A Royal Introduction to Futbol

Last night I had my first futbol (soccer) experience....here in England. Having been to Whitecaps games in Vancouver and Seattle, I thought I knew something of what to expect, even the 100-150 Vancouver fans in Seattle made their presence felt with chants.

Our seats were great. Six rows from the field near the top of the box, very close to the action and in the same end as both team's cheering/chanting sections. Tonight Reading Royals(pronounced red-ing) were plying the Ipswich "Tractor Boys", who had at least 2000 fans in attendance and had travelled about two hours to make it to the game. Both groups volleyed chants and jeers back and forth all game long. There was no video screen promting people to cheer nor a mascot rousing the crowd. I saw a mascot entertaining kids on the field before the game, but that was it. And, unfortunately for me, there was no "hymn book" so I could chant along. The only chants I could make out was the general booing, "wanker" chants at the refs, and when a bad call was made against Ipswich, their fans repeatedly bellowed "YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOIN'!!" at the ref. As soon as said ref confered with his linesman and reversed the original call the Reading chanting group, only two sections and an iron gate away, busrt into exactly the same rousing chant: "YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOIN'!!"

The entire game was very exciting for me (mind you i've been known to appreciate a 0-0 hockey game or a 6-3 NFL game so long as it's entertaining). This game saved most of it's dramatics, and red cards for late in the game, and thankfully, when we had the opposition net in front of us. Seconds after entering the match, local boy, Simon Church, potted a late goal in the 88th minute. The crowd went crazy...and the Ipswich fans not only fell silent, but eerily still as Lindsay's dad Kevin pointed out for me behind a giggle.

It was a great night with great friends and Family: Lindsay's mom and dad, Kevin and Krysia, her Uncle Frank, and cousin Ian who procured us the great tickets. Thanks for an awesome first futbol experience.

The Yank

Coulda, woulda, shoulda and the Boo boo

One of the ongoing annoyances with seat-of-your-pants travel is that you always seem to find out "what you should really do or see is..." after the fact.

"Have you guys been initiated in to Buckfast yet?" asks a friend over Facebook. This isn't breakfast for a buck, but a terrible tasting Socttish tradition and very inexpensive tonic wine. "You'll hate it (first sip), then love it (second glass), then hate it (next morning), then want some more (later in the day)" they rave. It's a must so we've been told, and we coulda, woulda, shoulda if we had only known a few days previous.

Interesting info on Buckfast (May, 2010). "Scottish Labour wants a legal limit on the caffeine content of alcoholic drinks which would effectively ban the tonic wine Buckfast. The party hopes to amend the forthcoming alcohol bill to stop drinks firms using more than 150 milligrammes of caffeine per litre of alcohol. Buckfast currently contains two-and-a-half times that amount".

Returning to England after visiting Scotland, we were advised that we shoulda flown into the Highlands (Inverness or Aberdeen) then trained/bused to Edinburgh, skipping Glasgow altogether. We shoulda purchased a cheap return flight to Glasgow, bused to Edinburgh (10 minutes longer than the train and half the price) then bused back to Glasgow. But, in complete honesty, it was quite nice to compare the two most commonly recognized Scottish cities. We completely blipped on returning home from Glasgow, however.

Make sure you ask about return tickets when you travel by train. It is some of the best advice we've received in the UK. This fact alone can save you money. This is where we made the costly boo-boo. We went and purchased that return train ticket from Gatwick airport to Reading (good for 28 days and cost us £45 for both of us, total. A one way ticket to Gatwick is £19.20 each or £38.40 each with a return ticket) not realizing that our return flight from Glasgow didn't fly into Gatwick airport, it was Heathrow. The problem with landing at Heathrow is taking a train out of the airport. There is only an express train that takes you to London Paddington only and then from there you catch your connecting train. So we forked out £23 each for this 10 minute train alone. Once in Paddington (the epicenter of all training mayhem) we caught a train to Reading, another £8 each. Travellers unfamiliar with London Heathrow wouldn't know that they could have spent as little as £5 to ride coach to Paddington station instead.

We're going to see if we can be refunded for our unused return ticket.

The Limey

The Trainspotting Manifesto, Wee Weekend and Praying for a Bar Brawl

Trainspotting, by definition, has a couple of meanings.

1. hobby of collecting railroad locomotive numbers: a hobby that consists of collecting the numbers of railroad locomotives

2. looking for vein: the search for a vein that is prominent enough to inject drugs into ( slang )

I have chosen to add another meaning:

3. A 14 man dorm room. Blue, metal bunks, so rickety that even when you pass gas they squeek so bring a good pair of ear plugs. There is a secret door in the room that is another private room, sometimes, if you are really lucky, this room will be occupied with several young German kids who sleep all day and come home at in the wee hours. And don't worry, they know about hostel etiquette, they speak a regulare speaking volume at this hour too. Then they will take turns going to the toilet which is located upstairs or downstairs from the Trainspotting room. The painted paper that has been ingeniously tapped to the windows between the connecting rooms, still gives off more light than the brightest day in a desert land, so bring a good eye mask too.

3a)The plaster covered floor where other travellers have been trainspotting has worn away to show a palette of colours it has been painted over the years.

3b) You might spot one of two earwigs in a Scottish hostel. Hands are good for this as you may not want to squish bug guts into your crispy clean hostel bedding. Just flick this earwig as accurately as you can into the direction of neighbouring beds. Then leave the hostel, maybe drink off the shock, and come back with enough indiscretion for you to pass out and forget all about the insect infestation.

The Blue Sky Hostel is a great place to stay. The lime green walls was an interesting choice, but complement the fun disco ball hanging from the ceiling well. On hostelbookers.com, the hostel has provided a strict manifesto for hostelling with them:

We cater to backpackers only! We are not a youth hostel, hotel, bed and breakfast or guest house! Please, if you are boring with no personality, kind of a person that sits in the corner not talking to anyone waiting for someone to feel sorry for you then blame the hostel because you didn't have fun or if the fact our dishes and cups don't match bothers you or if you are not a backpacker between the ages of 18 to 35 years and are not used to backpacker hostels do not book with us as you will not be happy here!

We had to laugh at how perfect his place sounded for us in particular, the mismatched glassware, which for those who know us, is exactly what you'll find if you open up our cupboards. We went ahead and booked us for two nights crossing our fingers in hopes that Morgan would make the age cutoff (we love how young you are Morgan).

The owner of the Blue Sky Hostel is Canadian. He's from Alberta and has been running the show for ten years. He's not hard to pick out. He's the much more strung out Kurt Cobain look-a-like, only with longer, un-dyed hair.

One of our dorm mates also happened to be from the good old grain roots of Alberta. Denny was a mill worker who couldn't have look less inconspicuously Canadian; lumberjack attire and a canoe paddle jutting from his backpack. He had been travelling Eastern Europe for the past eight months and shared a fun story about his experience with bunk beds. He found himself working in a hostel where a guy and girl had come home late one night. So drunk, the guy had wet the bed in his sleep. The pee had dripped down and on to the girls bed below. The girl wakes up in the night and freaks out thinking she'd been the one to wet herself in her slumber. Drunk and confused and urine soaked, she thought, who better to make this better than the guy she liked, in the bunk above. So she climbed into bed with him and together then lay in the pee soaked bed. So we had a wee laugh about the wee-wee weekend in Eastern Europe.

The Blue Sky manifesto goes on: "Glasgow hosts the best night life in the whole of Scotland. Come and stay at the Bluesky Hostel in Glasgow and experience it for yourself. You will not be disappointed. You have been warned!" And what else should you hope, if not expect, to see when you begin your merry pubbing? A bar brawl.

On our last night in Glagow, we make it to The Hall pub in Glasgow at 9pm. We've missed out on the 'Screamin' deal - a free burger and soft drink valid with a coupon issued from our kind Blue Sky Hostel. With broken hearts needing meanding, we decide on two pints of delicious Tetley's. We find a seat close to a pool table where a pack of men are knees deep in drunk and having a good laugh at their terrible game, which involved a lot of cue-guitaring and cue-jousting in celebration of a hole pocketed.
A group of two young kids make their way to the pool table and want to start a game, but in Glasgow, this is recipe for a classic Glasgow tradition; bar brawls. One of the elderly gentlemen isn't finished using the table and begins to mince words with one of the younger lads. Things were getting heated so Morgan shiftly grabbed us two more pints.

There's a classic scene in the movie Trainspotting. At a bar, Begbie brags to his friend about his prowess at the pool table and concludes the story by casually throwing a pint glass of beer off the bar balcony, injuring a woman. This instigates a violent bar brawl.

Unfortunatley, there was no connecting of glasswear to skulls, but we're still in search of a good Scottish bar fight or another viewing of Trainspotting is in order.

On pints: In Vancouver, there's been a lot debate about the size of a true pint. In the UK, there is no head on your pint. It's beer, right to the top of your glass. A full 20 ounces of goodness. Thirsty? Beer is cheaper than water. A small bottle of water will cost you £1.50 while a massive pint of beer costs as low as £2.

From here on in, Morgan and I have decided to sign off as The Limey and The Yank. Morgan has American citizenship and I have British. After three pints it seemed like a good idea.

The Limey

London's Eye, The Coal Hole and the cure for jet lag uncovered

Friday September, 17th, was crisp, sunny and unplanned, as per usual. We bought an Oyster card (a £19 transport card that allows you unlimited use of tubes and trains) and hopped on a train heading for Paddington Station, London. There was no where to sit as a pair so we decided to stand in the middle car (the exit and toilet section of all trains). The door of the train has a window with no child-fitted limitations, so we pulled down the windows and watch Reading rush by. Our animal instincts begged us to stick our heads and tongues out the window, but the lightening fast bullet-trains coming in the opposite direction may have turned us both into Ichabod Cranes. It was very humbling to think of the skytrain system in Vancouver at that moment. We laughed. Sorry skytrain, but you've definitely got some UK competition.

Off the train, heads and all, and into the underground station, the tendency is to put your metro ticket away for safe keeping, but in England, and most of Europe, you need this card for both entering and exting train and tube stations. It's a pain, but really cool to see an advanced transportation system. London's Underground is the oldest and second largest metro station in the world.

We walked into London's colourfully decorated Chinatown, but our visit was shortlived realising we would soon be seeing the real Chinatown's, in China. We visited Buckingham Place which was regal and packed with tourists taunting the motionless guards. Green Park, which sits next to the palace is conveniently very green, and sprinkled with lawn chairs that look very appealing but come with a £1.50 charge for an hour of sitting. Don't worry, grass sitting can be done right next to these chairs, free. Covent Garden, is an open court market, always featuring authentically English street performers (very comparable to Granville Street's regulars, but haven't seen any English Spandy Andy's meandering the streets yet). We were lucky enough to catch "The Tom Show" and his really unattractive, but magical, maneurvering through a stringless tennis racket.

Off to Tower Hill, we saw famous Tower Bridge, this is not the same London Bridge that Fergie has humped across, but another famous London bridge overhanging the River Thames. We were able to catch a glimpse of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre before heading to Waterloo for "a ride in the sky" on the London Eye. The London Eye was once the largest ferris wheel in the world, but has now been surpassed by the Singapore Flyer (42 stories high). The ride is 30 mins full of terrific photo ops and lots of self reminders to "keep your head up" for those who have a fear of heights (Worgan Milliams).

Completely nackered, we headed into posh Hyde Park to meet our friend Stirling at The Coal Hole pub. Catching up over pints of London Pride, we get the down low on one of London's newest hotels, the Savoy. Opening at 10am on October 10th, 2010, The Savoy will be hoity-toity British hotelling. From tailed suit coats and white gloves at high tea, The Savoy's most expensive suite costs £10,000 per night. A Chinese business man has been rumoured to have rented it out (that's him and his staff) for the entire first month of operation.

After a round of English Jagger, we staggered off to Mr. Griffiths' flat where we feasted on wine, cheese and good conversation. Another pub stop and an English Italian meal later (the restaurant name escapes me and remains somewhere at the bottom of my pint of Strongbow) we caught the late "milk stop" train home (a train that makes all the stops) and found our first unbroken sleep. After many sleepless nights, we had found the cure to our painful plane lag. Pints, wine, vodka, repeat.

Scotland tomorrow for some haggis and whiskey.

Ps. A Subway on a British map is not actually that, it's a walkway that let's you walk under the street instead of crossing it.

UK Lindser

First attempt

This will be my first attempt at "blogging". Please bare with me as I'm not an accomplished writer like Lindsay, don't let this detract from her work.

My impressions of England so far:

That "look" that is always prevelent in English films/TV show's; They don't scout locations, that's what everywhere looks like! Brick houses side by side. The 3-4 story Office buildings? It looks like the 4 blocks of Water Street, that Vancouverites have made into lofts, multiplied by one million.

The stairs in the homes are scarily steep. I'd sleep on the couch in the living room after a "night on the piss". Wouldn't venture those drunk!!

Green, this place is very green. Don't know what i was expecting, maybe an entire country of city. The countryside is beautiful here, much nicer than Abbotsford and Chiliwack.

Transit is so conveinient, bit pricey, but if done right more than worth it. The tube maps are easy to follow, the trains are comfortable, transit staff are helpful, even when they seem bored outta their tree. Just pay attention to when the tubes stop and prevent you from getting to your train drunk late at night, leaving you with an expensive cab ride. I don't care how cool the cabs are here, not worth the money.

Most importantly, the people, they're are great, hospitable, and friendly. Especially Lindsay's family and friends. They welcomed us into their homes, fed us, shown us around, and given us invaluble help.

Lovin' England!!
morgan