Ultra Slavonic

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June 21, 2005

europe, at last

I know you've been wondering what's taken me so long to get my Europe photos up. I can only assure you that I'm just as far behind on my other things as on my blog. For example, today I've been writing emails following up on a May 18 meeting, and I still have other things left over from early May!

It's been quite chilly and rainy in Moscow the past few days. Keeps the mosquitos and gnats away, though.

So, my trip.

Flew to London on Aeroflot, which once again had quite acceptable service. We flew in over the center of the city at night, which was quite a sight. I saw the Tower Bridge and everything. Since I arrived on a Sunday, once I took the train to Paddington Station and started walking to my hostel, the place was eerily deserted. It all looked very nice and clean and reminded me of Scandinavia.

Here's a picture from the next morning, taken from the window of the room I stayed in:

That's the inside of the city block. More scenic, but no less Mary Poppins looking, from the outside:

The next morning, the city was just as deserted because it was a bank holiday. There were just lots of lost American tourists wandering around, having just arrived or getting ready to depart.

Flew to Croatia with a bunch of Britons going on holiday. The middle-aged women next to me were taking full advantage of the free alcohol, drinkings lots of port wine.

Arrived in Dubrovnik, immediately thinking Croatia looks a lot like California. It probably looks a lot like Italy too. Went straight to the conference, where I was greeted by a bunch of Croatian library school students (mostly girls) running the registration desk. Here's a picture of me with some of them later at the conference. If you're really interested, there's more photos of cute Croatian girls and the conference (including the part I missed) in the photo gallery.

Maybe Croatians are Slavic by heritage, but they're a world apart from your average Russian girl: they're outgoing, even shake your hand, and speak English fluently (thanks, I later learned, to films and movies beind subtitled rather than dubbed). They showed me the way to the hostel where I was also staying and invited me to go with them to hang out with the others at the beach that evening. So at around 11 p.m., we climbed down the old, steep stairs on the rock cliff under a nearby hotel and went to the little beach below. They sat around, singing Croatian songs I don't know, and I determined that I could understand about 30% of what they were saying in Croatian.

Here's a view of that same beach during the daytime, from above:

During a break in the conference, they took us to the Old City for a tour of the main archive, where we got to see selections from their valuable holdings. Here the head archivist was showing us some of their prized collections:

Since he talked for quite some time, I took a few photos out the window:

Basically, the whole Old City is devoted to tourists today, so the streets seem to have only tourists and those working in the tourist industry walking on them. I never saw one beggar, so I'm not sure what the Croatians do with them. However, regular people do live in the city, and you can see their normal houses if you walk up any of the narrow streets.

It really is "up" since the whole walled Old City is like a bowl, so no matter where you walk from the big main street and square above, you go up.

Walked around a bit and took some photos reminding me of the computer game Myst.

The next day we got a tour of the city library, which also has valuable holdings. There's even a portrait of the first city librarian:

But they also have what, if I remember correctly, is the oldest printed book in the Glagolitic script (used for the first written Croatian):

Had an opportunity to explore the city a bit more. On my last day, I walked around the city wall. Here's some photos of the spectacular views:

Oh, and here's a photo of a strange, large statue near the conference center. I got the impression it had been temporarily relocated there but then forgotten:

Flew back to London and took a bus to Oxford to meet up with a guy I know from Michigan who's studying there. Oxford is a nice little town, but really not as spectacular as I expected. Nearly all the colleges look the same (which is somewhat intentional, since you couldn't be a real college unless your buildings were sandstone as well). I was also surprised how many tourists—American and not—visit Oxford. Who knew it was such a popular destination? Apparently it has become quite a bit more popular since the Harry Potter movies because some scene was filmed in the dining room of Christ Church.

So despite being a bit underinspired, I did snag one picture worth showing that gives you a taste of it. Here are some students playing croquette. This was serious, not some girlie sport, as the governor of California might say.

In Oxford I did get to see what a pub is like and almost got to go to a "bop", which is a college-sanctioned party. But it was Saturday night, not Friday night. Oops. I learned so many new things about English on this trip. I had seen lists of Britishisms before and so knew about the most obvious ones. Others were plastered on t-shirts for American tourists, like "Mind the gap" (when getting out of the subway, as opposed to "Watch your step"). But the one I didn't expect at all is "Way out" for "Exit". Actually, it's not always "Way out": when you climb to the top of St. Paul's, the signs say "Way down"! But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Back in London, I checked into a different hostel located in Holland Park, which always has lots of people relaxing, especially with their dogs. So they provide these:

So now, some photos of London:

The road to Buckingham Palace, behind the arch above:

On Sunday afternoon I went to Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park, which has a long tradition of free speech. People gather there to speak and can discuss anything they want as long as they don't defame the queen. If you ever go to London, it's definitely worth stopping by. For example, this chap was decrying global capitalism, led by the US, and telling us quite passionately about the one true democracy in the world, Venezuela, whose oil the US is trying to steal.

Not totally sure about this guy. Should have asked:

This mysterious ladder with sign was soon mounted by an eccentric fellow—you know, compared to the others!—who made all sorts of jokes and occasionally took a swig of olive oil.

Here's a view from when I did climb St. Paul's:

Went to the Tower of London, which it turns out is less of a tower than I imagined. It's like the Kremlin in many ways, only smaller. Here's a view as you're entering of my favorite building in London. It's new, and people often call it the Gherkins pickle:

The Tower Bridge:

I sneaked a picture in Westminster Abbey:

Took the Eurostar to Brussels and found my way to Leuven. A cute little city:

Our conference was in this cute little castle at the edge of town, not far from a posh suburb that a Swedish colleague described as being like Wysteria Lane in Desperate Housewives:

On the left, said Swedish colleague, from Uppsala, who I first met in Lund in April. She did an interesting dissertation in linguistics on OCRing old text, and now does electronic publishing. In the middle is a young sociologist from Montreal studying in Toronto who studies open source communities. On the right is a guy who I also met in Lund from the very tip of the heel of Italy now working for CERN in Geneva. Not all electronic publishing specialists are so attractive.

On the way back to Moscow, we flew in an Il-96, which had more room inside than I've ever seen on a commercial airliner. Service was again fine, but I was puzzled by the one flight attendant who went down the aisle handing out migration cards for non-Russian citizens. She said in Russian, "Migration cards" as she handed them out, and I was thinking, "Will those who don't speak Russian understand her?" She came to my aisle, where a non-Russian-speaking British woman was sitting. This woman obviously knew to expect a card, so she raised her hand. The flight attendant asked her in Russian, "Migration card?" The woman said "passport", knowing that she needed something for her passport. The flight attendant then asked her, again in Russian, "Are you a Russian citizen?" When the woman clearly didn't understand her a second time, she handed her a card and continued walking down the aisle. Typical Russian customer service, but it seems to me that if there was one job on board that required you to speak English, it would be handing out migration cards. After all, we can get by with drinks and food by pointing.

Posted by kshawkin at June 21, 2005 10:46 PM

Comments

Posted by: gzombie at June 22, 2005 11:21 AM

Posted by: gzombie at June 23, 2005 02:47 AM

Posted by: Shihwe at June 23, 2005 07:35 PM