28 June-30 June 2014: Traveling to New Zealand

I had never made a journey as the long as the one that got me to New Zealand.  I left College Park at about 3:00pm on Saturday, June 28th, and arrived at my hotel at about 6:00pm on Monday, June 30th, a total of about 35 hours of transit.  And, let me tell you: ugh.

After Peter drove me out to Dulles, I made my way around one of my least favorite airports in the country and boarded my flight to Los Angeles.  I had a window seat, thank goodness, and was even the first one in my row to board.  A couple of kids sat down next to me.  The one in the middle seat immediately turned to me and asked me if I'd be willing to give me his window seat, because he preferred sitting there.  A moral quandary ensued.  On the one hand, he was younger than me, and deserved to have the thrill of seeing his country from the air like I had enjoyed when I was his age.  On the other hand, gosh darn it, I wanted the window seat.

Thankfully, my quandary was forestalled by the rest of his family, who shouted him down.  (That way, they could sit contiguously.)  Whew.  That emergency out of the way, the only emergency that was faced for the rest of the trip was the medical emergency that unfolded somewhere over Texas.  I couldn't see what happened, and we didn't have to make an emergency landing, but, in between that and our already-delayed departure, we were about 90 minutes late into LAX.

So, I got to be one of the people who rushed out immediately after the flight attendants say "some passengers are making a tight connection, so please be seated if LA is your final destination", which was a first for me.  We came in at the gate literally neighboring our departure gate for Sydney, and they had delayed our flight to Sydney by 30 minutes, because I guess there were enough of us to make that doable.  I was pretty surprised, honestly!

I boarded my flight to Sydney, and got to my customary window seat.  Then began the great Prayer of the Window Seat: please don't sit here, please don't sit here, please don't take the seat next to me.  The Prayer is only sporadically answered in the modern aviation industry, but somehow the gods were listening - although the flight was almost full, somehow the seat next to me was not!  Yesssss!

Me being me, I had developed an hour-by-hour list of activities to do on my flight, to make sure I stayed productive and slept at a relatively appropriate time.  I'm generally terrible at sleeping on planes, so I figured I could stay up for a while in a bid to adjust my internal clock.  But I couldn't adhere to my schedule.  My flight from LAX departed at 10:00pm local time, or 1:00am internal clock time, and so soon I found myself collapsing.  At least I didn't have any problems sleeping for a couple of hours, I suppose?

It's about a 15 hour flight between LAX and Sydney.  Sure, that's kind of terrible, but, honestly, sometimes Heffner family road trips between Minneapolis and Detroit lasted that long, so I guess I had some experience with it.  The weirdest part was the complete blackness out of the windows.  Because of our departure time, it was completely dark when we left LA, and our arrival in Sydney was at 6:00am local time, so we spent the entire flight during "night".  There were also no lights whatsoever coming from the most isolated stretches of the Pacific Ocean, for obvious reasons.  It was a bizarre situation to be in.  I knew time was passing... great periods of time, actually.  But I had no way to tell beyond what our screens were saying the time was in Sydney and LA.

At the Sydney Airport, I had about a five hour layover scheduled... probably not enough time to go out and do anything in Sydney, unfortunately.  So I spent some time waiting with Theresa, one of the other grad students from UMD going to the conference.  She has an irrepressibly perky personality, I think part of her past as a teacher, so I got along with her swimmingly.  (It's hard to imagine anyone not getting along with Theresa.)  However, she had an earlier flight over to Auckland, so I got to spend a lot of time waiting.  Then a lot time more waiting, because my flight to Auckland was delayed by an hour or so for unspecified reasons.

By the time I was boarding the plane to Auckland, I was pretty exhausted.  The Air New Zealand clerk gave me a withering look as I tried to bring my carry-on suitcase onto the plane.  "That's much too big," he said, "we'll need to check it to Auckland."  He then proceeded to ask me several times whether my final destination was Auckland.  I totally understood his caution, but after the fifth or sixth time I felt a little talked down to.  Yes, despite my American passport, I was indeed going to Auckland, full-stop.  Jeez Louise.

My flight to Auckland was shocking.  I was fed!  I got a meal!  There were in-seat entertainment systems!  And all this for a 2.5 hour flight!  It was pretty nonsensical to my American sensibilities, but I wasn't complaining... at all.  For the meal, they mentioned that they had New Zealand wine, which I had heard was fantastic, so I had a glass... and, uh, that was a bad idea, it turns out, as drinking a glass of wine with the ridiculous jet lag and sleep deprivation I was feeling made the wine affect me much more than it should have.  Rather than doing some of the work I had planned, I instead watched "Wreck-It Ralph", which I enjoyed.

During my shuttle ride from the airport, I managed to avoid falling asleep, while the two other people on my flight (students from the University of New South Wales, in Sydney) did.  I felt somewhat smug.  After checking in at the (very lovely) Copthorne Hotel, I, Theresa, and a couple of grad students she had met went out to dinner at a burger restaurant we stumbled into, all of us (but the Australia student) speaking rather incoherently and doing a lot of staring at our burgers.  I returned to my hotel, stayed up past 9pm, then immediately fell asleep, and managed to stay asleep until 7:30am the next morning (with just one interruption).  Whew.

14-15 March 2014: Europe 2, Transportation Boogaloo

Washington, District of Columbia/Newark, New Jersey, USA/Stockholm, Uppland, Sweden/Turku, Finland Proper(!), Finland

H: 15/9/4/3 L: -2/-6/4/0 Weather: Overcast/Mostly Cloudy/Light Snow/Clear

Yes, friends, it's time for another European adventure.  I feel like you all must have heard this story at one point, but, here goes: once upon a time there was a Facebook News Feed, and upon that Facebook News Feed one Jonathan Andrew posted a link to an entirely accidental sale by a regional Norwegian air carrier.  Lo, and much flailing was had, and much wailing and gnashing of teeth about the failure to take the $399 Turkish Air deal to İstanbul was recounted (actually, I found that deal independently of the Flight Deal, but I knew it would have shown up there at the time!), and it was resolved to definitely for sure take advantage of probably the cheapest flights I will ever see to Europe again in my lifetime.

And so I posted on Facebook requesting compatriots to join my in my travels, after someone who shall go nameless claimed that he "was already going to spring training in Florida".  The marvelous David Bogojevich had meanwhile posted the same deal to his Facebook Wall, stating his desire to go to Scandinavia.  I said I just wanted to go somewhere, anywhere, gosh darn it.  We agreed to travel together to Stockholm.  I accidentally got a return ticket for a Monday rather than a Sunday, but whatever.  Hurry, hurry, hurry, some previously unknown part of my brain shouted at me.  And so I bought tickets.  But disaster struck: though I had a receipt, and was ticketed on United the next day, my dear David was not so lucky, and his purchase never went through.

So, yeah.  That's why I'm going on a Baltic Sea tour for my spring break, rather than seeking warmer climes... say, Spain, or Italy.  My itinerary is as follows:

14-15 Mar: Traveling (via Newark and Stockholm) to Finland
15-17 Mar: Finland
17-19 Mar: Estonia (nothing says St. Patrick's Day like Estonia)
19-21 Mar: Denmark
21-24 Mar: Sweden

It's definitely fast-paced and exciting, but that's just how I like things!

The morning of the 14th started off way too early, at 5, which is not a time that most humans should often see.  I propoelled myself out of bed through sheer force of will, ate the last of my strawberries, drank the last of my milk, and set off for the College Park Metro station.  The day started with an ill omen.  Just as I get to the top of the escalator, sure enough, I hear "doors closing" and I get to watch the perfectly-timed "rush" Yellow Line train head for the airport and other places in NoVa without me.

Timing was a big worry during the day.  Not the timing of the Metro—the Yellow and Green lines share vast sections of track, and indeed I only had to wait a minute to transfer.  I wasn't worried about the transfer between planes—due to the parameters of the tickets I bought, I would have 8 hours to make my flight to Sweden.  I was using those 8 hours to visit my good friend and former labmate Prashanth Rajarajan.  No, the problem was in Stockholm.

Some time in the not too distant past, the Swedish government decided that the whole business of regulation was passé.  An unusual sentiment to Swedes, to be sure.  So, in their infinite wisdom, they decided to abolish (almost) all regulations on taxis.  In one fell swoop, Sweden, of all places, became one of the most unregulated taxis systems in the developed world.

What does this have to do with anything?  In my itinerary, I had taken a gamble.  I only had 75 minutes to get from my plane to my ferry to Finland.  Factor in customers, and at least 20 minutes for a trainjust to get to Stockholm, and I was already worried.  When I discovered on the 13th that that the ferry port was in fact nowhere near the railway station, and I'd probably have to take a taxi, I was upset; I absolutely despite taxis.  (Something about the financial transaction and the having to explain a destination in an unfamiliar land.)  When I discovered the Swedish system is what it is, and that I'd have to hunt and pick for the "right" taxi (certain brands with certain "unit prices", listed on their back windows), well... I was not a happy camper.

So, as I saw the Yellow Line train pull away, I hoped that I was not getting a premonition of the ferry doing the same.  But thing started looking up pretty quickly.  Just as boarding began for my flight to Newark, I got an email from Couchsurfing; the amazing, talented Minnesotan(!) living with her husband in Copenhagen accepted my request to crash on her couch.  My plane was 30 minutes early to Newark.  As I bought my tickets to and from the airport (oh, I can get both directions simultaneously?  how convenient!), an NJ Transit train showed up immediately.  The conductor used an adorable hole punch to punch an adorable hole in some sort of mysterious slip of paper that was slipped in front of my seat.

Lunch with Prashanth was absolutely delightful.  I could practically feel his excitement for his work and his future oozing out of him.  We talk about science, our programs, our friends, and swapped gossip and stories.  I can't wait to see him again (come visit me, PRaj!).  As we went our separate ways, and I entered Penn Station to return to the airport, I assumed that my luck and struck again: I heard that a train headed to Newark Airport was leaving posthaste for Track 4.  I made my way down there.  It was an Amtrak train, but it was taking basically the same route as the NJ Transit ticket that the NJ Transit folks had been so kind to provide me with earlier, so it was basically the same, right?  People around me grabbed hold of some paper printouts not at all resembling my ticket, but they had just bought tickets a different way, right?  I nervously looked it up, and the route I was on was listed as a recommended route for getting to the airport by NJ Transit.  Great.  So I was good, right?

Right?

I broke into a sweat when the conductor announced he was checking train tickets.  I was reminded of when I was churchshopping and had to stare every time to make sure how this next church decided to do communion; I eagerly scanned to try to see what everyone else was doing.  I didn't see a cute little hole puncher.  I saw none of my tickets, in fact.  I started shaking a bit.  I was in the second compartment.  He entered mine and got within 5 seats of me.  4.  3.  And then... he briskly walked away.  I froze.  He did not reappear.  We got to Newark station.  He did not reappear.  We pulled out of Newark station.  He finally showed up again.  But the victory was mine.  The next station was the one for the airport.

So when he got to me, and confirmed my worst fears—though I had bought an identically priced ticket, it was not the right one, and I was in fact doing a Very Bad Thing (tm) by having boarded the Amtrak train—he basically just shrugged and told me to get to the end of the train to make sure I actually left at the Newark Airport Station like I said I was going to do.  I had to take a Walk of Shame to make sure I did so, but I considered that a small price to pay.

The screening process at Newark was uneventful.  But, as I got to teh front of the line to get on the plane, my ticket caused the scanner to beep unpleasantly.  I frowned.  "Oh," said the gate agent, "You have a new seat.  There was a baby on board that meant that someone needed to be reseated.  11A is your new seat.  It's also a window."  At least it's also a window, I thought.  But, as I discovered, it wasn't just "also a window"; it was also an Economy Plus seat, the sort of seat that they give you a formerly-normal-coach amount of legroom in.  Sweeeet!  It had a defective screen at first (also, did you know that United's inflight entertainment runs on Linux?  I learned this from the errors!), but that somehow magically repaired itself after Peter texted me to get a flight attendant on the case.  As we took off, the captain informed us that our flight time was going to be a full hour early into Stockholm, so maybe those taxis would be no problem.  Maybe the Metro wasn't a premonition at all, I thought, as I watched Frozen and Who's Line Is It Anyway, and then drifted into a fitful couple hours of sleep.

We did get in an hour early, which meant that I had time for such luxuries as "going to the bathroom" before I headed on the train.  The train was gorgeous and new.  And the ticket person immediately assumed I was Swedish, greeting me with a cheery "Hey, hey!" (actually "hej", but it's pronounced identically and is adorable).  I've honestly been very curious about whether people would do that.  On my previous journey, nearly everyone assumed I was German (I remember this being particularly true in Frankfurt... which is entertainingly coincidental given that my actual German ancestors were actually from very near to Frankfurt).  However, all Americans constantly believe me to be Scandinavian (which is, in fact, false, according to my research).  I figured Scandinavians would be a good test case.  If they went by statistics alone, I should be Scandinavian.  But if my appearance strongly suggested that I was German, they should assume that.

Oh, and no one should assume I'm American, as no Americans ever travel internationally.  People seem to be pleasantly surprised when I say I'm American.  I know our own self-perception of us as international travelers is terrible, but in reality, although we're perceived to be uncultured and somewhat brash, we're also perceived to be exceedingly generous, outgoing, and cheerful.  We're the kind of people you'd like to get a drink with.  People are alarmed by our use of guns and the death penalty, but, well, if you're someone interested in traveling abroad, you're probably also alarmed by our use of guns and the death penalty, so that's nice.

I got to the central train station, and by this point was somewhat unsurprised to find that the ferry's official bus was pulling into the station about five minutes after I showed up to take people to the ferry.  I bought my ticket and got whisked off, then boarded the ferry, which is a nice, new, small little cruiseliner with free wireless internet.  Nifty!

There was not much to the ferry ride... it was longer than the plane ride, but there was WiFi, so that helped.  Also, lots of loud, bellowing groups of Swedes and Finns who were about the age of my parents but liked to take about four shots each at 1pm.  Also, there was a woman who looked like a witch.  She had a long, flowing black cloak, hair down to her knees and also sticking straight up a half a meter or so above her head.  I would've taken a picture if I hadn't known I'm completely incapable of being inconspicuous.  She was kind of terrifying.

Finally, I stepped out onto the ground in Turku, and my friend Essi came right over.  Apparently my smiling face was conspicuous amid the crowd of boisterous yet somehow still dour Nordic faces around me.  She and I boarded a bus for downtown Turku, and stopped at what she explained is Finland's answer to McDonald's.  We then had an entertaining exchange with a cashier wherein all were flummoxed (but me) that somehow my card does not have a chip in it (things that are found in every single card other than those issued in the US), and talked about the tragedy that is people who have a Harry Potter character who is someone other than Hermione (though Neville could pass by our estimation).  I'm now in her apartment, trying to slow down and get ready to obey my body's instructions: SLEEP.  SLEEP NOW.  Good night!

06 Aug 2012: Adieu to Europe

06 Aug 2012:

Adieu to Europe

Freiburg am Breisgau, Baden-Württemburg, Germany/Saint-Louis, Alsace, France/Amsterdam, North Holland, the Netherlands/Detroit, Michigan, USA/Lansing, Michigan, USA

H: 19/20/19/27/29 L: 16/16/16/14/12 Weather: Showers/Showers/Rain/Clear/Clear

I couldn't believe that I was leaving Europe already, but, unfortunately, it was the case.  Chris and I set off fairly early in the morning so I could see more of Freiburg than I had already.  We tried to budget ourselves some time, but, of course, given that it was a morning, both of us were moving pretty slowly.  We were also stymied by the ridiculous hours kept by some of the stores of Freiburg.  I wanted to get my brother an official U. Freiburg t-shirt, and their official store was open for about three hours in the early afternoon of Tuesdays and Thursdays...?!  I did get to see the city center in the day, though, which was nice.  What a lovely town.

Chris looking super sexy.  I have no idea why I'm so shiny.

Chris is pretty much the best tour guide in the whole world, besides being a fantastic person in general.  Hooray and schwa for Chris!

By this time, it was time for us to head back to his dorm to pick up my stuff.  Once we got there, though, I realized how close I was cutting it.  It would not be good for me to start my trip back to the US by missing the bus that would get me to my plane to get to my plane to get to my plane to get to Lansing.  No sirree.  We ended up sprinting through Freiburg, and I felt so rushed that I ended up having him take my money and run to the bus stop ahead of me and my luggage to pay for my ticket.  Luckily, desperate measures were not needed, and I made it on the bus with just about exactly a minute to spare.  Whew!  I said my goodbyes to Chris, then headed to the EuroAirport.

The EuroAirport, despite being, officially, the "EuroAirport Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg", is actually a ways outside Freiburg, 70km away.  So I had about an hour bus ride to get there.  After a bit of a struggle to actually get my tickets, I passed through security fine. (I did almost lose half of my identification documents in the scanner, but luckily some unknown force made me look back and see that they had fallen out of my travel belt.)  Then I had an agenda: I needed an Orangina.

Orangina is one of my fondest memories from my first trip to Europe.  Every restaurant we went to, it seemed, offered the deliciousness that is Orangina.  (For those who don't know, Orangina is an orange pop that has 1) real orange juice, 2) some pulp, and 3) probably crack or something in it.  Seriously, give it a try.)  And I hadn't seen it at all on my second trip to Europe.  If I had seen it, I would've had one, trust me.

But, finally, in EuroAirport, I sighted my prey in a vending machine.  I paid however much it cost, then quaffed it almost immediately.

Sweet orangey goodness.  The only drawback was the plastic bottle that it came in, rather than the original funny-shaped glass one :(

My flight from EuroAirport to Amsterdam was uneventful, besides learning that I could apparently gate-check my carry-on that was too large for European standards.  In Schiphol, I realized I had only gotten my first ticket in EuroAirport, not my other two, so I had to print off my next two tickets at a KLM counter.  This probably makes me one of the few people in the world to have a KLM-branded Detroit to Lansing ticket.  Once more, I went through the at-gate security too early and ended up waiting around to no good end, though at least this time my layover was shorter than my previous one to Glasgow.  (I'm not sure why everyone is so obsessed with Schiphol.  Maybe others have longer layovers that make it seem like they don't have to get to the gate so early.)

My flight from Amsterdam to Detroit was fairly similar to mine in the reverse direction. My seatmate was not as awesome as mine on the way over, but he was still pretty cool; he was a professor of marketing from Wayne State returning from a conference in India.  He said he had taken an extra day in Amsterdam on the way back just because he could, and was as disappointed as I was by the prices of Amsterdam museums. (He seemed to like the Van Gogh one better than me, though.)  We had a friendly chat for a while, then I turned my attentions to the entertainment console, identical to the one on the flight over.

Going east to west, you're supposed to stay up rather than sleeping.  Thus, in quick succession, I watched the Hunger Games (good!  followed the book very closely, which I was impressed with), The Ides of March (good, if depressing), and Captain America (alright, but by this time I probably would've thought that YouTube video of the panda cub sneezing looped a bunch of times would've been quality entertainment).  And finished it up with an episode of Parks and Recreation for good measure.  Alright.

The plane landed in Detroit, and then the wonderful process that is "US Customs" began.  I think I was there for about an hour and a quarter, or something like that, which was not fun.  In line, I chatted with my seatmate and a woman returning to the US from a week in Vienna, where her son and his girlfriend were staying.  One of the wonderful things about not having a checked bag was how much easier it was to stroll through security after the initial check, but, of course, I had to wait in line behind everyone who had like five checked bags.

Oddly, though, after going through customs, I had to leave security entirely and then go back in again.  To make matters worse, I thought I had misplaced my Detroit to Lansing ticket.  (At this point, I was having a very hard time braining.)  So, I went and printed a ticket at one of the check-in booths, only to find that it was proudly branded "DTW-->LAN".  So, obviously, the security guards would conclude that I was flying just from Detroit to Lansing!  How embarrassing!  (Like I said, I was having problems braining.)  Luckily, though, I somehow re-found my KLM-branded ticket to Lansing, and proudly showed it off at security.  They seemed unimpressed by my awesomeness.

My first dinner back on US soil was a cheeseburger at Fuddrucker's, because, for serious, Fuddrucker's.  Then I got on board the flight to Lansing.  I was picked up there by my soul sister, Jessica, and my friend Jaya, who I'm quite grateful to for doing that for me, because I'm not exactly sure what happened the rest of the night except for realizing when I got to my apartment that the trash can had disappeared from my kitchen.

As it should be clear—at the very least, from my going back to complete this even more than a month after I actually got back—I had a fantastic time in Europe.  Thanks to everyone who made it possible, from the funding for the travel to the people who made staying in hostels and seeing the sites wonderful!  Lessons learned:

• No matter how well-planned your itinerary is, things will still fail.
• That said, a well-planned itinerary can still be a wonderful thing.
• Make sure to have a cell phone that works in the countries you're visiting.
• Trust the sites that have crowdsourced reviews—they know what they're talking about.
• Muesli is delicious in yogurt.
• Croissants are a wonderful breakfast food.
• The best way to make friends is to mention food.
• Europeans don't believe in "fast casual" dining, so, either get take-out or realize you'll be there forever.
• When in doubt, public transit workers are often kind or helpful if you're lost.  Sometimes even both!
• Minnesotans sound like gay Germans to Europeans.  (Possibly even gay Jewish Germans.)

Thanks for sticking through with my blog.  I loved writing it!  As should be clear from my Facebook status updates, I'm having a fantastic time at grad school.  I hope your fall is off to a great start!  Thanks for helping make my life absolutely wonderful!  :)

Flails,

Chris

18 Jul 2012: Circadian Rhythms Jhghghhhghgh

Howdy!  It's currently 19:24 in Glasgow, and I'm trying to force myself to stay awake until 21:00 so that I don't completely mess up my Circadian rhythms beyond hope of recovery.  This actually worked really well the first time I went to Europe—they forced us to keep moving until 20:30 and then sent us to bed, I had some of the most amazing hours of sleep in my life, then woke up with my Circadian rhythms completely fixed and ready to start my previous Europe trip—so, hey, hopefully it works again?  I figured writing a blog post would give me something productive to do that wouldn't involve me, I don't know, trying to write a manuscript at ???!?!??!?!?! o' clock in my head.  But my apologies if I'm near-incoherent at time.  Based on the emails I sent at rhombus o' clock from Amsterdam, I apparently start using bigger words when I am tired.

Also, wtf, 70 pageviews?  You people are ridiculous! <3

So, let's see, how have travels gone?  Shockingly, the flight from LAN to DTW was uneventful, except the gate we waited at was un-air-conditioned for no apparent reason.  Our departure from DTW was then delayed for about an hour because our cabin was too hot for Delta travel guidelines.  Well done Michigan!  Detroit's temperature of 38C at the time was the hottest in the country, according to the CNN feed I saw on one of the in-terminal monitors.

This is the only picture I took yesterday in the US.

Once we finally got onto the plane, I got stuck next to a chatty guy.  Now, you know me - normally I'm happy to chat it up.  But usually I like to read on plane rides and just use them as a time to disconnect and destress; they were wonderful times to use to write down reflections of different grad school visits this spring.  Plus, I wanted to try to sleep on the plane, at least a little bit.

This time, though, it was different.  It turns out the guy I was sitting next to was pretty awesome.  For one, he has the best birthday in the whole world.  (Along with Madonna.  And me.)  Which I thought was a pretty awesome coincidence.  But he also lived in the DC area for 40 years (went to Georgetown for grad school and stayed there until retirement) and absolutely loved classical music - in his house in Dayton, Ohio (where he grew up and retired to.  protip guys: retiring somewhere cheap is a good idea!), he has more than 6000 classical music CDs and 4000 classical records.  He was headed to Amsterdam to connect to a flight to Budapest to begin a journey down the Danube, which would complete a trans-European river extravaganza he had planned.

So, like, three hours into the flight, I realized we were almost half-way into the flight and I hadn't attempted to sleep or made use of the plane's entertainment features.  Oh, yeah, those: zomg.  Everyone had their own little remote control they could use to control the TV in front of them, where we had like 40 movies to choose from and 40 TV episodes it was all so CRAZY and even while I was having fun let's-talk-about-Osmo-Vänskä time I was also like "I JUST WANT TO WATCH 20 OF THESE MOVIES RIGHT NOW" so eventually I just kind of was like "welp I should probably go to a quiet place so that I can pretend to rest some" and watched "Hugo" (which was good!) and then attempted to sleep for an hour but it wasn't very effective.  Meanwhile my awesome seatmate watched Office Space, because he was awesome.

The one drawback to the entertainment system: they had a single episode of Game of Thrones to watch.  Okay, cool, makes sense.  And what was that one episode?  Season 1.  Episode 9.

Season 1.  Episode 9.  w.  t.  f.  FAIL.

Tragically, though, I failed to swap contact information with him.  In fact, I never even got his name, I don't think.  Argh.  I really need to not do that, because yay for friends from all over the world :\

Anyway, as we were landing, awesome seatmate was like "I don't remember Schiphol being all that big" but of course it was huge.  The first thing that Schiphol remended me of was vanilla chapstick, because I think the cleaner they used smelled like it.  I wandered over to my gate and gave my awesome seatmate a manly handshake as we parted ways.  Then I did something really stupid: I wandered over to my gate and went through the random passport checkpoint they had there to sequester all the UK-bound passengers on KLM flights in one area.

Yeah, no.  Don't do that.  Not right away.

Can you spot the semantically-implausible syntactic ambiguity?

You see, I had about a four hour layover. When I landed, the only thing I could think of was "I have to go to the bathroom REAL BAD". So, when I was looking for a bathroom outside the passport perimeter and saw that the first one I located had a long line (i.e., it had one), I immediately thought to myself, "Aha! There will be one through the checkpoint!" and went through right away and it turned out I was the opposite of correct because it turns out that the men's bathroom inside the checkpoint area was entirely closed and so now I was stuck in an area where there was one overpriced snack vendor and nothing to do and AUGH.

I did fix the bathroom issue (there was a unisex one) and the nothing to do issue (free wireless internet in Schiphol?!) but the food issue ended up being anti-fixed because one reason I thought it was okay to go through security was that they said they were going to feed me lunch on the Amsterdam-->Glasgow plane but then "lunch" was A TINY BAG OF SALT-AND-PEPPER CRACKERS WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN??? (crackers with salt and pepper on them. my Minnesotan sensibilities were offended by the pepper.) Also American carry-on standards are apparently quite different from European ones so I had to be "that guy" who puts his bag in sideways into the overhead bins. The one redeeming thing about Schiphol was that there was a guy with a copy of Storm of Swords, but he wasn't even reading it.
So by the time I get to Glasgow I'm cranky and hungry and frustrated and sleep-deprived, but at the same time I'm exhilarated and excited and enthusiastic and ready to jump around because there's people around me talking in SCOTTISH ACCENTS like that's a PERFECTLY REASONABLE THING TO DO.  What on earth is that about?  So I get cash, get lunch from a lovely lass named Lindsay, then head out the door and onto the Glasgow bus, where I have to ask, in the most pathetic way possible, "What do I do?" to the bus driver to make my way to the place where I'm staying.

One of the things that struck me about important trips before, and international travel in particular, is how interesting the difference is between the perspective of the traveler and everyone else around them.  For me, this is a really important day: it's the start of an exciting and awesome new adventure, a fitting end to my undergraduate career and start to my graduate, where I'll be visiting awesome places in Europe and having a lot of fun.  For most everyone else who got on board that bus as it wended its way through Glasgow, it was Wednesday.  (Worse yet, I was taking up slightly more than a seat with my bags, and whenever I'm doing that a cute old granny sits next to me, and I have to dislodge her from her seat to get out.  argh.)

EU = Holiday Inn = Scotland?

So, Glasgow.  Fun fact, Americans: you know how weather this summer has been hot, sunny, and dry?  Well, Europe's had the opposite of that.

You know what are fun?  25C temperature drops from departure to arrival.

So it's in the low teens here, with occasional rain.  Pretty lovely.  Glasgow itself is very... er, industrial.  I think it's the European equivalent of, say, Toledo, or Lansing, or Rochester, or whatnot.  Some buildings are not without their charm, but overall I wasn't particularly impressed, besides the novelty of OMG THEY'RE NOT AMERICAN BUILDINGS YAY.

To help keep myself away, I took myself on a walk up to the conference location for tomorrow and then visited the close-by Hunterian Museum, which was pretty alright (and free!).  Apparently, though, all museums in Glasgow close at 5, so I didn't see the Kelvingrove Museum, which is supposed to be better.

Siamese deer say "och aye" to that!

Wow this is a long post.  Okay.  Anyway.  Now I'm at my accommodations, which are really just a dorm room that was vacant for the summer and was thus rented out.  That works great for me; I get Intarwebs and dorm-style living, which is basically what I'm used to, so it's nbd.  And it's cheap!  Yay for cheap.  And convenient.

Tomorrow, the first day of the conference and presentation time!

Flails,

Chris

17 Jul 2012: Setting Off

Pretty much the entirety of my life for the next 20 days has been put into these bags.  The exception, of course, being Nikola, as I'm not very good at typing on a keyboard inside a backpack.  What a weird thought.  You might not find this so extraordinary, you people who do outdoorsy things and commune with nature and whatnot, but for me this is rather abnormal.  It may shock you, but I tend to overpack a bit.  I once went to quiz bowl nationals (a weekend quiz bowl tournament in Chicago) with a bag I would've had to check if we had flown, because I decided I was somehow going to sort through all my college spam that weekend.  (Instead, I went to a Mexican restaurant that I didn't want to go to and was grounded for it and, unrelatedly, played Mafia with Mississippi girls.  Long story.)

In any case, I'm going to be doing laundry in sinks and stuff, which will be an exciting and new experience.  I largely followed the advice of people who had done it before online.  They all say to be sure to fit everything in a single carry-on and leave at least some of your bag empty for souvenirs along the way.  I'm not exactly sure how they managed to do that.  My bag is pretty much full, and I followed their instructions as well as I could.  The only exception is clothes; I have a couple extra long-sleeve shirts because it's so much cooler over there than here, and my clothes are a bit dressier (--> heavier) because I'm presenting at a conference and everything.  (current temperature here: 36C.  current temperature in Glasgow: 13C.  also, sorry this blog is in metric, so there.)  They must have magical powers of cramming stuff into suitcases or something.

Speaking of advice, one thing I remembered from my Europe trip four years ago was to not wear anything with English writing on it or else you'll be branded as an awful tourist.  (Well, maybe not in the UK, but it just so happens that almost all of my clothing with English writing has an American placename on it.)  So the only non-collared long-sleeve shirt I have that doesn't have English on it is this one:

Aww yeah.  I don't know if I'm going to be brave enough to wear it like that, but luckily it's easily reversible - the only tag is on the side.  Alternatively I'll just buy something over there, but given my extreme distaste about entering clothing stores I'm not sure I'm going to be brave enough to do so.

Also, speaking of four years ago, we were also misinformed then to the purposes of a travel belt - we were told to use it for everything, but instead you're supposed to wear it somewhere inconvenient and store petty cash in your wallet.  Huh.  Funny how that works.

So, anyway, this will be my travel blog, and hopefully I'll update it about on a daily basis.  In less than an hour, I'll be being picked up by the incomparable Mark Bogner to head to the Lansing airport.  I'll be flying from there to Detroit, where I have about an hour between flights.  From Detroit I head to Amsterdam.  It'll be interesting flying trans-Atlantic again.  The last time I did, I only got about an hour and a half of sleep.  Maybe I'll get more now because I'll have a window seat and can lean against the window?  Also my sleep habits have definitely gone downhill a lot since high school.  In Amsterdam, I have about a four-hour layover.  Then I go to Glasgow.  (pronounced /glæz.gow/ - "a" as in "apple", "s" as in "is", "ow" as in "tow")  Oddly enough, despite being only a half an hour longer than my flight from Lansing to Detroit, lunch will be served on the plane from Amsterdam to Glasgow.  wtf.  Hooray for living in America, where we get budget service for big-name carrier prices.

The next time I'm sure I'll have internet access will be afternoon EST on Thursday, but I'll try to write down something tomorrow so you don't get two days in one post?  Maybe?

Flails,

Chris