Brevity on a sunny day.

I just stumbled upon this on the NYT website. It perfectly sums up how I'm feeling right now: living in the present here, but at the same time using what I'm doing here to inform how I feel about and experience the United States when I get back. The fact that it's pretty bad-ass photography for the most part is just the icing on the cake...apparently the collection was done in conjunction with the FOAM museum in Amsterdam, which was doing an amaaaaazing Avedon retrospective when I visited at the end of April.

Okay, getting too pretentious. Moving on...

I spotted some insanely cheap tickets to Berlin on Ryanair's website this week, and five of us are heading there on June 18th for one last huzzah. Pretty excited.

I'm off for a run and potentially a nap. Something about today lends itself to sleep.

Word of the Day #2

So it isn't Dutch, but here it is:

Angstschweiß (pronounced angst-shviess) - sweating due to nerves

...and on that note, I'm off to drink a liter of Coke Light, crank up the Chet Baker, and write this damn paper.

Odd.

Last night, I experienced my first pangs of not wanting to leave. (I know, right?)

A whole bunch of us internationals were out on the patio at Odessa, schvitzing and drinking rapidly warming Palms, to celebrate Martina's last night in Nijmegen before she heads back to Switzerland. As she left, some part of me was like, damn. The people are what make Nijmegen tolerable for me. And quite honestly, I have no idea when--or if--I'll see them again. Not a pleasant thought.

And I turn 21 in less than 2 weeks? Honestly, WTF?

The signs of London

And just for a little weekend pick-me-up, some charmingly worded signage from around London town:

(Fortnum and Mason)

(Tower of London)

(Tower of London)

(St. Bartholomew's Church)

Oh, those Brits. I just can't get enough.

London skies and bubbly Bath

The re-cap!

After a long and stressful morning of traveling (bike to train to another train to bus to plane to bus...how I love Ryanair and chronically late Netherlands rail), Drew met me at Liverpool St. and we explored the hilariously touristy South Bank.


Parliament really does take your breath away. Big Ben--which, as I've recently discovered, is the name of the bell and not the clock tower itself--is absolutely magnificent. Pictures don't do it justice. It's not as humongous as movies would have you believe, though.


We followed up with a bit of wandering through the North Bank--Leicester Square, Buckingham Palace, Green Park--and stopped at Fortnum & Mason, a magical place that some vulgar Americans might call a department store (I, of course, wouldn't be among them), for some tea, conversation, and a glorious and unexpected run-in with one Caiti Maloney and her family. (YAY! Yay yay yay.) We perused the aisles of such funky items as Darjeeling Fine Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe tea, rose-petal preserves, and towering stacks of chocolate. They are, after all, purveyors of foodstuffs to the Queen herself.




London is in many ways a very bourgeois town...which filled me with a bit of self-loathing before I learned to just shut up and enjoy myself. Never did I think like a place like Harrods, with its food courts filled with £35/100g truffles and LED-lit Egyptian escalator, could exist (and continue to exist for over 100 years).



Drew managed to snag free tickets to a Bollywood version of Wuthering Heights at the Lyric in Hammersmith, which was--wait, what was that noise? Oh, I think it was Emily Bronte turning in her grave.

After a deep and much-needed sleep, I hopped on the Tube and spent the morning at the Tower of London. It's definitely more interesting and less creepy than popular opinion makes it out to be. The Crown Jewels are so seriously blinged-out that it's hard to believe that they're real. The carvings that prisoners made in the walls of their cells were shockingly well-preserved, which seems to be a trend in England.



There was also a fairly awkward and poorly maintained memorial to execution victims on the Tower Green, where many a political enemy and insufficient queen lost their heads.

Speaking of execution: the armory had an extensive collection of Henry VIII's armor from his early twenties until his death. The signs were pretty informative, but accompanied with snarky little signs mapping his path towards obesity and general lethargy based on analysis of his armor. He wasn't the greatest guy, but come on.

We walked through Borough Market's many stands hawking organic fruits and veggies, exotic American beers and other beverages (strawberry-rhubarb juice--YUM!), and even a stand claiming to sell ostrich and zebra (?!) burgers. Couldn't spend too much time, though, because I've been waiting my whole life for the next thing on the agenda...


R&J was done as it should always be done: devilishly funny in parts, with period costumes and bawdy songs and tons of fake blood and some really great ensemble turns. And all with a groundling seat. Glee! I'm sad to say that Heathrow doesn't re-direct their flights around the Globe, so some soliloquies were interrupted by the roar of a 757 overhead. Methinks that they didn't have that problem back in the day.

The production ran about three and a half hours, so we had just enough time to grab dinner before Waiting for Godot. Patrick Stewart. Ian McKellen. I really don't think anything else needs to be said.

But no trip to London is complete without a stroll by Parliament at night. Magic.


Met up with long-lost Manhattanite turned Londoner John Hogan the next morning for a posh brunch at the Wolesley and a guided tour of the nooks and crannies of the city. Some highlights: pints at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese (one of the oldest pubs in England, frequented by pretty much everyone who was anyone in the last few centuries), Francis Bacon at the Tate Modern, sneaking into the Temple (where the Inns of Court are located) through a small and nondescript door--




--lovely St. Bartholomew's Church--


--and Covent Garden at night.

Got to bed early, because we hopped on a bus to Bath the next morning briiiight and early to visit Ms. Christina Lepri on her home turf! The Roman baths were really incredible. Never did I think that going through a museum would be so...relaxing.


We also took a sip of the so-called "healing" sulfur spring waters. Warm. Gross. Don't do it.


After a quick trip through the Fashion Museum and chips at the Pig and Fiddle, we took a rainy, beautiful stroll through the home of Jane Austen. The English countryside is really all it's cracked up to be.




Hopped up at six the next morning for the bus back to London--there began the Epic 42 Hours Sans Sleep--and finished up the rest of the Tate Modern as well as a couple quick surveys of the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery.

The real showstopper, however, was Westminster Abbey. I looked up in the cavernous arches above the nave and choral pews and felt tears welling up in my eyes. Loyal readers of Carr on a Bike (and, uh, anyone who knows me) know that I'm not a crier, but damn. The tombs! The ancient carvings! The 12th century religious murals! Ahhhh!




And have I mentioned that the audio tour is narrated by Jeremy Irons?

It was weird and frustrating to be back in the Netherlands the next morning, to go from a place where things sort of border on the familiar (Vitamin Water! Reese's! English! Culture!) to a place that still, even after almost 5 months, feels foreign and uncomfortable. I'm still working on accepting the fact that I didn't come here for the Netherlands; I came here for Europe, which has proved to be pretty freakin' awesome.

This room needs cleaning and some overdue library books need reading, so I'm off to do my thing. Forty-one days, ladies and gents.

Of passports and poor word choice

I'm back in NL. London was awesome...it's one of those cities that you don't fall in love with immediately, but grow to like more and more each day until leaving becomes a serious drag. Bath was incredibly beautiful. I wish I'd gotten to spend a bit more time there.

A brief rundown: I got to see three plays, gorged myself on free museums, roamed churches and ruins, wandered for ages, laughed until I cried with good friends. I don't know if it's just the warm fuzzy feeling I got by being surrounded by English for the first time since January, but life just felt so much easier there, so much more civilized, more beautiful and less practical. I am so ready to go home. So, so, so, SO ready.



P.S. As for the title: so apparently I have some quality that screams OH MY GOD PAT HER DOWN SEVERAL TIMES AND QUESTION HER ABOUT HER MOTIVES BECAUSE SHE'S AN EVIL VICIOUS TERRORIST. This has happened at least once every time I've flown in Europe. So I'm standing in the Stansted airport at five this morning, having just completed 24 hours without sleep, and I make the bleary-eyed mistake of telling said security officer that oh no, I don't have any special plans in traveling, I'm just heading home to the Netherlands.

Oh WAIT. HOME?! Stupid. Stupid stupid stupid.

She raises an eyebrow. "You don't SEEM like you're from the Netherlands." Long shifty glare. "Can you step to the side for a moment?"

So, just to throw this out there: I'm not a terrorist. Seriously. The rumors are false.

London calling...

Leaving bright and early (GAH!) for London tomorrow. Should be fabulous, despite predictions that it'll rain every minute of every day that I'm there. Be back on Tuesday.

But that wasn't the main reason I updated. This entry is a shout-out to Alexandra (Poisson du Monde) Fisher.


Yes, I took this with my webcam without you knowing. MWAHAHAHA.

And now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Tulips, canals, sand, and general adorableness

The same crew who went to Italy in March (I swear, every time I think about that trip I have to pause, sigh, and look longingly out the window) decided on Saturday night to take a marathon train trip to northern Holland.

Northern Holland, it bears mentioning, is not near where I live. What? you say. Don't you live a little north of center in the Netherlands? True. But using Holland and the Netherlands interchangably to describe the same country is a common mistake. In fact, calling somebody a Hollander if they don't necessarily live in those provinces is a little derogatory, like calling them a hick or something. I live in the province of Gelderland. Noord- and Zuid-Holland are two other provinces west of Amsterdam.

Lesson over. Let's get to the pictures.


We started off in Haarlem, which is, um, vastly unlike Harlem as we understand it. Lots of canals and houseboats and pretty, pretty flowers. We had a cup of coffee and some tostis (traditional Dutch grilled cheese-like thing) in the sunny town square as the bells tolled in the Grote Kerk, then made our way through the winding cobblestone streets.



And there was a windmill! True, we have one in Nijmegen, but this one was older and cuter. (Cute will be an oft-used adjective today. Get used to it.)


Houseboat living isn't too weird in the Netherlands because there's so. much. water. We saw some particularly lovely ones in Haarlem. This one, for instance, had a hot tub. YUM.



Next, we jumped on a 20-minute train to Zandvoort-aan-Zee, which is a resort town on the North Sea. It was surprisingly warm, and we went wading.


...then Jaclyn and Dahl went swimming.


After a brief sunning session to wring some of the water out of said jeans (ahem), we took a train to Alkmaar, another town known worldwide for its cheese market and countrywide for its football team. (Quick note: I think I really live here now because when somebody talks about football, I don't immediately think about quarterbacks...I think about what Americans like to call 'soccer'.)





Another windmill! It was surrounded by this lovely leafy park and pretty houses and canals, and just as we were leaving to head to the train station, a puppy came galumphing over and jumped in my purse. YESSSSS.

I can't believe how different Holland is from the rest of the Netherlands. Even Amsterdam doesn't compare in cuteness, and Amsterdam is a frighteningly cute city once you get past the whole OH MY GOD THERE IS A SHOP SELLING MARIJUANA TWO FEET AWAY thing. True, we visited on a Sunday so there's the whole natural slowdown of everything being closed, but everything just seems more pleasant and livable and humane, really.



We agreed that Nijmegen needs some canals. Perhaps we'll start digging a moat around Hoogeveldt today.

Sara from Italy is cooking up a whole lot of tiramisu tonight for her birthday and for the rest of the week, I'm consumed with preparations for London. It's surprisingly cold out. I mean, come on, Netherlands...it's gonna be June in a couple weeks. Get your act together.

Kraków: the SparkNotes edition.

So I'm sure you've seen most of my pictures on Picasa (once again: picasaweb.google.com/margaretaislinncarr), which mostly come with explanations, so I'll keep it fairly short and sweet. Excerpts from my travel journal (ooh! SCANDALOUS).


"First impressions of Poland: Dry. Stuffy. Depressing. This is probably mostly attributable to the four hours that Rebecca and I spent touching our neighbors' knees in a 2nd-class smoking car from Bydgoszcz to Warsaw. I just kept seeing these halfhearted houses and these thrown-together train platforms in the middle of absolutely NOWHERE that look more like rusted 1970s playground equipment than an actual place where people board trains--thank you, recent communism--and tired looking flowering brush, and I was like, is this it?"

"A textbook Eastern European woman (tacky purple jewelry, scrunchie, orange-red lipstick) not only mediated our questions to the train conductor, but got off at Warsaw Centralna--skipping her own stop--just to make sure we got on the right connecting train. It's instances like that that make me feel like the world's not so big after all...and yet, the hassle of today makes me extraordinarily aware that Americans aren't the center of the universe."

"I've tried to start this explanation several times and I feel like I just can't. It was the only remaining gas chamber, the other (and larger) two at Birkenau having been dynamited in an attempt to cover up the genocide. The air was thick with poison and thousands of ghosts. The mildewed ceiling dripped death. The silence reeked of last screams and lungs closing against one's will. I stumbled through, dazed. I had stood where they had stood, and yet, I was alive. Not by virtue of inner strength or perseverance, but just by the mere chance of chronology. I walked through the valley of death and emerged dizzy and utterly empty and completely unharmed. I find this staggeringly unfair."

"People talk about Auschwitz like a giant cosmic ink blob on the annals of history, and it most emphatically is not. Some god did not drop the ink. It wasn't a mistake. We wrote it, and we are responsible--not as Germans, not as Americans, not as old, not as young, as human beings--for not mopping it up in time."

"I looked out at the fairly new houses built around Birkenau and Auschwitz, the residents of which have to look out at the reminder of that horror each day. How does a nation bounce back from being the main symbol of barbarism in the history of the modern world? I can't imagine."


"The main square is enormous and kind of quirky: illegal street vendors selling remote-control cars and foam dogs, hundreds of people eating lunch under yellow umbrellas, teenage hip-hoppers (is every city in the world required to have a mediocre dance team? I think so), turrets and arches and flags atop candy-colored buildings of indeterminate age. St. Mary's Church (pictured) is obviously ancient on the outside, but kind of unassuming as European churches go--all brick and tarnished brass, asymmetrical towers--but filled with kaleidoscopic color on the inside. Almost cartoonish and absolutely breathtaking."


"Wawel, the castle, is astounding but not quite elegant--a veritable hodgepodge of design elements (the retaining wall, for instance, was constructed in the 1920s), mostly brick and stucco, with the Wawel Cathedral (JPII's old hangout) ornamented with brass domes both aged and polished...soaring iron gates, ivy-covered towers, and a great view of sailboats on the Vistula. The gardens were in bloom and the sun was blazing."





"We were let into the Remuh Synagogue's incredibly old cemetery by two gruff guardsmen ("You pay!" "Cover your arms!"). It was silent. The whole Kazimierz quarter, in fact, was silent (it being the Sabbath and all).


"I think I've perfected the art of people-watching. Later in the day, we watched the sun set over the city from a shady bench in the Planty (park that surrounds the Old City) by the Florianska Gate, and I was completely absorbed by meditating on the fine line between dressing up and looking like a hooker in Eastern Europe, cooing at the audacious children and puppies that walked right up to me and stared before being summoned by their slightly embarrassed parents/owners, elderly couples all dressed up for a Sunday-evening stroll (men in sport coats and ties, women in skirt suits and heels, some shuffling painfully), the father and mother on Rollerblades, pushing a wheelchair-bound son and a baby in a stroller while a daughter, also on Rollerblades, tagged along, couples swapping hands in the back pockets of jeans...the real spirit of cities, I've found, seeks you out."





Life in Nijmegen right now can best be summed up by what I'm consuming: a raincoat, Top-Siders, a stack of UK Glamour, and a lot of Wilco. Yes, folks, the rain is back. Priscilla (my bike) is dying a long, slow, painful death, which makes me sad. Class is starting again today after almost two weeks of vacation, which is a welcome change. This break has mainly consisted of a lot of sleeping and dealing with the remnants of a nasty, nasty cold that developed right before Poland. I understand now why I get sick so rarely at school--my body simply doesn't have time to do it.

Freaky things: a mere 8 weeks until the land of red meat and freedom, technically being a senior...IN COLLEGE. How did I get so old?