Things I will miss about England
The time is fast approaching: in less than three weeks, I’ll be picking up my life in Oxford and moving back to the New World. After all my agony and misery and kvetching about life in England at the outset, I’ve quietly come to love it. People often ask me what I’ll miss about England, with that special wry English undertone that seems to smirkingly say, ‘if anything.’ Well England, there are a lot of things I’ll miss and none of them particularly more than others.
Fighting Modern Aristocracies or What Occupy Wall Street is Probably Trying to Communicate
The Occupy movement has had a couple of months to organize and communicate its desires, thoughts, and solutions. While I still don’t think there is a coherent set of goals or grievances, and certainly no solutions, there is definitely a passion and belief that something isn’t right alongside general feelings of discontent with the proverbial Bogie Man. Because of poorly defined arguments and largely reactionary (read left wing) ways of communicating ideas, more conservatively minded folks, myself included, tend to roll their eyes when such a spectacle of complaining is set before them.
Silly British Design: The Magic Roundabout
They can be found all over Europe and Europeans generally approve of them. To an American, roundabouts rarely make any sense, but in some specific circumstances, it is possible to see the cleverness of them. While weaving through vineyards in Southern France for example, the roundabouts keep you moving as traffic is generally sparse. This is not to say I approve of a road system that requires traffic circles, but for the zig and zag roads that span most of Europe, roundabouts often make sense.
Tradition: We're Doing it Wrong
Every year AHA members vote on their favorite beers, and every year is just as predictable as the next. See if you are able to spot the patterns of the 10 most desired beers as rated by AHA members. Pliny the Elder. (8% ABV) American Double/Imperial IPA. Bell’s Two Hearted Ale. (7% ABV) American IPA. Dogfishhead 90 Minute IPA. (9% ABV) American Imperial IPA. Founders Kentucky Breakfast Stout. (11.2% ABV) American Double/Imperial Stout.
Criminal insanity as a defence to wounds inflicted during rental process.
We’re in the process of renting a new flat. I’m also in the process of studying for two straggling exams, one of which happens to be on Criminal Law. We received our new Tenancy Agreement and were surprised to discover that it includes what effectively amounts to a £500 move-in fee. At the same time, I happen to be on the “Criminal Insanity” section of my revision. This prompted some timely considerations.
Roma: Great Food, Fantastic Wine and... Terrific Beer?
Our expectations of Rome were those of most people before they go: old buildings, great food, bold wines, long lines, crowded piazzas, and trains full of thieves. What I wasn’t expecting was to be able to find craft beers from all over the world served in the tiniest little beer cave surrounded by Italians watching football pretty much all day long. Ma Che Siete Venuti a Fa was rated best beer bar in the world in 2010 on ratebeer.
Bleroni Cafe
Julianne and I stumbled upon Bleroni cafe in Jericho a few weeks ago while walking into town. It’s a quaint little cafe in a cute neighborhood with good food and great coffee. The first thing we love about this place is the coffee. It’s probably some of the best in Oxford and it’s sold at a very reasonable price. Second, and more importantly, we can find an American breakfast complete with maple syrup.
Budget airlines and cheap European travel
I write this half asleep on a midnight budget flight from London-Luton to Prague, apparently over Frankfurt Germany though that’s difficult to confirm with the thick cloud cover over the whole of Europe right now. Budget airlines are a brand new experience for us - this is the first time we have traveled anywhere far enough from London to require a plane. At 80GBP return from London to Prague, the price is certainly right and makes travel to anywhere inside of Europe cheaper than I think it will ever be for us.
Czech out my Trdlo
Like most tourists in Prague, we spent the majority of our trip in Old Town, a place where time (at least for the buildings) has stood still and has somehow managed to skip being obliterated by two world wars. Well, perhaps not entirely, apparently the Americans destroyed a few buildings mistaking Prague for Dresden… we were never well known for our geography. But I digress. In the main square there are cathedrals and buildings from the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries as well as an old clock tower with a very famous astronomical clock.
Oxtoberfest
We have unfortunately not been to very many pubs while in Oxford, so Oxtoberfest, a four day charity pub crawl event, was a good excuse to go check out some of the places we always walk past and never go into. It also gave us a chance to see the English in their natural environment, slightly drunk but happy instead of the usual sober and sour. The challenge was a fairly short order: a pint from each participating pub and we would get a free t-shirt and brewery tour which I thought would be fantastic.