I must be British

I have to post this because it is too funny not to:

I was just walking down the street near our flat and was waiting to cross at the crosswalk (one of the ones where cars are forced to stop). A young guy in a brand new BMW M3 stopped and let me cross but he also made all sorts of rude faces and gestures to indicate that he was not very happy about me holding up his evening. Once I got to the other side he pulled up next to me, rolled down his window, and said:

"You know who you look like? Harry Potter!"

And then he laughed and sped off!

Moritz and Tiffany visit

Enough said? Perhaps... But for those of you who don't know them (there may be 1 or 2 of you) Moritz and Tiffany both worked in Seattle with Casie, Lori and Carisa. Moritz recently returned to his native Switzerland, and Tiffany is now working at a tech startup that sells complex software which I don't understand. Mortiz came to visit us to celebrate his birthday (and life in general), and Tiffany was here for a whirlwind 5 day vacation. A good time was had by all! We saw the musical 'Buddy', drank at London's best Mexican place past closing, ate huge pancakes, and consumed quite a bit of Swiss chocolate. My favorite moment was of course finding a restaurant named 'Christopher's'... It must be pretty classy...

The 5th of November

Apparently we Americans are not the only ones who enjoy blowing things up to celebrate national independence. We have recently discovered that every November the British not only hold massive fireworks displays, but they also burn effigies of Guy Fawkes on huge bonfires. For those of you who haven't recently watched 'V for Vendetta', Guy Fawkes was the one caught in the basement of the Houses of Parliment ready to ignite a few hundred barrels of gunpowder. Needless to say he's not well regarded in this country! The logical way to celebrate the anniversary of his being caught is obviously to pretend to burn him while drinking lots of mulled wine and shooting off a ton of fireworks.

We were joined for this event by our friends Lori Mitchell and Carisa Richardson (soon to be Osvaldik) who worked with Casie in Seattle. They were just as confused as us about what we were celebrating, but we all agreed that it was the most kick-ass fireworks show we'd ever seen (sorry America). We also walked through 4 parks, went to a church service at Westminster Abbey, and checked out Buckingham Palace. Not too shabby for one day! The rest of the week we hit up a bunch of restaurants all across this fine city and spent most of our working hours hung over. Can't wait for Lori and Carisa to come out again next year!

Amster-hot-damn

Viva la Netherlands! After laying low in England for a while, we decided it was high time to go visit our good friends Aaron and Sara Pocklington in Amsterdam (also Erika and Rob who are doing their part to introduce the American tradition of barbeques to the Dutch). It was a great weekend. We got in on Friday and did some hanging out with the Pocklingtons before going to a great 3 course Italian dinner and a walking tour of the Red Light district (don't worry Mom, we were just casual observers...).

Saturday was devoted mostly to recovery but also an extensive search for pancakes. We also toured the Heineken brewery which was really cool - mostly because it included 3 free Heinekens! Sara was nice enough to let us drink her beers... I guess in Amsterdam pregnant women aren't allowed to drink. Weird! Saturday night we went to a BBQ baby shower for the Pocklingtons at Erika and Rob's place which was great.

A big congratulations go out to the Pocklington family which now includes a little guy named Andrew! We're hoping he'll make the trip across the channel soon to visit Casie and Chris (who gave him his first abacus) here in London. See a link to their blog on the right.

Country Walk #2 - Berkhamstead

Equipped with the proper gear (i.e. a map and compass), Chris and I were determined to follow the directions given us in our country walks book and complete the 6.5 mile walk as directed. The map we got was so good, it told us when we would be coming to deciduous trees versus coniferous trees. However, the novice compass readers did not realize that you cannot read a compass on the go, and actually have to hold it still for second so that it can catch up to you. We didn't realize that until we reached a town that was not in our directions. Turns out we went west about a mile rather than north as we had thought, so the 6.5 mile walk turned into a ~8 mile walk and only followed the given route for about the first 3 or 4 miles.

Even though we didn't navigate our way along the route that the book suggested, we still saw some beautiful things, one of which was a herd of about 40 deer running directly toward the path that we were walking along (although about 50 yards ahead of us). Luckily, there were some cyclists heading toward us along the same path in the opposite direction that frightened the deer back into the field.

Oxford with Helen, Dan and Cameron

Ah, Oxford... The refuge of England's intellectual elite as well as thousands of gawking tourists. Helen, Dan, Cameron, Casie and I threw in our lot with the latter half and toured around Oxford for a few hours on a Sunday. It was actually not nearly as crowded as we had expected and had a lot of open areas for walking. We saw roughly half of the 40+ colleges in Oxford, including the newest one (only a few centuries old). We were welcomed to this college by a tall Englishman who found it impossible to end a conversation. He just trailed off saying 'yes... quite... hmph...' over and over. Dan and I weren't really sure what to do.

The day was fun and good times were had by all. We had a nice lunch on the river, complete with extra-spicy mustard and good beer. Later, as you can see below, Helen put Cameron in the gallows and was immediately given 'Saint' status. I'd say they both deserved what they got!

Country Walk #1 - Watton at Stone

Chris bought me the best book a few weeks ago. It's called Walks in the Country near London and has about 25 really, truly country walks. They all start at train stations, take you 6-12 miles around the country and deposit you back at a train station, so theoretically, the walks are perfect. However, if you do not know each particular hay field and tree clump like the back of your hand, this book may not be quite enough to make it all the way to your destination. We learned that the hard way. Apparently it was an incorrect assumption that the author's suggestion to get an Ordinance Survey map was merely a suggestion rather than a must-have. Now we know. We traveled for about 4 hours around this lovely place, walking literally through the middle of hay fields and many other kinds of fields that are unknown to me, and ended up about 100 yards from where we started, which was not, in fact, our goal. Lucky for us we knew our way back to the train station and made it before dark. Read Country Walk #2 for a better (read: not much better, but better) journey that nearly followed the book's suggested trail.

A couple of notes on the pictures. The first one reminds me of home, which is why I took it, and the second one was just funny. The third was a very beautiful area and the fourth was crazy Chris chasing the millions of rabbits.

Notting Hill Carnival

If you've never heard of the Notting Hill Carnival, don't worry because we hadn't either, until it arrived in our lovely little neighborhood over Bank Holiday weekend (a 3 day weekend at the end of August). However, apparently over 1 million people from across the world have heard of it and regularly attend the lively, drunken three day event - supposedly the largest in Europe.

Not sure what it is? We weren't either, but hopefully we can depict the event with some of the pictures that we got.



This shot captures our street - that's our building on the left there and you can't really see them but the management team of our property hired 2 security guards and a fence to go round the entire property for this event. The police block off all of the roads so that nobody can drive in the neighborhood throughout the event, to allow for the constant flow of people coming and going (mostly coming) with the minimum number of casualties possible. You also probably can't see the grocery sacks that nearly every person has on them, which generally contained 3-4 cold ales or lagers of the participants choice.



You could actually hear the carnival long before you could see any action due to these cute little horns and the whistles that at least every other person had - and loved. We could probably go the rest of our lives without hearing another whistle and be just fine with it. :)





These pics give you a little flavor for what the actual parade entailed. There were tons of "floats" that mostly had dancers dressed up in very fancy costumes. The other kind of float was a truck that carried a bunch of people and a very souped up sound system, which was followed by about a hundred thousand people dancing to the caribbean music blasting from it. There's always a pretty good-sized gap between each float for all of the people that are so inclined to follow along as part of the parade, which 99% of the people there did (I still can't figure out why - they must've picked their favorite music and stuck to it all day).



Our favorite part of the whole deal was the people watching. There were no two people alike - quite the opposite, in fact, which is what made it such great fun. We have a ton more pictures to share, but you'll have to come to our place to check them out.

2 enthusiastic thumbs up.

The London Bus Tour - August

We broke down and did the London Bus Tour the day before we started at PwC and have to admit that it's a pretty good way to see the city. We never hopped off, but certainly picked out a few places that we'd like to see when we get the touristy bug, such as the London Eye, a few taverns and a street art fair.

Flashback in time - Dumpster Diving

For those of you that haven't heard the story, it's a pretty good one. Our beloved Mr. Christopher unfortunately did not realize that the Work Permit the UK issued him was an important document, and decided to toss it while we were still in Portland. Now, the funny part is that he didn't just toss it in the trash can at the house. We actually made a trip to the local dump to get rid of a car full of trash mere hours before leaving the lovely state of Oregon. As we were on about the 2nd or 3rd mile heading out of Portland for the last time, we realized that we were short 1 very important document and immediately made a beeline for the dump. Once we got there, Chris didn't hesitate in jumping straight into the disgusting bin, but fortunately for him we had presumed that we tossed it in the recycled paper bin rather than the even more disgusting pile. After about 15 minutes of Chris frantically throwing papers everywhere, Casie fearful that our trip would be delayed, and Kelly shooting the whole thing on her camera, he came up with the folder that was holding the magic ticket to the UK. Kelly got a couple of lovely pictures (that I can't find for the life of me right now) and a video - the video you can check out on YouTube at: http://www.youtube.com/v/vslzZmhALP4

Our place!

Finally we have posted pictures of our flat! We're lucky we took the pictures before Cameron and Dan tore it up... In any event, we are very happy with it so far. It is a one bedroom, one bathroom flat in Notting Hill, which is on the north west tip of Central London. We are very close to the tube stop and Kensington Gardens, as well as our new favorite pub - The Prince Albert. They have 'Schneiderweisse' beer so they are #1 in our books.

You may notice in the pictures below that we have some clothes hanging in the kitchen... It turns out not every Londoner believes in having a clothes dryer. So our place generally smells like Tide, which is actually pretty nice. You may also notice that we have a view of a brick wall, which is because we are looking out on the inside courtyard of an apartment block. This is actually very nice because we get hardly any street noise. Our block also has a porter (sort of like a live-in handyman) which is great because he can take deliveries for us and what not.

We are in the process of decorating our place with all our pictures, etc, and will make another post about that soon. In the meantime, come and visit to check it out for yourself!

The Czech Republic

Our trip to the Czech Republic was brought on by a United Airlines magazine article about bicycle beer tours you could do in / around Prague. Although we didn't end up doing the bike tour, the prospect of great beer at bargain prices was too good to pass up. Prague was incredible and very relaxing. Our hotel (Hotel Pav) was fairly cheap and felt like a Westin. We were close to the river so we could walk around all the bridges and islands, etc. We also managed to see two great blues acts, an outdoor movie, and of course the huge Prague Castle. We consumed many Budvar's, which has now become our favorite pivo (beer, to the layperson).

After Prague we took a road trip in a Smart car to a little town called Ceske Krumlov. If you don't know what a Smart car is, chop a Civic in half and you pretty much have it. Ceske Krumlov is a great (and touristy) small town on the River Volga that looks the same way it probably did hundreds of years ago. We took some road trips through the country and also went on a 6 hour canoe ride, which was really relaxing despite our one-sided races with other canoers. Unfortunately we lost the disposable camera we were using so no pictures - maybe next time!