Abroad, Adventures Abroad

Steel horses and disappointments

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The Kelpies were recommended to me by a colleague as a ‘thing to see in Scotland’. And, I’m so glad we did, this was definitely a highlight of the trip for me. Created by Andy Scott, a pretty famous contemporary sculpture artist, the Kelpies are gigantic horse head sculptures emerging from turning pools along the Forth & Clyde canal. Here’s the fun bits I stole from the Kelpies visitor page (here):

Each of The Kelpies stands up to 30 metres tall and each one weighs over 300 tonnes.

From the artist:

“I wrote of working horses. Of their role in the progress of modern society, as the powerhouses of the early industrial revolution, the tractors of early agriculture and of course, the first source of locomotion for barges on the Forth & Clyde canal, which The Kelpies now inhabit.

…

“I see The Kelpies as a personification of local and national equine history, of the lost industries of Scotland. I also envisage them as a symbol of modern Scotland – proud and majestic, of the people and the land. They are the culmination of cutting edge technology and hand crafted artisanship, created by our country’s leading experts through international partnerships.

You walk up to the Kelpies from a parking lot a fair bit away, you know they’re going to be big, but they keep growing as you get closer until they tower over you in both beautiful and intimidating ways. The sky shows through the steel plates and depending on where you are to the sun you see it blazing through as well (assuming you’re there on a sunny day, which let’s be honest, Scotland isn’t known for).

Now, who isn’t a fan of civic art? I’m all for it, but these guys are just better, they’re about the heritage of their place and they’re beautiful ta’ boot. You can’t top that…

Unless you’re Arria.

Arria is my biggest disappointment of our Scotland trip (well, aside from trying proper haggis, which I really wanted to).

So Arria is another sculpture by the same artist and I hadn’t heard of her before our trip, then, as we’re driving into Scotland, the sun is setting and all of a sudden I look over and there is this gorgeous, graceful sculpture of a woman hands thrown out to her side and she is actually radiating light from the sun setting behind her. It was one of those images that just sticks with you, it, for lack of a cornier word, moves you.

But, we were speeding along a highway and she disappeared behind us way too quickly.

I really wanted to go back and see her up close. I really hope I get to someday.

Here’s a little more about Arria (stolen from here):  Arria “takes the form of a female figure, with two large swooping arcs from the upraised palms of her hands to the hem of her dress. The idea of the arcs comes from the Gaelic name for Cumbernauld, “comar nan allt”, which translates as “the meeting of the waters”.”

The town she is situated above once won an award for being the most dismal place to stay in Scotland, and a part of the idea in commissioning her was to give people some pride in their hometown (the above mentioned Cumbernauld).  Given her position on a hill above a major highway, something like 70,000 people will see her every single day. Not a bad perk for the cost of gas.

More to come.

– a

Abroad, Adventures Abroad

Stratford upon Avon or where Shakespeare may or may not have written some stuff, assuming he wasn’t actually a myth or monkey. Or something.

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I guess I should be more excited about Shakespeare’s home, but I’m not. Maybe because the whole place really does feel very touristy. We visited Anne Hathaway’s Cottage, which is where Shakespeare’s future wife grew up. Shakespeare grew up in a house somewhere a short walk away, he would have traipsed around the whole area laying woo on Ms. Hathaway. Or something like that.

This place was once a Tudor cottage, now it’s a bigger Tudor cottage, since I think the Hathaways’ came into some money after Shakespeare got famous (though maybe not for a related reason) and expanded the house quite a bit. To begin, the gardens were lovely; with an orchard, a small lavender maze, and these interesting sort of giant teepee shaped huts constructed out of vines (Is there a real name for this?). Inside one of them was a speaker system with celebrities reading you Shakespeare sonnets. That was pretty great.

Inside the cottage was kind of trippy. In that the floors and stairs were so uneven you were likely to trip. JK. JDespite being very well preserved, you could definitely tell this was a really old house and that was very cool. The rooms were tight and cramped and the windows were tiny with wavy glass, and yeah, the wood floors were old and way uneven. On the second floor you could see in between the cracks in the floorboards WAY more often than I was comfortable with.

I think my favorite part of the tour might have been finally learning about thatched roofs, which we see all over the place here, but I know nothing about. Here’s the parts I remember, most of them are probably around 5 or more feet thick and when they are replaced they usually only replace the top 2ish feet. Even at that it costs an actually fortune. Like £25,000. Seriously. But, you only have to do it about every 20 years depending on where in England you live. Other bits of note, the Tudor style houses were generally painted white all over, including the beams, unlike we usually think of them here with the white plaster and dark beams. Painting the beams dark is a decorative tradition that only dates back to the Victorian (?) era. Although, I read somewhere else that in parts of England they did paint the beams with tar to protect from the weather, so the black and white contrast may have been inspired by an actual historical precedent.  Although, I read somewhere else that in parts of England they did paint the beams with tar to protect from the weather, so the black and white contrast may have been inspired by an actual historical precedent. The walls in between the wooden frame would have been filled with clay, mud or plaster made with lime mixed with straw (this is called daub) and the tour guide claimed that the expression ‘here’s mud in your eye’ may have originated from the builders having to try not to fling dirt in each other’s faces as they put up the wall from opposing sides of it. Of course, I have no idea if it’s true and google claims a whole bunch of different things on the subject. Still, kind of a fun thought.

More to come.

– a

Adventures Abroad

Mini-England! It’s a miniature of a miniature! Of a miniature!

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Bourton-on-the-Water is in the Cotswolds, an historical and rural part of England that is just a bit North of us, I think. You know you’ve left Oxfordshire (our neck of the woods) when you start to see the golden-y stone buildings outnumbering the brick. It’s actually a really nice change of pace, because as an American, and recently a person trapped in LA, I really miss buildings that were not all the same color (ie. BRICK red).

Also in the Cotswolds: sheep. Sheep in fields. Fields surrounded by waist high stone pile fences. Fields on rolling hills. It’s so scenic, like right out of a BBC miniseries series (probably a few of them actually…) scenic. I’ve now gone through a few villages in the Cotswolds and, yeah, they are pretty much all ridiculously adorable and surrounded by equally charming landscape. Panoramas of idyllic countryside everywhere you look, living there I’m sure it would lose its charm and start reminding me of Tillamook way too quickly, but just visiting is pretty much the definition of delightful.

Bourton-on-the-Water is home to a tiny model village of Bourton-on-the-Water, which is in turn home of a tinier model village of the model village of Bourton-on-the-Water, ad nauseum, ad infinitum, etc. (Well, not really, but there are four layers to this, so yeah, pretty impressive.

We were the first people to arrive at the model village and after walking through a very tall and toothy turnstile (seriously, you’d think they were guarding the crown jewels or something), we came out of hall way to overlook a pretty sizeable village – in miniature! The village complex is pretty big, like about the size of almost a gymnasium and it features the stream which meanders through Bourton-on-the-Water. The individual buildings stand anywhere between waist and almost shoulder level. They are laid out just like the town (kind of the point, I know) and where possible they seem to feature the actual shops that are in the buildings. For instance, the tiny post office features the post office logo and poster about exchange rate prices and postage rates. The churches feature imitation stained glass windows and when you get down close enough to them you can hear the choral/organ music playing inside. Wandering around the little roads and peering into these tiny buildings is definitely a Gulliver’s Travels kind of giant stomping awesome feeling, and the fact that some of the little houses have furniture and curtains and people inside also makes it a tiny bit voyeuristic. I totally loved the whole package. But, most especially pretending the crush things, because who wouldn’t?

The other fantastic part about the model village was a set of mechanical miniature scenes. One of the circus and one of a mint. I loved them both, I love that they were designed and crafted and built and the technology to do so has nothing to do with digital. It’s kind of strange how rare that is in our daily lives and it’s nice every once and awhile to see it. I love my iPad, but this is a tiny working thing that a person built and all of its tiny moving parts make it a whole 3d multi sense perception-al thing. I’m not sure I’m saying that right, but whatever, I know what I mean.

More to come.

– a

everything

Moving to Europe, “oh, the lows, woes, and pros”

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This blog describes my process of moving to England. It is an “un-sugar coated” version including the lows and woes of moving to a foreign country as well as the pros of this marvelous adventure. In it I discuss my aspirations and excitement about moving here as well as describe some of the financial and planning mistakes made along the way – some of which could have been resolved with better knowledge and research. But as luck would have it the tide brought treasures that were received with great appreciation during this incredible journey.

It began as an ambition to see Europe. I visited Vienna a year ago to speak to scientists at the European Geophysical Union (EGU). While I probably should have spent more of my time at this conference I was captivated by the “old world.” I stepped off the underground train in the city center. I walked up to street above and looked around this impressive city center. I was in complete awe of my surroundings. The massive spiraling gothic cathedral was breath taking and in front of me was the main thoroughfare that was once marched by the knights of the crusade over 1000 years ago. My mind was blown, and I wanted more!

As Alaina shared a similar aspiration to travel the world and live in Europe I began applying for jobs in the summer of 2014. Initially, I was going to use my CSU position to work overseas. In hindsight this may have actually been the best option financially since CSU was paying me quite well. However, they were not willing to help me move overseas and I was not interested in having the same employer on my CV for too long.. So, I started applying for jobs overseas. I quickly realized that England would be the best option for work since I could actually read the application forms, IN ENGLISH. Furthermore, there were numerous opportunities in England with institutions leading the field of Atmospheric Science. After a second job interview I was offered a research scientist position at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) with a joint appointment at University of Oxford.  This exciting news made it possible to fulfill this dream!

The first “eye opening” fact to consider was the much smaller salary I would receive in a country with a considerable cost of living. This comparison holds up even compared to expensive LA! However, I was fortunate that RAL assisted us in our move and helped considerably with setting up my immigration process.

At this time, we were living in a tiny house in LA. The house was so small that it could almost fit inside our storage locker that contained all of our stuff. With an abundance of “stuff” the ambition arose to sell as much of it as we could before moving overseas.

The overseas move would involve three major movements with Christmas at the epicenter. Sell our stuff in LA, move to Oregon where I would work remotely to JPL and stay with family over Christmas and the month of January, move to the UK!

 

Phase 1: Getting out of LA!

The first phase involved selling our belongings. Craigslist and yard sales seemed to work well. Los Angeles is certainly a Mecca of yard sales and selling used crap! I am so very pleased with how well we did. I could put the list of sold items on here but it would be several pages long. Here is a taste (our cars, Wii, elliptical, couch, hot tub, PA system, dog trailer, air conditioner, sound bar, desk, reclining ergonomic chair, reel lawn mower, dresser, café lights, microwave, hobby airplane, etc.…). If you subtract the sale of our cars we made $2,540 from household items. If you include total sales, a whopping $10,040! (I kept a very accurate spreadsheet..).

One aspect that just kills me is that we paid our U-Haul storage locker $2,500 to store our crap during the two years we lived in LA. There is a lesson to be learned here, do not use storage lockers. Sell your crap instead before you store it somewhere to never been seen! Storage lockers are a rip-off and I will avoid using them again in the future. While we sold a lot of our belongings we still had an inordinate abundance of things, like, our king bed, book shelves, kitchen island, musical instruments, barbecue, tools, and boxes and boxes of miscellaneous items involving the kitchen, desk, books, and the like that we were either too attached to or unwilling to sell.

In preparing the move to Oregon, we thought the load was manageable. I called a moving company first and they quoted me $1,400 to transport our goods. This was far better than the standard U-Haul ($1,750 + $500 for gas). The optimist in me felt like it was advantageous to go with the movers and save a bunch of money. WRONG! The space they were quoting me was for 450 cubic feet. When they arrived at our house and looked at our stuff they told us we had more like 900 cubic feet. Part of this underestimation was the moving companies fault. They did not properly enquire with me over the phone. And part of it was my fault as I clearly underestimated the amount of boxes we had (20 vs. 80). When they requested $3000 for their services our jaws hit the floor. We had no time at this point to send them away and figure out the U-Haul business so we went with their services, which ended up being poor anyway as they broke some of our art pieces as well as lost parts of our furniture. This was a regrettable disappointment (and yet another lesson learned..) but we were in Oregon before Christmas and Phase 1 was complete. 

 

Phase 2: Enjoying Family Time and Surviving Dog Bites

We arrived in Oregon and had a little more than a month to make the big move. This time would be envisaged with great joy. Being with family and friends, working leisurely with no supervision, and preparing for the adventure of a lifetime! Well, some of these elements were joyous but I had no idea how stressful it would be. This part of the adventure would be more realistically played-out with constant worrying about dog attacks, immigration deadlines, and transportation arrangements for the dogs, and us.

The dog attack was awful. Ruffy got loose and sunk his teeth into (Donita’s Chihuahua) Coco’s neck. The wounds were not immediately obvious. Coco spent days hiding under a chair upstairs and only came out when he was forced – his scared response compounded the emotional distress occurring in the home. Upon washing the area, it became clear it was infected and he needed medical attention. This experience was horrific and I felt awful about what had happened. A part of me really wished we did not have to raise the awful aggressive little dog anymore. I don’t understand how Ruffy can be such a sweet loveable little dog one minute and an aggressive maniac the next.

The Visa application process was also a bit of a disaster. I made a mistake when filing. It turns out that you need to apply for each person separately and not assume that you are applying for a family. This mistake involved additional trips to Portland for fingerprints. As a consequence, we nearly failed to file them in time!

We also learned that Visas are expensive ($1950 per person for a 5 year term visa). While waiting for the Visa, we were getting antsy to buy airfare since we didn’t want to wait till the last second when prices were sky-high, no pun intended. Initially, the idea was for the two of us to fly over with the dogs caged underneath the same plane, stay in dog friendly hotels while we found a house in the UK to live in. This dream was not feasible so instead we decided the best method would be for me to fly over solo, and then Alaina shipped the dogs to me two weeks later after I had sufficient time to find a place to live, and then she flew over. Luckily, this plan worked and it was exactly how it went down.

Before leaving, I learned that you could not lease a place in the UK without seeing it first-hand. Also, you cannot open a bank account without being present. So, all of these things would have to wait until I arrived. With the dogs arriving two weeks after I would arrive the UK, I was presented with a scary deadline to find shelter!

But before we finished Phase 2, we also had a wonderful bon voyage party with our closest friends and family at my home up the Wilson River. My mom organized the whole thing and put up British decorations everywhere. A perfect way to go!

 

Phase 3: Arrived in England!

My first week here was spent in at a shared private residence (AirBnB) in a small village called Radley. My week stay was comfortable and  the woman whom I stayed with was quite helpful in a country that was completely foreign to me. I chose this location because it was right off the main railway heading into Oxford from London and had good bus links to the outside world, which was needed to go house hunting.

One of the first things I did was obtain a bank account. This was critical. Without the account you cannot secure a lease. The only branch that would actually take me was Lloyd’s bank. Other branches like NatWest, Barclays, and HSBC required a week to schedule an appointment and employment verification details. These were not valid options.

I started viewing houses although none were sufficient to house two dogs. I was getting desperate. Most landlords in the UK were not keen on having dogs in their properties. So, I did as anyone would do in times of sheer desperation; call landlords anyway and offer more money! Through a stroke of good fortune a nice lady agreed to allow us to rent her terrace house in a village called Wantage. She liked that I had a permanent position at RAL and requested only a slightly larger amount of quid for the move-in deposit.

The day I visited Wantage, I knew with every fiber in my body that I wanted to live here. I still feel this way after living here for several months. It is the most adorable English style town/village I have ever seen. The tutor style architecture buildings with numerous shops, open-air markets, and pubs make this place a lot of fun. Furthermore, our house is in close proximity to stores so we do not require a vehicle to obtain bare essentials and sustenance. We bought a trolley cart and take it to go grocery shopping twice a week at our local Sainsbury’s and that’s it!

Regarding the financials, the first thing you should know about moving to the UK is that it takes a lot of money. The move here was expensive and we needed every dime, or should I say “pence.” Even with agreed recompense from my employer (which took forever by the way) it required a significant amount of cash in hand to purchase Visas ($3900), plane tickets ($2000, with baggage), rent deposits ($3500), and general expenditures. The general expenditures bit turned out to cost a lot more than I ever expected. Transportation in England is pricey. I was shocked to learn that short bus rides tend to cost about £8 per trip and cross-country rail tickets are on the order of £30-£50 (e.g., a trip into London). This of course is put into perspective by comparing transportation to the cheap rates in LA, which are $3.50 for bus and $16.50 for super shuttle to the airport. God, I can’t believe I’m calling LA cheap! Bottom line is that this is an expensive country, far more than even when LA standards are concerned.

To pay for rent and the deposit we had to transfer money from our US bank account to the UK. Alaina came across a great service called Xoom. This service is better than the poor rates offered by bank wire transfers and other services like Western union. The commission they take on transfers is less than 0.5%. We had the money, as Alaina had just sold the car in the US when I arrived. We had the funds and were set to move in!

 

Phase 4: Living in the UK

After living here for several months I find that I am quite happy. While settling in was painful at times, it was totally worth it. My work environment is great. People are laid back and sociable. I’m connecting and collaborating on international projects. I’m learning more efficient ways to write programs and analyze the abundance of European satellite observation datasets. I have just started at Oxford and will be facilitating student projects and working with the climate modeling community to mesh our satellite observations with global climate models. I will also have numerous opportunities to visit Europe by attending conferences as they arise, like in Sweden (last month), Rome, and Berlin. I cannot express how exciting this is!

In Wantage, Alaina and I have recently discovered English folk music. Every Friday night local artists meet at the “Shoulder of Mutton” a local pub here to play traditional music. The combination of accordion, banjo, harmonica, recorder and Bodhran sounds awesome. I think I want to join in and play the recorder sometime! The people are quite friendly and interested in social engagement. Alaina and I sit in the “snook” as they call it. It is a room with a large table that some people sit in to engage in conversation. As we are the only Americans people are generally interested to strike a conversation with us. We find very few Americans in our area in general. In fact, I think I have only encountered two so far, and that includes Alaina! I can’t wait to see more Americans soon; these of course would be our family and friends. So come visit England and see us!

Abroad, Adventures Abroad, At Home Abroad, everything

Adventuring in our new neck of the woods

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Here are a few snapshots of the fantastic adventures that car having has opened up for us: the Blowing Stone, the Uffington White Horse and Wayland’s Smithy.

From Wikipedia, The Blowing Stone is a giant piece of perforated sandstone, and the legend is as follows:

The stone is capable of producing a booming sound, when anyone with the required skill blows into one of the perforations in a particular way. This was, according to legend, the means whereby King Alfred summoned his Saxon troops, in readiness for the nearby Battle of Ashdown, against the Vikings. This legend reputedly gives rise to the village’s name, ‘King’s stone’, the Lisle suffix being a later addition.

Also, according to legend, a person who is capable of making the blowing stone sound a note that is audible atop Uffington White Horse Hill (where Victorian antiquarians thought King Alfred’s troops had camped) will be a future King of England.

In reality, it is a giant rock in a little fenced outcove directly behind someone’s front garden. It is hilariously anti-climactic to go see, and exactly the kind of small-town tourist trap thing you could possibly want to find in rural England. Matt was brave enough to try blowing into a few of the perforations, but I saw spiders and pretty much decided I didn’t need to defeat the Vikings that badly.

I’ve mentioned the Uffington White Horse on here before (it’s the prehistoric hill figure, carved out of the hilltop to reveal the white chalk that runs under the soil here), but I can now finally say I’ve seen it much closer and, much more spectacularly, the view from around it. The horse is carved very high up on a hill, surrounded by pasture land that overlooks the whole shire, or area we live, or whatever you want to call it. We took the dogs up to see it and walked through the surrounding sheep fields to admire the lovely views. The sheep were super not okay with the dogs, staring at us fervently and even slowly stalking us until we’d look back at them/or face them head on, while the dogs were absolutely thrilled to see the sheep, so that was entertaining to say the least.

Wayland’s Smithy is a Neolithic long barrow and chamber tomb. It is just off the Ridgeway (the oldest road in the world (, I think?) and is a really neat little surprise in the middle of nowhere. It’s not a lot to see, just some stones and some tiny rooms where the bodies used to be, but it does have a feeling history about it, it doesn’t look like anything else I’ve ever seen.

(Also from Wikipedia,) here’s the legend:

Wayland’s Smithy is one of many prehistoric sites associated with Wayland or Wolund, a Germanic smith-god. According to legend, a traveller whose horse has lost a shoe can leave the animal and a silver coin on the capstone at Wayland’s Smithy. When he returns next morning he will find that his horse has been re-shod and the money gone. It is conjectured that the invisible smith may have been linked to this site for many centuries before the Saxons recognized him as Wayland. 

Alright, more to come when I’ve got more time to type, but a break in the rain is calling us to venture out to the market now before we have to walk home in the rain…
Yeah, that’s right. We’re still being good and trying not to drive to run our in town errands unless we must, what’s the point of being within walking distance, if you don’t walk? Go us!

 

 

 

 

At Home Abroad

Lessons in Rage and Horror (or driving a manual in another country)

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We bought a car! It’s all very exciting and magical not to be solely dependent on riding the bus and having things delivered! The car is, funnily enough, also American, a Chrysler PT Cruiser and it’s a very bold sparkly red (I believe, the color is called ‘Inferno’). It’s a 2006, but not too many miles and overall it’s a good purchase. Or, so I’m told. Because I kind of hate it.

Now that we’ve purchased a car, Matt has the crazy idea that I should be able to drive the damn thing. So, driving it I’m trying. Here are the problems, in no particular order.

Everything about the car and the roads are backwards.

The car is too big for the roads.

Oh, yeah, and the car is a stick shift and it is impossible to learn to drive a stick shift because they are the cruellest thing to happen to humanity, maybe ever.

Yeah, hang nails, the Kardashians, genocide, all not as truly horrible as driving a stick shift. Or, at least, it’s close.

In all seriousness, I’m a few lessons in and (I’m told, repeatedly, though I don’t really agree, that) I’m doing okay; it’s really difficult, it’s incredibly stressful and there seems like no possible way that I’m going to ever get through this education process without running into something with the left side of the car or coping with traffic without screaming, but I’m working on it.

Adventures Abroad

When We Wandered in Wales

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I worried that while people would want to come visit us over here – they would somehow be unable to, or it just wouldn’t come together, but I’m happy to report that is not how it’s been going and I’m so grateful for it. As much as I really enjoy the Brits, it’s nice importing over some people we really know, even if it’s never for long enough…

And, now to Wales!

Tara arrived on 4 July. Best Independence Day present ever! And, the following weekend we trekked on over to Swansea, Wales. Swansea felt pretty big to me after a few months in Wantage, and also, weirdly modern and metropolitan (note to self, leave Wantage more often, your perspective is skewing…). With all the transit, it was about 3.5-4 hours to land at our lovely dragon themed hotel. The Welsh have a serious thing for dragons, which is awesome, I’m completely down for more countries adopting mythological creatures for their flags, mascots, etc. The British Unicorns, here we come!

Upon our arrival on Friday, we wandered around downtown Swansea, including stops in a town square area complete with fountains, castle ruins, a respectable number of references to Dylan Thomas and a bunch of drunks Welsh boys yelling things and cheering on one of their ranks who was dressed to impress in neon wig and a tiny French maids costume and who then commenced to belly flop into one of the aforementioned fountains. Oh drunk Welshmen, you’re going to be our weekends reoccurring theme, aren’t you?

Next, we walked on to the Dylan Thomas Centre, which was sadly closed (that’s what you get in Europe if you try to go places after 5pm. I’m not kidding) and so, we continued on to the waterfront with its boats, nifty bridges, excellent sidewalk art and a weird boat step system that I’ve forgotten the name of (it gets boats out of the harbour, which is damned up higher than the water body around it?).

Next came beer and pub food and more drunk Welshmen (and a Scot) who sloppily hit on Tara and sang both of us old army songs from their time in the service. Yup, that’s right, we were serenaded by a Welsh veteran celebrating his 75th birthday and he was definitely well soused.

After dinner it was too late to go do anything touristy, but too early to just keep drinking, so we settled on seeing the only movie about to start that was not animated. Magic Mike XXL. Oh yeah, this was definitely a girls weekend. The movie was delightful and afterward we ventured into a couple of bars, had some lovely cocktails and listened to some remarkably loud cover bands. We considered walking into some of the plethora of nightclubs, but realized while it might still be midnight in 1995 in Wales, but it was 10pm in 2015 for us and we didn’t need the black lights.

Saturday was for the Mumbles. We bussed over and started with delicious brunch across the street from Oystermouth Castle. And, then CASTLE!!! RUINS!!! All of the lovely scenery! Oystermouth Castle was first built in the 1100s; it’s a Norman castle, built on a hill overlooking the bay and the Mumbles and it is AWESOME. It is by far the most complete ruins I’ve ever seen, with full rooms, fireplaces, staircases and battlement (?) walkways still intact, or at least, well restored for your meandering pleasure. It was a fantastic place to wander around, although the narrow and well-trod staircases were pretty terrifying. We watched a bit of the Swansea airshow – watching fighter jets circle and swoop around the bay from on top of one of the battlements and it was pretty spiffy, if not a little silly as it was only ever one plane at a time.

After the Castle we headed down to the coast, we were hoping to head out to the lighthouse, but it turns out it’s a closed island, so not so much an option. Instead we saw the beach and the downtown with all the fun tourist accoutrement, 10 feet tall monkey statues in red bikinis, a ginormous arcade, dozens of adorably named restaurants and souvenir shops, etc. The Mumbles reminded me a lot of Lincoln City or the nicer parts of the tourist-y Oregon Coast. Everything is coastal themed and laid out as to take the best advantage of the ocean views. But, with the monkey lady, so there’s that…

Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells, and cockle shells,
And pretty maids all in a row.

Saturday night was our fancy night out, just us girls and my sunburn out on the town. We finally tried cockles (which Tara was questing for, as she assures me they’re definitely an iconically Welsh thing) and I tried my first pâté. All together a pretty exciting date night.

Sunday was Cardiff (yes, I will take absolutely EVERYONE there and use them as an excuse to visit the Arab Room over and over again) and a surprise cab ride when we discovered that the buses no longer serve Wantage from the train station nearest to us. Whoops. Sadly, Tara left last Tuesday, but we’ll always have Wales… and drunk Welshmen.

Adventures Abroad

Punting the Cam, or 3.5 Oregonians and a former Brit take Cambridge*

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The whole no car and pets at home thing almost threw a wrench in it, but we were happily able to meet up with the wonderful Brant and Mariko (and attached adorable Marlowe) for a day out in Cambridge. It was a long trip, but we happily arrived in down town Cambridge on time and no worse for wear. We had some crepes and walked around the market square, visited the outside of King’s College and couple of lovely old churches, and awaited our punting-buddies-to-be…

What is punting you may ask? Punting is awesome. Granted, I’m completely biased by the amount of fun we had doing it – the whole one time, but anyway. Punting is boating in a punt (you may now roll your eyes), which is a flat-bottomed boat which is square on the ends. The punter stands on the upper part of one of these ends and propels the punt by pushing against the river bed with a pole. Kind of like a gondola, but gondolas use oars. Punts are especially designed for small, shallow rivers.

As Brant and Mariko had the baby and none of us wanted to risk falling in the river, we did a punting tour with a professional, who propelled up along an area of the Cam River known as the Backs. So named as it runs along the back of some of the major Cambridge colleges. The tour guide gave us some facts, some history, and lots of local color commentary, so, in short, the best kind of tour guide patter. He also was incredibly good at yelling at people to pull their arms, legs, elbows, hands, etc. back into the boat so they wouldn’t get broken off when the novice punters crashed into us or each other. I’m not saying he had to yell at Matt twice… But, he did. Matt just really wanted to lose a limb apparently (he wouldn’t have necessarily lost it, but it would have definitely been a painful injury). Highlights from the tour included a great view of St. John’s College and it’s asymmetrical eagle (which is apparently there as an snub to another wealthier college just down river), another Bridge of Sighs (there are just too many of these, apparently everybody has got to have one…), the Mathematical Bridge (not built without nails, not built by Newton, not taken apart by students, or for that matter, not any of the other conspiracy theories), and last but not least,  baby water fowl (ducks, swans, geese, we had the gamut – and they dealt admirably with the obnoxious number of boaters).

After wine in punt came the Round Church, or the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which is one of only four medieval round churches still in use in England, and was actually kind of delightful for not looking as complicated as EVERY-OTHER-CHURCH-IN-EUROPE… Seriously. It was built in 1130 by knights returning from the Crusades and is based on the Holy Sepulchre  in Jerusalem. Or so says Wikipedia, here. Inside the church is two stories of columns with arches between circling the nave (yup, totally had to look that word up, still don’t know what it means), which is I think the whole of the original church, though other parts have been added (but they aren’t round, so what on earth is the point!?!). Oddly enough we met an Alabaman (?) in the churches gift shop…

I’d like to make it back to Cambridge when we have more time. We didn’t get into tour inside of any of the colleges and there are some parts of the grounds/courtyards I’d like to get a better look at. Plus, as an Oxford employee, I like to think Matt is tempting fate just stepping on the premises. (Note: Oxford and Cambridge are rivals, it’s like U of O and OSU, except their insults would probably be in Latin and somebody would be wearing a monocle).

Anyway, more to come.

– a

*Note: I know Brant isn’t actually a ‘former’ Brit. And, Marlowe is only .5 an Oregonian because she’s little. Also, she and Brant both have dual citizenship, so really together they’d equal one more Oregonian, and only a single Brit, but that’s all too complicated and not nearly pithy enough for a title…

Abroad, Adventures Abroad

Sweden, much belatedly.

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There is nothing quite like getting a text message 12 hours before your flight notifying you that your flight has been cancelled. Just that, nothing else. Cancelled and… nada. Then, you spend 20 minutes trying to get onto the airlines website (it keeps crashing (likely due to the amount of sudden desperate traffic) and finding out that there is a depending airline strike affecting multiple Scandinavian airlines, and also, online rebooking is down. Also, online customer support is down. Also, apparently you can be charged for calling customer service in this country – BECAUSE WTF? So, I spent 20 minutes on hold waiting to talk to the airline, 30 minutes on chat with the car service and another 6 stomping my feet and contemplating why I ever try to leave my house, before delaying my flight by one day and being fairly assured that if I didn’t hear from the airline by 8am the next day, then I would probably be able to fly out the day after… And, luckily, I was.

One other note, the 40 minutes on chat were for nothing. I still got a 3:30 am wake-up call from my driver who was 30 minutes outside of London (and 30 minutes away from picking me up) confirming that I was ready to go for my originally scheduled car service pickup. I still feel pretty bad about that part. I doubt anybody reimbursed him for his time or gas on that day… But, oh well. Moving on.

I arrived in Sweden to find a beautiful woman awaiting me just outside security. It was just like Love Actually. Complete with hugging. Or something like that. Karyn and David were awaiting me at the smallish and therefore lovely Gothenburg (Göteborg) airport, which reminds me a lot of PDX. Smallish, easy loading/parking, and excellent outdoor statuary, and only a short drive from your nearest McDonalds? Yeah, it’s weird when those pop up over here, but they do. Sweden actually reminded me a bit of Oregon a few times throughout the visit. It’s very green and foresty. Not flat, but not exactly rolling hills, lots of fields and grey cloud cover and the houses have something of that blocky, big windowed, certain styles of siding, coastal Oregon style. Although more candy colored; Karyn  says the houses there remind her of Lego houses, because they like the bold and the primary colors, but there’s a fair amount of the bright pastels as well.

We started the trip with about a dozen roundabouts on the way home and amazing gyro pizza. The pizza was wonderful, the roundabouts might be safer and more environmentally friendly, but damn they are nauseating, especially when there is one almost every block!

It was a long trip, so I’m not going to get overly precious about chronology here, but as follows are some highlights.

We took a wander through downtown Gothenburg and saw gorgeous and/or nifty buildings, including an opera house designed to look like a ship, another called the ‘lipstick’ building (red top floors, white middle, red lower) (yes, it was weird) and a gorgeous old factory with an aged copper roof and shutters. The copper roofs are a big thing in Sweden and I am a HUGE FAN. The green color is vibrant without being garish and is usually in such wonderful contrast to the buildings, whether they be light stone/paint, or brick. Gothenburg feels much more modern than the UK, partially because it is, but also because of the scale. It’s just not – cramped – like so much of England has felt. It’s also very clean, there is that tidy, moneyed feeling that some places have.

There is no Karyn and David without pinball, so of course the requisite time was spent in the pinball arcade, but also watching the world championships on a live streaming service. J Despite how silly that may sound, it was actually kind of fun to watch that way – they had a camera on the player, another on the play field and a third on the score board, so you actually got a lot more information about how it was going then I can ever manage to gather while watching it live. Naturally, Karyn won everything… Or something like that, accuracy be damned. Also to be noted, from the food shack next door, I bravely tried the Halv Special (half a special)’ – a hot dog in bun buried under huge amounts of mashed potato and something called shrimp salad, with fried onions, and a drizzle each of ketchup and mustard. I try to always be game for embracing the local food style, bu yeah, I wouldn’t have been sorry to miss this one, although I bet Matt would have loved it. Eew. However, I felt very differently about the Swedish meatballs, fries and lingonberry sauce I had there a few days later. MUCH YUM.

Ullared. How to describe Ullared? Ullared was described to me as a sort of Disneyland of discount shopping, a Walmart mecca (please don’t strike me dead for that one)… It’s a compound of shopping all by itself in the-middle-of-nowhere-Sweden and people actually take vacations to visit this place. However, I didn’t think it was that nuts. We went, largely for my own amusement, but also so Karyn could stock up on some new house to fill/furnish necessities. This place was probably double the size of a Walmart or a Costco. And, it had some of everything. Mostly at wonderful discounts. And, was as crammed with people as a Costco on a holiday weekend Saturday. It was by no means terrible, but it was definitely a bit zoo-y. The store also features its own salad bar restaurant, its own sports bar restaurant. And, is then surrounded by a bunch of other outlet stores around it: crafting, sporting, gardening, adult, book, and a couple others I don’t remember. As much as I’d like to pull something salient out of the experience, I’ll just say, I got some of the best bobby pins I’ve ever used in my life here and it was a fun day out, if not culturally educational in any way. Oh, and I got build-them-yourself Tomte Dolls which I will assemble before Christmas. *Note: I’m gradually accruing us small things that will someday make our Christmas tree an impressively multicultural experience, and this makes me incredibly happy. On our drive there we stopped to see a beautiful country church that was perched on a bit of hill and surrounded on three sides by fields of sheep. It was adorable, painted lots of pretty colors and with lots of tall pointy turret-y roof elements and I like to think that makes up for the lack of culture having discount shopping outing.

Last but not least…

Matt arrived from his conference on Friday evening, and we were scheduled to leave mid-day on Sunday, so Saturday was our one big tourist it up day. And, Karyn and David totally picked us a winner. Marstrand is a beautiful little island in southern Sweden, a short drive from Gothenburg and featuring ridiculous amounts of charm and scenery. We walked along the coast, including through the ‘eye of the needle’ (a very narrow walkway between very tall rocks) and through some little foresty paths… And, then COAST. Not like beach coast, instead like giant, prehistoric, fall off the edge of the world, rock coast. It was just gorgeous. And, it felt like the edge of the world, though this isolated, desolated look was totally interrupted by a huge sailing race going on just a short way from shore and so the view was peppered with lots of brightly colored sails. We continued our walk along the coast, seeing a deserted nudie beach (way too cold for that yet), and the fort on the hill, which dates back to the 1800s or something. We had some fish and chips and ice cream, we saw some really fantastic civic art (my favorite was Tony Craggs’ Point of view).

After Marstrand was an authentic taco dinner made by Karyn’s fantastic friend, Rachel (another LA escaper, though I think she didn’t hate it there, so we’ll have to try not to hold that against her) and there are not words for how fun it was to not only have dinner with friends, but also to have tacos. Seriously, who knew you could miss tacos so much?

 

Some food for thought:

  1. Licorice is a BIG thing in Sweden. They pair it with everything, berries, salt, chocolate, the list goes on. I am a fan of black licorice (much to Matt’s chagrin), but seriously, it’s not a versatile pairing flavour people. Stop trying.
  2. The long summer days in the UK, but even more so in Sweden (it was still light-ish at 11pm when we were there, in late May), are amazing (if not a little weird), but they do make me fear the VERY SHORT winter nights…
  3. The Swedes don’t lack in national self-esteem. And, for good reason, Sweden takes great care of itself, but there’s also only a few million people there, so that’s not exactly as difficult to do well as it would be for other places…

 

It still amazes me that we know live somewhere where international travel is so logistically feasible and (comparably) cheaper.

More to come.

– a

At Home Abroad

Serial Commas and Sentence Case. Or, settling in at work.

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I have had some really great jobs, and I have worked with some incredibly fantastic people. And, even when work has been hard to find, or I’ve taken a job I didn’t want, I’ve had support or it’s led to bigger and better things. I’ve been lucky, really.

But, I’ve never loved really loved my work. I’ve never wanted to call the work I was doing my field, or my career. Until now.

I LOVE my new job. So, so much. It is amazing, and challenging, and interesting, and I still can’t believe I’m really here doing this.

Let’s be honest, I’m still in the honeymoon phase, and none of the irritations or problems I will phase have presented themselves yet, I also don’t have a full workload, so I know it’s only going to get harder and I will likely screw some stuff up as I go on, but I really think it’s going to feel worth it in a way that nothing has before.

And, I’m sure some of the current joy of it is also that I’m doing this job in England, surrounded by adorable Britishness, like accents (I’ve got a Scot and a ‘Brummy’ (whatever that is) on my team), funny words (faffy, ta, crikey), and tea breaks. Also, I work a 10 minute walk from an actual historical estate that could have come right out of Austen. So, yeah, the frosting isn’t hurting either.

But, it’s also just really that cool. I’m turning an MS into a book (not single handedly, obviously). But, I’m editing the form without having to be terrified that my penchant for run on sentences and faulty comma usage is going to screw anyone up, I’m coordinating cover design, I’m doing a bunch of other things I don’t even know about yet, because we haven’t gotten that far. And, whatever I’m not doing I still get to learn about because somebody else here is doing it and they believe in training!

I know I’ve kind of skipped over our Swedish excursion here, but I’ll try to get something up about it, soon.

And so, more to come.

– a