great danes

Wow, sorry about the title, but I had to do it. I could feel the pun blocking any other witty options coming out of the ol’ brain box. Okay, so Denmark: I had a blast.

I was a little nervous getting there, as I was staying with a friend of a friend who I had never met and only conversed with over email. She lives up on the coast, north of Copenhagen, but I was able to take a train easily from the airport to her town, where she picked me up. And Inge is awesome. She and her husband, Jens (pronounced Yents), were very cool, housing me, telling me about what Denmark’s really like, making me delicious home-cooked dinners. And their young son Markus was very sweet.

Inge took me around the town, showing me the church where she got married, which was modeled on the Copenhagen Cathedral and was built on land formerly occupied by an 18th century royal palace and gardens that had belonged to an insane king who let it fall into disrepair after he found out that his wife and doctor were using it as a location to have their affair. Whew, those royals: drama, drama, drama! (Though the insane thing, to quote Eddie Izzard: Because it’s a bad idea when cousins marry! Bottom of the gene pool, you know. You’re just scraping the barrel there, “We’ve haven’t got enough for any more of you royals there, sorry.” First rule of genetics: spread the genes apart!) Anyway, it was beautiful, the large park that’s left covered in the new snow–yes, it snowed there that morning, and wasn’t that a trip.

Then Inge drove me up to Helsingor to see Hamlet’s Castle. Dude. I cannot tell you how much I geeked out. I was walking through Elsinore! It was amazing!!

After the castle, we picked Jeanine up at the train station there and drove down to Louisiana, a modern art museum not too far from Inge’s house, and it was one of the cooler museum’s I’ve been too, though I didn’t get quite enough time to explore, but it was cool. I was so glad to see Jeanine (it’s been almost seven years!) and get to hang out with her. It turned into a beautiful day, and we later went on a nice long walk with Inge and Markus. Jeanine later said to me: “It’s so great hanging out with you; it’s so much fun and reminds me so much of your mom.” Awww.

Next day, we went to Copenhagen, which is a beautiful and fun and vibrant city. We went up this huge tower, called the round tower (but in Danish) that uses a winding ramp-thing instead of stairs, and it included this:

yeah, my humor’s not too far removed from that of a twelve-year-old boy. What can I say, I still giggle when the picadilly line trains announce that they are the eastbound trains for Cockfosters. Almost three months and it’s still a little funny.

Then we went to Nyhavn (new harbour), which is so pretty:

see? where Jeanine had to part to catch her train back home. Then Inge and I went for lunch to get a traditional Danish open-faced sandwich. At this point, I had a choice between fish, pork, or–essentially–and open-faced (gourmet-ish) gusburger. I still won’t eat at the white spot, but it wasn’t too bad. Then Inge left to catch her train back home. I took a canal cruise, which was pretty great, except that I started shivering as soon as I actually got off the boat. I warmed up by walking down the main pedestrian street, popping into various shops to look around and warm up. I got a few nice small things, but was mainly killing time. I got off the boat at 16:15 and my flight wasn’t until 21:25. I still ended up at the airport super early, but at least I was warm and not-stressed. Though CPH is a smallish airport, it was one of the longer security lines I’ve been in, complete with animated “how to go through security” instructional video, that I had to watch about twelve times because it was on a loop. So I got to the terminal with the directive to blow the rest of my cash (I was not going to pay exchange commission twice to get it back to pounds), which I did on food, mostly, and a really cute pair of Danish porcelain earrings. Oh, and I gave my nice dinner waiter (who was polite and charming though obviously overworked) a big tip.

Friday, I did something, but I can’t remember what. Errands, I think.

Saturday, I went to Kew gardens in Richmond to see the Henry Moore sculptures on display there (it was the last weekend of the exhibit), and of course, when I got there, it started raining. I also wanted to see the Oxford vs. Cambridge boat race which began at 1715 just a few miles east on the Thames, so after getting my fill of Kew and Moore, I decided to kill the next few hours walking along the Thames Path. It was actually quite pleasant despite the rain showers and cold wind, as long as I kept moving. However, about two miles down, the path turned almost entirely to mud, so I had to move quite a bit slower to keep from slip-sliding, but that did nothing to save my nice green chucks from the mud. Nothing more I could do, I kept going, which was fine once I knew cleanliness from the calf down was a lost cause. Eventually, I got to the bend in the river at Hammersmith bridge where I had decided to watch the race, and there was still half an hour before the reserve race. I happened upon a boat ramp and figured, “hey, I can kind of clean off my shoes here.” Bad idea. I mean, cool to have put my feet in the Thames (and it looked relatively clean there), but not so cool to be standing with wet shoes in the cold for the next hour. Well, it all worked out. I saw the race, heard some rather creative and loud curses against the winning/losing crew, and was part of the mad dash to the tube station afterwards. But, boy was I glad to get back to Nido, take a hot shower, make some tea, and wash my shoes in the kitchen sink.

And now, spring break is officially over. I have class this evening, but before that, I’m going to take my time today. Go to the gym, maybe go shopping, definitely drink more tea. And just for kicks, a little Monty Python graffiti:

we went to Tipperary, it was a long way to go

It’s been a while, but I want to get an update in before I left for Copenhagen.

Picking up where I left off, Masque of the Red Death was fantastic! I’m so glad I was able to share that innovative London theatre experience with Aliya. Then we did Karaoke at the Long Hope, including highlights such as all the girls singing “Spice Up Your Life” and Joe soloing on “Sweet Child O’ Mine”. Friday and Saturday, Aliya and I were in the city, at museums and walking around for about twenty hours, and it was great. Aliya and I travel similarly: we want to be out and in the city, not missing anything, so it was a busy, tiring, but fabulous few days.

Sunday, left for Dublin, and it was so good seeing mom, dad, and walter, I can’t even find the words. Saint Patrick’s Day shenanigans happened, but they’re mostly stories about walter, so I’ll let him share if he wants. But it was a blast, as always.

Tuesday, Walter flew back to Cairo, and mom, dad, and I rented a car and drove to Killenny, where we saw the very cool castle, which has all sorts of ties to Anglo-Irish history from Richard II to Elizabeth I and Bonny Prince Charley.

Next day, we drove to the Burren (and through Tipperary, hence the title of this post), which was gorgeous and awe-inspiring. It used to be a sea, so the ground is covered in limestone with grass poking out for the cows and sheep to eat. And, boy were there a lot of cows and sheep. I don’t know how dad put up with mom and me “awww”ing all the time. We also went to the Cliffs of Moher on the West Coast, and the view there was breathtaking. I climbed a little ways beyond where the fence ends, but I couldn’t go too far. The trail was a little to close to the edge and the wind was whipping a little to fiercely for me to be comfortable. It was beautiful nonetheless. It was quite an adventure trying to find the B and B that night, as we all repeatedly felt as though we had somehow driven into the opening credits of The Shining. Once we did find it, the woman who ran it was, well, “curt” is a nice way to put it. Other, meaner people may change a letter.

Next day was our longest drive, nearly five hours back over to the east coast to county Meath and Newgrange, a neolithic sun temple/tomb. The inside has been preserved for 5000 years, and it was pretty awesome to stand in the middle. Mortarless stonemasonry, perfect alignment with the sun on the winter solstice, intricate Celtic carvings. It was great.

Then it was Friday, and mom and I flew back to London, dad back home. Mom’s hotel is really cute, and I helped drag her bag up the four flights of steps. I was feeling sick, so we got an early dinner, and mom came back to Nido with me, to see where I live.

Saturday, still sick, but not too bad, we went shopping . . . in the snow/hail/sleet/rain (and occasional sun). It was a weird weather day. We ate in the West end then saw La Vie En Rose off of Liecester Square (only £5 a ticket!), which was great. But I overdid it a bit, and spent yesterday recovering, with mam here to take care of me.

Tonight, we got to Hairspray, and tomorrow we both leave: I for Copenhagen, mom for home.

and we’ll ride and we’ll ride, never growing old

Okay, week’s been a bit of a whirlwind, time to play catch-up and kill time until I can fax my internship contract to the National Yiddish Book Center.

Biggest news from last weekend was going clubbing with Shelby and Andy at Turnmills on Saturday night. It was a mad house, in the good sense of the term. We waited outside in the queue for about forty-five minutes, sharing alcoholic beverages to keep warm and stay classy. Got in, and it was nuts: loud, crazy, awesome techno music blaring in the many rooms, strobe and laser lights pulsating to the beat, and droves of people doing their ridiculous rave dancing. It was a lot of fun! Shelby and I danced on a raised platform with many other party-goers, and I was really glad that Shelby got her techno/london club experience. It was quite a send-off.

Sunday, I spent ten hours working on my postcolonial indian lit paper (3000 words), cooked a pasta dish to last me the week, cleaned veggies, and watched Raiders of the Lost Ark while doing so. Doing domestic was good for me, recentered me, and I also went to the gym and sweated some of my paper anxiety away. For all the time spent on a couch with Kim and Joseph Campbell, it was a good day. Monday, I worked on the paper more, typing and editing it, fell in deep like with a new TV show (Eli Stone) that will likely end in hearbreak when it gets cancelled, went to class, where we had probably the least crazy and most engaging and educational speaker: a leader of London’s gay pride movement. Also, he biked there in the rain, so he gets bonus points for not only being great on civil rights and liberties but also going green. It was so cool hearing his experiences in the underground then political movements of the 70s and 80s. Like dealing with disproportionate efforts from the police to raid cruising areas by assembling en masse in police departments.

Then, the rocket again with Matty and Anna and Kate and Kira, where I got cheap but yummy bar food, but I still had some editing to do and Anna was getting over a cold, so we both lit out about 9.30.

Tuesday, I got up early-ish to get Aliya a ticket for Masque of the Red Death at the student centre, and took the opportunity to go for a run then do some errands. I’m pretty proud of myself, actually, because I was able to run for 10 minutes on the city pavement without stopping (I did that jog-in-place thing at stop lights). Usually, I have more problems running on asphalt, and my knees were protesting afterwards, but it was worth it, running almost the distance from Nido to the student centre. Shakespeare in the afternoon: Richard II, a fairly interesting discussion (about the politics of power) for a fairly boring and political play (Gloucester, Winchester, York, Gaunt, Salsbury, Exton . . . so many Dukes, Earls, and Knights, not to mention two kings).

Yesterday, I turned in my PIL paper, and we discussed Hind Swaraj in class, and Prof. Majeed was pretty nice in acknowledging that most of the class had not read: he said at one point that we should all go for Ph.Ds because we were talking so well about a book we hadn’t read. For the record, I read it two years ago for another class, but I did go back over it before class. Because I am a nerd with amazing time-management skills. The discussion was actually the best we’ve had in a while because Prof. Majeed does a pretty good job of lecturing with discussion elements (he has some problems leading discussions without lecture bits to fill in the gaps . . . some of that might be that people don’t really read the texts, though).

Last night, my theatre class went to see random at the Royal Court Theatre. Many of us were slightly daunted by the prospect of an hour-long one-woman show, but it ended up being one of the better shows we’ve seen (in my opinion). The actress was technically and emotionally captivating and natural and commanding, able to switch among four characters without it seeming ludicrous or unbalanced. The play itself is poetic and subtle and important. I connected on a deeply personal level, probably due in large part to this increasing feeling of missing my brother so damn much. The other day while walking to class, Wild Animal Party’s “Slow Down,” the song Bradford wrote about their cross-country road trip, came on my ipod, and I got a bit ferklempt, picturing Walter driving in the van out of Shanendoah and into the world. I think it’s increased because I know I’ll see him soon (Sunday! amazing!). I’m coming up on spring break; only tonight’s theatre visit–which is going to be terrifying and dreadful and sublime, in their literal definitions–stand between me and two weeks of freedom and travel.

Also, apparently we weren’t the only discontents regarding the amalgamated theatre class, as they’ve decided to split us up again, and my class will now be the six of us Jets meeting from 1-3pm on Thursdays. This is good news, but I feel bad for the professor, who is still getting adjusted, to be dealing with brats like us. Though I think we were dealing okay, and had kept our grumblings to a minimum. What’s done is now done, and one byproduct already is that we’re to read a few pages of psychoanalytic tecnique regarding performance in anticipation of the next class. I already told my fellow Jets that I can’t shut up about Freud when dealing with Poe, and when the professor brought him up in the lecture part of class today, Joe made some snide comment (as he is wont to do, and I appreciate that in him), to which my only response was, “I didn’t say anything. He brought him up,” then I kept my mouth shut. Freud is just so much fun to muck about with. I love it.

On a final note of awesome: Anna and I bought tickets to Eddie Izzard’s new show, Stripped, which he’ll be touring with this summer. I’m going to drive down to New York from Amherst (where the National Yiddish Book Center is) and stay with her in her apartment (it is good to be making so many New Yorker friends), and we’re going to go on Saturday June 28! (well, we’re hoping. we were able to get advanced tickets on ticketmaster which lists a 28 june show, but his website does not [yet].) I’m so excited, and they’re really good seats, too, close to the stage at Radio City.

bagels and locks

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while, but Shelby came in on Saturday, and I’ve been splitting my time between classes and her. First day: South bank and the Tate Modern (really, that walk from St. Paul’s to the London eye is probably my favorite). Second day: met her friend, Andy, who she’s staying with for the next few nights until she leaves (Nido rules being rigid as they are), and we all walked from Chalk Farm to Primrose Hill to Hampstead Heath and Highgate Cemetary (where we saw Marx’s and George Eliot’s monuments) in the North, took a bus from Hampstead to King’s Cross for a pit stop and change of shoes, then walked all the way from Nido to the Thames and west to Leicester Square. It was kind of amazing, if a bit tiring. We were following the flow of the river Fleet, which apparently still runs under London, and we were able to go to a sewer grate outside a pub and actually hear it flowing. It was pretty darn cool, and I always like the Thames at sunset. We had wagamama for dinner (big surprise, I know) and saw There Will Be Blood at one of the huge theatres in Leicester Square, followed by a pub visit.

On There Will Be Blood: I am so glad I saw it in theatres. The vistas and the music need widescreen and surround sound to be at their peak of effectiveness. Daniel Day-Lewis certainly deserves all the praise (as always), for any man who can make a line as ludicrous out of context as “I drink your milkshake. I drink it up!” oddly terrifying in context deserves all the awards. Paul Dano (as Eli, and also seen in Little Miss Sunshine) should be on every list of hollywood up-and-coming young actors. He was incredible, mesmerising, mysterious but also fleshed out, hypocritical yet earnest, and held his own against DDL. The whole film was a fantastic and enthralling exploration of this twisted, flawed, dark egomaniac, and the costly process of achieving the “American dream.”

I can’t help putting it on a spectrum with the other amazing “male” movies of this past year: 3:10 to Yuma, No Country for Old Men, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (which I didn’t see but wanted to, and about which I heard good things). The western is back, and in able-hands, has surpassed it’s genre with these meditative films. There seems to be some kind of dialogue, or perhaps shared monologue, passing between these films; regarding what exactly, I’m not sure, but among the possibilities are: the nature of masculinity, the price of celebrity/fortune, fathers and sons, etc. I think these may be a reflection of the reaction against a “might is right” form of politics and foreign policy of which so much of America and the world is fatigued. We had a cowboy for president, he fucked everything up, so we’re now forced to redefine what a cowboy is.

Monday: class then the Rocket (a pub) with my friends Mattie and Anna (fellow Jets), their friend Kate, and Shelby. I’d never been, but the other girls love it there, go every monday, and it was actually a lot of fun (and cheap-ish pub food, to boot).

Tuesday: Class, then showing Shelby a fun night in the West End: dinner in Chinatown, dessert in Soho, and Spamalot front row seats for £20 each. We had a lot of fun, and the musical was even better the second time around. And, I swear, each knight looked really familiar. They’ve all probably been on Doctor Who.

Wednesday: Class in the morning, then Shelby and Melissa and I went to Camden for Indian food lunch (curry, rice, and a drink for £5), and Shelby and I walked around the stalls in Camden Lock and Camden Market, where Shelby bought a vintage leather coat for £15. Then I had my play: Brief Encounter (not the film), which was ten kinds of fabulous. It was produced by Kneehigh theatre group, who took the film from the 1940s, used it as a backbone for the story, and made it accessible, funny, modern, poignant, vaudvillian, and theatrical. They used what I call the Tony Kushner style of theatricality: let the mechanisms of the theatre appear, make the audience aware of the process, but–unlike Brecht–still make them believe in and buy into the emotions and the characters and the story in the world being created. It was an almost perfect balance of the stylized and the mimetic. I loved it, and so did all my curmudgeonly theatre friends. Afterwards, Shelby was out with Andy, so I went to the Long Hope to continue the tradition of post-theatre student-priced Strongbow that has become an awesome part of my weekly routine. (twice next week, with thursday’s additional show, and–as if it could get any better–thursday is karaoke night at the Long Hope. and aliya will be here then!)

This morning: pre-class bagels with Matty, Anna, Joe, and Jillian, who deemed the bagels “pretty good, even by new york standards.”  High praise.  I love me some Jet bonding over baked goods.

I’ve been feeling a bit off over the last few days, with a morning and intermittent-during-the-day sore throat. I’m generally feeling overly-phlegmy and fatigued, so tonight I’m chilling in the room, reading Poe in anticipation of next week’s Masque of the Red Death, and calling it an early night. It looks as though tomorrow Shelby and I will be shopping til we will be dropping. I also want to show her the markets.

Edit: somehow wordpress logged me out as I was typing, so I lost all the hyperlinks and edits I added when I tried to publish this post.  so you’re going to have to look up the things you don’t know yourself. sorry bout that.