Asatour 2006: Getting There: Half the Fun?




Gods, I hope not. If getting there is truly half the fun, then this trip is going to suck.

Anyway, there's a traditional formula required for these entries, so here goes:

Greetings from Durham, England! I'm sitting in my dorm room within Durham Castle, overlooking the courtyard. Above the castle walls, I can see the spires of the cathedral. But more on that in my next entry. This entry is about how I got here.

On Friday morning, I left the US on a variety of planes, and flew east. This meant that, in the space of one week, I crossed both the Pacific (returning from Korea) and the Atlantic (heading to England). I am now mostly convinced that the human body was not intended to do that.

The plane rides were, for the most part, uneventful. Someone passed out on the first of them, and so we were met at the Memphis airport by Emergency Medical Services. I met some nice people on the flight from Minneapolis-St. Paul to London, who lived in Montana after giving up their high-stress lives in Denver. Good, fun, people, coming to England for a tour.

After arriving at London-Gatwick, I cleared customs fairly quickly. I then checked in to have my Britrail train pass activated, and proceeded to the train loading platforms...

...where I promptly sat down on the wrong train. The schedule I had received said the train from Gatwick to Kings Cross station would depart at 9:43. When I got there at 9:31 and saw a train at the station, I assumed... wrongly. As the train started into motion at 9:34, I turned to the lady beside me and said, "I realize this is a horrible time to ask, but where is this train going?"

I was on my way to Victoria Station, instead of Kings Cross. Not a big deal, I thought bravely. I just had to get a ticket on the London Underground (a separate train system) to go from the former to the latter. That wasn't quite as easy as I had expected. The train stations are complicated, particularly to me. The DC Metro system is fairly easy, and it's really my only point of comparison. I waited in line at a ticket machine, only to discover it didn't take pound notes and that I didn't have enough change to purchase a ticket. After wandering through several more very crowded lines, I found my way to a quick ticket window, purchased my ticket, climbed on the train, and after a couple more small misadventures, made it to Kings Cross, in time to climb aboard the train coming toward Durham...

upon which all the seats were reserved. (I realize I'm overdoing the ellipses in this entry, but everything about the journey here seems so cliffhangery, it's hard to resist.) I squatted down (with many others) in one of the small areas in between cars, adjacent to the bathroom, and we were off. The train ride was about 2 and a half hours. Upon arriving in Durham, I took a taxi to my hotel, whose literature boasted that the Beatles had stayed there in 1967. It wasn't a BAD hotel, but I found myself wondering if a) the Beatles had stayed in the summer; b) if the summer of 1967 may have been particularly cold; and, if not, then c)why the purple hel George, Paul, Ringo and John hadn't found some place else to stay. My room was hot and humid. The hallway, on the other hand, was quite cool, having several outside windows. I contemplated and rejected the idea of sleeping in the hallway, as it was not a very wide corridor.

The next morning, I awoke, packed, and checked out of the hotel, asking for assistance from the desk in obtaining a cab to University College, Durham. The cab driver arrived a short time later (I was sitting down allowing the last of the sweat from being in my room to dry in the much cooler outdoors), and we climbed in, prepared to go to University College, Durham...

...the location of which was completely unknown to the driver. This in spite of the fact that she had lived in the area her entire life, the fact that University College is housed in Durham Castle, and Durham Castle is adjacent to Durham Cathedral. Nope, no bells. She dropped me off in the City Centre, because she knew this was close to the area, from the instructions she had obtained after asking someone waiting for a bus.

I tucked my luggage under my arm, and began to walk away from the Castle. I walked away from the Castle for approximately one half hour before turning around and seeing it on the hill. I then stopped for lunch, rehydrated, and began the arduous trek up the footpath to the Castle and Cathedral.

And that's really the first leg of travel for the journey, in a very "Perils of Pauline" style, I know. And yeah, it WAS fun. I realize that. I laughed at myself a lot, even when I was hot and frustrated. I managed to hang onto an attitude that I was learning by doing, and, to quote a saying I saw on a calendar, "A mistake is simply a different way of doing something."

At the moment I'm having trouble plugging my universal adapter into the British outlets here in the castle, so stay tuned for more in the continuing saga. Next time I'll talk about the Cathedral and Castle and the conference itself, in an entry I'm considering calling "The Venerable Frickin' Bede!"

Oh yeah, goals so far for the trip:
1. Learn to hear and say "Brilliant" without thinking of a box of crayons.
2. Try to figure out why I have this strange idea in my head that learning the language of a foreign country is good, but attempting to emulate the dialect in a country which speaks the same language as you is bad.

Posted: Mon - August 7, 2006 at 05:56 AM       |    

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