The Last Days in Sunderland

Tomorrow morning, I will be leaving Sunderland, quite probably forever. I may never see some very close friends again, unless they send wedding invitations, which is probably unlikely in most cases. My life as far as I know it is packed up into four bags, and I'm oddly unemotional about it.
For the plan-happy amongst you, I'll be in Leicester for two nights and a day and in London for five nights, and also in Bath for one day and zero nights. I'm sure I can find some internets in London, if not in my hostel, then nearby, so I'll post pictures as I feel like hogging the bandwidth and might give short daily updates if I don't feel like using a lot of internet. They'll probably run something to the effect of "Oh, my days, I just walked through Westminster Abbey. Westminster Abbey!" with a picture or two as teaser. You can substitute any historical thingy that I've always been interested in.
Like the Sherlock Holmes museum, which is within easy walking distance of my hostel. (!!! my expectations are so high that they'll probably be dashed. This will in no way diminish my picture taking habit or plans to purchase something to stick on the flap of my bag or something to commemorate the time I visited Sherlock Holmes's house.
In the meantime, I've been planning for my return home. Specifically, for The Questions.
Every traveller, whether to the next town for a few days or to the other side of the world, knows The Questions. I always struggle with these, quibbling with myself out loud about how hard it is to answer them before launching into an hours-long rambling story with enough rabbit trails to be the hundred acre wood. So, this time, I decided to plan ahead. And, disclaimer, Questions 2 and 3 are not generally asked to day-trippers, but other-side-of-the-world-travellers seem to get them a lot, and I always want to ask them, so I'm answering them.

1. What was your favourite part/thing?
I would have to say that this is one of my least favourite questions ever. It's really hard for my decision-making-impaired brain to narrow down a whole range of generally enjoyable experiences to just one, unless I had a terrible time, in which case the pessimist within insists that "leaving" was my favourite part. Usually, nothing stands out that much until years later, when I only remember the best part and have forgotten everything else but the worst.
In this case, I'm going to say "cheese and onion pasties, cheap nutella, being called "love", "darling", and "pet" without a southern american accent, and the friends I made."

2. What are you going to miss the most?
Similar to the first, but not the same. I'm really not going to miss being called love all that much, but I will miss being able to microwave a cheese and onion roll for a quick, filling, and delicious breakfast quite a bit.
And I will really miss my friends. I've never made such close friendships with people that I know for a very nearly fact that I won't see again. I've made friendships this close in high school, and I still count the Inklings as some of my closest friends ever; I've made friendships this close at Whitworth as we bonded over difficult classes and the odd batty professor and core, and I plan on being friends with these people for a very long time, and will probably be going to their weddings, even if they scare off all the timid whitworth boys. But none of this has prepared me for making friends, to a sibling-like point, with people with whom the only thing I have in common is that we lived in the same flat for four months. I almost can't remember not knowing Josie, Conor, Flo, and Adam. And I never want to forget them.

3. What will you not miss?
I will not miss the friggin exchange rate. I will not miss being unemployed. I will not miss being unable to understand the cashier's accent. I will not miss the sidewalk being paved with cigarette butts. I will not miss having a roommate (especially one that gets snippy when she's tired). I will not miss the University of Sunderland. I've been here long enough that I can think of these very, very easily.

4. What was your least favourite part/thing?
Easy. The impossible little frenchman. Not only could I not understand half of what he said, he didn't like me. The only time he showed any lack of somewhat haughty condescension, like I was a particularly stupid breed of moron who was soiling his oxygen, was when I dominated the GC software.
I don't like being thought of as stupid. It didn't help that I was completely unfamiliar with lab habits, lab report expectations, and the labs that were prerequisites. I have the knowledge. In fact, I solidly passed organic chemistry and its lab. But I didn't take PBM103 or any of the other first year biomedical science modules at Sunderland, which put me at a severe disadvantage when it came to figuring out what was expected of me.
The other thing that I didn't like was having a difficult roommate. I'm a little mad that she even signed up for a double room. When I asked her why, she replied that she had never roomed with anyone before and felt that if she was doing all these new, unfamiliar things, she might as well share a room, too. This was not fair to me. I was expecting someone who, like myself, had no need for the stupid little "how to not to make your roommate hate you" pamphlet.
I know, I know, life's not fair, but I'd like to have a word with whoever assigned us to the same room. Flatmates are one thing. People who are predisposed not to get along can still be in the same building; kitchen use just needs to be regulated. People who are predisposed not to get along cannot share a room without misery on both sides, if not open hostility and the urge to scream into your pillow, except you can't because she's sitting right there. The most annoying part was the vague superiority complex, except where english was involved. Look, all right, you've been to a million more places than I have, you know more about the world than I do, and you speak a lot more languages than I do, but at least I'm not rude, loudly, in public. The worst part is that I think we would have got along fine if we hadn't been roommates. It's certainly not that she's german. I've met several other germans, and I like all of them. It's just that we are not the sort of people who can room together without starting to hate each other a little bit.
That was a downer of a Question to put last, but it always seems to come up last. So...

5. Would you do it again?
Absolutely. I'd do a few things differently (get a visa or an internship with a stipend or something), but I'd do this again in a heartbeat. It wouldn't be the same — nothing ever could be — but I seriously doubt that I'll ever regret this. I might, in a fit of reverse culture shock, regret having turned my life upside down, but the friends I've made, the experiences I've had (including the ones I'll never wish on anyone)... I'll always pine for England, at least a little bit. I think it's fair to say that this has changed my life, if only in that I've done something that's made it so that only people who've at least done something similar can really relate to me for a few months. This isn't to say that I won't be friends with my friends that I left a whitworth or various and sundry other universities across the pacific northwest, but there's going to be a bit of a divide between the "us" who have lived abroad and the "them" who haven't.

Edinburgh — Friday 28 October to Monday 31 October

Friday was a day of sleeping in and moving slowly until about half an hour before it was time to catch the metro to Newcastle, where we would catch the Megabus to Edinburgh. In addition to frantic packing activities, Adam was missing. We decided that he could drive to Newcastle if he had to, and set off for the metro with way too much luggage. The best part was all the food that was being packed. Josie thought it was the funniest thing that Jessi was packing for the apocalypse for a four-hour endeavor, since she had to drive an hour and a half to get to the supermarket in her home, um, town.
When we got to the metro, Flo, Lisa, and Josie realised that they didn't have enough change for the fare (£3, and it has to be coins) and hurried over to the Aldi (right next to the station, but we were on the other side of the tracks) to buy something that cost less than £2.
While Jessi, Conor, and I were guarding the luggage (so much luggage!), Adam showed up to let us know that he couldn't come. He had a big project due for his film class (he ended up interviewing a DJ instead of a prostitute), and the main problem with it was his fault. There were many sad faces made by all parties.
After an unnervingly long time, Josie, Flo, and Lisa came running (and that's not hyperbole) down the stairs to the platform. They'd been stuck behind this guy with a trolley (cart) full of stuff who had refused to let three kids with one thing each go ahead of him. He took forever, and then he bought fireworks.
Geh. In any case, they made it with just enough time to buy tickets. The train came, we said good bye to Adam, and then we were off!
Flo brought out his food about two stops in. It takes about a minute and a half to go between stops in Sunderland.
We did get stuck at one station, but that was about five, maybe ten minutes of waiting.
Jessi brought out her food at that point. Josie made faces at them.
We finally got moving, and I understood why Adam thinks that the metro is populated entirely by sketchy people. It's a long train ride to Newcastle, and there are a lot of sketchy little stops along the way. In my limited experience, which is pretty limited to Sunderland, there's not a lot of open space in England.
There was enough open space between Sunderland and Newcastle to provide ample sketchy metro stops.
We made it to Newcastle, which is a rather pretty city that I'd like to spend time in not at the airport between 23:00 and 01:00, without being threatened by any of the metro regulars.
I didn't get to see any more of Newcastle than the metro and the very short walk from the station to the megabus stop allowed. We found our bus easily and boarded without incident.
I got an aisle seat, which was disappointing, because the countryside was very pretty. It got dark pretty quickly, and I spent about an hour in drooly snoozing that didn't leave me very rested. After that, I tried to stare out the windows at the dark landscape, but I was foiled by the shade on the windscreen (windshield) and the bald guy in front of me. I did see the Conan Doyle Tavern on the way in to Edinburgh, but that was about it.
There are so many castles and spires and the like in Edinburgh. It was incredible. In the dark, at least, it was beautiful. I was not expecting this. Big cities in the states are not considered beautiful, as a rule. Striking, sure, and occasionally intriguing, but rarely beautiful.
On the long walk to the hostel, we joked constantly about how this castle or that imposing building was actually the hostel, and learned that Josie's parents met at while staying at a hostel that was in a castle in Edinburgh. Her dad actually broke a hundred-year-old stained glass window when he and his friends got locked out. We also made fun of Flo, who griped the whole way about how hungry he was and how heavy his bag was (it held his and Lisa's clothes and was a duffel with no shoulder strap). Jessi borrowed Josie's rolling suitcase and rested her bag on it.
After arguing a little bit over which building was the Edinburgh Castle and which was the building that Flo was pointing at, we reached the Budget Backpackers hostel.

Hostel! The colours outside are pretty tame compared to inside.

We had a bit of a hard time explaining that we were missing on person, lowering our party count to six, and only four of us were staying for three days, and two of us were only staying for two days, but we all booked together. It was great. (Flo and Lisa had to go back for class on monday. Our megabus tickets got us back well before 6 PM, so I was fine for class)
Almost immediately after checking in, getting our bedding on, and ditching our luggage in the lockers, we set out in search of food. Flo was hungry, and the rest of us were starting to feel peckish as well.
We argued over whether we should try for Pizza Express or something cooler. We argued kind of a lot this trip...
We settled on The Castle Arms, a little restaurant on top of some shops. It was okay, but nothing to write home about.

Dinner. The better part was looking around the city, since the food was pretty "meh." 

I had "soup" that ended up being a vegetable stew-y sort of affair, while everyone else had a main course. I foresaw my eating habits in this. Yay, vegetarians! At least I have a valid excuse for avoiding haggis if it ever crosses my path.

After the castle arms, we ambled around the city. It was about 8PM at this point, I want to say, but the city was still nice to look at. We found a graveyard (which freaked Jessi out for some reason), and kept an eye out for tour guides with white facepaint and anachronistic clothes. I quickly determined that they were from the "Witchery Tours" across the street from where we ate, which I thought would be very interesting. They were very popular around Halloween, though, so I didn't bring it up to the others. There was no way we'd be able to afford it even if we managed to book a spot.

After lots of ambling, we ended up at a coffee shop that looked like it had cake, which Jessi was craving. It turned out to be The Elephant House, billed as the birthplace of Harry Potter.

Edinburgh is kind of obsessed. There's one shop that has a "JK Rowling was never in this shop" sign.

Apparently, Joanna (JK) Rowling had a bit of a rough start. She was a single mom without a steady enough job to pay for heat, so she took her kid(s) around to coffee shops where she could sit and write. I wasn't too impressed by Elephant House as a coffee shop. I suspect that they get by on their fame rather than their coffee. The mocha that I had made me tired, which was rather distressing.

After the Elephant House, we moved on to The Last Drop pub, which we later learned is where the condemned had their last glass of whiskey before being hung out in the Grassmarket. The Grassmarket was actually sort of across the street from the hostel.

The Last Drop tavern had several movie quotes. I took a picture of the Sean Connery one because he's Scottish. And Batman is in the picture, too.

 The Last Drop was really crowded, so it was also really warm. I dozed while waiting for everyone else to be ready to go, which was a little embarrassing. It was fine, though, since I was able to fall asleep pretty quickly once we did get back to the hostel. I felt a little sorry for our asian roommate, who was asleep before we got back around 11 PM.

No one really felt sorry for asian roommate when she woke everyone except me up at four in the morning moving out.
Saturday is the picture day. Edinburgh was even prettier in the daytime, and the whole city was like the cool walls that make me so ridiculously happy in Sunderland.
We had already decided to go on the free walking tour at 11 AM, so we ambled downstairs for breakfast at 10:30-ish. All the breakfast foods were overpriced, but I got a large bowl of greek yogurt with honey. It was delightful.
There were three or four other people on the walking tour, all from Holland. It was led by Will from Australia, who was traveling around Europe and decided to stay in Edinburgh about six months ago. I'm slightly jealous of the ability to pick up and just start life over in a new place.
Don't worry, mom and dad, I'm coming home in january. I want to do science (which I can't do if I get a degree from here) more than I want to go globe-hopping.
We started off by learning about Greyfriars Bobby, whose statue across the street from the Greyfriars Bobby Tavern that's right next to the entrance of Greyfriars Kirkyard (the cemetery we visited friday night) is the most photographed statue in Scotland. I took a picture of it, but it didn't turn out well enough for me to keep when I ran out of space on my camera.

So there was this policeman who had a dog, which was unexpectedly a skye terrier instead of some more terrifying breed. John the policeman and Bobby were an inseparable pair until John died, after which Bobby sat at his grave (in Greyfriars) every single day for, I believe, 16 years. Stray dogs weren't allowed in Edinburgh, so the people sent around a petition that basically elected Bobby to parliament. Since killing a member of parliament was illegal, Bobby was able to keep his vigil without worrying about having no owner. When he died, he got his own grave at the front of the cemetery, a statue across the street, and a pub named after him.  

Most haunted graveyard, thanks to the various epidemics that swept the british isles. 

Greyfriars has 400 headstones and about 400,000, um, occupants. It's on what is referred to as "the mound", which was actually created by the mass burials during plague and epidemic years. Lovely.

Here's the most haunted part of the most haunted graveyard: this row was a prison for the few thousand survivors of an assault on Edinburgh by the english. George "Bloody" Mackenzie was the guy in charge, and apparently he felt the need to teach the Scots a lesson. 100 were taken out and hanged all at once in the Grassmarket at the beginning, and the 700 or so who survived after several months of bad treatment were tortured. 

The single most haunted place in the graveyard: the tomb of George Mackenzie, the guy who masterminded the atrocities from the picture before this.

It was all so pretty...

"Worst thing that happened to Scotland"

 The Flodden Wall (FLOW-dn) was built by some Scottish king to keep the English out. It was a mile square, and it held the entire population of Edinburgh for way too long. Unfortunately, when the English came, no one was guarding the gate, so they just walked in. Oops.

Allegedly the place where Joanna Rowling first had the idea for Harry Potter when talking to a little boy about what they did in the building there.

Graveyards: beautiful. Also, that's Flo there in the foreground.

There were so many spires and steeples.

For any Harry Potter fans who read this blog: Tom Riddle's grave.

Edinburgh Castle. Pretty awesome.

The sun was shining from behind, so the lighting was almost surreal.

Either St. Augustine's or Greyfriars church.

So. Pretty.

National library. Huge. 

Apparently, it's great fun to watch drunk girls in high heels try to walk on cobblestones. 

Castle. That cliff is where they threw suspected witches into the lake that used to be there. If they hit a rock on the way down (likely), they weren't a witch and their soul went to heaven. If they drowned (very likely), they weren't a witch and their soul went to heaven. If they somehow managed to survive, they were a witch and were tortured to death.
In the words of Will the tour guide, "Basically, if you were accused of being a witch, you were in a whole s***load of trouble."

Princes gardens. Yes, that's grammatically correct. This is where the lake (which was full of non-witch corpses and nasty refuse from the city, hence the great soil that leads to gorgeous gardens today) used to be.

Monument to Sir Walter Scott.

Scott himself.

There's this weirdly modern section of the city. Most of it is awesome and old, but if you look between the two old buildings, there's a new, glass building. 

Some cool stuff. I never really figured out what they are, but it's pretty.

Will the tour guide from Australia. Also "Edinburgh's Disgrace" in the background.

Will again and Conor. I was aiming for the unfinished amphitheatre. Edinburgh was trying to promote itself as a centre for the arts, but they ran out of money. It was all a bit embarrassing, I gather.

That cool thing and also the whole city.

The city and the harbor. I'm not sure which body of water that is. I think the North Sea is nearby-ish.

I can't remember what it was called, but that's where they'd signal the ships to move out at 13:00 (1:00 PM) every day. Somebody would climb up and fire a rifle until the city started absorbing the noise; they put ip a white flag on the cross-looking thing up there. Also, Jessi in the foreground.

So much old stuff. 

Again with all the cool old buildings! So pretty!

...Mansion? Classic country estate looking place.

So cool.

Fancy hotel has a courtyard on top.

St. Giles. Next to the Scottish Parliament's headquarters, which used to be a prison.

I think someone's heart is actually in the middle there; I could be wrong. I kind of missed the first part of Will's explanation. It's the only place where it's legal to spit in Scotland, however, so we all spat and dodged the flying globs of saliva.

These are not TARDISes. But they almost are...

I have a thing for tall buildings. I think this one is the HUB, the only place where a parliament meets over a cafe. 

Just outside the hostel. Old wall!

Other side of hostel.

Arthur's Seat, the mountainy hilly thing that King Arthur allegedly climbed to look over Edinburgh. We climbed it, too. Well, we actually climbed the taller hill in the middle, but we were close enough.

Climbing Arthur's Seat.

A... house? 

Jessi in front, Conor to the side taking a picture, two random people, then Flo and Lisa. I think Josie was ahead of me.

That is a really bad place to have a house. No wonder it fell down.

Me on top of the world. If you embiggen (by clicking, I think; if that doesn't work, try right clicking and opening the image in a new tab) and highlight, you can see a non-edinburgh town about a million feet below me.

Everyone else: Conor, Josie, Flo, Jessi, and Lisa was behind me. Flo kept playing with the wind and jumping to see if it would carry him back. It did. It was so windy up there... 

What a view. Totally worth the brutal climb.

Another gorgeous view. The green stretch in the middle of the picture is the actual Seat; we went up to the taller part behind the Seat. 

After we climbed back down the Seat, Flo and Lisa went to sort out their train tickets back to Sunderland while the rest of us played hearts before ambling around again. We acquired two new roommates, an older guy who turned out to be from Ecuador and an even older guy who didn't speak english. Flo and Lisa got back before we did, and Flo planted a large fake spider in Jessi's bed. Jessi hates spiders.
It was hilarious.
I must be a very deep sleeper, because apparently the guy who doesn't speak english woke everyone else up at about 4 AM. This seems to be a common theme. Apparently, he was folding shopping bags for at least half an hour. Jessi asked him if he was done at one point, and he just said, "Hello." Jessi was not amused, and ranted later, when we were all awake, about how he could have said he was sorry, or that he didn't speak any english. I'm not sure where I developed my sense of sympathy for people who can't speak the language of the country they're in very well, since I've only been in El Salvador, and I picked up enough spanish to make my needs known or was around a translator who could help me. I think it very odd that Jessi, who is not speaking in her native language and who went to America with iffy english skills when she was in high school, is incredibly frustrated by people who don't speak english. I realised at about that point that I will probably not get along with Jessi at all by the end of november. Call it personality clash, culture shock setting in, or familiarity breeding contempt, but I will probably have an outburst when we move in on december. I planned to take steps to push this issue back as long as possible, and it might be that she's having culture shock. She's used to living at home, not having a roommate, and speaking in German all the time. I'm used to living in a dorm, cooking for myself, having a roommate, and speaking english. This is probably why she occasionally turns into a total monster. She's also unwilling to simply accept the suppositions of others, and vocalises any doubts she might have. This drives me crazy. I don't mind when she gripes about the dishes, or when she is irrational about bugs, or when she sounds angry over something little, like me being in the way of the microwave, or when she's really lazy and gets everyone else to get things for her... This turned into Watson's "I never complain" rant (starts at 49 seconds) from the Sherlock Holmes movie, which has a SEQUEL coming out!

Sunday, we mostly slept in (after the noisy packer debacle), and I can't really remember what we did. Flo and Lisa checked out, and I think this is the day that we went shopping. I got yarn for Mom, some postcards, and some "Traditional Scottish Tea" in a cool box. I was hoping for a nifty scarf, or some other touristy thing, but there was nothing I liked enough to justify spending the money on it.
We had Pizza Express for dinner, and it was okay. The best part were the "dough balls" (like small round breadsticks) with nutella. So good.
We had three new roommates when we got back, a couple and their third wheel. There were a few awkward moments there, but they were polite enough and didn't wake us up at crazy early in the morning.

Monday was fine. We caught the bus back with no trouble, other than Jessi insisting upon asking the drivers where they were going instead of reading the sign on the bus and on the gate, which I told her about (eye twitch) and being sent back into the nasty, hot, smelly bus station because our bus wasn't loading yet. For the ride back, I got the window, which soothed my irritation with Jessi, and I watched the countryside amble past.
After a lengthy search of the train station for a bathroom, we bought our tickets for the metro, which were oddly small. Jessi, of course, had to make sure that they were proper and not invalid in some way instead of simply confirming that everyone else had the same thing, since we all used different machines. Not that I'm bitter. Anyway, the rest of the way home was uneventful, and my post-journey endorphines saved the day by making me essentially forget any frustrations for a few hours. It was good to get back to Sunderland.

Also, the time changed. I think it was Saturday night.