Trains with British Accents

It's no secret that I have a masochistic fascination with train travel - see my December posts on my attempt to take the train home for Christmas for reference. I can make my mother hang up on me by merely mentioning that I'm taking the train home for Christmas again; my father gladly aids and abets. In my plans (as I tell my mother), this year I'm taking the train west to California, where I can then take a Southern route to Atlanta, rather than having to go to Chicago, the only direction trains go from Denver. I figure this way I'll run into less bad weather (in case you missed my Christmas train adventures, metal tracks contract when they're cold), which I thought would make my mother happy. My father and I have now progressed in our machinations to him flying to California to meet me, and then we'll take the train home together from San Francisco. So, if this winter is as bad as they're predicting, my dad and I will be spending Christmas in El Paso. My mother's silence is filled with anger.

While I was in England I took the opportunity to take the train from Bristol to Birmingham. Granted, it was just a two hour trip, but nowhere in England is actually more than a few hours away (unless you're trying to drive, where upon you realize that their roads don't go anywhere useful and they don't have road signs telling you where you are or where you're going). Meanwhile, I've always heard that trains actually work in England/Europe, and I was ready to test this hypothesis.

Firstly, I found the train situation very confusing – the trains don’t have numbers like planes and US trains, they have final destinations and departure times. Birmingham is not the end-of-the-line for any train. After a week of drinking and very little sleep, this was quite daunting. There also weren’t any employees on the platform to point clueless Americans in the right direction. Luckily I happen to glance my destination on the list of stops for the Edinburgh train, so I cast my dice and got on that train. On the platform I was instantly faced with the painful realization that neither the outside or inside of my train looked like the Hogwarts Express, and I died a little inside. All British trains should look like the Hogwarts Express by principle - have they no national pride? The cars on the train also aren’t labeled, and all I had was a seat number, so I went in and out of several cars before I found that some man was sitting in my seat – at that point I figured it was just a free-for-all. Sitting on the train in the station I realized no one had yet checked my ticket; apparently I didn't need to buy a ticket after all and England is run on the honor system. Excuse me, honour system. I could have just gotten on any train I had wanted to without ever buying a ticket, in fact I seriously contemplated staying on the train and just continuing to Scotland. I could have gotten better prices on Scotch there. However, after a few stops someone finally came around to check tickets, so I guess I would have been busted…or could have just hidden in the bathroom. Sometimes it's just too easy it's not even worth it.

On the train, I was sitting across from an old man who didn’t realize I couldn’t hear him if I had headphones on and started drinking Guinness at 10:30am. What can I say, I liked him...even if we didn't understand each other very well. But towards the end of my trip he started telling me that we were taking an unplanned detour around the city and were at least an hour behind schedule. I immediately lost all faith in the British rail system and considered all trains a failed way of travel. I also started texting my friend meeting me in Birmingham that I was going to be late. Five minutes later we pulled into the station on time. I regained my faith in non-American trains as an acceptable way to travel, but learned to never trust people with accents.

Running around like The Hoff on purpose

I recently visited England on a combined business and pleasure trip, and took delight in many of the unique features, deliciousnesses, idiosyncrasies, and pure crazy of a foreign culture. Pubs are fantastic. I've always loved them in the States, and in England (shockingly) there are even more of them. Cask ales aren't my favorite, but I always enjoy trying new beers; and the ciders are delicious. Additionally, in the north, they actually serve their beer at a respectable temperature. Cream Tea is to die for. I first thought this was tea with cream. What's so exciting about that? But no, cream tea is crack. It's a scone smothered in jam and clotted cream. It's crack. After eating this you immediately feel like you're about to vomit, you then proceed to have a minor heart attack (or massive, if you've already had a scone that day...not that I would have three scones in one day or anything), and wake up the next morning ready for another. On the less tasty side, The British have a love of coins that I don't get. If there's anything more useless than a pence coin, it's a two pence coin. Why two pence? I think the sagging pants trend started in England as a result of all the coins they have to carry around. If the U.S. ever produces a two cent coin, I'm defecting to Argentina. Good for them, but it's not for me. However, the Brits have some passions that are completely unforgivable.

The Hoff. It's just wrong. My British friend with whom I was staying in England for the vacation portion of my trip is obsessed with The Hoff. She had a picture of him hanging in her bathroom. I had to pee with my eyes closed. Prior to visiting England, I thought her obsession was just because she was a freak, but apparently it goes frighteningly deeper than that. The British love David Hasselhoff. He's constantly talked about on the radio. I heard several interviews with him on BBC radio, and they talk about him all the time even when he's not being interviewed. Apparently every topic can be related to The Hoff. And I think all TV channels are under contract to show constant airings of America's Got Talent and Meet the Hasselhoffs. I'm getting ill just thinking about it.

But, what's to be expected with a country that produces this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2Gh1U14RZA. British music at its best. I heard this song in England and it got stuck in my head; who knew the video was going to be the highlight of my life. The first time I heard the song the DJs were just playing snippets because they thought the lyrics were "like a cow on purpose", rather than clown. So they would play the refrain and the shout "COW" over the the "clown" lyric. Craziness. Craziness that was stuck in my head for 5 days straight. I can't wait for a video of The Hoff karaoking the song to surface on youtube.

Sniffing dead moles and other childhood habits

So I like to smell things – flowers as I’m walking down the street or through the woods, the aroma of yummies in the oven, the air after a spring rain, rubber cement, whiteout … all the normal things. Some people tell me I have a problem, but I don’t feel that just because I make mistakes on purpose so I can white them out means I have a problem. I just really enjoy delectable smells, which happens to include lots of office and lab supplies. And before you really start to judge me, I’d just like to clarify that I am NOT a paste eater; some things are just wrong.

I think it goes without saying that this is in no way my fault. I didn’t choose to be “That Girl” who automatically smells the sharpie or whiteboard marker every time she takes the cap off. I don’t really even like the smell of sharpies and white board markers, they make me a little queasy. But when I started the first grade, the first thing I was given to put in my desk was a set of Mr. Sketch markers. Now these markers may be the best things ever invented, but they are also the root of my odor fixation. Who gives a 6 year old a set of 12 scented markers – which, as being scented in the first place, are obviously supposed to be sniffed – and doesn’t expect them to graduate from first grade without a huffing problem? And, at the same time, we’re taking art classes that involve lots of gluing. Now at my school, we didn’t use that pansy Elmer’s nonsense; we used the real stuff – rubber cement. Rubber cement is quite possibly still my favorite smell, and it’s no wonder to me why you get carded when you try to buy it these days. It’s like getting mad at people for trying to get rid of prairie dogs – you can’t put a Whack-a-Mole game in every Chuck E Cheese’s, Showbiz Pizza, and arcade across the country, and not expect people to want to whack prairie dogs in any way possible. It’s conditioned into our being at a young age. But as for me, Mr. Sketch smells way better than whacked prairie dog.