Enormous Update Part 1 - Cardiff

It has been awhile... I've had (and have) lots to do!

We'll start a long time ago, since that is when I last posted! The weekend of Valentine's Day: I was pretty bummed that I couldn't see Katie, but I made sure to get to talk to her. By coincidence my parents decided, all by themselves, to go see Katie play a game at Colgate that day so I asked them to bring her a rose. But that isn't what you want to hear. You want to hear about how I went to Cardiff (Wales) that weekend! My friend Jenn Bradley from Colgate is on a Colgate study abroad program there, so I went to see her. I took off after class on Friday, by train. All in all I think it was like a 3 hour trip (I don't really remember). Unfortunately Cardiff was hosting the England-Wales rugby on Valentine's Day, so the train was absolutely packed. Standing room only. I stood for about 3/4 of the trip there, until a seat was finally vacated and I collapsed into it. I then caught a cab from the train station to Jenn's dorm, and met up with her and another friend, Lea, to bake some cookies (I hadn't arrived until pretty late, so anything more elaborate was kinda out of the question). As we made cookies I met all of Jen's flat mates, Peter, Anthony, Ed, Mickey and another guy I only met really briefly, most of whom were actually British, and more importantly very friendly. I am incredibly jealous. Totally schools my anti-social Asian flat. We stayed up chatting and then went to bed.

The next day we took off to Caerphilly, near Cardiff, and the site of a ruined castle (cheaper to visit than Cardiff Castle!). It was really cool, and so much less expensive than everything and everything in London. You have to pay 15 pounds to see anything like that in London; in Wales it was 3.20 with a student discount! So we explored and such, though I forgot my camera, as usual, and had a generally good time. After leaving the castle we found a place to grab a mid-afternoon lunch and watched the Scotland-France rugby on TV as we ate. The Wales-England match was later, but there were plenty of people packed in to see this early one! I convinced Jenn to try the sticky toffee pudding, and she agrees now that it is the single-best dessert in the universe (though I have since learned that this is only the case when it is done right).

It was now time to try to get back to Cardiff, which was much harder than we thought it would be. We had taken a bus out, and any other bus system I'd ever been on you simply went to the other side of the street and caught the same bus line to get back. So we tried that and it really wasn't working... none of the buses were what we wanted. We started asking bus drivers how to get to Cardiff and the consensus was that we should go to the other side of the street. They gave other directions as well, but with their thick accents we had no idea what those other directions were. So we tried the other side of the street, again with no success. Bus drivers just kept telling us that our bus would be there soon. We waited literally and hour to an hour and a half. We didn't really know what to do! Eventually a guy on the street saw us asking, and came to offer help.

He was certainly interesting in appearance. Completely shaved head, with a tattoo all the way around the back of his head. Nose ring. Big black boots. He told us we had to go to the Caerphilly bus station, which by chance he was walking to at the moment to go visit his friend somewhere. He said we could walk with him. So a little hesitantly we followed. Chatting with him as we walked behind Jenn and I were eye-talking to decide whether we should really be following him. We eventually decided that we would follow so long as there were other people were around. Turns out that we had nothing to worry about because the guy was every bit as nice as his offer to help hinted at; he got us to the bus station, helped us find the right bus, and then took off for his own. See? You can't judge a book by its cover.

After getting back to Cardiff we made a brief run to the grocery store with Jenn's flatmates to pick up stuff like "egg noodles" for dinner, and ice cream for after. We were going to go to the house of one of Jenn's friends from Germany for dinner, and her roommate, from someplace I don't remember (Asia somewhere...? I really don't know), was making the food. She had requested the egg noodles, but we couldn't find them in the store. Jenn and I figured "egg spaghetti" was close enough and got that instead. Still seems to me like it should be the same thing. Apparently not though... who knew? I don't know why it didn't work, because she made the food and we ate it, but apparently we ruined dinner. Oops.

After that we returned to Jenn's flat and got ready to go out in downtown Cardiff. They had some free entry passes into one of the clubs, but only if you went a little early, so we took off. Clubs aren't really my scene, but I had a good enough time. It was good just to spend time with old friends and new. When we left the club it was pretty late, but we stopped at a chips place that was absolutely PACKED. And it was 0n a street of about 10 places exactly like it. They just churned out french fries at breakneck speed, and you could get them with cheese, gravy or any number of things. It was like the Cardiff version of slices, but with french fries. I don't know if it was the crowds from the rugby, or just the fact that it was a Saturday night in the club district of Cardiff, but there were massive numbers of people, and there was trash from these chips places everywhere. I wouldn't have wanted to be on morning cleanup.

The next day I just grabbed the train for home, midday, after a fairly lazy morning. Jenn walked me to the train station via the scenic route through the park and past Cardiff Castle. It was a really nice place, and for once, the sun was actually shining! Cardiff was a lovely place. Jenn was a really good hostess, having extra blankets and towels all ready for me. I really appreciate everything she did for me!

Once again on the train, I didn't get a seat. This time I was standing in the food car, and eventually managed to get a seat on this little counter ledge thing. The problem was that it was at about chest height, so when I sat on it I had to crunch to keep from hitting my head on the ceiling. Not ideal conditions, but better than standing!

When I got back to Royal Holloway it was late afternoon. I spent some time getting things back together, and making dinner. Then at 8:00 I went to meet back up with my pub quiz team! After the terrible experience we'd had the week before at the on-campus quiz night we decided to try the quiz night at a local off-campus pub, The Crown. The atmosphere was infinitely nicer, there were questions we could answer, and we just generally had a much better time. We placed 3rd of 5 I think, and agreed it was definitely something we would do again. So hopefully that is a weekly thing now! The only issue came up on a question that should have been a gimme for us. The question was "what sport did the great Wayne Gretsky play." Given that we are Americans this was really easy, and presumably hard for the Brits for whom hockey is irrelevant. So we answered hockey and were done with it. When it came time to check answers, teams swapped sheets, and the answer to this particular question was "ice hockey." The other team immediately jumped up and said "does just hockey count if you don't say ice?" The pub's quiz person immediately said no, you must specify ice hockey. We were pretty upset of course and started a great debate about the meaning of hockey. We contended that if you asked Wayne Gretsky what sport he played he would say "hockey" not "ice hockey." Furthermore, he played in the NHL, not the NIHL. They would have none of it. It was yet another illustration of how logic and fact don't apply in England, all that matters is the bureaucracy!

In the end though we were content with the results and had a good time. The prize for the second place team, which was only 2 people, was a pitcher of Fosters and they offered it to our group, which was very nice, and we accepted, though I did not partake.

Phew! All in all a very successful weekend, though I don't have any pics to share! Eventually I will get some from Jenn, though even she only has a few. Another post to come soon about this past weekend, my trip to Scotland!

Quiz Night

Not much of note really going on around here these days, thus the lack of posts.

Saturday I went into the city and muddled around in the Victoria and Albert museum. It was a cool place, once again, free, and had some cool stuff, but it was hard to really get into it. It is literally just a museum of stuff. I couldn't find any particular theme holding it all together, and thus it was all just nifty peculiarities to look at. I think if I had been there with some good friends it would have been different, being able to point out cool things and joke about some of the weird stuff, but alone it was just a curious place.

From there I went to Harrod's, because I've heard several times from people at home that I just had to go to Harrods. Best way to describe Harrod's? Hell. It is a big, very poorly laid out, incredibly expensive mall. I was trying to meet my friends there, and it was just utter chaos; you couldn't find anything. Apparently there were maps, but I didn't pick one up somehow, so I was left wandering through bizarrely themed rooms and a lot of women's clothing. I was trying to meet three girls, and when I found them even they didn't want to stay. We left very shortly after.

Fast forward. Sunday night a group of five of us were planning on doing the quiz night at one of the bars on campus called the Stumble Inn. The student union's monthly schedule shows that they have it every Sunday night... but of course it doesn't say what time. Because, after all, isn't "Sunday" specific enough? So my friend Leah tried looking online. Nothing. She tried going to the Stumble Inn. It was mysteriously closed. She eventually found out that it was supposed to open at five on Sunday night, and asked me to go check when trivia was, since she choir practice. So at five I went suited up to go out in the rain walked on over. The Stumble Inn is entirely empty when I get there. And the lights are off. And the two pathways leading to the door... roped off. I took the hint and went back to my room. As has become the patter in England, I went to get a simple question answered and returned not only without the answer, but more frustrated and confused than before.

I spoke with Leah when she got out of her practice and she went over to the other student union bar, Medicine, which is literally located up the stairs from the Stumble Inn, and asked about the Stumble Inn's trivia night. She was told 8:45, and she told everyone else. So we all show up at 8:35, to be sure we get a spot. Of course, the bar is empty, except for the bartender (it was actually the guy that had talked to Leah at Medicine, but he had come downstairs to the Stumble Inn), and two people playing pool. So we sit down and wait. And wait. And wait. And wait. A couple more people trickle in, but it doesn't seem like trivia is going to happen. At about 9:45, just as we're about to give up, a huge mass of people storm in, techno music starts blaring and they announce trivia is starting. Why techno? I have no idea.

The next couple hours were spent trying to decipher the drunken words of the caller, who intermittently broke into uncontrollable laughs while asking the questions, making them entirely incomprehensible, and on several occasions answered his cell phone while calling. All the while, our ears were accosted by the unnecessarily loud beats one might expect at a rave, not a pub trivia night. My favorite question: "ThrUN, America 2, Australia 3?" A close second: "(hahahahahahaha)y bugh(hahahaha)? Oh, and because the night ended in a tie for first, it was settled in a dance off. Halftime was musical chairs, and everyone cheated.

We wound up having a good time ripping on the Inn for how incredibly bad their quiz night was, and making fun of the incomprehensible mumbo-jumbo emanating from our rude and drunken caller, but we are not headed back anytime soon. We're going to try quiz night at the Crown, a real pub (not a student union bar) in Egham this Sunday.

Stay tuned for what happens this weekend. I'm headed to Cardiff to visit my friend Jenn (from Colgate). I'm excited to get back to traveling!