Tubes and drinks

The tube strike caused ‘chaos’ this week around London but appears to have settled down early, I had a visitor from the states today who was right on time for our meeting when I frankly was not expecting him to be, given the alarmist news from yesterday. Regardless, Mentalfloss has a great summary of the strike alluding to the “Keep Calm and Carry On” theme of Britain, while at the same time linking to a brilliant “tube strike drinking game.” Apparently the best cure for a transport strike is

“work from home”, crack open the drinks, and play a little drinking game.

I had no idea that’s what the Brits meant by “work from home,” they must think me quite the lush!

Ryanair and equal opportunity

Ryanair, the dominant low-cost carrier in Europe, had a policy for a time where non-EU passported persons had to check-in for flights in person, for a fee, because we were not checking in online. Which we would have done if they had not restricted the online check-in process to persons with an EU passport. Now, apparently, they have dropped this discriminatory practice and have started to charge all fliers for printing out their own boarding pass from the online system. Ridiculous, yes? Ways that Ryanair charges for flights while pretending to be cheap, yes. (Don’t forget, they are the airline contemplating a charge for use of their on-board toilets too.) Is this still cheaper and more convenient than flying a traditional carrier? Sometimes. Is it clearly a cost-benefit ratio balance that only the individual traveller can make and on any single trip? Totally.

To drive or not to drive…

That is the question. For various reasons, the question of getting a car has suddenly cemented itself on my brain. This is something I had been avoiding in my time in England thus far; circumstances are such that my walk between home and work is a pleasant 15 minutes and I’m even closer to a wide variety of shops and restaurants, including a Sainsbury’s at two blocks away and a John Lewis about three blocks away. So you could argue that I really do have everything I need quite close, and my longest jaunts are off to the health club which is about 20 minutes’ walk away. However, what I don’t have much of in this little urban bubble is a social life. I’ve been really fortunate to make a couple of friends recently, but in both instances a car would be really handy for getting out of town to their villages (although I admit in both instances there are buses, so it’s not a completely lost cause without a car). In some ways, I really don’t miss the fuss of owning a car, paying for a car, keeping a car insured and paying all associated taxes. Without all of this, my life is quite simple.

But I confess, I’m an American girl who has always been a road-tripper. Every time I return to the states I rent a car, and sometimes drive longer distances than is truly necessary just because I love the feel of the open road. It was instilled in me as a child to be a road-tripper, we did lots of driving between the family homeland in Minnesota and the east coast where we lived for a time, and while east we also drove all the way south to Florida and north to I can’t even remember how far. When my sister and I were both based on the east coast as adults, we did a memorable jaunt into NYC as well as a bittersweet trip back to MN when I abandoned my post in Virginia for what would eventually be my job here.

I have lots of travel coming up, so this is not necessarily something I would do until after my summer trips to other continents, but starting to try and understand the UK rules of the road might come up in about September. I’ll have to take lessons and pass a test here, and obviously save up some money and look for some wheels. And finally, I’d have to sort out a place to park the thing in my urban environs, making a very small car (Smart! Mini!) look appealing. But it’s starting to really tempt me… so I’m going to have to do some serious soul-searching on the whole car vs. public transport question not to mention the “oh dear, this would really be sticking down roots in England” issue… thoughts?

Glasgow train adventures, take 2

Most of my (flying) colleagues left Glasgow on Saturday, but I was staying over because my return train was booked for Sunday, noonish, well 12:30 to be precise. This becomes important. I woke up around 9 on Sunday, had plenty of time to enjoy a leisurely web surf and coffee experience before showering and packing. I checked out of the hotel at about 11:30 (more than plenty early) and got a taxi to Glasgow Central, the train station at which I had arrived. It was so early that my train was not displaying on the giant screens, so I went into M&S Simply Food for some nosh for the train, and was patiently sitting in the station watching the monitors. The trip back was due to be slightly more complicated than the trip there, due to the usual Sunday-ness of works taking place on National Rail (I assume) I was taking a different route home than I had taken there. When the trains for around 12:30 started displaying, I started panicking: there was no train for Edinburgh at 12:30, which was what I was supposed to take. I furiously started rooting around in my bag for the schedule I had from “thetrainline.com” (thanks to the blog commenters after my Manchester experience) only to discover I was in the wrong place: I was supposed to be leaving from a different station in Glasgow. Suddenly my being early was too late. I simply did not have time to guarantee that a cab ride to the other Glasgow station would get me there in time, and my whole trip (and assigned seats from Edinburgh to home) required me to make a connection in Edinburgh at 13:50. There was a 12:25 train leaving from Glasgow Central that would go to Edinburgh, and then I noticed, strangely also went to Doncaster, which was my next leg according to my itinerary: a booked seat from Edinburgh to Doncaster was in my itinerary. I boarded this train at 12:15 noticing that every single seat had a “reserved” card on it. I parked in the open area outside the loo until the train started moving, only then to then realize “were my tickets valid?” The ticket said “Glasgow Cen/Qun St” which I hopefully took to mean that it meant Glasgow Central OR Queen Street, which was indeed the case. Fortunately the train on this leg was nearly empty, so I stole a seat that was reserved only from Newcastle onwards, ate my M&S food and read my awesome book (more on that soon). It was only part-way to Edinburgh from Glasgow that it started to occur to me that this might be the exact train I needed to take from Edinburgh to Doncaster (it was). I waited until Edinburgh to move to my reserved seat, and sat there contemplating my mistake of planning. How had I not had the seat reserved from Glasgow directly to Doncaster? Had I mistakenly opted for “minimum time” versus “minimum changes” such that a 12:25 departure from Glasgow Central would have seemed inferior to a 12:30 departure from Glasgow Queen Street? This I will never know, but I will be more careful in the future.

The trip from Edinburgh to Doncaster was scenic to say the least, and only interrupted by yet another obnoxious person speaking loudly throughout. This time, instead of an American showing off to his work colleagues, it was a British (and clearly English, not Scottish) woman yammering into her cell phone for ages. Some drama had emerged in which her daughter, of indeterminate age, had been out sick from work (or school?) last week and needed apparently to get a doctor’s note to justify this. I was stunned on the one hand, seriously (to my British readers) is it still par for the course to have to get a note from a Doctor if you are sick? I have never had to do this in my life, and I thought it was one of the bygone trends from an earlier era. Regardless, I was subjected to about an hour of this woman first talking to the daughter, then relaying the story to any number of friends or family members with complete disdain: “I am her MOTHER, and she has CLEARLY been ill and is NOT LYING about it…” and so it went. As was the case with the previous trip, the assigned and guaranteed seat means that you do not have the liberty to escape from such things, which is a shame. I guess next time I should go for the “quiet carriage” in which cell phone use is discouraged.

I made it home without further incident, after the change in Doncaster and the remaining trip home, on a nearly empty train much to my delight. I finished my most excellent book, about which I will next write, and was home in time to enjoy a nice dinner picked up at the M&S at the train station on my arrival. Thus ends the excellent Glasgow adventure, with many lessons learned about the pre-booked reserved seating on British trains.

From the train to Glasgow–an annoying American

I made it to Glasgow tonight, but not without an expat adventure. I had a reserved seat on the train (thanks to those who had informed me of the details of how to do this!) and so was captive to my local seat-mates. By the time we arrived in Glasgow, I had finished the book I started back home, and the train was pretty empty, but for a few incomprehensible Glaswegian speakers in front of me (not that I wasn’t trying!) and a mixed group at the 4-seater table to my left. There was one Brit, one Aussie or NZer (still can’t always tell, my bad!) and one American. By the end of the train ride I knew the following about the American:

• He was gay.

• He had broken up with someone named Jeremy and one or the other of them had gained the Louis Vuitton bag in the settlement (I truly can’t remember which one)
• He was angry that his life in his thirties was not different from his life in his twenties, because he had no “wedding, house in the suburbs, two kids” scenario to look forward to because he was gay. (But is this true? I know plenty of partnered, happy gay couples who have the lives they wish for including babies and homes…)
• He had little knowledge of American Geography, due to his lack of explication when trying to explain the “Ozarks” without mentioning either Missouri or Arkansas. Or anything else near there.
• He had been in the military (!) and worked on Kerry’s campaign before moving across the pond.
  
• He had an understanding of “homesteading” in the middle-US that extended as far as the movie “Far and Away” and no further. And this was nothing like, say, the experiences of Laura Ingalls Wilder and her family in homesteading my neck of the woods. But the movie version was presented to the foreigners as fact.

It was this last transgression that had me a bit miffed by the time we pulled into Glasgow Central: he was representing all of American history without the appropriate background knowledge, and the non-Americans would have taken it as written. The combined sum of the trip was that I whispered my “excuse me” to this group as I went by to prevent my being identified as American to those in the group who were likely to notice my origin.

Suddenly on this trip, I had new respect for those who were annoyed by Americans in the UK because I could have knocked this guy’s lights out by the time we arrived. I don’t care that he has been in the UK for more than 5 years (again, something I know now) because he showed no cultural acclimation at all. Aside from the occasional use of “whilst” you would not guess he had been here in the UK for any length of time. And of course, his commenting to his junior (Brit) colleague with the starting line “I am not just your boss but your boss’s boss and I say…” made me want to smack him and say “wanker!”

Just goes to show, I am not immune to the phenomenon of being annoyed by annoying Americans in the UK, even though I could perhaps be seen as one on occasion. To soothe my nerves, I leave you with a shot of my view from my hotel in lovely Glasgow.

Ah, Heathrow

The conflicting reports continue to come in. Heathrow was named the world’s most annoying airport this week, in a survey relating to passport lines and baggage claims. But a friend flew through there this week and claimed the overall experience to be much improved in the T5 era. Who knows–haven’t been through T5 yet myself. Second and third on the annoyance list were JFK (which I somehow miraculously have never flown into) and LAX. But in good news for we massively evil and polluting types, long haul flights in premium economy may soon join business class in having lie-flat beds, at least on the A380 where bunk beds are being considered. I’m a frequent traveller back to the states, and while I have no issues with the relatively short flight there during the day, the return trip over night does seem to mess me up to the point that I’ve been looking into upgrading my return with miles now that I’ve made it into the silver class on BA. Perhaps I can dream of a day when this will not be the case. Or perhaps the route will never be judged long enough to deserve such luxuries, and I will be forced to live with the lacking night’s sleep for as long as I live on this small island.

Puppies

I’ve returned from Manchester, and having run out of reading materials on the train there (even though I had a pile of work with me–amazing how distraction-free the train ride can be when it’s more than three hours!) I decided that for Friday late afternoon into evening, I would read nonsense. So I bought the book “Marley and Me” at the WHSmith at Manchester Piccadilly rail station, and managed to knock off the entire thing before I got home. And oh, what a book, if you have ever had the pleasure of trying to manage a badly behaved dog.

I was married for six years, and at about year 2.5 in the marriage the ex and I brought home an adorable puppy that sounds a lot like Marley from the book. It was only half retriever (not clear if it was Lab or Golden) and half spaniel of some sort, so only about 50 pounds full grown (half of Marley) but shared so many of the characteristics of Marley that it was gut-wrenching to read. My little darling was Murphy, and he was the most adorable and exasperating puppy, and later, dog, one could ever imagine. I loved him fully and he brought me great joy in the remaining 3.5 years that my marriage survived, including being a strong comfort to me when I lost family members in a terrible car accident about a year before my divorce. I was completely gutted when I had to leave him with my ex-husband when we got divorced; I was in grad school and moving into a studio apartment, and the ex bought another house with a yard in suburbia. But I admit, he was a very badly-behaved dog, Marley-style.

Murphy was the reason that I stayed in touch with my ex after we divorced, after I left Minnesota and even after I left the country. I would dog-sit to see Murphy when I was still in the area, and later I would just visit, spending painful time with my ex-husband for the sole purpose of getting to see, and photograph, my darling and ill-behaved mutt. But I did move to the UK, and eventually I got the sad news from the ex that he had inexplicably–and without telling me–gotten rid of Murphy, then probably about 8 or 9 years old. He claims to have sent Murph to the humane society, but I have my doubts. It was nearly two years ago that this happened, and I’ve had no contact with my ex ever since. I’ll probably never know what became of my darling puppy–for he remained a puppy, a badly-behaved but enthusiastic puppy, the entire time I knew him. I probably don’t want to know what happened in the end, given that the fate of a nearly 10 year old dog given up to the humane society cannot be good, and who knows if that is even the truth of what happened (I don’t trust my ex to tell me the truth).

So for people on the Liverpool to Norwich train this afternoon, who could not figure out why I was crying my eyes out reading this book about a dog, there you have it.

In Manchester by Rail

I had a very strange day. Worked much like normal, and then headed to the rail station for a short trip to a major hub, followed by a long trip to Manchester. I arrived about 9 pm, and checked into my hotel for my one night stay–back home tomorrow in the reverse trip. I’m constantly amazed at the persistent tendency of the local Brits to complain about the train service: I still find it totally amazing that I can just check the schedule, buy a ticket at the station and travel half-way across the country (in relatively bad weather even) in such comfort. I got lots of work done in the 3.5 hours on the train to Manchester, and have the faint glow of happiness about my work meetings tomorrow. One question for the Brits or Brit-living folks out there, though: how do you get a reserved seat on these longer trains? I’ve done the London-to-Bath route twice, and today travelled up to Manchester, and in both cases there were few seats on the train that did not have little cards in them saying “reserved” with a starting and ending station. Interestingly, less than half of these spots were ever filled on the journey, including the one next to me. But say I wanted to guarantee myself a nice forward-facing window seat on my journey, what would I have to do?

Lands of chocolates

The scene: my bedroom, this fine morning-turning-afternoon. I awoke, glanced at the clock and sat up like I had been electrically shocked. 12:15 pm, oh no. What happened to the alarm? I am late, I missed my normal noon work commitment–am I in danger of being fired? Will I be able to make it up? I rushed into the living room, double checked the time, yep, still after noon, still in serious trouble, $%&(^!, checked my email quickly, and continued to panic. Started to berate myself for the late-ish time I had gone to bed last night without really thinking about it, but conscious that my bedtime had been reasonably late all week long. Adrenaline started to rush as I worried about the consequences for my job. Rushed into the bathroom, put the plug in the tub and started to run the taps. Had a moment of clarity: it’s Saturday! Job is secure, sleeping in was intentional, whew. It took a few minutes for this to sink in and for my blood pressure to return to normal. I actually tried to lay back down on the bed, now that sleeping in was allowed if not encouraged, but my body was not calm enough to recover from the earlier panic. Why on earth was I so discombobulated? Well, I had been trapped in Geneva yesterday thanks to Britain’s inability to handle the snow, and had only arrived home at 1 am last night. I had slept like a log and forgot completely about where I had been, and because I had been travelling I had lost all concept of what day of the week it was.

I am aware that sometimes I travel too much. Last weekend, I was in Brussels where they proudly advertise their fine Belgian chocolates. Yesterday I was in Switzerland, where they proudly advertise their fine Swiss chocolates. I had never been to either place before, so it really was quite a week in the travel adventure stakes. (Note that my passport is now stamped on every single page and about to take a trip to London to have pages added…) In the grand scheme of things, this week could have been much worse. I got back from Brussels okay on Sunday evening, managed to make my work commitments Monday before the whole town shut down on account of the snow. I was in town three full days Mon.-Wed., including successfully sending my sister off on Wed. Thursday I worked three quarters of a day before being picked up by the car service I’ve been using to travel to Switzerland. The meetings Friday were good, and it was only the return trip that was a bit fraught.

As I think about it, this has been a recurring theme and one that I will gladly take–I can even hope to maintain the trend. My trips to places seem to work out perfectly and on time, while my return trips from places seem to be the ones affected by bad weather, general travel delays and other nonsense. If there are going to be a statistically-mandated number of trips affected by travel delays, I’d much rather have it this way than the other way. For example, for Switzerland, I had to fly into Geneva and catch a train for an hour to Neuchatel. Had my arrival into Geneva been delayed as much as my departure was (2.5 hours in the end) I might have missed the last train of the evening and not known quite what to do. I was early back to Geneva airport last night, which meant I ended up spending a full six hours there due to the delays, but better that, on the final bit of the return trip. I even had the mobile number of the driver who was picking me up at Stansted, so I was able to text ahead with updates on our progress.

All that happy feeling aside, I really do get pissed off at the airlines. Why don’t they just tell us what’s going on? There were two full flights worth of London-bound travellers, one set to Stansted and one to Luton, trying to work out if we were going to be able to get home. The rumors were flying. Those of us with smart phone capabilities were all online trying to work out whether the planes were flying. Our plane did not even leave Stansted until after we should have boarded it in Geneva for the return trip. The airlines knew this and could have given us some information. The monitors in the airport did not post an estimated late departure time until 45 minutes before we actually left, surely they could have guessed at it earlier than that!

In the end, I’m home and hugely relieved to find myself in my own flat on a Saturday. And let’s face it, I’m hugely relieved to realize that it is Saturday and that I did not sleep through a critical work event that could have put my job on the line! I’m drinking black coffee because I am out of milk and need to get to the store, but if that’s the greatest of my immediate worries, I’ll take it. This week sees a bit more chaos and nonsense, in that I have to do yet another over-one-night trip although this time I don’t have to leave the country and I get to see more of my adopted homeland–it’s Manchester I’m heading to on Thursday. And then hopefully no more trips for a month or so. I’m about travelled out right now. Although I’m super excited to do my Swiss versus Belgian chocolate taste test later today, having brought home slabs of dark chocolate from both locations!

Travels and mortality

I got back from Italy about 1:30 am this morning and was feeling pretty ornery about that. It was a hard trip–a journey there early Tuesday morning and a delayed flight back late Wednesday evening. I was in Treviso near Venice but did not get to see Venice at all, thanks to the rain. (I did get to see a nice exhibition of paintings of Venice by Canaletto and others in Treviso, so it was not a total cultural loss which is good given that it was a busy business trip.) By the time I got home I was exhausted, and I had to ‘perform’ at work at noon today, including the fact that I was not prepared. My morning was thus frantic, I did my best with work but was 2 minutes late and had not enough photocopies for the numbers that had assembled. I spent the afternoon in my office whittling 90-some emails down to 30-some (more to work on tomorrow) and complaining to myself that my job was all about airplanes and emails, the science has gone out of it. All in all, I felt like it was a pretty poor experience the last few days. Then I clicked on yahoo! news and saw that a plane had crashed into the icy Hudson river.

Suddenly, one stops to count blessings. The plane was heading to a place where family members of mine live, and all survived the crash. This event was reminiscent of a crash in the 80s that has scarred me, and which was mentioned in the yahoo! article: the crash into the icy Potomac, about which a television movie was made that I can still see in my mind. Only a few survived in the Potomac, so it is a huge relief to hear that all survived today’s ordeal. And suddenly my hour delay out of Treviso, Italy looks trivial.

I take my life into my hands every time I book a plane ticket. I know this. I have great anxiety about flying, usually manifest as fears and dreams about missing flights, but also white-knuckled experiences actually on airplanes. I hate traveling, but I love having travelled. I have a passport that needs to be sent to the US embassy in London to have pages added, because it’s nearly full of stamps, and I’ve only been using it 4 years and some change. Having worked in the business of automotive safety at two different points in my career, I have the facts in mind that demonstrate that flying is actually safer than driving or being driven, but that does not somehow remove my fear associated with airplane travel. I’m sure it’s the control aspect: we feel in control when driving, and at the mercy of others when flying. I live on an island and have no choice but to travel a great deal for work, and I do travel a good amount for pleasure as well. Regardless, there’s nothing like a little airplane incident to make me feel grateful to be home.