-ass tower and looked at an incredible view of London from the top. It was a monument to the Great Fire of 1666, and it had this incredible mural of people burning in flames and King Charles II looking like freaking God. (Propaganda is so fun, isn't it?) Unfortunately I didn't even know the class was going to be 4 hours long, let alone we were going to be traveling, so I didn't bring my camera. NONE OF US DID except Alex, so she wins the prize. I discovered on the trip there that the other girls and I in my program are all equally dorks about history and like to touch old walls and marvel at their age. We ate at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese last night before we went out, and not only was the top portion from 1667, but apparently the bar in the basement had a foundation of a monastery from the 13th century. Margaret posed an idea that Henry VIII destroyed the monastery when he decided "to hell with Catholics!" and turned it into a motherfucking pub. Awesome, right? Awesome for us, anyway.

Also, I had bangers and mash. Which is DELICIOUS.

Cheers!