Yanks in the UK

It all Ends with a Book

2011-10-13T18:29:00.003+01:00

After nearly 3 years back in the US, we've finaly compiled a book!! It includes this blog and our travels afterward. Check it out here

Picasa III

2008-10-20T22:32:00.003+01:00

With the massive amounts of photo taking/processing going around here recently, I'm pretty excited about this new version of Google's Picasa software. You can do photo cropping, tuning, and touchups, and can even have it find photos you have with faces in them, or sort by color. Between the color sorting and the collage feature, I was able to make this nice little piece of Yanks in the UK memorabilia:

If you want a simple but powerful photo processing tool I'd highly recommend it.

Photo Explosion

2008-10-15T21:18:00.001+01:00

Well, it’s hard to even see what I’m typing with all of the dust and spiderwebs on this blog, but it’s high time for a post! The yanks in the UK have been so busy with travel and work, that their UK life has remained sadly undocumented. Thankfully even if we can’t manage much text I have plenty of photos cued up for viewing. Here is the fastest summary of 3 months ever:

Budapest: Awesome city with lots of interesting soviet history and amazing thermal baths—3 day weekend there.

Normandy: My friend John and re-enacted the D-Day invasion arriving in Normandy by car ferry from Portsmouth. Gin and Tonics in the piano lounge possibly better conditions that actual Allied troops in WWII.

Camping with our favorite British family in Wales

Week in Novia Scotia, Canada with Lauren’s family in a house on the sea. Bears, moose, and foxes galore.

Burdette parents visit! Week showing Mom and Dad every corner of

England

in 7 days.

Olympics Abroad

2008-09-05T18:59:00.001+01:00

Now that the smoke from the fireworks has cleared, Oprah's filmed her ‘Welcome Home Olympians’ episode and Michael Phelps has donated that bonus, it's time to reflect on the good, the bad and the ugly of viewing the Games from another country.

It was an Olympics Opening Ceremony for the record books! The 2008 drummers and 3000 Confucian disciples were awe-inspring. Multiple times during the ceremonies I had to pinch myself, I couldn’t quite believe that what I was witnessing was real life. The footstep fireworks and the over-the-top performances felt more like a sci-fi flick than something that could occur in my lifetime. Because Nick is on the Olympics Team at Arup (unfortunately, not the team that actually goes and competes, although he does have a gold medal for working on the project for over 1000 hours), they watched the Opening Ceremonies at work, a nice way to spend the afternoon. There were plenty of jokes and general hysteria when President Bush was shown in the stands.

He saw the ceremonies for the second time later that evening, when we headed over to a friends for dinner. Gareth, who is a proud Welshman who has lived in Australia, his flatmate Tami, Naomi (both of whom are lovely English women), and Marwa, our friend from Syria, had dinner and watched the entire Opening Ceremonies on tape. It was great fun to see the reactions of people from all these countries to the ceremonies. At the end of the big show, the Brits all said, ‘Well, that’s it – we’re screwed. We’ll never be able to compete in 4 years!’ Someone said, ‘We won’t even bother to try!’

The Parade of Nations was a particular highlight. We got out a book of maps and an atlas and tried to find each country as they were announced (two comments on that – one, I know that sounds nerdy, but there was plenty of wine so it was quite entertaining! And two – all of that would have been irrelevant had my amazing brother been present, as his geo-political knowledge is frighteningly extensive). Marwa would poke fun at most countries as they entered the Bird’s Nest, saying outrageously inappropriate things in a thick accent, like, ‘Look at those French! Look at the silly way they walk!’; ‘Oh, the Germans! I bet they are all drunk!’and ‘Look at the Egyptians, they are all on steroids, and they still won’t be any good!’ She was immensely proud when Syria’s tiny contingent of athletes entered, scrunched in between the giant Russian and American teams. When the American team came out, Gareth said, 'You guys are so uplifting! It's like, don't worry, the Americans are here, everything's going to be ok!'

After our charming evening, I thought, ‘wow, these games are going to be amazing! What an incredible cultural experience, we’re really appreciating the global nature of the games for the first time!’ But what I hadn’t grasped was that watching the games in another country is, in some ways, the equivalent of not watching the games at all. Instead of hearing Bob Costas comforting voice each night walking me through hours of coverage (sidenote – does anyone else think Bob Costas has the best job ever?), seeing the pull at our heartstrings back stories of atheletes, missing out on the statistics and stories and longer coverage that you can afford to do with a greater budget and larger viewing audience. All the BBC could offer me was an hour of highlights each evening at 7 pm, highlights that were British in nature. That meant I saw very little of Nastia Liukin’s gold-medal-winning routine but saw the one British contender for the uneven bars’ routine about 5 times; no volleyball, beach or indoor, no women’s basketball, soccer or softball, very few American moments at all – but I DID see hours of sailing and, worst of all, cycling at the velodrome. After the first few nights, I wanted to pull my hair out. After the first week, I had completely given up.

A couple of stories will, I hope, highlight just how truly different (and inferior) the coverage was. On the first Sunday, I saw that basketball was on, and that the US team was playing China. ‘Awesome!’ I thought, ‘This will be so cool to see America’s greatest players against the best that Team China has to offer, just seeing this group of guys playing together will be a treat.’ I truly felt like my father’s child as I cracked open a beer and sat Indian-style on the floor in front of the tv, ready for a great game. After 5 minutes, they cut forward to the end of the first half. Then, 5 minutes later, they cut forward to the last 5 minutes of the game! And that was that for my Olympic basketball viewing. What came on immediately after, you may wonder? Archery.

The next night, I watched the Olympics highlights, knowing that Michael Phelps had swam that day and that surely, at the very least, they would cover that. And they did – they showed the race in full. Then they cut back to the studio, and said, ‘That makes 2 medals now for Phelps – time to add another medal!’ They then panned over, where there stood a CARDBOARD Phelps! They then put a gold medal around his neck! How sad is that? They knew they’d never get to talk to him, never get to interview him, so they honoured him with a cardboard cut-out. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Somehow the BBC got Michael Johnson to do their track commentary, which was the one shining moment of the games. He is articulate and bright and brings the sport of track to life. When he was first in the studio, the first thing they asked him was, ‘Have you seen our own Michael Phelps over there?’ He replied, ‘Um, yeah, that’s kind of weird.’

Olympics Fever

2008-08-20T21:03:00.009+01:00

Very soon I'm going to do a post on what it's like to watch the greatest international sporting event in another country. To whet the appetite of those of you who share my complete Olympics obsession, here's a string of links to interesting, often funny and sometimes poignant trivia from the history of the games. Most of these come from mental_floss, which has a great blog full of random trivia and brain teasers.

The weirdest Olympics events of all times (singles synchronized swimming? Are you kidding?)
In the same vein, 12 sports that were cut from the Olympics (rugby could make a come-back!)
Strange paths to multiple medals - my favorite is the Yale/Harvard/Oxford grad who won gold in boxing AND bob-sledding!
Cassius Clay throwing his gold medal into the Ohio River is one of '13 Medal-Worthy Olympic Performances'
For those of you obsessed with the structures of the Olympics, like Arup's Bird's Nest, Water Cube, and Nick Burdette's Amazing Bridge of the 2012 Games, here's a story on how past Olympics venues are being used now.
And if that's still not enough, here's 7 completely random Olympics stories that you've probably never heard before (seriously, how could you NOT get a perfect 10 in the gymnastics event of rope-climbing?)

Trip Catchup Take 1

2008-07-29T22:13:00.003+01:00

As we've finally settled down enough to have some time to be home and post about our travels, it's time to get this blog up-to-date! I'm shocked to see that we have trips as far back as April that remain un-posted, so we'll have to try to knock a bunch out in a row. Get ready for lots and lots of sporadically labeled pictures.

Backlog Trip #1: York, UK (pictures here)

In what was probably our longest Peugeot road trip to date, we drove up to York in the north east of England for a 2 days and a night with our friend from Syria. York is known for its cathedral, the York Minster which was the first building to rise higher than the Great Pyramid, the highest structure in the world for 3500 years or so. York was really charming (though rainy while we were there) and you can definitely understand why everyone here would say it is the number 1 or 2 nicest English town. On the way back, we made a long detour to check out the longest bridge in England (5^th in the world?), the Humber Bridge, which was pretty amazing.

Backlog Trip #2: Northern Italy (pictures here)

Most of our British friends here are appalled by the number of sites and destinations that we cram into our trips, but I think our long weekend in Italy will stand as the high watermark of our insanity for some time. What began as a long weekend in Venice turned into what seemed like a competition to ride every mile of railway track in Northern Italy, as our travel map bellow suggests.

The trip began with a bit of recklessness from the start: over a 3 day UK holiday weekend I saw it was much cheaper to fly into Rimini south of Venice and out from Milan that direct to Venice, so I booked it. Upon further research, it turns out these locations are 4+ hours from Venice, but no matter, we had 3 nights and 3 days to do it all. We landed in Rimini, which is a tiny airport and the one taxi waiting left pretty quickly. After a 20 minute wait for the bus, I remembered the airport wasn’t THAT far from our hotel on google maps, and vaguely remembered we needed to walk to the beach then north. Off we went with all of our things in the backpack, and 4 hours later were still heading north, looking for any vehicle that looked even a little like a cab to collapse into. We did finally find our hotel (on foot), and got up early the next morning to spend a few hours on the beach before catching the train to Venice.

In Venice our travel challenges continued when our hostel was full and we needed to find a place to sleep for 2 nights of a very busy May weekend. Thankfully, a bookstore nearby had a sign out front advertising a B&B (beds and books). The owner showed us 8 beds he had set up in his storage room amidst hundreds and hundreds of Italian books and magazines. We smiled and said it was great.

After the challenges of getting there, Venice was well-worth our hardships and we loved it. The water everywhere, tiny winding streets on which you have to suck in let people pass, the food, and the architecture were all amazing. There really is nowhere like Venice. We had a great time taking boat trips out to two of the other islands in the Venetian Lagoon, Murano and Burano. Murano was the glass-making capital of Europe for centuries, and Burono is a fishing village with beautiful brightly-painted houses.

Our last and most extreme travel ‘hiccup’ occurred at the airport in Milan. The woman at the ticket counter kindly showed me that our return tickets had been purchased for a date 3 weeks in the future. DISASTER. At the Ryanair help desk, the attendant couldn’t even say out loud the price of 2 tickets for the flight leaving in 1 hour for Birmingham, she had to type the number into a calculator and slide it to me discreetly. Well, I guess the good news was we could stay in Italy to wait 3 weeks for the price of those tickets.

After a few dark and desperate hours, the airport internet café came through huge and we found a flight back to Birmingham from Pisa late the next day. Back on the train we went, making the 5 hour trip to Pisa and arriving late that night. We emailed our respective employers to tell them work the next day wasn’t going to work so well, and decided to make the most of the beautiful day and enjoy our impromptu visit to Pisa.

Checking our tickets 100 times and arriving at the airport 3 hours before our flight, we managed to board a plane out of Italy and breathed a sigh of relief when we touched down in England that night. It was truly an amazing/insane Italian adventure! I think our British friends are right, we are crazy.

John - Good-on-yer, mate!

2008-07-27T17:35:00.006+01:00

Last weekend we saw off our good friend John, Nick's closest work colleague here, who moved to AUSTRALIA last week. He's transferring to the Brisbane office for - well, for as long as he wants to stay, really. We had his going-away party last weekend, then helped him finish packing and sent him off. We're excited/proud/tiny bit jealous of this adventure that he's on.

There were around 20 people at the party, with 8 nations represented - I love that about Nick's workplace, so different from mine where I'm the only 'diversity' going. There were people from Malaysia, China, Portugal, America (hmm, who could they be?), Spain, Poland, Syria, Wales, England, etc. We were at a Mexican restaurant, and I was sitting next to our Polish friend Lucazs, who like many others had ordered fajitas. His food had arrived and mine hadn't, and I said, 'Go ahead and eat, it's fine!' He said 'I don't know how! I do not understand this food, what do you do with it?' I was amazed that he'd never had fajitas, or any Mexican food for that matter before! After he'd managed to roll one up (asking about what the salsa and guacamole were), he said 'This is a very difficult meal. I do not understand why people would want to work so hard for their food.'

Another of Nick's friends, Mike, had just got back from a wedding in California and was regaling everyone with tales of this exotic land that is America. Nick and I listened, amused, as he enthused about burgers (I will never eat a burger here again! I am ruined for life, he said), and shared how confused he was by driving. That was surprising to hear, because most people find the driving in America so easy. The combination of straight roads, lanes that are actually wide enough for a car, and automatic transmissions makes for smooth sailing compared to British standards. However, Mike was confused by two things - crosswalks and stop signs.

For crosswalks, he felt that we didn't do quite enough for them. He said 'A line painted across the road could mean anything!' He couldn't understand how we could get by without thick lines of vertical paint and flashing lights to mark them.

On stop signs, he said 'Stop really means stop - it really does!' As though he had come to a stunning revelation. Happily for Mike, who is quite polished and speaks with a posh accent, not knowing this led to his favorite American encounter. As he attempted to roll through a stop sign, a guy shouted at him in a southern accent 'A**hole!' Mike responded, 'I'm ever so sorry, did I do something wrong?' To which he received--er...a commonly used automobiling hand gesture. We might have found the exchange normal or annoying, but he was so excited to have encountered a real, live, Angry American, like when the black bear at the zoo roars.

You can imagine how proud Nick and I were hearing this story! We showed those Brits who rules the roads.

Office Life in Britain

2008-07-21T13:47:00.004+01:00

I’ve been spending a whole lot of time at the office recently, so while we catch up on organizing travel pictures I might as well tell a bit about work life.

To start, we’ve been embroiled in a fierce inter-office competition called the Arup Cup for some time now, with teams (like bridges, highways, IT) competing in ridiculous competitions over lunch to assert office dominance and presumably build morale. The British are known for inventing games (croquet, rugby, soccer, billiards, cricket, cheese-rolling, etc.) and then loosing to the rest of the world in those games. No, no, that’s a bit harsh, and I have to compliment them on the incredible array of sports they’ve developed. The nearest comparison I can make is that Brits of all ages seem to be as inventive as US college students in dreaming up new games and competitions.

I’ll give you a flavour for their inventiveness with two of the recent Campus Cup activities: the Pancake Race and Wellie Wanging. The origins of Pancake Day in Britain seem similar to Mardi Gras in French-speaking countries and it is a celebration that precedes Lent. Since Lent is a period of fasting and eating simply, rich ingredients like butter and sugar would all be used up by making tons of thin pancakes then eating them. That’s all pretty straight-forward, but the office adopted this into a bizarre race where teams need to flip a pancake on a skillet while ducking under or jumping over poles, and finally running through a gauntlet of co-workers armed with whiffle balls. My bridges team was pleased to be crowned winner for this event, as you can see from the proud photo:

The competition continued in another great British test of manhood: Wellie Wanging. A bit of preference: a “Wellie” is a type of completely waterproof boot worn by the Duke of Wellington which most Brits are obsessed with. I certainly understand how important waterproof clothing must be to them here, but the Wellie seems to enjoy an almost cult following. Anyway, in an effort to look for new ways to use their boots, the game of Wellie Wanging was invented where you pretty much just see who can hurl a Wellie the farthest. Here’s a great one of me mid-launch:

So yeah, all in all a pretty serious place to work. It’s not just games though--the other week I had to go down to the London office for a long, boring, and ostensibly important meeting. They gave us an hour break for lunch, so I pulled out my trusty A-Z street map and found I was 5 minutes walk from the British Library. That sounded like a nice destination, so I went there and over my lunch hour saw i) an original Guttenberg Bible, ii) the Magna Carta, iii) the first map of America, iv) Leonardo Da Vinci’s notebook, and got a sandwich in the café. It was the most culturally scintillating lunch ever, and you can’t do that many places…I mean antiquities and good roast beef!?

Walking Heroes

2008-07-14T18:44:00.008+01:00

My Mom and her sister, Aunt Mary Beth, are my heroes. They are both cancer survivors in remission, praise God. About a year ago, last June, they read that if you walked for 30 minutes over the course of the day, you reduce your risk of cancer recurrence. Most people would hear that, sigh, and add it to the bottom of their list of things to accomplish for the day. Not Mom and Aunt Mary Beth. They heard it as a challenge to rise to. Unfortunately, Mary Beth lives in Oklahoma (note – that is NOT the unfortunate bit!) and Mom lives nearly 800 miles away in Ohio, so it would be impossible for them to walk together and hold each other accountable….

Until they had the idea to virtually walk towards each other. Each month, they decided, they would track their miles walked, getting closer and closer to the other, until they met in the middle around St. Louis! Nick made a map for them that he updated each month with the miles walked by each, and the total percentage complete. Here’s their October map, 4 months in:

You’ll notice there are symbols in Springfield, Ohio and Tulsa, Oklahoma to represent our intrepid walkers on the next map, from December. Mom’s is Schuler’s Donuts, the absolute best donuts in the world, and Mary Beth’s is the sign for….er…some historic movie theater that I don’t know. There’s also symbols next to their names: Mom has cowboy boots for her country dancing and Mary Beth has eye glasses for her love of reading.

Finally, finally, finally, after 10 months of solid, hard-core walking, they reached each other! And actually met up in real life, with a long weekend in St. Louis in May (see fireworks below).

The picture below is from a different trip, but it sums up the celebrating that occurred! I am so proud of you both!

Easter ‘08: 6 Days, 3 Countries (Part II, finaly)

2008-06-18T18:00:00.001+01:00

The Great French Roadtrip: Conquering the Coast

We picked up our sweet French rental car in Perpignan after a solid 4 hour bus trip from Barcelona up the coast. The French highway system is really good (though you stop to pay a toll every 10 minutes) and our car cruised like a dream. Since all speeds were in some meaningless km/h unit I didn’t pay them much attention, and was more interested in trying to figure out how the windshield wipers knew to come on automatically as soon as it started to rain. Those French do make some pretty cool cars.

Our first stop, to celebrate my 26th birthday was the valley town of Millau, home to one of the top 5 most amazing bridges in the world! We beheld the Millau Viaduct as the sun was getting low on my birthday, and what a present it was. We made it to the bridge gift shop 15 minutes before closing, and pretty much cleaned them out. If anyone wants to borrow a fascinating 30 minute video on the viaduct, you just let me know.

The four of us spent the night in Millau, which is a wonderfully quaint French town on its own, and overshadowing it with the highest vehicular bridge in the world only improved it. The next morning we followed an elderly French couple to what seemed to be the only church in town open for Easter mass. It was interesting to take part in the service in French, and afterwards we had lattes, bought a lunch of baguettes and cheese, and generally tried to blend in with the locals.

Next, we travelled 2000 years into the past to see probably the best example of Roman bridge-building in the world: the Pont Du Gard (2 bridges in 2 days…who planned this trip!!). This 3 level stone aqueduct was part of a water system that carried water from springs in the French Alps to the town of Nimes 70 miles away. The bridge looks stunning in the sunlight and you can wander all over the site: up the hills on either side, over the pedestrian level, or along the River Gard which it crosses.

Happy and contented with pictures of bridges dancing through our heads we headed back to Nimes where we had a hostel for the night. We quickly learned that not much had changed on the streets of the city since Roman times, and it is the most challenging/frustrating driving experience of my life! New York’s northing, you should try driving in Nimes. Anyway, after 2 hours of winding through the narrowest, oldest streets of France we found our hostel and managed to crash our car out front. That night we managed a walk to see Nimes’ main claim to fame: the well-preserved Roman amphitheatre.

The next morning, ready to leave Nimes forever, we set off on an unbelievable road trip of discovery (note how much stuff is going to happen before I write about going to sleep again). So, we set off fairly early and headed down through Marseille, France’s second city and a tricky one to get through. We drove along the coast and saw the famous Château d'If prison out in the harbour, where the Count of Monte Cristo was held in the book, the Count of Monte Cristo, which was about a count, who lived in a place called Monte Cristo.

Right, taking a tunnel (?) out of the city we headed down the coast and down a HUGE cliff to the beautiful fishing town of Cassis. We had some coffee and walked around the harbour some, then got lunch overlooking the sailboats bobbing in the crystal blue sea. I read that one of the best drives in France was along the cliff tops east of Cassis, so we wound our way up what can only be described as an incredibly dangerous road. The wind was insane that day, so the cliff top drive was closed for safety, which was extremely disappointing to our car’s driver but deeply comforting to its 3 passengers. Instead we found a road to the top of a cliff and got out to be nearly blown over by the unbelievable coastal winds. There’s a great video on our picture link at the end of all this that shows how crazy the wind was that day.

Finding our way back to the main road, we continued along the coast through Toulon and down to another of the top drives in France along the D559 north of Le Lavandou. The coast there undulates up onto huge cliffs then down to protected beach coves and the road and coastal villages follow right along. We kept stopping to snap pictures out to sea or try to get out onto a beach…it was a great drive. After an afternoon of driving and stopping, we decided to visit St-Tropez to ogle at how the other half lives. We walked around checking out the high-end designer shops, beautiful people, and enormous yachts with names like “don’t touch”, “all mine”, and “I’m so rich it hurts”. We bought a postcard.

Back on the road, we got stuck in a 40 minute line to pay for a toll, which seemed to show that building a fast road to make people stop every 10 minutes and pay a toll results in a very slow, expensive road. Finally well after sunset we made it to our goal for the evening: the posh principality of Monaco. Having just walked the streets of St-Tropez we were used to looking glamorous, and I know I certainly cut a dashing figure in my grey fleece, jeans, and sneakers. I popped my collar for that extra boost of panache.

We made the usual rounds through the city and checked out the casino Monte Carlo (they wouldn’t let us on the actual floor), the Grand Prix circuit, and the harbour. Monaco is an amazing jumble of buildings and you can tell they really tried to cram as much as possible into their tiny country. The hillside starts with a road, then houses, then a bridge carrying a road over those houses, then houses built above that, with a road coming through a tunnel, with houses on top of that. It’s not somewhere you’d live if you wanted a backyard. Anyway, we got dinner at a nice restaurant with a picture of the prince smiling away at us and pictures of his mom, princess Grace, everywhere.

At 11 or so we decided it really was probably time to head back to Nice where we were staying for the night, and arrived at our hotel just before 1. What a day!

The next morning we took Eric and Dez to the airport to catch their flight to Paris (turns out France is actually really, really big and Paris is not just next door) where they would spend a few days before coming to Birmingham. Lauren and I spent a few hours on the beach that morning, and then did a quick cliff-top drive before flying out ourselves. Not bad for 6 days!

Whew…TRIP PHOTOS

Oh that’s right we have a blog…

2008-06-18T12:19:00.002+01:00

Task: keep friends and family up to speed on our UK livin’ with regular blog posts
Performance: complete multi-level failure with no blog activity for 49 days
Attitude: Sheepish and generally contrite
Excuses: Extensive. (i) Suspension of regular life for non-stop glut of travel, work, illness, and deprivation of sleep (ii) 4 weeks of solid visitors (iii) flooding of apartment floorspace cutting off home internet connection for 3+ weeks.
Action Plan: (i) beg reader’s forgiveness, (ii) storm landlord’s house demanding basic human rights, (iii) write shorter posts more regularly

We're about 5 trips behind now but we'll start to work on catching up!

Easter ‘08: 6 Days, 3 Countries (Part 1)

2008-04-29T08:34:00.004+01:00

Whoo-hoo visitors! After a 6-month visitor hiatus we were excited to welcome our Pitt friends Dez and Eric to Birmingham for the first time just recently. Not wanting our guests to come to the greatest city in Europe first and thus make the rest of their trip a sad anticlimax, we decided to do Birmingham last after an Easter holiday trip to more mundane destinations, like Barcelona and the south of France. The UK gets Good Friday and Easter Monday off, so with an extra 2 days your average euro-worker can put together a pretty sweet holiday: we flew down to Spain on Thursday to meet our brave countrymen.
We met Eric and Dez on a busy side street in Barcelona outside our apartment for the next 2 nights. After some happy hellos and stories about Spanish language difficulties (they tried to find out what they were ordering for breakfast only to have the waitress start clucking and flapping her arms like a chicken laying an egg!), we set off to catch the late afternoon sun in the Park Guell: a surreal (Antoni) Gaudi-designed park on a hill overlooking the city.

From our experiences there, Barcelona seems to be about two things: food and architecture. I’m sure they’re great at lots of other things too, but we didn’t get much past those two. The city’s most famous son is the early 20th century architect Gaudi, who helped to invent the Art Nouveau style and designed many totally unique buildings around the city. You really got a sense for his style at Park Guell, which he designed for a wealthy count who wanted to sell houses in the park to Barcelona’s rich and famous. The project was a commercial flop, but the park looks amazing and it a great place to be at sunset.

Architecture is way easier to show than describe, so now might be a good time to check out our Barcelona pictures so you see what I mean!

Our first night in the city we discovered that our nice 3rd floor apartment was on the most happening street corner in Barcelona, and people don’t seem to need sleep in Spain. Poor Eric fared the worst, and it took a lot of coffee in this nice local café to get us going the next morning. Once we got going, though, we didn’t stop. We started with a metro trip to Barcelona’s most famous attraction, Gaudi’s partially completed (under construction for almost 100 yrs!) Sagrada Familia cathedral. This fairy-tale building is seen as his masterwork and Gaudi died while working on it (hit by a Barcelona tram car – killed by the city he loved). After touring this amazing cathedral, we went up to a hospital designed by another architect with the goal of giving patients an environment that makes them happy and thus aids recovery. It was a really nice hospital, with a big open “campus” with lots of orange tree. I think if you have to get seriously injured on vacation, Barcelona is the city to do it in.

We spent the afternoon wandering in the dense maze of streets and alleys in the old town, and found a great tapas place from our guidebook with huge casks of house wine by the door as you entered. Lauren was a pro on the Spanish front, though even she had a bit of trouble reading menus since many things were in Catalan, the regional language of Catalonia.

The same scene played out whenever we entered any restaurant: someone would smile and approach then say something completely incomprehensible but probably very friendly to us, and wherever Lauren was in the group we would push her to the front while making awkward stuttering noises to the host. Lauren would start chatting away, asking about the kids, the weather, who they were supporting in the next football match, etc, and the rest of us were left to meekly follow in lemming mode. For all we knew Lauren had this super power of telepathy with an alien race, and it came in very, very handy. It was like magic: they would say something, and then she would understand it and say something back, which they understood. I think Lauren rather liked it.

After some more aimless wandering we had a comical experience trying to find a cable car up onto the mountain west of the city, called Montjuic. We got off at the foot of the mountain and saw a cable-car symbol on our maps right at the corner we were standing on. Looking up, there was no way a cable-car could leave from there. There was one further up, but the buildings blocked its terminus from view. We walked around the block, around another block, checked our 3 different maps, scratched our heads, and after 40 minutes were getting desperate. Finally, feeling pretty dejected and incompetent, we headed back down into the metro to give up, only to see the SAME symbol in the metro as on our maps! Well, like archeologists piecing together a hieroglyphic puzzle, we followed the arrows towards this mysterious symbol, which turned out to be an UNDERGROUND incline up the mountain. Haha, we just laughed and laughed…and cried a little.

The mountain top was beautiful and mostly covered in parks and Olympic Stadiums. This is where the 1992 Olympics were held, and for 1 month the mountain was renamed Olympus, and the mayor had to wear a toga like Zeus (this is a lie). We walked along catching some great views of the city, then passed the impressive Olympic complex, and on to the National Art Gallery and its steps and fountains. At dusk there was a huge fountain show (like, really, really huge) with lights and music, which was created for the 1920’s world fair. It was a great end to our sightseeing day and we headed home exhausted. We rallied for a great meal at a tapas bar then crashed and slept very well our second night.

After just 2 short days in Barcelona it was time to move along: our stylish French rental car and the open road were calling. Saturday morning, we headed to the Eurolines (“the Greyhound of Europe”) bus terminal to catch our chariot across the boarder. Though much more scenic, the ride reminded me of my Greyhound trips across PA with unhappy drivers and lots of seemly unnecessary stops, but after 3 hours we crossed the boarder into France and got off in the warm coastal town of Perpignan. The French countryside beckoned…

Our Peugeot Time-Machine

2008-04-22T21:40:00.003+01:00

Last month we traveled 2000 years back in time simply by driving 80 miles north. Sound too good to be true? Well, let me tell you about a little civilization I like to call the Romans.

The Romans were around a long time ago: 2000 years they say, and what’s more, they didn’t just stick to Rome. They made it over here to Britannia and in AD 74 founded a legionary fortress called Deva at the site of the modern city of Chester. Being cultured, historical types we decided to take a day trip up to Chester to see “the finest walled city in England” (pictures).

Chester has come a long way since the Romans left and most of the present walls are medieval or Victorian ones built on top of the original fortress. The walls and gates surrounding the old city were a popular place for Victorian gentry to go “promenading,” and in the spirit of the promenade we made sure to look as refined as possible as we walked the scenic 2 mile circuit ourselves. It was a great way to see the city and neat to think of how long the walls had protected the city.

Besides the walls, Chester is just generally known as a very quaint and charming English town, with lots of old Tudor framed houses and a special section of 2-story shops called “the Roes”. They are quite unique and looked like a typical row of 700-year-old shops at street level but had steps up between every other shop, leading to a covered walkway along the tops of the shops running along more shops on the second level. I could see its charm and surly they were ground-breaking in the 1700s, but they reminded me a lot of a 2-story American mall. I’m sure the villagers of Chester would have me tarred and feathered for saying that.

It was a great day out, and happily our car/time machine performed well on this, its longest journey to date!

…stay tuned for a major travelogue post this weekend, including American visitors (yeah!!), tiny principalities, tapas, and dangerous mountain pass drives!

What I'm Loving

2008-04-16T18:22:00.003+01:00

This doesn't fall under the usual 'travelogue' type posts we normally do, but there's so much good stuff that I've been enjoying lately that's worth sharing! Here's what I'm loving at the moment:

Books
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - I'm a few years behind on the bandwagon of this book, but I LOVED it! The main character, a 9-year old boy named Oskar Schell, is precocious and precious and heartbreaking. It is so symbolic, playful and creative. If I ever write a book, I would want it to be similar to this

Plot Against America - I didn't love this book quite as much, but it's still really good (alternative history of America during WWII), and the main character is also a 9 year old boy, which seems like an unusual coincidence! Has anyone else read these books?

700 Penguins - My first coffee table book, this collection of 700 Penguin paperback covers combines my interest in design and my obsession with books.

Movies
The Thin Man - My family has been after me for years to see this movie, and now I know why! It's incredibly enjoyable, and the marriage portrayed between William Powell and Myrna Loy was groundbreaking. There's a whole 'Thin Man' series, I can't wait to see the others.

Arsenic and Old Lace - Hilariously entertaining Frank Capra classic, starring the inimitable Cary Grant, it's another Horstmanian favorite.

Michael Clayton - I've heard mixed reviews of this movie, but we really, really liked it - I think the intelligent dialogue was my favorite part.

TV
Flight of the Conchords - Now that Arrested Development is off the air, this is hands-down my favourite comedy. Brett and Jemaine are hilarious - if you havent seen it, you need to!

Brothers and Sisters - I absolutely love this show. It reminds my family a lot of ourselves, and it is so refreshing to finally see an amazing family drama again. For me, it's in the same vein as Party of Five and Life Goes On.

Music
Alexi Murdoch - I know nothing about this guy, but Andrew (my sister's boyfriend) gave us some of his music and I listen to it over and over - low-key/folky/soulful.

Those are the heavy-hitters at the moment. I would love to hear YOUR recommendations!

Belgium by Land: Part Duo

2008-04-07T15:11:00.002+01:00

Brussels is a huge and sprawling city, and a bit intimidating to get around. Saturday morning we decided instead to visit somewhere more charming and manageable, and made the very popular day trip to the lace-making town of Brugge. We got coffee in a brutalist concrete train station, managed to get train tickets by pointing and showing numbers of fingers and toes, and were off through some beautiful countryside to Brugge (1 hour west near the coast).

Brugge is a picture perfect almost Disneyland-clean city with an interesting history. In the Middle Ages the city was a huge producer of lace and shared control of the “global” cloth trade with its great rival Ghent. The small river leading to Brugge slowly dried up, however, isolating the city and killing off its trade dominance. This pretty much froze the city in time, making it one of the most beautifully preserved medieval cities in Europe. It was ‘discovered’ again 200 years ago when wealthy Belgians started building beautiful homes matching the ancient architecture and it’s been a premiere tourist destination for recent centuries. Apparently it does get really busy and touristy in summer, but on a (freezing!) February Saturday we had plenty of room to wander. This was good, because stopping too long would let the hypothermia set in.

We took the town in with a long walk and our usual game of trying to figure out where Nick has led us astray. We visited an interesting religious community from the thirteenth century south of the city called a Begijnhof, which had a rough circle of whitewashed houses around central green. These Beguine communities were common all over Europe, and were built to encourage widows and unmarried women to live in communities and help the poor, etc. The original residents were not nuns, (they did not take a vow and were free to return to secular life) but with the decline of the Beguine communities in the last century many are now occupied by Benedictine nuns.

Proud of our cultural/religious education, we spent the rest of the day looking at grand architecture and eating amazing fries and chocolate-covered Belgian waffles. The fries were a double bonus, since they delayed frostbite and were really tasty.

A nap on the train back into Brussels got us ready for our much-anticipated Belgian Beer crawl around the Grand-Place – “one of the most uniformly beautiful enclosed city squares in Europe” as the tour book says. The square is mostly made up of ornate guildhouses which are now really cool restaurants and pubs. We tried 4 or 5 different places, trying to sample some of the highlighted beers from our guidebook. There were tons of bitter, fruity, creamy, and alcoholy beers, many with millennium-long pedigrees. The glasses were really unique too, with one notable beer, Kwak, served in a totally impractical round-bottomed hourglass so you couldn’t set it down. It came with a wooden stand to hang it from when you wanted to set it down.

Other highlights were Leffe, Chimay, and Lambic which is made with one of the oldest beer manufacturing methods on earth, using wild yeast and aged 2-3 years in a cask. Draft Lambic is extremely rare, and we went to the one place in Brussels that had it, which was an experience in itself. We walked down this long, shady ally very much off the beaten tourist track into a small beer hall with long wooden tables and benches filling the room. You just took a bench seat where you could find it among the patrons and they brought you a big ceramic pitcher of Lambic along with some mason jars. It was great, and it was fun just people watching and drinking our (kind of cider-tasting) draft Lambic.

The next morning we rose and checked out, leaving approximately 6 hours to explore all of Brussels. We started with a walk back through the Grand-Palace in daylight and read a bit about it in our trusty Lonely Planet guide. Town Hall was pretty impressive, but the guildhouses that boarder most of the square encapsulate the Baroque ideals of exuberance and complexity. The square was rebuilt after 1695 French artillery fire leveled Brussels, and city guilds used their money and power to have their headquarters rebuilt and control the style of architecture (early urban planning). The law they created said that “non-conforming facades are to be demolished at the expense of the offender,” so I guess people were pretty careful with development. Industrialization rendered guilds obsolete soon after they dumped all this money into their houses and with all industry/commerce taking place in newer parts of the city the Grand-Palace quickly became something of a museum, preserved it in its height for modern tourists like us to visit and enjoy.

We hurried on through the Cathedral, the main park in Brussels, and finally took a tram car ride to the EU quarter where all of the governmental buildings for the European Union are located. This center of bureaucracy was about as boring as it sounds, and none of the buildings or architecture were particularly stunning. Writing the EU Quarter off as a rookie tourist mistake we crossed the city to the much-more-interesting Victor Horta Museum, which was his former house and workspace. Horta practily invented the Art Nouveau style of architecture which rejected imitative styles of his time (neoclassical) in favor of an innovative style characterized by curving sinuous lines. Horta experimented with steel and glass, and said “never use a straight line when a curve will do”. His house was really interesting and a great last stop on our Brussels blitz.

Nice work to anyone who’s read all the way down to here: pictures for a reward !

Belgium by Land: Eurostar Stars

2008-04-05T10:53:00.004+01:00

For Valentines Day this year we thought wrap the experiences (not simultaneously) of Belgian beer and high-speed train travel into one glorious weekend trip. Friday after work we made the 1.5 hour train trip down to London to catch a Eurostar train out of the new St. Pancras International Station. St. Pancras used to be a major hub of British rail travel and was the largest enclosed space in the world when it opened in the 1860’s, but time and neglect really left it in a bad state. When the all-new (Arup) high-speed line from the English coast to Central London was proposed, St. Pancras became the new terminus of Eurostar and 800 million pounds ($1.6 bn) was spent to totally renovate and modernize it.

Friday night it was fun taking to to walk around the new station and check things out before we left: the “world’s longest Champagne bar”, high-end shops, and of course, impressive roof arches. After we had our fill of modernized Victorian engineering we boarded our train. A comfortable 2 hour trip later we were on the streets of Brussels!

As Cool As We'll Ever Be

2008-03-31T19:37:00.005+01:00

Nick and I are terribly, embarrassingly behind on blog posts! The fact that we still haven’t written about Brussels is just shameful, and now we are multiple countries and two amazing visitors behind! We will be working over-time during the month of April to catch up!

We had the great privilege of being two of the adult leaders on B1’s (our church here) First Kids’ Weekend Away. B1 is rather small, and there are only 6 ‘kids’ between the ages of 10 and 16 (hopefully none of them will find this blog, as I’m sure they would be insulted to be called kids instead of super-cool teens!), and we took these kids and one or two friends of each away for the weekend to the Peak District. It was boisterous, exhausting and all-together memorable.

The weekend was organized and directed by Colin, who used to be in the army and has also worked for an outdoor adventure camp, so as you can imagine he had planned an action-packed weekend. From the minute we got in Friday evening until we left Sunday after lunch, there were events and activities happening, on top of cooking all of the meals (no packed lunches for these kids!). Friday night we just ate soup and did some ice breakers, including the ‘cup game’ where you each person has a plastic cup and you pass it around the circle to an intricate rhythm. My family will be delighted to hear I have finally found other people to play the cup game with, because once I learned it in high school I would do it for hours, to everyone’s general annoyance. Apparently I’m not the only one to have fallen under the spell of the cup game – one of the youngest girls was such a fan she carried a cup around with her and beat on it ALL weekend, to the slight annoyance but wary tolerance of the rest of the kids.

Saturday was much more intense – even though the kids didn’t go to bed until 11:30 (3 hours later than the normal bedtime of the youngest kids!), we had a 6:30 am wake-up call, a hot breakfast, and then it was off to the first of two of the weekend’s extreme activities: caving! The pictures at the beginning and end of the post show us before and after the adventure. Everyone loved caving, because it was whatever you made it. We crawled through the narrowest cave entrance possibly known to man, and then were allowed to explore the nooks and crannies to our heart’s content before meeting up at various points for a buddy check. The older boys could be as extreme as they wanted to be, while the girls were able to take their time more. After crawling on his stomach through water Nick doesn’t think he would do it again, because he’s a bit claustrophobic and it was surprisingly difficult and intense for a group of young caving novices!

We were just beginning, though – the afternoon included a low ropes course – which again the kids LOVED – and an orienteering walk through freezing rain in muddy fields. The course was so muddy that one of the boys stepped into mud up to his waste, and lost a shoe! He had to walk a mile in socks just to get back since the mud devoured his footwear.

After those adventures, it was time a for a big dinner, after which some of us girls went on a night walk while the boys stayed back to help Nick build the campfire. The nightwalk was incredible – I’ve done nightwalks before through woods, but this was through wide open fields under a really low cloud covering, so that you literally couldn’t see the person walking in front of you. It felt spooky. At one point, Colin lost the path and left us standing in a field while he went in search of the way. At first the girls screamed a lot and were really scared. Then they realized that by turning on and off their ‘torches’ (brit-speak for flashlight), it looked like a ‘disco’ (brit speak for school dance), and so they threw a disco, dancing and singing in the field. Once Colin finally found the way, we winded our way back to the camp site where a huge, warm campfire greeted us.

The campfire was one of the weekend’s highlights, because we had imported the ingredients for that great American treat: Smores! Smores are a completely foreign concept here, since they don’t have Hershey’s and they don’t have anything that even remotely resembles graham crackers. They were a huge hit, especially with the older guys. People kept saying ‘These – what are they called again? – are amazing!’ And ‘I love shmores!’ They couldn’t believe that people have these all the time in the States. Nick and I were so excited to share an American classic with people who were so appreciative! You’d think that would be enough for Saturday night, but we still had more games to play! We did games and icebreakers until midnight, at which point we finally convinced them it was probably best to get some sleep.

At Sunday’s 6:30 am wake-up call, a lot of the pep had gone – they were dragging. The day’s big activity, abseiling, cured that! Abseiling is essentially rappelling, and Nick was thrilled and the kids were scared that we were rappelling off of a 60 ft tall bridge. They gave us the option of going with someone else or alone, and most people tried it with their friend first and then by themselves on their second go (everyone got in three tries because they were so well-behaved and coordinated – the instructors said they were the best group they had worked with – we felt proud!), with the exception of the two youngest girls. They both wanted to go with me before they went alone. The one, who all weekend had seemed confident and outgoing, turned out to be terrified. She cried and cried as we stood at the top of the bridge, with all the kids trying to talk her into going. The instructor finally convinced her to go, and the entire way down with me she was shaking and crying and saying ‘Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh.’ Over and over. When we reached the bottom I thought ‘well, she completely regrets that!’ And she said ‘Let’s go again!’ For the majority of the kids, both caving and abseiling were completely new, and it was amazing to get to share those adventures with them.

Truthfully, though, the highlight of the weekend was their complete love of and fascination with all things American. I think it’s a combination of their age and the fact that most of the pop culture that they like is imported from the states, but they just can’t get enough of it! They were asking us questions all weekend, the older boys grilling Nick and the girls quizzing me. The girls were hilarious – they asked ‘What’s the mall like?’ And ‘What’s a skate park like?’ And asking what words we had for different things and how we pronounce them. They also asked ‘What words do you use for amazing?’ I said ‘awesome’, and one of the boys said ‘Americans say radical a lot’ – I tried to tell them otherwise but they weren’t having it.

They then used this new-found knowledge to come up with a conversation, which they repeated over and over the same way kids do when they’re learning a foreign language. Imagine the following in a fake, wisconsiny type accent:

‘What are you doing today?’ ‘I’m going to the skate park and then I’m going to the mallll’ ‘Really? That’s awesome!’ ‘Yeah, I’m going to see a movie.’ ‘What’s it called?’ ‘To-may-toes and Pot-ay-toes.’ ‘Radical!’ ‘Yeah, and then I’m going to buy sneakers and galoshes.' ‘That’s awesome!’

They just couldn’t get enough Americana. I don’t think we’ve ever felt so cool or popular! You can see more pics from the weekend here.

Weekend Peugeot-ventures

2008-03-01T22:40:00.006Z

The Era of British Roadtrips has begun. With hundreds of miles of UK highway stretching out from Birmingham in all directions and our new car sitting on the street just a key turn from ignition, it’s going to be hard to stay inside writing blog posts on weekends. Hundreds of towns, hedgerows, hamlets, cities, bridges, and castles are out there waiting for us, and we can’t disappoint.

We began our auto travels a few weekends back when our friend Anthony (or Mitri, as he's better known) from Pitt came to England for work and spent an extra weekend hanging out with us. Though people here are a bit down on it, we’ve wanted to visit nearby Nottingham since we arrived. Robin Hood, Sherwood Forest, the Sheriff; we figured Disney had pretty accurately shown what the place is like and expected to be greeted by friendly, lovable talking animals when we parked and heading into town.

The Robin Hood angle was pretty disappointing; no animals AND turns out there is no real record of him actually existing and most historians doubt he did, but Nottingham was still really cool. We visited the world's oldest pub, from 1189AD, called Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem, so named because of the trip Richard "the Lion-hearted" took in the 3rd Crusade at this time. It is built on the front face of a cliff, with Nottingham castle built into the cliff above, and has multiple, winding rooms carved into the stone, so it has a sort of cave/pub feel. It was really impressive.

Maybe it's because Nottingham is not a big tourist destination, but we've never had so many people hear our accents and want to talk with us! First we spent 2 hours in a pub with these two local guys talking about England and the US, and a lot about the election (EVERYONE here wants to talk about the election). Their main observation about the US was that you can get a bag of chips so big you can dive in and just eat your way out. We didn’t mention how pathetically small we’ve always found their chip bags here.

In Ye Olde Trip we ended up talking to a group of 20 Welsh nationalists full of revolutionary fervor out for a bachelor party ('stag do' as they're called here) and through this learned a lot about Wales. These guys did NOT like England, and all spoke Welsh as their first language, which is pretty cool. We were joking about how it would have been smart to snap a picture with them to document the time we had a pint with the future leaders of the Glorious Welsh Revolution. One question we never managed to ask was why they came so far into England if they didn’t like the English?

Since Nottingham just occupied our Saturday, we rounded the weekend off with a Sunday trip to the Black Country Living Museum, which documents life in the first industrial settlement in the world, just west of Birmingham where industrial iron-making was invented. The area was called the black country because clouds of soot and smoke blackened the sky. They told us it was “black by day and glowed red by night.” Many think JR Tolkien based Mordor in the Lord of the Rings on this area. We had a great time seeing the old cottages and mines with some of our friends from here - the captions of the pictures really say it all! Check out pictures of our journey back in time.

Yanks in the UK Official Road Trip Tracker - measuring our farthest road trip to date:

My Wild 'n Crazy Friday Night

2008-02-29T19:09:00.005Z

Nick's out for a 'guy's nights' with some of the boys he works with - they were going out for Man Burgers and a Man Movie (Rambo). I was very graciously invited, but happily declined. I've been ill this week, so it's kind of nice to have a quiet night in, and thought y'all might want to hear about it! I am drinking a glass of red wine, listening to music, and getting caught up with emails/letters/etc - all while I'm wearing the most comfortable bathrobe in the world.

That might sound weird, but seriously, I can't tell you how happy I am about this bathrobe (which I think they call 'dressing gowns' here?). I've been wanting a big, soft bathrobe to curl up in for YEARS, and this year for Christmas my mom got me a big, puffy, soft, pale blue robe that cames down to my ankles - thank you, Mom!

(I almost left that whole part out because I know that guys I work with will read it and make fun of me on Monday - but I thought it was worth some ridicule if I could share my contentment with you!)

One of the things I've caught up on tonight is my Shelfari shelf, which was a fun reminder of all the great books I've read this year. My top recommendation from the last year is Bone People - if you've read it, let me know, if you haven't please do! I've also recently finished The Testament of Gideon Mack and The Shadow of the Wind - are those popular in the States, or are they purely British phenomena?

Other than my crazy night in, we do have an exciting weekend planned. We're going to Chester tomorrow, which according to Lonely Planet is one of the most beautiful towns in England. It's a very adventurous day trip by British standards, a whole 2 hours north of here - I'm sure we'll have some amazing pictures to post soon!

And to give you a taste of posts to come in the near future, below is one of my favourite shots from our weekend in Belgium a couple weeks ago:

Defining the British

2008-02-26T11:37:00.002Z

Lauren found a great article from the NY Times about Gordon Brown’s recent proposition to formulate a British “statement of values” defining what it means to be British.

“The proposal, part of a package of British-pride-bolstering measures announced by the Prime Minister’s government, raised a host of tricky questions. What does it mean to be British? How do you express it in a country that believes self-promotion to be embarrassing? And how do you deal with a defining trait of the people you are trying to define: their habit of making fun of worthy government proposals?”

Some of the suggestions were:

“Once Mighty Empire, Slightly Used”
“Dipso, Fatso, Bingo, Asbo, Tesco”
“At Least We’re Not French”
“We Apologize for the Inconvenience.”

The winner, favored by 20.9 percent of the readers, was “No Motto Please, We’re British.”

David Bishop, author of the winning motto said:
“The point I was making is, this idea of a statement of Britishness; I cannot think of anything less British than that.”

“Part of the trouble with the whole exercise is that Britain never really began as a country, but rather “just evolved endlessly through time,” said Vernon Bogdanor, a professor of government at Oxford. “In the past, Britain was something that just happened,” he said. “You didn’t have to think about it. No one’s ever sat down and thought about what it means to be British.”

It is funny to live in a country now that just “evolved endlessly through time” and it definitely helps explain why Brits are so bad at celebrating national holidays. I miss American history…we were so decisive: colonize, declare independence, set up successful democracy, and settle down to plan great 4th of July parades.

In a related and doubtless controversial note, the Times had an online contest to find a six word motto for the US with 1300+ entries including:

“Still Using Fahrenheit, Feet, and Gallons”
“Just like Canada, with Better Bacon”
“Hubris: it’s not just for Greeks!”
“We came. We saw. We conquered.”
“Supporting Free Trade since 1776 (sic)”
“Enlightment scientific rationality meets puritan morality”
…and many, more

Driving in our Autocar

2008-02-14T17:38:00.003Z

After a month or so of driving in the UK I am actually starting to get use to the seemingly-insane roadways and want to write a post about my initial impressions before I’ve been “assimilated”:

The first thing that any American getting into our car would notice is that it’s small…some would say tiny. The driver seat is easy to adjust because I just pull the lever and ram it to the extreme back stop so I can get my knees on either side of the steering wheel and make a decent stab at controlling it.

I’ve found that being small is especially striking at high speeds. When driving to work on the 'Motorway' surrounded by lots of other pod-like cars I get this strange feeling I'm on some highway of the future like in the Jetsons puttering along in my little space-pod. This is all made ever stranger since the highway cuts through some beautiful English countryside where you can see sheep grazing and 2000-year-old hedgerows separating each plot. Ancient bucolic calm is separated from a space-age Active Traffic Management superhighway by a thin fence of metal.

This other-worldly pod-commute is in stark contrast to driving in any urban environment in Britain. Navigating the 500 year-old roads of a city centre, I feel like some sort of rally-car driver fighting for my life among terminally-ill competitors with nothing to loose from a crash. If you’re going to die, they must think, might as well go pulling off some never-before-seen road manoeuvre. Everyone is peeling out, weaving in, and generally in a huge rush to move forward 1 space in the queue (ok, ok line!) at the next light. The roads of Birmingham are literally at capacity most of the time, and Americans could learn a thing or two about real road rage from the Brits.

I’m getting use to it all though, and through the worst of it you can still be warmed by the cheery accent of some BBC radio announcer talking about how it will be mostly overcast with ‘a bit of wet’ for the next 859 days in England.

A UK Superbowl

2008-02-07T11:40:00.001Z

Televised sporting events sure make the harsh reality of time zones apparent. It never bothered us in the States, but exactly why does the Superbowl have to be on a Sunday night? Sunday afternoon or even any time at all on Saturday would be much better for those tenaciously clinging to their American Sports connections 7 time zones from Arizona.

Thanks to the most American of our British friends we made the most of the Superbowl here, sitting down in front of a flat-screen TV to a feast of dominos pizza, nacho dip, Budweiser brews and even Oreos imported from the Motherland itself. Other than the late hour (kickoff at 11:10pm) we had a wonderfully American Superbowl 42 viewing. Of course seeing adds for British car insurance instead of the classic Superbowl ones was a bit of a downer, but at least you don’t worry about missing anything when you get up to go to the bathroom.

It was also funny how the commentators had to sort of explain a little about how the game works whenever they weighed in on it, and apparently last year there was actually a 20 minute lesson on how American Football is played before the game. This year from the TV menu you could select either British or “American” announcers, as well as a segment to learn the rules of the game, for those just tuning in to this strange American pastime =).

The worst part of the experience was actually just how good a game it ended up being, and our initial plans to leave at the 1:00am half-time show had to be changed due to ferocity of contest. Unfortunately we called it quits at 2:30, just moments before the epic 4th quarter carried the Giants to victory. In retrospect this was a major error in judgement, and we kind of feel like bad Americans for not watching all of our national sport’s championship game. Oh well, I guess there is something to be said for semi-coherence in the workplace, and it will make for a more dramatic letter to the NFL asking to change the game time next year.

What a game! What a country .

Anniversary Zwei

2008-02-04T13:33:00.000Z

To celebrate 2 amazing, international years of marriage last weekend we made our first trip to 'the continent' since August with a holiday in Berlin! We had heard the German capital has some great architecture, history, and is the happening-est city in Europe, so we packed the most European clothing we own and hopped on a plane to try and go blend in. We figured on the dance floor of an all night underground techno-rave no one would even suspect we aren't locals…

Ok, we actually decided to give the techno raves a miss but were able to enjoy the numerous other highlights of the city in stead. We got in late Friday night to find out that our hotel had given our room away the first night, BUT they put us up at this amazing 5 star place across the street with an espresso machine in the room, then we got to go back to our original hotel the next night where they apologized with a room (or rather, apartment) that was definitely larger than our flat in England! All in all we did very well with Berlin accommodations, and learned how nice it is to have hotels trying to 'make it up to you'.

Leaving the comfort of our posh room for the rainy streets on Saturday morning, our first stop was the Kaiser Wihelm Church also called the "hollow tooth". The original church was badly bombed during the war, but its bell tower has been preserved and a strange hexagonal modern church built around it. There we saw pictures of Berlin in 1945 which showed neat rows of rubble, with about 70% of the buildings in the city destroyed or seriously damaged. You got a sense too for the world of fantasy the government was living in reading official press reports about this “temporary inconvenience” and how the church would be rebuilt even more grandly as soon as the Germans win the war.

After a quick lunch at the American Embassy (Starbucks), we took the U-Bahn (underground) to the eastern side of the city where most of the historic buildings are located. We spent most of the afternoon in the Jewish Museum, which had some unusual symbolic architecture representing the broken shards of Jewish life in Germany and Europe in the 20th century. Many of the exhibits were very moving and well-done, and the volume of information was extensive, tracing the presence of the Jewish people in Germany since the Middle Ages.

The next stop on a real but pretty depressing tour of German history was the Checkpoint Charlie museum featuring the history of the division of Berlin by Soviet forces following WWII and the terrible realities of life in a divided city. The museum was filled with stories of people flying, swimming, tunnelling, and driving trucks through the Berlin Wall to get out of the East, many of whom did not survive. The wall really evolved, beginning as coils of barbed wire that were laid out on the street, dividing neighbourhoods, shops, and even homes. As more and more people fled the east though, the fortifications increased, and by the 1990s the Berlin wall was actually two 10ft solid concrete walls with a "kill zone" between them patrolled by guards and dogs. By the end of the exhibits you got a bit of the sense of how momentous the fall of the wall must have been. The pictures of thousands of people just tearing the wall apart when the border was opened were moving.

Saturday night was had dinner in a traditional German pub from the 1600's and were pleased to see that no one was speaking English—just us and the locals. I think other than our terrible German pronunciation, clothes, and the 6 or 7 attempts to take a picture of us with our food, we did a pretty good job seeming like locals too. For 3 hours after dinner we had the only dry weather of the weekend, and we got to walk along Unter den Linden Strasse to the Brandenburger Gate seeing the significant buildings remaining in former East Berlin.

Sunday our flight out wasn't until 10pm so we decided to see something a little more cheery from before the rather depressing 20th century. Just on the edge of Berlin we visited the impressively royal and pleasantly opulent Charlottenburgh Palace, summer home of the first Kind and Queen of Prussia. The palace was as lavish and over-the-top as you would expect, but also had some beautiful gardens and lots of windows, which gave it a nicer contemporary feel.

In a final blitz-tour of sites, we ate pretzels at a bakery, took the U-Bahn to Potsdamer Platz which was a square of rubble during the Cold War but is now the Times Square of Berlin and has some very impressive architecture. We then walked up by the Brandenburg Gate again, and waited in line for the Reichstag (Parliament Building) in the pouring rain. Just before trenchfoot set in, we made it into the warm and dry interior, only to learn that we then had to go back out onto the roof to experience the new Norman-Foster-designed dome (1995). Though a bit cold on rainy January days, the glass dome that crowns the ancient building is really impressive and offers some amazing views of the city.

The Reichstag was a great capstone to our Berlin experience, and after a quick dinner at this great serve-yourself Italian place we visited our first night (why risk a poor last meal?) we took the S-Bahn to the airport. By 1am we were back in bed a time zone away in Birmingham, having crammed quite a bit into an amazing anniversary weekend!

Yeah Pictures!!

The Land of Quelf

2008-01-27T17:54:00.000Z

Saying the Horstman Family likes games is like saying the sun is a bit bright - it's so obvious and such an understatement that it's meaningless. We don't just like games - we don't even just love games - we consider them a way of life, serious business, something so necessary to the way we interact that I can't imagine what we would do without them, although I'm guessing it would involve watching movies and eating chocolate, our #2 and #3 activities.

This Christmas we were in fine form. There were the standards, such as nights of Apples to Apples with friends and families, and dominoes (see picture above!), but this year we started some new traditions. For starters, there was Wii Day, wherein Megan, Andrew, Nick, Aidan and I stayed in our pajamas all day and played Mario Soccer and Mario and Sonic at the Olympics. This was especially amusing/embarrassing, because it was the first time we'd played the Olympics, and Nick very sneakily took video of us trying to figure it out!

Another great addition this year was Speed Charades. We have a history of taking traditional games that we've played into the ground and making up new rules for it - and by we, I really mean Aidan, who is the king of the games. Charades is a game we've been playing our whole lives, so we have the hand signals and shortcuts all down pat, and frankly it's become a bit too easy. To mix it up a bit, we handed out a card to everyone in the beginning, then timed how long it took for everyone to get through one round - it was hilarious to watch people jumping up and down and panicking as they acted things out! One of my favorite additions was the signal for 'fad', which was to swing your hips around as if you're spinning a hula hoop - you probably had to be there! As you can imagine, timing the game made it very intense. I tried to get my friend Katie to play with us, but after watching for a few minutes she whispered to me ' You guys are very intimidating to play games with!' and decided to remain a spectator.

The newest and most significant addition to our gaming regime, though, is Quelf. Quelf is hands-down the most random and ridiculous game I've ever played. You take turns moving around the board and drawing cards with various actions, which if you don't perform cost you spaces. Some of the things people had to do:

Nick: every time he made eye contact with someone he had to point at them and say 'I have you now!'
Megan: perform a 60-second aerobics routine. Bonus points if anyone joins in.
Lauren: drink a full cup of water from the opposite side of the glass. Think about that one for a minute!
Aidan: every time someone rolls a 4, pretend like you are a weeping willow and sing a sad movie theme song through your tears.
Katie: end everything you say with the words 'I have spoken!'
Andrew: turn an article of clothing inside out - he chose his pants (trousers for you Brits!)
Megan: wrap your left hand in aluminum foil and leave it that way
Andrew: swing an article of clothing around your head while singing 'Rawhide'

I could go on and on - this game is RIDICULOUS! Highly recommended, if you're in a playful spirit.

There's pictures of some of these games, and the rest of our Christmas break here. These include pictures from the very successful surprise birthday party we threw Mom. I don't think we could ever pull off a real surprise party, so the Party Conversion Route (turning the Christmas Open House into the birthday surprise party) was definitely the way to go! I just feel sorry for Aunt Mary Beth and Auntie Mary, who had to wait out in the back yard until we were ready for them...

Wheels.

2008-01-15T22:11:00.000Z

Exciting news on the home front: a short 9 days into 2008 and we became proud owners of…a new car!! Well, maybe not quite new, but our friends John and Becky did a great job making it feel new with this air freshener to give it that just-out-of- the-factory scent. It was great to be able to buy the car from friends, especially since we wouldn’t have had the first clue how to go about getting a car on the open market.

Our new chariot is a blue Peugeot 206 “3-door”, since apparently they count hatch-backs a “door”. I think if I was buying a new car I would make the dealer enter and exit the car from all 3 doors just to prove the hatch is really a door. Anyway, it’s small (apparently 3800mm long) but zippy and those French really know how to style a car. It’s got some nice curves, and two impressive though surly over-done air intake holes to let the 1.4 liter monster of an engine under the hood breathe. Most importantly, it unlocks hundreds of potential day and weekend trips in the UK, and I even hear there are ferries that will take you over to Europe in your car! Now if we could just get rid of these time-demanding jobs we could be in Hong Kong by Summer.
Realizing this weekend that 1) we own a car and 2) it’s the weekend, we headed out on our first road trip to the Welsh border town of Ludlow, to see not one, but two castles! You can’t walk to the coffee shop in this country without tripping over a castle =). Check out a few pictures of this rare sunny January day.

Celebrate, Celebrate!

2008-01-13T14:58:00.000Z

It was very, very difficult for me (Lauren) to leave home, especially after having such a wonderful time with my family - I'll try to post soon on some of the games that we played, because in true Horstmanian style we had days in a row where we did nothing but play games - but the transition has been a little bit easier because the Horstman family has received so much good news this week:

Aidan, who is a senior in high school, received a scholarship for Akron University's Honors College, which is his top choice!
Megan, who has been working full-time but for part-time pay at a local school, was hired for a great full-time position teaching sixth-grade science and social studies at a school just outside of Springfield - she starts next Monday!
my parents are going to visit us this fall to celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary,
and, best of all, my mom, who finished chemo this fall, had her three month appointment the day I flew back, and her numbers are the best they've ever been, so she is really cancer-free!

We have a lot to be grateful for right now!

…And We’re Back!

2008-01-07T22:21:00.000Z

Not returning empty-handed: Nick hit the 70lb checked bag limit right on the nose with all the American delights that a suitcase could hold. These delicacies of Uncle Sam’s kitchen should last us through the winter, or at least till the end of the month. I have no idea, but this might be the first time that Auntie Anne’s pretzels were ever birthed in their soft, buttery goodness on English soil. When we do make them, we should send one to the Queen so she can command Auntie A to open a store here by royal decree. That still has some pull I understand.

Apologies for the massive blogging gap, but it has been a crazy December. To fill you in using one sentence, work has been really busy for both of us and Nick is now a FULL UK LICENCE HOLDER capable of backing around a corner, driving on the left (wrong) side, and navigating 16 lane roundabouts with ease. Nest stop: car ownership.

We had a great last 2 weeks at home with our families, and the time sure reminded us of all of the amazing people we left behind for a time in the States. We spent the break eating, grinning, playing games, throwing surprise parties, attending cultural events, shopping for cheap (re: any) American products, walking, singing, and laughing a lot. All at once.

Lauren returns to the UK on Wednesday, and until then I’m doing my best to keep it together and avoid a repeat of the lows of last year. Here’s to the civilized male, in the land of civility.

Happy New Year!

Day Trip to the Center of the World

2007-12-02T22:13:00.000Z

Always eager to explore our adopted home, Lauren and I took a train trip down to London last weekend to visit Greenwich (pictures). Greenwich is on the Thames River just southeast of the main city, and is know for three things: seafaring, astronomy, and time. The two main attractions in this really nice part of the city are the Royal Observatory at Greenwich (home of the Prime Meridian separating the East and West Hemispheres) and the national Maritime Museum.

We spent most of the day at the Royal Observatory which was a really fascinating place. Our guide was especially good and told the story behind the race to find an effective way of measuring longitude…

In the 18^th century ship navigators had a real problem in that they couldn’t tell reliably how far east or west they were while at sea. Latitude (N-S) was easy since you can see how high the sun gets above the horizon at sea and calculate how far you are from the equator, but east-west is much harder. In the early 1700's there was a horrible accident where English ships crashed in the shallows off of Land’s End because of an error in Longitude and 1200 died. The King put out a prize of 20,000 pounds to the first person to give a reliable way to measure longitude. A self-trained clock maker in England (from York in the North) came down with a clock he invented that used springs instead of a pendulum to tell time at sea accurately. After decades of trials and new models, he was finally able to convince the King that his clock was accurate enough and it became the first chronometer.

Using this clock you could always have the exact time at Greenwich "with you" in the ship, then use the sun to find when it was noon wherever in the world you were. Some simple math with the time difference gave you your latitude quite precisely, as long as your clock was precise and you knew your fixed comparison point. As simple as it sounds, this method was revolutionary since you didn’t have to sight the stars or sun to estimate your position, all it took was reading a clock. So that all the ships in port in London had the exact correct time, there is a ball that has dropped at the top of the Royal Observatory at precisely 1pm since 1833 so that all the ships in harbor could set their clocks. One of the ships was even designated to be "on the ball" and fire a small cannon at that instant, so that ships that couldn't see the ball, didn't miss the time. Our guide had a great time telling us all this and was really good.

It was neat to get a sense for the navel tradition of Britain and its links with astronomy and time, as this work with determining longitude accurately allowed ships to sail more boldly around the world. These connections are very strong at Greenwich, and I came away really struck by what an inventive, courageous, and inquisitive time this age of English seafaring was.

Yo-ho-ho-ho a sailor’s life for me.

Fun with a camera...

2007-11-28T22:19:00.000Z

...in London. I just got back from a 2-day course and got a chance to take a flight on the London Eye for the first time. Afterwards I had a good time just walking around with a camera for a few hours.

An Arup Gateway to Europe

2007-11-19T15:52:00.000Z

I’ve been a bit slow on the draw…er…“write”, but last week was a big one for my London-based design company, Arup.

Almost as soon and the Chunnel Tunnel between England and France was opened, people realized that it wan’t exactly the best set-up travelling at 180mph from Paris to the Dover coast, only to craw through the 100-year-old railway network of England on the way into central London. Arup basically just paid some of its top thinkers to just dream up the best way to extend this high-speed line into central London. At considerable cost and risk, the company suggested a method to the government, and they agreed. 18 years and 2.7million Arup man-hours later that dream is a reality.

A huge part of this project was totally renovating the historic St Pancras Station to accept the 400m long Eurostar trains, and you can see a great BBC slideshow about this process here. We’re excited to experience the new line and station first hand in February on our upcoming trip to Brussels!

Below are 2 posts from an internal Arup Blog about the opening, if you’re interested in reading more.

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“Queen opens Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL) and St. Pancras Station Today”

2hrs 3mins 23seconds.

That’s how long the inaugural journey from Paris to London took on 6 September 2007. The new St Pancras station in London, and the Eurostar service that will run this route, is officially opened today by the Queen. Regular service will commence on 14 November from the new station to the centre of Paris and Brussels, running at speeds of up to 200mph.

The result of more than 1600 Arup staff and 2.7million Arup man-hours.

A Grand Opening Summary

Last night the new St Pancras International station played host to the opening celebrations of both the station itself and High Speed 1, with the Eurostar service.

It was a phenomenal celebration of an amazing engineering project, delivered on time and on budget, which Arup has been involved in for the past 18 years. St Pancras International will now be seen as one of the world’s greatest stations. For the evening it was transformed into an event venue to accommodate 1000 guests, including the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Mayor of London Ken Livingstone, Lord Heseltine, John Prescott, and a full house of other dignitaries.

Her Majesty the Queen reviewed the arrival of two Eurostar trains and the first ‘Bullet’ train - the high speed domestic train linking Ashford and Ebsfleet to London, and providing a seven-minute ‘Javelin’ service between Stratford and King’s Cross ready for the London Olympics in 2012.

The occasion was highly appropriate for us, because of the thousands of Arup staff who have worked as part of the Rail Link Engineering (RLE) services and also the ‘maverick group within our extraordinary company’ (quote from ‘The Right Line’ book by Nicholas Faith, which tells this story and to be launched at the House of Commons on 3 December) that created this project; the Channel Tunnel Rail Link.

The Master of Ceremonies last night was Timothy West, who acted the part of William Henry Barlow, civil engineer, who in 1863 designed the original station. We were reminded that this famous train shed arch spans 240ft and is over 100ft high at its apex. On its completion in 1868 it became the largest enclosed space in the world.

And now, nearly 160 years later this space has been transformed into probably one of the finest stations in Europe, and possibly the world - an icon has been reborn.

But, to me, this transformation was due to the brilliance of individual Arup engineers and, those individuals, working as part of the RLE and Union Railways North, should be hugely proud of their achievement. As should all Arup staff. Of course, I personally was also hugely proud of that ‘maverick group’ - the project creators. We often fail to acknowledge their role when great engineering achievements are being celebrated.

A wonderful day for Arup.

High-Beam Post: Set Your Browsers to Anti-Dazzle

2007-11-13T21:53:00.000Z

On of the more painful steps in our gradual Englishization has been going through the long and arduous process of procuring a driver’s license. Since the States is not part of the EU or a Commonwealth country, (we said we want a Revolution) apparently the price of our freedom is US expatriates going through the incredibly bureaucratic and expensive process of attaining a UK license.

The first step for me (Nick) was to study 1,300 multiple choice questions and take a 1 hour theory test, which includes a hazard perception portion in a driver simulator to make sure that you can click a mouse when things pull out in front of you. Then, 2 months later when you can get a slot, you have to pay $200 to take a 1 hour practical driving test with a pass rate of 35%. In the mean time, you get to pay a professional instructor $45 an hour to teach you the correct way to handle roundabouts, bus lanes, and the 200 types of pedestrian crossing they have here.
Last week I was very proud to pass my driving theory test with flying colours, proving to the government (and Queen Elizabeth herself??) that I am ready for the real deal: the road test. December 12^th is my date with destiny.

To take you, our readers, on the excitement of this journey with me, I’ve included some real test content below. You can see how you might fare here in a 21^st century low-emissions plastic car on streets designed in the 12^th century. To warm up, here’s some vital definitions:

Carriageway - One side of a road or motorway. A ‘dual carriageway’ has two lanes on each side of a central reservation.
Pelican crossing - A crossing with traffic lights that pedestrians can use by pushing a button.
Puffin Crossing - Similar to a Pelican crossing, but with no flashing amber light
Toucan crossing - A type of pedestrian crossing that cyclists can also use
Zebra crossing - A pedestrian crossing without traffic lights
Pegasus crossing - An unusual kind of crossing. It has a button high up for horse riders to push (Pegasus was a flying horse in Greek legend).

Now, on to some of my favorite real test Sample Questions:

You have been involved in an argument before starting your journey. This has made you feel angry. You should:
a) start to drive, but open a window
b) drive slower than normal and turn your radio on
c) have an alcoholic drink to help you relax before driving
d) calm down before you start to drive

Take your time to think of the right choice on that one. Now, let’s see if you know how to drive with some real panache:

Using rear fog lights in clear daylight will:
a) be useful when towing a trailer
b) give extra protection
c) dazzle other drivers (correct!!)
d) make following drivers keep back

I always drive to dazzle. Ok, let’s say I’ve just blinded you with my flair…

You are dazzled at night by a vehicle behind you. You should:
a) set your mirror to anti-dazzle
b) set your mirror to dazzle the other driver
c) brake sharply to a stop
d) switch your rear lights on and off

Anti-dazzle mode: ENGAGE! Armed with this practical know-how, Y’all (like me) are so ready to take to the streets of Britain. I’ll be honking and circling a roundabout endlessly if you need to find me…

The Law of the Land

2007-11-11T18:00:00.000Z

Last week UKTVGold (television channel devoted to 'classics' such as 'Jim'll fix it') published a survey on England's wackiest laws, according to public vote. This is the kind of thing we yanks over here live for!

The Top 10

1. It is illegal to die in the Houses of Parliament

2. It is an act of treason to place a postage stamp bearing the British monarch upside-down

3. In Liverpool, it is illegal for a woman to be topless except as a clerk in a tropical fish store

4. Mince pies cannot be eaten on Christmas Day

5. In Scotland, if someone knocks on your door and requires the use of your toilet, you must let them enter

6. A pregnant woman can legally relieve herself anywhere she wants, including in a policeman's helmet

7. The head of any dead whale found on the British coast automatically becomes the property of the king, and the tail of the queen

8. It is illegal to avoid telling the tax man anything you do not want him to know, but legal not to tell him information you do not mind him knowing

9. It is illegal to enter the Houses of Parliament in a suit of armour

10. In the city of York it is legal to murder a Scotsman within the ancient city walls, but only if he is carrying a bow and arrow

See here for the full BBC article. And thanks, Martha, for bringing this to our attention!

Candace Rae, Aquanaut

2007-11-11T17:33:00.000Z

There's a chance that you don't know Candi, since she hasn't made the trip to visit us yet. Most of you, though, probably already know that she has been a dear, dear friend of mine since kindergarten, that we went to 'university' (as I now always say instead of college, which causes Nick to shake his head at me in shame of my growing vocabulary of Brit-speak) in the same city, and that she was one of my bride maids.

What you may not know is that Candi is getting ready to complete a three-day stint as an aquanaut! She will be living and studying under the ocean with Project SeaCAMEL. If you're interested in learning more, such as reading the mission blog, finding out how Candi will be spending her time, and reading her profile, check out the mission site here.

On another note, one of the guys I works with sends some of us our profiles and the word of the day every day. A couple weeks ago the word was aquanaut. Amazing coincidence, I know. :-)

UK Travels: Back in the Saddle

2007-11-04T21:25:00.000Z

After a few weekends of rest, we’ve managed to get out exploring the UK a bit these past 2 weekends and will report briefly on our progress =). First, we joined 3 friends on a trip to the Brecon Beacons in southern Wales for a 10 mile “Waterfall hike” that was heavily hyped. It ended up being a really nice fall day and was probably one of the best walks we have done here. At one point the trail actually goes behind a waterfall, and the views from behind a sheet of water are really cool. It was perfectly laid out walk too, with a village pub right at the halfway point for some grub and a pint of ale. We posted some photos of the walk here.

Last weekend we borrowed our friend’s car again for a birthday trip for Lauren to the Cotswolds, a range of hills about an hour south of Birmingham. This region is called the Heart of England and is dotted with “cookie-tin villages”, as they call them here, which are so perfect they could go on some quaint biscuit box. We stayed one night in Broadway, which is supposedly one of the nicest towns in the area, but all of the places we visited looked like movie-sets for a quaint and charming English village. Even the names are charming…we visited Stow-on-the-Wold, Bourton-on-the-Water, Chipping Camden, and even drove through a place called Studley.

It was a pretty leisurely weekend of driving from town to town, checking out the shops and bakeries, and having morning, afternoon, and evening tea. It was an incredibly British birthday for Lauren, though we still stick out as pretty clear tourists with my sneakers and our American clothes. We should have come on horseback wearing a traditional plaid ridding hat and bonnet…if we managed to avoid speaking we might have been able to fool the locals. Oh well, we’re yanks in the UK and proud of it =). Here's some pics of that adventure in Britishness.

English Lesson #1

2007-11-01T20:05:00.000Z

I'm hoping this will be a running feature, with whatever new 'English' word or pronunciation I've learned. Then your challenge could be to use the word in a sentence, or try out the Brit pronunciation in a posh voice and impress (amuse? annoy?) your friends.

Today's lesson: whine and whinge are two different words with almost the same meaning. For years, whenever someone would 'whinge' in whatever Agatha Christie book I happened to be reading, I pronounced it in my head as whined, chalked it up as a typo or crazy British spelling, and moved on. But no - whinge rhymes with binge, is almost interchangeable with whine, but as Tim, co-worker and guest-blog-writer-extraordinaire, put it 'kids whine, adults whinge.'

Happy Birthday Lauren!!

2007-10-25T14:43:00.000+01:00

Well, I’m a day late, but I just found this handy feature of back-dating posts. Ehem…

Today Lauren surges confidently into her mid-twenties as we celebrate her 26th BIRTHDAY!! Much has changed for us since I wrote her last birthday post 1 year ago, but the love and joy that she brings to everyone around her sure hasn’t. I’m just one of the many that are blessed through her sacrificial love, and I know many, many people are thankful for her 26 years of life. We’re celebrating this weekend with a trip to an as-yet-undisclosed location in Britain…we’ll tell you all about it when we get back!

British Air Magazine on...the British

2007-10-20T08:35:00.000+01:00

On our British Airways flight to Iceland we discovered a wealth of blog-post-worthy segments in the complimentary (I hope?) in flight magazine. The following was written by Tim Dowling who moved to England from Connecticut 17 years ago. He picks up several things we’ve noticed, obviously with more humor and insight then we could give…

I wonder what our growing British readership thinks of all this??

How to Greet an Englishman

2007-10-19T11:56:00.000+01:00

This forward was going around the office, and I think it does a good job summing up people’s expectation for England’s match against South Africa in the final this weekend.

(Background: England won a surprise victory against the Australians to make it to the semi-final game against France, and lost something like 32-0 against South Africa about a month ago).

What the Ruck?

2007-10-17T17:25:00.000+01:00

Tim's back, this time to set the record straight on rugby...

I'm loving the confusion over the great English game which is rugby. Here is my American’s Guide to Rugby.

Rugby officially started in 1845 when 3 boys published some written rules for a game which had been played in England for a couple of centuries. The boys were from Rugby School (less than 30 miles from Birmingham) and that's why it was called rugby.

Rugby came across to the US of A and the first match was played at Harvard in 1874. Eighteen years later a sub-game, based on rugby, was spawned which we now know as American Football. Why did rugby decline and American Football take over? Your guess is as good as mine but perhaps there weren’t enough pads and passages of play lasting more than 3 minutes in rugby!

Rugby played today has two halves of 40 minutes (yes there are no timeouts in that time, a whole 40 minutes of continuous play) with a ball a very similar shape to that of your American Football, minus the big stitching. There are 15 players on each team and although it’s a very physical game there are few serious injuries. Rugby players are that hardcore they had to introduce a rule whereby they must leave the pitch when they were bleeding as they were just playing on regardless. They are now swapped out for a ‘blood replacement’ and they come back as soon as the flow is stemmed!

The only other main differences I know of (I don’t really know much about American Football though!) is that in rugby you can’t pass the ball forwards and you have to touch the ball down to score a try.

For those of you not following the Rugby World Cup (RWC), USA was in the same group as England. For a non-professional team they put up a gallant fight with a final score of 28-10 to England. They were also in the same group as South Africa so at least you guys can say you played both the World Cup finalists (and lost!).

The USA, Tongan born!, centre Salesi Sika is one to watch as he is definitely one of the fastest rugby players I have seen. He can run the 100m in 10.5 seconds which is almost as fast as me!

That’s it for today’s lesson. Watch the final on Saturday for more of the ultimate game and I’ll watch Superbowl XLII in Feb for some comparisons!

COME ON ENGLAND!

Rugby for Harry, England and St George

2007-10-16T22:32:00.001+01:00

Not that most would have noticed back in the States, but it was a massive weekend of sports here in England with both the national football (“soccer”) and rugby teams playing on Saturday. The Rugby game was the semi-finals of the Rugby World Cup against France, and it was one of the most-watched games in the history of British Sport (I think I read that means 12million viewers!).

Since England has been at war with France over most of its history, I knew the Rugby game would be big, but I got a real sense of how war-like it would be when I got this email from the Royal Shakespeare Company the day of the game:

"Cry, 'God for Harry, England and St George!'"
Henry V Act III, Scene 1

This weekend as England prepares to take on the French in the semi-final of the Rugby World Cup in Paris, ITV has called on the RSC to help set the tone for their coverage of the game.

Geoffrey Streatfeild, who is currently in rehearsals to play Henry V, will appear in ITV Sport's build up coverage on Saturday evening, performing extracts from Henry's iconic speeches delivered on the eve of battle against the French.

Best wishes,
Royal Shakespeare Company

The quotes, read during clips of monster-like men painting their faces, slamming into each other, yelling, sweating, and staring down the camera were:

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother

And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks that fought with us

When the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger:
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood.

After that intro, performed as only a RSC actor could, I was ready to go fight for England. The game was savage, brutal, and pretty awesome to watch (even though we didn’t understand most of the rules). England was triumphant, and Shakespeare was right, after watching those guys go at it for 80 minutes, I did hold my manhood cheap. It’s strange to say, but I think we’re actually excited to watch the final against South Africa next week. We are going to miss our favorite Frenchman though, Sebastian Chabal, who had fans in the stands holding clubs and dressed up as cavemen.

When he came in for a substitution, the announcer said [British Accent]: “Hello, the 21^st century Aztec is taking the pitch.”

Iceland Part 2

2007-10-13T23:45:00.000+01:00

The rising sun filtering through the frost on the car windows woke us up early the next morning, and I was surprised to find I could actually breathe through my frozen, icicle of a nose. Scraping a hole in the window ice, I realized that the sun was just rising and we hurried to get bundled up and go see sunrise on the lake. When we left the car the wind had died down, though the air was still crisp and very cold. As we approached the lake we found hundreds of tiny “icebergs” had washed up on the shore overnight, and got some amazing pictures of the various shapes and colors in the rising morning sun. The lake was magical, and having clear skies there at both sunrise and sunset was amazing.

We got on the road quickly since we had quite a way to drive, covering almost 1/3 of the whole loop road to make it to lake Myvatn that night. After 2 hours of beautiful driving along the south east coast, we stopped at the charming fishing town of Hofn, to get some supplies and stop in the library for internet. We were shocked to STILL have no word from Duane, now 4 days after he was supposed to have arrived in Iceland, and wrote a few even-more desperate emails to friends in Pittsburgh. Back on the road, we spent 3 hours winding up and down dirt roads around mountains and following the jagged coastline of the east. Eglisstadir is the only major town in the east, and we stopped for gas, a bacon-wrapped hotdog, and another call to Duane. After 4 rings, this time, he picked up.

“DUANE!!!! How are you?? Where are you!?? What happened?”

“uh…yeah, I just got out of jail.”

“what!?”

It turns out that 6 hours before he was supposed to leave on his flight, while he was on the way to the store to get supplies for the trip, the police pulled him over and took him to jail, where he stayed for 4 days. It seems there was some horrendous mix-up where he was keeping some Habitat for Humanity supplies (Duane leads HFH operations in St. Bernard Parish, New Orleans) in a city school building that was being torn down. He went there with some volunteers one night to get their supplies out, someone saw them leaving and reported it to the police. They thought he was stealing the supplies and a week and a half later found him and arrested him. Most of his bosses were on vacation, so they kept him in jail for 4 days.

Lauren and I were obviously shocked at this incredibly terrible luck, and that such a basic mistake could cost him his trip to Iceland, the whole reason that we were there. We had thought of lots of reasons that Duane might not have been able to call…but jail sure wasn’t one of them! Though obviously down, Duane said “at least I got a break from work.”

There was nothing we could do but get back on the road and keep driving, but the whole thing was pretty upsetting. At least Duane was OK, but what a crazy, unlucky, immensely unfortunate mistake to make us miss out on the time together. Rather then pausing after every amazing sight and saying “but where’s Duane!?”, from this point on we switched to “but poor Duane!” What an incredible, crazy story!?

Tired by the hours of driving and down about Duane, we continued on and finally made it near to our camp for the night at about 3pm. Before camping, we wanted to make the 24km trek to Detifoss, Europe’s largest waterfall, and turned up a poor dirt track that followed the river through a grey moonscape. The road got worse and worse, and we started to hit patches of dirt and deep puddles, so filthy you couldn’t tell how deep they were. The car quickly became caked in red mud, and while sending up walls of water going through the puddles at full speed started as fun, the drive became pretty treacherous quickly and getting stuck or damaging the car was a real possibly. We slowed down and battled our way along for what seemed like hours, finally making it to the clearing for the waterfall. I was impressed to see that we were the only 2WD vehicle in the parking lot, while Lauren was just happy to step out of the car alive.

The landscape around the falls was bleak and inhumane, with jagged rocks everywhere and barely any signs of plants or life. There were patches of snow and not a soul in sight, and the walk down to the falls felt like we were exploring the edge of the world. Dettifoss fit the harshness of the scene perfectly, and the violence of the falls was incredible. It was just jagged, angry water the whole way down, and after awhile you actually felt bad for the water droplets that had to go over this jagged cliff of doom. It was thunderously powerful and overwhelming. We walked a circuit down the river to another waterfall, and made it back to the car as the sun was getting low. A much slower drive back got us over the 24km road in one piece, and we made it to our campsite on lake Myvatn at sunset.

After another freezing and cramped night in the car, we were pretty tired of car camping and happy for the accommodation we’d booked for our next 3 nights. Today (day 6) was our whale-watching day, and we got cleaned up and made the 1 hour drive north to Husavik on the coast by 10. We stopped by the whale-watching stand to confirm our 1pm trip, only to find that that was canceled due to bad weather expected, but there was a boat leaving in 3 minutes. We raced to the car, grabbed every warm piece of clothing we had, and made it to the boat just before they headed off. We were given these sweet lined whaling cover-alls, which were stylish and functional, as the pictures will show. Our captain was a pudgy, red-faced man with a huge grin, and (best of all) one of those sweet fur-lined Russian winter hats with the flaps on the sides. This guy was the real deal.

We were at sea for 3 hours, and spent most of that time scanning the choppy water and trying to face away from the driving rain. We were only a few miles from the Arctic Circle here and it definitely felt like it. I don’t see any need to ever go further north than this, and it is pretty impressive to look at a map and see we were north of Hudson Bay in Canada and most of Alaska. We spotted the fin of a Minke Whale and a few large birds, but most of the animal life had, sensibly, gone somewhere much warmer after summer. Our guide told us we would pass close to Puffin Island, which was pretty exciting until she added that all of the birds flew to Cuba at the end of August. A round of hot chocolates and cinnamon buns as we came into port made it all alright though, and we did get to see lots of pictures and skeletons of whales in the Husavik Whale Museum where we spent the afternoon. We finished our time in the town with some great seafood chowder and headed back to lake Myvtan and our hotel.

Day 7 we awoke in the warm comfort of our hotel room, and it was nice to be able to feel my nose through the whole day, instead of just the second half. We headed off on a tour around the volcanic lake and made stops at several sites to take hikes and explore. We climbed the 2000-year-old Hverfell explosion crater and walked around the rim, then wandered among the strange stone pillars and arches formed in the Dimmuborgir lava field. Finally, we visited Iceland’s most spectacular lava field, the Krafla area. In the 1970s drilling that was being done for a geothermal power plant is thought to have triggered a series of eruptions called the Krafla Fires. The plant is now built and functioning, but the ground in the area rises and falls through the year as magna moves around below the surface.

As we drove up towards Krafla, we passed the eerie space-station-like power plant. With huge pipes crisscrossing the snow and blasts of steam pouring out of valves and holes in the mountain, it looked like the evil lair of a Bond villain. The temperature dropped noticeably as we climbed at it started to snow, really setting the stage well for Krafla. We got out of the car and headed down the trail that, until recently, was guarded by a huge sign warning visitors that this was a dangerous area and volcanic activity could begin with short notice. Apparently the sign was such a draw for tourists that they took it down and I guess you just have to assume from the ominous, steaming landscape that it’s not particularly safe.

We walked passed a steaming lake smelling of sulfur that had stained the surrounding rocks all sorts of different colors. A poorly marked trail led into the black lava field, and the snow drifts interspersed with black, jagged rocks made it look like some sort of Oreo Cookie landscape. We walked along the path, avoiding razor sharp rocks that hadn’t been around long enough to be smoothed by erosion, and got some good pictures of us in front of what was obviously a volcano of some kind. The whole area was wild and downright sinister…we were pretty happy to make it back to the car unscathed and head back down to town.

We picked up a group of 3 cold backpackers from Switzerland who asked for a ride down to town, and they invited us in for tea and Swiss Chocolate, which Lauren wisely accepted. It was fun to hear about their experiences in Iceland, and they loved that Lauren was from Springfield, and kept talking about Simpson’s characters. We got their emails and hit the road, making a 3-hour drive to the north west of the island and arriving at our hostel there just before 10.

This put us in good position for our last day exploring, and we made it out to the tip of the Snaefellsnes Peninsula by mid-day. This area is famous for the Snaefellsjokull glacier which is the point where Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth begins: the explorers enter through a crack in this icecap. After our last glacier walk, I was excited to make it back onto a glacier again, and it was really disappointing to learn that the tourist office that runs trips up the mountain to the glacier was closed for the season. Not one to give up too easily, we found a jeep-track on the map that went up to the glacier, and made it 12 of the 14km to the edge of ice, before we crested a hill to enter a world of nothing but white. The car got stuck in the snow, and I had to concede that yes, it was physically impossible to make it to the glacier.

We had a great afternoon driving and walking along the coastline anyway, and enjoyed a clear and sunny last day. We made it back to Reykjavik after our 6 day trek just as it got dark, and managed to rally for one last night in the capital. There was a great all-you-can-eat seafood place in our guide book, and we enjoyed a nice last dinner there, before wandering the streets to check out some of the colorful corrugated metal architecture and interesting art and clothing shops. We joked about how Reykjavik would actually be a pretty cool city to live in, and how crazy it would be to actually do that. Until about 4 months ago I didn’t know that there was a place called Reykjavik.

The next morning we were off bright and early to return our battered and filthy rental car, which had been our home for 8 days, and fly back to Heathrow and our “home” here in England. It was a wild, amazing, and exhausting vacation, but one we are so glad we were able to go on. Duane was right about Iceland, and the trip is definitely dedicated to him, poor guy. We hope to see him soon.

And now, the link you’ve all been waiting for…our trip pictures!

Enjoy.

Iceland: Part 1b

2007-10-08T22:07:00.000+01:00

Ok, so as you can see from the title, I didn't quite make it through writing the dramatic conclusion to our Iceland adventure, so these 'sampler pics' will have to hold you over until later in the week, a taste of what's to come...

Master and Commander: Not so far side of Europe

2007-10-04T14:04:00.001+01:00

(Note: To continue to keep the Icelandic suspense going, we have a very special treat for you: our first ‘guest spot’! We’ll be back in our regularly scheduled capacity this weekend.)

I have been very privileged to write a guest article in this good, sorry great, blog I stumbled across a couple of months ago and now regularly look forward to reading! Firstly let me introduce myself as Tim one of Lauren’s colleagues and English language coach!

Whilst Lauren and Nick were braving the Artic climbs of Iceland (which is also a UK budget frozen food shop) I was sunning myself in Sardinia with my lovely girlfriend Sarah. (Sardinia is a small Italian island off the west coast of the mainland).

The holiday started very badly after being delayed for 7 hours at London Gatwick airport. However, I spent the time at the airport wisely by watching rugby (this is a game similar to American Football only we don’t wear girly pads or rest every 2 minutes!) and using the new Dyson hand driers! Wow is all I can say!

We finally got to our hotel at 4am and after a couple of hours sleep got up ready to hit the water for 9am. The resort we were staying was wholly owned by a British company called Mark Warner and catered for activity holidays (sailing, kayaking, windsurfing, tennis and mountain biking to name but a few activities on site) and was basically a British compound with British guests and British staff (except the catering and housekeeping staff).

As one of the sailing instructors commented we weren’t “the usual people” that go on a Mark Warner holiday. How right she was! We were the youngest there by a long way and at 25 I was practically a baby. There were also a group from a singles travel agency which were also very weird. Without being too rude I can see why most of them are single! These included a guy who dressed up in a yellow suit complete with leopard print cuffs and a wig and many people dancing like that embarrassing uncle at a wedding.

Anyway as we are both keen sailors the main reason for the trip was to get some hours on the water. This involved a strict regime of being ready to go sailing at 9am until 5.30pm and then ‘socialising’ until the very early hours. The free wine at dinner was a recipe for disaster with many a stagger back up to the 5^th floor each night but we still made it up and after a quick dive into the sea we were ready to go.

We had a great week and had lovely hot sunshine everyday and the wind wasn’t too bad. As the demographic of the guests was somewhat elderly we were pretty much the only ones using the boats and had pick of what we wanted. We got to know the instructors pretty well and they gave us endless stick all week for taking our own buoyancy aids (BAs). The reason we did was a tactical sunbathing one as both Sarah and I have nice small BAs to allow for a better tan. However, I now have a nice tan line in the shape of a BA.

I would like to put something in this section about how we embraced the Italian culture and did some touristy bits. However, the furthest we got was to the shop up the road to buy postcards! We did see some of the country on the transfer back to the airport but apart from that the focus was on getting as much time sailing, windsurfing and kayaking as possible.

Hopefully you all (sorry, y’all) enjoyed this post and you never know I might be invited back again… TTFN

Iceland: Part 1

2007-10-01T23:03:00.000+01:00

"I should imagine that no place on earth can show anything to correspond with [Iceland], and there is nothing that one has learnt to consider beautiful or ugly with which it could be compared. It is quite unique, offering no single point of contact with any of the beauty-values that civilization has taught us."

-Glaciologist Hans Ahlmann

“Incongruent with our beauty-values” was a phrase we jokingly used often in Iceland as we marvelled at bizarre lavascapes, moonscapes, and icescapes throughout the country. We spent 8 days driving around the island visiting waterfalls, glaciers, volcanoes, lava fields, hot springs and geysers. We covered 2800 km of paved and unpaved roads (see below for Indiana-Jones style map), slept in 5 different parts of the island, and saw every major site accessible by 2WD (and some that probably shouldn’t have been). Many of the places we saw really did feel other-worldly, like the set from a movie or an Apollo moon mission.

Our flight from London landed on Saturday morning, and we discovered a rocky and foreboding place made all the more unwelcoming by the freezing rain that was falling. Our trip to Iceland was inspired completely by our friend Duane from Pittsburgh, who said that rather than visit us in England, he would meet us in Iceland (Iceland!?). We were set to pick Duane up the following morning, but first were to meet another friend of Nick’s from high school who also ended up being there for the first 3 days of our trip. We make the 50 minute drive from the airport to capital of Reykjavik across strange rocky lava fields, and got there just in time to meet Scott at the statue of Leif Erickson in town. Wasting no time, we hopped in his rental Yaris and headed out of the city for the afternoon to see what this land had to offer.

Many of the main roads in Iceland are sealed but a good section of the far eastern ring road and most roads off of the ring road are still just gravel, so it is a pretty harsh island for rental cars. By the end of our trip we had pushed our Ford Focus station wagon (or 'estate' as they're called in England - strange!) about as hard as I think it would go…but that tough made-in-America car stayed together and flat-free. With Scott we headed south of Reykjavik onto the Reykjanes Peninsula stopping at a black sand beach, some bubbling mud pits, and finally finishing of the day with a nice long soak in the famous Blue Lagoon. The lagoon is a rocky outdoor lake filled with hot mineral water pumped from the ground, next to a geothermal power plant. The bottom is covered in silica mud and the water is a milky blue color, with the eerie effect of steam rising everywhere into the cold air. It was a great place to spend a cold and rainy afternoon, since the water was super warm and surprisingly energizing.

The next morning after a night in Reykjavik I went out to the airport to get Duane…and waited 4 hours to no avail: the flight came in with no Duane. We emailed and called him, but finally figured we had better make the most of the day and if he came in somehow, he could meet us at our hotel. We visited the three sights of the “Golden Circle” popular with tourists: Thingvellir, home of the first Icelandic Republic in 950AD; Geysir, site of 3 geysers and the namesake for all geysers; and Gulifoss, one of the largest waterfalls in Europe. All three were quite impressive, but Gulifoss was our favorite, and the raw power of an unbelievable amount of water pouring over the rough river in torrents of whitewater was hypnotic. We got the all-you-can-eat Viking stew at the restaurant by the falls and headed back to town to look for Duane and check out the city.

No luck with Duane, and after another round of calls to his cell phone and concerned discussion, we headed out to check out the busy streets of Reykjavik. We had heard that places there don’t get busy until 2am on a weekend, and that seemed to be true, with most restaurants and bars quiet. Generally we were pretty impressed with the food options in Iceland, and in many ways they seem better off than England…the gas stations around the island manage bacon-wrapped hotdogs (Nick’s main breakfast on the road) and Betty Crocker cake mix, two items you can hardly get anywhere in England! In the end we found a café in town and ordered a round of Viking brand beers and some nachos…very Icelandic.

The next day I made another trip to the airport, enjoying another sunrise drive to see if Duane caught the flight from NYC on Monday. No luck again, and I returned, really worried about what could happen to someone to keep them from coming on a trip they were so excited about, and not telling the people they were meeting—we were getting really worried. We emailed friends in the US to see if they could keep calling him, but figured we had to make the most of our time and get moving if we wanted to make it around the island in a week. We set off with Scott for a long drive east along the Route 1 ring road to another waterfall then something I’d never seen before—a glacier!

After a 5 mile drive on a poorly-built jeep track through black sand and lava rocks, we arrived where ice meets rock at the edge of a huge glacier (named “M” then lots of letters that aren’t on my keyboard). The glacier was like a giant mountain but made of ice, and to get to it we had to follow a river across black sand (some of which was quicksand) to an ice-cave that the river was flowing from. Though innocent looking, walking on the glacier was so dangerous…the combination of melting ice and gravity could kill you in a variety of ways. In many places the ice was too steep to walk on without slipping, and if you slipped there were plenty of dark crevices, razor-sharp projections, and holes that disappeared forever into the heart of the glacier. We made our way carefully to the far side of the river into the ice cave, which was amazing: the ice was all different colors, but looked like polished blue crystals in many places and formed incredible shapes. We left as it started to get dark, and the ice was much more slippery as the air cooled and the surface re-hardened. I was struck by the cold brutality of the ice, and even being extremely careful, glaciers seem incredibly dangerous places to be.

After our death-defying glacier walk, we parted ways with Scott and continued east to the fishing town of Vik where we spent the night in a hostel, saving our first night camping for the following evening. We fell asleep happy to be having such adventures, but wondering what event might have befallen our friend and trip-inspirer Duane. The possibilities did not seem good.

The next morning we went to the post office to check email and voicemails, and were dumfounded when there was still nothing from Duane. We sent a few more pleading emails and headed on, continuing our counter-clockwise island circle. After a futile trip to the ocean to try to see some Puffins on the sea cliffs, we took to the road again and were struck by the emptiness of the island as we moved away from Reykjavik. We passed fewer and fewer cars, and it really was just us, the landscape, and Justin Timberlake (one of the 2 CDs we had for the rental). The road cut across yellow and black deserts, where you apparently cannot cross in heavy winds due to the terrible sandstorms that blow up. After a few hours we started to see more mountains (all snow-capped) and glacier tongues, and crossed these vast black flood plains with various river courses carved into them, like the water picked a new way to flow each morning. There were simple bridges where the road crossed some of these rivers, but it was clear from the massive flood plain that the river must get many, many times bigger with melt water in the spring.

We pulled off at the start of the largest icecap in the world outside of the poles and Greenland, the Vatnajokull glacier, to visit the tourist office at Skaftafell National Park. There we learned about the geologic history of the area, including the unbelievable phenomenon of sub glacial volcanoes. Vatnajokull has several active volcanoes under the 1km of ice, and in the 1990’s one of them erupted for days, taking 2 days to melt its way to the surface and creating an enormous reservoir of melt water under the ice. When the water gets to a certain pressure, this lake is able to lift the glacier (since ice floats) and, like a bathtub, the lake drains. We saw a video of the flood and the water ripped through the side of the ice, carrying chunks of ice the size of 3 story buildings out to sea, and utterly decimating all in its path. The bridges on the ring road snapped like toothpicks, and later that day we saw two giant steel bridge girders that had been twisted and driven into the ground by the flood. Nick took a moment of silence.

After hiking around the National Park for the afternoon, we drove on along the southern edge of the glacier to our campsite for the night: the amazing Jokulsarlon lake or “Iceberg Lagoon”. This lake is a surreal phenomenon (i.e. incongruent with social beauty-values) where a lake has formed between the glacier and the sea. Giant icebergs break off (calf) from the glacier and slowly melt, flip, and break up over 7 years until they float out the river to sea. We arrived just as the last boat tour of the entire season was out among the icebergs, but the operator said that if enough people came he would run one more tour. Lots of people stopped in, so we got to take the very last boat tour till June of this lake…some pretty nice luck. The icebergs are all different colors and shapes, some black from volcanic ash, some white from the sun causing air bubbles near the surface, and some are crystal smooth blue, if they have recently flipped over. I took like 100 pictures out on the boat, then we walked along the shore as the sun set in a crystal clear evening sky. Sunset on the lake was a photographer’s dream, and one of the highlights of the trip.

But where was Duane!? Would we survive the freezing cold night camping? What else did Iceland have in store for us? Will I ever finish processing and uploading our ridiculous quantity of photographs for you to see?

Tune in next week for the dramatic conclusion to our Iceland adventure!

A Sweet Taste of Home

2007-09-26T16:33:00.000+01:00

Whew…well we made it back with all of our fingers and toes from the Land of Fire and Ice, and will definitely have a couple of posts coming on that soon. Iceland is just so darn photogenic, so we have about 800 pictures to sort through as well, which will be online soonish. To maintain a semblance of order on this crazy mess of a blog, we'll try to at least keep the posts in somewhat chronological order and talk about our last trip: back home for the wedding of our good friends Kristian and Rachel.

We left Birmingham on Thursday morning and 10 short hours later were in a Wendy's devouring delicious chicken nuggets and planning our shopping-spree-like attach on the mall across the street. With universal 50% off sales on all products in America (£1 = $2), and two checked bags to fill, it was a rough afternoon for the shelf-restockers in any store we made it into. You can imagine the odd looks we got from shopkeepers as we wandered the aisles, grabbing everything we could see off the shelves, and calling to each other, 'This is so cheap!' Continuing our American rampage, we visited with any family we could fit in, picked up our college friends Dez and Eric and headed up to the beautiful Poconos Mountains of Pennsylvania for the wedding Friday afternoon.

As we sat among old friends that night at Kristian and Rae’s “welcome meal” eating piles of crabcakes and drinking great Pennsylvanian beer (bitters are great but we do miss Yuengling!), it was very evident what a great gift our being able to be there was. Friends had come in from all over the US (well, world) and we were able to see friends who we haven’t hung out with in, in some cases, years. It was just an amazingly happy celebration and reunion, and being there made us realize what a tragedy it would have been to miss it. We definitely can’t thank the groomsmen enough for making that possible.

The outdoor wedding was late Saturday afternoon and it was a hot (what is this “summer” season?) but beautiful day and the Bride and Groom had the whole audience in tears with their personal vows. In the 7 years I’ve know Kristian, he has always been with Rae, and to see them joined in such a happy ceremony was fantastic, as the Brits say. The reception was out of control, and it was very clear that Kristian and Rae have managed to attract friends just like them: happy, outgoing and a whole lot of fun. After like 4 hours of dancing in the heat without a slow song in site, human physical limits were reached, and people broke off for more pictures and catching up. As if the last two days of events weren’t enough, we got one last chance to see everyone at a goodbye brunch Sunday morning. We then drove back to Ambler, packed for an hour and headed off to the airport for our 7pm flight.

It was a jet-lagged, sleep-deprived weekend but such an amazing event and chance to be there for our good friend’s big day. It was one of the best gifts we’ve gotten, and reminded us again of all the great friends we have waiting for us when we get back. Till then, we really miss you all!

Star Trek Encounter in Stratford

2007-09-14T09:21:00.000+01:00

We’re falling a good bit (as opposed to a wee bit, which I now comfortably use in conversation!) behind, and the situation is just going to get worse. We were at Kristian and Rachel’s wedding over the weekend, which deserves a post and a half, and we leave tomorrow morning for a week camping adventure in Iceland. During the 4 days of recovery time between international trips, we’ve had a friend from Pittsburgh, Ross, staying with us!

Despite our complete exhaustion when we got back Monday, it was wonderful to see Ross. He’s on his first international trip, and his enthusiasm and wonder helped us to again see England through fresh eyes. We showed him around Birmingham on Monday, and then he explored Stratford and Warwick Castle on his own Tuesday and Wednesday, before heading out Thursday morning.

Ross was especially excited to see Stratford, because he is a trained thespian. Nick and I have been looking for a good excuse for a while to get to a show by the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), and this was the perfect opportunity. We met him in Stratford to see 12^th Night in one of the company’s more intimate theatres. To our surprise and delight John Lithgow was in the performance! He was fantastic as Malvolio, and it felt like such an honor just to be so close to him, let alone witness his equal parts comic and tragic turn as the character.

During intermission we were in the lobby talking about the utter coolness of seeing John Lithgow, when Ross said, ‘Oh my Gosh. OH MY GOSH!’

I replied, ‘What, is John Lithgow standing behind you?’

and he said, ‘No, it’s Sir Patrick Stewart!!!’ And sure enough, it was! He was in the audience to see the show, and was standing less than five feet behind us with a drink in hand. It was amazing for Nick and I, but even better for Ross, because Patrick Stewart is one of his favourite actors and personal heroes of all time. Ross went up and introduced himself, shook his hand, chatted to him about the next show he’ll be doing, while Nick and I stood smiling in the background. Oh, and Patrick totally looked over and smiled at me at the end of the conversation – we shared a moment.

Hopefully our next post will be in about a week saying we made it back from Iceland safe and sound and frostbite-free!

Fine line between funny and offensive

2007-08-24T15:05:00.001+01:00

So my colleagues are known for sending around funny emails to the whole company, I think it's part of the whole young, creative atmosphere. This week there were some emails floating around about a possible barbecue, and I replied and said, 'I'll be there! Americans never miss a good BBQ!'

Which someone then responded to with the picture below. You tell me:hilarious or offensive?

A Car-less Year

2007-08-23T13:06:00.000+01:00

While we were out saving the earth the other day (read: going shopping in the city) we saw this add and thought it was a great starting point for a public transit post. We have been here one year and learned a great deal about what life and travel look like for those who can’t (or choose not to) own a car. When moving here, we were excited about the prospect of living in a European city and living “the simple life” car-free. We soon learned that England is much closer to America than Europe in its car ownership culture and basically everyone that can own a car, does. Central London seems like the exception, but for the most part, travel in England without a car is challenging.

Worried about the cost and difficulty of getting a UK licence (the test is ridiculous, with most people spending hundreds of pounds in lessons to pass) and owning a car, we have been happy to see this as what could likely be the one time in our lives where we don’t own a vehicle and try to experience it for what it is, taking in the good and the bad.

On the good side, we have really come to love train journeys, both for long trips and work commutes. The difference between fighting your way through rush hour traffic and sitting on a train reading to and from work is huge, and living on a train line that lets us both ride and walk to work has been a great experience. Over mid-length trips to cities, the train is hard to beat as well. We’ve visited Liverpool, Manchester, London, and even Paris by train, and would say they are far superior to cars both in the relaxing journey as well as the arrival. Pulling into the main train station in the heart of these cities and getting off on the busy central streets is a great first way to experience a place, contrasted with fighting traffic looking for a parking garage somewhere on the city outskirts.

While trains are great for regular commutes and intercity trips, they just don’t work for trips to the country, and can be very difficult if you want a stop on a different line. We have managed to fill in with busses, but these are painfully slow and still can require several transfers to get where you’re going. In short, public transit makes spontaneity difficult, and many areas are essentially off-limits without a car.

As our circle of friends here grows and we learn more about the places that we are missing just off our bus and train routes, we have realized that getting a cheap little car actually makes a lot of sense and will be working on that this fall. We’re glad that we did this year though, and learned a lot about life on the trains and busses from the experience. Our weekly hour-bus-rides to a friend’s house are real studies of British sociology, and the people who you meet on buses are incredibly varied and quite different to those we encounter in our professional lives. As transport solutions other than the personal auto become more of a hot topic, I feel like our car-less life has yielded some insight into the realities of public transit “on the ground.” Hopefully, like all of our experiences here, we’ll be able to file this away for whatever the future holds.

Until then, man is it going to be great to drive again. Do you think a bald eagle graphic on the hood would be too subtle? Maybe we need a flag too…

A Holland Holiday

2007-08-19T09:54:00.000+01:00

Our latest trip out from this conveniently-placed island was a 4 day trip to the city on the Amstel: Amsterdam. We had an amazing time with Megs and Andrew, just exploring the city with them as they enjoyed their first visit to a non-English-speaking country. We loved the place, and decided that Amsterdam has a bit of PR problem, since for many just the name conjures up images of hippies, drugs, and the red light district. While these elements were present in small pockets, what this description misses is the 100km of beautiful tree-lined canals, the peaceful quiet of a city with very few cars, the great museums and galleries that we visited while there, and yes—it must be said—the hundreds of unique and ancient bridges that pepper the city (see our trip pictures here). Even the narrow, leaning buildings that line the canal streets are colorful and full of character. The houses were taxed on width, so most of them are 5-6 stories high and only 2-3 windows wide. Since the stairs are so narrow and small, each house has a hook hanging from a beam on top of the gable, which is used to lift furniture through windows into the house.

We had great weather there and managed to avoid any public transit until the last day: we just walked everywhere. We visited Anne Frank's house, the Van Gogh and Rembrandt museums, and the Heineken Brewery, as well as one of the famous parks and a clandestine church in an attic. Between a boat tour and renting a water-bike for the afternoon, we made good use of the canals and explored much of the city from the water. We also made a day trip out to see some working windmills and wooden clog-maker which was super-cool. We tried on some clogs and walked around the shop, but couldn't possibly think of any practical reason for owning a pair, so we had to appeal to reason and leave them behind.

The Van Gogh Gallery was really neat because it followed the life of one artist, which lets you really get to understand his work and development, rather than jumping from artist to artist like in a large, general museum. Anne Frank’s house was really good to visit too, and a bit of the reality of what it would be like to hide from daylight behind thick curtains came through. They hid for over 2 years from the Nazis, and were found because of an anonymous tip. There were just a few months left in the war, but still 7 of the 8 hideaways died in camps. It did a good job conveying the terror of the time for Jews. The boat tour on our last full day was one of our favorite parts of the trip, and a great way to see Amsterdam and enjoy a sunny day.

Check out or trip pictures, and we’ll try to put some more up of the rest of our visit with Megan and Andrew soon!

Educational P.S.:

I work with a guy from the Netherlands, and I asked him what the correct term for the country was. I was surprised to hear that neither is really correct, though Netherlands is the official name, which means “lowlands” even though much of the country is not lowlands. Strictly speaking, “Holland” refers to the 3 (most prosperous) counties on the coast, though people in other counties will still say they are from Holland, and in national competitions like football their team is called Holland. It was funny to hear of their split identity, and I guess we take for granted the clarity of “United States of America.” That pretty much sums us up.

An Englishiversary: Reflections On....

2007-08-16T09:01:00.000+01:00

Happy English-iversary to us!!! One year ago today we flew over from the States, completely unsure of what was in store. We had no friends, no money, nowhere to live, and only one of us was gainfully employed. It was a scary flight and an even scarier cab ride. One of our biggest fears was how we would get through the first few months financially. The cab driver who took us to the temporary housing we were staying at, when he found out Nick is a civil engineer, started laughing. ‘I make more than you!’ he said. ‘I hope you’re not planning on buying a house here, because you’ll NEVER be able to afford it!’ striking fear and dread into our nervous hearts!

We’ve come a long way from those first few cold, grey weeks of apartment-hunting and the growing pains of learning the ropes. In fact, there are days where we feel right at home here, happy and comfortable and content, and a little bit like we’ve been here all along. Then there are the days that we feel we’re back at square one, raging against the poor business hours, poor customer service, and poor weather, and spend the evening eating pancakes or BBQ and listening to country music.

We’ve been so busy with guests, though, that most days we just carry on with life, and don’t think too much about what country we’re in. We’ve done very little reflection on the journey, on what’s different or similar, and how we’re changing. The one-year mark seems like the perfect time to really reflect on the journey, while we can still remember what it’s like to be American. (just kidding – I’m sure we would still bleed red white and blue. Except that’s also the colors of the Union Jack, so it wouldn’t mean much!) I'm hoping to write a few posts on food, language and travel for starters, so stay posted.

Update: As a sign of just how far we've come, we actually celebrated the 'englishiversary' at work today! We had a proper 'English cream tea' with scones, jam and cream. After telling some real horror stories about my first four months (no friends, no job, no money, no reason to leave the flat for weeks at a time - I sounded like Debbie Downer!), I was told that I'd really earned the celebration! While we are enjoying our treat, someone asked me what the best and worst part of living here is. When I said the two best things were the work-life balance (ie number of holidays and number of hours worked per week), they were SHOCKED, because they see England as the hardest working country in Europe, and think they get a raw deal. I said the second best thing was the ability to travel to other countries so easily, and they found that funny: 'Oh yeah, because we go jetting across to the continent all the time!' Clearly not everyone has the same attitude to travel as us! They mostly agreed with me, though, when I said the worst thing was the cost of living, so at least we saw eye to eye on something.

2007-08-15T23:08:00.000+01:00

I don't think we can add anything to this article in the newspaper this morning. It's clear that a general feeling of love and reconciliation has swept across Europe =).

Life as a Wedding Present

2007-08-07T20:01:00.000+01:00

When our good college friends (and one of Nick's groomsmen) Kristian and Rae invited us to their wedding this September, we really felt the reality of how hard it is living an ocean away from our friends and family. When Kristian asked Nick to be a groomsman, telling him that we just couldn't make the trip was even worse. I was so disappointed to not be there for a friend who had stood up with me at my wedding. We tried to think of a way to make it work, but couldn't and resigned ourselves to missing the wedding.

Kristian was equally disappointed that we couldn't be there, and so his groomsman got to talking...and decided to give him a real-life Nick Burdette groomsman as a surprise present!!!

We couldn't believe they would spend their hard-earned money to fly us over. With generosity like that, Lauren and I had to do our best to live up to the surprise, and figured out something that the groomsman could give the happy couple at their combined party in July. Trying to say "The Brits will be there!!!" in pictures was challenging, but I think we pulled if off pretty well. Shawnee, PA, here we come!

The New Camera

2007-08-05T10:30:00.001+01:00

Well, it finally arrived. It’s been a roller-coaster of emotion here in Acocks Green, from the low of our trusty digital camera lighting its last flash bulb in Paris, to the glorious arrival of its replacement: the Olympus SP-550 Ultra-Zoom. This attractive piece of glass and circuitry has all the features a travelling ex-pat could want in a surprisingly light case. With 18X optical zoom, we don’t even have to go anywhere anymore--we can just go up on a nearby hill and take pretty good shots of Mayan pyramids. So, if you see any future pics that look incredibly perilous—be cool—we were chilling miles away when we took that shot. This baby can store 1200 pictures on a single card, takes video, and even has a super-fast 15 frames-per-second bust mode to catch the typical “whale breaching” shot during fast action. It has a fully-manual mode too that I am learning so you can adjust “The big 3”: shutter-speed, aperture, and ISO to get the best exposure. In summary, look for sharper, professionaler, colourfuler, expensiver-looking travel pictures here from now on!

-Lauren (Ok, ok, you got me: it’s really Nick)

The 18x zoom in action at the Coventry Cathedral:

Great Tapestry from the back of the church

Great Tapestry at full zoom!

Taking a Bath

2007-07-26T18:18:00.001+01:00

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

2007-07-26T13:05:00.001+01:00

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!

It's a Family Affair

2007-07-24T13:44:00.001+01:00

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.

Birmingham: The Hollywood of England

2007-07-17T17:28:00.001+01:00

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!

American Food: a Lucrative Commodity

2007-07-13T13:58:00.000+01:00

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!

An Americans in Paris

2007-07-12T17:31:00.000+01:00

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.

Happy 4th of July!

2007-07-04T13:32:00.000+01:00

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.

Nick’s Award

2007-06-28T15:43:00.000+01:00

Nick’s love of bridges was made a bit more public recently when he won a paper competition run by the Institute of Structural Engineering. The essay prompt was to write in 4 pages why structural engineers should want to design bridges. Since Nick’s career path has been like an after-school special about the kid who dreamed about making bridges ever since he was a little boy, he figured he had to enter. As the competition winner, Nick got to miss a day of work and go down to an IstructE meeting in London to give a presentation on his paper (in a ringing Yankee accent!) and accept his prize. His paper will be published in a future issue of the Institute magazine as well. To whet your whistle, here is the paper’s introduction below.

Bridges: they are a symbol, a metaphor, an icon, a sculpture, a monument, and a way to get from A to B. They are photographed, painted, eulogized, crossed, and climbed. But with bridges meaning many things to many people, what drives their creators? What draws structural engineers of all ages and backgrounds to these ancient and iconic structures? No doubt the drive of each bridge designer is unique, but rarely are structural engineers given more opportunity to overcome complex challenges and meet the needs of a growing society through such daring, elegant, and creative solutions. Because a bridge is not called to offer shelter or habitation like a building, its structural skeleton is not hidden by architectural additions that can distort space and proportion. Bridges are defined not by what is added to the essential load-bearing structure but by the simple purity of that structure itself. Bridge design provides a unique opportunity for structural engineers to prominently exhibit their creative skill in overcoming nature to provide human transport.

If that intro leaves you with an insatiable desire to read more, let Nick know--but remember, he is only human and may not be able to cope with the overwhelming demand =).

Travelogue Catch Up

2007-06-26T07:20:00.000+01:00

I've been waiting to post on our late-May trips to Wales and Prague for awhile due to delusions of picture-labelling over-achievement but time is marching on and so is the blog. Better something than nothing. So…our most recent long term trips happened in late May when our friend John came to visit for the week of Memorial Day (coinciding with an uncreatively-named "May Bank Holiday" here).

After a day of the usual visitor acclimation, we hit the road in our borrowed Honda Jazz once again, this time setting out west to the rolling hills and winding roads of Wales. All of the signs in Wales are in both Welsh and English, and so the words "SLOW" and "ARAF" are painted in big letters on the road as you go through towns. We enjoyed telling each other to araf down, and "araf your roll", so, basically you could say we speak Welsh. Our first stop was Devil's bridge, named this because people thought only the Devil himself could have built the original bridge in the 12th century. I was kind of disappointed, and I think the three of us could have done it in 3-4 days with hour lunch breaks. It is pretty interesting thought because now there are 3 bridges stacked on top of each other, plus there is a 90 foot waterfall nearby. After a hike down to the waterfall in the rain, we drove to the coast for lunch (Welsh Rarebit, which has no rabbit in it) and down to Hay-on-Wye, a town with the largest collection of used book stores in England.

Hay-on-Wye was packed with visitor since it was their annual book festival the weekend we were there—called “a Woodstock of the Mind”. After a rainy few hours browsing the musty shelves of many a bookstore and a few purchases, we left the crowds of Hay and headed to Abergavenny where we were staying at the Blacksheep Backpackers Hostel. We had a great dinner at the Bear Hotel on the way (some really good local ale and a Welsh black beef steak) and finally got into Abergavenny long after dark. Driving the streets was straight out of a horror film, with driving rain, no one around, and no sign of our hostel. I managed to understand enough of the thick Welsh accent of a gas station employee to make it in the direction of the hostel. John and I got out of the car in the driving rain to inquire at some pub that might be a hostel, and were met with three grizzled old men smoking cigars and drinking their closing pints on the small porch of the bar. "Yur a bit late for drinks! Closin time!" They managed as we approached. We had to push past them to get in anyway, so I asked if this was the black sheep hostel. They stared at each other long enough in silence that we just started in anyway, and as we were going through the door a light came in the mind of one of them who yelled: "BLACKSHEEP!!" in this hilarious scream of drunken recognition. On our way out to get our stuff they thought we might be their taxi. Thankfully it was the hostel and we locked the door to our room and slept in the safety of being separated from drunken Welshmen. The Welsh people are a merry bunch!

The next day we toured an amazing castle, then spent the afternoon in the Welsh capital of Cardiff before heading home for work the next day. It was a great trip (click here for pictures) and though it rained quite a bit we loved Wales and were impressed with the friendliness and warmth of the Welsh. It's crazy to have this "other country" just an hour west of Birmingham!
After a day back in the office we left Wednesday morning for the capital of the Czech Republic and the "Paris of the east": Prague! Coming into the city on the bus from the airport was really neat, the language is so different and harsh sounding, and it was a very industrial area near the airport, so it felt kind of 'Soviet'—just over 15 years ago this would have been behind the Iron Curtin.

The city was amazing and we couldn't believe how well preserved everything was even after Nazi occupation and 4 decades of communism. Because Prague was sort of between two fronts and not German home soil (thus not bombed by Allies) it was fairly unharmed. Apparently one of the (only) comical events of destruction during Nazi occupation involved statues of composers on top of the main music hall. Nazi soldiers were sent up to destroy the statue of Mendelssohn because of his Jewish background, but the statues were not labelled. Finally they picked the one they thought was him and destroyed it. The statue was actually one of Wagner, Hitler's favorite composer!

We enjoyed some fantastic Czech beer and sausage, took a river boat tour of the city on the Vlatava river, and made a train journey out to the county to see a castle there one day. Prague has some amazing architecture and a very medieval feel, maybe more than anywhere we've been yet. It is a great city for just walking around in, and we could have done that the whole time. Though it is getting more expensive, it's also a very cheap destination (for food and beer especially) and we were amazed how far our British Pounds went there. In no particular order, our pictures are posted here.

After 3 nights there, we drank out last Budvar and flew back to Birmingham, for a final night out with John. It was great to have him here and we had such a good time…and set quite a pace! We were ready for the relaxation of the work week after a holiday at that speed.

Pub Quiz

2007-06-25T13:27:00.000+01:00

As a lot of you already know, Aidan (Lauren's brother) is visiting us for six weeks during his summer vacation. He will be a senior in high school next year, so he has a nice, long summer break. We’re already having a great time: we celebrated his 18^th birthday, introduced him to our British ‘mates’, went to see Spamalot in London, going to Paris this weekend ….but we spend most of our time at home playing games in true Horstmania style! Our favorites have been Wii, Apples to Apples, and a book of ‘Pub Quizzes’ that we bought over here. Pub quizzes are quite the phenomenon, and most pubs have at least one Quiz Night a week. Questions cross a range of categories, and lots of the questions in this book are way too English-centric for us to even take an educated guess, like ‘who was the first Cricketer to score 1,000 wickets in international play?’ (I made that one up, but you can imagine!). Every once in a while, though, they ask a question on American-ese that we find hilarious. These include:

What do American men put in their billfolds?
Where do Americans put luggage in their cars?
What do American babies wear on their bottoms?

And our favourite:

On what day do Americans eat turkey?

Rooftop Transformation

2007-06-18T22:30:00.000+01:00

Moving from Pittsburgh where there was no end to the number of landscaping and home improvement projects that friends needed help with to England has been hard for me, with few chances to “get my hands dirty” and build/fix something. For this reason I have been really excited about the coming of nicer weather and the chance to go to work on “Nick’s Project Space” as Lauren calls it: the rooftop right outside a door in our living room. As you can see below, the roof was not much to look at, with 2 power lines running across it and a junk yard (why!?) in what looks like it should be a residential plot next to us.

After some green outdoor carpeting from Ebay, plastic furniture, and a trip to the garden center, we ended up with this:

I am really happy with how it turned out, and am most proud of the tensile structure holding up the bamboo screening. I anchored some steel-core clothesline to the bricks, then using two “masts” made of wood and picnic umbrella stands, I rigged up a system of tight lines that I tightened with a turn buckle till you could play them like a guitar. The bamboo just hangs on these and I left a door that can roll shut or open for access to the uncivilized badlands outside our green paradise.

Our rooftop vegetable garden and scenic junkyard

During the brief periods without rain here we have enjoyed grilling and eating outside, and it’s even possible to forget you’re in the city on a letting agents roof for awhile. A little green (even the plastic kind) goes a long way.

Barbecuin’ in the Beer Garden

2007-06-18T22:14:00.001+01:00

Nick has done an ‘absolutely fantastic’ (as we’re learning to call all things awesome here!) job converting the roof of the office beneath us into an outdoor wonderland. He can do a much better job explaining the vision and subsequent engineering feats to achieve said vision, but I can tell you the following things:

We call it a ‘beer garden’
There is a grill, table and seating for four, outdoor carpeting and bamboo screening
Flours and potted herbs line the walls and there is a separate ‘vegetable garden’ outside the screening

It has completely opened up our flat, it’s like having an extra room! Plus, with it not getting dark until about 10 pm(!), we are able to spend the evening outside eating, reading and hanging out with friends.

We put that last one to the test last night with an International BBQ with friends – it was a little cozy, but it turned out well! Nick is friends with a guy from Poland and a guy from Malaysia, who offered to do an international potluck. Lucasz brought sausages back from Poland with him and grilled them, and Chris made us prawn friend noodles. Lucasz even brought us Polish vodka (not for the faint of heart – there is a picture of bison on the cover!), so all we had to provide was space, salad and dessert. Things got a bit tight in our hallway-like kitchen, but the two cooks didn’t mind. We should invite people over to cook with us more often!

Burdette Brother Attack

2007-06-05T15:33:00.000+01:00

Nick’s brothers were the next set of visitors, and we had a great time doing the two extremes of England with them: the back-to-nature experience of camping in the Lake District Park, and the sheik urban style of London. When Eddie and Greg flew in, we gave them an hour or two to nap, then drove the 3 hours north to the Lakes, where we stayed in a simple cabin surrounded by sheep in a shepherd’s field our first night. We had a great time away from it all (including showers) and had a couple of great hikes when it wasn’t raining, and plenty of tea.

After a few days of work, we all went down to London for a long weekend and enjoyed doing the tourist thing for the time. We stayed at a great hostel near Hyde Park (I don’t know how the neighbours let a hostel operate there) spent the weekend popping out of tube stations like gophers. We saw the British Museum, the Odeon Cinema, the wax museum, walked the Thames at night, and had a proper full English breakfast before Eddie and Greg went to Scotland to 'ride out' the last leg of their journey.

It was awesome to have brothers here visiting, and we definitely miss their dry humor. Really all we can say is that you have as much love for us as you are showing in the picture below!

3 Cheers for the Blog!

2007-06-05T15:32:00.000+01:00

Gulp – Nick has really stepped up the blogging game on me. Conveniently for him, he is leaving tonight on a business trip, and then is going away with work friends for two weekends over the next two months – so I have a bad feeling these ‘post promises’ are going to be filled by the girl whose brother is flying out TOMORROW!

Not that I’m bitter or anything.

Haha, I’m really not at all, and I have no doubt Nick will be pulling his weight with posts on visits from the Burdette Brothers and John, delighting you with tales of our adventures in the Lake District, London, Wales, and beautiful, beautiful Prague. I hope to provide you with a bit more color commentary on the nitty-gritty of homelife.

If there’s anyone who still cares. We don’t blame you if you’re gone for good!

The Blog is dead. Long live the Blog.

2007-06-05T15:18:00.000+01:00

I know what you are all thinking (the 1-2 family members who are still reading this thing). Three posts in May? Are they kidding? Do they hope to keep my interest drip feeding a post every 10 days!?

Before you go and find another blog about a funny American couple living in England, hear us out.

April/May has been the season of visitors around here, and we have been high-tailing it all over this island and beyond. We’re both working full time now too, and it’s been a bit of an adjustment trying to keep up with things around the house and balancing our social lives here with work and visitors.

I know what you’re thinking: lame excuses…and you’re right. We’re going to try to pull this thing together, and I’m setting the bold goal of doubling our posts in June. Look for a full 6 posts this month (most of which are needed just to get us back to the present), with potential for July to shoot right through the roof. For now we’ll take it a post at a time.

To start us off, we have a few pictures from trips with our last few visitors to get out there to the masses. After our great trip to Scotland with Lauren’s mom, we headed into northern Wales to check out a strange and wonderful place on the coast created as an experiment by a welsh architect: the Italianate village of Portmerrion. It was a beautiful day, and we had a great time walking and enjoying the beach there. Looking at the pictures now, I realize that was the last nice weekend for a month…Lou Ann sure knows how to bring the right weather.

Things are getting worse…

2007-05-23T22:10:00.000+01:00

Addendum to CCTV post…yesterday on my way to work I spotted an article that just made me shake my head at the police state we’re living in. As you can see from the photo, the police are turning to the military now for ideas. It isn’t enough to just mount cameras on poles everywhere, now they can watch us from the SKY!! At least the “cyber cop” in the photo looks really funny.

Heroes

2007-05-21T13:54:00.000+01:00

There are people in my life whom I deeply admire, and who serve as heroes for me as I strive to follow their footsteps. Generally, my heroes are people who believe, intelligently and passionately, in something greater than themselves and dedicate themselves to living out those beliefs. Last week, I heard some good news about two of my heroes: my cousin Perry and Sister Dorothy.

Perry is the oldest child of my mom’s sister, and a lawyer in Oklahoma, who strongly believes that the death penalty is wrong. Regardless of your personal beliefs about the death penalty, there is no question that it is often unfairly and wrongly applied, and that there are a number of innocent people on death row. Although Perry could be a financially successful lawyer of another type, he has dedicated himself to defending people on death row, and working to get them off (surely not a popular job in Oklahoma), first as a lawyer for the Oklahoma Indigent Defense Service, the last line of appeals, and now as a partner in a law firm. Last week, he successfully got a client who had been in jail for 22 years released! Congratulations, Perry!

The same day I heard news about Sister Dorothy Stang, a dear friend of my family’s, a nun from Dayton, OH who loved the people of Brazil and lived as a missionary there for decades. She particularly worked to defend the rights of native farmers against ranchers who were determined to steal their land. After receiving a number of death threats, she was murdered in February 2005 by gunmen who were hired by the ranchers. The gunmen were easily convicted, but it was questionable if a guilty verdict could be found against the ranchers, who have a large amount of money and influence. Amazingly, in a landmark decision, one of the ranchers was found guilty last week! It is so unfortunate to me to be writing mainly about her death, because she had a joyful spirit, love for life, and a profound influence on everyone she met. However, I am sure she is rejoicing at the way justice is working, in both of these cases.

All of this makes me feel inspired and challenged to again look at the way I’m living my life, and how I could be more selflessly giving myself to what I believe in.

It also makes me curious: who are your heroes?

- Lauren

LaserFutureTechnoGeorge

2007-05-17T20:54:00.000+01:00

Here’s a story: April 23^rd was a fine, sunny day here in England, and we decided to venture out into the bustling streets of Birmingham to join in the nation pastime: shopping. However, we soon learned it was St. George’s Day, the national holiday of England, and we should be celebrating, not shopping! We headed to Victoria Square in the center of town to see what the English do to celebrate their national holiday. In America we have our wonderfully standard traditions of hanging flags, having parades, and shooting fireworks. We expected to learn something of the English traditions now too!

Well…if you could create the ultimate metaphor for the cultural identity confusion and generational schism in England today, St. Georges day might be it. We saw some sweet old ladies all dressed up in their England hats:

…but then turned the corner to hear loud, pulsing techno music and this going on!!

It was the most bizarre fashion show ever (and they’re pretty weird events to begin with). Some people were laughing and taking pictures, some people just stopped to watch curious for a minute, and the old people sat and muttered. What sort of holiday is this?

We thought the show was a riot, and just kept saying “this has GOT to go on the blog” as wave after wave of bizarrely-clad ladies of the future came out on stage. Not the sort of think to make your average bloke go home proud to be an Englishman, but highly entertaining. England may be culturally confused, but it sure is entertaining.

On the Road: The Untamed North

2007-04-29T22:26:00.000+01:00

Well, I’m just going to ignore the fact that we’ve let each and every one of you down with like 1 post in the last month and pretend nothing happened. I’m here to tell you about our recent(ish?) adventure taking The Great American Road Trip concept to the dual carriageways of Scotland. Wanting to check out the north of England and Scotland and ready to celebrate Lou Ann’s ankle healing (Lauren’s mom), the three of us set off on what can only be called a highly ambitious tour of the North. As you can see by the Indiana-Jones-style map below, there’s really not much more for us to see here.

We borrowed a sporty little car called a Honda “Jazz” from our very kind friends Ollie and Claire for this 1400 mile adventure. We set off on a sunny Thursday morning and headed north on one of the two main motorways in the country (the M6) which was a joy, let me say. After 3 hours stopped in traffic due to some horrendous accident up ahead, we were ready to go back to our train-hopping lifestyle. Traffic finally cleared though, and by 2 we were on the streets of Windermere, the capital of the Lake District. We drove through several towns that inspired the inventing of the words “picturesque”, “bucolic”, and “idyllic”, and went on a walk to a 4000-year-old circle of stones.

The next day we wound through treacherous mountain passes, (shifting with my left hand) managed to avoid dying and got back to the motorway to head up to Scotland. After Glasgow, Loch Lomond, and Glen Co, we finally arrived late at our B&B in Fort William on the west coast. The next day we rose with the rooster (they raised chickens at the B&B) and headed down the coast to the port-town of Oban, to catch a ferry to Mull. We visited the large island of Mull, and the smaller islands of Staffa and Iona. We finished the day with Fish & Chips back in Oban, then back to sleep.

Sunday was our chance to make it as far north as we could, and we did pretty well, heading along Loch Ness to Inverness, then all the way out to Ullapool for an amazing seafood dinner. Happy that probably only 5% of Brits had been this far north in Scotland, we returned swaggering with Yankee confidence to our last night at the B&B. After an amazing vegetarian “full Scottish breakfast” we hit the road early the next day, all the way across Scotland to the town of Kirkcaldy on the east coast, where Nick’s great, great grandfather emigrated. After spending 2 hours there to get a feel for Nick’s heritage and buy a MacFarlane tartan tie, we headed across the mighty Firth of Forth Bridge into Edinburgh.

In town we saw the castle, walked the Royal Mile, and checked out the strange and exorbitantly expensive (10x the original price) new Scottish parliament building. We had dinner in the Elephant Café, where JK Rowling penned her first Harry Potter novel, and then it was on the road again. We drove back into England and down to Newcastle for the night, to a “dodgy” inn that did not serve the famous Newcastle Brown Ale. Tuesday morning was spent admiring the famous bridges of Newcastle, including the new Millennium “eye” bridge which opens like an eyelid to let ships under. As our last site, we drove due west from the city to a couple of sites along Hadrian’s wall, built by the Romans to keep Scottish barbarians out and define the north-western limit of their empire. We drove most of the 70 mile wall, and hiked some of the most striking sections. At 2pm we turned the Jazz south and made it back to good old Brum that evening, ready to get back to work on Wednesday.

All in all, a pretty relaxing holiday.

Lake District Pics

Scotland Pics

The Graveyard Shift

2007-04-16T14:02:00.001+01:00

We’re way behind on posts, which seems to be par for the course these days. At the moment, we are still enjoying Mom (Lou Ann)’s wonderful visit. We have loads of pictures and stories from our Great Britain Roadtrip and Weekend in Wales coming up.

Before that, though, I had to share one quick story. The weekend was unseasonably warm and sunny, so we went for a walk last night. The closest pretty place to walk is this large cemetery up the road from our flat. When we got there, it was about 5 til 5, and the cemetery closes at 5. I advocated walking around the outside of it, but Nick said, “Oh, live a little and walk through the graveyard!” We had a lovely stroll to the back gate…which was locked. We then had a lovely but nervous stroll to the side gate….which was locked. We then had a much quicker walk to the front gate – also locked! Our only choice was to climb over the wall. The experience of breaking out of the cemetery with my mom will stay with me always!

Birthday Football

2007-04-03T21:56:00.000+01:00

We decided we couldn’t live in England and not see a premiership football match, so for Nick’s birthday we got tickets to see our local Birmingham team Aston Villa play London’s Arsenal at home. We got the tickets to go with BJ and Katrina when they were here but, disappointingly, the game was postponed and we couldn't go then. We decided to keep the tickets and use them with our next guests...the advantage of having so many visitors!

At the game we found it hard (though extremely necessary to avoid physical assault) to support Villa too much since we knew they weren’t going to win, and Arsenal plays ‘the most technically accurate and graceful football of any team in England’ (this right out of the home program). In the end, we found the loud chanting and singing from the Villa fans very entertaining, and though we didn’t know what we were singing (which is probably good…) we clapped and mumbled along. It was a really exciting game, and I don’t think you can call live football boring…it was incredible to see the players pretty much run all-out for the whole game and nearly kill each other for the ball. I think much like in American football, the career of these guys can’t be too long.

It was an awesome birthday present and a unique cultural night out, and as you can see from the photos, we had great seats and a great time. We even avoided any threats of physical violence, other then when we came in a bit late. After Arsenal fans, Philadelphia actually does look like a city of brotherly love.

Monumental Mockery

2007-04-03T21:29:00.000+01:00

During our travels and sight-seeing with Kevin and Martha we encountered quite a bit of dubious public art. It raised the question for us, what is public art? Why was it put here? Is it serious? Comical? We decided public art is what you make of it, and being comical people, we decided comical was much more interesting than serious. So, throughout our adventures in various cities, we made a point to show that, no matter how serious this art may seem, it’s really pretty darn funny. For proof, I submit exhibit A.

Other than some shameless American tom-foolery, the rest of the Cammarata’s visit was just solid Olde Worlde sightseeing. We posted a couple of photos of walks around Birmingham, as well as a trip to Warwick Castle here. Lauren got a gingerbread man (not a REAL one) from a first-grader in Lancaster, PA, as part of a school project to see where he ended up. As you can see, this lucky gingerbread man got some pretty great photos of being carried around the castle. He has since continued on his journey for St. Patty’s day in Dublin then on to Chicago. Gingerbread people get to do the coolest things.

The fab 4 do Liverpool

2007-04-01T17:09:00.000+01:00

A few weeks ago we decided to continue our exploration of this little island and head up to Liverpool with our most recent guests, Kevin and Martha. We took the train there Saturday morning, stayed in a hostel which was the former Venezuelan embassy (!?), then caught the train back Sunday night. Apparently Liverpool has quite the reputation around England, and most people here were pretty surprised we were going, but said it was good we were taking the train so people couldn’t steal our hubcaps. Our friend at the train station ticket counter asked us why planes won’t fly low over Liverpool, and told us it was because they didn’t want their wheels stolen…ha! That great British whit.

Anyway, we risked life and limb to check out this ‘European City of Culture 2008’ and found some fairly nice and pretty ‘dodgy’ parts of the city. Because the city won this European award, there is a ton of development and revitalization work happening there, and it really will be a totally different place in a year or so. We saw a sea of construction cranes and were constantly going around and through various construction sites.

The main tourist area of the city is around Albert Dock, which is a world heritage site that has been totally renovated into an area of shops, restaurants, and museums. One of the odder things we saw was the H&S Customs Museum, where we learned how to smuggle drugs, ivory, or stuffed mongoose-fighting-cobra statues into the country. They had example of some of the things that people tried to sneak into the country, and it is pretty amazing how much contraband they find every year. The Liverpool Tate Museum and the Maritime Museum were two cool ones too.

The city’s obsession with the Beatles is probably justified, since they kind of put it on the map, but the Beatlemania did seem a bit over the top. It’s got to be the #1 industry in modern Liverpool, with tons of tours, pubs, and shops fueling it all. Everyone tries to relate to the Beatles somehow and I guess it ended up seeming a bit sad, and like the city needs to define itself as something other than ‘the place the Beatles came from.’

All in all we had a great time, but it made us happy to live in Birmingham--and some would say that result alone makes the trip worthwhile. Check out some photos of our Liverpool shenanigans here!

The CD Says it All

2007-03-31T15:15:00.000+01:00

Since Martha and Kevin visited close to Nick's birthday, they took the opportunity to remind him of the musical dominance of the land he left behind. They made this CD, which reminds us all in bold red, white, and blue glory of what the A really stands for =). From The Presidents of the United States 'peaches' song to 'the boss' screaming 'Born in the USA' it's American hit after hit. It's nice we now have a soundtrack for our July 4th 'Independence Day' BBQ!

mm, mm roadkill

2007-03-30T16:16:00.000+01:00

The funniest moment of my week:

I was riding with the two Ollies (IE’s two directors are both named Oliver) to my first client meeting, and the second Ollie (not of Ollie and Claire) turned to me and said, “The greatest thing happened this morning!” I was expecting a big sale, or maybe something related to his family. But no: “I picked up a deer!”

“You WHAT?”

“I picked up a deer! It’s my first one: it was in the middle of the road, freshly killed, nice size. It’s in the boot (trunk) of my car.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

“Skin it and eat it. I can’t wait! I can’t take it home until tomorrow night, though.” (and yes, that means the deer sat in the car for two day. Gulp.)

Although initially repulsive, the image of Ollie in his Savile Row hand-tailored suit, loading a big deer into his small boot, is hilarious. Nick and I came up with these taglines for this moment:

“Savile Row suits: as individual as you are.”

“Brits are taking sustainability to whole new levels.”

I also have to note that before this moment I thought "eat roadkill" was only a punchline to "You might be a redneck if you..."

Endnote: Nick is a big proponent of finding pictures to go with our blog, but I thought this time I would spare you the search results of “photos: roadkill to dine for”!

Look, ma, a real job!

2007-03-26T15:34:00.000+01:00

Big news at Casa Burdette: the consulting gig has turned out even better than I could have hoped and I’ve been offered a full-time position with IE Design Consultancy!

IE is an exciting, dynamic company of 16 that offers “brand strategy, design delivery and digital solutions,” or in laymen’s terms branding, graphic design work, website development. It’s a really creative environment, with a ping pong table right in the main work area! IE was started 12 years ago by Ollie, of our very good friends Claire and Ollie. The company has exploded in size in the last two years from four or five employees to 16.

We’re calling my role ‘Value Stream Manager’. The job will be split between project manager of larger projects and managing internal improvement efforts. There is a real need for my particular skill set. In the past, with a smaller company and smaller projects it didn’t matter that there was not a high level of project management or focus on standardizing processes. Now, though, they are winning larger projects and experiencing some growing pains. It feels like such a great match to me, and I am thrilled at the opportunity to make a real difference! They've already won a huge project, partly sold by emphasizing their professional approach and 'new full-time project manager.'

I start full-time April 16. In the meantime, I am wrapping up the consulting phase with them and with John, my other client. I’ll also be taking about a week and a half off to enjoy Mom’s visit, starting this Sunday! Life is really great at the moment, and light-years different from the long 'autumn of our discontent,' or something like that.

BJ and Katrina do England

2007-03-25T22:11:00.000+01:00

As we continue to try to catch the blog up with our life (it’s currently about 2.5 weeks behind), here’s a post about our second visitors of the year: our pastor and his wife from Pittsburgh BJ and Katrina!

In an amazing display of smooth-talking skill, BJ managed to convince his Missiology professor at seminary that rather then taking a final in his class, he should be allowed 2 weeks to go to England and visit with churches there to see how they are doing church and mission in what is a much more secular culture than America. Freed from his need to take a final, BJ and Katrina high-tailed it over here and spent about 6 days with us in Birmingham meeting with people and doing some site-seeing, then went down to London for another week.

It was great to have them here and we had a blast showing them our friends and church here, English pub life, and some sweet castles and cathedrals, Olde Worlde style. We took a day and went out by train to Coventry, which is known for its cathedral that was destroyed in WWII and rebuilt in the 50’s. Kenilworth Castle is just a bus ride away, so we went there as well, on a very English (cold and rainy) morning. We have some pics of their visit here.

BJ posted a few other pics of their trip on his blog too.

Happy Birthday, Nick!

2007-03-22T13:12:00.000Z

Today Nick hits the quarter-century mark! In typical Nick fashion, he made his own double-layer cake yesterday, and we are cooking dinner for friends tonight. The celebration started when Martha and Kevin were here and we went to a premiere league ‘football’ game (SO exciting!) and will hopefully continue tomorrow night when we go out to celebrate just the two of us.

This is one of my favorite days of the year, as I think about everything that Nick is. He is kind and caring and makes everyone feel special, hilarious and playful and still a kid at heart, deep, sensitive, smart AND wise, passionate (especially when it comes to bridges!), a wonderful friend and an amazing husband.

Life here gets better and better, and we are feeling more at home, but it’s still lonely spending a birthday away from friends and family, so if you get a chance, share some birthday wishes!

Nick's Olympic Site Visit

2007-03-09T00:08:00.000Z

Last week I had one of my coolest days of work since I started: A paid sight-seeing day in London! Well, ok, the 'sites' were pretty much the future Olympic Park I am working on and I had to act like it was all business, but I was there with my camera and tube map like any tourist. We got to go up a tall building to the official London 2012 observation deck, where I took the following picture of the industrial waste of East London.

Before

And here is what we have 5 years to make it into:

After?

I think changing the sky to blue might be the hardest part. Anyway it is a really exciting project and it was fun to go down and get a sense for the grand scale of it all. Since we didn't have to meet at the site till noon, I even had time to go to the recently developed Paddington Basin, near its namesake station. This area has a couple of amazing moving pedestrian bridges that are more art than bridge, most notably the famous 'rolling' bridge. I snapped a few photos with a friend and posted them here.

All in all, a gold-medal-winning day! That was horrible. What a bad way to end a blog post.

Manchester

2007-03-08T23:56:00.000Z

The next stop on our recent sight-seeing blitz of England was a day in Manchester with our friend Anthony from Pitt. Anthony works for a company in Pittsburgh setting up really complicated testing devices, and gets to do a bit of international traveling for his job. When we found out he was working near Manchester, we thought it would be a great chance to get another English city under our belt.

Like most northern English cities, Manchester has gone through some rough times in the last 30 years, but (so a few websites claimed) really woke up when an IRA bomb went off there in the early 90’s and got moving with an urban regeneration scheme. Today there are tons of new buildings and commercial districts in the city centre, and the city commissioned a number of sweet pedestrian bridges to really help the tourism industry out (or at least bridge tourists like me).

We took the train to Manchester Piccadilly station, which was a fun experience in itself. High-speed Virgin Pendolino trains just recently began running on the British rail network, and they are pretty slick. They have about 125mph top speed, and to avoid slowing down on the turns that were designed for 1870's trains, they actually lean into the turn. The whole train rotates imperceptibly, but sometimes you will look out the window and only see sky or only see grass. It's a very advanced system, and it cuts journey times down a lot. It only took 1.5 hours from Birmingham to Manchester.

After meeting Anthony in town, we headed to the Manchester United Stadium, where a game was playing that day. We were early for the game crowds, so we went into the stadium museum to see all of the (hundreds) of trophies won over the years. Then it was off to a newly developed part of the city, near the Imperial War Museum for lunch and a tour of the museum. We finished the day walking around the arts and cultural district to the north, and getting dinner down in the recently-converted canal district. At 9 we said goodbye to Anthony and hopped the train back home. We were exhausted, but for a one-day trip, we did a pretty good job taking in the sights and sounds of the city. We would definitely recommend it for any future visitors to England. You can check out some of our pictures from the trip here.

The Gilmour Girl

2007-03-07T12:59:00.000Z

Laura had emailed us near the beginning of January to see what the middle of February looked like for us. We told her no one was coming then and that we’d love for her to visit. We didn’t hear back from her for a bit, and figured she couldn’t make it. Imagine, then, our happy surprise when she emailed about a week before her flight to see if that would still work for us! She flew in Saturday, February 9^th and stayed for just under a week.

Laura was here for the worst of British weather. She arrived the day after the big snow storm, and the entire week was cold and raining. A lot. At least it was authentically English! To add to the warm welcome of her first day, Nick and I both had pretty bad colds. We figured it would be alright because she’d just want to sleep her first day, but she was ready to hit the ground running Saturday morning! I think Nick and I went to bed before her that night – I don’t know how she does it!

Despite our illness and the terrible weather, we had an amazing time. We did mundane things, like grocery shopping, cooking dinner, and singing along to very random songs together, and more exciting things like great day trips, eating table-sized naan, and drinks at the ‘famous’ Jam House. I only worked one of the days she was here, so we were able to ride trains around the countryside together. As our first American visitor to come specifically to visit us, she was the guinea pig for communal living and random day trips, most of which turned out well! We visited:
· Wolverhampton – don’t ever go! Although the museum has some sweet clothes to dress up in, that’s all there is to see.
· Stratford – a must for anyone who’s read Shakespeare or has a penchant for quaint English villages
· Kenilworth and Coventry – amazing castle ruins and a beautiful cathedral. Highly recommended, just be sure to dress warmly!
· Oxford – Laura did this one on her own; highly appropriate since she’s from Oxford, PA!

If you haven’t yet, check out the rest of the pictures for a full view. Next up? Meeting Mitri in Manchester….

We’re back!

2007-03-03T10:43:00.000Z

February flew by at the Hotel Burdette, and we have a brief break in the action for a blog post or two. To those of you who gave up on the blog over the last three weeks…well…I guess you’re not reading this anyway, so I’m not sure why I am addressing you. To those who stuck with us, 'Ta for that' and read on.

Since the last post, the snow has melted, I have not had a proper snowball fight with my South Indian friend, two sets of guests have come and gone, new cities have been visited, sweet bridges photographed, and job offers made. In short, it has been a crazy February.

We’ll try to step through events in some more detail, and I’ll start with our first guest in England: Laura! Laura came for a week in mid-February, when the forecast was 10 days of straight rain, possibly the most authentically English week here yet. We made a ton of day trips, some better than others, and have a jolly good time. Laura did us a big favor by labeling and posting her trip pictures (208 of them) here already, but we figured to put up a few more to satiate our photo-sharing impulses. Check out our crazy pics here.

Feb 8: Winter’s Finally Here

2007-02-08T20:55:00.000Z

Snow! In England! Today we had what by English standards was a real blizzard: 7 cm of snow. People here are really in shock over it all. It has been the main news story for the week, trains were canceled, kids stayed home, and work was about 60% full. Though we don’t get snow days anymore, even work was buzzing with a child-like sense of mischief and fun. Above is a picture I took of the fields out behind the office. Everyone there pretty much just stared out the windows all morning, enthralled by the snow. I must have heard a dozen people say, “feel like home, Nick?”

The best for me—even better than the snowball fight we had at lunch and the snowman we made by the front door of the office—was seeing the reaction of several people on our team from southern India who had never seen snow before. It was amazing how a little snow could turn 40+ year old engineers into kids again. One guy I have been working with was late, not because of traffic, but because he spent half the morning taking pictures of his house, his car, the trees, his street, everything. It was great, he even started to walk around the office taking pictures out the windows, ignoring the strange looks he kept getting. He told me he was really surprised how “spongy” the snow was, and thought it would be like hard ice and hurt when you touched it. He saw us make our snowman and congratulated me on how we made it when I came in after lunch, like I had done a wonderful and miraculous thing. We then had a detailed discussion of what would now happen to the snowman: would he blow away, or get hard, or melt? He wanted to know how his stone eyes and mouth stuck to his face so well, and the best way to make a snowball.

It was really fun, and great to be reminded of how really and truly amazing the world is. Maybe tomorrow I’ll take this 40+ Sr. engineer out and have a good ol’ snowball fight with him.

Obviously I won’t throw my hardest.

Our street, snowified

Clothing Cultural Learnings for Make Benefit American Visitors

2007-02-06T17:40:00.000Z

We are entering the season of international visitors! Laura is arriving this weekend, Mitri is in Manchester the weekend after that, then BJ & Katrina, and then Martha & Kevin! We've been doing loads of research on potential daytrips, etc, but we have neglected to properly prepare our visitors for some of the cultural differences they'll encounter.

Thankfully, Kevin is on the ball - he has done extensive research on how to fit in, and has purchased a wardrobe full of 'UK camouflage' for their trip. I think this research will be beneficial to everyone, so check it out here.

Royal Leamington Spa

2007-02-05T19:58:00.000Z

Armed with spring-like weather and an insatiable American need to explore, we left the comforts and conveniences of city life behind on Saturday and made the long (45min) and arduous (reading on the train) trek to the rough-and-ready town of Leamington Spa (an old spa). Like the early American settlers taming the wild west, we boldly ventured into the great unknown (an extra train stop). The things we do for this blog (click here for pictures).

History: Leamington Spa was founded in the early 1800s when a few prospectors found mineral (salt) springs bubbling up near the river Leam. After wells and baths were built, the town really took off and became a major destination for Londoners and Brummies alike, as people went to ‘take the waters’. Doctors came to the town and set up practice to prescribe all kinds of crazy cures involving bathing or drinking the brackish mineral water at different temperatures. The town really hit its stride when a friend of the Queen who lived there asked if she would rename it ‘Royal Leamington Spa’. She did and business doubled overnight, now that people knew that this town had clearly passed a strict royal inspection. I guess this must have been best for the postmen, who could now tell people they delivered the Royal Mail to Royal Leamington Spa (by royal decree). People were just royal-crazy.

Anyway, the town started to get pretty crowded and even some poor people were coming to the wells, so it was high time for an upgrade. The gentry come to spas to get AWAY from their serfs, not to run into them at the pump house! The town launched a whole new development to the north of the old town, across the river Leam, where much nicer buildings, museums, and baths were built. This new town was the place to be for about 20 years, until better railways and the rise of coastal resorts in the 1860s took all of Leamington’s business elsewhere. The baths were still popular with the locals, however, as ‘Turkish spas’ until around the 1950’s.

We had a great time walking around the town and gardens, and it helped that it was sunny and 50 degrees (Fahrenheit – we still can’t think in Celsius). The main attraction now is the museum in the old Royal Pump Rooms, which gives a good background to spa life. Since people didn’t really bathe back then (Queen Victoria is famous for saying “I take a bath once a year, even when I don’t need it”) the baths were actually a very sanitary place and did help cure lots of diseases basically caused by being filthy. Cheltenham and Bath to the south are two other popular spa towns, with Bath being famous for the Roman baths built there.

From the Department of the Bleeding Obvious

2007-02-05T15:42:00.000Z

So was the title of a news blurb in Friday's paper, which read as follows:

From the department of the bleeding obvious:
'People are more likely to binge on comfort food when they are sad than when they are happy'
- From a study by the University of Mississippi, University of Pittsburgh.

Ah, we're so proud of our alma mater for making international headlines!

Working In England

2007-02-01T07:20:00.000Z

Since our post-Christmas life here has been mostly work and not so much exotic travel, I thought I would slip in a post here about my work. I brought our camera-phone along to work with me one day, and documented my commute, so you can all experience it and get a view of the area. It was funny snapping pictures like a tourist on my way to work, and I got plenty of looks. There are still lots of times that we stop during ‘regular’ things like commuting to work and think: is this really my life? I really live in England? Its strange how with time you get use to just about anything, even bazaar things you never dreamed you would be doing.

Right, so check out a picture documentary of my travel from Acocks Green to the Blythe Valley Business Park every day here. I also included a large image of a flier I scanned showing some views of my (Arup-designed) office and a little write up about it. Look for about Arup and my top-secret project later. I’ll have to write in code and send you each the code-breaking sheet.

All this talk of work is making me restless! Maybe we’ll go somewhere this weekend. Till then, God bless.

Lauren got a Job! (well, 2 really)

2007-01-29T21:05:00.000Z

It is with much fanfare, hubbub, and general gaiety that we announce the formation of Lauren Burdette International Consulting. Soon to operate on both sides of the Atlantic, Lauren is taking the inefficient quagmire of British commerce by storm. Armed with her mall-machine-printed 20 for $4 inkjet business cards and 3 years of consulting experience she’s ready to help over-worked Brits fit 8 hours of work into their 7.5 hour days.

Continuing the post with the same level of honest realism it started with, Lauren met with two different marketing/advertising firms in Birmingham last week to sell her skills as an Industrial Engineer (‘Management Engineer’ here). The one firm is about 16 people and is led by a friend of ours that we met through church, and the other is a self-employed friend who is thinking of growing his business.

Lauren met with Ollie and Oliver, the two directors of the larger firm, ie design, on Wednesday and gave a presentation overview of her skills, experience at Maynard, and specific services offered. She gave the same talk to John of morsebrowndesign later that week, and everyone was really excited about the things that Lauren could do for their operations. It looks like she will be working 3 days a week with the larger firm, and 1.5 days with John – fantastic! She’s going to try to keep volunteering 1 day a week, making her 2007 schedule very different than England 2006.

These projects should last 2-3 months, and both companies have already begun to think about ways to recommend Lauren to others. With process improvement like this being so unknown here, the market for Lauren’s skills in the small business community could be huge. We’ll see where this all leads, but for now it is a huge answer to prayer and really, really exciting for us. As our life here fills up more, we’ll try to stay up with the blog as best we can, and there are plenty of adventures on the horizon for 2007. Thanks for reading!

PS: Check out the websites of the two firms, it’s funny how different some things are than American companies. They talk a lot about the importance of a ‘work-life balance’ and using green energy and a bike to get everywhere—not major headings for must companies in the States.

Literary Sterotypes

2007-01-29T15:22:00.000Z

In addition to documenting our own adventures and cultural insights, this blog seems like a great place to share insight from other sources. I am currently working my way through the 15 books that my friend Claire lent me because I don’t have much else to do (a situation that, praise to God, is changing and I’ll post more on later). So far I have read The Red Tent, The Time-Traveler’s Wife, Life of Pi (so good! One of my favorite books I’ve read in a while) and Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. The last is particularly engaging and interesting, as it is written by a British author of French heritage about an Italian unit that is stationed on the Greek island of Cephallonia. Although I haven’t seen the film adaptation, my impression is that the novel is more complex and more richly nuanced. I was especially struck by the cultural characterizations he offers throughout the course of the book, including the two below:

The Greek doctor Iannis is expounding to the Italian capt. Corelli: “I know you have not thought about it. You Italians always act without thinking, it’s the glory and the downfall of your civilization. A German plans a month in advance what his bowel movements will be at Easter, and the British plan everything in retrospect, so it always looks as though everything occurred as they intended. The French plan everything whilst appearing to be having a party, and the Spanish…well, God knows.”

Also from Captain Corelli’s Mandolin: “In those days Great Britain was less wealthy than it is now, but it was also less complacent, and considerably less useless. It had a sense of humanitarian responsibility and a myth of its own importance that was quixotically true and universally accepted merely because it believed in it, and said so in a voice loud enough for foreigners to understand. It had not yet acquired the school boy’s habit of waiting for months for permission from Washington before it clambered out of its post-imperial bed, put on its boots, made a sugary cup of tea and ventured through the door. Accordingly, the British were the first to arrive, the ones to stay the longest, the ones to do the most and the last to leave [in the rebuilding of Greece after the earthquake of 1953].”

I don’t know about the first quote, but the second matches up pretty well with most people’s attitudes about the British government, in our experience. We watched Out of Africa the other night, which also eloquently captured England’s self-proclaimed power and influence near the end of the colonial era. I believe there is some bitterness about the change from ‘the most powerful empire on earth’ to taking the backseat to Washington.

Our 1st Wedding Anniversary

2007-01-23T18:27:00.000Z

January 21, 2006

January 21, 2007

We can't believe a year went by so fast! A year ago we stood before our beloved friends and families, and pledged to love and support each other for the rest of our lives. At that point in time, we had turned down England and were looking forward to building a life together in Pittsburgh. We were then and are now amazed at the outpouring of love we were shown by all of you that day, and the support you've given our marriage since.

Now almost countless twists and turns to the story later, we spent our first anniversary in the Malverns (beautiful hills and a village about 45 min from here), walking in unbelievable gusts of wind with new friends. Needless to say, we'd never imagined that's how we would celebrate our first anniversary! It seems especially fitting though, and a sign of good things to come for the year ahead. The fall was especially lonely for us as we tried, and seemingly failed, to connect with people and establish friendships. It all felt like so much work, and we became pretty insular. There's been quite a shift since we've come back, however. We've been busy with new friends every weekend so far, whether it is for dinner, a movie, games, or walking in the countryside. It seems things are looking up for us here!

For more pics of our day out, click here. Also, thanks for all the happy wishes through emails, phone calls and cards! They truly made our day!

Holiday Highlights

2007-01-20T08:31:00.000Z

We’re both really and truly back in England!

Nick’s already done a great job capturing the bittersweet feeling of being home (aka the States). For me, the hardest part was the short amount of time we had. It felt that we were constantly saying ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’ to our best friends and family. It was a joyful visit and a painful reminder of what we miss.

The trip home will sustain us in phase 2 of the England Adventure. Just some of the memories we savor are:

Watching Arrested Development with the Burdette brothers
Making bridges with kindergartners (surprisingly both more stressful and more fun than it sounds!)
Cooking Christmas dinner for the Burdette family
Watching traditional Christmas movies: White Christmas with the Burdettes and Muppet Christmas Carol with the Horstmans
Christmas Eve party and first annual drumming circle
Getting hugs from extended family members
‘Home Day’ in Springfield – included mad Mad Gabs, trivia games, and a turkey dinner
Food we’d missed: Frozen Javas, good ice cream, lots and lots of pizza, good coffee, Yuengling, Lydia’s and Monterey Bay…..
Oh Hell: the game
All kinds of Cranium (Turbo, Pop 5, Conga – and making up new rules to make it even harder!!)
Dez and Eric’s wedding – so beautiful! And saw so many people!
Crazy, 12am Auntie-Anne Pretzel making
Friends, friends, and more friends
Learning that people read our blog

So that last one may sound a bit cheesy, but we were really surprised and encouraged by the number of people who told us they read this thing. It is such a link for us to you guys, and it means so much to know that we are actually meeting our goal of connecting with people. We’re also newly committed to start posting more frequently….er….starting this weekend!

You are Being Watched

2007-01-09T22:21:00.000Z

Here’s a post that I have been meaning to make for awhile, and since I have hijacked our England blog until Lauren gets back on Friday, this seems like a great time to write. One of the most surprising/disturbing things that we have noticed here are the incredible number of Closed Circuit TV cameras that line every street and public space in England. The BBC reports that the average citizen in the UK is caught on CCTV cameras 300 times a day. That’s got to mean that most of your waking hours you are being watched by some camera somewhere. England has by far the most cameras per capita of any country in the world, and it’s hard not to get nervous about so much state observation.

Cameras catch everything, and with thousands of them on motorways automatically snapping license plates and mailing tickets they seem to have replaced police in many instances. In 1996 CCTV accounted for more than three-quarters of total crime prevention spending. What has been unnerving as I looked up some articles on cameras is how little opposition there seems to be to them. There are a few independent sites contending that cameras are not the same as a human police officer, but in the standard press towns seem to be trying to out-do each other in their Big Brotherness with no mention of the huge reduction in personal privacy.

The next stage here is talking CCTV cameras, where operators watching a screen miles or even countries away can chastise people over intercoms. One forward-thinking town is actually using the system to monitor their main streets, and if anyone drops a piece of trash, the loud speakers kick in and they are properly taunted from above. If you have to read this to believe it, click here. I mean, make a few minor changes, and it might as well be a POW camp in the jungles of Cambodia. The striking part about the article is how there is no dissenting view offered, and these cameras are held up as the answer for crime. Where is the debate?

I understand that this is something that law enforcement thinks will give them an edge, and I’m sure it helps in prosecution, etc., but at what cost? Recording the lives of law-abiding citizens on this scale seems kinda totalitarian regime-ish and is certainly a slippery slope, as questions of who can use this information for what emerge. If you were at the right level in the government now, maybe you could read this through a window as I type it? Woah, that’s pretty scary. What are we DOING here??

Anyway, that is my “dark side” of modern English society for the night. Maybe we will start another blog about how England is becoming the world of 1984 to provide a forum for Brits to stand up to the man. Ehh, I doubt it though, we only have time for one blog, and this one sounds more fun. Until next time, hold on to your precious, precious FREEDOM!

Bachelor’n It

2007-01-07T22:17:00.000Z

As you can see, with Lauren in the States with her family until Friday, I have kind of let things go a bit around here. Sure showering, cleaning, and civilized table manners are great, but sometimes it’s nice to go back to my old grad school days of wearing warm-ups, eating out of cookware, and letting the laundry pile up around me. Throughout all of this though, you can be assured by the logo on my bright orange PennDOT shirt, that I am “thinking safety”—no domestic accidents on my watch, despite the beer and hot cookware. Yep, this bachelor life is pretty great…pretty great. Yep, yep, I’m livin’ the dream.

OK, when’s Lauren getting back?

A USA Christmas

2007-01-07T01:09:00.000Z

We had an amazing time at home for Christmas, and it was wonderful to see our family and friends after our last 4 months in England. We spent time with Nick’s family first, and got a chance to go and be ‘mystery readers’ at his mother’s kindergarten class. Lauren read a book about bridges all over the world, and then Nick led the kids in a bridge-building activity. After a great ‘Christmas’ dinner with the grandmothers, we set off to spend some time in Ohio with Lauren’s family.

This was Nick’s first year attending the preimer annual Springfield event, the Horstman Christmas Eve party, and he thoroughly enjoyed the chili and Frito pies, as well as the caroling and drum beating. It was a very musical Christmas Eve. After a few days of game-playing and relaxing in Ohio, we took to the road again to spend an all-too-short time in our beloved Pittsburgh. After 4 days of games, lunches out, weddings, late nights, and New Years Eve parties, it was time to leave again. The whirlwind trip certainly brought to focus the people that we miss dearly from back home and made it really difficult to get back on a plane.

We posted some photos from our time with our families on picasa here. It was great to see everyone at home and so hard to leave again. If we didn’t see you, or barely saw you we’re sorry! So little time! As always, our door and guest room in England are open, and we look forward to spending lots of time with our family and friends when we come back. Happy New Year and keep in touch!