Musings on the National Express...

15. Dec. '09

"My heart always does a jump as I get on the National Express bus headed to Brighton. It's this excited nervousness, which, in so many ways is like going home. I love all my friends so much, the familiarity of what I'll eat from Marks & Spensers and what I'll order from Costa."

20. Dec. '09

"Nat'l Express Driver: When you tale a call you need to keep in mind how long you're on the phone because no one else on the coach has anything to do except listen to your conversation and nobody wants to know who did what, who you took home and how long they lasted. Especially because there's children and men on board and they will get jealous...including me."

The fact that England's public transportation inspired two journal entries from me within a week means America is doing it wrong. I should also mention the bus driver gave us all chocolates while wearing a Santa hat.

Brighton, England

I got from Liverpool to Brighton for £6. How awesome is that? Sure, I had to pay to put a bit more money on my Oyster card to ride from the train station to the bus station in London and to ride the bus in Brighton when I didn't want to carry my luggage and the groceries Lisa and I bought up Elm Grove (re: the never-ending hill to get to her house), but I'm still pretty damn proud of myself. I got a Megatrain from Liverpool to London for £5 and then a National Express funfare from London to Brighton (2 hours) for £1. Win. If I had wanted to wake up freakishly early enough to take an 8:30 am train, that would've been only £1 as well.

Sadly though, almost immediately upon my arrival to Brighton my camera stopped working mysteriously. This is probably because I tend to just throw it in my bag without a case and hope for the best, but it did last me 4 years. Since I lived in Brighton for a year in 2007-2008 and was around both last summer for Pride and in December for Christmas I have enough pictures to give you a taste of this wonderful town.

So what did I do in Brighton? Well, mostly I sat on Lisa's couch and studied German. No really, I'm pretty boring. After four months of traveling, I was tired of being a tourist. I did live here a year already, so it was nice to just have some down time. Plus all my friends were finishing their dissertations and studying for exams, which motivated me to study for the fake German exam I have in my head (re: speaking to a Smith professor in May so she can evaluate my likelihood of learning enough German to qualify for the Fulbright). I popped into Allsorts Tuesday to say hello (a queer youth group in town I joined when I was studying at Sussex, which gives you free dinner!), went out to Legends at some point with Lisa, Elea and their friends, got my hairz did, FINALLY got my free coffee at Red Roaster and ate way too many vegan Co-op custard and jam doughuts. Two packages for £1 is really the death of me.

On April 30th Emma W drove Emma K and me into London to Emma K's house. We made a wrong turn and ended up having to drive through the center of London, which took like 5 billion hours, but it was a nice tour! Once we got to Emma's house we met up with her sister Holly and her Mom and headed to this restaurant near Camden Town that was supposed to have crazy good ice cream for Emma K's birthday. Being vegan, I went for the sorbet with fresh bananas and it was super yummy. Mostly I was a giant sick face my last several days in England as one of my glands swelled up super big and I seemed to develop a fever (for 10 days), which I'll go more into later. Germs suck.

Here's some past times in Brighton for ya:

Lisa (former flatmate at Sussex Uni), Lizzie and me last summer at the Marlborough, this mostly lesbian pub we used to live at the year I lived in Brighton (they had free pool!).

Walking along Brighton Pier, which is full of fried snacks, candy, arcades and rides!

Last summer from the left Lucy, Emma W and Helen. Brighton has a rock beach, which everyone but me seems to hate. What I hate, however, is getting sand all over my body. I finally swam in the sea in Brighton for the first time last August!

At Brighton Pride last summer, which is basically the gayest gay that ever gayed. The entire town shuts down for this, tooooons of people flock to the city and then everyone follows the parade to Preston Park at the end, which is MASSIVE and filled with outdoor clubbing tents, giant rides, lots of stands with food, condoms, t-shirts, sex toys, etc. It was freaking massive. The only negative part was if you had to pee (I did) you had to wait FOREVER and toilet paper was scarce. Also, it rained on our parade that year. I thought this reference to Little Britain was especially funny. The Oldest Gay in the Village.

Lisa and I last summer at The George, a vegetarian pub I was obsessed with that had the best pub quiz EVER and the best vegan nachos everrrr. I freaking love me some vegan nachos. This is likely us after devouring an entire pitcher of Pimms.

Brighton Beach as seen from the Pier.

The Wreck. I think at one point this was supposed to be the or a pier and then it, well, was wrecked. It basically just reminds me of Sugar Rush, an awesome British lesbian TV show that takes place in Brighton. Watch it!

And another view of The Wreck that I took with Kaden a couple years ago on a super stormy day.

The Royal Pavilion

Next Stop: America!

Christmas in the You Kay.

Get ready for a picture-heavy post! My hiatus on this blog has not been due to a lack of fun things in my life, but rather, too many! I've been traveling and seeing friends (and having my internet hate me at my flat), so now I'm playing catch up before I'm all sorts of busy again!

I went to England for Christmas time and the week before it. First stop was Brighton with Lisa! For some reason I didn't start taking pictures until after I stayed with her, so here's a picture from the vault of Lisa and I at Sussex my 3rd year of uni. We ate lots of noms from the George (vegetarian pub in Brighton), played Rock Band, Dutch Blitz, saw New Moon! (shhhhh) and generally frolicked around Brighton.

Getting off the bus, our first stop was All Sorts, a LGBT youth group/social events/awareness organization in town I was part of when I lived in Brighton. There was condom stuffing in the front room all eve! Hooray!

I always spend a lot of time in Sainsbury's when in England because a) I love food, b) I love looking at food and c) I love food that they don't have where I live. The Sainsbury's brand (above) likes to mock itself. The difference between England and America is that America's advertising tries to convince you you're getting more for less money, while England just accepts the reality that their cheaper store brand will be a bit more shite. For example, Sainsbury's Bitter, "a bit less bitter". I think the store brand of Crunchy Nut says something like, "Less nuts, still good." Hilarious.

It snowed. Southern England doesn't really know how to deal with snow since apparently the last blizzard there was 20 years ago. No joke, everything shut down. The buses stopped running down this hill, stores closed, everyone called in sick, trains and planes were cancelled or severely delayed for days. Not to mention they didn't have plows or grit to put down. Thus, I slid down this hill everyday from Lisa's to get into town and took a pretty serious wipe-out in front of some dudes.

More snow! The Level is on the right. It's named that because it's, well...level.

The Royal Pavilion all snowy and pretty! Damn the ugly fence in the way. According to the interwebs, the Brighton Pavilion was built in the early 19th century as a seaside retreat for Prince Regent, who moved to Brighton because his physician told him the seawater would be good for his gout. The Pavilion was also a discreet enough location for the prince to "have liasons" (a.k.a. bone) his ladyfriend Mrs. Fitzherbert. Eventually John Nash redesigned the place as it is today, and now you can see a very Indian-influenced appearence on the outside with a strong Chinese and Indian fashion influence on the interior.

My next stop was North London to stay with Emma K and Holly. Because Emma W's car got snowed in we ended up in London a day later, but it's okay because the three of us went to the cheap all-you-can-eat Indian buffet, where we created some pretty impressive food babies. When Emma K and I finally did get to London, via bus instead of car, we ended up with the BEST BUS DRIVER EVER on the National Express. He wore a Christmas hat and gave us sweets! His shut the fuck up on the bus speech went something like this...

"When you take a call you need to keep in mind how long you're on the phone because no one else on the coach has anything to do except listen to your conversation and nobody wants to know who did what to who, who you took home and how long they lasted. Especially because there's children and men on board and they will get jealous. Including me."

Proof that I was in England. Me with a Tesco bag full of food this time. And Christmas puddings! Which I still have yet to explore with my taste buds.

We went to Camden Town, which is my favorite place in London. It's basically this maze of crazy stores and stands selling things. I love it. Here's Holly and a crazy mannequin.

And me and a crazy mannequin!

There's a lot of weird things in Camden Town. Myself included. Tee-hee.

This is a futuristic clothing store called Cyberdog. Think clothing the Jetson's would wear. You'd think there isn't a huge market for such things, but this store is fucking massive. It goes on forever with pounding techno music and generally makes you feel like you're tripping balls at a rave as soon as you walk in. I really wish I had an excuse to wear clothing from the future.

Moped tables!
This is the face you have to make when riding the Tube, or any public transportation, really. Demonstrated by Emma K.

I spent the actual Christmas holidays in Lewes with my friend Gulliver and his family. We stayed at his boyfriend Ollie's parents' house. They had the most ridiculous spice rack ever. See above. I pretty much had an orgasm every time I looked at it. Here's Gulli demonstrating the awe-inducing power of the spice rack.

Gulli and I are both vegan so we were pretty pumped about vegan Christmas. He made nut roast using a unique method that involved chopping the nuts by cutting them with a scissor.

Gulli's family with Christmas Crackers! When I lived in England I was really confused as to why my English friends wanted to eat crackers so much during Christmas. Eventually I was clued in to the fact that Christmas Crackers are actually little wrapped containers with presents inside that explode when you tug them!

The Christmas Crackers also had hats! These are our presents.

It was a good trip overall and it was great to see everyone again (some for the first time since June 2008!). I'll be back in April heading from Dublin, to Liverpool and back down to Brighton and London, so I'll even get to hangout not in a blizzard! Thanks to everyone for hosting me, feeding me and generally being awesome!

Left, but not there quite yet.

I'm currently back in Brighton, England staying with my friends and former flatmates Lisa and Emily. Being back here has been weird, to say the least, but also more normal than much of anything that's happened to me in this past year. It's funny, when I'm here America and my last year there feels like it was all a dream. When I first got back to America after my year in Brighton, I dreamed about Sussex and my friends here, closed my eyes and pictured the familiar bus ride to town and all the nooks and crannies of campus every night, feeling horribly misplaced. Eventually I settled back into life in America and my former life in England felt like a dream. It's funny how familiarity works like that.

In any case, one week left here and I'm leaving again, off to my next adventure in Prague. I have with me a lot of luggage and was in fact charged $70 in overweight fees from Virgin Airlines on my way to the England. I've been aggressively using up contact solution, toothpaste and the vegan white chocolate chips I felt the need to bring along with anything else that has the potential to lighten my load before my next flight. I was about 10 kilos over in my one suitcase, however, so that might be a bit of a challenge! It's hard to move your entire life in just two suitcases! Though, when you think of me having more than 100 pounds of stuff, it begins to sound like I'm just being extravagant. How does clothing get so bloody heavy?

Quite excited to get to Prague and sad to leave here at the same time. As it's the summer, most of my friends aren't in Brighton or are just passing through for Pride, so it's sort of strange being back. I miss the days when we were all at uni together on the Sussex campus! I might even miss that tiny little kitchen in our Park Village flat just a little bit. Speaking of Pride, it was enormous and wonderfully gay. Got mobbed and hugged by the Allsorts kids as they passed us during the parade and then free sandwiches and noms from the tent later.

Saturday I get to Prague, then there's a pub crawl and the next morning a tour of the city. I can't wait to get there, meet everyone and get settled. Even excited for the work that the TEFL course is bound to be. I get to use my brainz again!