Last weekend, Andrew and I made an important purchase: a mobile phone (no one here says "cell phone"). Which is good, because I found out yesterday that we have to wait two weeks to get a landline. That means two weeks until internet and TV, too. It all goes back to BT (that's British Telecommunications), which is still run by the government, and is, thus, a monopoly. The British aren't really keen on customer service anyways, so when you add in the fact that there's no competition in an industry, there's barely any service at all. I spent a total of three hours on hold trying to get through to BT just to set up our new phone line. And this wasn't an American-style holding system with music and cheerful voices. This was three hours of hearing the phone ringing in that special British insistent double-ring. Ring-ring. Ring-ring. Ring-ring, fourteen times, then "We are VERY busy right now. Stay on the line." Ring-ring. Ring-ring. Ring-ring. It was maddening. Oh, and this was all in a phonebooth, too, because if I called from my mobile phone, it would be like a pound per minute. No toll-free numbers here; you have to pay to waste your time. I finally got through, only to be told that the earliest they could install our line was the 3rd of October. "WHAT?!?" I couldn't keep from exclaiming. But there's nothing for it, apparently. The friendly Irishman I was talking to said that two weeks is about average. Let's all pray nothing ever goes wrong with the phone line! So he set up the appointment for me, and then at the end of it saw that that whole day had been filled up during the time it took him to take my details. So we started all over from the beginning. Joy. But I have been told that on October 4th I will have phone service. Fingers crossed. Do not breathe. Do not pass go. Certainly do not collect 200 dollars.
Friday, September 21, 2007
Fish-and-chip-and-PIN
The week's shopping has been marked by two overwhelming emotions: the thrill of the hunt and the frustration of being an American abroad. It has been rewarding to put together a new home in, I think, record time. And, since about 95% of our new possessions came from the same place, everything looks very neat and coordinated. Finding the last few items on my list keeps me alert when I'm walking around town, which is always good. Every time I find something new, though, I have to buy it, and there's no telling what will happen.
We first heard about chip-and-PIN technology when we were traveling around the UK this summer. They have it in all their credit cards: a microchip that stores a PIN number so you have to know the right number and can't steal a credit card and forge the signature. Every credit card issued in the UK has a chip-and-PIN, and store clerks are always completely baffled that we don't have them. I've had to explain at least 50 times that we don't have that in America, and people always look at me as if I'm coming from Siberia instead of Florida. Chip-and-PIN is a fairly new technology here, but it has caught on quickly so that many stores won't take anything but chip-and-PIN. This rule is enforced differently at different stores and even by different people at the same store. At the local stationer's (like a mini-Office Depot), they pulled out a dusty credit card swiping machine with carbon paper. At a bookstore one day last week I used my credit card and just had to sign the receipt, then the very next day they sent me off to the cash machine and couldn't take my card at all. At another bookstore of the same chain, they took my card but called Wachovia to authorize it. IKEA charges 70p for a signing card; Waitrose sometimes requires photo ID; and you should see what we had to go through at the bank last week to get cash for our deposit on the flat! Thank goodness Andrew works there, or we'd be out on the streets.
But there is hope in sight. Andrew has an account through Barclays, obviously, and his Barclaycard, complete with chip-and-PIN, is in the mail. Now we just need to get me sorted out, and we'll be able to shop without a care in the world. Now, if only the chip-and-PIN came with free money...but Andrew gets paid this weekend, for the first time in four months. It's a good day!
We first heard about chip-and-PIN technology when we were traveling around the UK this summer. They have it in all their credit cards: a microchip that stores a PIN number so you have to know the right number and can't steal a credit card and forge the signature. Every credit card issued in the UK has a chip-and-PIN, and store clerks are always completely baffled that we don't have them. I've had to explain at least 50 times that we don't have that in America, and people always look at me as if I'm coming from Siberia instead of Florida. Chip-and-PIN is a fairly new technology here, but it has caught on quickly so that many stores won't take anything but chip-and-PIN. This rule is enforced differently at different stores and even by different people at the same store. At the local stationer's (like a mini-Office Depot), they pulled out a dusty credit card swiping machine with carbon paper. At a bookstore one day last week I used my credit card and just had to sign the receipt, then the very next day they sent me off to the cash machine and couldn't take my card at all. At another bookstore of the same chain, they took my card but called Wachovia to authorize it. IKEA charges 70p for a signing card; Waitrose sometimes requires photo ID; and you should see what we had to go through at the bank last week to get cash for our deposit on the flat! Thank goodness Andrew works there, or we'd be out on the streets.
But there is hope in sight. Andrew has an account through Barclays, obviously, and his Barclaycard, complete with chip-and-PIN, is in the mail. Now we just need to get me sorted out, and we'll be able to shop without a care in the world. Now, if only the chip-and-PIN came with free money...but Andrew gets paid this weekend, for the first time in four months. It's a good day!
Hunting and gathering
Oh joy of joys, we are moved in to our new flat! We got our keys last Saturday and moved all our stuff out of Tony's garage on Sunday. I've spent all week shopping, which isn't necessarily as much fun as it sounds, at least for me. On Sunday, Andrew and I took the bus down to IKEA and spent four hours looking at furniture. On Monday I went back down and bought said furniture and picked out dishes, glasses, sheets, towels, trash cans, and everything else we needed. That part was a lot of fun, but it was pretty exhausting, too. The furniture was delivered on Tuesday, and Andrew and I put everything in place over the next couple of days.
Now, IKEA specializes in flat-pack DIY furniture. The great thing about flat-pack furniture is that you put it together yourself, so it's cheap. The trouble with flat-pack furniture is that you put it together yourself, so it takes a lot of time, work, and cursing. But we got it all done, and we now have a bed, two bedside tables, a couch (that we just put the legs and cover on), a bookshelf/room divider, a clothes rack (they don't really do closets here), a side table, four chairs, and legs for a kitchen table, although we're still waiting for the top. So we're pretty much set on furniture. I still can't find lots of random bits and pieces for the flat, though. I had to go back to IKEA again yesterday for extra pillows and some things for the kitchen, and I found an ironing board, laundry basket, and mop at Woolworth's, but I still can't find a broom, for instance, and there's no Target or anything like that here. The grocery stores are small, too, so they don't carry very many non-food items. All in all, though, the flat is looking great and feeling like home. And, just so you know, we are 100% ready for guests, so buy your tickets now!
Now, IKEA specializes in flat-pack DIY furniture. The great thing about flat-pack furniture is that you put it together yourself, so it's cheap. The trouble with flat-pack furniture is that you put it together yourself, so it takes a lot of time, work, and cursing. But we got it all done, and we now have a bed, two bedside tables, a couch (that we just put the legs and cover on), a bookshelf/room divider, a clothes rack (they don't really do closets here), a side table, four chairs, and legs for a kitchen table, although we're still waiting for the top. So we're pretty much set on furniture. I still can't find lots of random bits and pieces for the flat, though. I had to go back to IKEA again yesterday for extra pillows and some things for the kitchen, and I found an ironing board, laundry basket, and mop at Woolworth's, but I still can't find a broom, for instance, and there's no Target or anything like that here. The grocery stores are small, too, so they don't carry very many non-food items. All in all, though, the flat is looking great and feeling like home. And, just so you know, we are 100% ready for guests, so buy your tickets now!
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
And there again
Deep breath. Okay, here we go.
When last I wrote, we had just arrived back in Tallahassee for ten days or so. We had a lovely time at home, lots of relaxing with family and friends, the final bits of packing, even a trip to the beach where we had the whole state park to ourselves and saw no living souls but a few fish. Then we came back here. We arrived on September 2 at Heathrow Airport and had to get to the London Docklands area. It should have taken us one and a half hours. It took four. We had the maximum allowed luggage weight again, just like last time. And just like last time we had to take four different trains to get where we were going. The new twist this time was that just as we got to one of the Tube stations, we had to evacuate for an unknown security reason. The it was buses and tubes and trains from there, until we finally arrived at the hotel, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, to discover that Barclays was going to take quite good care of us. It was a really, really nice hotel. We went out and bought Andrew a couple suits for the week and then collapsed. Andrew got up sometime in the evening for a dinner cruise along the Thames, but as I wasn't invited, I slept...for about 20 hours.
The next day, Andrew and I got up and went downstairs for breakfast to discover that every other person there was dressed to the nines, and we were just in shorts and T-shirts. I don't think anyone actually stared at us, but it felt like we'd just wandered in in our underwear. The rest of the day, I felt like I'd stepped into Lost in Translation. I put on some smarter clothes, took a long bath, read the newspapers, had a light lunch at the bar, and waited for Andrew to come back from his first day of training. That evening we went to pick up his suits from the tailor, then we went out for dinner with his new friends. At first, I was really nervous, and I didn't want to talk too much because my American accent sounded so flat compared to all the lovely English, Welsh, Scottish, and Irish accents around me. But soon I fell into easy conversation with several of them, and I had a really great time! I learned a lot that night and later nights in the week about the English school system, slang words, clothing styles, and politics. All the basics, right?
Here's a quick primer:
I went to uni, or university, not college. College is a level of secondary school, especially for students going on to do A-level exams.
You do A-levels if you're quite clever. Being smart is totally different; it has to do more with looking nice.
Use the word "mate" with friends or in casual conversation. This applies only to men, really.
Brilliant is fantastic, not clever.
Cheers, while it can mean please, thank you, hello, goodbye, or just about anything else, is really just an extra friendly way to say thanks.
I can't be bothered. This is my favorite. If I'm feeling lazy, I can't be bothered to get out of bed before noon. If a store clerk is rude, I say he can't be bothered to help me. They use this one a lot. I'm starting to get the hang of it, but I can't be bothered to explain it more thoroughly than that.
The week went brilliantly. My parents arrived on Tuesday because Daddy was teaching an IBM seminar nearby, so I got to spend lots of time with them. On Tuesday we went to the Tower of London to gawk at the crown jewels and caw at the ravens. I'm reading London by Edward Rutherfurd, and lots of it takes place right around the tower, so that was fun for me, too. On Wednesday, Mommy and I went to an Impressionism art exhibit at the Royal Academy, then had a proper afternoon tea at the Wolseley and took a lovely stroll through St. James's Park and Westminster. Thursday we spent in Enfield; more on that later. Friday we all explored Enfield a little more and had a really nice dinner at The Stag. I'm sure Andrew and I will go there again. Saturday, we all walked around London a bit, saw the new flat in Enfield, and went to the new Lord of the Rings musical in Covent Garden. All I can say is, Wow. I've only seen large-scale productions of Les Mis and Phantom, but this beat those hands-down for pure spectacle. It was also impressive that they were able to turn it into a three-hour musical. It worked. I mean, it's nothing to the movies, but it was a pretty awesome musical. The costumes and special effects were really cool. The creatures, especially the Balrog and Shelob, were really scary, and Gollum was amazing. What a night at the theatre! On Sunday, Mommy and Daddy had to leave early in the morning, and they made it back safely. So we've had our first visitors, and we're ready for more! Hopefully not until we get into our new flat and work out the transportation system a bit better, though. In the five days they were here, we went onten different tube lines, local and regional trains, buses, and taxis. It was exhausting!
But I promised to explain why Mommy and I had to go to Enfield -- and why we aren't in our flat yet. On Tuesday, I got no less than three emails and a phone call about our flat that we picked out and put a £200 deposit on three weeks ago. Apparently our reference check had failed and the landlord didn't want us anymore. To top it all off, it was my fault because I'm unemployed. Well, I'm sure you can imagine how I reacted to that. I got really mad, and then I went to work. It turned out that we hadn't failed our references; they had refused to check them because they were all American phone numbers. Apparently the £150 referencing couldn't cover about £5 in phone calls. So this company saw that we were American, refused to check our (pristine) references, employment, and housing history, and told the landlord we were unreliable renters. After several difficul conversations and hours of waiting for returned phone calls, I was told that we could still live there if we paid six months in advance (what we were expecting anyways) and started paying rent immediately. And we had to take the nasty furniture instead of getting it unfurnished like we were promised. And we had to move in a week later. That's when I lost it. I very politely told our estate agent that that was ridiculous and we weren't doing it. On Wednesday I made about 20 phone calls and set up a few appointments to look at other flats. I am SO glad Mommy was there to help me. We looked at a few flats together and found one that was even nicer that the first one, closer to the train station, with a nice landlord that we met, and totally in our price range. Sign me up, I said. And, fingers crossed, knock on wood and all that, we are scheduled to move in on Saturday. I had to confront the other estate agents about the other one and failed to get our deposit back, but they agreed that the landlord was crazy and had decided not to work with him anymore. So that's done, at least.
Now let me tell you about the new flat. It's a studio flat on the second floor (we would say third floor, but they count the ground floor as zero), above a news agent's shop. There are two big windows in the front room (we're calling it the bliving room) and one in the kitchen. It's all brand-new, freshly painted, with hardwood floors and crown moulding throughout (note the "u" in moulding. I'm learning...) and really nice fixtures. The kitchen is huge and has room for a narrow table along one wall. The bathroom is really nice and has a bathtub, not just a shower. The bliving room is very light and spacious. It's approximately 13 by 13 feet square, and we're not sure exactly how to divide it up, but we'll work on that soon enough. It's unfurnished, just like we wanted. We're going on a shopping spree at Ikea as soon as we move in :-) New furniture, towels, sheets, dishes, silverware, everything. Hooray!
Which brings me to this week. We had a hard time finding a place to stay in Enfield, so we're up in Stevenage, just north of town on the same train line as Enfield. Stevenage doesn't have much to offer other than a cheap hotel, but there are a Tesco (kind of like Wal Mart but less friendly), a shopping mall, and a movie theater across the street that make us feel right at home (ugh). Our restaurant choices are two "American style" restaurants, Pizza Hut, KFC, McDonald's, and Outback. I'm not even kidding. Andrew has been going in to work every day, and I've been sitting around reading, looking at job listings, etc. I'm basically just willing the time to pass until Saturday. Andrew, however, has been thoroughly enjoying himself. He loves his new job! He gets to be very important, and people listen to his ideas and want to help him succeed. I'm so proud of my husband. Now I just need to get me a job and we'll be all set. So Saturday is the big day. Next week we'll get phone/internet/TV and I'll send out contact info to everyone. We miss you all and can't wait to show off our new flat to visitors! I'll write next week to let you all know how the moving and furnishing goes. Until then, cheers!
When last I wrote, we had just arrived back in Tallahassee for ten days or so. We had a lovely time at home, lots of relaxing with family and friends, the final bits of packing, even a trip to the beach where we had the whole state park to ourselves and saw no living souls but a few fish. Then we came back here. We arrived on September 2 at Heathrow Airport and had to get to the London Docklands area. It should have taken us one and a half hours. It took four. We had the maximum allowed luggage weight again, just like last time. And just like last time we had to take four different trains to get where we were going. The new twist this time was that just as we got to one of the Tube stations, we had to evacuate for an unknown security reason. The it was buses and tubes and trains from there, until we finally arrived at the hotel, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, to discover that Barclays was going to take quite good care of us. It was a really, really nice hotel. We went out and bought Andrew a couple suits for the week and then collapsed. Andrew got up sometime in the evening for a dinner cruise along the Thames, but as I wasn't invited, I slept...for about 20 hours.
The next day, Andrew and I got up and went downstairs for breakfast to discover that every other person there was dressed to the nines, and we were just in shorts and T-shirts. I don't think anyone actually stared at us, but it felt like we'd just wandered in in our underwear. The rest of the day, I felt like I'd stepped into Lost in Translation. I put on some smarter clothes, took a long bath, read the newspapers, had a light lunch at the bar, and waited for Andrew to come back from his first day of training. That evening we went to pick up his suits from the tailor, then we went out for dinner with his new friends. At first, I was really nervous, and I didn't want to talk too much because my American accent sounded so flat compared to all the lovely English, Welsh, Scottish, and Irish accents around me. But soon I fell into easy conversation with several of them, and I had a really great time! I learned a lot that night and later nights in the week about the English school system, slang words, clothing styles, and politics. All the basics, right?
Here's a quick primer:
I went to uni, or university, not college. College is a level of secondary school, especially for students going on to do A-level exams.
You do A-levels if you're quite clever. Being smart is totally different; it has to do more with looking nice.
Use the word "mate" with friends or in casual conversation. This applies only to men, really.
Brilliant is fantastic, not clever.
Cheers, while it can mean please, thank you, hello, goodbye, or just about anything else, is really just an extra friendly way to say thanks.
I can't be bothered. This is my favorite. If I'm feeling lazy, I can't be bothered to get out of bed before noon. If a store clerk is rude, I say he can't be bothered to help me. They use this one a lot. I'm starting to get the hang of it, but I can't be bothered to explain it more thoroughly than that.
The week went brilliantly. My parents arrived on Tuesday because Daddy was teaching an IBM seminar nearby, so I got to spend lots of time with them. On Tuesday we went to the Tower of London to gawk at the crown jewels and caw at the ravens. I'm reading London by Edward Rutherfurd, and lots of it takes place right around the tower, so that was fun for me, too. On Wednesday, Mommy and I went to an Impressionism art exhibit at the Royal Academy, then had a proper afternoon tea at the Wolseley and took a lovely stroll through St. James's Park and Westminster. Thursday we spent in Enfield; more on that later. Friday we all explored Enfield a little more and had a really nice dinner at The Stag. I'm sure Andrew and I will go there again. Saturday, we all walked around London a bit, saw the new flat in Enfield, and went to the new Lord of the Rings musical in Covent Garden. All I can say is, Wow. I've only seen large-scale productions of Les Mis and Phantom, but this beat those hands-down for pure spectacle. It was also impressive that they were able to turn it into a three-hour musical. It worked. I mean, it's nothing to the movies, but it was a pretty awesome musical. The costumes and special effects were really cool. The creatures, especially the Balrog and Shelob, were really scary, and Gollum was amazing. What a night at the theatre! On Sunday, Mommy and Daddy had to leave early in the morning, and they made it back safely. So we've had our first visitors, and we're ready for more! Hopefully not until we get into our new flat and work out the transportation system a bit better, though. In the five days they were here, we went onten different tube lines, local and regional trains, buses, and taxis. It was exhausting!
But I promised to explain why Mommy and I had to go to Enfield -- and why we aren't in our flat yet. On Tuesday, I got no less than three emails and a phone call about our flat that we picked out and put a £200 deposit on three weeks ago. Apparently our reference check had failed and the landlord didn't want us anymore. To top it all off, it was my fault because I'm unemployed. Well, I'm sure you can imagine how I reacted to that. I got really mad, and then I went to work. It turned out that we hadn't failed our references; they had refused to check them because they were all American phone numbers. Apparently the £150 referencing couldn't cover about £5 in phone calls. So this company saw that we were American, refused to check our (pristine) references, employment, and housing history, and told the landlord we were unreliable renters. After several difficul conversations and hours of waiting for returned phone calls, I was told that we could still live there if we paid six months in advance (what we were expecting anyways) and started paying rent immediately. And we had to take the nasty furniture instead of getting it unfurnished like we were promised. And we had to move in a week later. That's when I lost it. I very politely told our estate agent that that was ridiculous and we weren't doing it. On Wednesday I made about 20 phone calls and set up a few appointments to look at other flats. I am SO glad Mommy was there to help me. We looked at a few flats together and found one that was even nicer that the first one, closer to the train station, with a nice landlord that we met, and totally in our price range. Sign me up, I said. And, fingers crossed, knock on wood and all that, we are scheduled to move in on Saturday. I had to confront the other estate agents about the other one and failed to get our deposit back, but they agreed that the landlord was crazy and had decided not to work with him anymore. So that's done, at least.
Now let me tell you about the new flat. It's a studio flat on the second floor (we would say third floor, but they count the ground floor as zero), above a news agent's shop. There are two big windows in the front room (we're calling it the bliving room) and one in the kitchen. It's all brand-new, freshly painted, with hardwood floors and crown moulding throughout (note the "u" in moulding. I'm learning...) and really nice fixtures. The kitchen is huge and has room for a narrow table along one wall. The bathroom is really nice and has a bathtub, not just a shower. The bliving room is very light and spacious. It's approximately 13 by 13 feet square, and we're not sure exactly how to divide it up, but we'll work on that soon enough. It's unfurnished, just like we wanted. We're going on a shopping spree at Ikea as soon as we move in :-) New furniture, towels, sheets, dishes, silverware, everything. Hooray!
Which brings me to this week. We had a hard time finding a place to stay in Enfield, so we're up in Stevenage, just north of town on the same train line as Enfield. Stevenage doesn't have much to offer other than a cheap hotel, but there are a Tesco (kind of like Wal Mart but less friendly), a shopping mall, and a movie theater across the street that make us feel right at home (ugh). Our restaurant choices are two "American style" restaurants, Pizza Hut, KFC, McDonald's, and Outback. I'm not even kidding. Andrew has been going in to work every day, and I've been sitting around reading, looking at job listings, etc. I'm basically just willing the time to pass until Saturday. Andrew, however, has been thoroughly enjoying himself. He loves his new job! He gets to be very important, and people listen to his ideas and want to help him succeed. I'm so proud of my husband. Now I just need to get me a job and we'll be all set. So Saturday is the big day. Next week we'll get phone/internet/TV and I'll send out contact info to everyone. We miss you all and can't wait to show off our new flat to visitors! I'll write next week to let you all know how the moving and furnishing goes. Until then, cheers!
Saturday, August 25, 2007
And back again
Boy, all this transatlantic flying is getting to be exhausting. We had a pretty good time in Dover. The castle and Secret Wartime Tunnels were fascinating, especially the tunnels. The castle was quite impressive. Most castles I've seen were either ruined fortresses or preserved homes, but this one was a real fortification, still used up through WWII -- incidentally, I'm not sure they use that phrase like we do. At one point it was referred to as "the 1939-45 war." We enjoyed exploring the castle and going up and down the winding staircases. There were fabulous views across the countryside, and we could see France off in the distance across the channel, even in the bad weather. From a lookout point right on the edge of the land, we could see the famous white cliffs, and they were lovely, although we had to imagine how they would look without the sprawling modern ferry terminal at their base. We didn't get to walk down to the beach, so I couldn't tell you if Matthew Arnold's poem Dover Beach had it quite right. The town of Dover wasn't particularly nice, and we had no reason to linger and walk in the rain. We found some decent fish and chips for lunch, but they were still nothing to the ones we had in Robin Hood's Bay. How frustrating that my first fish and chips would turn out to be an impossible ideal to meet thereafter!
But back to the cliffs, where during the 1939-45 war, tunnels were carved into the soft chalk. Dover, poised on the very edge of England, was a major front in the war from the beginning. Just a few months in, the Maginot Line had failed, Belgium and France had fallen, and the British troops were trapped in a tiny area of land, cut off from both sides by German troops and constantly battered by Luftwaffe planes. A retreat was called, and everyone made for Dunkirk, just across the channel from Dover. From the planning and communications rooms in the secret cliffside tunnels, a rescue mission was launched. Boats from the area, everything from huge navy vessels to tiny fishing dinghies, were called into service and launched across the channel to pick up the exhausted troops. By the end, 350,000 men had been evacuated safely. Astounding. Almost as astounding to us, though, was that we had never even heard of it! Most Americans forget that the war even started before we got there, and we certainly never learned about it in school. I can't wait to learn some of the other exciting bits of history I've missed out on. Anyways, now these tunnels, with their original medical and communications equipment, including rows and rows of telephone switchboards and those clear, vertical boards you always see in movies used to track the movement of ships, and enormous maps with troop placements, are now open to the public. They even try to recreate the experience with sound effects and momentary blackouts. A little cheesy, but it does add something, I suppose.
Our other excursion in the Dover area was to Canterbury, which is a very nice little market town. Actually, a pretty big market town. It was filled with shoppers, and we enjoyed looking at all the shops and finding Mommy a big, woolly, sheep-shaped tea cozy. We saw the cathedral only through the small opening in the wall where you pay admission. At 13 bucks a head, we decided to pass, which was frustrating, as that was what we had come for. But we did see a ruined monastery elsewhere in town that was one of the earliest Christian sites in Britain and was torn down by good old Henry VIII. The major historical organizations, English Heritage and the National Trust (both of which we are members now), really ought to send him a thank you note for providing them with so many evocative ruins.
We camped near Dover, and what with the bloody English weather (terrifying thunderstorm one night, gale force winds the next), we spent a lot of time in the local pub. It was a nice mini-break, though, our first of many, to be sure. And then we began the long journey home. We stayed at a hotel near Heathrow the last night and watched the England-Germany football match with a big crowd. (England lost, of course, and it was all blamed on the goalkeeper, Paul Robinson, who is also keeper for our local Premier League team, Tottenham Hotspurs). The next morning we caught a flight to JFK, took a taxi to LaGuardia, sat there for seven hours, and finally flew to Orlando, where Nicholas and Katie waited for us with smiles, hugs, friendly dogs, a delicious, home-cooked meal, and a comfy bed. Yesterday, we drove up to Tallahassee, where we'll be for the next week. Andrew's work permit has come through and we've sent in our paperwork for our entry clearance. Now we just need to finish packing the last few things, enjoy our families, and get ready for the final move. Another deep breath is in order. Wish us luck. Cheers!
But back to the cliffs, where during the 1939-45 war, tunnels were carved into the soft chalk. Dover, poised on the very edge of England, was a major front in the war from the beginning. Just a few months in, the Maginot Line had failed, Belgium and France had fallen, and the British troops were trapped in a tiny area of land, cut off from both sides by German troops and constantly battered by Luftwaffe planes. A retreat was called, and everyone made for Dunkirk, just across the channel from Dover. From the planning and communications rooms in the secret cliffside tunnels, a rescue mission was launched. Boats from the area, everything from huge navy vessels to tiny fishing dinghies, were called into service and launched across the channel to pick up the exhausted troops. By the end, 350,000 men had been evacuated safely. Astounding. Almost as astounding to us, though, was that we had never even heard of it! Most Americans forget that the war even started before we got there, and we certainly never learned about it in school. I can't wait to learn some of the other exciting bits of history I've missed out on. Anyways, now these tunnels, with their original medical and communications equipment, including rows and rows of telephone switchboards and those clear, vertical boards you always see in movies used to track the movement of ships, and enormous maps with troop placements, are now open to the public. They even try to recreate the experience with sound effects and momentary blackouts. A little cheesy, but it does add something, I suppose.
Our other excursion in the Dover area was to Canterbury, which is a very nice little market town. Actually, a pretty big market town. It was filled with shoppers, and we enjoyed looking at all the shops and finding Mommy a big, woolly, sheep-shaped tea cozy. We saw the cathedral only through the small opening in the wall where you pay admission. At 13 bucks a head, we decided to pass, which was frustrating, as that was what we had come for. But we did see a ruined monastery elsewhere in town that was one of the earliest Christian sites in Britain and was torn down by good old Henry VIII. The major historical organizations, English Heritage and the National Trust (both of which we are members now), really ought to send him a thank you note for providing them with so many evocative ruins.
We camped near Dover, and what with the bloody English weather (terrifying thunderstorm one night, gale force winds the next), we spent a lot of time in the local pub. It was a nice mini-break, though, our first of many, to be sure. And then we began the long journey home. We stayed at a hotel near Heathrow the last night and watched the England-Germany football match with a big crowd. (England lost, of course, and it was all blamed on the goalkeeper, Paul Robinson, who is also keeper for our local Premier League team, Tottenham Hotspurs). The next morning we caught a flight to JFK, took a taxi to LaGuardia, sat there for seven hours, and finally flew to Orlando, where Nicholas and Katie waited for us with smiles, hugs, friendly dogs, a delicious, home-cooked meal, and a comfy bed. Yesterday, we drove up to Tallahassee, where we'll be for the next week. Andrew's work permit has come through and we've sent in our paperwork for our entry clearance. Now we just need to finish packing the last few things, enjoy our families, and get ready for the final move. Another deep breath is in order. Wish us luck. Cheers!
Monday, August 20, 2007
There again
Hey everybody. It's been an eventful week or so since I last posted. We're in England again, and we've found a cute flat in Enfield. Right now, we're in Dover, camping and seeing the sights. It's been quite a trip, though.
We arrived in London on Thursday morning. The flight over was okay, but it wasn't the same service as our first flight over, and since it was an overnighter, I couldn't sleep and was exhausted when we arrived. We gathered all our luggage (we maxed out the luggage allowance so we could start moving our stuff over in batches) and staggered to the train, then hauled everything on trains and tubes and buses to a storage unit in Enfield. Hellish, but done. Except, when we got there, we found out that, due to antiterrorism laws, you can't rent a storage unit without a valid UK address and utility bills to prove residence. We needed to store our stuff so we could find a place to live, but we couldn't store it until we had a place to live. Fantastic. So we had to haul all our stuff back to town on another bus (keep in mind the no-sleep factor here and the approximately 250 pounds of luggage we were dealing with). We got back into Enfield town (apparently "town" means London; "Enfield town" means downtown Enfield) at a complete loss and sat in the train station trying to figure out what to do. Camping was right out, with all that luggage, but hotels were too expensive, and we needed to find some storage option so we wouldn't have to drag everything around for 8 days and back on the plane. Andrew scurried around looking for a hotel while I watched our stuff, and I met a very nice gentleman who offered to help and gave me a Christian pamphlet. I smiled and thanked him, but I felt a bit weird about it. He went on his way and Andrew came back with no luck. We couldn't even think, we were so tired and sore from carrying the luggage, so we broke down and booked a room at the only nearby hotel for £65 a night. Yikes. Oh, and it was raining, of course, and I slipped and hurt my wrist. Fabulous. But we got to the hotel, dragged our luggage upstairs, and collapsed on the bed and fell asleep immediately. A few hours later, things were looking much better and we went to the library to check email. I was sitting in a chair at a second computer while Andrew was checking his email, and a gentleman walked up and asked if he could have the chair to use the other computer. He saw that we were Americans and introduced himself as Tony. He was very friendly and full af local information and advice, and he gave us his contact information. We were pleased at the friendliness of our new neighbors and went to find some dinner before crashing for the night.
The next day, we went back to the library and got a newspaper and did some research on flats in the area. Andrew had discovered the previous day that it might be very difficult to get a flat without previous rental and banking history in the UK. This did, in fact, turn out to be the case. We'll probably have to pay for 6 months in advance, which, coupled with the crappy exchange rate and the fact that we haven't yet started earning pounds, is a very expensive prospect. But I guess we should have expected it to be difficult, moving to another country. At any rate, we found that flats were not only expensive but also rare. We went from office to office asking for the same sort of flats, only to find that they had all been rented out the day before. We started to get nervous about it but forged on. Finally we got to an office that had a flat to show us, and it was great, available, and not too expensive. We almost took it on the spot but held off to try one more office. They had another one to show us that was awful and more expensive, so we rushed back to the other one to see if it was still available, and, thank goodness, it still was, so we snatched it up and we now have a place to live in Enfield! Hooray! We celebrated with a nice Indian meal and a bottle of wine. Ahhh...
The next day, we were filled with out flat-finding success, but we still had all the luggage to deal with. We couldn't move in to the flat until September 8. We asked at Barclays if we could store it there, but no luck. The flat-rental office also couldn't take it. We couldn't get our friend Courtney on the phone. So I called Tony from the library to ask for advice. He turned out to be our Enfield hero. He let us store our stuff in his garage in a very nice neighborhood not too far from our flat, he made us tea, he drove us to a nearby campsite (the hotel was too expensive for another night), and he even joined us for dinner and a movie later on. And what a fascinating guy. He's lived and traveled all over the world and had great stories and strong opinions. Obviously, he's extraordinarily friendly, too. So we got rid of our stuff and made a good friend already. Success. Yesterday we took the train down from London and camped near Dover. Now we're off to see the castle and the cliffs, and tomorrow we'll head up to Canterbury to see the cathedral. It's good to be traveling again, and it's good to know that this is our home turf now. We're really excited, and I'll post a thorough description of the new flat and its special challenges later on. Cheers!
We arrived in London on Thursday morning. The flight over was okay, but it wasn't the same service as our first flight over, and since it was an overnighter, I couldn't sleep and was exhausted when we arrived. We gathered all our luggage (we maxed out the luggage allowance so we could start moving our stuff over in batches) and staggered to the train, then hauled everything on trains and tubes and buses to a storage unit in Enfield. Hellish, but done. Except, when we got there, we found out that, due to antiterrorism laws, you can't rent a storage unit without a valid UK address and utility bills to prove residence. We needed to store our stuff so we could find a place to live, but we couldn't store it until we had a place to live. Fantastic. So we had to haul all our stuff back to town on another bus (keep in mind the no-sleep factor here and the approximately 250 pounds of luggage we were dealing with). We got back into Enfield town (apparently "town" means London; "Enfield town" means downtown Enfield) at a complete loss and sat in the train station trying to figure out what to do. Camping was right out, with all that luggage, but hotels were too expensive, and we needed to find some storage option so we wouldn't have to drag everything around for 8 days and back on the plane. Andrew scurried around looking for a hotel while I watched our stuff, and I met a very nice gentleman who offered to help and gave me a Christian pamphlet. I smiled and thanked him, but I felt a bit weird about it. He went on his way and Andrew came back with no luck. We couldn't even think, we were so tired and sore from carrying the luggage, so we broke down and booked a room at the only nearby hotel for £65 a night. Yikes. Oh, and it was raining, of course, and I slipped and hurt my wrist. Fabulous. But we got to the hotel, dragged our luggage upstairs, and collapsed on the bed and fell asleep immediately. A few hours later, things were looking much better and we went to the library to check email. I was sitting in a chair at a second computer while Andrew was checking his email, and a gentleman walked up and asked if he could have the chair to use the other computer. He saw that we were Americans and introduced himself as Tony. He was very friendly and full af local information and advice, and he gave us his contact information. We were pleased at the friendliness of our new neighbors and went to find some dinner before crashing for the night.
The next day, we went back to the library and got a newspaper and did some research on flats in the area. Andrew had discovered the previous day that it might be very difficult to get a flat without previous rental and banking history in the UK. This did, in fact, turn out to be the case. We'll probably have to pay for 6 months in advance, which, coupled with the crappy exchange rate and the fact that we haven't yet started earning pounds, is a very expensive prospect. But I guess we should have expected it to be difficult, moving to another country. At any rate, we found that flats were not only expensive but also rare. We went from office to office asking for the same sort of flats, only to find that they had all been rented out the day before. We started to get nervous about it but forged on. Finally we got to an office that had a flat to show us, and it was great, available, and not too expensive. We almost took it on the spot but held off to try one more office. They had another one to show us that was awful and more expensive, so we rushed back to the other one to see if it was still available, and, thank goodness, it still was, so we snatched it up and we now have a place to live in Enfield! Hooray! We celebrated with a nice Indian meal and a bottle of wine. Ahhh...
The next day, we were filled with out flat-finding success, but we still had all the luggage to deal with. We couldn't move in to the flat until September 8. We asked at Barclays if we could store it there, but no luck. The flat-rental office also couldn't take it. We couldn't get our friend Courtney on the phone. So I called Tony from the library to ask for advice. He turned out to be our Enfield hero. He let us store our stuff in his garage in a very nice neighborhood not too far from our flat, he made us tea, he drove us to a nearby campsite (the hotel was too expensive for another night), and he even joined us for dinner and a movie later on. And what a fascinating guy. He's lived and traveled all over the world and had great stories and strong opinions. Obviously, he's extraordinarily friendly, too. So we got rid of our stuff and made a good friend already. Success. Yesterday we took the train down from London and camped near Dover. Now we're off to see the castle and the cliffs, and tomorrow we'll head up to Canterbury to see the cathedral. It's good to be traveling again, and it's good to know that this is our home turf now. We're really excited, and I'll post a thorough description of the new flat and its special challenges later on. Cheers!
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Back in the homeland
We're back in Tallahassee for a few days now, finally. Once we got back to the States, we went to New Jersey and saw Uncle Fred and rested up for a day, then we drove up to New Haven to pick up Elise and drove to Boston for a night of fun with old friends and new. Robert, Todd, Lauren, and Michelle showed us a good time. Then it was back to New Haven, back to New Jersey, and down to DC for more catching up with Adam, Michelle, Zack, and David. Then we drove to Blacksburg to pick up all our stuff from the storage unit (thank you, Daddy) and say goodbye to our friends there. Brian and Cami threw a wonderful party for us, and we got to spend some quality time with Amy, Alex, Gil, Luke and Amy, Nicole, Adam and Krista, Savanna, and Elizabeth and Tim. I can't imagine a nicer way to say goodbye to Blacksburg. From there it was an easy drive to Tallahassee, and we've been spending time with family and friends and organizing our lives before the big move. More later on that progress.
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