Fedor's weblog: Notes from a small island

Last weekend we made a little trip to England. Although it was a very good trip and we had a lot of fun meeting up with old friends again, the journeys themselves sucked majorly. Friday evening, we left Milan on the airport shuttle during rush hour and spent about two hours getting to the airport. Fortunately, nobody really gives a shit (or at the very least very little) about the new safety measures implemented to prevent terrorism in Italy, so we were in time for our flight after all. When we arrived at Stansted Airport, we were of course there at the only time of day when there isn't a bus to London every half hour, but had to wait for about two hours in the rain. By the time we did get to London it was 11 pm and OBVIOUSLY this means everything closes, even on Friday night. Fortunately, we found a little off-license supermarket not far from Marike's place and we created our own little party while Marike's fellow students started leaving the common room when we entered because 'it was so incredibly late already' and we were alone by 1 am.

On Saturday, we visited the British Museum and let ourselves be amazed by the Egyptian, Greek and Japanese sections. Especially the Japanese section, was very beautiful and instructive as I didn't know that much about Japanese history and culture. Afterwards we went semi-shopping in Oxford Street and treated the way too posh and way too expensive central London department stores as museums and admired the Christmas decorations. There's a lot one can say about the British, but they certainly do know how to make pretty shiny Christmassy thingies!!!

After that we took the train to Coventry to visit Matt and Anthony. We had a gorgeous dinner at a Lebanese BYO restaurant with them and of course drank far too much wine. According to Matt's calculations the next morning, we had finished 10 bottles of wine between the four of us. Well, that's only 2,5 bottles a person, isn't it? That's not very extreme... At least from my perspective! I've done worse than that! The next day we made a surprise trip to Oxford, a city neither Olaf nor I had ever been before. We didn't really do anything there, but we just walked around admiring the architectural styles of the old building and of course the local department stores with Christmas decorations! After a little dinch in a pub, we went back to Coventry (illegally traveling first class because coach was filled with people) and it was time for us to return to London (this time legally traveling first class because some English bitches had taken our reserved coach seats and the train manager couldn't be bothered to even come and take a look).

Back in London we met up with Marike again and went on a mad hunt for any place in London that would still serve us alcohol at 10.30 pm on a Sunday evening. We had to take the airport shuttle at three o'clock again, so it was really no use going to bed in the meantime. As it was also quite cold, warming ourselves with alcohol was the only solution and we really didn't feel like waiting outside for hours. We found one lovely restaurant near Covent Garden that would give us one bottle of wine but were not very subtle about us having to leave quite soon again. So, after having chucked down the bottle of wine and being chucked out of the restaurant, we went on the hunt again. Marike took us to a lot of pubs she knew and thought might be open until late, but we were completely unsuccessful until we found one place that was open for 24 hours a day. After some bottles of wine and nibblies, however, we were told that they wouldn't serve us anymore because they were going to close at 1 am. Apparently, these Londoners hadn't completely grasped the concept of a 24/7 pub. As we still had more than two hours to kill, Marike was sweet enough to offer to stay up with us and to take us back to her place again for a little repetition of our private party of two nights before. She lives in one of these very old dorm buildings with creaking floors and squeaking doors where there are always sounds you can't explain and people generally assume they are haunted. For this reason, being all alone at night in the common room amid all these sounds was kind of scary, but also exciting because it felt like being inside a horror movie! Anyway, after saying our goodbyes to Marike, we managed to find a taxi and went to the airport.

As our plane didn't leave until 6.30 am we decided that taking a little nap on the bus had refreshed us enough and that we would continue drinking at the airport. Amidst people desperately drinking coffee to stay awake, we had a lovely bottle of wine and slept like a rose on the airplane and on the bus back to Milan. Poor Olaf had to stay awake to go and give renewing his residence permit another try (which failed again, evil Italians!), whereas I didn't have to work until that evening and had already prepared those classes the week before, so I jumped right into bed. That morning, prompted by Marike, we realised that we hadn't taken any pictures that weekend, so unfortunately no pictures of rainy England on my blog.

Getting a bit rested was exactly what I need, because that evening my Dutch friends Maartje and Edin were arriving. Fortunately, they had already been traveling through Italy so they were quite beat themselves. We didn't really too that many exhausting things but just spent the time catching up and walking through Milan a bit. Tuesday evening, we did get a bit drunk, however... Here are some photos.