Advertisement
Published: June 21st 2011
Edit Blog Post
Windsor Castle
Stunning gardens Here comes another entry because I've just returned from another trip. On June 7th once classes finished I set out for Nottingham, England to visit friends. I had visited them back in October but wanted to see them once more before heading back to Canada. The plan was to spend time there until June 13th, then set off for London and meet up with a friend and fly to Italy with her on the 14th. It was a great week in Nottingham. The friends I visited are family friends and they wanted me to have the opportunity to see England with my aunt so they flew her over from Canada! Pretty awesome. We spent the week getting together with friends and family, seeing the birthplace of DH Lawrence, shopping, going to the horse races, seeing a cricket match and even visiting Eton College and Windsor Castle. It was a busy week!
On the 13th I took a train into London and met up with my friend Molly, also from Canada. We were booked to fly into Venice early the next morning so we crashed at her brother's place for a few hours before leaving for the airport. Around 3am we
Me in Eton
Those swans got vicious! got all our stuff together and double checked everything just before heading out the door to catch the bus to the airport. That's about the time I realized my passport was gone. When the family friends had dropped me off at the train station to go to london that morning I'd checked and definitely had it. We'd been all around London that day and I normally keep it snug in my purse on my hip and I know I would have noticed if it had dropped out...it's a tiny purse with just enough room for a wallet and passport.
So, needless to say instead of leaving for Italy at 6am I was catching 2 hours of sleep before I woke up to go into London and find the Canadian Consulate. I was a mess. The panic of losing my passport and the guilt for ruining my friend's trip was enough to make me a basket case. When we got to the Canadian Consulate the man on security asked me what I'd like to do there and I answered "cry". ha. Two hours of sleep, a lost passport and still a sense of humour...sort of. So they handed me
Millennium Stadium
Cardiff, Wales. This is where some of the 2012 summer Olympic games will be held. a massive stack of papers and had me fill them out which took me forever. At one point we had to leave to get my picture taken for the passport photo and I looked like a disaster. Not an ideal time to be having someone take your picture. Just as the man was about to do it he says "Do you know you have a bump on your lip?" For anyone who does not know the story I have had said bump since I was 5. It's a scar from a bike accident I had that resulted in a VERY split lip because of a lost tooth (one of 3 actually) that made its exit through instead of around. Anyways needless to say I'm aware of the bump partly because it's been there forever and it happened to me..I was there...and partly because I've seen my face in a few reflective surfaces over the years. I'm very proud to say I kept any and all sarcastic comments of the like to myself when the man said it to me though but my friend and I had a good laugh later about the many responses that popped into my mind and
went unsaid. So, the day that was supposed to be spent in Venice was spent emailing hostels to cancel, sitting in the Canadian consulate to get a temporary passport, and planning a UK tour instead since I couldn't leave the country.
That night we stayed in a hostel in London because my friend's brother had people staying with him and there wasn't really room. The man at the desk asked us if we wanted lemonade when we arrived and we very enthusiastically replied "YES!" The "lemonade" was sprite... Then they showed us to our room where I was assigned a bed I couldnt actually get to. The beds were so jammed together the only opening to get into my bed was covered with a ladder to get to the top bunk. Oh the joy. We actually had to move furniture so I could make my bed. I also had a woman next to me from Croatia who spoke really little English and more importantly was (I think) mentally ill. She spent the whole time muttering to herself and as we talked in the room she would pick up words we said and use them in what sounded like her prayers. She had needle marks and bruises all over her arms and when she swung her legs over the side of the bed to get up, her legs were incredibly swollen and purple and she had yellow toenails that were long and jagged. I wish I was making this up but I'm not. I was pretty nervous about sleeping next to her but I did. We only spent a few hours there before leaving early the next morning. While getting ready to go I used the tap and broke the piece right off just by turning it off. Water was spouting everywhere but it was so hot we couldn't fix it and the staff didnt come in until later. We literally checked out with water spewing everywhere and ran off to catch our bus to Cardiff, Wales
Cardiff was incredible. I could live there. We spent two nights there and I could have spent our whole trip. On the second day we went to a beer festival with over 160 beers and over 40 ales. I was in heaven. We parked ourselves at a table and hours later were still there tasting beers and making a whole ton of friends. We ended up going to a club with a huge group of people we met that night and got back to the hostel at 4am. We left the next morning on the train for Manchester. I was really sad to leave it behind. The town even has a local beer called brains so we went to a pub and got to order "brains battered fish". It was worth it just for that!
Next we spent two nights at the impressive Britannia Hotel in Manchester. We did some touring around with an organized city tour, and checked out the peoples history museum, and art gallery. Both very worth seeing. We also found a really adorable place to have traditional afternoon tea with scones and jam and clotted cream. SO delicious.
We found cheap first class tickets back to London by train on Sunday and made our way back to the big city. I picked up my temporary passport, spent one last day seeing more of London and then boarded a plane and made my way to Sweden...where they detained me at the border. They checked my temp passport in great detail and made me promise to leave the country in time for my visa expiry date. They were not exactly friendly about it either. I felt like some kind of criminal sitting off to the side while the people in line stared at me and made their way through.
Despite that, it's really starting to hit me that in just a week this experience will all really be over. When I arrived back in Linkoping I felt relief...I felt comfort...I felt like I'd come home. It all feels weird and displaced because most of the students have already gone for the summer and it seems a bit deserted around here but for the past 10 months this has been home and above all else it has been the place I've truly grown up and learned who I am and who I aspire to be. It's been the place I've made friends from all over the world and it's been the place that has taught me to be proud of where I'm from. I have learned how to stand on my own feet and to appreciate those I can lean on and I have laughed and cried and struggled and experienced so much joy here and it's all been so worth it. If my life was one of those growth charts parents start on the wall for their kids that they draw in with marker I think these past ten months might represent a growth spurt. I have a long way to go but this journey has been one I wouldn't trade for anything.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.105s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 12; qc: 50; dbt: 0.0587s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb