Dusk Through Narrow Streets

It’s really kind of funny–before this year, I’d done a significant amount of travel all over the US (though mostly to the same areas–Florida five or six times, Hawaii about eight times, family repeatedly in Washington, Nebraska, Montana, Minnesota, and of course there’s travel within Alaska), but the only foreign country I’d ever visited was Canada. I’d been to at least a couple territories in it, at least, but that was it, unless you count visiting the French embassy in D.C. or the tiny piece of British territory at the Captain Cook Monument in Hawaii.

Within the space of a year–well, six months, actually–I added five more countries to my list and became something of a jaded international traveler (making the 20+-hour trip from Anchorage to Istanbul is a little nerve-wracking; going back and then, a couple weeks later, making the same trip back to London is just exhausting). My passport isn’t close to being wrinkled and dog-eared from use the way I’d kind of like it to be, but at least it’s got stamps from every country I’ve visited save Scotland, which is something.

I suppose partly I hate buses because I absolutely cannot sleep on them. And trust me, I’ve tried; my very first genuine long-distance bus trip was from Pittsburgh to DuBois this summer, when I was running on…I don’t even know, 36 hours without sleep by that point? The bus was virtually empty, as such things often are with a route like that (same for the Norwich-London route; that was just me and the driver for a while on the way back), so I did the logical thing and stretched out across a couple seats, assuming I was so exhausted, surely I’d be able to sleep.

Yeah, not so much. To begin with, two seats is only just long enough to be not long enough, and if you try to curl up, prop your feet up on the window, or just let your feet dangle, some part of your body will fall asleep, which isn’t conducive to you actually falling asleep. Propping your feet up on the seat across the aisle sort of works, at least a little longer, but you have to move every time someone wants to come by, which isn’t conducive to sleeping either. That’s if there are extra seats, of course, and my 10-hour trips to and from Edinburgh, and my I-don’t-remember-how-many-hours to and from Birmingham for the Coldplay concert, were absolutely packed without a single extra seat.

Sitting up and leaning against the window is no good; there are too many hard, sharp angles, and even if you avoid those, touching your head to the window instantly conveys every single rattle and vibration from the entire bus right into your bones, which is enough to keep you awake even if you didn’t clock your head on the window every time the bus jolts over, like, a crack in the pavement.  And unlike on airplanes or even trains, there are almost never any tray tables, which for someone like me who can only do airplane-sleeping with her head on a pillow on said tray table, that’s not good.

Oh. And did I mention jolting over cracks in the pavement? Yeah, well, buses are kind of big and clunky. Every little movement seems to be exaggerated exponentially, so you’re getting jostled all the time if it’s not steadily going down the highway. Which it’s usually not since it’s always making stops along its route.

Because, you know, that’s exactly what you think of when you think of Christmas. :p I’m lazy, okay? I should probably talk about Christmastime in Norwich and why that’s prettier than here, but whatever.

So: coach travel. That basically means long-distance travel by bus. Since my last post on the suckiness that is coach travel, I also spent another 4+ hours in a bus going back to London. (That was more fun than the journey from Heathrow to Gatwick, but we’ll get to that some other time.) And it is not fun. Trains are slightly better, and airplanes even more so, even though airplane travel can’t really be classed as “fun” unless you’re clinically insane or something. Because the thing is, if a bus is moving forward at a pretty steady rate of speed, that’s not so bad; it’s maybe a little more uneven for moving around or sitting still than you might like, but it’s okay. But any time the bus slows down or turns? Well, if you’re trying to sleep, you will be thrown half off the seat, and if you’re walking to the lavatory or in the lavatory…yeah, good luck not brusing yourself or worse.

I spent a lot of time in Turkey craving an ordinary American sandwich–you know, like something from Subway or even just some lunch meat, cheese (cheddar, please God, not feta), and lettuce slapped between a couple pieces of bread. I didn’t expect to have the same problem in England.

Oh, they’ve got Subway there; I broke down and bought something at Subway more than once. It’s the cold prepackaged sandwiches that baffle me. At least in the UK (not so much elsewhere–I had the worst time trying to find some basic sandwiches to save for later when I was in Marseille and Katowice), every place you look–ASDA, Tesco, Boots Pharmacy, truck/bus stops, campus food outlets, you name it–seems to have the same basic selection, and that selection is very, very weird. For starters they all have mayonnaise. All of them. And the kinds…okay, well, put it this way: “prawn cocktail” is not going to be a common prepackaged-sandwich variety in the US. It is in England.  (It’s disgusting, too. Trust me on that one.) I’m…blanking on some others. Just believe me that they’re odd. All I wanted was something basic: some bread, some meat, some normal cheese, some lettuce and maybe some other veggies like a couple tomato slices. That’s easy to find here. In England? Near impossible.

In all my whinging about RyanAir, I forgot one major annoyance, aside from the lack of seat pockets (all solid plastic back there), advertising anywhere, no free anything, and stupid sheeple: when you’re in the lavatory, NO ONE WILL LEAVE YOU ALONE. Seriously. Somebody opened the door on me on my first RyanAir flight, and I thought I’d somehow forgot to lock it, which is nearly impossible in an airplane lavatory since the lock usually controls the light. After that I made sure I remembered to lock it, and on a later flight…yep, I actually saw the lock sliding toward the unlock position. You know, like a flight attendant or something was unlocking it. Without knocking. I seem to remember someone trying the door and saying something, and I yelled back because apparently no one will hear you otherwise, except clearly they didn’t anyway. And even when stupid flight attendants weren’t unlocking the door on me, people would try to open the door while I was in there. You know, instead of knocking, or–here’s a wild idea–looking at the little sign on the door that very clearly says “Occupied” when it’s locked. (Okay, so not everyone on RyanAir flights speaks English. I don’t care. Some things are really, really basic, and airplane lavatories are the same everywhere.)

Wow, that was…an incredibly long journey. Felt like longer and more tiring than my Anchorage-Istanbul trip or Anchorage-Norwich, even though I think both of those were a longer period of hours. See, the problem was that I was behind on all my coursework, so in the days leading up to leaving for home, I think my longest night of sleep was 7 hours, and that was Friday night; night before that I had six, and then five, and then three. I stayed up late a lot doing homework, yeah. And then I got five hours the night before I flew out from Gatwick because it took so very long to get to my b&b.

I got in Sunday night at midnight, though, and I was about falling asleep standing up at that point, and then of course it took half of forever to get my bags back, and then I had to finish my last paper and send it in because I’d had no internet up until then. So I got to bed aroud 3 a.m. And then I didn’t wake up until 5 p.m., and I was up for six hours before I was dizzy-tired enough to go back to bed. Today I got up at 9 a.m., although I haven’t done much today but whatever.

Anyway, the point is, I’m done traveling, but I’m not done writing. This is still a travel blog even if I’m not living overseas. I have lots of things from England etc. I never talked about, and when I run out of that, I have plenty to natter on about from my various earlier travels. And failing that? Well, I live in Alaska. I’m sure I’ll keep coming up with something.

Most of what’s annoying about RyanAir is to be expected, really; they are very cheap, so they have to make up for that in every possible way, by charging for any checked luggage and plastering their airplanes with ads and all that sort of thing. The more annoying part is that the people who fly RyanAir seem to be pretty uniformly–well, stupid. I don’t know if I just think this because I’ve been on airplane flights pretty regularly since I was very young and therefore know exactly what I’m doing, which means I might have a bit of a “lol noobs” attitude towards less experienced travelers…or if it’s because people really are stupid.

I mean, I totally understand hanging on every word of the safety lecture if you aren’t familiar with it. At least that stuff is mildly important. And, okay, since RyanAir doesn’t do reserved seats and loads from both ends of the plane, it can be difficult to find a seat, which I suppose explains–but doesn’t excuse–the seemingly inevitable pushing and shoving past each other that happens as everyone is getting onboard (though frankly I think there’s never a good enough reason to have several people going in opposite directions in those tiny airplane aisles).

But look: it does not take much knowledge of air travel to understand that bags you can’t or don’t want to store in the overhead bins go under the seat in front of you. Not under your seat. Not between your feet. Not in your lap. Under the seat in front of you. That’s what it’s for. There’s even a bar so you can’t put crap under your own seat. Even that is more easily remembered from experience, I suppose, but this is common sense: you really don’t want your bag in your lap or under your feet for two and a half hours. There is room under the seat in front of you. It’s totally empty. Squash your bag in there. Seriously. I can think of at least five women just in the rows around me who spent the entire flight from Katowice, Poland, to the London-Stansted airport with their bags either in their laps or under their feet.

And really? I know even on more normal flights people start unbuckling their seatbelts before the fasten-seatbelt sign goes off at the gate. But whipping off your seatbelt and standing up while the plane’s still moving down the runway? As the flight attendant is making an announcement, at that very second, that you shouldn’t take off your seatbelts yet? COME ON PEOPLE. THIS IS COMMON SENSE. YOU ARE NOT FIVE YEARS OLD. SIT THE FRACK DOWN AND SHOW JUST A TINY BIT OF PATIENCE, GEEZ.

Oh. And when they keep proudly telling us “We’ve arrived 20 minutes ahead of schedule!” and remind us they have the best on-time-arrival rate of all European airlines? Sod off. I’m convinced they just pad their arrival times for that very reason.

Yes, RyanAir is cheap, especially if you actually manage to hit one of their sales right so you get a seat for free/£1/£5/£10 instead of “free, but oh wait here’s 30+ pounds of taxes and fees and crap”. There’s a reason they’re so cheap. Most other airlines will not plaster seat backs and overhead bins with advertising, nor will they make you pay even for drinks. They also generally use jetways instead of making you walk through the rain or whatever to the plane–although, bizarrely enough, on the flight from Katowice to Stansted, they loaded everyone into a bus and drove us, like, 50 yards to the airplane. It was definitely no longer than I’d walked on my other RyanAir flights and maybe even shorter. It was totally weird.

Normal airlines also don’t use pre-recorded announcements or radio advertisements over the intercom, which are awesome if you’re trying to sleep. Nor do they play loops of really annoying music while everyone’s boarding. They fly into non-podunk airports. And maybe most importantly…normal airlines don’t seem to have a client base made almost entirely of STUPID PEOPLE.

Will expand on this later. Need bed now.

Until this summer, I’d never done much travel by bus to speak of (or international travel, but I think we’ve covered that). Then I ended up having to use an affiliate of Greyhound to get from Pittsburgh to DuBois, PA, where my best friend lives, and of course the same thing going back. That was…what, four hours? Five? I forget. Mostly I’ve traveled everywhere by airplane, with some driving by my dad when needed.

And then I got here, where travel by coach and train is very common, and first I have the four-hour coach trip from Heathrow to UEA, and then more recently the ten-hour one-way journey to Edinburgh, and then two hours each way to the Stansted airport for my Marseille trip, and yesterday 3-4 hours each way to Birmingham for the Coldplay concert (which was fan-bloody-tastic, by the way). For comparison, I’ve done enormous amounts of airplane travel and not insignificant train travel, in Alaska and then here, plus that trip on the sleeper train to Ankara that was not much fun.

My conclusion? Coach travel sucks.

And…I’m just gonna expand on that later, because I’m lazy and also I need to pack for Poland, ulp.

Things I forgot yesterday, mostly. Again I should preface this with the disclaimer that if I seem to be making sweeping generalizations, I’m really not; I’m just talking out of my nether regions based on stuff I saw in Marseille.

• French people don’t mind graffiti. Mostly I’m assuming this because it was all over in Marseille. Like, normally you’ll see it on bridges and things but often it’s covered up, and of course it’s in bad parts of town or whatever, but in Marseille–practically every flat surface had something scribbled on it, even in reasonably nice areas.
• Church bells toll on the half hour, not the hour. I really don’t know why that might be, but I noticed this enough times to be sure of it.
• There’s a significant crime level in Marseille. Well. Maybe. One site mentioned that it has a reputation for theft and muggings and stuff. Mostly I just noticed what seemed a higher-than-usual concentration of police and a high occurrence of police sirens, plus bars on most ground-floor windows. Also, lots of homeless, which might mean something.
• Lots of shops close on Sundays. And on Mondays, apparently, but not the same ones, so…I really don’t know what conclusion to draw there.
• Most French don’t speak English. I swear I’m not being the ugly American here, okay? I wasn’t expecting lots of English speakers in Turkey, for instance, But I figured, it’s France, it’s in the EU, it’s close to England–probably lots of people speak at least a little English. Well, sure, some do, but at least in Marseille, it was a surprisingly low number. I actually feel like I came across more people with a little English in Turkey than I did in Marseille. Of course, if I visited a more touristy area, I suppose I might have a different experience.

And on that note…I gotta say I’m glad to be back in an English-speaking country. I liked Marseille quite a lot, all things considered, but even two days there had the same effect on me that two weeks in Turkey did: I found myself abruptly homesick for America, where things are familiar and everyone speaks my language. That mostly went away as soon as I got back to England, so apparently the language bit mattered more.