Sunday, A Moldy Day

Sunday, A Mouldy Day

Sunday. The day to leave the beautiful city that is Brighton. And since getting to Brighton was such a big mess why should leaving be any different?

Check out time was at ten, but our train tickets weren’t due to leave till 2:47.  So we woke up at 9:30 packed up and made it down to the front desk by about ten till ten. Now because this hostel previously won the award for least efficiently run they felt like they had to live up to their previously established reputation. So we go down there and no one is working, because as I mentioned before, nobody actually worked at the hostel! There was a line forming of about ten people before someone finally showed up, all of us crammed in this tiny little room for ten minutes. Finally someone showed up and just asked up for our names and said thank you and goodbye.

Okay, slight rant time. If they are going to make such a big deal out of checking out before ten, with fines and everything, warning you like eight times, be out before ten! Someone should be there to check you out before ten! The office doesn’t even open till ten! I really wasn’t so please with my first hostel experience.

            The day before we wandered into a teashop called The Mock Turtle but when we tried to sit down the entire shop was full, mind you it really isn’t very big. So to kill time we had all decided that we would go there to get breakfast to kill some time before our train and also to introduce Jamie to a traditional English tea with crumpets.

            It was such a cute little place; we got there at about 10:40 and didn’t end up leaving till about half past twelve. The food was fantastic and all of us practically inhaled those scones and tea. Always accompanied by good conversation we were happy and stuffed by the time we left.

            We headed straight for the train station to see if we could hop on an earlier train, maybe get back a couple of hours before we intended. So we walked though to the platforms and lucky enough for us we were able to hop right on a train. Yeah, that didn’t end up being the best idea. The train was completely packed, no seats anywhere. We ended up standing in the area were you can get off and on with a bunch of other people. Now the people who we were standing with were characters to say the least. There were four of them, three girls and one guy, all British, all loud and all drinking beer at one on a Sunday like it was water. Laughing and making rude comments they were all paying no mind to all of the other people on the train. Also, to put the cherry on the cake of their incredibly rude behaviour the guy was sitting there openly flipping through a men’s porn magazine. At one point a man who worked for the train came through pushing a trolley filled with food and water and one of the girls got up and tried to steal a chocolate bar! So when the Russian sounding man tried call her out there was this little mini scene that ended in an obscene gesture on the Russian mans part and a lot of loud arguing and insensitive name calling from the British girl. The fun part about the whole thing was because there was nowhere to stand I was literally right in between their arguing. All in all, very uncomfortable for me and everyone on the train who was listening.

            We got off the train in London and again had to take the tube to another station. Only this time it wasn’t so easy because, just our luck too, half of the lines were closed for maintenance or some other reason, point is half of them were closed and we ended up having to go a little ways in the wrong direction to be able to transfer to a train going the right direction. It was a big stressful mess accompanied by a bag that was only getting heavier the longer I held it. I was also getting this major headache that was only getting worse as the day went on and it wasn’t until I felt like I was going to puke that I realized that I was probably dehydrated seeing as the only thing I had to drink that day was an enormous amount of tea. Cassie force-feed me water and Advil and with in the hour I felt ten times better.

            We found ourselves on another train, a little confused if it was actually going to Oxford but just crossing our fingers that it would. Luckily it did end up in Oxford a good hour and a half before we were supposed to arrive. We got on the U1 and the second that we got back to the flat I walked in my room and saw that the mould had spread all up the walls making the room unbreathable. Fantastic isn’t it. I ended up having to move sixty per cent of my stuff it Mel’s room and the kitchen as well as dragging my mattress onto the floor of Mel’s room. Stressed to the max and on the verge of freaking out I hopped in the shower for a good half hour and then stuffed my face with food and then immediately went to my make shit bed and just didn’t do anything for the rest of the night. 

Friday, October 12th, 2012 Day 1 in Brighton – Traveling

Since Cassie’s friend, Jamie, is visiting from Boston we decided to not only show her around the wonderful city that is Oxford, but also to go adventuring to some place in Europe during her stay. The original plan was to go to Dublin where we would have had a free place to stay curtsey of a friend of Jamie’s who was studying abroad there. However, when we started to look into prices, mindlessly searching the internet for cheap flights and came up with nothing under 221 pounds we begrudgingly had to throw in the towel for the trip to Dublin. So on to the next plan which was concocted when Cassie mentioned, “Hey, what about Edinburgh?” that sounded great, until we came across the same dilemma as Dublin. Our confidence shattered and the idea of just staying the weekend in Oxford with maybe a day trip into London started to be planned I had the idea to flip through my book of England and just see if any thing stood out. While mindlessly turning the pages, not really expecting to find anything, I stopped on this photo of a pier. I walked to book into Cassie’s room and said, “How about we go here?” “Where is it?” I looked for a caption with the name Brighton. Cassie continued to look at the photo for a few minutes then said, “Yeah, sure.” So we booked the tickets and the hostel and just waited for Friday to come.

Friday morning was a bit hectic. Our train was due to leave at 9:31 and we all agreed on leaving the flat at 8:20 to make sure we made it to the train station in time to print out our tickets and allow a little extra time if something went wrong. Well, everything seemed to go wrong. We didn’t end up leaving the flat till 8:30 and when we got to the bus stop the U1 was still ten minutes out and when those ten minutes passed and the bus still hadn’t arrived I began to fell slightly anxious.

We ended up getting to the station at 9:15 and when we tried to print out our tickets it told us we needed the conformation number. Lacking that important detail we didn’t quite know what to do so we went up to the ticket counter and luckily the man was able to print out our tickets after we showed him the credit card and a picture ID to go with it. It was starting to seem like the rocky start to our morning was going to disappear. I probably should have knocked on wood.

No train from Oxford goes straight to Brighton so we had to get off and London Paddington and transfer to London Bridge. So we got off the train, lugging our stuff around which on a whole wasn’t that heavy but carrying it around awkwardly through a sea of people suddenly made the bags feel like they were packed with bricks other than the bare necessities. 

Reading on the ticket that to get to London Bridge we would have to take the tube. So we went up to one of the men who worked at the station and asked for directions on how to get there. So I misunderstood the guy, but in my defense my logic was pretty sound, you know, for a misunderstanding. He gave us this map with a bunch of color coated lines on it and said you take the brown one to the gray one and the gray one to the station. Now, if I had grown up in New York or DC or somewhere with a metro I probably would’ve recognized this map to be a metro map but no. I thought the map corresponded to the train station so I was literally running around the station look for a brown line to follow and getting more and more frustrated when all I could find was a pink and green line on the floor. Finally Jamie and Cassie, who did grow up around metros, looked at the map, saw it to be a subway map, made fun of me for being flustered and we went and found the Tube.

Since we lost a considerable amount of time with me wandering around and then having slight hiccups buying our tickets for the Tube we ended up missing out train. By a hair too! We were running and right as we got to the car doors they closed. Me about to just have a complete meltdown, mentally trying to figure out how we were going to go about getting our tickets changed and such Cassie and Jamie just shrugged and said, “Well there is another one in 20 minutes we will just get on that one.”

We got to Brighton, asked the travel assistance guide how to get to our Hostel in Hove and then proceeded to get on the bus. When we got off the bus we realized that we had rode it about six stops past where we were supposed to get off. So we got back on the bus and rode it back. Luckily the stop was pretty close to our hostel, so getting to the hostel wasn’t a problem. So, we had a brief break in the disappear of our trip.

When we got to the hostel and walked over to the front desk where is blonde young looking, Swedish girl was sitting. With a smile and since the booking was in my name and on my card I walked up and asked if we could check in. Looking flustered the girl said, ”I am sorry, I am just trying out, I don’t even work here.” Cassie, Jamie and I all looked at each other and then Jamie said, “Well who does work here?” because there was no one else in sight. The Swedish girl responded by saying that the woman in charge had gone off somewhere about a half hour ago and she had no idea where she went or when she was coming back. Getting more and more annoyed but feeling bad for this poor girl who was just left here we stood around waiting for the woman in charge to come back so we could check in. Really all we wanted to do was put our stuff down, take a quick nap and refresh slightly from our unreasonably hectic day. But no, the universe wasn’t going to let us off that easily.

Finally, after a half hour of waiting in this tiny cramped room the woman in charge came back only to tell us that check in wasn’t till three. We all just kind of look at her, all holding back our words of anger that we had been waiting in this room for half an hour, half an hour that we could have gone to a coffee shop and sat and waited were as now, since three was only 20 minutes away there wasn’t really anywhere that we could go because the second that we would get there we would have to turn around. I think the woman read the disgruntled customers on our faces and offered to let us pay now, get the codes to the room and the building, and leave our stuff in the office and just to come back at three. Slightly appeased we ended up doing just that.

Since we were so close to the ocean we decided to just go walk onto the beach and see the water. It was absolutely beautiful and the crashing of the waves and just the serene atmosphere of the ocean did wonders for all of our stress levels which had just been climbing and climbing all day. At three we turned around and walked back to the hostel. When we got in our room, which was comprised of two bunk beds we all just climbed up and feel asleep for a good two hours.

Waking up we all felt refreshed, happy, and slightly hungry. Now Hove reminded me of Headington slightly, not as nice as the Oxford City Centre but still nice on a whole, more independently own shops and restaurants. Having no plan as to what was actually in Hove we walked up the main street until we came upon this Italian restaurant called Otello. Each of us shrugging our shoulders we walked in and sat down. The food was good, not the best Italian I have ever had, but it was more just nice to have someone prepare a nice hot meal for me after a long day of late busses and missing trains.

After we ate we decided it would be fun to go into the main part of Brighton and explore what the city nightlife down there had to offer. We ended up just form pub to pub more so to just explore the interior than to get anything to drink. One of the pubs we went into Jamie and I really had to use the bathroom, but I think it was meant to be progressive or something because all of the bathrooms were meant to be both male and female users and being more on the modest side neither me or Jamie had any desire to watch a bunch of guys peeing at a urinal. Finally, we found a bathroom tucked away so not a lot of people would notice it. When we walked in there were two girls in there, clearly very drunk, waiting to use the bathroom. After waiting there for a good five minutes Jamie finally said, “Are you sure there is someone in there?” There wasn’t. The two girls started having a laughing fit, used the restroom, struggled with turning on the sink and went back out to drink more leaving Jamie and I with a funny story to tell at parties.

Once we had our fill of the city we went back to the hostel, roughly planned what we would do the next day and fell asleep almost immediately. 

A Delayed Wednesday

            When I woke up this morning, the light peaking through my window making it just barely too bright to sleep anymore, I noticed one of my three greyish-blue covered pillows had been pushed halfway down between the head of my bed and the wall. This isn’t uncommon for me, every morning I wake up and half of what had been on my bed when I went to sleep the night before will have been violently kicked off in my sleep.

As I was putting my bed back together, reaching for my pillow that had fallen down the front of my bed against the wall my jaw dropped when I saw what the pillow had been ever so carefully concealing.  What should usually be this yellow, off white colored wall was replaced by black mold, slowly crawling up the side of my wall.

My level of disgust at seeing a long stretch of mold was actually enhanced, if you can honestly believe it, when I reached under my bed to pull out my socks that I had kicked off during the night only to find them covered in mold spores. Horrified that my warmest pair of socks, which I have affectionately named my Mountain Man socks, could possibly be ruined I completely ignored my extremely scheduled morning plan and the fact that I had a lecture in two and a half hours was completely forgotten.

I rushed to the bathroom, filled the basin with the boiling hot water that comes out the second you turn on the tap, threw in some detergent and vigorously began hand washing my favorite pair of socks over and over again, constantly refilling the basin. After they reached what I deemed clean I had another problem. How was I going to dry them? I knew that if I just left them sitting in my room the same thing would happen, the moisture would cause the mold to just come right back.

            Standing in my room, holding to pairs of soaking wet socks in my hand an idea occurred to me. Then radiator. It does nothing to heat up my room but it burns your finger every time you touch it.  So I placed my socks on the grate where the heat comes out and then began to get ready for the day.

            In my film industry class we had a guest speaker who talked to us and gave us the historical backstory of a film he was in the process of making about the lives of various astronomers. I will be brutally honest with you. An hour and half astronomy lesson was not doing anything for my ability to focus or worse yet stay awake. I tried really hard the entire time to keep an engaged look on my face, but the dim lights combined with the speaker’s monotone voice and my complete disinterest in everything that he was saying, well my eyes were having a very difficult time remaining open.

            Finally we were permitted to split up into our groups, the lights were turned on and the conversation help wake me up some. We were all given the assignment to come up with a marketing strategy for this film by looking at other films and using creativity to help think up new and clever ways to promote the film.

            My group is comprised of two girls from High Point University, a guy from Detroit, a British girl, and two British guys. We talked a little bit about what we could do and then made plans to meet up sometime during the week.  They are all really sweet people and the walk back with all them was rich in conversation about what always seems to come up the first time I talk to anyone British which is the difference in our accents and the way we say things and all that nonsense.

            I went back to my flat, had lunch in the hour between my film course and my travel writing course, listened to music and then walked over the Willow building.

            The day ended with Collier and I trying out this new pub, well new for us, called The Port Mahon. It was a small pub about halfway down to the city center. Very home-y and defiantly the definition of what Americans believe to be a pub.

            The day started off not so great but as it progressed it got better and ended fantastically over a meal with good friends. 

Lazy Sunday

day

For weeks Mel and I have been planning to go shopping but every time we plan something the hour before we are about to leave one us backs out for some reason, mostly because of school work or we just really don’t want to get out of our pajamas just yet. Friday, the day I went to Uffington, was the day that we were supposed to go but because of my trip to Uffington I had to reschedule with Mel. So we planned on Sunday and made a pact that no matter what happened we would not cancel this trip, mainly due to the fact that we were both itching to spend way to much money on a bunch of new clothes.

Our original plan was to leave at twelve but when we were planning out the details Cassie’s friend from home, Jamie, over heard us and then became included in the plan. She had just come the night before, so knowing her impending jet lag she said she might not be able to be ready by twelve which preceded us to push it back till one. So that was our plan, we were going to leave promptly at one, explore the city center and make sure to go into TopShop, Zara, and Primark. Mel had never been in Topshop or Zara and since those are two shops that I have not been able to shut up about since I got here she was pretty keen to go as well. 

The next morning I woke up, showered got ready and then bided my time till one by doing some work.  Side note, that’s all I do now, it is honestly probably a good thing that Hulu doesn’t work in this country because I am very much the type of person that says to myself, “Well, I could be doing work. Or, I could watch 30 Rock. Eh, I’ll just watch 30 Rock.” Since I don’t have that option here I have replaced my bored TV watching time with work time, hopefully this will stick when I get back home. One, the time set in stone to go. Well Mel wasn’t quite ready and we hadn’t heard anything from Jamie’s end so we gave it half an hour more. After the half hour passed and both Mel and I were ready and we still hadn’t heard anything from Jamie’s end we just assumed she was still asleep and left for Oxford.

It was a really nice day, I was just in tights, shorts, a top and a heavy sweater and I didn’t feel like I was going to freeze to death. Neither of us had any desire to walk all the way to the city center so we walked to the bus stop. Well long story short we weren’t paying any attention and hoped on the U5 instead of the U1 so when it tool us down Marston road and we had to walk all the way back to the main road we just decided to through in the towel and walk all the way into town.

We finally got there, both of our feet hurting; mine especially though because I was stupid enough to wear heels, but nothing cures pain quite like retail therapy. We went into Topshop first and it was just as fantastic as I hoped it would be which in turn caused me to spend much more money than I planned, but hey, in my mind it is worth it. The skirt and shorts I bought are extremely cute.

We didn’t end up having any time to go into Primark since it was a Sunday and everything closes at five, really don’t understand that by the way. But all in all it was a really successful day despite the fact that I think I might have broken my feet from walking in heels all day long. 

Uffington on a Friday

My Friday began on a bad note. A couple weeks ago Collier organized a trip up to Uffington to see the white horse and asked Cassie and me to accompany her. The white horse is this crater that mysteriously appeared on the mountainside that highly resembles the shape of a horse. Nobody knows how it appeared or why. They do know when it appeared but you can do anything with science these days so that bit of knowledge isn’t very impressive on their part.

Due to Collier’s magical connections with Dr. Forsyth she was able to get him to drive us up and take us around the country. Since Collier was the on who was excited about this and the most eager to go out of the three of us we just let her plan the whole thing out. Cassie and I were essentially just along for the ride and we figured, on the road up there, a combination of her and Dr. Forsyth would give us all of the cool information and little facts about what we were doing.

The night before Collier came over and told us the final details about when we would be leaving the next more. Basically, she told us to be at her flat at one so we could catch the U1 to Harcourt Hill to meet Dr. Forsyth and leave for Uffington by two. Well, that didn’t really happen and that would partly my fault but also the fact that Cassie and I our both girls. The night before I forgot to set my alarm for when I over slept by and hour and a half, only waking up after Cassie came into my room and 11:30 my morning did not progress so nicely. I am one of those people who require a lot of time in the morning, not only to get ready but also to just wake up for the day. Yeah, I need at least two and a half hours. High maintenance I know. To save time I opted to not take a shower despite the fact that I was going on day three without one, threw on some mascara, jeans and my High Point University shirt (which I never wear other than bed just so you are aware), layered up with sweaters and my rain coat, threw some my camera and water in my backpack and still made it out the door late. I should really work on getting ready at the pace of a normal human being.

We finally made it to Harcourt to meet up with Dr. Forsyth and Dr. Schweitzer, climbed in the car and immediately set off. While in the car Collier started to ask questions about the history of the White Horse and Dr. Forsyth responded by equating it to Stonehenge. Meaning, nobody really knows how or why it got there but they have continued to preserve it. Before he went on Dr. Forsyth interjected with a legal statement for all of us. “Now, just so we are clear on the legal side of things, this outing, I am taking you as my friends, not as students of Oxford Brookes.” With a smile Collier then said, “So you consider us your friends!”

The weather wasn’t too bad, but it was very cold, windy, and a little bit rainy. It was at the point were if it was even just a tiny bit worse no one would have wanted to deal with it. But since it was teetering on that edge it really wasn’t bad enough to really complain about. The walk wasn’t bad at all, it was only about a mile and it was a steady incline. Dr. Schweitzer and I were far back from the Collier, Cassie and Dr. Forsyth for a little because we were just standing, trying to get good pictures of the White Horse and the overlooking view.

Once we got up to the top we could see the horse, but not in it’s entirety, and a good photo was almost entirely out of the question. Despite it’s similarities to Stonehenge it was nowhere near as photogenic. The most interesting part of standing there next to it had to be looking at how well taken care of it was. The grass was cut nicely around it and the stone had a white chalk covering the help it stand out better against the green grass.

Sheep. There were sheep everywhere. So, being girls all there of us just had this intense desire to go up and hug a sheep. Wouldn’t you? They just look so fluffy and cuddly; you really just can’t help but want to give them a huge hug. Unfortunately, no matter how slowly you walked up to one, they would get spooked and run away. So after about our third attempt to walk up to the sheep we just gave up on that venture and came up with a new plan. As a funny comment Collier just turns to me and says, “Sarah, you should just go chase after one.” Before I could even respond with any sort of retort Cassie just takes off after the sheep, which in turn caused the sheep to take off running. That was probably one of the funniest things I have seen in along time, Cassie acting as a herding dog.

As the day went on the weather was getting worse instead of better so we decided to head back, Dr. Forsyth went to go get the car and the rest of us went to the mound were St. George apparently killed the dragon. Walking there was kind of slippery and at one point we had to play the “Don’t get hit by a car” game, we just stepped to the side. What I found most rewarding was the view. You could see so much and so far of this green countryside, it was beautiful.

Instead of going straight back to campus Dr. Forsyth was incredibly kind and took us back to his home for tea. It was lovely, and once we found out that Collier had never had tea before we all looked at her in awe and just told her to drink up. It was very nice, we mostly just sat and talked and after a day of being wet and cold it was nice to just sit and drink something hot and eat a little something sweet.

Dr. Forsyth took us back to Harcourt and in perfect time too because that bus was there right when we arrived, so we didn’t have to wait for it. We did get stuck in a little traffic on the way back which I wasn’t too happy about because at that point all I wanted to do was go back to the flat and just take the longest shower imaginable. Walking back down Pullen’s Lane, all three of us were practically running.

After my long hot shower I got some of my work done and then preceded to devour a pizza. Later, Collier came over and we planned out more of our trip to Venice, which translate to me trying to find the cheapest flights out there.

Unfortunately, my camera is being a little temperamental, so I can’t upload the photos onto this post but hopefully later on I will get it working and then be able to amend this post to include some pictures.