Forth! And fear no darkness!: Thanksgiving Weekend Trip!

Due to the fact that I am currently just sitting in a hotel killing what is hopefully my last night here in London, I thought I should probably just distract myself as much as possible and write a blog post, since I am still three weeks behind. This post we’re going to rewind back to thanksgiving weekend, when I (ironically) took a trip that included London. Here goes:

Thursday, November 25, 2010.

Today was actually Thanksgiving at home, but since Austria does not celebrate this holiday we of course had class. (Curious thing about my program though, we don’t celebrate, by which I mean have classes off, any American holidays “because we’re in Austria” yet we also don’t celebrate any Austrian holidays because “we’re Americans;” how much sense does that make?) Still, my friend Allison and I ducked out a little bit early in order to make our flight. In early October, this was our plan for the weekend: bus to Bratislava, slovakia, from where we had booked cheap flights (it’s about an hour away, and by cheap I mean 5 Euro one way and 12 the other – a total of about 22 dollars to fly to Brussels and back to Bratislava). Our flight would get us in to Brussels in the evening where we would spend the night. The next day we would get up and train to London, spending the day and night there, and where Paul Britton (who came to visit in October) would join us. We would then wake up Saturday and train to Paris where we would spend the day and night. Sunday we would wake up and train to Brussels, spending the day and night there, and then Monday we would fly back to Bratislava and Paul would train back to London.

Turned out, it was going to be really expensive to buy those trains, and hectic getting a hostel in paris, and mostly we just decided it wasn’t at all worth the trouble. So we revised our plan, and booked a bus from Brussels early Friday morning to London that would return Sunday night. This way, we still got to see London, Paul let us stay with him, and it was just much less complicated. So that’s what we did. Thursday night we wandered around Brussels looking for a place to have our Thanksgiving dinner. We were just about to give up because we hadn’t found anything when we accidentally stumbled onto the main street. We ended up deciding on a place named the Cheesecake Café because it was really decorated and when we went inside to find a menu to look browse through, it was so warm. So we stayed. We ate on the third floor so we could have the best view of the rest of the restaurant so we could people watch. I had some sort of chicken tenders and fries while she had an omlette. I’m not saying it was the most extravagant Thanksgiving meal I’ve ever had, but it was amazing at the time.

The next morning we got up really early to catch our bus to London. This was an experience that I am convinced I only need to do once in my life, and I have now done it twice. Our bus left Brussels at 8 and was supposed to get in about 1 to London, but we were an hour and a half late. Unfortunately, the movies that were played on the bus were dubbed over in French. Thus, I could hear the first two English words of every sentence before the French came in, and it was one French person who narrated every voice, which was actually kind of funny. Then a very scary thing happened. We were preparing to cross the channel, so they made everyone get off the bus, go through French customs, get back on the bus, drive 40 feet, get off, go through English customs (where I didn’t have an address so they yelled at me and Allison didn’t have a visa so they yelled at her), and then get back on the bus. Then, our bus drove into a giant metal box. Literally. That was what I saw happen. Eventually it got lots darker and lights came on in the box. Then the box started moving. After a while it stopped and the other end was opened and we drove out. We had pretty much driven onto a train that took us under the English Channel, but no one told us anything.

Overall, it was not a super experience, but we made it safely to Victoria Coach Station where Paul Britton, a friend from Davidson who had previously visited us in Vienna was prepared to meet us. He took us to his apartment (he is on the NYU program in London, which he wasn’t to terribly thrilled with) and we dropped our stuff off. We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening walking around the more famous parts of London. We saw Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, Parliament, and Big Ben, and we hung out by the river for a while as well where we got a good view of the London Eye. It was, however, reasonably cold for most of our trip, so after a while we just headed back to Paul’s place to get ready to go out with his roommates.

Some of you may remember that Allison, my companion for this trip, worked at a summer camp with a good friend of Patrick and myself from Davidson, Peter Delpin, who also happens to be Paul’s roommate at Davidson. In an odd circumstance, one of Paul’s roommates in London is a good friend of Peter’s from home, Jason! So there we were, Peter’s friend, Davidson roommate, grade-school friend, and summer co-worker all in the same apartment, while he was abroad in China. Anyway, Jason took us to hang out with some of his friends from Wake Forest that night, which eventually ended with Jason (who I had met once when he visited Davidson) and I searching for and finally acquiring a kebap really late at night.

The next day we did more touring, led by Paul. We saw St. Paul’s cathedral and walked from there to the Millennium Bridge (this bridge is the one that is torn apart in the opening scene of the sixth Harry Potter movie!). From there we walked down the river and saw a variety of more modern but famous buildings, the Tower Bridge, and the London Castle. As a continuation of our Harry Potter sight seeing (which Allison and I were very excited about), we then stopped at King’s Cross Station and visited the place where they filmed Platform 9 ¾! This was pretty neat as well. We ended the day by going to the Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park, which was basically like one giant Christmas market from Vienna that was really high-tech. (I can’t remember if I’ve described the Vienna Christmas markets? I’ll look and include it soon if I haven’t.) There were rides, bratwurst stands, hot cocoa stands, and much, much more. Again, it was cold, so we only stayed a couple hours, but it was really fun.

Sunday we had a pretty slow start to the day, but we ended up getting food and catching our 2pm bus back to Brussels. Upon arrival there about 9, Allison and I didn’t really have anything to do, but we did need to eat some food, so we found a kebap place to stop for a bit. Our flight out of the Brussels Chaleroi airport was at 7ish, so we decided to just walk through the city and give ourselves a tour. It was reasonably cold, but we made sure to wear almost all of our clothing. On our walk we got to see the main square (decorated with a life-size nativity scene with real sheep, a tree, and a bunch of lights), the main, and giant, judicial building, a cathedral, and a couple other important sights. About 1 we made it to the other side of the city where we needed to pick up our bus. We sat in the waiting room for about 3 hours and then took a bus to the airport. We then flew to Bratislava again Monday morning, and took a bus to Vienna. I got back in time to make it to class and then immediately fall asleep.

All in all, we had a blast. Allison and Paul became really good friends, and she even decided to fly out to Denver in January to make the drive to Davidson with us (Paul picks me up, and then she’ll see Peter too once we get there!). It was my last weekend traveling, and I was very ready to be done with all of that. Hopefully I’ll write on the plane tomorrow (if it goes!!!!) and have another post up soon! Thanks for reading, sorry for being so way far behind!