Walking in a Dream

The English and the French have a longstanding tradition of hating each other. The English call the French "frogs," and the French call them "roast beef." One can't help but feel disappointed in the France's name-calling ability (one would think that the French would be amazing at that kind of thing...) I believe this stems from the fact that the English and the French are opposite from each other in nearly every way. Just as a quick example, the entrances to the London Underground look like your standard public transportation entryways, whereas the entrances to the Paris Metro look like portals to some sort of Grecian afterlife.

In England, I've seen entire transactions take place in stores where not a single word is spoken. In England, you show your thanks with a brief but sincere smile, or possibly a "cheers" if you're feeling reckless. In France, the moment you walk into a store you must say "bonjour" to whoever is behind the counter, and when you leave you must say "merci." England has a monarchy, France beheaded theirs. England's stuck with the same government and reformed throughout the centuries, France is currently working on government number five, English is a free flowing and adaptive language, the French language is tightly regulated by an academy of scholars. The differences go on and on, when England goes right, it seems that France must go left.And though my Anglophilia dictates that my allegiance be with the English through and through (and it is!) I longed to go to Paris.

You can see France from the coasts of England, I've heard that in certain areas the French radio stations come in clearer than the English ones, when I came to England, I expected that everyone would have been to Paris, but this isn't necessarily true. To be sure, more people had been to Paris, and it certainly seemed a little more banal than in the United States, but not by much. Bill Bryson talks about how the English have their own sense of distance. For example, the distance from London to Edinburgh (an eight-hour train ride) is deemed "far," the distance from London to the United States (New York, Los Angeles, it doesn't seem to matter) is deemed "rather far," and the distance between London and Paris is deemed as being a breadth so great that one might as well travel to Jupiter (at least then one wouldn't have to deal with the French or the Euro.) Because of this, it seems like I've met more English people who have been to my country, which is an eight to twelve hour flight away, than I've met people who've taken the two-hour train ride\hour flight to Paris. And so I traveled to Paris with much trepidation.

Because I did not speak the language, I had to do a thing that I hate doing, which is asking for help from other people. I so often try and go it alone. In planning my trip to Paris I didn't even bother trying to get anyone else to come with me because I didn't want to get bogged down with trying to make plans and then not get to do everything I wanted to do or even worse not going at all because the plans never came to fruition. But if I wanted to go to Paris, I would have to hope that at least some of them would speak English, and that at least some of them would be nice enough to guide me so that I wouldn't stick out like a sore thumb in their city. In short, I would have to rely on the goodness in other people. A goodness that I claim to believe in but that I have a hard time depending on. Even worse, I had to put my faith in the benevolence of the French, which is a difficult thing to do when you've been raised in America.

Waiting in St. Pancras for the Eurostar, I made a list in my journal of the reasons I was afraid of traveling to Paris. I had been seized by fear and wanted to travel back to my room in Norwich, and I find that the most helpful thing I can do in such situations is to write.

Here is the list verbatim from my journal:

"May 19, 2011

Reasons to be scared of going to Paris:

1. It took me this long to figure out how to function in my own culture, it seems like to switch language and landmass now would just be cruel.

2. The language.

3. The gypsies.

4. America's longstanding frenemy relationship with the French.

5. The French.

6. The language.

7. Looking like an idiot. Or a tourist.

8. Not spending my time wisely, not getting to do everything. Wasting opportunities.

9. Getting into a fatal accident.

10. Getting lost.

11. Running out of money.

12. The language."

All these things turned over and over in the rock tumbler that is my mind. I had talked with my cousin, Annie, about going to a country where you didn't know the language or the culture and how much it frightened me. She told me that not knowing the language was the best thing about traveling; that feeling of being utterly lost and only knowing two or three phrases in the native tongue. She was right.

I knew a total of two phrases in French; I knew how to order (necessary for the consumption of delicious French food,) and I knew how to ask people if they spoke English (though I was ready to meet them halfway with my nigh three month of German or my rapidly deteriorating Spanish.) Though I needn't have worried so much about the language. Nearly everyone in Paris speaks English, the trick is that you have to try speaking French. They seem to understand that their language is intentionally hard and were always good natured when I butchered it with my minimal understanding of Gallic pronunciation. And when I say everyone spoke English, I mean everyone. A homeless man approached me, asking me for money. I told him that "Je ne parle francais" (I was trying to branch out) and as I walked on he shouted out, "Je ne parle PAS francais; I don't speak French!" What hope does America have for the future when even the French homeless are bilingual?

I used to think that people who talked at end about their trips to Paris were such snobs. "Oh you know, we just went to this delightful little bistro on the corner and got a crepe and a coffee and sat and had lunch in the Luxembourg gardens." But after going to Paris I realize that they aren't snobs, thats just how Paris is. In Paris, everything one does is fabulous with little to no effort. I got dinner one night at... this delightful little bistro on the corner. A croque monsieur and a can of Orangina. And I realized I was near the Seine, the river that runs through through the city that has been romanticized by such films as "An Education" and "An American in Paris." So I sat on the embankment, began to eat my dinner, and then I realized that through no direct effort of my own, I was living the standard cinematic montage of Paris. In the gramophone in my mind I played some Edith Piaf.

As my trip went on, many of my assumptions about the French began to fade away. I found the French to be ridiculously nice, which was in opposition to their snooty representation in American pop culture. I was always told that Parisian drivers are insane and that Paris itself is ridiculously dirty, but I found that the drivers were not nearly as homicidal nor was the filth nearly as ubiquitous as my own beloved Los Angeles (though I can confirm that the French do in fact, all chain smoke like Bette Davis on a Thursday.)

I think that my biggest fear was in going to Paris was that I would be incredibly disappointed. I had built it up in my mind for so long, I had heard so many stories, I had so many expectations. I never really thought that I was going to make it to Paris, or even come to Europe. It seemed like something other, more glamorous people did, but not me. To me the Mona Lisa would always be an answer to a test question and not an actual painting. Walking around Paris, I felt all these fears lift. The world was full of hope and possibilities. And though I knew this feeling would not last, because such feeling cannot last, I was happy to be in the moment. I was happy to be in Paris.

I Heart Haggis

Scotland's national drink is whiskey. Scotland's second national drink? IRN BRU.

IRN BRU as it is sold in Scotland is banned in the United States because it refuses to be tamed (and because it uses mildly controversial colorings to make it a shade of orange that an Oompa Loompa might refer to as "a little tacky.") But IRN BRU was only the beginnings of my culinary adventures in Scotland.

Lets get this out on the table. Haggis is the finely minced heart and lungs of a sheep that has been mixed with oatmeal and some spices and allowed to cook for a few hours in the stomach of said sheep. Sound delicious? It is.

After the Loch Ness Monster, Macbeth, and Groundskeeper Willie, my associations with Scotland revolved around this mystery food. Every time a movie or television show will take place with authentic Scotsmen, there is always some mention of Haggis, and I knew I had to try it.

Haggis is traditionally served with "tatties and neeps," Scottish slang for mashed potatoes and turnips ("Well, what else?" was my mother's sarcastic response.) You can also pay an extra pound and get it with whisky cream sauce. And even though cream sauce is one of the most ridiculously easy and cheap condiments one can make, I still (of course) found room in my budget for this as I am of the opinion that anything worth eating is worth eating even more with a cream sauce. Or gravy.

I asked the woman at the front desk of my hostel where I should go to get good haggis. She pointed me to two pubs. I went to the one that was closest. I'd try the next one the next night. The first pub was in the heart of Old Town Edinburgh, named "The End of the World," so called because the city walls used to be right next to the pub, and because there was a tax to go through the gates, most people never left, thus making the city gates the "end of the world" for as far as they were concerned. I ate at another one called "The Last Drop" because it was where they used to do the hangings in town.

My father was considering coming to visit with my brothers, and I told him we would have to go get dinner at a pub to get the true English experience. I could hear the concern in his voice that all I had been doing in England was double fisting Guinness night and day when he responded with a half hearted, "Well... that'd be interesting." So just to set the record straight: a pub is not a bar in the way that Americans think of them. Pubs are more like cultural places of gathering. Crick and Watson announced their discovery of the double-helix in a pub in Cambridge (which I ate at!) People bring their children to pubs in England, it's a communal thing.

But back to the haggis. I went into the pub, ordered my food, and read my book. There are several views on bringing the book when you dine alone. Some consider it a good way to relax, some consider it to be a pathetic attempt to not seem like someone who's going to die alone. In my opinion, it works either way. My food came and I dug into my first bite of haggis.

I've eaten the parts of the animal you're supposed to throw away before. I've had menudo, liver and onions, and I even tried chicken giblets. They're nice actually. And really, if you've ever eaten a hot dog, who are you to judge? And you really should try haggis. Like a nice, umami-infused sausage (to use today's culinary buzzword.) And if you happen to be a fashionable conscientious omnivore such as myself, you can feel superior that you're being resourceful. Like the Native Americans. Not like those foolish people who throw away perfectly edible organs when there are starving children in... that place. (When are my TOMS coming in the mail?) And maybe it's my Scottish ancestry, but I discovered I love haggis. In fact, I loved it so much that I ate it two

more

times.

And that wasn't the end of it. No siree. On my way back to the train station, I popped into a cafe, hoping to grab a sausage roll. They were out of sausage rolls, but they did have... BLACK PUDDING.

Black pudding is also known as blood pudding which is also known as blood sausage. If you think that's some cutesy, folksy, English name like "toad in the hole," it's not. It's exactly what it sounds like. And it was a most enjoyable breakfast. Warm, crispy, meaty, all those good things that I'm beginning to associate with offal.

What has become of me?

I Heart Edinburgh

I hadn't really thought about Scotland before I came to England. I can trace part of my ancestry up that way, but I saw no real reason to go beyond mere familial fascination. But in mid-April, Scotland and Edinburgh were all that I could think about. My trip to Rome had to be canceled for reasons that are too bureaucratically infuriating to go into, and because of it I was left with a free week and money that I had set aside for travel. Well, what else was I supposed to do?

But what does one do in Scotland? I was talking with my flatmate Hannah before the Easter Break started. Hannah didn't know, she'd never been. "It's so far up there," she said. Because they live on an island, the British have their own sense of what is "far." To me, "far" is somewhere that takes more than a day's drive. For example, Dothan, Alabama is what I would term "very far" as to get there involves a 36 hour drive where although it's not necessary to feel victimized and plotted against by your family members, it certainly helps.

So here are the facts, from Redlands to Roseville, a nine hour drive that my family makes about three or four times a year, it's 465 miles (or 748 km, for you Canadians.) To me, this is not far. From Norwich to Edinburgh, it's 376 miles (604 km.) Conclusion, Edinburgh is not "far." (Just for reference, from Redlands to Dothan it is 2147 miles, 566 feet, and three arguments about your fitness to operate a motor vehicle. I don't know what that is in Metric.)

Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, but you wouldn't really be able to tell. It's not a major metropolis, it reminded me more of Bath but bigger, or maybe San Francisco but smaller. I've never been anywhere quite like it. The most metropolitan thing there is the Scottish Parliament, which most of the Scottish view as a blight on the city (it really is though... it looks like some sort of Chinese knock-off of Frank Gehry.)

But again, what does one do in Scotland? Even as I got off the train, I still wasn't exactly sure. I had a few ideas, the castle, the National Gallery. I was only there for two and a half days, so I didn't have to fill up a huge amount of time, but I was afraid of having too much time and not enough things to do. I dropped my stuff off at the hostel and made my way to a free walking tour I'd found online (the "New Europe" Walking Tour, it was excellent, in case they wanted to sponsor my blog,) and I realized that Edinburgh was full of things to do.

Did you know that the Scottish Crown Jewels are older than the English ones? That's because the Scottish had the good sense to hide them when Oliver Cromwell was in power and destroying royal paraphernalia left, right, and center. Or that every day at one in the afternoon, a cannon is fired to tell everyone it's one in the afternoon (we were told that it's one and not noon because the Scottish are a stingy people and why waste twelve shots when one will do just as well?) OR that in medieval Edinburgh, at ten o'clock every night, a rousing cry of "gardyloo" would go around the city and people would throw the contents of their chamber pots into the streets (which was also the time all the drunks would be coming home from the pubs.) What a fascinating city!

Another thing about Edinburgh, it's basically Harry Potter Land (and not just because they all sound like Hagrid.) JK Rowling wrote the first one in a cafe there. She (may have) got the inspiration for Hogwarts from a school that was visible from the table she wrote at in the cafe AND she took character names from an adjacent graveyard!

That poor man has now had his name conflated with one of the most evil characters in literary history. We should all be so lucky.

Sitting in The Elephant House, I tucked into my beef pie and mash and looked at "the table." The place where she sat down day after day, only ordering a single cup of coffee because it was all she could afford, and pounding out her book. The amount of faith she had to have to do something like that must have been monumental. The thought that even when it wasn't coming out right or she was ready to give up and get a paying job, she just kept going and writing, and rewriting, and revising, and she knew that if she just kept at it, she would come out of it with something she was proud of. It was inspiring.

And so I'm trying to be more faithful in my own writing. I've started getting up every day and writing for two hours, and even if I don't like what I write, even if I think to myself that I should just give up now and become a proper English major, that's where the real money is, I won't. I'll power through. At least I hope I will. I have faith I will. I'll think of JK Rowling in the cafe and I'll keep on writing. And that's my souvenir from Edinburgh.

England with Mother

I woke up about a month ago with the strong feeling that I never wanted to leave England. I had fallen madly in love with it. I loved their strange place names like "Basingstoke" and "Cockfosters." I loved their adherence to tradition at all costs. I loved the brilliant and incomprehensible color of green that comes out when the sun shines on the grass. But most of all, I love the people. British people get bad rap, but they're some of the funniest, kindest people you will encounter (now the Italians, those are some truly unsavory people.) England is in almost all respects, a perfect country. Except for one thing; all of my friends and family live an ocean and a continent away, in California.

Now I love California too. It's the best state in the Union in my opinion, but I've always had an Old World soul. Ask any of my friends. No really. I organized and successfully threw a tea party for my fourth grade teacher. Of course this is undeniably significant of my billboard-sized homosexuality, but I think this also speaks to a love of the eccentricities of Europe. And also a love of cake (it always comes back to food here on my blog, have no doubts about that.)

Up until my epiphany I had alternated between being homesick and being in love with England, the kind of love that they have in the movies, a love to rock the ages. Jack and Rose, Scarlett and Rhett, Adam and the British Isles. But I also had been having recurring dreams where I was able to fly back to California for a weekend and visit all my friends and family (and dogs.) I missed them terribly. But on the morning of my epiphany, I felt like I would be able to live an ocean and a continent away from them.

And then my mother came. I love my mother, everyone does. She's effortlessly lovable and genuine to the core. She taught me to love all things kitsch and camp, something so few appreciate these days. She's a wacky woman. Until she visited me in England, my mom had never had a passport and excepting Hawaii, she had never left the North American continent.

Walking around London with my mom was a different experience. She travels differently than I do. Whereas I often want to get to my destination as quickly as possible, my mother wants to explore every nook and cranny along the way, which makes you find things you didn't see. In Bath she and my cousin found locks along canals. She chatted up one of the other tourists on the walking tour and found out about a restaurant famous for its buns that we later went to and enjoyed.

And as I traveled with her, I remembered all the things I loved about California; the hodge-podge of Los Angeles, the hippie elegance of San Francisco, the poppies that bloom along the five in Spring, the oranges in my hometown of Redlands.

As we took the elevator (that is one word I simply cannot let go of, it is not a "lift" and it never will be) up from the Tube, my mom handed me an orange that she had picked from the tree in our yard. They say that the sense of smell triggers more memories than any other sense, and as I lifted the orange to my nose and dug my nail into it, my love of California came flooding back to me. Earthquakes, Mexican food, driving, traffic, all my friends, all my family, all my dogs! It had been so long since I'd had proper fruit that had been grown and allowed to ripen under legitimate sunlight. How could I even think of living anywhere else?

And now I'm of two minds. There's the part of me that loves California and shorts and oranges and the way the sun turns everything golden early in the morning. And then there's the part of me that loves England and it's ancientness and traditions and vaguely socialist democracy. And it's weird, to feel simultaneously homesick and content with where I am. My alternating feelings I had before my epiphany have now synthesized into some strange alloy and I don't know how I feel anymore.

But what I do know is this; I have two months left here in England, and I'm going to have the most amazing time living in a place that I love and that will have a very large piece of my heart. And then I'm going to go back home to California, a place that I also love, that also takes up a large part of my heart. And so when it comes time to leave England, and give up my overseas address and overseas mobile number and the amazing feeling that come from being international and having an accent, I'm happy to be giving it up for a place that I love just as much.

Pancake Day!

In the States we call it Mardi Gras. Everyone gets drunk, wears beads, and generally acts like they're on the set of a "Girls Gone Wild" video. I was told before I left that most Europeans view Americans as drunks. I imagine that Mardi Gras has not done much to stem this reputation. In England, instead of Mardi Gras, they have Pancake Day. And no, that is not a euphemism.

It wasn't that the idea of Pancake Day was strange to me. Heaven knows all of my posts on this blog come back to food eventually. No, what struck me as strange about Pancake Day was the wholesomeness of it. It was something that actually sounded fun. Because I was born with the soul of a seventy-nine year old woman trapped inside me, I'm not the biggest party person, and consequentially, participating in the no-holds-barred bacchanal that is Mardi Gras has never appealed to me.

Pancake Day arose out of the need to get rid of "rich" food items like milk, sugar, and eggs before the more somber season of Lent, which is a time when Christians celebrate Christ's fasting in the wilderness. It is traditional to give something up for Lent. I've personally never done this, but this year, as a challenge to myself, I have decided to give up chocolate. I expect that in two weeks time I will have either given in to stress and gone back to my cocoa mistress, or have murdered my entire flat in cold blood.

I made the Pioneer Woman's recipe for sour cream pancakes. In doing this, I had to wrestle with not only the Metric system, but the English Imperial System of Measurement. A US Customary cup is roughly 236 milliliters, however an English cup is exactly 284 milliliters, this would have been all right had the tablespoons I was able to track down been in proper ratio (an American tablespoon is 1/16 of a cup) but no, they weren't. Luckily, I am not only a culinary but also a mathematical genius, and I was able to make pancakes that were delicious beyond all means. I ate them with golden syrup and shared them with my flatmate Kam.

I had made my pancakes earlier in the evening, my flatmates were going upstairs to cook in their friends' kitchen, and I was expecting a quiet night of catching up on some television and wolfing down chocolate digestives and a Snickers bar before the clock struck midnight. But when I went to the kitchen, I was met with utter madness. Apparently the friends' kitchen was in use and ours was to be the scene for Pancake Day. Eggs were being smashed against the counter, people were whisking with forks and spoons, and pancakes were being poured on all four hobs in the kitchen. And then a fatal mistake was made, someone brought out an electric hand mixer. They needed my help. They just didn't know it yet.

Baking is a delicate process. Too much of one thing or not enough of another, and you might as well go into the corner and cry yourself to sleep. Not that I would know anything about that. I don't even have corners in my kitchen. It's a perfect circle. Perfect, like me. No, I'm not on any medication, why do you ask? But I digress. Using an electric mixer with pancakes would serve to activate the gluten, which would make them not unlike the Hopi bread that you can get at scouting events and various historical reenactments. Things were eventually straightened out. Condiments were lined up as if they were soldiers going off to war. Every plate and utensil was pulled out and distributed and soon the feast was on!

It's strange how one day of celebration can be expressed in such polar opposites. Across the States, people would be drinking and vomiting and revealing their various body parts to each other for beads, but here, we were eating pancakes. And for the first time, it felt like I was really celebrating Mardi Gras, or at least Mardi Gras as I would like it to be.