Master this Technology.

Alright, so I went to Europe for the first time last week. I left from Boston Friday th 18th and arrive in London on Saturday morning. I met Steve there and we immediately took a train to York. The first two things I noticed were how kind people are over there and how clean everything is. People seem to care much more for their surroundings. We met Steve's good friend from home, Geoff, at the York train station and brought our stuff to the Geoff's friend's place. Geoff's friend, Irish Martin, and Martin's flatmates were kind enough to let Steve and I crash on the floor for three nights. I don't remember much about Sunday because I was dazed from all the travelling and lack of sleep. We spent Sunday and Monday walking around the ancient city of York. We saw the York Minster and walked all the antiquitous walls that surround the city. It was a very cool place. Most of the buildings are hundreds of years old and don't have a straight piece of wood on them. You'll have to check out the pictures at the dumbbox for a better idea. Sunday night we went out in classic hooligan fashion after drinking 9% Tenent's Strong for the England vs. France football match. England lost. The English were pissed. At one point I told someone I was Canadian and he immediately assumed I was French Canadian. I narrowly talked my way out of being attacked by angry hooligans. We also spent alot of time enjoying the old pubs and hidden beer gardens. Tuesday we headed for Glasgow. Glasgow is a very rough place. It's known for having the most violent inhabitants in the UK. We narrowly escaped fisticufs on three separate occasions. Our plan was to head to Ben Nevis on Wednesday and stop on Glencoe on the way back. However, unprecedented circumstances on Tuesday ruined these plans. We went out to a real locals' place called the Scotia. We were watching Euro 2004 and having a few pints. Eventually the locals started coming in, someone brought out a guitar and then there was a harmonica. Steve ended up playing guitar for the first time publicly. It was ridiculous. After the bar closed we were invited to an "afterhours" pool haul. There were security cameras at the door and stairs up to the place and monitors inside so everyone could see if cops were coming. There was a secret exit in the back. We stayed here until very late playing pool with Fast Eddy and a 60s punk rocker. They kept buying us beers and forcing cigarettes on Steve and Geoff. As a result we didn't make it to Ben Nevis the next day. Instead, we headed for Edinburgh. Here we walked the Royal Mile and saw the town. It reminded a great deal of Montreal. At one point we were assailed by an old Scotsman who kept touching Steven and telling him how handsome he was. Geoff and I couldn't stop laughing. They best part of Edinburgh though is the Holyrood Park. It's a huge volcanic structure right in the middle of the city. We hiked up to the top, Arthur's Seat, at about 850 ft. We met an Australian named Liam along the way and ventured down the other side to a place called the Sheep's Heid. Apparently it's one of the oldest pubs in Scotland so we figured it'd be an excellent place to try some Haggis. There I had my first (and probably my last) serving of haggis with neeps (squash) and taddies (potatoes). It wasn't that it tasted bad, but it sat in my stomach like a rock for about two days. Anyway, it was fun. We hiked back to the train station and went back to Glasgow for a good night's sleep in the Euro Hostel. The following day, Thursday, we took a plane from Glasgow-Prestwick Airport to Oslo-Torp via RyanAir. It cost about $75 total for the three of us to fly. Pretty good deal for a two and a half hour plane ride. The first thing you notice about Norway is that the sun never goes down. Well, it does, but only slightly and between the hours of about 11PM and 4AM. It's possible to go to a club around 11PM and end up missing the whole "dark" of the night. Anyway, we were picked up by some of Geoff's friends, Sveine, Mari, and Fred Olaf. We were driven to the fjord-town Sandefjord and picked up by a fellow in a powerboat named Runi. The fjords are beautiful. They're like nothing I've ever seen (obviously because we don't have them in the US). I would have gone swimming but the waters were filled with jellyfish. Captain Runi drove us to another fjord-town called Tonsburg. Apparently it's the oldest town in Norway and was a Viking capital. We stayed the night with another friend of Geoff's, Thor-Andre. These people really couldn't have been nicer. We walked around Tonsburg a bit on Thursday and Friday and then headed for Oslo by car. Another of Geoff's friends from school, PG, took us in his Opal. Everybody drives turbodiesels over there. A much better idea than the petrol-guzzling behemoths that Americans drive. Oslo was astoundingly clean and astoundingly expensive. A beer at a pub there was about $10 US. Ridiculous. So you have to buy beers at the grocery stores and only have a drink or two while you're out. Unfortunately it was raining the whole time we were in Oslo and we didn't get to walk around alot. It seemed like a pretty cool place though. Again, we watched lots of Euro 2004 there. I flew home from the Oslo Internation Airport just outside the city on Sunday. Check out the pics on dumbbox for a better idea of the journey.

I would really like to live over there some day. Europeans are very kind. They're clean and care about the environment they live in. They also seemed generally more wordly or, perhaps, sophisticated than Americans. Maybe they're just better educated (which is entirely possible seeing as education costs almost nothing in Europe). It's also incredibly easy to get around without owning an automobile (the worst investment ever). The only thing I didn't like was that whenever we had to stand in "queue" it seemed to take much longer than back home. I'm not sure why, perhaps people are just in less of a hurry. It's really an eye-opening experience. I don't know what percentage of Americans travel out of the country, but I would imagine it's much lower than that of other country's citizens.

Words of the Day
averse - having an active feeling of repugnance or distaste: disinclined (like the taste we had for any American tourists we happened upon)
mote and beam - small and large (repsectively) faults
scruples - motivation deriving logically from ethical or moral principles: conscience, moral sense
incontrovertible - impossible to deny or disprove: irrefutable
elucidate - make clear and comprehensible: clarify, enlighten (I most certainly feel so after this journey)

Just a quick note to say that I've survived my European vacation. Story and pics to come.