26 July 2007

Taking a Bath

Nick spent a weekend recently with some work friends travelling down to the Roman town of Bath in southwestern England. Other than London, this has been our first foray into the south, though we have plans to start exploring that area of the country next. On the way down we saw this welcome sign on the highway, and it brought a tear to my eye for the sweet land of Penn’s woods. This English Pennsylvania doesn’t give beautiful PA, USA much competition, since as far as we could tell it consisted of 300 yards of road and a Shell gas station, but the sign was thrilling. I wonder if that Shell attendant appreciates what a well-named town he’s working in.

Bath on the other hand, was really nice, and thinking about it may have been the last weekend it didn’t rain here (2 months ago?!). It was the only time yet this summer that I needed sunglasses, but my cool new £4 H&M aviator glasses let me down like it was their job, with the metal frames staining my skin green. I had these green lines under my eyes that made me look like I got beat up by the Incredible Hulk.


Other than having a stained green face, it was a fun weekend of sightseeing and getting to know some friends from work better. The main attraction of the town is the ancient Roman Bath house, which still has hot water bubbling up into the main spring today. You can taste the water (which was HORRIBLE) at the “historic” pump house and it makes you really appreciate how far humanity has come: from drinking this awful warm brew of 50 minerals, to eating chewable Flintstones vitamins to get our nutrients today. I’ll take the Flintstones any day. Orange please.


Check out some pictures of our adventure in cleanliness here.

Horstmania: A Game-Playing Nation

Oh, is it ever! If you are not familiar with the quirkiness of my family, we call ourselves ‘Horstmania’ instead of the much more boring ‘Horstman family’. And if you don’t know that we border on obsession with games, then you don’t know my family at all, and might be reading the wrong blog! We are known for spending days going from game to game with amazing stamina. As soon as we grow tired of one game, someone asks, ‘So, what’s the next activity?’ and we are off again!

I’ve felt a bit deprived this year, as there have only been a few days or nights that we have convinced people to play games with us, and they were not all rousing successes. You may have heard us bemoaning our attempt to play Apples to Apples (can you believe they didn’t know who Lucille Ball is?) or heard the story of ‘the penny game,’ which is a bit too PG-13 for this blog.

Thankfully, six weeks with Aidan will put that right in a hurry! Friends in England would ask, ‘What are you doing tonight?’ and the answer was almost always the same: Games! Our favorites included:

  • Pub quizzes – We’ve already posted some of our favourite questions from this, but it’s worth noting the sheer volume of pub quizzes we completed: over 240! We did quizzes all over Birmingham and Paris. We even became known at several coffee shops, where they would start making our drinks as soon as we walked in, and ask, ‘Do you have that book with you again?’ Man, are we crazy!
  • Reverse Apples to Apples – this is a Horstmanian specialty, taking the roughly 500 ‘noun’ cards through multiple elimination rounds to find our favourite. There’s no good way to explain it, other than to say it is intense!
  • Online quizzes and crosswords – Aidan and I would spend hours on these.
  • And of course, 1950’s Wii! Buddy brought his Wii with him, and we had a blast trying it out, but unfortunately the video wouldn’t read completely correctly, so it was in black and white the whole time. At the beginning it really threw us off, but now I’m convinced that Wii’s were never meant to be played in color.

With Meggy and Andrew here, the games just continue! We spent both Sunday and Monday night sitting around playing cards, which becomes more and more fun as Andrew becomes more and more ridiculous.

It IS making me question our hosting skills, however, as in the middle of a game Andrew said, ‘This is just like camping!’ We clearly need to show them a better time – they can’t have flown all the way to England to do the same things we would do if we were sitting in the woods of Ohio!

24 July 2007

It's a Family Affair

I have been completely spoiled with family this summer! After six weeks with my brother, my sister and her boyfriend, Megan (or Megs, Meggy, Lindsay, sis, sissy – all of the above apply!) flew in Friday morning. They have really brought ‘home’ to me, and have kept feelings of loneliness and homesickness at bay. I’m already sad that they are only here for a little over two weeks.

Unfortunately for Meggy and Andrew, Friday was the second-worst weather day we have had since we moved to England (second only to the one day of snow!) – torrential flooding that left many people stranded. In fact, the runways at the airport became completely inaccessible just a few hours after they landed. That would have made for a terrible first flight for Andrew, who had never flown before this trip but will fly 8 times before he’s back home! Thankfully, the worst we experienced was a very wet Friday and a long trip home by bus as all trains were cancelled, and a wet journey into Coventry on Saturday. And a bit of disappointment from Megs and Andrew, as they had foolishly packed for summer not realising that England has no such thing!

We had the weekend with the two of them before they headed up to Edinburgh today, and then on a backpacker’s tour that Nick and I did a few years ago with John, Eric and Scott, and that the Burdette Brothers did during their visit. They get back in Friday night, we’ll take a day-trip and then it’s off to Amsterdam for four days! We’re really looking forward to the time away with them to explore a new place, and I expect we will have plenty of great stories to tell.

17 July 2007

Birmingham: The Hollywood of England


The eyes of the (rock) world turned to Birmingham last Friday as the prince of darkness (or what’s left of him) Ozzy Osbourne unveiled his inaugural star on the “Walk of Fame” along Broad street. It was a crazy train of emotion when Ozzy mumbled something into the microphone, had a mild seizure, and then posed as this brilliantly executed marketing move for Birmingham kicked off. You can see from the full article that the notoriety of Birmingham’s stars fall off pretty fast after Ozzy. His might be the only star on the nascent walk that anyone recognizes, but hey, a second-rate “Hollywood style” walk of fame is just another great reason to visit this city of the arts!

13 July 2007

American Food: a Lucrative Commodity

Ever since we moved to England back in August we have been fairly convinced that compared to local cuisine American food is just…well…better. We thought a lot of this had to be subjective, since of course, you just like what you grow up with, but a recent trip to the upscale Selfridges department store in Birmingham proved our case once and for all. In a special section dedicated purely to American food (even decorated with stars and stripes) we found all of the classics: microware popcorn, fake macaroni and cheese, Reeces peanut butter cups, even Lucky Charms! It was a carefree wonderland of dancing, skipping joy until we realized how expensive they all were: converting to USD people here are willing to pay:

$4 – Small box of Kraft macaroni and cheese
$10 – Bag of Double Stuf Oreos
$12 – Jar of Skippy peanut butter
$14 – Box of Lucky Charms cereal

Unbelievable! We are thinking to quit our jobs and start importing macaroni and cheese, getting it for 20 cents in the US and selling it here. Now I know that Brits may say it is only crazy American expats who are buying this stuff, but basic economics tells us that these things must actually sell at these lucrative prices, PROVING their higher quality and general deliciousness. You can’t charge $10 for a bag of English tea biscuits.

On the other end of the spectrum, John spotted the following item in the store when he was here, decidedly absent from American supermarkets:

If you click on the picture you should be able to read the package…hilarious! The best selling point is its “surprisingly delicious chocolatey taste” following directly after “picked and regurgitated by a weasel”. Mmmm…I love the smell of weasel coffee in the morning. This was displayed along with the traditional chocolate-covered ants, shots of liquor with a big, juicy worm, and tequila-flavored suckers with scorpions at the center (a bit different from what you find in a tootsie pop!). Equally impressively disgusting were the prices - $20 for one of these suckers!

12 July 2007

An Americans in Paris

Last weekend we conquered England’s greatest defence. What has protected this island for thousands of years, what foiled Napoleon and Hitler alike was defeated with a single ticket purchase. The convenient strip of water that has insulated England from the world for human history, the English Channel, was crossed by three upbeat Americans laughing, reading, and playing games in the space of 20 minutes. What a great age we live in.

The three of us (Lauren, her brother Aidan, and Nick) set off Friday morning catching a train to London and then picking up the high-speed Eurostar train from London Waterloo staion. After an eventful trip through security, with Nick being forced to eat his lunch alone with the security guard since he made the mistake of going through the entrance and couldn’t leave, we were off to France at 190 mph! For parts of the trip we travelled next to the highway, and it was fun to fly past the cars in the fast lane like they were standing still. We made it to the “aromatic” subways of Paris by late afternoon and our hotel just before dinner. Our surprisingly affordable posh-pad was south of the river Seine, which cuts the city in half running roughly west-to-east.

After a dinner out where the waiter spoke like Donald Duck when Lauren ordered duck and flew a remote-controlled helicopter around the restaurant, we realized that Paris wouldn’t exactly match the stereotypes we had. We turned on the TV and found that we got channels in 7 languages, including a very frightening Russian talk show, and an equally frightening Japanese karaoke channel. The best though was the CRAZY show about America featuring interviews with the fringes of American culture including three guys drinking on a dark basement staircase telling the French “how it was” in America. We made it our goal to be the nice, friendly, “normal” kind of Americans for our time in Paris—ambassadors of awesome, if you will.

Over the next three days we saw and did a ton, including a riverboat tour of Paris, trips to the Louvre, Pompidou Center, Luxemburg Gardens, Notre Dame, a Parisian food market, and of course, the Eiffel Tower. You can see pictures of some of these here, but sadly, the 4th member of our team (our digital camera) died after years of exceptional service. Unfortunately, this means that Nick will be forced to get a nicer, new camera with lots of sweet features for the rest of our trips this summer. Too bad.

Generally we were impressed by how relaxed Paris was: the historic center is much smaller than London and the wide streets, cafes everywhere, and great parks make it easy to just lounge. The number of cafes is really amazing, I guess they are there to cope with the masses of tourists but it seems like Parisians must not cook much at home either. We spent an afternoon relaxing in a park, and enjoyed people watching, including a group of men hunched around a table playing speed chess in what seemed to be the “chess” section of the park. They had to tap this timer and games only lasted like 5 minutes, which was amazing - it looked like a highly choreographed 'hand dance'. We totally could have taken them.

The food market was a good experience too, and we had fun pointed at food and then making ridiculous hand-motions and sounds to try to explain how much cheese, or bread, or olives we wanted. English definitely didn’t get you too far in Paris, and we were reliant on Aidan’s French many times. We would point at some things, he would utter strange sounds and then we got those things…it was a good system. One of the best meals we had was our last lunch, on this cool island east of Notre Dame. We did a little walking tour of the island, checked out some of the shops and then found a little crepe restaurant off the main street. There was no English to be had there, but the owner was friendly and made great crepes. Like the rest of Paris, eating a meal there was a very leisurely activity, and our waitresses always seemed surprised when we wanted to pay and actually leave. Though the industrious American in me would find the pace hard to get use to, Paris is a great place to go for a vacation…it’s all just so relaxed. We had a great time taking it all in.



Chewing on a sandwich on the way home and looking out the window as the French countryside sped by I was struck again by what an amazing opportunity this stint out of the US has been. Many things are close to the same…but vastly different as well. The fields looked similar to the ones I had driven through hundreds of times in the States, but I could look out the window as the 180 mph train blurred the heads of grain and imagine generations of farmers who worked these fields as the centuries stretch back. This was the edge of the known world at one time, and the site of so many lives and wars, feasts and funerals. These fields have seen so much, yet still they are here to yield food to the people of France today. The history in this part of the world is incredible, and reminds you how short our 3 score and 10 years walking on it are.

04 July 2007

Happy 4th of July!


Happy Independence Day! We hope that you are all celebrating with friends and family, eating lots of good food, and watching beautiful fireworks! We are missing everyone back home and celebrating by, er, working! I did bring in a cake to work and we all took a coffee break, ate cake and chatted about America, which then turned into a discussion of how hard it is to get through airport security in the USA, so that was both special AND patriotic! As I'm sure Tim can attest, since I now have co-workers who read the blog regularly (note to self: don't link to the company website if you don't want people from the company to find your blog. There goes an entire wealth of funny work stories that I won't be posting!). Also, Aidan is still here so maybe we will sing some 'America the Beautiful', 'Star Spangled Banner' and 'Yankee Doodle Dandy' tonight!

It is very strange to be outside of the States on the 4th. This is Nick's first 'foreign 4th', but it's actually my third: one in Mexico and one at sea. It is my first, though, without a group of Americans to celebrate with. And it does feel a bit sad and strange, lonely and isolated. It especially makes us think about all the things that make America special and home for us, such as the open, loving people we were surrounded by, the food, the weather (this was the wettest June on record!), shops being open past 6.....the list goes on and on!

We can't complain too much though - although we are working and isolated today, we did just spend a long weekend in Paris, with lots of good stories that we will have to write about soon.