Break Day 3: Alone in London

So...first day of London was sort of...badly planned.

Nathalie, our other friend who also went to London, and I had planned to meet up the next day at Buckingham Palace at the changing of the guards. Oh...if only we had known...

I walked over the the palace and stood by one of the entrances. It was pretty calm, I waited...and waited. Finally I walked over to a lady and asked "excuse me, is this where you watch the changing of the guards?" like a brainless tourist. No, she said, I had to walk around to the other side. I rounded the corner and saw what must have been thousands of people alllllll over the palace. Within two seconds I knew I would never find them. And I had left my tablet at my cousin's place. Great.

Okay now try to find Nathalie.... 

I found a place among all the other tourists at the gate to stare at the stone-faced men dressed in red walk back and forth. That was really boring, to be honest. The other people around me, on the other hand, where fascinating. To my left I heard French, to my right I heard Slovakian, so I sort of half understood everything around me. One little French boy turned to his mom after waving to the guard "Maman, why does the man not wave back when I say bonjour to him? it's rude." Lots of little things like that.

After 15 minutes of waiting I realized that this was ridiculous, and I left and went to the park right next to the palace. It was a fantastic park, I went on a mini run, and I must have looked like an idiot, but I didn't care. I loved it. I have to say, I felt a lot less judged in the UK than I do in France. I don't know what it is, but in France it feels like everyone and their dog is glaring at you for disrespecting some sort of social norm.  Here, however, I felt like I had gone back home. Maybe I could even walk around in sweats.

AND! SO MUCH STARBUCKS! I have started measuring the awesomeness of a place based on the number of Starbucks or Subways I pass within an hour, and London...in this regard you have succeeded.

I did that, then walked back to the touristy thing, impossibly even more people had managed to show up. I did a quick walk around the palace, half-looking for Nathalie and her friend, but I had given up the second I saw the crowd. Needless to say, I did not find them.

So plan b: explore London on my own. I waited for the guards to do their thing, but I more heard than saw the changing of the guards, the crowd was too big. Then I walked through another park (where I saw a squirrel for the first time in months) towards the London Eye, and...just sort of walked. A woman let me use her cell phone at one point to call my cousin and let her know what was going on. Another thing I'm no longer used to: random strangers on the street being nice to you. Sorry France but... you sort of fail at this.

Nathalie is a huge England buff so I was sort of relying on her and her friend to be tour guides, but since they weren't there I snagged a map from the tour bus company and just followed the bus route on foot, which was actually a pretty successful plan.

"Maman, why does the guard not say bonjour to me when I say bonjour to him? C'est impoli"

Back in my day, we played with sticks when we were waiting 

These kids were adorable

Another example of kindness I forgot existed, the policemen walked through the crowd telling everyone how to hold their stuff to protect themselves from pickpockets, and he made hand gestures for those who didn't speak English. I doubt this would happen in France

Forget the guards, park! 

Squirrel, first one in months

Poor guy, his job is literally to stand there and have people take pictures of him. Tyra Banks would be proud.

At home I'm used to doing a lot of my favorite things on my own, so it was actually kind of nice to be able to wander around and see what I wanted, do what I wanted. Slightly lonely, but it was nice to just wander. Like I said, I basically followed the tour bus route: I went all the way from the Parliament buildings through some random streets towards St. Pauls, then along the water to Tower Bridge and back.

Westminster Abbey

Street performers. Yes, that is an oddly-bent man in a basket on another man's head 

A book sale under one of the bridges... a beautiful sight, I was worried I would never leave

One of my favorite finds, the Twinnings tea shop!!! One good thing about being alone, I could wander in here, sit down for a tea tasting, and I didn't feel rushed

Literally the best tea I have ever had. Each of of these is hand made, and a chrysanthemum flower is sown into it

Sikh protest 

And then I found a goat, the first of many on this trip :)

St. Paul's Cathedral. I was really lucky to come on a Sunday, it's the only day you can go in for free, otherwise it's pretty pricey. I sat in for a little bit of mass. The inside is gorgeous 

Tower bridge

Hay's Gallaria

The city lit up at night 

Shakespeare's Globe Theater, eh, not that impressive. But then again I didn't go inside 

I stopped into Tate Modern, a free modern art museum, on my way back. I actually liked some of the stuff in there, some of it was just weird. 

A whole room filled with communism propaganda 

Aaaand apparently this is art...

...as is this? 

My impression of London: it's beautiful. Touristy? Yes. But it was expected. Definitely less so that Paris, though. I think I heard more English in Paris than I did here.

At the end of the day I went back to my cousin's house and checked my tablet. 20 messages from Nathalie. Facebook had shown all her massages as "seen" so it looked like I had ignored her...oops. The plan had originally been that we go back to my cousin's together, but that failed. There was a bit of confusion. But she was able to get into contact with my cousin and she found her way over. Then we ate cake. Went to sleep.

Break Day 2: family

Day two was much, much better than day one. We had planned on getting up early to see Birmingham before leaving for London, but after the night we had had, we decided that sleeping in was a better idea. We all slowly got up, Ania (my wonderful cousin who was sweet enough to let us stay at her place on top of helping me with planning, buying tickets, etc.) made us a real breakfast. Eggs, potatoes, tea, coffee, bread, cheese, ham. Polish hospitality... there's really nothing like it. I missed it.

I was really glad I was able to see her. When I went to Poland this summer she was in England, so I wasn't expecting to see her for at least the next couple years.

And on top of that, I got a surprise visit from an uncle I hadn't seen since I was too little to remember. He was great, he had a huge personality and sense of humor to match. So much family, it was fantastic. It was strange though, he had brought a friend with him and I was with Nathalie, so we were speaking English. I don't think I've ever done that with my Polish family. Not bad, not good, just different.

My uncle drove us all to Birmingham, which was nice, it meant we didn't have to take a train there.

We only had a few hours to explore around, but Birmingham was nice and I'm glad I got to see it. It was also there that I took out some more money from an ATM. Sigh... I had nothing. For a cheapo like me...it hurt, it hurt deep.

Funny as these are, they were really helpful. Still not used to people driving on the other side of the road

Shopping center in Birmingham

French follows us everywhere 

I believe this was a museum of some sort

Hello your highness

New library in Birmingham

Cousin and long lost uncle

The library has an elevator that takes you up to the viewing area on the roof

view from the top

Around 4:00 Ania, Nathalie and I hopped on a train to London.

And the train had wifi! Dear France: please be more civilized like England, wifi on the trains is a good first step.

We got into London pretty late and we split up. Nathalie was spending the night at a friend's and Ania and I were staying with my cousin's wife (Cousin in law? Cousin? How do these things work? Ania's sister in law. Sigh, genealogy is frustrating. It was family, I stayed with more family). We had never met but I had heard nothing but good things about her, which all proved to be true. I went over to her house, she fed me wonderful, wonderful Mexican, cheesy, chip-ey, sour cream-ey food. (I eat primarily out of cans, primarily cold food, primarily crappy food without any seasoning. This was fantastic).

As I did in the last post, let me take a moment to once again say how wonderful Polish hospitality is. Dinner, then tea and cake (goodness, so much cake) and hours of conversation. I used to get annoyed seeing how much my mom fusses over guests, but now I really, really love it. It was nice to speak Polish again with wonderful people. I almost didn't even want to go explore London, I would have been fine staying in with them and talking some more. I had forgotten how awesome it is to be surrounded by family, to be able to lay out on a couch after a satisfying meal and just discuss.

train to London 

:)

Okay two things wrong here: the word rubbish, and the trash under the sign that says no trash

Legitimate Polish store :) So. Many. Poles here. 

But eventually it was midnight, and I had a long day ahead of me, so we cleaned up and went to sleep.

Like I said, day 2 was so much better.

Break Day 1: my worst nightmare

I'm going to try and write this one quickly because I really don't want to relive the first day of my vacation. Thinking about it makes me start to panic a little. I can't even begin to overemphasize the level of stress I experienced that day.

What is the worst, the absolute worst worst worst thing that can happen to you while traveling (besides death)? The one thing you're supposed to avoid. At. All. Costs? I'll let you think about that one for a while, and when you finish let me know if it matched up with my experience (spoiler alert: it probably does).

Our first flight was Friday afternoon from Montpellier to Birmingham, England, where we were supposed to meet my cousin and head back to her place. I don't have class Fridays, so I spent the day finishing up the food in my fridge, cleaning up, doing last-minute packing. I had to go exchange euros for pounds which was way more complicated than it needed to be. I took out 500 euros (I know, I know, too much, but I figured better too much than too little... Big. Mistake), walked to the exchange office in Centre Ville. And I waited in line. For half an hour. Then I got in and it turned out I needed a passport to complete the transaction. So, not wanting to pay for more tram tickets, I finally figured out how to use the VeloMag like I had been planning to all semester (basically a bike rental system, 50 cents an hour, they're really great), biked home, grabbed my passport, biked back, waited another half an hour, biked back again, ran up to my room, finished my packing and left for the tram to get to the bus to get to the airport to get to England.

Little did I know that (very odd) smile wouldn't last long

We did it all right: we got there three hours early, went through security, got on the plane, were all excited. We were in England within the next couple hours.

And then it turned sour. Actually, no, sour is what we use to describe a lemon, what happened to me...adjectives do not exist that can accurately describe it.

We walk out of the plane and we needed our passports to get through. So I open my backpack where I had put a little travel fanny pack I borrowed from another friend that I used for my dorm room keys, wallet, money, and passport.

That's funny, it's not on top. I dug around more. Crap, I guess I left it on the plane. I ran back, it wasn't there. I dug through my backpack, Nathalie and another friend also going to England looked through theirs, I dumped my things out, the security guy went back on the plane to look.

It was gone. My passport was gone. You can't begin to understand my panic. My passport. MY. PASSPORT! screw the two months' worth of rent, forget the credit cards and the dorm key. My passport, the most important document a human being can have in today's world, was gone. My identity could be sold and stolen, the rest of my life could be haunted by this. Even now, writing about it spooks me.

So I was taken to the deportation office. Yes, I was about to be deported back to the US. I had my friends go find my cousin, because by this point she had been waiting for about an hour, maybe more, and tell her what was going on. I walked behind one of the airport workers, completely numb, trying to wrap my head around the situation. I have to cancel my cards, I have to contact the American embassy, I need to call my mom...all this was starting to register. I sat down and started bawling and frantically Skype chatting my sister. The full extent of the gravity of the situation slowly crept up on me. I just sat there and wept, a complete mess, and I didn't care. I regretted coming, I regretted everything, I hated myself for not paying more attention, for being such as idiot.

I have no clue how long I sat there, but finally the employee came back with his boss, I did my best to describe the situation. I don't remember exactly what happened, to be honest, during that time.

Then he walked by again. And...

"I think we found it." I started crying harder out of pure joy. Someone had taken it, stolen the money (two months or rent, one month's wages, almost enough to feed me for a few months... I have a whole list of these, I could go on), but left all my cards, keys, and, most importantly, my passport in the bag on the metro.

I wasn't going to be deported, my identity was still mine, I could stay in the country and I could continue my travels. I left the deportation office, found my cousin, she gave me a huge hug. She came with me to the police station where a couple of cops (English cops with the big, funny hats, I almost asked for a picture) sat us down and questioned us, wrote up a report.

They were the nicest policemen I have ever dealt with. They gave us tea (with milk...strange), they kept making jokes, poking fun at each other. I gave them my address and they made fun of that too. "153rd place, but for place you just write pl" *looks at me* "...no, I'm going to write out place." The man fully wrote everything out. At one point he took off his bullet proof vest and handed it to us: "there, feel that, and they wonder why we have bad backs." I don't know, there were a bunch of little random things they did that were amusing and helped calm me down. And it also struck me how weird their helpfulness and kindness was to me. Somehow in the last two months I had gotten used to people not even pretending to care. If this had happened in France? Psh. They wouldn't give the slightest of craps, although I may be exaggerating. They'd probably be on a cigarette/coffee/lunch break anyhow.

Best of all, I understood everything! If I had to almost be deported, I'm glad it happened in an anglophone country, at least I could coherently describe what happened, and not try to use my second-grade level French.

So, finally, at about three in the morning, we met back up with everybody, took a taxi home, and went to bed. I laid there for about an hour with my heart pounding thinking about what had just happened, and then finally fell asleep.

Ten day break part 1: the plan

French universities have been on break for about the past week, giving us plenty of time to catch up on all the readings and class material we didn't understand... so naturally nearly all the international students planned awesome breaks all over Europe instead. Nathalie and I decided to plan a trip to England and Ireland. We've been on the road, in planes, trains, hostels and apartments for a week now, and I finally have access and time to use a computer, so I thought I'd write a quick update.

I've had some truly horrible things happen, I've had some interesting things happen, I've had some awesome things happen. To be honest so many things have happened I don't feel like trying to recount it all and sifting through my hundreds of photos. But I'll give it my best go. These posts are going to be published in parts, each day will get its own post and it might take a while for me to put them up. There's no way I could fit it all in one.

Planning for this trip literally started a month ago during our pre-stage. Nathalie came into my room and we stated talking about the trip. Both of us agreed that we didn't intend on spending hundreds of dollars on tickets just to go out and drink and party, and both of us were interested in going north, so why not go together?

And so started our month of scouring Ryan Air, Irish Rail, various English public transportation systems, emailing friends and family in the area, etc. Planning was a very long, very frustrating process, but it was exciting.

We went from Montpellier to Birmingham where my cousin let us stay with her, then to London where we stayed with another one of my cousins, to Dublin, and now I'm in Galway, on the other side of Ireland.