Hello from England!

Hi everyone!

Well I am flying back to Germany tomorrow after spending the semester break in Manchester. It has been a nice trip, and it was of course nice to visit again with my friend from college, Mike. The one thing that I was really hoping to get to see when I was here was something from Jane Austen or Pride and Prejudice. It turns out that the Jane Austen birthplace and museum deal are way on the other side of the island, and so we didn't try to get down there. That will be the next trip. What we did get to see, and anyone who knows how much I love the BBC edition of Pride and Prejudice will understand, was Pemberly! Mr. Darcy's house. Oh, yes. Well ok. It's real name is Lyme Park, and it is the house that they used for the outside shots of Pemberly in the miniseries. But it was so cool! I was at Pemberly. The house was closed for the winter, as was the front garden, so we actually only got to see the back side of it, but we walked all over the grounds, and now I feel like I have experienced one of those long walks that characters are forever taking in Jane Austen novels. Ok, so it was February, and it was really cold, and very foggy, but still totally worth it.

The next day I was pretty exaughsted, and it is hard to top going to see Pemberly. So we saw a little bit of central Manchester, and went and bought train tickets for the trip we decided to take for the next day, to nowhere else but Stratford upon Avon. This has become quite the little literary trip. Because of the most unbelieveable traffic, we missed our first train and ended up getting there an hour later than we had hoped. And because it is a three hour train ride, that had us getting in at like, 1:30 in the afternoon, and all the houses close at 4. We wandered into town, hoping to find the tourist information center to get a map and tickets to the house and whatever else. And we got to the river, and saw a sign that a walking tour was starting at 2:00, in just a few minutes. And since we had to choose between the two, I wanted to learn more about the town in general and take the tour, rather than just see one of the shakespeare houses. So we took the tour which was great, since we were the only two people on it. Because I was American, the tour guide made sure to point out all the times that anything American has crossed paths with Stratford, which was sweet. After the tour we went and bought me a perfectly touristy tea towel with william's face on it. As you do. Then we went and had dinner in the only building in Stratford that still has a thatch roof, and made sure we were at the train station in plenty of time to catch our train back home. Even though it was a really short visit, I am really glad that we went.

Then it was Saturday, and we had Mike's mom's season tickets to the Stockport County soccer game. Stockport has been a team since the 1880s, and not too long ago was challenging to make it up to the highest division, and now is the worst or second worst in the lowest division. Some very bad managing. If they keep losing, the team will have to be kicked out. They played fairly well on Saturday, unfortunately the ref made lots of calls against Stockport. The tying goal didn't count, and most people are still not sure about why. It was pretty messy, and the referee had to have a police escort home, which is not usually the case for this team, whose fans are very enthusiastic, but not hooligans. After the game we went just about all the way across Manchester to see "Anything Goes". Mike has just gotten into a production of it, and since it is full of great music, we decided to go see it. We got the tickets and went to dinner at a Chinese restaurant next door, which had some of the wierdest service I have seen in a while. I don't think there was one interchange between us and a waiter that didn't involve lots of "what? what did you say?" and repeating everything. Usually the waiter would ask a question, we would answer, get this wierd look like.... they want what?? they would ask again, we'd repeat it, and eventually everything would be sorted out. Then we went and saw the show and it was very nice. We had good seats, and the music and dancing was lovely. The only thing I had a little trouble with were the accents. Since it is an American show, and it is sort of important that they are all American except for one british guy, they all had American accents. And most people were alright. The male lead kept slipping sometimes, but I was probably the only one who could hear it. But there was one lady who had the wildest attempts at an American accent I have heard. She would start off wobbly, clearly a british person trying not to sound british, then it would change, sometimes mid sentence, into a "southern lady" drawl, and usually by the end her last word or two would come right out of the midwest. It was totally confusing, because I couldn't decide if it was on purpose or not. But I am thinking it was not. Then we walked along the water (the quay, if that helps) back to the tram to get back into town, and at one point were confronted by hungry swans who were sure we had bread crumbs for them. If you have ever been approached by a swan walking to you very purposefully, you might know just how sinister an experience it is. I recorded a little bit of it on my camera, before we decided it would be best to put some distance between us and our new "friend". Before we went home we had a few drinks, and made another friend, who thinks my name is Jericho, and who told us his whole life story and what we should learn from him. Oh well. Over all, it was a long but very nice day.

Today is another quiet day, I am going to pack up some of my stuff and go meet Mike at Evensong at the Cathedral, where he sings, since he has been at a rehearsal for Anything Goes all day. It is nice to have a little time to myself, since tomorrow will be spent in the airports and getting ready to go back to school early Tuesday morning.

Hope you all are well and that I will hear from you soon!