Sunday, September 29, 2013

Pictures from Glendalough and Trinity College

Pubs and Libraries

Location: still headed toward Cadiz, Spain!

Ireland, Day 3 (9/22/13):

I had to head back to Dublin on the 5:30pm bus, and I had already seen the lake, so I decided to dedicated my second day in Glendalough to visiting the round tower and the ruins of the monastic settlement in the ancient graveyard. I asked around town for the best place to have breakfast (which at some hostels is included, but at the Glendalough hostel is not) and was told to head to the Wickalow Heather Restaurant, which was about a mile down the road. I wasn't in a hurry, so I decided to walk there and then come back and view the ruins afterward.

Aside from an impressive number of wasps which eventually drove me inside, the restaurant was nice––I decided to forgo the traditional Irish breakfast on account of its similarity to the traditional English breakfast (seriously, beans are not a breakfast food!) and instead got poached eggs which came with two pieces of toast. Then they brought out another six pieces of toast! Who on earth needs that much toast? I ended up eating most of the toast and then making a butter and jelly sandwich with some more so that I could have it for lunch later.

And then I spent the rest of the day ambling around Glendalough, sketching the monastic ruins and graveyard, and finding a quiet place to sit in the forest and draw while listening to songs from the Lord of the Rings. When it was time to catch the bus back to Dublin I felt very refreshed, and was looking forward to going on the city's famous Literary Pub Crawl, which I had booked a spot on that evening.

There were already a lot of people waiting for the bus, and by the time it arrived the crowd was large enough that I was pretty sure not everyone was going to fit. I quickly established myself toward the front-middle of the line, at which point the driver announced that those with return tickets could get to the front of the queue. Fortunately that is what I had from the day before, so I was able to get on. I knew that the bus was going to be full, so I looked around for someone I'd like to sit next to for the next hour. Then I noticed a girl who I recognized from Semester at Sea, though I hadn't actually spoken to her before, sitting near the front of the bus.

Her name was Kira, and while I was trying to think how I knew her I remembered that it was because she was our student-presenter for Russia––she goes to school in Moscow, but is originally from St. Petersburg. Kira had actually come to Glendalough on the 11:30am bus, done the really long hike up the mountain and all the way around the lake, and then come back to the bus to leave at 5:30pm the same day. She was understandably a bit tired. But when I mentioned that I was doing the Literary Pub Crawl she decided to come with (you can also buy tickets at the door), so after the bus dropped us off in Dublin we headed to the Duke Pub, which is where the Pub Crawl begins from.

So what exactly is a Literary Pub Crawl? Well this particular one is famous because it is led be professional act ors who act out pieces from the works of famous authors from Ireland, and they lead you around to the different pubs that those authors used to frequent. Kira and I arrived a little early, so we went and sat in a side room to wait until we could purchase her ticket and claim mine.

We ended up sitting next to Fernando, a guy interning in Wales who is from Argentina and was visiting Ireland. So the three of us hung together while the Pub Crawl group moved between four pubs and a handful of other notable locations at which one of our guides would fire off a string of facts a mile long which I remember few of now but were really interesting to listen to at the time. In between we would have fifteen minutes or so at each of the pubs for people to hang out and get drinks. Kira and I hadn't had dinner yet and were not really in the mood to drink anything (I don't particularly like alcohol anyhow) and Fernando doesn't like the taste of beer, so our little company consisting of a non-drinking American, Russian, and Argentino made just about the most unlikely group possible to be on a pub crawl in Ireland.

And that is pretty much the gist of my third day in Ireland!

Ireland, Day 4 (9/23/13):

Which brings us to (dun dun dun)... my last and final day! I had one big goal for day four: go to Trinity College and see the old library and the book of Kells. The consensus seemed to be that to get the full experience one should sign up for a walking tour of the college, which includes the entrance to see the book of Kells and is only a couple Euros more.

So after wandering around Dublin for a while in search of breakfast, that is what I did! Our guide told us all sorts of things about the college (he was actually about to graduate and go to Oxford, so he said to forgive him if he got a bit nostalgic) and about the Book of Kells, which is considered one of the world's finest illuminated manuscripts and a national treasure of Ireland. There is a several-room informational display about the book's history and construction before you actually see it, so by the time I had gotten breakfast, did the college tour, and read all of the information the day was getting pretty far along (remember I have to be back on the boat before on-ship time at 18:00!)

The book itself was neat, but there were so many people crowded around that you couldn't really just stand and look at it for very long, so I think I actually enjoyed learning about it beforehand the most. For example, the Book of Kells actually contains the four New Testament Gospels, but the Celtic monks who created it were much less concerned with the content than with the style and beauty with which that content was presented, which meant that parts of it are hard to read because the monks would skip or forget bits and then add them later completely out of sequence, or they would abridge and abbreviate other parts.

We weren't allowed to take picture in the exhibit, but if you want to see what the Book of Kells looks like I would highly recommend googling it (or using the handy Wikipedia search bar that I put on the right-hand side of the page just for you guys!)

I then entered the Trinity College Library, which consists of one large and very impressive room with shelves of ancient books spanning multiple levels. Apparently it was mostly built to just be impressive, because at the time (according to our walking tour guide) there were only enough books to fill about 1/3 of it. The books were also organized in a most peculiar way: by size, with the largest on the bottom and the smallest on top, because it looked good. No idea how anyone ever actually found the book they were looking for with that system.

I cruised around the gift shop for a little while, before looking at the time, and realizing that while on-ship time is at 18:00, the last shuttle to get back to the ship leaves at 16:30. It was 16:15, and I still had to go and get postcards and a pin (I'm collecting them from each country.) Oops! Fortunately I knew exactly where I was going to get the postcards and the pin (then why hadn't I gotten them earlier? You've got to wonder...), but unfortunately they were in the opposite direction from the shuttle. So I'm speed-walking through the streets, getting everything that I was going to get, and arriving at the place the shuttle is supposed to be at 16:27––––but there's no shuttle. Great. They must have gotten full and already left. I had never actually had to walk back to the ship before, and although there was still technically an hour and a half until on-ship time I was still a bit nervous. I could see the ship waaay in the distance, so I spent the next half an hour speed walking there. Then I spent about ten minutes being lost in the harbor before finally finding and boarding the ship with almost 40 minutes to spare. Whew.

And that was Ireland! Stay tuned for when I get around to Portugal (no idea when that will be), and as always comments are very much appreciated!

Glendalough

Location: Southbound from Lisbon, Portugal

Yes, I made it to Lisbon!... and the ship actually left again today to head to Cadiz, Spain. That was fast. Anyhow, I decided to stay with the ship instead of traveling overland from Lisbon to Cadiz––remember how I did that from Antwerp, Belgium to Le Havre, France? Well there was the option to do it again here because the ports are so close together, but I decided not to because it seemed expensive and I had a hard time figuring out train/bus routes that would actually take me where I wanted to go. Over half the students on the ship decided to go overland, so it's pretty quiet here for once, which is nice. Hopefully this means that I can finally get caught up with the present on my blog!

Ireland, Day 2 (9/21):

After spending so much time in cities over the past couple of weeks I was itching to head to the countryside. And where better to do so than in Ireland? So I decided to go to Glendalough (glen-duh-lock), a little former monastic settlement founded in the 6th century by St. Kevin, which is located about an hour south of Dublin in the county Wicklow. There aren't around any public buses or trains to Glendalough, but there is a private bus similar to the Diamond Express (not nearly as cute though) which goes to Glendalough and back twice a day. It leaves Dublin at 11:30am, so on the morning of the 21st I packed a couple of bags, spent a little time exploring the area of Dublin around the bus stop, and then was on my way!

I had actually found out all of the information that I would need ahead of time, during my last day at Le Havre, so I was fairly confident that I knew where I was going and what I was doing. The one snag in this plan was that I wanted to spend two days in Glendalough, and this necessitated some kind of lodging. There is a youth hostel in Glendalough; it is a well-reviewed and generally pleasant-sounding place. It also does not accept debit card reservations online. So having been unable to secure a place to spend the night ahead of time, I boarded the bus with a feeling my mild trepidation. Would the hostel be full when I arrived? Hopefully not, because then I would either need to find the least-expensive B&B I could or go head back to the ship on the 5:30 bus that evening, which would be no fun.

So the bus pulls into Glendalough and drops us all off right in front of the visitor center. Convenient! I get myself a map and ask the woman at the desk where the hostel is located. She instructs me to go back to the main road, turn left, and just keep walking until I find it (apparently you can't miss it.)

It is a beautiful day; the sun is shining, and I have finally left the city! With a spring in my step I meander down the road, past a few stone buildings, over a little bridge, and past a small cluster of food/souvenir stalls. There isn't much room on the side of the road to walk, and I hug the edges as I climb a small hill and find myself passing an area of alternating fields and trees, leaving behind the small patch of civilization in the valley. The iconic round tower of Glendalough and the ancient graveyard at its feet rise up on the other side of a field to my left, and I snap a few pictures before hurrying on, anxious to see whether I will have a place to stay for the night. 

My description makes it sound like I was walking for a while, but it really only a few minutes (like I said, the place isn't very big) before I rounded a corner and found myself facing a large and cheery yellow building with the sign, "Glendalough International Hostel" painted in flowing blue script on the sign out front. I had arrived!

The interior of the hostel is very nice; there is a large lounge area with a wall full of DVDs for rent, and down a side corridor is a several-room dining area. I approach the reception desk hopefully. The lady behind the front desk says that yes, there are beds still available (spiffy!), but that check-in is not for another few hours. I could leave my stuff in the side room and take a walk if I wanted, and she would put my name down for when I return. With a feeling of triumph, I march into the side room she is indicating. There are no lockers, and the room itself is not locked/watched like the places that Jazlin and I had left our backpacks while traveling in England had been. Huh. That doesn't seem particularly secure.

There are two other people in the room, and a whole pile of backpacks sitting on a fold-out table in the far corner. I ask the people if that is where one leaves ones stuff. Yes, apparently so. Now I look at the little fold-up backpack I had brought with me, which isn't very heavy but I would still rather not have to wear it for the next few hours, and decide that if anyone is really dying to steal its contents then they can go for it (I believe it contained some clothes and a sketchpad.) I transferred everything of actual value to the medium-sized blue satchel I had purchased in England and now carry everywhere with me.

Then I deposited my bag beside the heap of backpacks and set out to explore Glendalough!

I'm not sure my every move is worth recounting from here (if it ever was) so I'll just say that I got some food from one of the street stalls that I had passed earlier, found a the trail leading to the upper lake, and followed it through the forest. As it turns out, Glendalough is a very popular tourist/day-trip destination, so although the town itself isn't very big, there are tourists everywhere––especially during the peak times of day (like at that moment) when you would be hard pressed to take a picture along the path and not have people dotted all along it. Which was fine with me, because they were a generally freindly bunch, and there were a large number of Spanish-speakers to try and eavesdrop on (not that I do that!)

At one point I saw another path diverging in the wood, which everyone else was walking past (yes, I had a Robert Frost moment there, thanks for noticing.) It was mossy and pleasant-looking, so I ambled down the hill and started along it. After about a minute, the path was much less noticable. After a couple minutes, it was almost gone entirely. I kept going for a little while after that, relishing the thick green moss beneath my feet and the feeling of being able to look in every direction and not see any people. This lasted for only a few minutes, before I saw that another small group had also discovered the trail some distance back, and I headed back to the main path and continued toward the lake.

I spend a while exploring the area and sketching the lake before heading back into town. The lady at the hostel had informed me that the hotel in town had free WiFi (you have to pay for it at the hostel), and I was itching to try to call family members who I hadn't spoken to in weeks, so I took out my iPod and the headphone/microphone set that I had borrowed from someone on the ship and spent a very enjoyable couple of hours talking with my Dad and my grandmother in Minnesota via Skype.

By the time I got off the phone it was getting dark, and I still needed to get dinner. The food stalls were now closed, as was the barbecuing that I seen from a distance earlier. Fortunately the bar attached to the hotel was open, so I ordered a bowl of smoked salmon and seafood chowder, which was very tasty and contained what I thought to be a very liberal amount of fish for the price.

By the time I finished that it actually was dark out, and I pulled out my flashlight and I made my way back to the hostel, enjoying the quiet and the feel of the night air (while mentally acknowledging that traveling at night is right up there with traveling alone in terms of the number of warnings we have received in our pre-port lectures. So traveling alone and at night would definitely be admonishment-worthy. Heh.)

So of course I made it back to the hostel. Yes, by stuff was still there, sitting all by itself in the corner of the side room. I had to interrupt the reception lady during her dinner, but she was nice and I got keys and borrowed a plug adaptor to recharge my iPod (yes, I felt very silly for forgetting my adaptor on the ship.) I also figured out the machines to get a couple of internet cards. You see, the reason that I had actually borrowed the headphone/microphone on the ship and was now making sure that I had internet and that my iPod was charged was because the 21st was my grandpa's birthday and I was planning on surprising him with a call at dinner. Of course, Ireland is 8 hours ahead of the Pacific Northwest, so dinner time for them would be about 2am for me. But I was a woman on a mission! So I headed for my room (an 8-bed female dorm to which none of the other three occupants had returned yet), set my alarm to 2am, and went to bed early (well, early for me.)

That is technically the end of the 21st, but I will mention that I did indeed manage to wake up, find a place where my 2am phone call hopefully wouldn't disturb anyone, and say happy birthday to my grandpa––surprising people is always fun, and it was nice talking with my grandparents again.

Goodness––I know I always say this, but I've got to curb the descriptive rambling on my next posts, or I'm never going to get to Portugal!

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Scenes from Dublin

Taxidermy and Hippopotamuses!

Location: Southbound in the Atlantic Ocean, just off the westernmost coast of Spain

Yes, we have officially left the shallow seas and entered the Atlantic Ocean! According to one of our marine biologists the approximately 300-foot deep waters of the continental shelf that we were traveling along gave way yesterday to waters that are now over two and a half miles deep. People have been seeing dolphins and whales all day (I missed them though) and everyone is really stoked for our arrival sometime tomorrow in Lisbon, Portugal (though we won't actually get to disembark until Friday.)

Anyhow, who wants to hear about Ireland?

Ireland, Day 1 (9/20/13):

I awoke on Friday morning with the sole plan of spending the day exploring our port of call: Dublin, Ireland. Known for its rainy weather, multitude of pubs, famous writers who once frequented those pubs, and Trinity College, home of the magnificent Book of Kells, I think that the city of Dublin is one of the more interesting ports at which we have stopped. It is also the first port in which a small fleet of shuttle buses were requisitioned on our behalf, so that instead of having to walk for about 40 minutes from the docks to the city center we only had to walk about 5 minutes there from where the shuttle dropped us off along George's Quay. It wasn't until the last day that I fully appreciated this service, but that is a story for a later post.

I actually do not have that much to say about my first day in Dublin. This may be due to a lack of interesting occurrences (impossible!) or simply that it has been too long and none of them are coming to mind at the moment. In any case, I disembarked the shuttle and set out on my own (armed with a map of Dublin that I picked up from the field program desk on the ship), though my group of one quickly became a group of two which then later picked up a third member. We spent the day walking all around Dublin; we went to Dublinia, Christ Church Cathedral, the Temple Bar area, Trinity College, and Dublin Castle.

We also walked through the Museum of Natural and Cultural History. From the name, one might expect to find an ordinary museum filled with informational displays about, say, the natural and cultural history of Ireland. Well, not exactly. The museum actually consisted of two rooms, one on the ground floor and another upstairs, which were packed full of... taxidermied animals! (Spell-check is telling me that "taxidermied" isn't actually a word––you get what I'm saying though, right?) Apparently there were over two million animals, all arranged in little exhibits showcasing their behavior in their natural habitats. In the first room there were cases of birds, mammals, marine animals, and insects all native to Ireland, including huge skeletal Irish Elk to waiting to greet you as you enter. Then upstairs there were animals from all over the world: kangaroos, giraffes, lions, elephants–––did you know that hippopotamuses are really huge? The one on display was almost twice as big as the Buffalo!

Anyhow, that was an odd but interesting experience. The museum was actually open later than usual because the 20th happened to be culture day in Dublin, which is characterized by all sorts of neat things that I didn't end up taking advantage of because due to the lack of internet I didn't get the schedule until halfway through the day and didn't have time to adequately plan anything. Oh well.

After leaving the museum the three of us spent almost an hour bumbling around trying to find some good, inexpensive Irish food (don't laugh, it was actually really hard!) None of us wanted to go to one of the Temple Bar pubs and spend upwards of $20 on a meal that didn't even include a beverage, and our only other options seemed to be foreign food (eating Spanish food in Ireland just felt wrong) or a convenience store. We did eventually get dinner though, and we made it back to George's Quay well before the shuttles stopped running (around 23:30 every night) so everything was good.

...and speaking of everything being good, I'm actually procrastinating on finishing an essay for my Cross-Cultural Psychology class right now by writing this blog post. So I should really go do that now.

Don't forget to comment!

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Pictures from Paris

Included is the Eiffel Tower, the view from atop the Eiffel Tower, walking down a street in Paris, and two shots outside of the Louvre.

The Clock Ticks, Yet No Clever Titles Occur!

Location: Leaving Dublin, Ireland

Why look––it's me again! I'm not sure how often people check this blog, but I imagine at least some of you were wondering at my five-day absence. Well, first I had another paper due in my World Literature class, so I was up half of the night last Wednesday finishing that. And then through some fluke the ship's internet apparently doesn't work around the port in Dublin. No idea why that area would be a problem, but within two hours of the ship embarking the internet was back and I could use my email again. We were in Ireland for four days, during which time I explored both Dublin and a little town/region to the south called Glendalough (glen-dah-lock.) I will now endeavor to finish off my posts for France (can't believe I'm so far behind!) and then later move on to the last four days in Ireland.

Before I do that though, I would like to once again thank everyone who has been following along with the blog––seriously, I love knowing that you're out there (and I had no idea how many of you there are!)

France, 9/15 & 9/16: Paris to Le Havre

I awoke on the morning of the 15th to my ever-pesky alarm clock, and to the quirky little room of my hostel in Paris, France. The sun was streaming though the windows, and all but one of my roommates were already down at breakfast. The Aloha hostel is one in which breakfast is included in the price, so not wanting to miss out on that I scuttled down the staircase and into a cozy basement room packed with tables and benches (and people more awake than I seated on those benches chatting animatedly over their breakfasts.) After finishing a satisfying meal of jellied pastry, cereal, and tea, I grabbed a Paris map from reception and set off into Paris!

The way I figured it, there were two options for my partial-day in Paris: #1) I could take the metro and spend the day whizzing around below the city, popping up from time to time at some attraction and then descending back down into the depths to jet on off to another. #2) I could start walking, resign myself that it really isn't possible to see everything in a single day, and just enjoy the scenery (in the sunlight!)

Guess which one I went with?

So during my leisurely stroll through the less-touristy part of Paris on my way toward the Eiffel Tower (which was apparently only a 15-minute walk from the hostel), I passed many shops with flowers, pastries, fruits, and assorted meats before stumbling upon a decently-sized street market under a bridge. It was in this market that I witnessed the first stage of the price mark-up process: it was a basket at one of the first booths, full of relatively cheap little Eiffel Tower trinkets in a variety of colors. They were 4 for 1 Euro.

After snapping a few pictures (and purchasing a few pastries!) I kept making my way toward where the map said that the Eiffel Tower was located. Then I turned a corner and I could see it! Part of the street was sectioned-off and crowds of onlookers were cheering at a steady stream of pink-shirted runners who were raising money for a cause of some sort (never figured out what exactly––everything is in French, remember) and through the trees, rising up in the distance, was the Eiffel Tower framed against the horizon.

I pass a small booth perched on the side of the road, selling souvenirs, and I am met with the second stage of the price mark-up process: more of the little Eiffel Towers, and this time they are 1 for 1 Euro. The cost is four times higher now that the Tower itself is in view. Hmm...

So I finally make it to the base of one of the Tower's legs and look up at the enormous structure indecisively. Do I pay and take the time to climb up into it, or am I happy taking pictures from the ground? After all, it's not like you can see the tower itself while you are inside it (well, you know what I mean––you see parts of it up close, but not really in a photo-op kind of way.) On the other hand, which kind of person comes all the way to Paris and doesn't go up in the Eiffel Tower?

I sit and munch on pastries at a bench in the nearby park while pondering this. A ragtag group of very desperate pigeons nearby are chased by a gleeful grade-schooler. They then set their sights on my pastries, and one of the huddle actually doesn't notice when I reach out to touch it. Definitely feeling a bit pet-depived: I'm starting to turn to pigeons. Okay, okay, back to the Eiffel Tower!

So I made up my mind, got up, plunged back into the swarms of tourists milling about at the base of the tower (did I mention that there were tons of tourists around? Because there were!) and parked myself decisively waaay at the back of one of the lines. Then I waited. It really didn't take that long, and I amused myself by trying to eavesdrop on the Spanish-speaking family in front of me (I understood some of what they were saying!) I had decided that I would take the lift up to the second floor, because I wanted to do more than just walk to the first floor, and the top floor was closed (and I didn't really want to pay to go all the way up there anyway.)

There is actually a little security check point that you have to go through before they let you up into the tower. I nervously scanned the list of prohibited items, knowing that I really had no way locking up anything that I couldn't bring with me into the Tower. Fortunately the only thing relevant was no glass bottles, and mine was metal. I did run into a bit of a problem when the security officer tried to clarify something and I had no idea what he was saying (he didn't speak any English and I didn't speak any French.) He waved me on though––I guess I don't exactly scream "big threat to monument security."

The view was neat from the second floor, and I probably took more cityscape pictures than was strictly necessary. I also become the unofficial Eiffel Tower photographer when I offered to take pictures for a couple of people (you know how it is when you go someplace with only one other person and you both want to be in the picture, but instead you each take turns getting a photo of the other person? Well I tend to take pity on people I see in that situation) and then a small queue of others jumped at the chance to have me take theirs as well. One of these individuals was a middle-aged Asian man with his wife, and he handed me an ancient film camera which I had to struggle for a moment to figure out how to work. Another was a couple from China who had just gotten married and were there on their honeymoon; they wanted pictures with me in it too. I probably interacted with more tourists than actual French people, but I guess that is inevitable with how little time I got to spend in France, and how much of it was in tourist areas.

Anyhow, I realized that I should probably move on if I wanted to have time to do anything else before catching my train, and as I stepped down out of one of the legs of the Tower I encountered the third and final stage of the infamous price mark-up process: right at the base of the Tower was yet another souvenir stand, and sure enough, sitting in an identical basket were the miniature Eiffel Towers... now 1 for 2.5 Euro! That is a whopping 10x more expensive than the first ones that I had seen. Obviously this makes sense, and isn't a particularly new concept to anyone––I just had never seen it laid out in such tidy steps before, so I had to share.

After separating myself from the throng of tourists at the foot of the Tower, I set off to go see the Louvre! This involved quite a bit of walking (I was still stubbornly avoiding the subway), especially since the Tower is a decent distance away from many of the other attractions in Paris.

But I made it there! You know how often times you see a lot of awesome pictures of someplace you are about to visit and then when you actually get there you think "This is it?" Well, I was expecting to feel that way (especially since I knew I didn't have time to actually go inside the Louvre to look at anything, and would be mostly taking pictures of the outside), but I am pleased to note that I was surprised at the area around the museum and how nice of a walk it was to get there. I was sort of expecting it to just parked in the middle of the city somewhere (hey, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg was!), but it actually has its own area right next to the "Jardin des Tuileries," which I entered from the west side and walked along all the way to the museum itself. I did stop briefly to pick up the least expensive food that I could find at one of the park's outdoor restaurants (butter and powdered sugar crepe, yum!) and to sketch some of the expansive gardens out front. Then, all of a sudden, I walk up some steps and there it was!

I realize that it's a bit silly to say I went to the Louvre, when all I really did was stand outside and take some pictures of it and the glass pyramid in front. But I figured that it would be better not to wait in line, pay for a ticket, and then be there for like 20 minutes before having to leave. I would rather come back some day and actually have time to walk around. (Plus, don't tell anyone, but I'm starting to get a bit tired of museums.)

Speaking of time, I was almost out of it! As it so happens, Paris is pretty big (no, really?) and walking around the city takes a while. I did wish that I had gotten to see the Notre Dame and Sainte Chapelle, but I didn't regret not spending the day rushing around on the subway. I toyed with the idea of spending another night and then catching the train to Le Havre the following morning, but quickly nixed that plan––one really shouldn't mess with on-ship time, and I wanted to make sure that I was in Le Havre staying close to the ship on the last day rather than having to worry about a train getting delayed and the ship leaving without me (I don't even want to think about how that would play out!)

So I caught a bus to the train station (which took a bit of doing, because I wasn't sure how to pronounce it to the bus driver), waited in the ticket line because the automatic machines did not want to cooperate, and managed to get myself a train ticket from a helpful lady who spoke a little English (I pointed to the word "Le Havre" this time, instead of trying to pronounce it, which I think helped that process.) After a bit of a wait I was on a train bound for the coastal town of Le Havre, where hopefully I would find the M.V. Explorer waiting for me!

The ride took a while, and the girl I was sitting across from was non-communicative, so I mostly slept on the way there. It was dark when I arrived, and as I stepped off of the platform I realized that French railway stations are not nearly so liberal with maps of the surrounding city as Belgian ones are. Which posed a problem, as I had absolutely no idea where I was or where the ship was (well, I did have a name and a direction, and I maintain that I could have found it on my own eventually!) Fortunately, almost as soon as I got off the train I encountered a massive group of about 15 other SASers who, like me, had come overland and just arrived in Le Havre on another part of the same train.

So we all set off the direction we thought the ship was, huddling in our jackets against the crazy coastal winds which buffeted us on our way through the dark and empty streets of Le Havre. Then we saw it––the little string of lights atop the M.V. Explorer glimmering way in the distance. By the time we actually made it there I was so happy to see the ship; I think that was the first moment it really felt like coming home.

This has become yet another very long post, but I did promise at the top that I would be providing an overview of day five as well as four, so I'll just say that on day five I felt I'd had enough adventure in my life, and decided to just stay in Le Havre and hang out in a cafe with internet. So that is what I did! I had another crepe and some tea while planning what I would do in Ireland and Skyping my mom. Then I grabbed some groceries from a small store nearby and made it back to the ship about an hour before on-ship time.

Okay, next post: Ireland! I can catch up before we reach Portugal!

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Trains and Rains!

Location: Le Havre, France

I have no idea when we will leave this harbor, but hopefully it will be soon since we're due to arrive in Dublin, Ireland on Friday.

Day 3: Brugge to Paris

I packed my bags and departed Snuffel hostel on the morning of the 14th, planning to spend a few hours in Brugge before taking a train to Brussels and then a bus to Paris.

It was a moist, overcast sort of morning, but before I left the city I was determined to take a canal tour through Brugge's many waterways. The walking tour guide on the previous evening had cautioned us that canal tours in the rain were not particularly fun and probably best skipped, but it wasn't really *raining* per se: more like lightly misting. So I found one of the canal tour landings (it's a popular activity in Brugge, so they aren't hard to find) and squished into a boat with a group of about twenty others. The captain (how big of a boat does it have to be before one is considered a captain? He looked like a captain, so I guess that's what I'll calling him) was an sturdy bearded man who conducted the entire tour speaking nonstop in three different languages (Dutch, French, and English) such that it was at times difficult to tell when one language began and the other ended.

Brugge is even more beautiful by water! At least, that was my impression during the first ten minutes or so of our trip. After that, things became very damp very quickly. The heavens were apparently just waiting for me to step into a boat in the middle of a canal with all my worldly possessions before letting loose.

But it wasn't the rain that got you wet––it was the umbrellas. Everyone who didn't have an umbrella was provided with one by the captain, and we all rustled about until the entire ship was more or less covered. At least, that was the plan. But if you can take a moment to think about the mechanics of an entire boat full of overlapping umbrellas you will start to see the problem. Yes, the umbrella above you keeps your head dry. But in doing so it channels the rain down onto the umbrellas to either side of it, which in turn proceed to dump all of that water onto your lap. So you try to position yourself so that no particularly large rivulets are gushing down on you, but that only works until the boat passes something cool (being in Brugge that happened quite a bit), and everyone turns to look at it, whereby all of the umbrellas shift and more water is deposited into your lap.

So you know how I was talking about having all of my worldly possessions with me? Well don't worry, I left most of my stuff back in my cabin on the ship. But I did bring both of my cameras (I will get into justifying why I take two cameras around with me in a later post), my iPod, and my laptop. Yes, all of my expensive beloved electronic devices are there with me on that silly little boat road which was determined to get me as wet as possible. Also, as I was packing light and only intended to be gone for a couple of days, I didn't pack much by way of changes of clothing. What I did pack is, of course, busy getting drenched in the bag that I am clutching.

So by the time my canal tour ended, I was very wet and kind of wondering if I would dry sufficiently so as not to have to go buy clothes at a thrift store in Paris. I was in good spirits though, because despite the constant fear for all my electronic devices, there is something very fun about being on a canal tour in the rain as everyone tries to keep control over their umbrellas while craning to see what sights the captain is narrating about. At one point we came to a very low bridge (tall people would have to duck to avoid hitting their heads) while we all had our umbrellas out, and the captain was like "everyone duck!" and we flattened down under our umbrellas and hoped for the best.

Speaking of hoping for the best, I had actually forgotten to do something very important while I was back at the hostel––print out my train ticket! Oops! So I speed-walked back to the hostel, and by the time I had finished getting the ticket to print I only had about a half an hour to get to the other side of town and catch my train. Ideally I would also find a supermarket to grab some quick breakfast for the road while I was at it. Time for some more speed-walking!

During the course of the next 25 minutes, I found a supermarket, grabbed some food which looked like it would be good (I couldn't actually read what it was because the only languages on the label were Dutch, French, and German), and then hopped on a conveniently located bus toward the train station.

I maintain that I could have barely caught that train, if platform 5 existed. As it so happened, when I followed the sign indicating platforms 1 through 10 I was met with 1, 2, 3, 4... 6, 7, 8.... yes, I kid you not, platform 5 was definitely the only one not there. I have no idea how that went wrong, but I would clearly not be boarding that train. Fortunately, there was another train within 40 minutes, which would be leaving from the much more accessible platform 9. So I contentedly munched on some rolls that I had gotten along what turned out to be potato salad with sun-dried tomatoes (a helpful Belgian guy on the train would later read the label for me, so I knew what my food was for sure) and waiting for the train to arrive.

The journey to Brussels passed without incident, and I was seated across from the aforementioned Belgian guy (and his uncle) with whom I talked a great deal about similarities/differences between Belgium and the US, and who helped ensure that I got off at the right stop in Brussels (there are three). Upon my arrival at Brussels "Noord," I set off to go find the Eurolines bus terminal. I fortunately still had plenty of time to catch the bus, and aside from it being almost 30 minutes late, I set off without incident.

Then commenced a long and rather uneventful four-hour bus ride to Paris. Now this time I actually did book a hostel ahead, but Paris is very large and apparently very busy this time of year, so the only hostel I managed to find room at was called the Aloha Hostel, and it was on the opposite side of Paris from where the bus dropped us off. Which was okay, because that just meant I got to ride on the Paris underground! I figured out my route and managed to catch the right train and get off at the right stop so that I could catch another train and get off at another stop. By the time I climbed up out of the station it was dark and I was feeling very keen to find my hostel. Note that I am in Paris, France, and everything is in, well, French. I also do not yet have a Paris map (I plan on getting one at the hostel), so navigating is a bit of challenge. I keep getting excited when I find a street name and it's actually the one I'm expecting it to be.

So I turn one last corner and head down a well-lit street off the beaten path––and there it is! I was so happy to see that hostel. I check in and head up a creaky spiral staircase and to my 6-bed female dorm. It is now about 9pm. I hunt around for a plug-in for my laptop for a while before finally giving up and heading back down to the common area where I claim half of a bench next to the reception desk, plug my computer in, and proceed to spend the next three hours hurriedly finishing a 5-page essay on French Art for my Mixed Media Visual Journal class which was supposed to be due that day (Get it? Trying to finish the essay before midnight so that it technically counts as being in on time? Yah, that's me.) I tried to work on the essay back on the bus, but my poor old laptop can't hold a charge for that long, and while there was internet on the bus there were no power outlets, so that only worked for about the first hour.

Anyhow, I finished it! That essay was sent off at 11:55pm via email (an acceptable method of essay submission on the ship), and I was feeling very accomplished. In case you were curious, that essay was the reason I was dragging my laptop around with me the whole time––I would have preferred to leave it back on the ship, but classes are very fast-paced on SAS, and there had been no time to finish the essay beforehand. There's something really neat about sitting in a hostel in Paris while writing an essay about the Visual Art of France though, so who's complaining? Also, my clothes had dried completely by about half-way through the bus ride, so that turned out all right too.

So that was my last day in Belgium and first day in France! It is now super late and I have classes tomorrow, so I will probably wait to post pictures until after my next post. Au Revoir!

Monday, September 16, 2013

Pictures a la Brugge

In Bruges

Location: Le Havre, France

Yes, I'm still in Le Havre! Actually the ship will be here tomorrow as well, but we have classes and aren't allowed to leave, so that will pretty much just mean seeing city instead of ocean out the window. I still haven't finished writing about my adventures in Belgium though, so read on!:

Day 2: In Bruges

First of all, has anyone seen the movie "In Bruges"? Yes, as it turns out, there is a movie called that; it is a black comedy starring Colin Farrell and it's supposed to be very funny. Apparently a lot of visitors to the city of Brugge in Belgium actually go there because they saw and liked the movie. I had never actually heard of "In Bruges" before three days ago. I went to the city because I had heard that it was beautiful and I wanted to escape all of the metropolitan hustle of the big port cities we have been frequenting.

So that is what I did! On the 13th I packed my bags and set off via train from Antwerp Central Station to go see the city Brugge. Note that I'm using the Dutch spelling of the name, which is what I mostly encountered in my travels (the city of Brugge is located in Flanders, which is what the northern Dutch-speaking region of Belgium is called), while the aforementioned movie uses the English/French spelling: "Bruges." I occasionally merge the two by accident and write "Brugges." I am always talking about the same place though.

So after managing to locate the correct train and get off at the correct stop, I arrived in Brugge! I actually stumbled upon a group of SAS students upon my arrival and traveled with them for about 20 minutes (during which time we wandered around and went in a very impressive gothic-style cathedral), but then I deciding to set off on my own to find a hostel (the rest of the group would be returning to the ship, while I was planning on continuing straight to Paris the next day.)

Brugge is gorgeous! Yes, it is definitely a touristy place––chocolate and souvenir shops dot the streets, and everywhere you look there are people on horse and cart rides or canal tours. But the tourists of Brugge tended to be a happy and laid-back bunch (with canals and chocolate everywhere you look, who wouldn't be?) so you couldn't really hold it against the city. I hadn't been able to book a hostel ahead of time because of the lack of internet, but fortunately my map had a list of places to stay on the back which included hostels. Of course, all of the hostels listed were very far apart from each other and not very near where I was at. So I chose one with a funny name (Snuffel) and starting walking. The entire way was lovely; one would be hard-pressed to find an eyesore in all of central Brugge. I arrived at the hostel within about 15 minutes, and asked if there were any beds left. Yes, there was one! It was in a four-bed female dorm on the second floor, and I was very happy to have it.

As it turned out there would be a free walking tour of Brugge leaving from the hostel about an hour and a half after I arrived, so I decided that would be a fun use of my evening and signed up for it. That is how I learned about the movie, "In Bruges"! I was in a group of about 8 people, and our tour guide (Andy) was very surprised to learn that none of us had seen the movie. Over the next two hours he showed us around the town, and a combination of the less-touristy places we visited and the increasingly damp weather meant that the streets were never packed with tourists, so it was actually quite nice. Andy also walked us past many of the locations which were used in the filming of "In Bruges." Everyone reading this should either rent that movie or put it in your Netflix queue, and while watching it you can think "Hey, Lindsey had a walking tour right by that spot!"

By the time the tour was over it had gotten dark, so I grabbed some fries at a Frituur which our guide had recommended before heading back to the hostel. By the way, don't let someone from Belgium hear you calling fries "French"––they insist that fries are a Belgian invention, and it is something of a national dish. The fries I got were available with a choice from at least ten different sauces. I wasn't even sure where to start, so I just had the guy use his favorite, which was delicious!

Thus ends my second day in Belgium. Comments, pretty please?

Sunday, September 15, 2013

Field Lab Pictures! (Belgium, Day 1)

In Flanders Fields

Location: Le Havre, France

Hey everyone, guess what? I'm back at the ship! That probably isn't very exciting without context, so read on:

Remember when I wrote that I was trying to plan what to do in Belgium? Well that actually required some extra thought, because the ports at Antwerp, Belgium and Le Havre, France are unique in that they are close enough together that there are no classes held while the ship is sailing from one to the other, so students are allowed to either travel with the ship or (dun dun dun) travel by land and meet the ship in the next port. Guess which one I wanted to do? Why waste a whole day on the ocean when you can spend it in Belgium or France, right? Anyhow, I was having a tough time because none of the people I spoke with wanted to do the same thing as me (many of them had decided to stay on the ship, and others wanted to go to Amsterdam, which I didn't feel there was enough time for.) So guess what? I decided to forge out on my own! I know, I know––everyone try to quell the urge to cringe at my traveling by myself. Is the urge quelled? Good, because I actually had a great time and I'm glad that I did it!

So hopefully I can try to reign in my rambling tendencies and get through this story without having to spend all night at it, but here was the gist of my plan:
1. Spend the 12th (first day in Belgium) on the field program for my World Literature class (I'll talk about that in a minute.)
2. Get up early on the 13th and head to the small medieval-style town of Brugges, Belgium
3. Take a bus to Paris, France the next day (remember that many countries in Europe are the sizes of states in the US, so that trip isn't as crazily distant as it may sound)
4. Arrive via train at Le Havre on the evening of the 15th.

Well, it's the evening of the 15th (actually it's past midnight right now, but we'll let that slide) and I have made it to the ship where it is docked in Le Havre, France! You can be excited too, now that you know how much time/traveling was required to get here (yes, that's your cue to go check google maps. Don't worry, I'll wait.)

Edit: There's no way I'm going to finish this tonight, so here's an account of my first day in Belgium, which actually has very little to do with what I am describing above. The rest will be along eventually, though it will probably be a while, since I have an essay due on Tuesday.

––––

Day 1: Field Lab for World Literature

I think at some point I explained that field labs are required day-long field trips which count for 20% of the grade in any one class on the ship (we take four classes.) Well, my first day in Belgium was devoted to the field lab for my World Literature course! We went to the little town of Ypres, which is a very historically significant place in western Belgium. The city and surrounding countryside were basically ground zero for much of the fighting between Germany and France during World War I, and my class has been studying poetry about the war in preparation for our trip there. One thing that is interesting about WWI poetry is the variation in tone between the works of different poets––some were angry and bitter about the senselessness of the war, while others were actually coaxing more people to sign up and fight in it. The following is a very famous poem in the latter category, which I think that everyone should read:

In Flanders Fields
by John Macrae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

The WWI museum that my class visited was called "In Flanders Fields," after that poem. It was a very well-constructed museum, and there was a lot of interactivity in the exhibits. Everyone went through at their own pace, which I much prefer to having to speed-walk along behind a tour guide (though I ended up having to rush toward the end anyway so that I was not late to meet the group.)

Afterwards we had a quick walk through the town. Ypres is an interesting place. It is riddled with beautiful historic-looking streets and buildings, but during WWI (which is almost 100 years ago now) the entire town was quite literally flattened. Very little remained, and according to our guide, when Winston Churchill saw the ruins he actually wanted what was left to stay as it was: a kind of monument to the war. The displaced citizens of Ypres weren't thrilled with this plan, and insisted that the city be rebuilt as close to the original design as possible (which it was.)

Next we went to the Menin Gate, which is a monument to fallen soldiers whose bodies were never found. Some 50,000 names are carved into the walls of the giant memorial, and every night (yes, every single night) there is a "Last Post" ceremony to remember the fallen. This has been going on since 1928, and that night (though we couldn't stay for it) was to be the 29,334th time the bugles sounded.

We then drove to see the surgery bunkers (can't think of a better description) in which John Macrae, the Canadian Doctor who wrote "In Flanders Fields," worked during the war. We also went to see the largest Commonwealth cemetery in the world (Tyne Cot), in which almost half of the graves bear only the words "A Soldier of the Great War" with a cross below and the inscription "Known Only to God." These were unidentified soldiers whose regiment or even country of origin could not be ascertained.

Our last stop was along the river Yser, at what was once a trench on the front lines of the Western Front. While the original sand bags have been replaced with concrete replicas, the trenches themselves remain essentially unchanged (well, as unchanged as you can get on a beautiful summer day a hundred years later), and we were able to walk through them and look over the river at what was once German-occupied Belgian territory.

All in all I am glad that I had that field program, because I learned a lot about WWI that I didn't know. For example, did you know that the Second Battle of Ypres actually marked the first time in history that poison gas was used as a weapon in warfare? Scary. With that note, I really need to start the essay reflection on this trip for my World Literature class.

Oh! And if anyone wants a movie recommendation, rent "Joyeux Noël," which is a film set during Christmas at the WWI trenches. The first time I saw the movie was when Ms. Lockhart showed it in my World History class in high school. I later rented it to show my mom, and then just a few days ago it was showing on one of the ship's TV channels so I got to see it again. Obviously I think it's a really good movie, so you should watch it if you get a chance. The events that unfold actually did take place (though perhaps not in quite so sentimental of a fashion as is depicted in the movie.) Okay, I've really got to end this post now.

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Pictures from Germany!

You can read through my last few blog entries to try and decipher the subjects of these pictures, since I'm pretty sure any image/caption combos I try to do will not post correctly. Happy trails!

Fishmarket, Hafencity, and Brötchen

Location: Antwerp, Belgium (we're a day early! Can't get off the ship though, because we still have to go to tomorrow's classes.)

Hah! With this last double-post I am now officially caught up with the present. Whew.

–– Hamburg, Day 3: 9/7/13 ––

The entirety of my third day in Germany was devoted to a service visit organized by Semester at Sea which took a group of us to the small town of Dollerup (located up north, near the sea border with Denmark) where we went to a family farm that had been converted into a home for foster children. There were seven kids there, ranging in age from 13 to 20, and we got a chance to meet them and have a tour of the farm before splitting into two groups for the actual service project. One group helped build a soccer goal and played several games with the kids, while the other group (which I was in) donned plastic suits to protect our clothing and began to paint/decorate a large wall with the help of a couple of the foster girls. Most of the kids didn't speak a lot of English, but we generally understood one another, and we all had fun. It was interesting to learn a bit more about the foster care system in Germany, and nice to get out of Hamburg city and into a more rural area. The bus ride there and back took a couple of hours though, so we didn't get to stay as long as many of us would have liked and we still ended up behind schedule in the end.

When I returned to the ship it was a bit too late to go back out into Hamburg (at least to me), and I had made plans to wake up super early and meet a couple girls who were going to the Fishmarket (a Hamburg event which only takes place on Sunday mornings) the next day, so I headed back to my cabin. At that point it occurred to me that I finally had enough time to process my laundry! I had gotten a large load of darks done by the ship a few days earlier, and the experience convinced me that I had better just wash my own laundry in the future (cheaper and safer for the clothes.) I still needed to wash a bunch of lights which couldn't be put into the aforementioned load, so I got out one of the little packets of detergent that I brought from home for just such an occasion and headed for my little bathroom sink with a pile of clothes and a mission.

What I ended up with was a heap of wet (but clean!) clothes and not nearly enough room on the little provided clothes line in my shower to dry them all. So I improvised, and had eventually completely taken over the shower and half of the bathroom with drying clothes. Of course at that point my roommate returned from her trip to Berlin desperately wanting a shower. So I moved everything to hangers in the closet and just kept the closet doors open. This seemed to work pretty well, and now that everything is dried and folded, I am officially proclaiming my laundry venture a success!

...Of course, all this meant that I didn't get to bed until about midnight. Which was a problem because I needed to get up at 4:30am the next morning in order to make it in time to meet the rest of the group heading for the Fishmarket. I'd say sleep is overrated, but I didn't really get any last night because I was up writing a paper, so right now I can attest that sleep is actually quite necessary.


–– Hamburg, Day 4: 9/8/13 ––

My last day in Hamburg! I got up bright and early (though it was still dark) and managed to drag myself out of bed and to the meeting place with an unprecedented three minutes to spare. I was pretty proud of myself; I had half expected to be too tired and to decide to wait and go later by myself. Another of our number actually did just that. But I had my tea in hand and I was ready to make the most of my last morning in Germany. So off we went to go and watch the sunrise over the Fishmarket.

For those who are wondering, the Fishmarket is actually a full-blown street fair with all sorts of things for sale besides just fish. I had received an email from my grandma advising me to try smoked meat as well as some Brötchen, so I set out on a mission to locate one or both of these in the maze of food booths which occupied the nucleus of the market. Smoked meat was pretty prevalent, and I eventually settled on some smoked halibut (who could resist trying some fish while wandering around a Fishmarket, after all!) I really had my eye on the smoked eel after getting a sample and discovering that it was abnormally delicious, but unfortunately all anyone wanted to sell was a whole smoked eel, and I wasn't quite that committed.

I had a little more trouble with the Brötchen, mostly because the word would sometimes appear in conjunction with other words, and I wasn't sure it was the same thing. Also there were often there prices for large quantities but not just for a single roll. I did eventually get one though, and had a thoroughly enjoyable lunch!

Afterwards I headed all the way back to the Hafencity, because I had heard great things about the Miniatur Wunderland and was determined to see it before I left. The miniature train exhibits were marvelous, with painstakingly created terrains that sometimes reaching multiple floor. Mountains, valleys, lakes, and cities spanned wall to wall and ceiling to floor. The place was packed with people, despite how early I arrived. But once you managed to wriggle yourself into a gap in the crowd you could just stand there staring for ages, especially since the lights of the rooms change so that the scenes are always slowly alternating between day and night. The miniature Las Vegas particularly lent itself to the nighttime span, with a full complement of multicolored lights and moving elements. There are, of course, trains moving through every exhibit, but there is also the occasional moving bus, car, or ski lift as well. I will be putting pictures up so that you can see some examples.

With only a few hours to spare before I ought to be heading back to the ship, I indecisively made my toward the spice museum. Now, I'm not really sure what the deal is, but despite wikipedia's assertion that this is the only spice museum in the world (yes, I get all my info from Wikipedia - it's one of the few free sites to visit with the ship's internet, so you use what you've got), there are actually two separate spice museums right near each other on the same street. This time I went into the other museum. It was a cozy inviting little place once you got inside (the outside just looks a bit doubtful), and there are big bags of spices sitting there so that you can feel and smell them. The entire place smelling like heaven. I spent ages there, despite the fact that it was really a very small place. I think that silly spice museum was my favorite place in all of Hamburg––I just wanted to stay in there forever.

Of course I couldn't, and all the spices were making me hungry again, so I headed over to coffee shop housed in this nice big historical building. Did I mention that the warehouse district is full of beautiful brick buildings surrounded by bridges and canals? It was once one of the centers of European trade, and all of the goods were stored and traded right there. Trade still plays a large economic role in Hamburg's economy, but its center has moved to a more modern locale. There is something about those old buildings though, that lends to the entire area a deep sense of soul. I spent an hour sitting in the coffee shop warehouse, sketching my surroundings and munching on what the lady at the counter called a "Hamburger" –– in this case referring to someone/thing which is from Hamburg, rather than a sandwich with a bun. This particular dish was a tasty custard-filled dessert.

Once I had finished with my Hamburger I headed back to the ship. Since then I have been rushing to keep up with all the assignments for my classes and trying to plan what I will be doing while in Belgium!


Thanks for your comments!

A View over Uberseebrucke

Location: Westbound in the North Sea

Here we have the next installment in the Hamburg series! Hopefully I am able to finish before we reach Antwerp.

–– Hamburg, Day 2: 9/6/13 ––

On my second day in Hamburg I decided to forge out on my own and explore the city. I had a few goals in mind as I swiped my ID card and disembarked the ship:
#1) Visit the historic warehouse district to and world's only spice museum, before perhaps going to the "Miniatur Wunderland" (a world famous model train exhibit)
#2) Find sunglasses to replace the ones that broke on me during my first day in England. Also locate some more snacks to bring back to the ship and a little travel sewing kit.
#3) Find a nice cozy place to eat breakfast because I woke up too late for breakfast on the ship.

So armed with my map of Hamburg and a moderately capable sense of direction, I headed down a friendly little tree-lined street toward a small park. Before too long I had found a nice cafe/ice cream parlor and grabbed a delicious breakfast of dubious nutritional value (aka apple pie and rum-flavored ice cream), after which I found myself meandering past St. Michael's Church. I remembered hearing good things about the place the previous day, so I wandered inside.

For a few Euros one can buy a ticket to climb to the top of the tower above the church and look out over Hamburg; for a couple more, one can also explore the crypt beneath the church. This seemed like an interesting way to spend my morning, so I got both. After descending into the moody vaulted crypt and perusing the pictures and objects in the informational displays (not much of the written information was in English), I climbed what turned out to be a massive amount of stairs to get the top of the tower. Surrounding the industrial-looking steps winding up it were numerous metal supports and beams: the climb felt less like being in part of a church and more like being in a factory of some kind. I'm not sure how old that part of the church was––apparently major repairs were needed first after the great fire which swept through Hamburg in the mid 1800s wiping out much of the city, and then again after a bombardment of WWII bombs did pretty much the same thing.

I did eventually reach the top, and took a bunch of what will probably turn out to be entirely uninteresting pictures of the expanse of Hamburg stretching out on all sides. I could even see the M.V. Explorer docked in Uberseebrucke harbor, which was neat.

After that I'm afraid my day gets pretty boring (well, even more so) to recount: I did find a grocery store to purchase snacks, and a sewing kit. The sunglasses took a bit longer, but I prevailed, and I managed to navigate myself back without relying on the map (though I'm pretty sure that was due more to luck rather than any skill on my part.) By the time I reached Hafencity (the old warehouse district) it was 3pm and the spice museum was closing early for a special event. So I hung out for a while in the area before heading back to the ship.

...Which brings us to the highlight of the evening! A few days before, I had signed up for a free SAS "Welcome Reception" which was to be held at a local family's home in Hamburg. I was under the impression that it would be a casual meet-and-greet with some snacks. (I was later looking through upcoming field programs and saw one described as a "Welcome Reception" in Casablanca, and the picture for that definitely showed a casual atmosphere, so I didn't just make that up out of nowhere!)

But nope, as it turns out this was actually a much bigger deal than I had realized. Not only were there students, but there were also some lifelong learners and members of the faculty (including our academic dean, who is a former astronaut, another guy who is a nuclear physicist, and apparently also another man who is in charge of the accounting for Semester at Sea.) Many of the men were wearing suits, and the non-student women were also dressed up. I felt bad that I hadn't known to come in more formal attire, but come to think of it I'm not sure I brought much in that department anyway, so it probably wouldn't have mattered.

The people who were hosting the event had a lovely home and were very nice. The husband (whose name I wish I remembered) is in the tea trading business. It is a family business which he and his brother inherited from their parents, so our hosts were both quite well off; I believe he even owns a tea museum down in the warehouse district. There were two server ladies who brought around glasses of wine and little cups of appetizers while we all hung out and talked. Then we were served a big tasty dinner and some desserts in more cute little cups. It was really great! I haven't quite been to something like that before, and I had a great time. As we left they gave us gifts of tote bags with little boxes of tea from the husband's company, which was also really nice of them. It made me glad that I stayed in Hamburg rather than going to Berlin, which is where most of ship (including my roommate) took off to that morning.

And that concludes Hamburg, Day 2! If you're still around, don't forget to comment :)

Monday, September 9, 2013

Neuengamme

Location: Westbound in the North Sea

Hey everyone! Long time no post. We are now leaving Hamburg and heading for Antwerp, Belgium; the ship is taking its time, so we should be there in three days. Germany was busy but great - I actually liked it there a lot more than St. Petersburg. Since I have so much to catch up on, I'm going to break this down into the individual days:

–– Hamburg, Day 1: 9/5/13 ––

After staying up fairly late to listen to the entirety of the second installment of "The World According to Boyer" (our Geography professor always presents a vey entertaining overview of the countries we are about to visit) I was tired and without much of a plan for what I would be doing the next morning. My roommate, Emily, was in the same boat. She offered that I tag along with her and some friends who were going to "Find an internet cafe." That sounded pretty good to me, because it meant I wouldn't by traveling by myself and that I could then plan what I was going to do for the next few days.

So that morning I packed my laptop into a little backpack that I brought and set out with Emily and her friends. As it turned out, we were a group of all girls and I made the 13th person. Nobody else had laptops or backpacks. That was when I began to wonder if this internet cafe plan was going to materialize. I wondered that a lot in the coming hours.

We followed people to the nearest metro station, where we had a bit of trouble figuring out which tickets to buy since the English translation button was broken and none of us spoke German. Where were we going? I still wasn't sure! Everyone else in the group was planning to go to Berlin and stay overnight the next day, so we all hopped on the train to the central terminal to figure out how they would go about getting bus tickets for that. On our way, we bumped into another group who were being led by a very speedy old woman to the station to get to the Neuengamme concentration camp, which had been turned into a memorial/museum. Our group decided to follow them (though we lost sight almost immediately, with one of the guys shouting back to us that the stop was "Bergedorf.") What ensued was a very interesting situation during which no single person seemed to know where we were going, but as a group we made it onto the train and then on the bus to Neuengamme with relatively few problems. We then found ourselves winding through a little neighborhood in the outskirts of Hamburg. The houses were lovely, and each was equipped with a cute little garden. We reached our stop and were deposited in what appeared to be the middle of nowhere, with a couple residential houses on one side and a corn field on the other. Someone thought that we should walk down the street paralleling the cornfield, so we did.

It was a beautiful warm day with a cool breeze, and the atmosphere seemed so calm and happy walking down the street beside the gently swaying cornfield that by the time we arrived at Neuengamme it began to just seem creepy. I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting, but outwardly there were no signs that tens of thousands of people had been killed there almost 70 years before. I always pictured the world as still being grayer and colder by the Nazi concentration camps, and the juxtaposition was unnerving.

We first walked around the memorial area out front, and then through a little forest to see the warehouses where prisoners were forced to work. We didn't really meet any other people until we we walked across a field (with little wildflowers growing all over it) and into a portion of the camp with informational displays (there were always sections in English), at which point we passed several groups of German schoolchildren who were on field trips to the camp. I think one of the most impacting things I saw at this part of the camp was the book that they kept as a register of all the prisoners. The people's names were right there––Auguste Martin was born the 11th of November, 1906 and was killed on February 2 of 1941. Also written down was the person's ethnicity, the prisoner number that they were given, and a brief description of how they died. Many were not executed outright but died because of the work, the harsh conditions, and their treatment by the guards. Every person's death was recorded so calmly and precisely, with little quotation marks on subsequent lines when a several people all died in the same way and the recorder didn't want to take the time to write it out on each line.

We were there for several hours. We spoke with a man sitting at an information desk in one of the buildings, and he told us that buses left every half an hour from a stop close by (not the one we arrived at) so our group split in half with those wanting to go early leaving half an hour before my group. When my group reached the bus (there are now six of us) we once again managed to get on the right one, and then to the correct train, and we navigated ourselves back toward the center of Hamburg. We spent the rest of the afternoon meandering around and finding food, after which we headed back to the station next to the ship. Note that I have been carrying my laptop with me this entire time.

When we left the original station we headed right across the street (within visual distance of the ship) and found that a little ice cream shop there had free WiFi. Finally! So I was able to get online, and look up what I wanted to do for the next few days while the rest of the group headed back to the ship. (I eventually went back too.)

Well, that's all I've got for day one, and this took long enough that I'd better head to lunch now. Stay tuned for day two!

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Today is Random Info Day!

Location: Westbound in the Kiel Canal

Hey everyone! I'm always surprised to hear how many people are encountering my blog - it's pretty cool to know I'm being thought of. Anyhow, the ship has left the Baltic Sea and is now cruising along the Kiel Canal, which is a much more direct route to our next port of call in Hamburg, Germany, than going all the way up and around Denmark. It's really neat being able to look out the window and see bits of Germany flitting by, and of course everyone's really excited to arrive in Hamburg and start exploring tomorrow.

So since I haven't been doing much besides classes over the last couple of days, I'm going to use this blog post to reflect on some interesting observations that I never got around to posting about St. Petersburg, and to write some general stuff about life on the MV Explorer!

As you may remember reading, the ship was docked at St. Petersburg's Vasilyevsky Island, along the north side of the Neva River. Apparently the main docks for ships are more to the southwest, and we were lucky to be where we were, because it was much closer to the city center. We were actually positioned right by an ordinary street; there weren't docks or anything, so a little pontoon boat with the Russian customs officials was set up between us and the shore, and every time we wanted to get on or off the ship we had to have our passports and Russian visas inspected by them (yes, I had to get a Russian visa before I came! The whole process took about six weeks, because I had to get visas for Ghana and Brazil as well. I didn't get my visas and passport back until about a week before getting on my series of planes bound for England, but I have spoken with people who didn't receive their's until the day they were scheduled to leave. That had to be pretty nerve-wracking.) We were not the only ones there though––a much larger cruise ship called Silver Whisper was situated close by. The folks onboard were very interested to hear about Semester at Sea and what our floating campus was up to.

Anyhow, there were some aspects of the city of St. Petersburg which I found surprising, and some that were quite normal. They drive on the same side of the road that we do in the US, the crosswalks are similar, and the people walking along the streets are pretty much just people going about their day. The weather was also normal––not super hot, but also not cold at all during the day. Traffic can be a bit crazy, and it's apparently common practice to park wherever you feel like (there were cars pulled all the way up on the sidewalk, and our bus on the first day had to stop several times because people had just gotten out and left their cars in the middle of the road.) While walking along the sidewalk it's very common to hear grumpy drivers honking at one another. We were warned to be super careful when crossing the street, but there were crosswalks that have signs lit up detailing how many seconds you have to cross, and as long as you kept looking for cars anyway (they have the right of way, not you) then it really wasn't a problem.

What was a bit of a problem was the smoking. People smoked on the streets, and in the coffee shops and restaurants. There are cigarette butts everywhere on the ground in St. Petersburg. Our tour guide would be showing us areas where cobblestone was still there from the 18th century, and we would look down and see cigarettes in all the crevices. On a lighter note, can you guess what else were everywhere you looked in St. Petersburg? Weddings! I am not joking; it was a widespread phenomenon. One of my teachers was talking about watching brides lined up on the street waiting for their turn to go into the cathedral. One would come out to tumultuous applause by their crowd of family and friends, and then one would slip in, and then another would come out to be met by another crowd. It was fascinating. Once I was walking down a back street with two other girls and we saw a well-dressed group packed onto a patch of green grass in between the street and a strip of temporary blue fencing (I think they were doing construction next door.) As we were walking by on the other side of the street, there was a woman with tears in her eyes standing on a podium speaking in very heartfelt Russian to the group, and when she stopped the bride and groom kissed and the entire crowd (as well as those of us on the other side of the street) started cheering. It was touching and very strange at the same time.

Also a bit strange were the fishermen. Sprinkled along the Neva right in the middle of the city were rows of fishermen who never seemed to catch anything, but stood there hour after hour just the same. I heard that unemployment was not a big problem in Russia, and that there are jobs (and therefor opportunities to make money and buy food) available for those who want them, so I'm really not sure what motivated those individuals.

I think that covers all that I can remember wanting to say about St. Petersburg, so now to talk a little bit about life on the ship! First of all, my grandma was curious about what they're feeding us, so this next paragraph is about pretty much all you never wanted to know about dining on the M.V. Explorer!

We have three and a half meals served each day. Breakfast, which is early enough that I have only made it there about half of the time, usually consists of fruit, pastries, eggs, and bacon which to me more resembles ham. They also like to mix it up a bit and have biscuits and gravy or cream of wheat. Lunch and dinner are pretty similar, with the usual assortment of salad, rice, potatoes, pasta, bread, and whichever meat they decide to serve (70% of the time it is fish.) There is also always soup, some type of dessert, and the ingredients to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. That last task is a bit of a challenge, because the peanut butter and the jelly are both in these big tubs and all they give you to spread them with are these awkward implements that resemble pie servers. I have only braved the peanut butter and jelly sandwich once. Finally, there is a snack time in the evening during which they have tasty little sandwiches and desserts that you can munch on. Of course, if you miss any of these fine dining opportunities you are on your own. The only things available 24/7 are the fixings for coffee or tea, which can be a bit a hit or miss affair in terms of that beverage being hot as opposed to sort of lukewarm.

Or, of course, you can go to one of two places where you can spend more money to buy food! Which I think is nuts, so I don't really have much to say on that topic. Not sure why anyone would pay $6 for a smoothie when they already paid tens of thousands of dollars for the voyage. It gets a bit difficult though if you've missed a meal and start thinking those muffins look really tasty, which is why I actually went on a quest in St. Petersburg to find a supermarket where I could hopefully get something resembling instant noodles. I was successful! I actually managed to acquire a decent armload of food/snacks (everything sealed and single-serve, so that I would be allowed to bring it back on the ship), but I think I may get some more in Hamburg so I don't have stoop to buying expensive ship food on the way to Belgium.

Granted, I just paid $6 to get my laundry done, so maybe I shouldn't be snubbing the folks who broke down and bought a kit-kat bar. The laundry people aren't very nice to clothes here, and I think I may try hand-washing my clothes in the sink in the future. Oh well, live and learn.

To wrap up this lengthy monologue, did everyone know that this ship is actually one of the fastest ships of its kind in the world? It is capable of traveling at 28 knots (32mph), which is apparently very good for a cruise ship. But we have been moving along at a snail's pace for the last few days, because we are in the unique position of needing more days at sea to facilitate (dun dun dun).... classes! I kind of wonder if our captain is a little bummed out at having to move so slowly, but the teachers already have their work cut out for them trying to keep a strain of thought going in a class that may meet anywhere from every other day to not for seven days because of the odd times we spend in port (we have ten straight days of no classes when we reach Portugal, Spain, and Morocco because the ports are so close together.)

So you know that whole not wanting to miss meals thing? Well it's dinner time! So hopefully I'll be blogging about my experiences in Hamburg soon, but don't be surprised if I'm too busy to update for a few days. Love you all!