Ups and Downs/Rich

Up: Watching the World Cup in Europe. Even in the outskirts of small towns in Scotland, the bars are pretty loud and entertaining during games. It’s fun to be in the midst of a lot of people who care; even if their team isn’t playing, they REALLY want some of the other teams to lose, which is always pretty funny. I can’t even imagine how crazy it’ll be in Paris and Lisbon (but will likely go into hiding if the U.S. beats Portugal while we’re there...). Random thoughts on various World Cup happenings so far: During the Brazil game I was 99% sure the guy who scored an own goal was going to start crying, Brail has a delightful array of players with one very masculine name (Fred, Hulk, etc.), English fans hate their team way more than anyone else hates the English, English newspapers and radios are hilariously self-deprecating about their lack of a chance to win, and the Netherlands are the most entertaining team in the world.

Down: Now, it’s time to address the biggest downside to Scotland. I wouldn’t bring it up in a blog post but it’s just so prevalent that we can’t honestly talk about the country without addressing it. “The grass is very well fertilized” would be a polite way of saying it. Zeke might have said it better when he said “this country is just riddled with poop” and “it’s like these sheep eat nothing but Taco Bell”. Sometimes we don’t get to enjoy the views that much because we have to look down the entire time to avoid stepping in anything. I tried to get a tasteful but indicative picture to show that I’m not exaggerating; imagine ten miles of walking and avoiding this:

Up: There are castles in Scotland. A lot of castles. They’re all owned by families whose names are Mac-something. As far as I can tell, the Macdonalds were the meanest but wussiest family around; they apparently cleared out villages of people so they could have more land to raise sheep, which were more profitable than having subjects. They also attacked a castle manned with 3 people with 50 of their ships and got turned back. Each of the castled families come with some pretty awesome family crests and really long, detailed family trees.

Down: Bugs. I’m coated in bug bites. The first night I went running and when I came back, Tirrill asked me what was wrong with my face. I had run into so many bugs that my forehead was mostly black. On the way, I sprinted past some cute American girls and thought they would be really impressed by how strong and fast I was. In retrospect, I was spotted red with exertion and black with bugs, covered in bugs, and smelled like I hadn’t showered in days (which might coincidentally have been true). For some reason they didn’t follow me into the hostel bar…

Scotland!

            We arrived in Edinburgh on Monday at 9:30 in the morning, after waking up at 4:45 at our good pal Frankie’s who so graciously let us stay with him. Once we landed we caught the bus to Edinburgh, which took well over an hour to get to the city center. Our first order of business was to find food since none of us had eaten all day. We found a nice, cheap place called Café Royale. Zeke and Rich promptly ordered two breakfasts each. After our delightful breakfasts we made our way towards Arthur’s Seat, a large hill that overlooks the city of Edinburgh. Along the way we passed the Queen’s Official Residence in Scotland, which is beautiful, grand and stunning, as well as The Scottish Parliament building, which I think was designed as an elementary school art project.

            Once we arrived at Arthur’s Seat we began our climb to the top. After several moments Rich stopped us so that he could disrobe in public, for neither the first nor the last time on the trip, and put on shorts. About half way up a steady rain picked up.  We got to the very top and enjoyed the view. As the rain picked up I began to complain incessantly. We took a different path down and stopped at a church from the 13^th century that is now mostly destroyed. The view was great and it was a peaceful break from the rain. Evan was particularly taken by the peacefulness of the church and took a few minutes of solitude. Meanwhile Zeke threw rocks down the hill and Rich tried desperately to think of movies other than Bruce Almighty that Morgan Freeman has been in as part of the six degrees of separation game.

By the end of the hike down we were all soaked and wanted nothing more than to get to our hostel to change into dry clothes. We flagged a taxi and shortly thereafter arrived the Lighthouse Hostel. Rich quickly plodded on into the hostel with his wet clothes and muddy feet and was promptly reprimanded by the owner of the hostel. We quickly learned that the hostel owner was quite O.C.D. and required that we wear slippers at all times. After changing into dry clothes we made our way to visit Edinburgh Castle. After a nice walk to the castle we realized that it was closed for renovations and instead walked along the Royal Mile, which is filled with old and beautiful sights.

The next day we woke up and rode the bus back to the airport to pick up our rental car. We made our way up and started talking to a man named Kad who used his thick Scottish accent to throw us off our bargaining game. After being sufficiently nickel and dimed by Kad, we hopped in our cute little VW Golf and headed off towards Fort William. Part of our being nickel and dimed was that there was an extra fee for every driver, and so with that I am now the sole driver for the next 9 days. With great power comes great responsibility. A few minor hiccups aside I think I’ve done quite well at adjusting to driving on the left side of the road.  On a related note, apologies to the dump truck that was leaving the Smelting Plant didn’t mean to be driving there.

 On our first day in Fort William we went to Glencoe, a picturesque valley. We went on what was supposed to be a three-hour hike but after about an hour and a half we had what Evan would describe as “lovely weather” or what Scottish people simply call weather. The rain was just enough to be annoying to me and ignite some more complaining. We went to the end of the trail and went back. Along the way three members of our crew sustained injuries, but the most nimble, strong, and handsome of us survived without a scratch. As we walked back in the valley we could hear a man playing a bagpipe for the tour groups that were there to take pictures.

Today was our second full day in Fort William and we hiked the highest mountain in the United Kingdom, Ben Nevis. Before the hike I was a bit apprehensive, as we had heard that the hike would take 7-9 hours and would require extensive hiking/climbing experience. It didn’t help that the person at the visitors’ center told us that there would be rain in a few hours, lowering the visibility, and that there is over a meter of snow at the top. Come to find out the lady had no clue what she was talking about. We hiked all the way to the top in two and a half hours, encountering maybe 3 inches of snow at the most. It also did not rain once. It was an amazing view at the top once the clouds cleared out and there were several monuments and shelters. We started to walk back down the mountain after Rich tried unsuccessfully a few times to perform a handstand at the top of the mountain. After about an hour and a half Evan had to sprint to the bottom on account of an “emergency situation.” The rest of us reached the bottom with only slight bumps and bruises and only one fall of any real note.

London Rerun/Rich

Interspersed between bouts of Zeke eating 19 Twix bars and Evan walking 8-10 feet in front of people despite not knowing where he’s going and taking wrong turns/trains, we stumbled into London. London was everything Iceland was not; busy, crowded, capable of getting dark at night, built more than four stories high, etc. It was really interesting to go from the isolation and solitude of 7 days of hiking in Iceland to the constant buzz of London, to go from sleeping in a car to going out until 3 AM.

London was also a homecoming of sorts for Zeke and myself. We spent the Fall of 2012 living there, spending 80% of our time in Primark, 10% in class, and the other 10% at basketball. After many a “Walkabout Wednesday” (some more eventful than others for captain Zeke), a couple of triple digit victories over some poor med school students, and one truly inspirational speech from our favorite Italian teammate (“WE MUST STRIKE LIKE TIGERS WITH NAIVES BETWEEN THE TEETHS! DO IT FOR KING’S AND OUR SELF-ESTEEM!”) we got pretty tight with the guys and girls on the basketball team.  The goodbyes were tough because we didn’t know if we would be back, and so our lives became a bit compartmentalized; our friends from London didn’t know our friends from the U.S. and vice versa, so they became sort of separate spheres of memories. I had my North Carolina life and I had my London life, but there was a bit of a disconnect between them because of the lack of players who had been there with me for both (essentially just Zeke).

After getting a visit last summer from London friends and then returning the favor this summer with Evan and Tirrill, those lines are more blurred. It’s still surreal, though in a fairly awesome way, to see my friends from home and my friends from abroad meet each other.

Our time in London was made so fun by some incredible hosts. Special thanks to Salma for housing us (even when we didn’t respond to anything until 2 AM), to Frankie for housing us (even when you had to sleep out of your dorm to make room for all of us), to Renata for making a ton of fun plans for us (even when we were always late), and to Phil for tagging along on our walking tours (especially when you educated us on every item in the British museum).  Y’all are all wonderful and I know you went out of your respective ways to come see us during our four days in London.

So our actual time there: two quick sightseeing tours where we hit the most famous spots in London (Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, St. Paul’s, Tower Bridge, etc.), a trip to see Olympic Park for the first time, and two t-shirt purchases from Primark. We nabbed a meal at our old local pub and walked by our old apartment complex, subsequently leading to PTSD flashbacks of angry FB posts from ex-roommates. We even had a night out on the town complete with some really energetic dancing, a certain Rich Frost joining the prestigious Renata All-Stars squad, and Tirrill interacting with various 35 year olds.

But the most memorable moment in London took part during a picnic in a local park. Our friend Phil, who can almost dunk a basketball, challenged Tirrill to a “catching small chocolate objects in your mouth from really far distances” competition. Our readers in the United States will surely be aware of Tirrill’s fearsome track record in such competitions and are probably wondering “was this Brit cruising for a bruising? Asking for a waxing? Begging for a beating?”

The answer is absolutely yes. Phil was promptly put into place by Tirrill’s fearsome jaw, alternatingly handsome and gobble-y. After Phil threw one of his world-renowned (literally, now) temper tantrums and blamed the loss on Zeke’s throws, Tirrill won a second round.  Onlookers were taking pictures, strangers asking to join in, and our new friend Vicky even started drooling at one point. I would say we won by about 1776 catches; it was a great moment for America.

Other highlights: a lot of rousing brunches at Frankie’s spot, the Rockingham Arms, a night tour of the city from Salma, bumping into Zeke’s sister Hallie, who followed in his footsteps studying in London, once again successfully not running into any NEDs, and sporting a lot of Henmans after a week in the wilderness of Iceland. Can’t say enough about my love for the people who made my semester, and these last four days, in London awesome. Here’s to hoping to be back again soon!

Iceland Photojournal/Rich

Sorry this post got delayed; I wantd to write during our twelve hours in the Reykjavik airport but Tirrill really needed to play Civilization. Here's pictures from Iceland in somewhat chronological order.

We arrived and started driving immediately, and so our first view of the country was this, driving along the Ring Road to a beautiful sunrise:

After we checked a couple of places and realized nowhere in Iceland opens before 10 AM, we made a desperation stop at a random stand-alone house on the side of the road. Expecting nothing, we ended up finding a free bathroom with running water and a hike to Godafoss, a waterfall that Tirrill had told us about on the way in. Apparently around 1,000 years ago, an Icelandic fella converted the place to Christianity and shoved the Pagan statues down this waterfall in a symbolic gesture.

We made it close to halfway around the country before we hit our first stops, which were some craters near Lake Myvatn:

We drove from Reykjavik in the Southwest corner up North, across the entire North, and back down South to the Southeast corner all in the first 24 hours. We took our first night of sleep at Jokulsarlon, a set of floating glaciers gradually being carried out to sea.

Our drive took us to Skaftafell next, which is the Southern part of the Vatnajokull national park. This was our first big hike, but nice guy Tirrill carried the three of us when we got tired so we made it to the top.

That night we drove to Vik and splurged on a hostel. In the morning we hit the black sand beaches:

Some of us were more successful climbing the rocks than others.

Pretty close by was Skogarfoss, which was one of many times we accidentally got ourselves soaking wet by venturing too close to nature for our pictures.

Time number two: at Strokkur.

Continuing the trend of accidentally getting wet: Gullfoss.

We hiked in a circle around Kerid volcano crater, which was the only natural attraction in Iceland we ended up having to pay to see.

Next stop: Thingvellir, a set of passes in between rocky cliffs with a ton of moss-covered rocks littering the way. Mostly we just felt like we were about to be attacked by Orcs or Wildlings the entire time we hiked there, which is doubly spooky after all the Game of Thrones we've been watching recently.

We tried to drive to Landmannalaugar (about 3 hours off the Ring Road), and the road to get there was closed. Not to be deterred, we explored the surrounding area and bumped into this lake, which was a pretty solid consolation prize (except that we're also convinced it was a nuclear waste site).

Looking for a place to stay, we ended up in a town famous for it's geothermal rivers and finally got to bathe in Icelandic rivers. And then bathed in an actual shower because we emerged dirtier and much sulfur-ier than we were when we got in.

Cliffs on the shoreline and a pretty big drop off:

And finally a day in Reykjavik, where I'm pretty sure 99% of the population lives. But still, nothing opens before ten.

Impressions, Anecdotes, Presidential Digressions, and Maybe a Few Pictures/Zeke

My last (first) post was somewhat hypothetical, so I’ll try to stick to realities now that we’ve actually experienced some of our trip. Full disclaimer: we haven’t yet become fluent in Icelandic. In fact, earlier today in Reykjavik a pugnacious group of 11 year-old truants asked us some indecipherable question, to which we responded with such limited social grace we might’ve been mistaken for John Besh, famed TV chef and purveyor of the uncertain sideways glance.

Forever in Jon Taffer's shadow.

We began our trip in Washington, D.C., where Tirrill’s delightful family hosted both me and Evan – we enjoyed the time immensely, in part because Tirrill’s family derives just as much pleasure from poking fun at him as we do (and despite the fact that we suffered an ignoble defeat to a nine-year old in basketball). We did a brief tour of D.C., the highlight of which was going to the American History Museum – while there we explored the Presidents Exhibit, and I was pleased to witness this kimono/leisure suit, which was worn casually around the Oval Office by none other than Warren G. Harding (29^th President of the United States):

Business casual. 

For those unfamiliar with this man, he was belligerently corrupt, unrepentantly adulterous, and had two right eyebrows. Across the board, historians rank him as one of the worst presidents of all time – but what do they know? His consistent ineptitude and risqué evening-wear has solidified him as my favorite.

Although John Tyler – a gaunt, sickly, generally insufferable man – comes close. One historian aptly deemed him an “obscure president, with little presence in the American cultural memory.” He renamed his Virginia plantation Sherwood Forest after being “outlawed” by his Whig party members, and his terrifically resigned last words were apparently: “I am going. Perhaps it is best.” Millard Fillmore is also in my upper echelon – his own final words were alleged to be, after being fed some soup, “the nourishment is palatable,” a turn of phrase that makes him sound like an overweight automaton.

Suspiciously eyeing the buffet on the other side of the room.

(Second Full Disclaimer: researching little-known presidents has become something of an obsession for me lately.)

From D.C. we flew to Iceland, where we began driving immediately despite sleep deprivation. Iceland’s an awesome (in every sense of the word) place, full of wickedly-named locales like Skarfanes, moss-covered lava fields, and Bonuses (the Costco equivalent, only with a big dumb sleepy-eyed pig as a mascot). And Forrest Gump lied to Jenny – sometimes there are enough rocks.

Rock-stacking: an Icelandic national pastime.

For the first day and a half I think we were hallucinating, and this feeling was exacerbated by our discovery of a CD in the Hyundai with 93 tracks, 18 of which were covers of Keane’s “Somewhere Only We Know.” Luckily it also had "Africa" by Toto, so we were perfectly content.

We rolled into Vik one foggy evening, and there we enjoyed watching Rich struggle to walk across the rocks by the black sand beaches. 

Can't be too careful.

Alternating between using all-fours and bumping his butt along the rocks, Rich became sweaty and pouty, but soon cheered up when fed some Tuc crackers and cream cheese. Outside of our hostel that night, at 10 p.m., Tirrill and I observed a man washing his tractor. This is the closest we came to witnessing an Icelandic midlife crisis. Other than the guy pacing back and forth by Gullfoss with his pants down and pale rear-end visible.

We’ve stayed at a camp site run by a man named Thor who loved listening to “Bittersweet Symphony,” we've observed sculptures we take to have been crafted by seals ("not sure I agree with your police work there, Lou"), worn jackets around our waists like chaperones on an elementary school field trip, gazed upon the pictures put up in Reykjavik menus in the “Mexican-food” section,

"Magnus, come here for a second and do your best Mexican impression."

chastised Rich for misusing the words “haggling” and “squire,” praised the gods in Valhalla that Tirrill found some coffee, puzzled over the reason for including this particular picture in a brochure at Kerid crater,

A lost Skid Row fan, unhappy pasty white folks, and something extra-curricular.

raced each other through lush vegetation on a mountain in Skaftafell, heard Evan whisper to himself about how “frightened” he is by the moss-covered lava, run out of breathable air in the car/bedroom, and swayed back and forth on the Krysuvikurberg cliffs, among many other highlights. It was great -- you'd just love it, devoted reader.

It's London-town next, where we're looking forward to getting mortal and eating cheap Indian food. And don't worry, mom, we'll look out for NEDs.