On the Road: The Untamed North

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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!

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

England Take II

Well after a marathon day of travel leaving Pittsburgh at 7am on New Years day for Ambler, New York, Brussels, and Birmingham, I made it safely back to this crazy island that we call home for now. As I drifted in and out of consciousness during my trip back, I thought about how different this trip was than our first trip here together 4.5 months ago. In many ways this trip was harder, since in August we at least had Christmas to look forward to and the idea of living in another country had quite a bit of mystery, excitement, and wonder about it. There is still some of that excitement, though being with family and friends in the States really reminded us of what we are stepping away from for this adventure.

Being home was wonderful, strange, and frightening for me in unexpected ways. It was glorious to eat American pizza, burgers, and fast-food, to have friendly and talkative cashiers and waiters, and of course, to spend time with the people that we love. But through all of this I kept feeling like things were different, like America and those we knew best had changed. I see now that home didn’t really change, I did. My whole bank of recent experiences and “England existence” seemed discordant with the life of friends and family that I embraced while home.

As I often do when I feel things and have no idea what’s going on, I talked to Lauren who noted that it seemed like I had real culture shock. A seasoned world-travel, Lauren talked about the strangeness of coming home after her summers in Mexico and traveling the Pacific. It’s hard to recognize and understand the changes that happen when you are immersed in another world, and I found answering the common questions “how is England?” obviously overwhelming and difficult to communicate. “Who are you?” is more like the question I would have to get through to answer the first one well.

What is perhaps hardest for me in my cultural schizophrenia is the timidity that I feel here and felt even in the States. I have always been a pretty confident person socially, but it seems that confidence is dependent on being at ease in the culture I am operating in. Here we are still very aware of being “the Americans”, the outsiders, and are somewhat guarded in social settings. What was frightening for me was that when we came home to everything we remember and love, I still felt the timidity of an outsider. If I can’t feel ‘myself’ in the places I was born, grew up, worked, when will I get that confidence back for good?

This is complex process and something that I’m sure anyone who lives in another culture wrestles with at some point. To be fair, a crazy 2 weeks back in the States trying to see everyone we could is probably not enough for me to adjust and ‘come back’ to my confident old, grin-flashin’, sarcastic-line-slinging self. I hope that with more time in both places, I will learn to feel comfortable and ‘myself’ again. I suppose this experience is making me look at myself in new ways and forcing questions that would never have been asked otherwise. It’s one of the many things we are learning through this adventure, but certainly not an easy part of our experience abroad.

-Nick

Christmas Chuckles

Good ol' Calvin!

Great News!

(Lauren's) Mom, for anyone who may not know, has been battling ovarian cancer since the summer. She completed her regular chemotherapy treatments. The bloodwork and CAT scan came back clear, so she can say that for now she is cancer free! Mom has been accepted into a clinical trial, and there were three possible arms of the study she could be put in: intensive chemotherapy, which would have been similar to the treatment she just completed in intensity and side effects, an experimental drug, or just observation. She is in the experimental arm, so she will get a 20-minute infusion once every four weeks for a year. Mom said that if she could pick which group she was in, it would be this one because it still gives her some of the protection of chemotherapy (which is great because ovarian cancer is particularly aggressive), but without, hopefully, the severity in side effects. If the side effects are too much, she can also quit at any time.

We will continue to post on her health whenever we learn more. Right now we are thankful for the arm of the study she is put in and her improving health. We are saving the big celebration, though, for a year from now when she's really and truly done!

Thanks for your ongoing prayers and support - they really make a world of difference.

What'd you say?

Last night Nick was talking to Duane, who just started a job in New Orleans coordinating volunteers to repair houses. All of a sudden he said, "Oh my gosh! OH MY GOSH!"

What could they possibly be talking about?? I wondered.

"My heart just stopped for a second. Did you just say what I think you said?"

"Did you say BOBCAT??"

It's wonderful that my chief competitions for my husband's attention are bridges and bobcats!

Happy St. Nick's Day!

Yesterday was St. Nick's Day, which is a big deal in Horstmania. We still put out our shoes, and St. Nick comes in the night and fills them with candy and leaves an ornament for each of us. The ornament commemorates some big event of the year. For example, I got a Pitt Santa my freshman year, and a tiny cruise ship the year I went on Semester at Sea.

Despite being an ocean away, my amazing Mama still made sure we celebrated St. Nick's Day right. On the day itself we got a package full of delicious American candy (Reese's peanut butter cups, how I've missed you!), and a wrapped ornament. I filled our shoes and set them out to greet Nick when he got home. Our ornament this year? Appropriately, it is a silver heart that says "Our Christmas Together," for our first Christmas married.

My mom's ankle is healing slowly - there is still a visible fracture but she is allowed to remove her giant boot of a cast to sleep and to drive. She tried to play the sympathy card and convince my dad and brother to fill the boot with candy (which would be A LOT of candy!), but they didn't fall for it!

Skittles: more than delicious colored candies

In our ongoing quest of culture-rustlin’ we joined a group of Nick’s co-workers to participate in the time-honored British pub game of skittles. This game has been played here as long as toothless pub-keeps have been pulling pints. Skittles is a precursor to 10-pin bowling, and involves rolling heavy, medium-sized wooden balls towards 9 wooden pins at the end of an alley. Only a few pubs around still have skittles alleys, because they take up a lot of space, they’re loud, and one can only imagine the liability of people hurling heavy wooden balls as the pints keep emptying.

By the end of the evening, after playing for 3 hours and getting to bowl 4 times, we understood why skittles was a dying game. You have to get your own balls, set the pins back up yourself, and keep score, and there’s just the one lane for a room that holds over 50 people. It quickly became clear that “playing” skittles is more about standing around with a pint talking than actually doing anything. It worked well when most of England’s pubs were quiet places where the neighborhood gathered to socialize and have a pint or two. Unfortunately, in today’s fast-paced, dog-eat-dog world of instant gratification, consumer-driven cell-phone relationships, the olde towne skittles lane(e) is going the way of the neighborhood milkman.

Let the record show that this blog does include actual cultural commentary.

Despite the thrilling competition, the night’s highlight was the ride home with Matt (a lifetime Brum resident) and a co-worker from India named Suds. Matt and Lauren both met Suds about a minute before getting into the car, where Suds’ first words were:

Suds (to us): “you are American, yes?”

Us: “yes”

Suds: “So, what do you find to be the biggest difference between people in America and people here?”

Us: “[Awkward silence] Oh, uh…well…I guess people are more formal here and slower to talk to strangers.”

Suds: “Yes! This is so true. In my country you can walk up to anyone at a train station and talk about the cricket scores. Here they look at you like you are crazy. What else?”

Us: “Hm…..well, people seem to be closer to their families. I think because they still live close to them, really, wherever they move in the country, so they can see them more often.”

Suds: “This is interesting what you say! Matt, is this true? Are you closer to your family and less friendly?”

Matt: “(laughing)…I don’t know, I’ve never been to America.”

Suds: “humm, yes, (back to us) Have you found that people don’t like you for being American? Personally, I really like America because we just signed a great nuclear treaty with them, but I wonder what others think.”
…

He just kept going - it was like being grilled on the Larry King Show! Suds was really digging deep for a near-stranger, and we were squirming under interrogation. He lives down the street so we are going to try to have him over for dinner sometime for more of his hard-hitting cultural dialogue!

It’s Christmas Time in the City

Though we are not going to be here for Christmas (hooray USA!), for the months of November and December, it is pretty hard to miss the Christmas build-up. Because the Brits don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, after their August Bank Holiday (a seemingly-meaningless convention for having a random 3-day weekend) they have nothing to look forward to until Christmas. For this reason, Christmas here seems to last for months, with most of the fall devoted to Christmas preparations.

When we first got here (mid August) we were amazed to see pubs and restaurants encouraging companies to hurry and book their Christmas parties there. Being a good documenter of culture, Lauren noted that OCTOBER 24th was the day that the Christmas exhibit selling Christmas cards and gifts went up outside the library downtown. Ever since then, it’s been full-tilt on the decorations, music, and shopping. The whole thing seems like Christmas overload to us, and, as if we needed another reason to love Thanksgiving, it serves the valuable purpose in the US of delaying the Christmas shopping madness a full month compared with here.

We spent yesterday (Saturday) in the Birmingham city center doing a little bit of shopping, and immediately felt like we were back in the States fighting through crowded malls. The only real difference is that the shopping center we went to, the Bullring, began in 1154 as a cattle and food market. This was just a few years before the King of Prussia mall had its first customer. We posted some pictures of the Bullring, an Arup-designed building completed in 2003 on our photo album here. Most of these photos were actually taken when we came out for Nick’s interview in early December, 2005, but everything looks about the same as last year. They give a good feel for the Birmingham city centre, and the small suburb of Solihull where Nick works.

Another Brum (Birmingham) Christmas tradition is the German market. There are rides, and stalls selling traditional German crafts and kitsch, and plenty of sausages and beer stands that line the city’s main thoroughfare. We feasted on fried cheese and warm pretzels last night, so good! This sort of outdoor market wouldn’t work as well in the snowy States, but the weather here is perfect – just cold enough to make you appreciate the crowds of people pushing against you.

The flower shop across the street from us has been selling Christmas trees for weeks now, and as convenient as this is, we’re glad we won’t be needing one. It’s been culturally interesting to see all this build-up, but we really just can’t wait to get on a plane and come back to America for the holidays. Just 13 days!

International 'Bond'ing

We finally saw the new James Bond, after hearing the hype for weeks. They love them their double-O. We had heard Casino Royale was the best Bond movie ever, and Daniel Craig the best Bond, possibly second only to Connery himself! It seemed that everyone in this country had or was planning on seeing the film.

Surprisingly, it lived up to all the hype. I was clutching Nick's arm most of the movie, and I kept talking out loud to the film (I wasn't as annoying as I sound - no one could hear me over the massively loud sound effects). One of our friends said that James Bond and Jack Bauer must be related, and that there's something about stern, blonde-haired, blue-eyed men saving the world that is utterly believable!

The best part of the night, though, was the international nature of the company. We saw the movie with about 10 of Nick's co-workers, and the following countries were represented:

• England (a given)
• United States (also a given)
• Poland
• China
• Canada
• Spain
• Malaysia

Arup is like England's melting pot - we've also met some people from India. It's really interesting to meet people from all over. We're having the guys from Poland and Malaysia over for dinner next week, so there should be some good stories to tell.

(A note on the corny title: I suggested it, and Nick said, "Alright, Norm Horstman." So we do turn into our parents as we get older, bad puns and all!)

Peak District

Last weekend we decided to get out of town and see what England in autumn had to offer (pics). We travelled up to the Peak District National Park, about 2 hours north of us between Nottingham and Manchester. National Parks here are funny, and very little of the land is actually owned by the government: they’ve found it much easier to just declare private land “National Park” and not have to go through the messy financial details of actually buying the land properly.

We went up by train early Saturday, and got a bus in Derby that stops at all the little towns throughout the park – that was a beautiful drive, seeing the rolling green and gold hills and the charming (albeit touristy) villages. We stayed in Bakewell, “the capital of the Peak District” because it was pretty central and had a number of hiking trails within walking distance of the towne centre. Bakewell is famous for Bakewell pudding, which was apparently invented there hundreds of years ago by the local tavern keeper. Lauren was intent on trying this even after we saw the recipe which called for 12 eggs and the yolks of 4 more, baked onto a crust covered in strawberry jam. Let’s just say this is one cultural experience you can skip when you visit!

Despite serious failures in local cuisine, Bakewell is a quaint traditional English town—er, towne—filled with stone structures and brick streets, and has some amazing countryside around it. After checking into our B&B, we spent Saturday afternoon hiking along an old rail line turned trail to the Monsal Viaduct, large, striking stone arch viaduct in a picturesque valley. We were amazed by the public “trails” that you had to take to get to the viaduct. Often, the trail would leave the old train line to take you through fields of sheep or cattle, with reminders at the gate to close it behind you and not let some poor farmer’s livelihood escape. One field had a sign that said, “Danger. Bull running with cattle.” It was a bit different than hiking in the US!

On Sunday we hiked to the awesomely huge estate of the Duke of Derbyshire, used as Mr. Darcy’s house in the recent Pride and Prejudice movie. This leads to some name confusion, as tourists call it Pemberley after the movie and locals (and the Duke who still lives there) call it Chatsworth. Apparently you can see a dress worn by Keira Knightley if you pay the £6 to go in, which being a total rip-off, we didn’t. The gardens were really cool though, with amazing fountains and statues. The landscaper in Victorian times (everything here happened in Victorian times) was a real go-getter, and he built a giant boulder garden, made a lake 400ft above the house laying piping for all of the fountains, and build an enormous glass green-house heated by coal supplied by underground tunnels.

The whole weekend was exhausting, hiking (or walking, as it’s called here) around 20 miles, and only getting the briefest peek at the beauty of this “park.” Thankfully our B&B was charming and cozy, run by a couple who bought it about a year ago. Between the full English breakfast Sunday and fish and chips in a pub Saturday night, it was a proper English weekend. It was nice to get away from the city and see some of the country, now that we are heading in to 3 months of near-total darkness and rain (hooray!). At least we’ll have our photographs for the winter to remind us that the sun does come out in England, and it is pretty nice when it does.

A rare artifact of historical life in the Peak District. See other pictures from our Bakewell aventure here.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We wanted to wish y'all a happy Thanksgiving! We've decided to forego the turkey dinner in the spirit of "if you can't do Thanksgiving right, don't do it at all." Our oven just has one tiny rack, and Thanksgiving dinners for both of us mean special dishes that only our Moms can make. To honor the spirit of Thanksgiving though, here are some things we are grateful for:

• Our fantastic friends, who even though we're not there physically, make us feel like we are home in spirit by emailing and calling and keeping us in their lives - being away from you makes us realize how very special you all are, and we can literally say there's no one like you in the world
• Our families, moms dads brothers sisters and extended - we are so blessed to be loved and supported and shaped by the strongest, deepest, funniest people we know
• the mild weather in England, where we still only need light jackets on most days
• the relationships we are beginning to form here

AND we are most grateful this year for the improved health of (Nick's) Grandmom and (Lauren's) Mom. Grandmom has been doing really well since the summer, and we are so excited about this long stretch of healthiness. Mom finished her last round of regular chemo a few weeks ago. Her CAT scan came back clear, and hopefully her blood work will as well (we'll hear soon). Plus, her ankle is on the mend and she is off her crutches! We thank God for bringing her to this point in her recovery, and pray for her continued healing.

A Teary-Eyed Tribute

Here’s a shot of one of our favorite streets to date. The ironic potential of a city alley literally called ‘Needless Alley’ could power a small town. Unfortunately this post is actually a tribute in loving memory of this wonderful sign. We usually get a good chuckle every time we walk down the main shopping street in Birmingham from seeing the good ol’ Needless Alley sign. Sadly, yesterday all that was left was an empty rusted frame and an unlabeled, seemingly needless alley. Apparently someone wanted to keep all of that ironic comedy to themselves, and stole the sign during one of the 18 hours of darkness here. It almost seems hard to blame them, and in a way, aren’t cities with nicely painted iron signs with witty and clever names asking for them to be stolen?

The answer, is NO.

Go Bucks!

The Ohio State Buckeyes held onto their number 1 berth yesterday, holding off University of Michigan in one of the most exciting regular-season college football games - well, ever! It was "the most-hyped game in the 103-year history of the most-hallowed rivalry". Just one more game between OSU and the national championship! For me, this makes 2006 the greatest football year ever.

And we missed the whole season. What are we doing here??? :-)

Roman Holiday

Well it only took us 3 weeks, but we have finally labelled and posted our pictures from our long weekend in Rome for Lauren's birthday. It turns out, there is actually a whole lot to see in Rome and we ended up with quite a few pictures. You can use the link at the end of this post to view them.

We had great weather for the trip, and apparently October is like the perfect time to go to Rome; it was not too crowded and it wasn't too hot, which was good because we did an enormous amount of walking which would not have been fun in the heat of summer. Rome has a metro system, which is great, but it only has 2 lines, a NS and an EW line. This meant that often it would be just as far to walk to a metro station as it would to just hike to our next destination. As a result, we probably walked 15-20 miles in the three days we were in the city, but they were scenic miles, with plenty of gelato and pizza breaks.

Rome is a great walking city, and we enjoyed walking along the river or getting lost in a dense maze of narrow streets trying to find the well-hidden Pantheon. None of the streets in the city-centre ever felt unsafe, and we found lots of cool little restaurants and monuments wandering off the beaten track. Our hostel was incredibly convenient, located on a main street just a few blocks away from St. Peter’s Basilica. Other than being the only people in the 38-bed hostel who wanted to sleep at night, we would generally recommend the place…more as a place to keep your stuff than sleep. We probably would have been better off on some park benches.

Other than a lack of sleep, the trip was fantastic, jolly good, a real hoot, etc. The food was amazing: we didn’t even understand how Italian food that looked pretty much like what we are use to in the States tasted like we were discovering lasagne, or pizza, or pasta for the first time. Perhaps the freshness of the ingredients has something to do with it, but we couldn’t find bad food in Rome. We would stop at some street stand for pizza, and, sure enough, it would be the best pizza we’d ever tasted. Any benefit we got from all our walking was certainly offset by the massive amounts of delicious food we ate. If Rome was a desert with a few Italian restaurants, we would still recommend going.

All in all, Lauren voted this her best big city (since no city can replace Pittsburgh) for the food, history, and beauty of the Italian capital. What are your favourite cities? We had a great trip, and we are very fortunate to have opportunities like this…not a bad 25th birthday!

Pictures, as promised.

I Heart Our Library

How do I love the Birmingham library, let me count the ways (I'm not joking).....

For starters, the library was our first and best friend in Birmingham. It's just a short walk from the train station, has great hours, and free internet! It is the reason we found our flat and it was a lifeline to home at a time we had none. The movie section is fanastic - there is an entire section of Classics as well as one on Literature. We're currently working our way through the Sherlock Holmes collection.

Then I discovered the music section. It is huge, filled with cds from all walks of life. I've never seen so many international/world cd's, including separate sections for each country. It has all of those Hear music cd's that Starbucks carries and I'm always curious about but never willing to pay money for, musical and movie soundtracks, even a country music section (and NO ONE in this country listens to c&w). You can check out 8 cd's at a time for two weeks. In the past two weeks I've gotten:
-The Hurricane soundtrack
- Damien Rice "O"
- Damien Rice "B-Sides"
- The definitive Don Williams
- The definitive John Lennon
- David Gray "Life in Slow Motion"
- Sergio Mendes "Timeless"
- The best of Patsy Cline
- John Legend "Get Lifted"
- Green Day "American Idiot"
- Bing Crosby "Winter Wonderland" (the best Christmas song-singer ever)
- Radiohead "The Bends"
- Radiohead "Hail to the Thief"
- Oasis "Familiar to Millions"
- The Rough Guide to Irish Music

It is like walking into a music store that stocks everything and being allowed to take whatever you want. As a result, we're trying to expand our musical taste: who is your favorite artist? Your favorite cd? What else should we be sure to check out?