(no subject)
Dear America,
I am back from Europe.
The first notable thing about France is that the French will often speak French and nothing else-a skill I certainly do not have. That combined with the completely nonsensical and arbitrary street placements and traffic of Paris (seriously, the traffic system makes zero sense. Streets careen into each other randomly, lanes are nonexistent leaving guidelines, and at any given intersection cars will almost collide in a clusterfuck of catastrophic proportions) makes Paris one goshdarn intimidating city. However, my mom's French is still pretty rock solid, and I figured out the Metro system pretty right quick, so we figured out our way around decently enough. We visited the Louvre (incredible), an intensely awesome modern art museum, Notre Dame Cathedral (and many others, that's for sure), took a double-decker touristy bus to catch sight of anything we may have missed, and saw an bizarrely intense avant-garde English opera written by Howard Shore (composer of the score of such films as the Lord of the Rings trilogy), conducted by Placido Domingo (a worldwide famous musical figure who, according to my mother, "still has it"), and entitled "The Fly"-yes, it is based on the Jeff Goldblum-Geena Davis-David Cronenberg 1986 horror film about a scientist who becomes mixed with a fly (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091064/). Needless to say, it was pretty weird (but pretty flippin' cool). A street hustler grabbed my hand and started making a bracelet on it. When he was done he asked me for 5 Euros. We tried to visit the Eiffel Tower but the day we decided, it was rainy, cold (those two adjectives can be described for a good deal of the trip actually), incredibly windy, and after a while started lightninging. We concluded that perhaps pictures from afar would be adequate.
The first notable thing about England is that the English will often speak English and nothing else-a skill I certainly have. It instantly makes adapting to London much easier. This is where, after some stupid airport eff-ups which resulted in him sleeping on the JFK Airport floor, my brother joins me and my mother. We visit the National Gallery (more incredible art), the Tate Modern (more incredible modern art), Buckingham Palace (and HOLY CRAP WE SEE THE QUEEN. Not much, just her head for like two seconds as she drives in), Westminister Abbey, the Parliament (in which myriad antiwar protesters have taken it upon themselves to camp out in conveniently placed tents covered in antiwar propaganda), the Globe Theatre, attend a service at St. Paul's Cathedral, and see "Les Miserables" in the West End-it's pretty fantastic except the pit uses too many synthesizers, Marius is terrible in general, and Valjean, who is very Irish and quite a splendid actor, sounds really thin, lateral, and poppy when he hits the high notes (my mom and brother disagree, and say he was terrific all around). Our visit coincided quite perfectly with a burgeoning knife crime epidemic plaguing the city's youth; I believe three murders took place during our trip taking the total number to 14. A man offered me drugs in the most offhand way I've ever seen; as I was walking past him, he muttered "Marijuana?" and kept walking briskly. What if I had wanted it? I would've literally had to chase him down and stop him and yell "WAIT YES I WOULD LIKE SOME ILLEGAL MARIJUANA PLEASE." My brother thought maybe it was his first time, or he was just terribly shy, which would be pretty cute. I'm sure there's a romantic Hugh Grant vehicle in there somewhere.
The first notable thing about Wales is that there are two official languages-English (yes!) and Welsh. Here is a not too terribly exaggerated example of what a typical street sign in Wales may look like: "No parking past this sign - Xpy ghanngkro dpz yyt." Seriously, Welsh looks like flippin' Klingon. Anyway, this is where we meet up with Dianne Cragg, a family friend who visits Europe much more than us and offers to drive us around the wrong side of the road so we don't have to, and my father. My father is involved with the Langsford Men's Chorus, a Wayne State based men's ensemble that is competing in an annual Welsh worldwide music competition called the Eisteddfod-naturally, they compete in the men's ensemble category. This part of the trip is basically spent watching lots and lots of musical offerings from around the globe, including this incredible men's choir from Sardenia which stands in a circle and sings folk songs-one of which is so good that it is still perfectly fastened in my head and I could probably sing it verbatim for you-and this incredible mixed choir from the Canary Islands that sings awesome, fun, catchy, jazzy tunes. In between here somewhere we travel to Liverpool and visit the Beatles museum-pretty flippin' cool. Anyway my dad's choir competes and sounds pretty goshdarn fantastic, if you ask me. They wind up coming in second place in their category-for a worldwide competition, I think that's kind of awesome.
My brother and I fly home. In the airport in Manchester, we see the rock band Mindless Self Indulgence.
So that, in a nutshell, was my trip to Europe. If you're still curious for whatever reason, look at my Facebook soon and I'll have up a bunch of pictures or just hang out with me in real life (cause I missed all of you) and chat me up or whatever.
Love,
Dpxyffxo (that's Welsh for "Greg")
I am back from Europe.
The first notable thing about France is that the French will often speak French and nothing else-a skill I certainly do not have. That combined with the completely nonsensical and arbitrary street placements and traffic of Paris (seriously, the traffic system makes zero sense. Streets careen into each other randomly, lanes are nonexistent leaving guidelines, and at any given intersection cars will almost collide in a clusterfuck of catastrophic proportions) makes Paris one goshdarn intimidating city. However, my mom's French is still pretty rock solid, and I figured out the Metro system pretty right quick, so we figured out our way around decently enough. We visited the Louvre (incredible), an intensely awesome modern art museum, Notre Dame Cathedral (and many others, that's for sure), took a double-decker touristy bus to catch sight of anything we may have missed, and saw an bizarrely intense avant-garde English opera written by Howard Shore (composer of the score of such films as the Lord of the Rings trilogy), conducted by Placido Domingo (a worldwide famous musical figure who, according to my mother, "still has it"), and entitled "The Fly"-yes, it is based on the Jeff Goldblum-Geena Davis-David Cronenberg 1986 horror film about a scientist who becomes mixed with a fly (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091064/). Needless to say, it was pretty weird (but pretty flippin' cool). A street hustler grabbed my hand and started making a bracelet on it. When he was done he asked me for 5 Euros. We tried to visit the Eiffel Tower but the day we decided, it was rainy, cold (those two adjectives can be described for a good deal of the trip actually), incredibly windy, and after a while started lightninging. We concluded that perhaps pictures from afar would be adequate.
The first notable thing about England is that the English will often speak English and nothing else-a skill I certainly have. It instantly makes adapting to London much easier. This is where, after some stupid airport eff-ups which resulted in him sleeping on the JFK Airport floor, my brother joins me and my mother. We visit the National Gallery (more incredible art), the Tate Modern (more incredible modern art), Buckingham Palace (and HOLY CRAP WE SEE THE QUEEN. Not much, just her head for like two seconds as she drives in), Westminister Abbey, the Parliament (in which myriad antiwar protesters have taken it upon themselves to camp out in conveniently placed tents covered in antiwar propaganda), the Globe Theatre, attend a service at St. Paul's Cathedral, and see "Les Miserables" in the West End-it's pretty fantastic except the pit uses too many synthesizers, Marius is terrible in general, and Valjean, who is very Irish and quite a splendid actor, sounds really thin, lateral, and poppy when he hits the high notes (my mom and brother disagree, and say he was terrific all around). Our visit coincided quite perfectly with a burgeoning knife crime epidemic plaguing the city's youth; I believe three murders took place during our trip taking the total number to 14. A man offered me drugs in the most offhand way I've ever seen; as I was walking past him, he muttered "Marijuana?" and kept walking briskly. What if I had wanted it? I would've literally had to chase him down and stop him and yell "WAIT YES I WOULD LIKE SOME ILLEGAL MARIJUANA PLEASE." My brother thought maybe it was his first time, or he was just terribly shy, which would be pretty cute. I'm sure there's a romantic Hugh Grant vehicle in there somewhere.
The first notable thing about Wales is that there are two official languages-English (yes!) and Welsh. Here is a not too terribly exaggerated example of what a typical street sign in Wales may look like: "No parking past this sign - Xpy ghanngkro dpz yyt." Seriously, Welsh looks like flippin' Klingon. Anyway, this is where we meet up with Dianne Cragg, a family friend who visits Europe much more than us and offers to drive us around the wrong side of the road so we don't have to, and my father. My father is involved with the Langsford Men's Chorus, a Wayne State based men's ensemble that is competing in an annual Welsh worldwide music competition called the Eisteddfod-naturally, they compete in the men's ensemble category. This part of the trip is basically spent watching lots and lots of musical offerings from around the globe, including this incredible men's choir from Sardenia which stands in a circle and sings folk songs-one of which is so good that it is still perfectly fastened in my head and I could probably sing it verbatim for you-and this incredible mixed choir from the Canary Islands that sings awesome, fun, catchy, jazzy tunes. In between here somewhere we travel to Liverpool and visit the Beatles museum-pretty flippin' cool. Anyway my dad's choir competes and sounds pretty goshdarn fantastic, if you ask me. They wind up coming in second place in their category-for a worldwide competition, I think that's kind of awesome.
My brother and I fly home. In the airport in Manchester, we see the rock band Mindless Self Indulgence.
So that, in a nutshell, was my trip to Europe. If you're still curious for whatever reason, look at my Facebook soon and I'll have up a bunch of pictures or just hang out with me in real life (cause I missed all of you) and chat me up or whatever.
Love,
Dpxyffxo (that's Welsh for "Greg")