The Ravings of Demented Rabbits

Glorious Nonsense

4/20/04

Or such is the description of the play Cyrano de Bergerac by some dead guy who's name I don't quite remember. We went to go see it on Monday, and it's a pretty accurate description. It's a romantic tragedy set against sort of a schoolboy's fantasy World War I, though the original was set in the 17th century, I think. It said about as much as you can expect any romance of the period to say, which is to say not much. But it does sort of remind me of how Marechal's mind works, for what that's worth. But at least the music, which was sort of medieval, and might have actually been real medieval for all I know, was very cool. And they did a few dances, one of which involved swords and was very very cool. So it was nice and flashy, but absolutely devoid of any substance. The National Theater IS cool, though. And fortunately for us who like swords, Kill Bill 2 opens Friday. Woot.

On another note, we, for values of we == Laura, Professor Garfinkle, and I, went out to dinner in Chinatown tonight. AHA was footing the bill, which meant that I was footing the bill, but since everybody else was ALSO footing the bill, it was ok. In any case, the meal was pretty good, if a bit different than I expected. Peking duck, sure. Sweet and sour chicken of course. The ginger beef and the beef in pepper sauce were a bit out there, though. Damn good, though. Worth the doing.

On yet another note, I booked tickets for my midterm break today, which is incidentally the week after next. Set me back about 100 quid, as they say, but I get to ride trains the whole way, so it's all good. And the whole thing looks like this:

Friday: Day trip to Winchester to see the cathedral and assorted nifty stuff.
Saturday: Day trip to Norwich to see the IIRC castle, cathedral, and assorted nifty stuff.
Sunday: And on the third day, he rested, because five hours on trains is a lot.
Monday: Day trip to Canterbury to see the cathedral, etc, etc.
Tuesday: Ride up to York, and browse what's apparently a really cool medieval city with lots to see, which is why we're all so spending
Wednesday: doing the same thing. But then on
Thursday: I'll go to Carlisle, on one end of Hadrian's Wall. Which means
Friday: and
Saturday: will be spent on the Wall, seeing what all I can see. Since there's apparently a village in bus range with three forts near it, that should be a lot. And then I can finally get back to London about 10pm.
Sunday: And on the tenth day, he rested. Because after that much traveling, you'd bloody well want a rest too.

Speaking of sights, and speaking of trains, why don't I elaborate a bit on my daily London travel, since I'm here. It's sort of like this. See, first, you have to pull out your handy London tube map, and see where the hell you are, and where you're going. And if you look at all those colored lines, and you're like "What the 'ell is all this rubbish?" don't worry, it's easy. First, you have to find Eastcote, which is up in the NW corner of the map, in Zone 6. Zones, we might add, have to do with ticket pricing, which we holders of the ubercool unlimited travel within Zones 1-6 Oyster card leave to mere mortals. Anyway. You'll see a purple line that runs through Eastcote, which corresponds to the Metropolitan line. Every morning, I get to take that train to King's Cross/St. Pancras, which you'll see by following the line. Sometimes I have to ride the Picadilly, which is the blue line, and to get to Embankment and the like I have to jump the Metropolitan at Baker Street and catch the Bakerloo, and if I'm going to the British Museum I'll hop off the Metropolitan at Euston Square because it's a straight shot, but for school I get off at King's Cross. Anyway. That's the tube part of our journey.

As it happens, King's Cross is pretty noisy because they're putting in what I think is a subway (which is what you call a pedestrian walkway that goes under the street here). It also happens to be across the street, or at least the enterance we went out is, from St. Pancras rail station, which is this Arabesque monster of a building, which must be four or five city blocks long, as we measure blocks in Corvallis. Huge and nifty looking. On our side of the street is the Camden town hall, which is one of those really craptastic 60's tragedies in concrete, but which happens to be next to the short way to school. This involves turning down a little alley, then going down a street full of nice old brick apartment complexes built in like 1904. Eventually you cross a road and walk by a little church (read: the size of a decent house in the States) that looks as if Ye Olde Crusaders might have dropped by at one point. Said church is right next to a rather nice little park, which if you walk through it deposits you right next to some more nice old brick apartment buildings (most of London is nice old brick somethings, but for now it's apartment buildings), whereupon it's like a block to school. Takes about ten minutes, and is pretty pleasant when it's not really windy and cold.

Tomorrow and Thursday we go back to the British Museum, which ought to be good, and then it's off to Oxford Friday, which should be interesting. And then the weekend is going to involve me writing two papers, because I totally procrastinated them forever and ever. But since we're not REALLY here to learn, that's ok. And since my parents are reading this, I assure you that while we may go through the motions, really this entire experience is about going to pubs a lot, and then going to nifty places. We go to class, too, but only because they've threatened us with starvation in a glass box if we don't. Reading and papers? Bah, I say. Bah.

Incidentally, the picture count is up to about 400, of which maybe 250 are real pictures, as opposed to shots of info plaques so I can remember what things are and bad pictures. How the hell I'm going to display all of that when I get back, I haven't the slightest clue.

4/21/04 Addendum:

Today was one of those days that starts out sucking the good suck, then decides not to on the spur of the moment. Frex, we were supposed to meet at the British Museum this morning, which observant readers of my little tube primer will realize means getting off at Euston Square. Well, the Metropolitan line wasn't running past Baker Street this morning, which if we examine our map means I get screwed. So I got to ride the slowest Metropolitan line train in known history to Harrow-on-the-Hill, stop for ten minutes, then go jerk-stop-jerk-stop to Baker Street, which means I'm getting off the tube at Baker Street about the time I'd normally be arriving at school. This did not please. Neither did the fact that 600,000 other people decided that Baker Street was the place to be, and the Circle line train I needed to catch to Euston Square was the train to be on. As a consequence, the train I DIDN'T get on was so packed nobody could move, and the doors could barely shut. Me, I just got the wannabe sardine can train, which worked, sort of. Somehow I was the first one there anyway, so it all worked. Then we toured other bits of the British Museum I somehow hadn't found, which amazed me, including this hella cool gallery of actual Roman Roman stuff, as opposed to British Roman stuff, which means you get leet gem cameo portraits of people all over the place and such. This was good.

Less good was intercultural class, which was a makeup, and therefore was vastly teh proverbial suck, since we're in there for two hours listening to a vastly entertaining woman talk about things that are essentially pointless to our existance here. This was quite annoying.

Less annoying was the whole tennis thing afterwards, where assorted people, like the two Mikes, Alden, and Katie/Andrea attempted to challenge Dr. Garfinkle at tennis and not quite doing it, whereupon people like Margalyn, Andrea, and I played frisbee. I missed frisbee, I realized. Thus playing it made me happy, and all was good and right in the world.

Posted by Dwip at April 21, 2004 11:02 AM