Oxford with a side of Hobnobs: Nobbly, Oaty Biscuit
Written between the times of July 11 and July 16, 2007

I’m not really sure how to begin this for several reasons.
1) So much has transpired it’s overwhelming
2) I’ve been thinking a lot about and I think I want to restructure how I write these blogs. Perhaps I’m a bit burnt out because I spend so much time updating and I’m thinking it’s getting way too detailed and unreadable. Since I see nobody’s reactions to this aside from the comments by my aunts and parents, I kind of want to stop putting so much time into it because writing for an invisible reader is no fun. And after over a month of this, I feel like the novelty has worn off and it’s at a who cares kind of place. Thus, I’m reforming my entries. (In future to make them easier to read.)
3) I just haven’t been in the mood to write. I’ve been having to deal with a lot of crap from school business wise now that I’m connected to email and I’m spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to get places around England so that’s been sucking my energy dry. At least things are finally in English, but the bus/train network isn’t as organized as Austria.

To sum up the rest of the week with my Dad: I left off with our amazing time at Nauchenstein Castle, which is seriously one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been and well worth the trip out to Bavaria to see it. We tended to spend our nights in the old center of Munich and walked around eating gelato. Pleasant ways to spend an evening on vacation.

Above: Spinache Strudel. Blew my mind.

One of our nights in Munich we were sitting, eating the gelato aforementioned, and we started to see at least 5 different bachelor/ bachelorette groups walking around. This number kept growing, and we still aren’t entirely sure what it’s about. They were all wandering around, asking people to sign things, or put on lipstick and kiss the shirt of the groom, or do embarrassing things to each other, and all these groups would just meet each other and talk, interact and disperse. Each group had matching T-shirts and were all different age groups. The highlight was a groom who had a giant, inflatable Shamoo pool toy handcuffed to his ankle, just walking around downtown Munich. We asked the staff at our hotel what that was all about and they didn’t know. Crazy Germans.

After Germany we went into the Czech Republic for a few days. Crazy encounters on the train that I interspersed in the previous entry. We walked around Prague a bit and then it started to rain so we headed back to the hotel and watched CNN international and ate chocolate until we fell asleep.

The ladies at our Pension were the definition of busy. There were several of them, none of which spoke more than a few words of English, and they buzzed around you constantly. All three of them came out to greet us at the gate, and all three went up to the room to show it to us, and all three helped at breakfast.

Our Pension was further out on the trolley line, which after our experience at the train station we were glad about. Typically you have a problem waving AWAY the taxis, but we couldn’t get one for the life us when we first arrived in Prague. We finally talked with these women from Canada who clued us in that they found out apparently there is a Prague Mafia that runs a Driving Service and picks on Taxis that come to pick up passengers at the train station. Prague train station = shady.

Our first night there we took a travel book recommendation of a restaurant called Café Architect, which was in a cellar/cave looking thing. It was so neat, and the food was really good too. We had a candlelite dinner in a modern cave, that doesn’t happen every day.

Above: I just woke up from a long nap before dinner. I'm still tired here.

Driving in Prague resembles bats out of hell. It is crazy and cars fly around street cars and pedestrians like a video game. Don’t ever rent a car.

Our first full day in Prague we beat all the crowds and got up early to walk around. Highly recommending seeing the Charles Bridge and famous square/clock before the crowds. We took a day tour to Kunta Hora, a wealthy silver mining town in the countryside. We stopped at a church made out of human bones from after the plague. They had chandeliers with skulls, femur bones, hip bones, finger bones, and every other type of bone in the body which was just plain cool

Kunta Hora: we had the best weather.

Get excited. They had a special case of skulls from soldiers who were in the holy wars and who had received brain injuries and sometimes even lived awhile after the injury. I had a moment and need a deep breath.

There were these two cranky ladies on the trip, who I came very close to putting in their place. They had nothing nice to say about anything. Thank God they weren’t American. I’m pretty sure they were German.

Kunta Hora was really neat and a great chance to see the countryside. At lunch I got a local beer, but don’t worry, Daddy liked mine better than his dark beer so that’s why mine got drained faster! Promise!

The one food I CANNOT tolerate: Dumplings. Bread, potato, whatever. Boiled bread is gross, and not appetizing. And I’m sick of dumplings. They are the scape goat of Germany, Czech Republic, and Slovakia.

Above: This was in the town of Dachau. See the dumplings on my plate....bread and potato...nasty.

Highlights of Prague:
- Really old streets and buildings
- Prettiness
- Avoiding tourist traps
- The Castle of Prague
Getting up there was a huge hike, but this castle was unique because of the age of the remaining rooms. Unlike a lot of castles that were continually updated this one retained a really old rustic feel.
- The Loretto in the Rain
The Loretto is supposed to be where Blessed Mother’s house was moved to in Italy during the holy wars by angels, and copies of the house sprung up all over Europe. It didn’t look much like a house to me, but it was still neat. (No pictures were allowed.)
- Indian Food: A curry in Prague
After a big day of walking, we scarfed our food down which was the first spicy thing I’ve had in a long time. This reminded me how much I like Indian food.
- Leave it to us to find good gelato in Prague. We did it. Fabulous.

We also saw the Infant Child of Prague, a holy figure, or doll, that appears on many holy cards and figurines. Well we went and saw it (no pictures, I’ll see if I can add one from the internet) and I guess let’s say I’ve never been much of a doll person. This figure is supposed to have survived many disasters and is really old. Well I couldn’t figure out why I was having such a hard time feeling serious about it, and it hit me later that night

The prayer for the Infant Child has a lot of exclamations for “Oh glorious infant child of Jesus” and so on. For any of you who have seen Talladega Nights, Will Ferrell prays to the little baby Jesus, all cuddled up in his crib, innocent and baby like…… so thanks Will, I couldn’t take a huge religious figure at all seriously.

At breakfast each morning in Prague the ladies played this awful OLD country, folkish music from like 40 years ago that was both in English and Czech. The kind of music you would expect to find in a run down gas station in west Texas that smells of rancid hot dogs. It was simply horrid.

Touching the statue of St. John on the Charles bridge for good luck, since he had bad luck and was thrown off apparently. I'm not sure how that works.

Thursday was our last day in Prague and we had a night train out. Well, it rained all morning and I had reached my limit of no email for 4 days, so we found this really neat internet café and had lunch and I had internet.

We had to go back to the nasty train station, and we were sitting at a “café” waiting for our train. Well we watched this man in his 60’s throw back vodka shot, after vodka shot. It was to the point of ridiculous. Well, he saw us through a language barrier tried to buy us shots, and we were like “noooooo.” So instead, he went and bought us these two like granola bars and left. It was nice of him, but a little odd.
The sleeper train was really neat, and the Germans apparently don’t do boarder control but the Czech do. So they come pounding at your door asking for passports while you’re in bed. Fun times.
Why do I always look so happy with Gelato?

Instead of staying in Frankfurt, we went to a smaller town just outside of it called Mainz. It was a neat town and the morning we arrived we went for a huge breakfast buffet at this café nearby and had one of the best meals of the trip (but there have been a lot of those.) They even had chocolate and vanilla mousse for dessert. We went and saw a church with Chagall blue windows and saw a lot of shops. Then I said I wanted to take a nap, and apparently Daddy wasn’t going to but when I woke up 3 hours later he was out too. : )

When we took this picture (above) I was kind of getting sick of the camera. I look a bit indifferent.

Traveling isn't for the faint of heart

The next morning, I was totally psyched for England. Well, thanks to Deutsche Bahn, which should be Deuche bahn about to go on strike, our train to Frankfurt Airport was broken, so everyone had to crowd on this other train, which stopped randomly for like 5 minutes on the way because it was having problems even after it had arrived 25 minutes late, well we finally made it off, people were running all around us to the airport but we had time.

Then Frankfurt was a mess with people. I don’t take hostages with my giant suitcases. I will run you, or your unsupervised children over if they don’t move. That happened a few times, because my combined weight of suitcases weighs more than you and doesn’t stop.

I resembled a song by Westside Connection called Gangsta Nation in the Frankfurt Airport. Move….get out the way…get out the way…. And so on.

Our suitcases were 2 kg overweight, so in the middle of terminal we had to frantically pull out randomness and stuff it in our carry on an Daddy cut his finger. So we went through security messes, then apparently Germany cares about your passport suddenly as you LEAVE in an airport, then we had to go through the exact same procedure of security to get to our gate, which was entirely too small and congested, I waited in line for the bathroom, got ripped off for a Diet Coke I needed to take Advil for a headache (wonder why) and then we had to lug our carry down stairs, on a tram, to get out to our freaking plane with more stairs. What was this, 1960? Frankfurt is a MAJOR airport. I expected this from like Austria….

Then our plane was late leaving too, so Germany and I exchanged some “friendly goodbyes and well wishes for the future.”

England

Passport control took ages. I got the 3rd degree getting into England, they wanted my itinerary, plane ticket out, student ID, details of where I was staying, and so on.

Oxford doesn’t disappoint. It is just as charming as imagined.

***This is important to understanding Oxford. English Universities aren’t like US ones. There isn’t a “Campus”. Oxford University is a collection of smaller, rather independent Colleges, like Brasenose (mine) and they all have their own shield

This first week has been a blur of activity and a lot of non-activity at the same time. I’ve again, but kind of dragged down by school business, but that is hopefully about wrap itself up.

Tonight, after I get back from London, I’m going to try and finish updating everyone about the following

-Oxford in general
-My morning walks
-Globe Theater’s Production of Merchant of Venice
-Trip to Brighton
~Brighton Rock
~Irish Men in a Pub
~Rocky Beaches
-Trip to Wallingford
~Castle Ruins
~Docile Bull
~English people like McDonalds?
~A lot of other stuff

Stay tuned!
Elaine

Below: Fountain in Mainz. One comment: wtf. jk :)