August, 2010

  1. THE GREATEST DAY Of OUR LIVES!!!

    August 30, 2010 by ms. xandra

    Tanya and I bought fancy picnic foods at Fortnum and Mason and took a long train ride to Crystal Palace Park, where we ate our scones and cream and jam in the park and saw historically innacurate but lovely and amazing Victorian Dinosaur statues, and managed to navigate and escape intact and sane from and honest to goodness real live hedge maze and then we explored the ruins of a burnt down Victorian pavillion and then we went to Soho for Chinese food and an evening at the theatre!

    And yesterday we went to a puppet show in a shop that sells shrunken heads, bones, and Victorian surgical implements in a rather salty part of town and didn’t even get murdered or lost (or have our heads shrunk)!  GO TEAM.

    There are pictures but I am paying for internet in the basement of my dormitory (sadly, yes, but there is full English breakfast every morning!)  so I will post them when I am back at the British Library (land of books, knowledge, and free wifi) later this week!

    Category Adventure | Tags: | No Comments

  2. R is for Rotterdam, good enough for me.

    August 17, 2010 by ms. xandra

    Hey everyone, I am in Rotterdam!

    I am now officially ON VACTION NOT DOING WORK for the next week and a half.  Then it’s back to London and back to researching for me.

    I met up with Aaron in Brussels at the Pantone Hotel, which, yes, is paint chip themed hotel.  We were on the orange floor.  It was pretty amazing.  At breakfast I almost accidentally ate a raw egg, because there was a bowl of raw eggs right beside the bowl of hard boiled ones.  I cracked it open and thought, “Gosh, Europeans really like their eggs soft boiled,” and then I noticed it pouring out of the egg cup.  Another excellent job.

    And now we are in Rotterdam, in a hotel in a barge in a canal!  It is called the H2otel.  Every piece of furniture in the room is spray painted silver, which, truly, is a marker of style and class.  My general inclination while travelling is to stay in wonderfully silly accomodations whenever possible, and that particular goal has been realized quite effectively on this trip.

    Rotterdam is fascinating – the city was completely bombed out in World War II, and rather than reconstruct, the way many European cities did, they took the opportunity to just start brand new.  So the architechture is mostly very interestingly modern, with odd smatterings of pre-war buildings.  As a post-war-ist, I kind of love it.

    And my goal of eating mainly cheese and beer on this trip is going very well:  yesterday we had fondue for dinner, and today we had dinner on an all-you-can-eat pancake boat, which is a wonderful thing that really, really exists in the world.  You pay your 15 euros, you get a seat by the window and a cruise through the harbour, and you get to go and get as many pancakes as you want from the pancake closet (actually a thing) and top them with as much ridiculous stuff as you want.  Topping choices included peaches, apples, salami, wedges of brie (cheese requirement fulfilled!), syrup, nutella, sprinkles, candied ginger, and weird little candy covered cruchy bits.  Also, some of the pancakes had apples and bacon baked into them.  And pannekoekenboot is my new favorite dutch word.

    Tomorrow we are going to Baarle-Nassau/Baarle-Hertog for the day, which is a Belgian exclave in the Netherlands with dutch enclaves in it.  The purpose of this trip is mainly to take pictures of ourselves jumping from one country to the next and to go to this restaurant that has something like 500 kinds of beer.  And then on Thursday, we’re going to Gouda for the day.  The purpose of that trip is mainly cheese.

    Some pictures!  For your edification.

    The color scheme of our room at the Pantone, where everything has a color number.  Everything.  Including the teas at breakfast.

    Rainy Brussels from the Pantone Hotel fire escape

    Canals and bicycles abound in Rotterdam

    Rainy Rotterdam skyline, as seen from the Pancake Boat

    Aaron likes pancakes!

    I also like pancakes!  I like them with jam and brie!  (Weird.)

    Also, I was in Liverpool last week and lots of things happaned including me refusing to go to any Beatles-themed attraction that you had to pay for,  me not understanding anyone’s accent,  and also me  discovering wine that comes in a pre-poured plastic glass with a tin foil top like a yogurt container that you can get for two pounds at Marks and Spencer, which I took as proof that the British understand my needs.  But I will write a proper Liverpool report later!

    Category Adventure | Tags: | 2 Comments

  3. Not dead yet

    August 9, 2010 by ms. xandra

    Hey, did you know that domain names expire if you forget to renew them cause you’re so busy going to England?  Funny, that.  But it’s ok!  I fixed it!  There was no blog here for a few hours today, but it’s back!  Good grief.  Clearly I should not be allowed more than one task at a time because damn if I can handle it.

    So, I’m in England!  I had a scant 24 hours in London, then a weird couple of days in Wigan (a small town that was once the spot to be for Northern Soul, and now has a mall at the former site of the Wigan Casino Club, which was the spot to go dancing to Northern Soul, but don’t worry!  They’ve named the food court the Casino Cafe in memoriam).  Wigan is a funny, small town with not much to do in it, and I finished with the research-related stuff I wanted to do fairly quickly.  And the town was kind of quaint and sleepy, but just quaint and sleepy enough to send me spiralling into an OH MY GOD I CAN NEVER WRITE A DISSERTATION BECAUSE I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THINGS type of identity crisis, so I didn’t sleep very well and sent what, in retrospect, was a totally pathetic and unfortunate email to my dissertation advisor explaining said crisis, and luckily she wrote back approximately five minutes later and told me that everything would be fine and that research trips basically make everyone feel disoriented and alienated.  And then I had a good night’s sleep and then I felt better.

    Now I’m in Blackpool (the hilarious Niagara Falls of England, minus the falls, with a lovely ocean, and just enough rain and clouds to make for a right crummy day at the beach) and tomorrow I’m going to Liverpool.  A quick google search of upcoming cultural events in Liverpool tells me that there is going to be a John Lennon Memorial Poetry Contest tomorrow at the Beatles Experience museum, so I could go to that!  Or I could shoot myself!  Or more likely, I could stay in the hotel room and wash my underwear in the sink.

    But I’m actually having a really good, productive time. I’ve gotten some good work done, and I’ve really enjoyed riding trains around the countryside.  I’m looking forward to being in a big city tomorrow, though.

    Further observations about the United Kingdom:

    THINGS THE BRITISH DO WELL:

    Jaywalking.  Good god.  It could be because I’ve gotten acclimated to LA, where if you jaywalk, you’ll probably either die or get ticketed because the LAPD don’t have enough to do, but holy fuck, the British seem completely unafraid of death by speeding car.  And I’m sure I look like a total tool as I patiently wait for the walk signal.

    Prepackated foods.  Oh, Marks and Spencer!  I am basically surviving on your little pies and your little salads because it’s cheaper than eating out every night, so Marks and Spencer Picnic in the hotel room (while watching Antiques Roadshow) is quickly becoming a bit of a tradition.  Also, walking around your stores is weirdly relaxing and therapeutic, more so than walking around a Trader Joe’s, which is how I relax and unwind and end up making unfortunate food purchases (ie:   those awful frozen avocados) in LA, largely because everyone in Trader Joe’s are always all Busy and Important and that doesn’t seem to be the case here.

    Tawdryness.  Blackpool is a little bit amazing.  Because it’s kind of shoddy and falling apart, and there are these old Victorian pleasure piers with rides and attractions on them that people clearly LOVE even though they are a little unfortunate and decrepit.  Also, they are currently getting ready for the Illuminations, which, basically, are piles and piles of Christmas lights that they run up and down the shore every fall for, um, some reason?  It’s kind of unclear. But people are very excited because ROBBIE WILLIAMS is coming to town to flip the on switch for the illuminations this year!  Gee golly.  So, basically, I sort of love Blackpool in spite of/because of this tawdryness.  As a devoted student of kitsch, it’s been a fascinating educational experience, because it is such an interestingly different kind of kitsch than SoCal Kitsch, with which I am intimately acquainted.

    THINGS THE BRITISH ARE LESS GOOD AT:

    Free wireless.  AAAAGGHH!!!  Some people need wireless internet a little too much.  This person needs wireless internet a little too much.  There is wireless in coffee shops here, yes, but it is almost always owned by British Telecom and is stupidly expensive (5 pounds for, like 1.5 hours!) which I resent deeply.  Luckily, I know that in London there will be wireless at the British Library and at St. Pancras station, both of which are basically across the street from where I’m staying, thank goodness.

    So that’s all for now!  Liverpool tomorrow, and then I will be reunited with my dear Gentleman Caller in Brussels for the ACTUAL VACATION part of this trip:  We will eat and drink our way through all of the cheese and beer in Belgium and the Netherlands.

    Category Adventure | Tags: | 1 Comment

  4. Adventures across the space-time continuum

    August 3, 2010 by ms. xandra

    Ok, so I started writing this late last night and got as far as uploading the picutres before I realized how past my bedtime it was.  I am now no longer flying to London tomorrow:  I am flying to London today!  I am currently in LAX, bogarting wifi from Air France, which is very very slow because I am obviously not actually in the Air France first class lounge.  However, this is a major improvement over what normally happens when I’m stuck in this airport for hours which is this:  I turn on my computer hoping that there has been a miraculous miracle and that LAX has free wifi all of a sudden (because charging for wifi at an airport should probably be illegal).  Instead, it is like, $7, which I totally resent, and so I try to steal wifi from somewhere, which usually results in me being able to connect to the Air New Zealand wifi but not actually use it because they give all of their customers a secret code and are mean and don’t share.  But today, some of the stars are aligned correctly, or something, so god bless Air France for their unsecured network.

    Anyhow, things are not as wonderful as they could be because there is NOT A SINGLE COPY OF VANITY FAIR ANYWHERE IN TERMINAL 2.  Vanity Fair is the only magazine I ever want to read on an airplane:  it has just enough actual, good, politically-oriented journalism and just enough complete and utter fluff (ie:  celebrities and dresses) to be perfect airplane fodder.  The New Yorker has too many words, Vogue has too much Anna Wintour, Vanity Fair manages to hit the happy medium between them (unless there’s a Christopher Hitchens column, but even then, there’s nothing quite like feeling some righteous anger regarding an idiotic blowhard who should never have been given any sort of media mouthpiece).  But not today, alas.

    ANYHOW!  Back to last night we go!

    …

    Presently:  I’m feeling rather future-oriented.  Tomorrow I fly to London!  What happens there will shape the future of…my dissertation.

    Pastly:  I cleaned out my camera’s memory cards and found all kinds of photos of past adventures, presented here for your enjoyment and edification, after the jump!

    (more…)

    Category Uncategorized | Tags: | No Comments