(no subject)
Alright, I am now sitting in Heathrow Airport and it is 11:52pm according to my computer. I don’t leave here until tomorrow at 2:35pm. So I’ve got time to kill. I have decided to kill this time by updating on everything that I have skimmed over in the past month. Starting, amusingly enough, with the last time I was in London.
London: Part one - the long wait
The day started normally enough, I’d gotten about five hours of sleep and had packed the night before. I had also finished my last final earlier in the week and had decided not to go to my Sprachkurs Thursday in favor of going to London and hanging out and being awesome with Kortney. So I’m getting ready to go and run into Beate in the kitchen or by the door or whatnot and she asks about when I am leaving and I tell her within the next few minutes. She wishes me good luck and a safe flight and I headed downstairs only to realize that I have forgotten my coat in my room. Poor planning. So I run back up and grab my coat.
By this time Beate is about ready to leave for work herself and tells me she will talk down with me if I give her two minutes. No problem, we’re both going the same direction so we can keep one another company. So we walk down and I turn right. Beate looks and me and asks me why I am going that way. Apparently there is a closer U8 entrance that I just didn’t know about for the entire year. Awesome. I rock so hard. Yea, the Bernauer entrance is about a block away instead of two and a half. You learn something new every day right?
So we head down to the U8 and make it to Alexanderplatz where we wait some more. While we are waiting it begins to rain. Awesome. It’s super early in the morning at this point and the S-Bahn platform isn’t totally enclosed. Oh well. So we chat and talk and I decide to tell her about the wonderful earring I had purchased the day before. She was quite surprised, but liked it because it’s relatively hidden, and asked what my parents thought of it. I told her and she laughed a little and then her S-Bahn showed up and she wished me luck once more.
For the record I am only going so much into detail because I have nothing else to do right now. You can stop reading at anytime.
Eventually I got on the S9 and worked my way up to Shonefeld Airport where my flight was to take off from. As is custom at this point, I was checked at security and then allowed to go through. I officially hate European airports by the way. Unlike in the States they do not tell you your gate until about 45minutes to an hour before you’re supposed to board the craft. So I bought a sandwich and found a place to sit. Thankfully I had no bags to check and had been able to get through security quickly because there were about 7 chairs in the whole of the wing I was in if I wanted to be able to see the monitor.
Eventually my flight was announced and I herded along with many other people down the corridor, out the door, down stairs, around a corner, past another line of people queuing up for their flight and eventually into a small offshoot room where we passed through initial security and sat and waited for boarding to begin. This was all kinds of fun! Leave it to me to be several hours early to the airport when you don’t find your gate until the last second. Not awesome.
So after waiting and waiting and waiting some more our craft finally arrives. It still needs to have it’s passengers deplane and get cleaned before we would be allowed to board. Did I mention it was already kind of late for boarding anyway? Well, it was.
Finally we are allowed to leave this room and file out onto the tarmac and climb the rockstar stairs into the craft. Being one of the few smart people on this flight, I chose to board via the rear entrance and was quickly able to stow my luggage and seat myself. I then read/slept for the duration of the flight.
The only thing that was really remarkable about this flight in general was the flight safety card. I can’t recall exactly what made it so funny, but it was amusing enough that I contemplated peeling it off the back of the seat and taking it with me.
Eventually I landed in Standstead and made my way to a ticket counter to print my train tickets. This was a process in and of itself. While the tickets said the way was clearly marked to find the Standstead Express I was unable to find it. I ended up missing the first one that would take me to Tottenham Hale which wasn’t to huge a deal until later.
I arrived at Tottenham Hale around 11ishAM I would like to say. Kortney was not there to meet me. My intial reaction was … um… don’t panic. *flails* I proceeded to wander the entire station (it wasn’t large) about 15 times before deciding that Kortney would not be there anytime soon. She had mentioned having a class so I figured she must be attending it at the moment and would come find me afterwards. Though before coming to this rational decision I had sufficiently panicked and tried calling just about everyone I knew in hopes of getting in contact with her. I even found a payphone when my phone decided it wasn’t going to cooperate.
Finally I just sat on one of the benches and read my book. Periodically I would get up and check for Kortney, or look for when the next train would come, or be spoken to by the people sitting near me. It was all relatively boring until there was an announcement that there was a linefire up the road and that all trains would stop running for the time being and the power would be shut down.
Well, I wasn’t going anywhere so I kept my pretty little space on the bench and read my book. I also watched as many, many, many people came and sat down expecting their train to come. It got to be kind of a game to see how long they would wait before asking someone what was up or having a security person come let them know. It was a nice day so I wasn’t at all perturbed by this. I also refused to leave the station because eventually Kortney had to come back. She knew my Plane came in at roughly 9 and that I had a ticket to get me to Tottenham Hale. So I read.
Finally, around 4 in the afternoon I heard a very familiar whistle and looked up to see Kortney across the tracks holding up a sign that said Kelsey. Apparently she had been there earlier and we had missed each other by about 15 minutes when she had to leave for class.
It was kind of funny because we had to stop in a convienience store and put money on her Oyster card (underground card for the tube network) and the cashier told us how he was glad we had finally found each other after seeing both of us wandering around for so long at different times.
Apparently Kortney had woken up several people in the states, where it was about 3am, in hopes of contacting me to figure out what had happened. I received an email from my parents later letting me know they had been called as well, but hadn’t gotten to the phone in time. So all in all a very stressful experience for all involved.
Because it was already late and Kortney had another class in about 2 hours or so we headed back to her flat and I met her roommates and the other Citadel students on her Summer program. To be honest I don’t really remember names. I know she lived with Tiffany and redhead (whose name I never did learn correctly -sayword?-), and across the hall were Bruneau (Bruno), Tom, Bueller and Francesco. I’ll harass Kortney for names later because I’m sure I forgot at least one.
After dropping off my stuff and chatting a bit, Kortney and I headed out to dinner with Tiffany and Bueller. Nom nom pizza. There was fully an egg on mine. I was quite pleased. Over dinner I got to hear all about her exploits in Munchen and London before heading back to her place for class.
Not gonna lie, her professor was ridiculously good looking. It was quite a distraction from talking about Irish poetry and political issues between the Protestants and the Catholics. Kortney was also the only student in class that day. Normally there are I want to say three people in the class (it’s only people in the program and there aren’t many people in the program to begin with), but Bruneau was basically ditching and I have no idea on the other one. It was alright though because I was actually able to recall a lot of information about the poems they were reading and was able to contribute a little bit. This is when being an English major comes in handy. I can sit in on random classes and have something to contribute or ask. That and Heaney is a pretty popular poet and we had read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man twoish years ago, so I was relatively up to date on some of the political strife from that. It was however a three hour class. This got to be a bit much because my skinny butt really can’t handle sitting for that long in those chairs. Not kidding. We did however get sidetracked with all kinds of different things so it wasn’t intense Irish poetry the entire time.
After we had sat through this class Kortney and I went back to her room and she got ready to go out. Being me, I sat and chatted with her instead of finding a new outfit to wear. Eventually we left with Tiffany and headed to B@1 where we met up with the boys and began our night. The boys were just about to leave B@1 so we helped them finish off drinks and then headed to a different bar. I’m pretty sure this one was Waxy O’Neil’s. It was quite strange as you can probably imagine.
However while searching for new bar, I was treated to the sights on London. I think it was actually on our way to B@1 that Kortney and I passed through Piccadilly Circus, but on the way to Waxy’s we ran across what appeared to be china town and all manner of other things like the theater where Avenue Q was playing and another where there was a Michael Jackson show or something.
Waxy’s itself was very interesting. The boys apparently like to pony up to the bar instead of collecting drinks and sitting down which made talking rather hard to do. I personally prefer to grab a table than be forced to talk to whomever ends up sitting next to me. In this case Boston and his friend.
Kortney and I acquired drinks and went to find out why Tom and Francesco were being told to stand in the corner. Apparently sports jerseys are not allowed to be worn in this particular pub for some reason.
Anyhow, we were then standing awkwardly by the end of the bar talking to these two when Boston and his friend started talking with us. While they told us, I have no idea what these two men actually do for a living, except that it’s somewhere in possibly California.
Eventually we left and Boston and his friend decided to come with us to another bar. After making it to this third bar Kortney and I decided we just wanted to go to bed. So we left with a couple people and headed home. Though we did stop and grab sushi on the way. They were very good spicy salmon rolls.
We then got home and made pasta because we were still hungry. This was when we found out from the red head that Michael Jackson had had a heart attack and was in the hospital or something. I thought it was interesting, but Kortney really doesn’t like red head so we took our pasta across the hall and ate with the boys.
After pasta and random internet videos Kortney and I went back to her room where she did just a little more packing and showered while I went to sleep.
This is where my day would normally end, tonight this was not the case.
Around freaking early o’clock someone started banging on the window and calling for Kortney. This is apparently a common practice by the Citadel students when they are locked out. Yay for having the room that borders the street. So, Kortney got out of bed and let them in while I proceeded to pass back out.
Yet again this is where my night normally would have just ended with my peacefully sleeping in a tiny bed with Kortney. Not so. Sometime later Tiffany and Bueller stumbled into the room loudly. Bueller then decided it would be a really good idea to use his phone as a flashlight and try and find Kelsey. All I remember is that I have never wanted to punch a man in the face that much at dark o’clock in the morning while he was drunkenly calling out “where’s Kelsey?”. Finally he got the message and left us alone.
I then woke up in the night feeling very sore. Stretching was not what I wanted to do. By stretching I managed to give myself a wonderful Charlie Horse. I’m honestly not sure how the room slept through my pained noises and massaging my calf. Eventually I fell back to sleep.
And that was when my long, long, Thursday finally ended.
Well this has been entirely helpful. It is now 12:53am. I only have to kill about 13 more hours before I head back to the states. I really wish I had the internet. However I have not been able to connect. I think I may have done something strange with the IP address. I will be calling Mike in the evening if this issue has not resolved itself before then.
As a side note, I would like to talk about the fact that Kortney actually had sheets on her bed. Germany doesn’t seem to believe in sheets. Wow, I can’t say at home anymore in reference to Berlin. That’s very weird. I’ll be taking a moment to reflect upon this before I can continue.
Anyhow, she has sheets. I did not have sheet in my host family’s house. I had a fitted sheet yes, but then only a duvet/comforter. I missed sheets quite terribly. I look forward to sleeping in my own bed again with sheets. I will be attempting to burn the comforter though because it’s hot as the devil back in Arizona. I checked and Monday at one in the morning it as 91 degrees. So going to melt. It’s not awesome. I will miss the random rains that cooled Berlin down. And I am ever learning to appreciate that obnoxious saying, “but, at least it’s a dry heat.”. Yes, humidity is horrible and makes me want to take ice baths, but 113 degrees is equally terrible.
I’m getting really tired of typing at the moment so I think I will now be organizing my photos from Berlin. Ooo Maybe I’ll go through and give them tags on the computer! This is what goes through my mind at 1am. Just go with it. Graffiti is bad.
It is now 6:36 according to my computer. I have slept as much as I think I will be able. I have moved back to departures from Arrivals, this is a story for after I have completed the months worth of stories I have.
Now without further ado
London: Part two - the tour
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As you can see I didn't actually finish what I started. Oh well. It'll happens.
Love and Hugs,
Kelsey
London: Part one - the long wait
The day started normally enough, I’d gotten about five hours of sleep and had packed the night before. I had also finished my last final earlier in the week and had decided not to go to my Sprachkurs Thursday in favor of going to London and hanging out and being awesome with Kortney. So I’m getting ready to go and run into Beate in the kitchen or by the door or whatnot and she asks about when I am leaving and I tell her within the next few minutes. She wishes me good luck and a safe flight and I headed downstairs only to realize that I have forgotten my coat in my room. Poor planning. So I run back up and grab my coat.
By this time Beate is about ready to leave for work herself and tells me she will talk down with me if I give her two minutes. No problem, we’re both going the same direction so we can keep one another company. So we walk down and I turn right. Beate looks and me and asks me why I am going that way. Apparently there is a closer U8 entrance that I just didn’t know about for the entire year. Awesome. I rock so hard. Yea, the Bernauer entrance is about a block away instead of two and a half. You learn something new every day right?
So we head down to the U8 and make it to Alexanderplatz where we wait some more. While we are waiting it begins to rain. Awesome. It’s super early in the morning at this point and the S-Bahn platform isn’t totally enclosed. Oh well. So we chat and talk and I decide to tell her about the wonderful earring I had purchased the day before. She was quite surprised, but liked it because it’s relatively hidden, and asked what my parents thought of it. I told her and she laughed a little and then her S-Bahn showed up and she wished me luck once more.
For the record I am only going so much into detail because I have nothing else to do right now. You can stop reading at anytime.
Eventually I got on the S9 and worked my way up to Shonefeld Airport where my flight was to take off from. As is custom at this point, I was checked at security and then allowed to go through. I officially hate European airports by the way. Unlike in the States they do not tell you your gate until about 45minutes to an hour before you’re supposed to board the craft. So I bought a sandwich and found a place to sit. Thankfully I had no bags to check and had been able to get through security quickly because there were about 7 chairs in the whole of the wing I was in if I wanted to be able to see the monitor.
Eventually my flight was announced and I herded along with many other people down the corridor, out the door, down stairs, around a corner, past another line of people queuing up for their flight and eventually into a small offshoot room where we passed through initial security and sat and waited for boarding to begin. This was all kinds of fun! Leave it to me to be several hours early to the airport when you don’t find your gate until the last second. Not awesome.
So after waiting and waiting and waiting some more our craft finally arrives. It still needs to have it’s passengers deplane and get cleaned before we would be allowed to board. Did I mention it was already kind of late for boarding anyway? Well, it was.
Finally we are allowed to leave this room and file out onto the tarmac and climb the rockstar stairs into the craft. Being one of the few smart people on this flight, I chose to board via the rear entrance and was quickly able to stow my luggage and seat myself. I then read/slept for the duration of the flight.
The only thing that was really remarkable about this flight in general was the flight safety card. I can’t recall exactly what made it so funny, but it was amusing enough that I contemplated peeling it off the back of the seat and taking it with me.
Eventually I landed in Standstead and made my way to a ticket counter to print my train tickets. This was a process in and of itself. While the tickets said the way was clearly marked to find the Standstead Express I was unable to find it. I ended up missing the first one that would take me to Tottenham Hale which wasn’t to huge a deal until later.
I arrived at Tottenham Hale around 11ishAM I would like to say. Kortney was not there to meet me. My intial reaction was … um… don’t panic. *flails* I proceeded to wander the entire station (it wasn’t large) about 15 times before deciding that Kortney would not be there anytime soon. She had mentioned having a class so I figured she must be attending it at the moment and would come find me afterwards. Though before coming to this rational decision I had sufficiently panicked and tried calling just about everyone I knew in hopes of getting in contact with her. I even found a payphone when my phone decided it wasn’t going to cooperate.
Finally I just sat on one of the benches and read my book. Periodically I would get up and check for Kortney, or look for when the next train would come, or be spoken to by the people sitting near me. It was all relatively boring until there was an announcement that there was a linefire up the road and that all trains would stop running for the time being and the power would be shut down.
Well, I wasn’t going anywhere so I kept my pretty little space on the bench and read my book. I also watched as many, many, many people came and sat down expecting their train to come. It got to be kind of a game to see how long they would wait before asking someone what was up or having a security person come let them know. It was a nice day so I wasn’t at all perturbed by this. I also refused to leave the station because eventually Kortney had to come back. She knew my Plane came in at roughly 9 and that I had a ticket to get me to Tottenham Hale. So I read.
Finally, around 4 in the afternoon I heard a very familiar whistle and looked up to see Kortney across the tracks holding up a sign that said Kelsey. Apparently she had been there earlier and we had missed each other by about 15 minutes when she had to leave for class.
It was kind of funny because we had to stop in a convienience store and put money on her Oyster card (underground card for the tube network) and the cashier told us how he was glad we had finally found each other after seeing both of us wandering around for so long at different times.
Apparently Kortney had woken up several people in the states, where it was about 3am, in hopes of contacting me to figure out what had happened. I received an email from my parents later letting me know they had been called as well, but hadn’t gotten to the phone in time. So all in all a very stressful experience for all involved.
Because it was already late and Kortney had another class in about 2 hours or so we headed back to her flat and I met her roommates and the other Citadel students on her Summer program. To be honest I don’t really remember names. I know she lived with Tiffany and redhead (whose name I never did learn correctly -sayword?-), and across the hall were Bruneau (Bruno), Tom, Bueller and Francesco. I’ll harass Kortney for names later because I’m sure I forgot at least one.
After dropping off my stuff and chatting a bit, Kortney and I headed out to dinner with Tiffany and Bueller. Nom nom pizza. There was fully an egg on mine. I was quite pleased. Over dinner I got to hear all about her exploits in Munchen and London before heading back to her place for class.
Not gonna lie, her professor was ridiculously good looking. It was quite a distraction from talking about Irish poetry and political issues between the Protestants and the Catholics. Kortney was also the only student in class that day. Normally there are I want to say three people in the class (it’s only people in the program and there aren’t many people in the program to begin with), but Bruneau was basically ditching and I have no idea on the other one. It was alright though because I was actually able to recall a lot of information about the poems they were reading and was able to contribute a little bit. This is when being an English major comes in handy. I can sit in on random classes and have something to contribute or ask. That and Heaney is a pretty popular poet and we had read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man twoish years ago, so I was relatively up to date on some of the political strife from that. It was however a three hour class. This got to be a bit much because my skinny butt really can’t handle sitting for that long in those chairs. Not kidding. We did however get sidetracked with all kinds of different things so it wasn’t intense Irish poetry the entire time.
After we had sat through this class Kortney and I went back to her room and she got ready to go out. Being me, I sat and chatted with her instead of finding a new outfit to wear. Eventually we left with Tiffany and headed to B@1 where we met up with the boys and began our night. The boys were just about to leave B@1 so we helped them finish off drinks and then headed to a different bar. I’m pretty sure this one was Waxy O’Neil’s. It was quite strange as you can probably imagine.
However while searching for new bar, I was treated to the sights on London. I think it was actually on our way to B@1 that Kortney and I passed through Piccadilly Circus, but on the way to Waxy’s we ran across what appeared to be china town and all manner of other things like the theater where Avenue Q was playing and another where there was a Michael Jackson show or something.
Waxy’s itself was very interesting. The boys apparently like to pony up to the bar instead of collecting drinks and sitting down which made talking rather hard to do. I personally prefer to grab a table than be forced to talk to whomever ends up sitting next to me. In this case Boston and his friend.
Kortney and I acquired drinks and went to find out why Tom and Francesco were being told to stand in the corner. Apparently sports jerseys are not allowed to be worn in this particular pub for some reason.
Anyhow, we were then standing awkwardly by the end of the bar talking to these two when Boston and his friend started talking with us. While they told us, I have no idea what these two men actually do for a living, except that it’s somewhere in possibly California.
Eventually we left and Boston and his friend decided to come with us to another bar. After making it to this third bar Kortney and I decided we just wanted to go to bed. So we left with a couple people and headed home. Though we did stop and grab sushi on the way. They were very good spicy salmon rolls.
We then got home and made pasta because we were still hungry. This was when we found out from the red head that Michael Jackson had had a heart attack and was in the hospital or something. I thought it was interesting, but Kortney really doesn’t like red head so we took our pasta across the hall and ate with the boys.
After pasta and random internet videos Kortney and I went back to her room where she did just a little more packing and showered while I went to sleep.
This is where my day would normally end, tonight this was not the case.
Around freaking early o’clock someone started banging on the window and calling for Kortney. This is apparently a common practice by the Citadel students when they are locked out. Yay for having the room that borders the street. So, Kortney got out of bed and let them in while I proceeded to pass back out.
Yet again this is where my night normally would have just ended with my peacefully sleeping in a tiny bed with Kortney. Not so. Sometime later Tiffany and Bueller stumbled into the room loudly. Bueller then decided it would be a really good idea to use his phone as a flashlight and try and find Kelsey. All I remember is that I have never wanted to punch a man in the face that much at dark o’clock in the morning while he was drunkenly calling out “where’s Kelsey?”. Finally he got the message and left us alone.
I then woke up in the night feeling very sore. Stretching was not what I wanted to do. By stretching I managed to give myself a wonderful Charlie Horse. I’m honestly not sure how the room slept through my pained noises and massaging my calf. Eventually I fell back to sleep.
And that was when my long, long, Thursday finally ended.
Well this has been entirely helpful. It is now 12:53am. I only have to kill about 13 more hours before I head back to the states. I really wish I had the internet. However I have not been able to connect. I think I may have done something strange with the IP address. I will be calling Mike in the evening if this issue has not resolved itself before then.
As a side note, I would like to talk about the fact that Kortney actually had sheets on her bed. Germany doesn’t seem to believe in sheets. Wow, I can’t say at home anymore in reference to Berlin. That’s very weird. I’ll be taking a moment to reflect upon this before I can continue.
Anyhow, she has sheets. I did not have sheet in my host family’s house. I had a fitted sheet yes, but then only a duvet/comforter. I missed sheets quite terribly. I look forward to sleeping in my own bed again with sheets. I will be attempting to burn the comforter though because it’s hot as the devil back in Arizona. I checked and Monday at one in the morning it as 91 degrees. So going to melt. It’s not awesome. I will miss the random rains that cooled Berlin down. And I am ever learning to appreciate that obnoxious saying, “but, at least it’s a dry heat.”. Yes, humidity is horrible and makes me want to take ice baths, but 113 degrees is equally terrible.
I’m getting really tired of typing at the moment so I think I will now be organizing my photos from Berlin. Ooo Maybe I’ll go through and give them tags on the computer! This is what goes through my mind at 1am. Just go with it. Graffiti is bad.
It is now 6:36 according to my computer. I have slept as much as I think I will be able. I have moved back to departures from Arrivals, this is a story for after I have completed the months worth of stories I have.
Now without further ado
London: Part two - the tour
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As you can see I didn't actually finish what I started. Oh well. It'll happens.
Love and Hugs,
Kelsey