American cars

I've had a little bit of trouble with American roads.

Mostly I'm fine but every here and there I have to stop and think about what I'm doing. Usually this is a problem when I'm out walking, say with the dogs, or running. I can't quite remember which side I should be on, where cars will be coming from, or how to cross the street. It's not instinctual, I have to give it conscious thought.

That doesn't surprise me; though I didn't drive in Scotland, and never adapted to driving on the left-side of the road, I'm definitely used to being a pedestrian in such situations.

However, I have since noticed a little trouble driving. Not always, but in strange situations.
Case in point.
I went shopping the other day and was driving (in the right lane) in the parking lot towards a space I wanted. Another car ahead of me, coming towards me, was in to my lane, presumably to make the wide left and snag the same space.
But for a few moments I stared blankly at the car head-to-head with my own. My mind raced. What country am I in? What side of the road am I on? What side of the road am I meant to be on?
And finally, So, if I'm in America, then why is he in my lane?

Too late. My parking spot was gone.

Photos!

Lakes photos up, see the new link.

Keswick Adventures

We visited the Lake District for two full days: to be honest, three might have been about perfect, I could have used one more day to explore Keswick. Any longer would require a change in locale, and I've heard Lake Windermere is a good place to go on a two-stop tour of the Lakes.

The first thing we went to in the Lakes was the Cumberland Pencil Museum. Wikipedia is probably more informative on this, but in the 1850's or so, graphite was discovered in Cumbria. One particular pencil compant, Derwent, is still in business today and has had a factory in Keswick since the beginning of the Cumbrian Pencil Industry. Next to the factory is a pencil museum, documenting the development of the pencil industry throughout the world and in particular in Keswick, with special attention to the technology of the pencil and its materials. The colored pencil section was really informative about how the color dyes are mixed to create colored graphite pencils.

I learned a lot about pencils.

Unfortunately the information was a little bit outdated. Signs referred to the 1960's as "25 years ago" (phrases like that are never a good idea for a museum display) and Russia as the USSR. But it was pretty cool too, the wood for the pencil is cedar, and comes from "the Great American states of Oregon and California", hah! Clay was originally mixed in with the graphite to help lower production costs and was soon found to help writing quality as well: it is the clay:graphite ratio that determines the hardness of the pencil.

Cool stuff.

Two long walks were accomplished in our two days as well. The first was up Walla Crags, located just south of Keswick, which had an absolutely perfect view of Derwent Water. The second was up Skiddaw, elevation of about 3000 ft or just under 1000 m, and consequently the smaller peaks of Little Man, and 'bump' of Latrigg. Skiddaw is the fourth-highest peak in the Lake District but 'just short of the tallest', though nothing ever told me what the margin of difference actually is. I'm pretty sure that Scotland was visible to the north, though I can't be positive it was actually Scotland I saw, and we could see a lot of the lakes and ridges in all surrounding areas. Climbing up Skiddaw was great, it helped create a sense of the geography and geology of the area, the farming areas, the lakes, the treeless mountains. I'm still not accustomed to such a profound lack of trees.

If anyone is ever planning a visit to Keswick, I highly recommend dining at Bella Roma, which also has excellent desserts, and coffee/drinks at 26. I highly discourage patronising Salsa, a Mexican place. I know, I know, I shouldn't expect good Mexican food in England, but even bad Mexican food usually tastes of something. This was just bland. Unimpressive.

Lake District

The Lake District, I have been told on many occasions, is the most beautiful part of England. It is located in the NW corner of England, just south of Carlisle and Hadrian's Wall, in the area known as Cumbria.

According to one sign, some millions of years ago, the continents of Europe and the Americas slammed into each other, and many mountains were created at this time, including those in the Lakes. After ages of erosion by glaciers, wind, rain, the mountains became rounded, lakes filled in some of the valleys, and the result is the lush green farming area today.

The Lake District was the famous retreat of many English artists, the more famous of whom are writers like Beatrix Potter, Wordsworth, Coleridge, the creater of Postman Pat (a British cartoon character). Back in the day, it was the summer home for loaded gentry, as one might find in Jane Austen novels.

Here, mountains are called fells.
Small lakes are tarns.
There were a lot of weird names. Keswick, pronounced Kez-sick. Just south is a lake called Derwent Water. Towns like Penrith, Cockermouth, Threlkeld. Lake Windermere, and the town Windermere, is a popular spot for walkers, just as was Keswick.

Keswick managed to cater to weekending tourists with its charm and remain genuine; it was also a Fair Trade and organic food haven. Almost every single house, even those outside the 'town centre', were B&B's. There were a few pubs and taverns, mostly associated with small hotels, and Keswick even boasts a nightclub open seven nights a week, though I didn't go inside. Most of the shops were either cafes, outdoor goods, or cute baubles (antiques & crafts).

The whole area was beautiful! More later; also, pictures coming.

whoops?

You know that Patrick Dempsey movie, "Made of Honor"?

I first saw adverts for it about a month ago, mostly posters on telephone booths and the sides of buses. The first wave were advertising "Made of Honor"

More recently I noticed a second wave of adverts plugging "Made of Honour".

Amazing!

speaking of kilts...

My friend Sandy works at a kilt shop on the Royal Mile and was interviewed by CNN today. For some reason.

Anyone want to tape CNN for me?

the kilt

Let me tell you a story.

The original Scottish kilts looked like the ones in Braveheart. They were longer, and draped over the shoulder, and were a lot warmer.

Once there was a forest in England the landowner wanted cut down. As the English do, he brought a bunch of Scotsmen down to do the hard work. The longer, baggy kilts got caught in the tree-cutting machines/equipment/stuff, which I imagine was quite a problem. What did they do?

The Scots worked naked.
What a solution.
No more dangling articles caught in machines. (Actually, I'm not so sure on that...)

The English landowner didn't seem to agree, and was really quite affronted by the nakedness on his land, so he designed a new kilt that just went around the waist.
The modern kilt! An English innovation.

Drinks in Spain

One evening in Spain I ordered a glass of orange juice to go with my dinner. ("Tiene, um, jugo de naranja...?") What arrived was essentially a glass of liquidized orange. It was pulpy, there were seeds in my drink, and it tasted exactly like an orange, nothing added it. On the side of the saucer was a large packet of sugar and a long spoon. Which, of course, I didn't use.

However, that sugar packet provoked me to look around at the other cafe drinks being served, and all of them came with giganto sugar packets as well. I'm not talking about the square-ish shaped ones that hold more sugar than they look, these are the cylindrical ones about four inches long that probably hold enough sugar to sweeten a third-world developing nation.

Most people used their sugar packets, even in the cafes con leche that I found to be sweet to begin with. I take my coffee as black as I can manage, and the orange juice was naturally sweet, so I never used mine. I think it struck the servers as odd.

oh yeah....

I forget why, but we were talking about babies in the shop last week, and the manager used only the word "bairn". Which is the Scottish for baby, which I knew, but it still struck me a little bit.


Happy Mother's Day!

At least in the US.
In Spain, Mother's Day was last Sunday (May 4) which I think is the day for most of Europe. Not so for the UK, where it's always the third, or fourth maybe?, Sunday of Lent.

It's refreshing not to be surrounded by Hallmark adverts.

Sometimes it actually does rain in Scotland.

All of last week we had absolutely gorgeous weather, up in the 70's, bright blue skies, lots of sun, the kind of weather that makes it impossible to revise for exams. Instead the entire student population turned a brilliant lobster pink.

Last night we had a thunderstorm.

It was a bit odd, really. I know it doesn't storm all that much over here, because storms require instable conditions and the constancy of the weather patterns preclude that a bit. But yesterday saw some heavier rain than usual, paired with rumbling thunder for a few periods of about fifteen minutes each. As far as I can tell, there was no spectacular flashes of lightning anywhere, just some thunder high up in the atmosphere somewhere.

Of course the 70F weather is gone as well, the storm heralded in cooler, foggy weather.

At least it's easier to focus on physics?

Paper

I think I've already mentioned this, but the standard paper size is called A4, and measures 21 cm by 30 cm, or 8.3" by 11.7". The hole-punched variety have two holes, roughly 1/3 of the way down the page. I've gotten used to it, but during my revision I brought out some notes on US Letter and I forgot that many people had never seen it. It was "so short!" and had "too many holes!" Hah.

I learned that the equivalent of the "nuclear family" is known as the "A4 family".

"So.. if you don't have A4 paper, then what do you call the A4 family?"
"The what?"

Notes on Spain

-I tried, whenever possible, to speak Spanish while in Spain (English in Gibraltar, because that seemed to be preferred). I think it surprised a lot of shopkeepers and receptionists, but though I completely butchered the language, I do hope they appreciated the attempt. Many switched into English after I started talking in Spanish, and in all these cases their English was much better than my Spanish. Others looked confused, so I used a few more hand gestures. It was pretty easy, anyway. I used the formal-you tense while asking questions, which generally has fewer conjugation tricks.

-The ice cream in the heladerias was amazing! There are two flavors distinctive to the region, one called something like Carapino which was vanilla with caramel and some kind of nut--macademia?, the other usually called Malaga or Malagueno or something else, that was a light chocolate flavor with what seemed to be raisins. I admit, the raisins surprised me at first, but this was possibly the best ice cream I've ever had.

-The coffee I had with breakfast was typically cafe con leche. This was also what was served in most cafeterias (being cafe'-teri'as, where the 's are accent marks, not the school cafeteria it looks like) in the evenings. In the latter case, the waiter would bring a small glass filled about 1/4 of the way with espresso. Then he'd fill in the rest of the way with steaming milk out of a pitcher. Cafe con leche!

-A lot of tourists, I am told, go to Spain and drink sangria. But the Spanish tend to drink tinto de verano instead, which is red wine mixed with the European version of lemonade, lemon-flavoured carbonated water. (Europeans are confused when they see real lemonade in films/television! It's too yellow and pulpy to them)

-The fast food of choice appeared to be Burger King. Huh.
-A cafeteria chain seemed to be called Okay. Huh.

-Tapas! Seriously, I cannot tell you how amazing it was to be surrounded by tapas bars, and all the ones I tried were good. Tapas are small portions of food, the size of your palm maybe, with the idea that a group orders a few and split them by having a few bites of each. General characteristics of the tapas I saw included: ones that were fried, seafood, sausages, cheeses, tortillas that looked more like quiche. Not many required eating utensils. The best part was how inexpensive calamari (generally found as calamares fritas) was!
Tapas are also an inexpensive way to eat, usually under 2 Euro per tapa.
For that matter, Spain was pretty inexpensive.

-Pensiones, in singular pensio'n (pen-see-OWN), are kind of like a step up from a hostel and a step down from a B&B. You get your own room, you share a bath, and you get breakfast in the morning. Most non-hotel accommodation seemed to be a pension, the same way that everything in Britain is a B&B.

-Breakfast in Spain seems to be exclusively toast with butter or marmelade and coffee. No where varied.

-Though less true in touristy areas, the Spanish siesta is definitely in full force for most of the society, with shops shut between about 1-4 every afternoon. Even some museums followed this rule!

-One of the coolest experiences was riding the bus from La Linea to Malaga, for a whole hour the bus driver was tuned into a station that appeared to play music exclusively in English. Classic rock/Oldies, Beatles, Eagles, Elton John, that sort of stuff.

Along those lines, I realised how much concentration it took to be surrounded by Spanish. When in Gibraltar I suddenly found it easier to notice my surroundings, because I wasn't using that extra step to translate signs and conversations. When the language isn't instinctual it's harder to notice smaller details, even if not actively conversing.

Check out my Spain/Gibraltar photos!

Nuff said. Link to the right, there's 57 of em. Two blog entries on Spain below, if you haven't seen them already.

Gibraltar

Before I went to Gibraltar, I was warned that it was extremely expensive and not to spend more than a day there. That advice was pretty sound.

Gibraltar is part of the UK, and as such uses the pound as its currency. But, cool!, a lot of places accepted Euros, and a few cafes/restaurants were even willing to accept US Dollars. Which was a little weird, why Gibraltar of all places.

The Rock is located on the western-ish side of the peninsula, and the main city is nestled onto the eastern side between the coast and the Rock. At the northern border with Spain lies the Spanish city of La Linea (de la Concepcion, a less expensive place, and very un-touristy, mostly I felt like the only English speaker in the entire city). The border was easy to cross, just hold your passport at your side. Seemed to be that as long as you have a passport, they'll let you through. A lot of people seem to come to La Linea to buy groceries and carry them across to Gibraltar.

Immediately after Customs is the Gibraltar Airport, which looks more like the bus station of a small city. The airport's airstrip lies east-west, and must be crossed on foot, then the city begins. It was amazing to suddenly see so many signs in English after seeing almost exclusively Spanish. Unfortunately, Gibraltar was also an extremely touristy place, the main commercial centre was half high-end stores, half cheap souvenier shops. But a lot of old things were there preserved among the new, including more churches per capita than I may have seen in my life, at least one for every major denomination (one synagogue, two mosques, at least three Catholic churches, one Anglican cathedral, one Church of Scotland, one Methodist... etc) it seemed, as well as an old convent, the original Gibraltar Chronicle newspaper printers, etc. The Gibraltar Museum included a basement section in which the ruins of 14th century Moorish baths could be explored. The Trafalgar Cemetery holds graves of sailors who fought in that battle and others of the late 18th century/early 19th.

Because, as like the rest of the southern Iberian Peninsula, Gibraltar has had a long history of several conquests. Way back they know that Neanderthals lived on Gibraltar, thanks to a skull found that is actually featured on the back of the Gibraltar pound coin!. They believe that the Rock of Gibraltar was one of the two Pillars of Hercules, and that the caves on the Rock may have been inspiration for myths about the descent into Hades--but then, honestly, what caves weren't? The area was Spanish until 711, then came under Moorish control until about 1462? when it became Spanish again. The peninsula was claimed by Britain in 1707 (I think) and has been British ever since.

At the southern end of the peninsula, where there are neighborhoods and very few traces of tourism, lie the Shrine of Our Lady of Europe, which I found absolutely beautiful; a large mosque, isolated and open; and the Europa Point lighthouse, built in 1843 and closed off to visitors. Kind of a shame, that. Europa Point was recommended as a place to visit but out there wasn't much to see. Not of the lighthouse, anyway; the (south)eastern coast of Spain was easy to see, and Africa was visible and would have been easier to see on a clearer day, I am sure.

The Rock itself was so cool. Now, I wasn't able to climb up to the top as I planned, mostly because everything seemed to be private property and I couldn't find the road that went up to the top. But, the national park area has a lot of cool little sites. On the north face are the Moorish Castle, built several times over up to 1333 and completely accessible to the public, and the Great Siege Tunnels from 1779-83. This Great Siege was the point of Gibraltar History everyone seemed proud of, but I couldn't tell you what exactly happened, or why, only that the British held their ground and almost all starved to death. Also there were the World War II Tunnels, where Eisenhower apparently planned invasion of North Africa, but this was privately run. Also there was a really bad two-room Military Heritage Centre and outdoor City Under Siege exhibition---in this latter, I learned about how the Gibraltar-ians starved. It was brill.

Along the walk to the south is the Apes' Den, where a large concentration of macaque (monkeys) can be found, though really they seemed to be everywhere on the rock. A Cable Car passed from the edge of the city centre, up to the Apes' Den at the middle station, and to the top of the rock at the Upper Station. More South was St. Michael's Cave, which as I said before, may have been inspiration to the myths of Hades, but who knows. The caves were by far the most tourist-ful of the Rock displays.

All along the rock were remains of military structures: batteries, magazines, a lime kiln, watchtowers. Gibraltar has no natural source of water, and little arable land, but has been prized as a military outpost since forever it seems, and the first mention I heard was when the Moors used it as an entry way for their conquest of the Iberian Peninsula.

I'm sorry for using the term "Moor" so much, but that's what all the information has and I don't know who these people were really, so unfortunately you're stuck with it.

-A lot of shops, especially, had stickers reading "Keep Gibraltar British!" At least we know their feeling on the subject
-Had an Irish Town, which was really about three blocks by one block and not particularly Irish?
-I had no idea they were allowed to mint their own money!
-There was a lot of mention about of the Gibraltar military forces, as well as the RAF. I mean it, everywhere.
-The price of petrol was surprisingly low, about 65p/litre. It's about 1 pound here in Scotland
-A lot of places advertised genuine "English Fish&Chips!" And there seemed to be few signs of Spanish heritage. By design? The shopkeepers were much more comfortable speaking English, as well, but my impression is that many of the residents may have preferred Spanish.
-They had four bus routes, an extensive amount for so small a peninsula, I felt.
-A lot of plaques about that commemorated the visit in 1954 of HM Queen Elizabeth II and HRH Duke of Edinburgh, which was kind of weird, I guess the Queen doesn't go to Gibraltar all that much.
-On the western side there seems to be only one main road, and just beaches, not much in the way of development.

Málaga

Last week I took off to Spain the day after an exam. What a great way to destress! I first spent two or three days in Málaga, which is located on the SW coast, along what is known as La Costa Del Sol (The Coast of the Sun). And I found that description quite true, there was nothing but warm, dry weather and sunny-blue skies.

Malaga has seen a long history, from something like the 7th century, to the capital? of the Moorish kingdom in Spain, to now. The original city stood behind a defensive wall, and though the wall isn't there anymore I still feel like a clear demarkation was evident between the old city and the new. Outside the wall's boundaries the streets were wider and straighter, the buildings taller and more spaced. Within, many of the streets were so small that they were forced to be pedestrian-only, which incidentally makes things really nice for tourists.

On the beach side of the city, the main street (La Alameda Principal) was divided in the middle by the Parque (park), about 10 or 15 yards wide and several blocks long. Inside the weaving Paseo De Espana (Walk of Spain) the tall palms and mediterranean flowers blocked out most views of the cars passing by. It was quite amazing.

El Teatro Romano: The Roman Theatre. This was right along the edge of the big hill in the center of the old city, and only found in 1950 or so when some plaza was being constructed. I was shocked at how small it was, nothing like the huge theatre I was expecting. But it was neat, people were allowed to sit on the original benches.

Alcazaba de Malaga An Alcazaba is a Moorish fort in Spain, Moorish being the local word for the Muslim rulers who were there around 11-14th centuries or so. According to my brochure I picked up, this Alcazaba was rebuilt many times, containing some three concentric walls until the Palace in the center, which had about eight small rooms off of two plaza/inner courtyard type things. The architecture was extremely Moorish here, very geometric in design and style.

Castillo Gibralfaro, the Gibralfaro Castle, was higher up on the same hill. Strangely, it seemed to be less well maintained, but it was still possible to walk all the way around the outside walls. The inside had just a little cafe/snack bar and some gardens, no palace or anything here. Apparently it once held a large Magazine and quarters for soldiers and that.

Picasso: was born in Málaga! Now that's pretty cool. The Museo Picasso Malaga, right by the Catedral (which is also very pretty, but that's about all I know about it), held entirely works by Picasso, with the exception of the Temporary Exhibit, which was 1920's and 30's photography... so still pertinent. Underneath the art exhibitions was an open archaeological dig, showing original Roman walls, Phoenician wells, paved 14th century streets, all together and overlaid in this tiny basement. It was absolutely amazing.

Other things I saw:
-Plaza de Toros de la Malagueta - The bullfighting ring of Malagueta, which I think still hosts bullfights, though maybe they no longer kill the bulls, or treat them quite as badly as they still do in more rural areas? I managed to sneak in, and watched a Spanish man practice twirling movements with his red cape in the centre of the ring.
-Ayuntamiento, the local/regional government. As a building, I think it means the City Hall. I have a picture somewhere. Along the Alameda Principal, three buildings stand out from the rest. One is the Ayuntamiento, one is Palacio de la Aduana (Palace of the Border), and the third is the Rectorado Universidad de Málaga (University Rectorate). Shows how important and influential the Church has been throughout Spanish history.