England Recap, Part the Last!

Oh, so here's something I forgot to tell you about Portsmouth. After the ships, Claire and I got cake and this cafe and the guy serving us was a) like seventeen, and b) obsessed with Claire. He tried to make small talk by asking about the 52 American states and was super embarrassed when we told him there were only fifty. Claire tried to save him face by telling him that Puerto Rico confuses everyone, haha!

Okay, our final two stops on the England trip!

First up, Camden!

First story, on our way to London, Claire and I made a train friend who sat next to me and listened to me tell Claire stories about the very silly things I used to in high school to not read books but still get As. In retrospect, definitely substantiated every horrible thing he's ever heard about the American school system.

Anyway, Claire and I had both been to London multiple times before, so this time we decided to hit up a place neither of us had seen: Camden. Aka Amy Winehouse's neighborhood. Having see it, I can say with certainty that a) it is awesome, and b) Amy Winehouse makes so much more sense to me now

Most of what he saw in Camden was the horse markets, a massive market that has built up, in, and around old horse-trading barns. In case you weren't sure about what animal used to live there, they put up massive statues to make it clear.

Camden was full of really cool stores selling funky everything. Also, we ate the best pizza of our lives there. And the guy made it in front of us. 

These were the bathrooms.

After Camden we headed over to Kensington Palace to sit in the grass and wish we had small children we could send to British private school so that they could get awesome uniforms. Eventually we met up with Claire's sister and friend and got more cake because it was Sister's Friend's birthday. Yay!

Final stop on our epic tour was Igtham Mote, pronounced Item Moat. A very appropriate name because it was both filled with items and surrounded by a moat.

The gardens were lovely!

And then we went inside. Ightam Mote is a giant square house, and every room you go to has someone in it that you can ask questions at. Our favorite was a guy who called us "very sharp" when we listened, enraptured, to all his stories about the psycho monarchy and then remarked that England was basically real-life Game of Thrones. Another guy thought we were weird. I can't remember what we were talking about when we got to his room, but he was evidently not a fan.

Here's a suit of Cromwellian armor they found in the moat, because that's a good place for it.

And that's it, that's the end of our England trip! In summary, it was an absolutely amazing time and not only did I get to see Claire, I also got to hang with her family and they are awesome and I love them. That will be all.

Thus endeth the England recap! It's July in 10 minutes, so I can at least say I got this blog post in under the wire!

The Peep Peep Story

So I'm going to get back to England recapping tomorrow, but I have a somewhat-entertaining story of the day for you.

I live in what is frequently considered the "ghetto" of Göttingen, usually so labeled by people who have never traveled far enough away from Rich White Europe to actually see a ghetto. In fact, so great is the discrepancy between where I live and what I consider to be a ghetto that I actually included it in a blog post.

So that's the setting for this story: my non ghetto.

Yesterday I walked out of my apartment and heard hysterical screaming. I looked around confused, thinking maybe someone was yelling at the Roma kids, but no, it was an African lady who lives in an aprtment across the street yelling her head off in my general direction. As I unlocked my bike, I got treated to the magical soundtrack of her screaming, "FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU, YOU ASSHOLE. GO FUCK YOURSELF, LORD KNOWS I WON'T," and so on and so forth.

Looking around, I didn't see anyone she could possibly be yelling at, except for one of my neighbors down the street. I pushed my bike over to her and asked her if she knew what was up. She immediately starting laughing and said," You don't even want to know." "Try me," I said. "For starters, who is she yelling at?" "She's yelling at the guy who lives next door to you, second floor." Ahhh, I figured. This was probably a racism issue. My old German neighbors have not distinguished themselves as the most tolerant of other ethnic groups.

"So what did he say to her?" I asked. "Say? He didn't say anything. He went to her." "He went where?" "To her." "To yell at her?" "No, Tina, he went to her." "Okay. Why did he do that?" "To see her." "I don't understand." "To make some peep peep." "What the hell is peep peep?" "SEX, Tina. He had sex with her and won't pay her."

And that's how I found out the African ladies across the street are apparently operating an informal brothel. Moral of the story: pay your prostitute or she'll make sure the whole neighborhood knows about it. Sista's makin' dem Benjamins with the peep peep.

The End.

England Da Recap Part II: Oxford, Stonehenge, Portsmouth

I'm sorry. I'm really, really sorry. I accept your nomination for Worst Blogger Ever and am prepared to win that title against a field of other crappy bloggers, i.e., dead people, badgers, and the like.

In my defense, my bike exploded and now I have to walk everyone. And when I say "my bike" I really mean "just the back tire" but "my bike exploded" sounds so much cooler than "so there it was, sitting in the garden, when all of a sudden the back wheel blew up with such a loud bang, my neighbors all thought someone had been shot."

Anyway, I really need to get on England recapping like, pronto. Here we go. Next stop on our epic England adventures: OXFORD!

After lovely times in Bath, Glastonbury, and Wells, we hit the road with Claire's parents and went to Oxford which was awesome. We mostly spent the day running around like morons. First we climbed this giant old Saxon tower (when we walked in, some lady was practicing organ and it was kind of entertaining) where we had a nice view over town:

Then we started going into random colleges/sneaking onto tours. I can see why Oxford is awesome, my university sure as hell didn't look like this:

Then we ran into some more buildings, ate crappy ice cream, saw a cool exhibit on fantasy books, and generally had an awesome day.

Next up: STONEHENGE OH MY GOD STONEHENGE.

First, it was really cool. Also the audio tour accompanying it was pretty bangin. Now have lots and lots of pictures of Stonehenge from different angles.

After Stonehenge, Claire's sister came to visit with a friend, so we switched places--they stayed with her parents, we went to stay with Claire's aunt and uncle outside of Brighton. First thing we did visiting them was...

PORTSMOUTH!

Was probably one of my favorite places of the whole trip because it was straight-up badass. Also, I would highly, highly recommend it. 

Claire and I got there at like 1 in the afternoon. After wandering the free museum and getting lunch, we decided to buy tickets that would enable us to see all five ships parked in the harbor. But the ships were so cool we wound up only seeing two which is why I want to go back sometime.

The first ship we checked out was the HMS Warrior, an old war ship that apparently used to be the best thing ever until technology caught up with it and then it wasn't. The whole ship is open to be explored, so explore we did.

Climb on shit, that's what we do.

Claire is awesome at loading cannons.

After that it was off to the Mary Rose, the wreckage of a 16th century warship that sunk before the battle ever started, apparently because there were too many cannons on it. Then a gust of wind came and pushed the ship over while it was turning, water rushed in to the open cannon portal thingies and the ship sank. Also there was a net over the deck to make boarding the ship more difficult for the bad guys--but it also trapped 500+ people on a sinking ship.

The Mary Rose museum was awesome awesome awesome. The ship sunk on it's side, so half of it was super well preserved from being embedded in the ocean bottom. When they dragged the wreckage out of the water, they spent some two decades spraying it with a wax thing to replace the water (which was holding the ship together). A few years ago, they stopped waxing and started drying, which is what those massive tubes are. Eventually those will come out too, and people will just get awesome views of the hull.

I didn't take a whole lot of pictures because the lighting was dim but seriously, if you ever go to Portsmouth and don't go to the Mary Rose exhibit, don't tell me because I will be very upset with you. They pulled so many really cool and amazingly well-preserved artifacts out of the water. Also they had a lot of examples of bones, and how they were able to guess people's occupations from the wear and tear on the skeletons. It was SO cool. We took so long going through every room that we wound up being the last two people there and got escorted out of the museum by a security guy who looked angry.

Then on our way back we had a half-hour stop in Brighton, which we killed by wandering around the train station and finding pre-measured portions of wine in convenient plastic glasses.

One more England recap coming up shortly!

England Da Recap: Bath, Glastonbury, Wells

Oh hey! Guess what, I'm a terrible blog-recap-posting-procrastinator! But before I get to that GUESS WHAT I GOT SHOTS. It was the most unnecessarily complicated process of my life but I finally started getting shots. Two more rabies shots to go and then I'm golden and also rabies-proof!

So finally, the beginning of the England trip recap! Surprising to no one, I got to England in the middle of the pouring rain. Surprising to everyone, however, was the following eight days of absolutely glorious weather. So glorious, we got sunburned. In England. I can hear what you're saying, and I know, that's what we said too.

Anyway, stop 1 on our fun trip: Bath!

On our first full day in England, Claire's mom took us to Bath, where we hit up an amazing cafe and I had the greatest mint hot chocolate of my life, also the second greatest hot chocolate of my life, right underneath the one I had in Paris. Then we ran around inside the cathedral and had way too much fun playing in the mirror they had set up for tourists to admire the ceiling without craning their necks.

Then came the Roman baths, which included one fun audio tour of some awesome bath-ness... 

...some imitation of statues, because that's always a requirement of these sorts of things...

...fun with silhouettes...

...and also some whispering comparing the general attractiveness of the Roman statues chilling up on the top wall.

Yes we tried some of the water being pumped out of the hot springs, no it was not delicious.

Then we ran around and saw the rest of the city which was gorgeous before meeting up with Claire's dad for dinner.

Glastonbury

Next stop, Glastonbury! Which was so, so cool! Actually kind of mind-blowing when you see what people could build without mechanical equipment. The ruins are absolutely massive and really neat. We hopped on a tour with some dude dressed up with a feather hat, and he was really entertaining. Also according to a sign in the kitchens, beavers were considered a fish.

King Arthur's supposed grave:

The kitchens:

After the ruins, we headed up the street to check out some gardens.

And then hiked up the giant hill to this piece of awesomeness:

Upon which Claire's mom took this picture which I think is super awesome:

Final stop on recap blog part I: Wells!

Which is apparently famous for it's massive cathedral:

That keeps going in one long uninterrupted building:

And keeps going, only to eventually turn into townhouses.

Straight.up awesomeness. More pictures of our other stops to follow soon!