The most shocking aspect of my brief trip this week to the UK were the exorbitant prices, which became blatantly clear during my first purchase in this fine country – a regular banana muffin for the exorbitant price of 3 quid aka British Pounds, which equals close to 7 freakin’ dollars!! For a muffin!! Next in line was the train ticket, which for the trip from London’s Paddington Station to Cardiff ran a solid 72 pounds (one-way of course) - $150 dollars for a 2-hour train ride. I have no idea how folks over there live, and I am surprised that not half of the population hovels on the street in cardboard boxes.
The journey overall was quite the adventure – and could have been easily the inspiration for the movie “Trains, Planes and Automobiles” – starting with the train trip to Cardiff, which started out innocently enough at Paddington, and got us as far as Didcot Parkway Station. At that point the little train thought it had enough, and stopped – after we all spent a leisurely, but not quite completely happy hour there, the cable that had snapped and taken out all the signaling between Didcot and Katmandu, was fixed, and we were on our merry way (or so we thought). Well, we made it as far as Newport, which is the last stop before Cardiff, where we again stopped for a while, and I remember at one point noticing that some of the folks who rode on the train with us earlier were standing outside, but I was jet lagged out of my mind and not in a place to really comprehend anything that was going on around me. Let me tell you I was not the only one surprised when the train all of a sudden moved back in the direction we came from – that would be London. I was not the only patron who had a gobsmacked look on their face – about 20 of us in the carriage aka railroad car had not the faintest idea what just happened. Apparently the conductors of the fine Great Western railroad company had not thought it important to inform all of the train riders that the little engine was turning around. After a stint of huffing and puffing and blowing off steam at a poor railway employee who had just gotten on and who was no big help either, we ended up back in Bristol, had to board the local jalopy to godforsaken Filton Abbey Wood (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filton_Abbey_Wood_railway_station ), henceforth known as “Friggin’ Abbey Wood” by the Group of 20, and from there had to hop onto another local rattler to Cardiff, where we only arrived three hours after the originally designated ETA.
Good thing the town of Cardiff, Wales made up for it big time. The capital of Wales is a charming place, with a lovely castle in the center of town, and conveniently located across the street from my hotel (http://www.cardiffcastle.com/ - http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=Cardiff+Castle&gbv=2 ). That is where I headed immediately for a tour, not to waste a minute of my brief and precious time there. The tour was well worth it – 2000-plus-years old, it looks like the quintessential castle from the outside, with a prison tower, the Norman keep, on a hill right next to it. Ownership passed from one Marquess of Bute to the next one and number 3 in the sequence was wise enough to hire architect William Burgess to do the interior. And what a job Burgess did – the rooms are munificent and posh in their design – to quote the castle’s Web site “rich with murals, stained glass, marble, gilding and elaborate wood carvings. Each breathtaking room has its own special theme, including Mediterranean gardens and Italian and Arabian decoration.” (http://www.visitcardiff.com/assets/Xmas%20cardiff%20castle.jpg)
The city rests alongside a beautiful bay (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Cardiff_Bay.JPG) - and the landscape around it is simply charming, rolling hills, sheep, daffodils and leeks - just as I was promised - with the occasional castle thrown in for good measure. Armani-priced muffins aside I had a wonderful time in the united of kingdoms, and even got to see a few friends. The most wonderfully charming Caroline Grace joined me Tuesday night in Cardiff, and what better thing to do to head down to the Hotel Bar where we discovered a very talented young man named Edwin who did some magic with the drinks at hand. In particular since I had wanted to sample the Welsh whiskey (Penderyn - http://www.welsh-whisky.co.uk/home.html), and it turned out to be not quite to my liking. Edwin added a few things including ginger beer and Angostura bitter, and bam! We had ourselves a nice little cocktail (or two).
I was fascinated by all things Welsh, in particular the language – every sign in town is in both English and Welsh, which I realized when I could not understand the announcements at the train station in Cardiff. The alphabet features 28 letters - a, b, c, ch, d, dd, e, f, ff, g, ng, h, i, l, ll, m, n, o, p, ph, r, rh, s, t, th, u, w, y – not all of which I was familiar with, and which make for some interesting word combinations that seem to show a stunning neglect of vowels. It gets even more crazy once you go from proper to colloquial Welsh. Coda i'n gynnar fory/wna i godi'n gynnar fory in colloquial Welsh means “I’ll have to get up early tomorrow”, but I am sure you had that figured out.
Wednesday Mother Nature provided us with a spectacular day and everyone lauded it as the official day of the summer in the region. Apparently the weather has been so dismal that even Britains’s biggest brewery Scottish and Newcastle lamented in The Times that the “stinking weather” is to be blamed for the decline in their forecast earnings. After a quick breakfast in the most charming of cafes, Caroline and I hopped the train and headed to Bath (leaving Wales, going to England) for not only a tour of her former residences in her old college town (one of which did definitely not withstand the test of time), but to see the stunning Roman and Gregorian architecture of this city which is one of the World Heritage sites. It took me only five minutes to fall completely in love with Bath. If you have never been there, GO! (http://images.google.com/images?gbv=2&svnum=10&hl=en&q=Bath+Somerset)
Most famous are the Roman Baths, which are supplied by three underground springs, and if you visit, you may for a small fee, even drink the lukewarm foul-smelling water from the well, which apparently has healing qualities. I could have used a clothespin during the degustation but my skin improved drastically within minutes, and I swear I looked decades younger. Wait until you see me, the results are staggering! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Baths_%28Bath%29 ) Adjacent to the baths is the Pump Room, which at one point in time housed the pumps I am sure, but now is a rather posh traditional British tea room, with an orchestra playing classical music, waiters hustling about quietly, serving three-tiered dishes with tea sandwiches and scones with clotted cream. (http://visitbath.co.uk/site/things-to-do/pump-room-p25611 ). The latter despite its artery-clogging capabilities was fabulous, as were some other new favorites of the English cuisine – in particular Cornish Pasties (pronounced more like nasty, not like paste) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornish_Pasty - and a new beverage of choice Pimm’s! It is Britain’s summer drink of choice, a bit like a milder version of Campari, and is mixed with either lemonade or ginger ale - and most enjoyable in an outdoor restaurant with a view of the river.
Bath is also famous for its association with Jane Austen, who lived there for a stint of 5 years at the beginning of the 19th century, but word on the street is that she did not like it particularly. The city of Bath is proud of the connection nevertheless, has a Jane Austen Center and celebrates the fact that two of her later novels (Northhanger Abby and Persuasion) take place here.
Other highlights in Bath include the gothic-style Abbey (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_Abbey) and the Royal Crescent, which is an impressive half-moon shaped sequence of 30 Gregorian-style houses, including the swanky Royal Crescent Hotel (http://www.royalcrescent.co.uk/ ). The day in Bath ended with a lovely dinner with my friends Mat and Crystal at Java, an Indonesian restaurant (http://www.javarestaurantbath.co.uk/ ), which was a charming place with delectable things to eat. The very lovely evening was capped off with a farewell beer, the local Abbey Ales Bellringer (http://www.abbeyales.co.uk/ ).
The trip home proved to be yet another adventure in UK Land – not that it is not nerve-wracking enough to have to transport life-saving bone marrow in hand for a cancer patient, but Murphy’s law dictates that things do go wrong, if given a chance. While the national train system did not disappoint this time, and got me to London Paddington in time, the rest of the journey was not as smooth as expected. Got to the airport nicely with the modern and most punctual Heathrow Express, but then it got messy. The flight I was booked on via American Airlines was going to be three hours late, so the fine folks at AA found a place for me with British Airlines, which of course is in another terminal. They promised me an earlier flight, which after being in three different lines and shuttling back between the ticket sale counter and the check-in stations seemed a possibility. After lolling around the airport for what seemed like an eternity and of course made you go do stupid stuff like buying Scottish whiskey in the duty-free shop, we took a bus (!!) to our airplane that seemed to be parked in a field halfway back to Wales. When we finally had lined up to taxi and seemed to be ready for take-off, an unruly passenger had harassed the crew of the plane enough for the pilot to announce that he would turn the bird around and bring the belligerent back to the gate where the airport police had organized a reception in his honor. Needless to say this cost us another 2 hours (because now we also had to refuel), and by the time we got into Boston, it was 9 PM and we were toast. I had asked the airplane staff if I could move up in the plane so that I could get my precious cargo faster to the lab, which they accommodated, and so at least I got to spend the last 20 minutes of my ordeal nicely nested in a first class seat.
My friends, I am now hopping in the car and heading to the Cape, where the famous Falmouth Road Race will take place on Sunday. I am signed up but because of my right foot injury I will decide tomorrow if I risk running or not (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falmouth%2C_Massachusetts ).
Enjoy your weekend, and talk to you soon!
Petra
