so i’m not sure if “reka in manchester” remains relevant… but maybe i shall continue anyway…
we are moving to LONDON! on saturday. my friend Carmen offered to drive us, making it infinitely easier than taking the train with all our luggage/ things. We’ve accumulated so much in a year. how?? hoarders!
while home-hunting, we saw many flats that were not okay. london is very expensive, and apparently the maximum limit on our budget does not buy much. but we weren’t even desirable candidates for the more expensive places.
we had a viewing in Sidcup, something of a suburb I guess. The flat seemed nice from pics, the only flatmate would have been a 29yo professional lady, and the commute, while on the expensive side (zone 5 i think) was not much, time-wise, with the train. But when we got out there, the lady cancelled. I think the word “student” is taboo, even if it is preceeded by the word “phd”, in the letting world.
we also saw a place where our room was just big enough to fit a double bed, and in the living room, the guy had a snake. well the snake had a massive box, with glass windows, and i’m almost sure that the snake’s room was larger than the one offered to us.
finally we found a kind older couple, who are renting their sons’ rooms, since they had moved out, so they converted that to 1 bedroom and 1 private living room for our use. we are their first tenants, so this could get strange at times, but they seem nice & easy going. and this was cheaper than the smaller-than-snake-pit-1-bedroom.
well anyway, short update on our next stop in adventures around the world. exciting
my cousin nora came for a visit, so we decided to utilize our craptacular lake-district guidebook and go for another hike.
we took the train to grange-over-sands and went on our trusty guidebook’s recommended walk
it first led us to a view-point that reminded me of the lighthouse in lost:
… okay well close enough… anyway no one got my lost reference of “i see my house from here” ):
we continued into sheep country
a bunch of them were babies and kept violently suckling milk from their moms. it was really brutal-looking.
a family started following us, but would only move when we turned our backs, if we turned around to look at them they stopped and pretended to be eating grass.
anyway, we got through this hike without any serious difficulty, returned to grange-over-sands, and then plotted ways to make our journey more epic.
so we consulted some local tourist info ladies about walking to the next town – Arnside. They said that it takes 30 minutes by car, and that we shouldn’t even think about it, we should just take the train… CHALLENGE ACCEPTED
so blue is the route the ladies thought of, red is what we had in mind, and green probably most accurately portrays what happened
first we took a preliminary walk on the boardwalk/ promenade to check out the terrain
so anyway we descended into Morecambe Bay, with the intention of crossing it into Arnside
even the sun came out
we never came across any quicksand. this sand making slushy noises was the closest we came, but our shoes sank only inches:
well anyway, after a while we realized that the ladies had somewhat of a point. there seemed to be an incredibly windy river that kept cutting in our path. but not to fear, we walked along it until we found a shallow place to pass
this was only the beginning however, as the river decided to cross our paths again with more force. but we found another shallow end, and crossed after artur’s exploratory crossing
so finally on the right shore, we dried our jeans a bit and decided to go through the forest. WRONG
but finally, via the beach, we made it to Arnside and took the train home to some curry-mile refueling.
after arriving in budapest, artur flew in from manchester to meet me, and together we embarked on a family-visit-y vacation. most characteristic of this was that we ate a lot. A LOT.
we ate gulyas
roasted animal fat & onion
and artur’s grandma fed us cake for breakfast every day
anyway hungary was many funz, but we left and took the night train to warsaw
my mom came to say bye
we got 2 beds in a 4bed cabin, but no one else showed up so it was all ours
i woke up at Katowice at around 4 am
we got there at 7 am, and after quick showers at artur’s grandmas we went to explore warsaw:
the city’s symbol is a mermaid
(lol @ im the queen of the night)
and also this building built by the soviets. apparently locals are supposed to hate it, but it still stands as a symbol of the city… meh
there are also a lot of churches, and the pope randomly pops up everywhere
(i like how god sends hugs & kisses. xoxo.)
i liked the pained walls
& bad translations:
make sure he/she does it softly!
then moar sights:
chopin:
uprising stuff:
also they were building this stadium for the fifa cup there in 2012, which our guidebook referred to as “the national wicker basket”
also after all the greasy eating we made it a mission to find a healthy place to eat one night. we found a place called ‘green patio’ that had created its image around serving vitamin-filled healthy food. it was pretty deserted, and they had a hogwards-style attempt at a ceiling, with 2 tv screens playing an out-of-sync film of clouds passing by on the sky. the food was really awesome though, it felt so nice to eat a salad and then a fruit-thing. also, the staff were funny. when we first came in i got an english menu n artur got a polish one. then when we asked for desert menus we both got english ones. ouch.
another night we met up with my friend ola from my masters programme in manchester. she took us to a tiny hidden bar which was pretty cool
we also visited artur-specific places & found a park he played in when he was little
anyway i generally liked warsaw. also i came up with a theory to distinguish east & west. since “2nd world” is no longer a term that is used, and there are many people who are born in the east but really grow up in the west (e.g. all my friends in canada) identities can get muddled & confused. but i have the ultimate test to set it right. i believe that the identifier of one true eastern european is the understanding and appreciation of a good strong plastic bag. yes. those thick ones, with colours and/or a logo.
i do believe that the biggest cultural divide between artur and i manifests when he uses a good plastic bag for garbage instead of the tesco bags and i cringe and he doesn’t get why.
my dad was leaving cambridge, and driving his dad’s car back to budapest, so i decided to tag along.
this was our route:
each colour line indicates distance travelled in one day; new colour means new day. train means i took the train, car means driving, ferry sign means we took the chunnel (idk what a chunnel sign is) pedestrian sign means we stopped for a run.
i spent one night in cambridge, where my dad’s friend took us to dinner at trinity college, which was a pretty surreal experience, we ate, and we drank all kids of wines with the grand master, and a sir, and other people, and they sat around the wine table talking about someone saying “ah, he will never get a nobel prize” (in the tone of “what a loooooser”).
from cambridge we left the next morning, and drove to a little place near brugges in belgium. that night, we went to an event called 32° Nacht van West-Vlaanderen. it was a series of runs, from 10k to 100k. yes, some people run 100k. we talked to one man who was running that distance, and he said it should take him about 10 hours. wtf! anyway i ran a 10k, and my dad ran a marathon.
the next day we went to see brugges:
secret code?
local ‘chaotic gang’, the red tigers…
horse-drawn carriages where everywhere
so… tacky… wait is that a cat version of Henry the 8th?! …
old stuff…
brugges was nice… and old-looking… but nothing special. i wasn’t a huge fan, it all seemed very constructed in a “look we are a protected heritage designated old-place-for-tourists-to-check-off-travel-list” way. sort of like we re-set the cobble stone once a year to make sure we stay pretty:
meh anyway, we got snacks n moved on
and arrived in brussels. i liked brussels much better, even though it’s all EU capital and everything, i thought it was pretty cool:
all i understand from that is ‘i am a rabbit, i am gay…’ but it’s enough
i wish we could have stayed for the planet coctail disco bar
belgian beers are really great. i love most beer, and will even appreciate water-y festival beer in the right circumstance, but belgian beers are super awesome. one of them is called kwak, there is also one called delirium tremens.
most famous square:
the old square was really nice. we had crappy weather, but it still looked amazing. also, all these buildings are full of a million little gargoyles or statues, and most of them are pretty funny. like this gargoyle grabbing her breast while barfing
and the poor fat kid getting his throat slit by santa
belgian chocolates are a thing too, but we didn’t have any. i bought some waffles in a carrefour but it was meh.
also that pissing statue is a big thing in brussels but we didn’t see that either, too many people. but we saw a pissing french fry, which grossed my dad out because of it probably pissing oil…
anyway i liked brussels, maybe because of its combination of the sincerely old with the modern:
but again we moved on… after seeing some naked bikers
and we stopped that night in luxembourg. we did no sightseeing, we were tired, so instead we tried belgian beers we had bought, watched some lame movie with george clooney and rene zegwegger and read about running.
the next morning we woke up at 6 to drive to north germany for an uber hilly half marathon.
the elevation was 902km, and once it was so steep that everyone stopped running and climb-walked. i tried this technique of flailing arms like a speed-skater. mildly effective. by the end i wanted to die, although at times i had the vonnegut epitaph ‘everything was beautiful nothing hurt’ run through my mind.
after that it was full speed home. we only stopped for gas, and this amazingly sharp rainbow:
my dad only had 2 cds in the car. one was awful. i don’t even remember what it was but it was the worst thing i’ve had to listen to since rebecca black. the other cd however was really really good. it was a band called elbow, who turns out are from manchester.
Reka in Manchester 