This is good. I've been hearing some kind words about my recent bloggy efforts, and it's nice to know that some people are reading. I would have written more in the past week, but I went from being busy taking my final exams to immediately doing more traveling. On Thursday my girlfriend, a mutual friend, and I went down to Wales, mostly for the sake of adding another name to the list of countries I've been to (currently an even ten, though it will reach thirteen by the end of the month). We traveled by train from Glasgow to a city in Wales called Llandudno, which I'm still not entirely sure how to pronouce. I'm sorry if this may come across as culturally insensitive, but Welsh is a funny language. To the best of my limited knowledge, I think that their alphabet is missing a few of the letters that we have in English, and they find the strangest ways to arrange what letters they do have. For instance, I'm looking at a trash can out on the street, and on one side it says "Litter" but on the other it says, "Ysbwriel." I memorized that word just to illustrate this point. I hope it's fixed in my brain for a long time to come, because come on, what a word, right? Ysbwriel. I'd love to tell you that it feels good rolling off the tongue, but I haven't even tried to say it out loud. I wouldn't even know where to begin in my attempts to pronounce it. Should I give the opening "y" its consonant sound as in "yes"? Or treat it like a vowel as in "sky"? These are the sort of things I'd like to ask a Welsh person if I knew one.
I learned another great word in the past week or so, but thankfully I can actually use this one because it's in English. I was just talking about this word over a drink at a nearby pub with a couple of friends. I first saw it during my final exams here when I looked down at the front cover of what they call a "copy book" here, and they have printed all these little lines for you to fill in your name and the date and everything else, as well as a set of instructions. I was reading over this list of directions, because I was new to all this and I didn't want to mess it up, when I saw the line reminding me to listen to the "invigilator" of the exam. "The what," I thought and almost said aloud. So, while I waited for the official start time of the test, I sat and repeated this word in my head over and over so that I'd remember it later when I wanted to look it up. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (as accessed online, obviously, because I'm not lugging that thing around when I pack my bag traveling between here and the states), an invigilator is "one who watches over students at examination," proving once again that the English language can and does have a word for any definition, no matter how specific or obscure. That's not a criticism, though. I really like this word. It suggests way more authority than a word like "proctor" or anything else we might call such a person in the states. I like the commanding "-or" suffix, suggesting an almost superhero-like quality, far superior to its weaker cousin "-er." I like its common ancestral root with the word "vigilance." I feel like "invigilator" might have reignited an old passion for words, bringing me back toward the days when I didn't delete the "Word of the Day" emails from Dictionary.com as soon as I got them.
I just got distracted from writing this blog entry for maybe an hour or more, mostly because a friend was sending me several messages on VYou. What the heck was I writing about? Words? I don't know, I'm trying to make it a new policy to dive into these blog posts without a strict plan for what I'm writing about, and now this is the result, I guess. For lack of a better train of thought, I think I'll backtrack and tell you more about my trip to Wales. What do you know about Wales? For a long time I had no idea it was a country. Then even later than that I learned that it's part of the United Kingdom. I think it was my girlfriend, Dana, who first brought up the possibility of going to Wales, and it just seemed like the thing to do since it's on the same island as the country we're staying in. The obvious destination would have been the captial city, Cardiff, but all the trains we could find going there were way out of our price range. Somehow Dana discovered this city called Llandudno, which I'd definitely think was a typo if I ever saw that on a map. It took a few hours, but by train we finally made it there in the late afternoon on Thursday. It was a very short walk from the train station to our hostel, which was easily the nicest hostel I've stayed in during my time abroad. What do you think of when you hear "hostel"? Probably that horror movie of the same name, right? Makes sense, considering that some hostels can be horrifying places. This one, however, boasted itself as an "affordable four-star hostel," and it delivered on that seemingly dubious promise. The three of us got to stay in an eight-bed dorm room which we had all to ourselves. There were sinks in it, a teapot, a little chandelier hanging from the ceiling--all sorts of nice, little accomodations that you don't expect from a hostel.
We walked around the city for a while that evening. After dinner at a fish and chip shop, we went to the beach nearby, where the tide was in so it was mostly nothing but rocks to walk on. We walked along the shoreline until we came to the pier where we passed loads of shops, stands, and games that were all closed down. Later we entered a national park and walked around a big cliffside until we could see the sunset. I'm not gonna lie, Wales was making a pretty good impression on me. I don't know why, but I like being in places that are on the water. That was one of the things I liked best about Geneva when I visited over spring break--walking around the lake, taking boats over it, admiring the huge fountain they have there, and just seeing the water as we moved around the city. Even here in Glasgow one of my favorite areas is walking through the park and seeing the River Kelvin. Llandudno had a really nice coastline with great views of mountains surrounding it. After the magical sunset watching, we went back to our amazing hostel for a night in our basically private room. The next morning we were planning on taking the city's cable cars up into the mountains, but we were told they weren't running that day due to the wind. I was a little surprised to hear that, given it's so close to the water and it must always get windy up in those hills, so come to think of it this doesn't exactly seem like the best place for a cable car line, does it? That was just as well for me, though, because I don't do well with heights (yes, ironic given my size), so a cable car ride probably would have freaked me out. Instead we took a tram ride up into the mountains, where we got to walk around in what was indeed some intense wind, but it's worth it for the impressive, photogenic landscape.
After two nights in lovely Llandudno, on Saturday morning the three of us traveled by train to Manchester, where we'd spend most of the day until moving on back to Scotland later that evening. This is another subject I was just discussing with friends over a drink at the pub, and someone else has backed me up on this so it's not just me saying it: Manchester is boring. Seriously, this has to be my least favorite destination out of all the cities I've been to so far. Okay, I might have more negative memories associated with Perugia, Italy because of an incident involving a train strike which really threw off our spring break plans for a whole day or more, but that was a nationwide phenomenon and Perugia, which was actually a rather nice city, wasn't really to blame. When we got into Manchester, we walked to Picadilly Gardens hoping to see the fountains that come up out of the ground there, but they weren't running either because of nearby construction or it was too cold, I don't know. We spent a lot of time walking around and seeing nothing of particular interest. At one point we found an art gallery which was nothing special but better than nothing at all, I suppose. We didn't even make it to the football stadium which is probably the only notable thing to see. My time in this city was so boring that I almost didn't get a postcard from it, even though I've been collecting postcards from every city, and when I did buy one I made my choice ironically, because it says "I [heart] Manchester" (and I don't) and that's it because there's no image of the city printed on it, just a plain white background, which to me seemed like a statement about what I did there.
To be fair, I'll say that Manchester did have two things going for it in my mind by the end of the day. The first was what we had for dinner: burritos from a place called BARBURRITO. The second is that Manchester is the first place I've been to in all my time outside the United States where I have found a Krispy Kreme. At home, I don't even go for Krispy Kreme that much. I'm a fan of their products, but I've only had them on certain occasions. On a regular basis I'm much more into Dunkin Donuts, which by the way they also don't have over here. But when I saw that Krispy Kreme near Picadilly Gardens in Manchester, it was the most delightful little glimpse of home and I just had to indulge. My curiosity and nostalgia for American obesity-enablers were rewarded with something wonderful called a "cookies 'n' cream donut," which I never knew was possible. Thinking back, I don't know why I didn't buy a dozen of them. I hope they make those in the states. Anyway, food advantages aside, I won't remember Manchester very fondly. Dana and I spent a lot of time just waiting at the train station for lack of anything better to do, and it was there that Manchester's reputation for football hooliganism really came alive before our eyes and especially our ears. I don't follow soccer or football or whatever you want to call it (nor do I follow any sport for that matter), so I can only assume that Manchester's team must have won something very recently, because boy were they celebrating. When 6:46 PM finally rolled around, I was happy to leave behind these obnoxious displays of drunken revelry, as well as the boring city surrounding them, even though it meant a four-hour bus ride to Glasgow after about forty-five minutes on the train, an undesirable travel arrangement that Dana and I agreed to undergo because it only cost eleven pounds.
Oh, the bus. Here I am all ready to wrap up this blog entry because I think I'm done with my story, when of course I have to remember our travel companions on the bus. When the bus left Preston, where we got off the train, I was hoping that it would just drive straight to Glasgow, but unfortunately it made one stop on the way. Where, I have no idea. With this single stop, however, the population of the bus must have tripled. Dana and I are sitting in the way back where I can have the most leg room, and I watch as more and more people climb onto our peaceful bus. It's late at this point, and the bus won't arrive in Glasgow until close to midnight. Everyone seems pretty quiet and calm, most looking to get some sleep, all except for these two girls who have now joined us at the back of the bus, one row in front of me and to our left. These girls are drunk and still drinking, right out of big bottles of white wine. You could have easily done a casting call for the British version of Jersey Shore on this bus. They kept calling us "bus people" when they wanted attention, like we were natives on this bus or something. These girls started singing "Crazy Train" on a bus. Who does that? That's like singing "I'm on a Boat" while riding any other form of transportation besides boat. Time goes by and they only get drunker, losing the capacity for full sentences, shouting, "Driver turn heat off now please," a call that would remain unheeded. So for well over an hour we're treated to their inebriated antics, dropping their phones and taking forever to find them again, while everyone else on the bus turns to show off annoyed looks over their shoulders every so often. Of course they could never take a hint in their lives, but at a certain point, like so many of us were trying to, they fall asleep. No, pass out. Later I heard wine pouring out onto the floor, and even later an empty bottle rolled up to Dana's feet. And now, like me for the time being, those two marvelous drunks are right back where they belong: Glasgow. Unless, of course, no one bothered to wake them, in which case they may still be on that bus, licking old wine off the upholstered seats and obliviously going wherever the driver takes them, like the true bus people that they've become.
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