turning the corner

Dear reader,
A year in graduate school has come and gone, and it has been a curious journey. Adventures, like streams, have a way of running into other adventures - and we have decided to remain in London for now, so that Sal can get into some fancy British art shows. That is, if our visa applications are approved and we aren't deported. (Lord willing and the creek don't rise.)
Since graduating in December, I have thought about where else to take you. Should I shut the blog down, now that it has served its purpose? Or morph it into a something new?
This is where you come in. What would you like to read about? Food, places, people, random sayings, famous places, back alleys, a survival guide? What do you want more info about, or themes do you have to suggest?
If you respond with your answers, on this blog or facebook, I will take the most popular or interesting one and try it out.

Most of all, thank you for joining me on this ride.

Cheers!
Gilee

the overseas American Holiday dilemma...SORTED

Thanksgiving is an awkward time for American ex-patriots. Part of you wants to get out there and find a turkey, and carve out your own little piece of America, darn it. Another part of you wants to mope, thinking of all of your American friends and family gathering around the table without you. Most of you would just like some good pumpkin pie, please.
Most Americans I know in London have come to a sort of compromise. They gather somehow, with that strange red-white-and-blue gravity that draws us together at this time of year, and do what any random group of Americans do when they get together - have a pot luck. So, someone offers their place (or flat, really), and asks all of their housemates to sacrifice their kitchen rights for the evening. Said host provides the turkey, and the guests bring the extras. And more guests. In the end it's a mish mash of food - and people - from all over the globe. Turkey with smoked salmon, bangers and mash, some curry...beet salad...pass the blackcurrant jam, please!
Not your traditional turkey-mashed-potatoes-cranberry kind of Thanksgiving, but...really, a decent reflection of the purpose of the holiday: Getting together, and giving thanks for whoever - and whatever - comes to the table.

Happy holidays, guys! And a special shout out to my fellow ex-patriots making it work, spreading the love.

spoooooky spoooooooky

there's a full moon out tonight! i can see it from my window, all hazy and looming yellow over the otherwise gray sky. as the day deepens into twilight, my thoughts too take a shadowy and sinister turn...
HALLOWEEN is near, my friends. time to prepare for the gouls, the goblins, the plastic frankenstein masks, the overindulgence in candy, the ---

wait a minute. i'm in the U.K. Halloween doesn't really...well...happen here.
of course, you do see some more candy in the stores, and the Simpsons on the American channels turn to their spooky episodes, but....there's something very different about Halloween in London. like, it's a muted sort of version of what i'm used to in the States.
less spooky, more kid-oriented, fewer dress-up parties...like their heart's not into it or something.
i heard someone say that Guy Fawkes Night is like the equivalent of the U.K.'s fall celebration, rather than Halloween.
sure, fireworks are cool, and bonfires, and i liked the movie V for Vendetta (this covers my total knowlede of this subject) but....

give me full moons and black cats and cauldrons of dry ice! and chain saws and haunted houses and rubber monster masks and jack o lanterns!!!

woooooooooo!

graveyard in West Hampstead - full of curious occupants

right.

So I'm walking to the bus stop, and hear a sort of clomping noise above the traffic. I turn to look, and sure enough, there is a horse in the street. Ok, so sometime cops ride around on horses here, like in the tourist areas. But this is in my new neighborhood, and the rider isn't a cop.
And the horse is pulling something. It looks like...a carriage? A glass carriage, kind of square and---something inside the carriage...like a...box.. or...
Holy crap.
It's a coffin.
And that's a line of taxis trailing it.

Do you mean to tell me, Britain, that if I die here, I can have a HORSE-DRAWN freaking FUNERAL PROCESSION???? Dude, I'll bet you have some kind of weird service that I can...

...find on the Internet. Really, Britain? REALLY??

creepy cool

Dunno how it is for the rest of you that live in London, but whenever someone comes to visit I get to see something new. Latest adventure was with my sister and her boyfriend, and we went a zillion places. My memory is pretty hazy, since I'm writing this blog to procrastinate writing my dissertation, but Westminster Abbey - that was creepy cool. Creepy because of all the dead people in there, and cool because they are uber-famous. According to its website, the Abbey's been around for a thousand years, so it's collected a LOT of dead people. Poets, artists - Tennyson, Chaucer, Browning...scientists - Darwin, Newton....kings, queens - most of them, knights...I won't list them all because it will BLOW YOUR MIND.

Oh, and it's incredibly Gothic, really one of the best examples of the Gothic period of architecture I've seen here.

So, to sum up - if you are into:
a. churches
b. famous dead people
c. gothic
d. all of the above

you will love the Abbey. Go, pay the £10 or so fee, and pay your respects.

Goth Week 2010

Every year, around Pentecost, darkness gathers from the far-reaches of the netherworld to settle in Leipzig.  This otherworldly phenomenon the locals call Goth Week (only probably in German).  Sal and I traveled to this lovely city to visit our fellow ex-pat friends, get out of London for a bit, and...well....

...stare at the Goth People.

I can't believe this, but the above photo is the ONLY ONE I TOOK of the Goth People.  With all the leather, black, metal, spikes, goggles, devices, lace, masks - - I think I was just too shocked to click.  I mean, if you haven't seen Goth Week, you just don't know how it's going to get to you.  YOU JUST DON'T KNOW, man.

I don't even know where to start.  There was this guy (??) who came out of a Beer Garden pavilion who looked like he stepped out of the gimp scene in Pulp Fiction.  There were zombie goths.  Vampire goths.  Pretty goths.  Sado-masochistic goths.  Punky goths. '80s hair goths.  Science goths.  Even anime-looking goths, with cute black hearts and pandas and...And the leather.  SO....much....black...leather....and some of the coolest knee-high boots I have ever seen.  Black lace umbrellas, carried by ladies who could've walked out of Tim Burton's head.

Even if you don't make it to Leipzig for next year's Goth Week, come sometime when it's grey and cold, break out that pair of tight leather pants your partner is ashamed you still own, and slink around the cobblestone streets a while.  You'll pass architecture frozen in Gothic and Baroque, and sausage stands, and accordion-playing street musicians.  And as you crane your neck to the sky to find the top of the spiraling tower of St. Thomas Church, you'll understand why Bach stuck around so long in this moody, soulful city.  (And I hope you pop in the church to pay your respects, as he's supposedly buried inside.)

Oh! Leipzig.  I hope it isn't Goth Week 2011 before we get to see you again.  (But just in case, I'm going boot shopping...)

'Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears!'

Today, as I trust you well know, is Shakespeare's birthday.  In honor of the esteemed birthday guy (and because admittance was free today), Sal and I wandered over to Shakespeare's Globe Theatre and partook of some gay frivolity.  Shakespeare's Globe is a stone's throw from my residence hall, on the South Bank of the Thames.  It is a meticulous reconstruction of the original theater, a true work of art and historical anal retentiveness.
On this 18th day of April, a perfect spring day, there were hoards of Shakespeare fans (and free admittance fans) streaming through the Theatre.  There is much to see and touch in the museum (old fabric, swords, helmets) and tiny booths in which you can record your part in some scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream and other plays.  (Sal plays an excellent Lysander. Who knew?)  The theater itself is more impressive than it looks in pictures, with pure oak beams forming a polygonal hug around a large stage.
I am looking forward to taking in a bloody show, perhaps Macbeth or Henry VIII.  Like the modern-day peasants we are, Sal and I plan to stand in the crowd and throw tomatoes.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SHAKESPEARE! You old dog, you.