Dusk Through Narrow Streets

I think I mentioned before that I miss Norwich and in many ways it’s Anchorage that is making me miss it. Anchorage is fine, don’t get me wrong, and I like living here; it’s big enough to have reasonable opportunities (for entertainment, employment, friends, outdoor stuff, whatever), small enough to not be overwhelming. But it’s…very new, and very small as cities go. We just hit 300,000 last year and we’re the biggest city in Alaska, so as cities go…we don’t have much soul.

Maybe that’s a weird way to put it, but when I’ve visited cities before that I’ve fallen in love with, it was because I got a sense for the soul of the city. That usually rules out any city whose buildings were constructed mostly in the last fifty years, so Anchorage is definitely out, as was London in this case (I know London has old parts, I just couldn’t find any of them–I saw stuff like the Tower and Big Ben and Trafalgar Square, but virtually everything was so modern it was just boring). Katowice and Marseille had grafitti everywhere and odd courtyards and alleys and cobbled streets. They were kind of exciting and very different. Edinburgh was old, really old, and full of history…plus more cobblestones and alleys. Same for Norwich. And I just eat that stuff up. I love that sense of magic and mystery to a place when you know it’s really seen things. To some extent you can get that even in cities with predominantly modern architecture, at least if you find parts with grafitti on subway tunnels or something. There’s a beauty in the grit and ugliness.

Anchorage is fine, and it’s got mountains and trees and all, but as a city–it doesn’t have enough beauty and history to give it a soul, and it doesn’t have the right kind of ugliness.

Neither did Norwich, for the most part, but despite being roughly the same size as Anchorage if you included the surrounding area, it felt much…cozier. And it sure had a lot more history. (And cobblestone streets and little dark alleyways. Have you got the idea yet that I love those?) I miss that. But the specific thing I’m missing right now, which seems to show up a lot more often in Europe?

Outdoor bare-bulb light displays. I don’t even entirely know how to describe it. Particularly when they criss-cross over a street–this picture I took my last week in Norwich isn’t great (click to enlarge), but it gives you an idea. And I’m sure that sort of thing is done in the US, but I sure haven’t seen it in Anchorage, in part because…well, none of our streets are set up right for it. And I miss it, because it’s pretty, and I don’t see it here.

Now offering e-mail subscriptions to this blog! Come on, you know you want one.

No, seriously, I am more awesome than you. I have photographic proof. Observe:

Yes. I have a baby TARDIS on my dashboard. Isn’t it adorable? My car needed an air freshener anyway because when it isn’t cold, it always smells something like a wet dog, which is odd because to my knowledge my car has never transported a dog, wet or otherwise. So when I found the Television and Movie Store (uh…Darleks? Dude…) across from the Forum in Norwich and discovered that among hordes of other Doctor Who merchandise like action figures and rubbish bins and lunchboxes, they sold air fresheners shaped like little Daleks and TARDISes…well…could you really expect me to resist?

No I’m not a hopeless nerd, I don’t even know what you’re talking about.

Okay, well, maybe this will be considered a bit closer to genuinely awesome and less hopelessly nerdy?

See? Pins all over my backpack from basically everywhere I visited and then some because…I always like the whole vintage-luggage-sticker thing and wish I could do that? Something. So what we’ve got here, not in order because I truly cannot be bothered, is Coldplay, Philadelphia, Barrow, North Slope Borough, Disney World (yes, that’s Stitch in a Hawaiian shirt), Guillemots, Marseille, Cambridge, London, Oxfam, Scotland, Poland, Anchorage, Turkey, a campaign button for my grandpa when he was running for Minnesota governor, and…hm. I have a pin for Codes in the Clouds, too. I’d be rather annoyed if I lost it, because it was cool. And yes, all the ones for bands are of acts that I actually saw live. Because I’m awesome.

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 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.

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.

Things I learned from my day in Marseille (well, actually, I have no idea whether any of these are true, it’s just stuff I observed, so…take with several grains of salt?):

• French people like dogs. A lot. I saw one in a McDonalds, for instance, and also saw a St. Bernard and a Great Dane, both of which are in the small-pony branch of dogs. French people also don’t clean up after their dogs when they poop on the sidewalk. (This might not have been dog doo, actually, but whatever it was, it showed up all over the place.)
• It rains all the time in Marseille. Poured from about noon on yesterday and rained for a while today. At least people here actually deal with this and bring out their umbrellas. On campus in Norwich, where it rains at least once a week, 3/4 of the students will run around in the rain without an umbrella. (And actually the hostel owner tells me it’s sunny 200+ days of the year. Guess it’s…just me then?)
• There are a lot of homeless people here. More than one person was camped out down at the Vieux Port, under an overhang in blankets and sleeping bags and stuff. An old church in the Panier quarter had somebody else’s sleeping bag spread out. Lots of others asking for money. Also some lady in the market tried to talk to me and, like, show me her baby? I assume she wanted money since I don’t speak French. And then she grabbed my sleeve when I was shaking me head, so that was definitely a no.
• Everyone smokes. Oh wait, that’s not a France thing, that’s a FREAKING EVERYONE IN EUROPE thing. I swear, everyone on this gorram continent must have a pack-a-day habit. (At least they don’t do it indoors like in Turkey.)
• Speaking of which, Turkey, or at least Istanbul, apparently takes a lot of its cues from France. Maybe that’s just both being Mediterranean, I don’t know, although technically Istanbul’s not on the Med at all.
• The French do street signs way better than the English. Still not quite as good as in the US, I think, but the main point is that they have street signs at every intersection. It’s wonderful.

I’m actually writing this from Marseille even though I didn’t bring my laptop, because the hostel has a computer with internet you can use for free, which is pretty awesome. The hostel itself seems pretty nice, but I can’t say a whole lot about Marseille itself except that it reminds me more of Turkey than it does of England; it’s been raining pretty much all day. My shoes are still pretty wet. All I really did today was get in, find the hostel, and buy some food at a supermarket, but seeing as I couldn’t sleep at all last night and got up at like 3:30 a.m. to get the coach to the Stansted airport, that’s kind of an accomplishment. (Oddly I’m not completely exhausted. Don’t know why.)