Everyone's A Little Bit Racist

WARNING/ACHTUNG: Large, long post about my recent journeys ahead. Continue at your own risk (though I did try to make it as interesting as possible).

Last night I had a visit from Tunisia-boy (I'm calling him that because I still am not sure of his name). He's Muslim and it's interesting to talk to him about it.

Perhaps it's like the pot calling the kettle black, but I'm sick of Americans. There's a bunch of new Americans here in Freiburg (they arrived a little before I left) and they're just annoying. They are everywhere and loud and drunken. I didn't come to Germany to see the American college campus reconstructed. But whatever. I'll get over it.

In London, I spent the first half of the day by myself. Sarah wanted to go to a museum, but I'm sick and tired of museums and so I decided to go off by myself for a while. But first I needed some cash. Let me tell you, an ATM is about the hardest thing to find in London. I asked about 6 people and searched for a good 35 minutes before I finally found one. Although ATMs are scarce, foreign people (as in not English) abound. It seemed as though every person doing a menial job (working in a convenience store or as a clerk) wasn't a native speaker of English. When I asked one guy for an ATM, he thought I was asking for food. Right. In a book, I found out that the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace was at 11am, but it was 10:52am when I realized that. So I started walking quickly towards the palace (it wasn't very far but perhaps too far). On my way, I saw a line of horses going two-by-two down the street. There were dressed-up guards riding them. So I gave up on the changing of the guard and followed the horses to a plaza thing. It turned out to be some official horse parade thing that looked like it might happen everyday (though I'm not sure). I really liked London and I'm hoping to go back during the semester for a long weekend and see a different play/musical every night.

Ireland was beautiful. On the 18th, we went to the Cliffs of Moher (I mentioned them in a previous post). They were amazingly incredible. They are huge cliffs that go down to the Atlantic and go for about 8 miles, I think. The day we were there, it was dangerously windy (but the wind was going inland so it wasn't too dangerous, really). At times it was impossible to walk forward. The wind would just push you where it wanted you. It also hailed on and off. On the way back to the car, I was trying to hold onto my souvenirs and protect my camera when a particularly huge gust came and just toppled me over. It hurt. I had huge bruises on my kness and elbows, and my left elbow was split open. But I was ultimately fine and it was definitely worth it to see those cliffs and the raging ocean. Foam from the ocean hitting the cliffs was actually flying up above us on the cliffs.

The first time I got close to the ocean was in Conamara the next day. We stopped at a little car park (as they call parking lots in Ireland and the UK) and walked down to the beech. It was low tide and there were a lot of rocks, so I didn't actually get to the real ocean, but I collected some little shells and climbed on the rocks. I saw a way that looked like a path to the shore, so I took it alone while the others were occupied. On the way, I encountered a section that reminded me of the dead marshes in Lord of the Rings. And then I got ot the rocks and started climbing over them to get to the water (there was water between the rocks, but it still wasn't really the ocean to me). After a while, it started to get dark because a strom was rolling in. And then it started hailing. I took shelter behind a particularly large rock and marvelled at the fact that I was riding out a hail storm behind a rock on the ocean by myself in Ireland. It only lasted about 5-10 minutes, and after it finished, I heard a distant yell that sounded like my name and so I headed back to the friends who were also stranded outside during the hail storm because I had the car keys.

The weather in Ireland was more spontaneous than in Michigan. It was literally, 'if you don't like the weather, wait 5 minutes'. It was always going from rain to sun to hail to snow to sun to rain to cloudy... over and over and over again. But because it changed so often, there were a ton of rainbows.

I finally tasted the ocean in Troon, Scotland, and I got my shoe soaked in Barmouth, Wales.

Wales was beautiful. There was the whole hostel issue, but the people turned out to be soooooo nice. Sarah and I loved the manager at the hotel where we ended up staying (he told us to come hang out with him and some others in the bar if we weren't too tired... we were too tired, sadly). The guy on the train who offered us a ride was amazing. Everyone was so helpful.

By the way, Dracula is a really good book.

The Itinerary:
3/14 - arrive in Dublin (Joslyn, Mary, Sarah, and I), drive to Glendalough
3/15 - ruins in Glendalough, medievel things in Kilkenny, end in Cashel
3/16 - ruins of abbey in Cashel, Rock of Cashel (castle thing), drive to Kilarney (traditional music in a pub)
3/17 - nature in Kilarney (lakes, waterfall), drive to Limmerick/Shannon
3/18 - Cliffs of Moher, Galway (traditional music in a pub)
3/19 - leave Galway, Conamara, drive to Dublin, see some of Dublin
3/20 - Dublin (National Museum, Natural History Museum, shopping, Polish food)
3/21 - Book of Kells at Trinity College in Dublin, Sarah and I continue to N. Ireland, sleep in Larne
3/22 - ferry to Scotland, walk around Troon and see ocean, train to Glasgow
3/23 - Loch Lomond and Luss (a village), bus to Inverness
3/24 - Loch Ness, Inverness
3/25 - bus to Edinburgh, museum (optical illusions and stuff), sight-seeing, shopping
3/26 - bus and train to Wales, end in Barmouth
3/27 - Wales and ocean, train to Birmingham, shopping and Krispy Kremes
3/28 - train to Salisbury, bus to Amesbury, walk to Stonehenge
3/29 - Salisbury (cathedral, shopping), bus to London, dinner of caribbean food
3/30 - London
3/31 - taxi to London Stanstead airport, flight at 7am, back in Germany