You can find me...

...here.

I've decided to move to tumblr. Follow me, bookmark me, whatever floats your boat. (:

Anti-nutter on board

So, with my flight looming [10 days], I've started to put a lot of thought into travelling. What should I ship home? How am I going to keep my suitcases under 50 pounds? How am I going to get my two suitcases from the house to the closest Piccadilly tube station? It's a seven hour flight that cuts across two meal times. What am I going to eat? 

That's right, I even have to consider what I'm going to eat. Because I have the dreaded nut allergy. 

And yes, this is a rant. 

Eating when you can't prepare the meal yourself is always a bit like taking your life into your hands. Yes, there are lots of nut free products out there, but for some reason they never make their way to restaurants, or airports, or train stations, or bus stations, movie theatres, university campuses... I could go on forever. For someone, like me, with a severe anaphylactic allergy [it takes less than a minute from the time a walnut touches my tongue, to the time my tongue starts to swell and my throat starts to close] planning your next meal is just one more travel hassle, and it's a big one. 

I can't just go to my university's library for the day. I have to plan a meal, or I have to eat chips, or leave campus and walk to the nearest Subway. Or, as I frequently do, eat something and hope I don't die. When eating out, I am the person who has the potential to ruin the entire social experience of eating together [and don't kid yourself, eating together is a very important social experience]. Why? Because maybe the restaurant will just say, "Oh, everything may contain nuts. We can't guarantee." Then you have to  delay everyone else's meal to haggle with them. "Well, can you please just ask the kitchen staff to be careful?" Sometimes restaurant staff claim something doesn't have nuts, then when you return and get a staff member who actually brings you their Big Book of Allergies, you feel ill and itchy as you realize you could have died last time you ate there because, yes, that meal does potentially contain nuts. You can't eat dessert, or if it's a sit down, three course meal, your dessert is a lazy fruit plate and everyone else looks at you with pity while eating whatever chocolate-y goodness the chefs cooked up.

I'm not a perfect nut-allergy martyr. My allergy turned anaphylactic in my late teens, so I remember clearly being able to just eat. And I still sometimes just eat. Tim Horton's, or ice cream cake, or something that only might contain almonds because hey, that's one I barely reacted to on the test! It's really stupid because obviously that muffin isn't going to worth it when I'm dead. And it's selfish, because if I die, everyone around me has to watch that happen. It's pretty traumatizing to watch someone suffocate to death. 

But even I don't risk it if I'm in the air [because the Atlantic Ocean doesn't have an emergency touch down hospital and an Epi-Pen lasts between 10 and 20 minutes], on a boat, or in a foreign country. So, naturally, I've collected a lot of stories about all the weird crap I've had to eat when there was nothing else available. 

In the airport in Budapest, the only thing I could find that was tree nut free was a mixed pack of  mini chocolate bars, and even that wouldn't have been suitable for a peanut allergy sufferer because one of the types was Snickers. Oh, and one of the types had coconut. So, I pretty much bought the mixed pack so I could remove the Mars Bars and eat them. 

On my way to Austria, there wasn't a single thing I could eat in the Heathrow Airport that wasn't junk food. So, I bought a 'may contain nuts' chicken wrap, ate it well before boarding, and hoped I didn't end up missing my flight for a hospital trip. 

In a Brussels train station, even the Mars Bars had, 'may contain almonds and hazelnuts,' on the packaging. My dinner consisted of a pre-packaged Belgian waffle, and hours later my hostel roommate gave me an orange because all food related places were closed by the time I made it back to Paris. 

My breakfast when travelling on the Eurostar between Paris and London consisted of Milk Buttons [a Cadbury chocolate product] that I picked up on my way to the tube station in London because it was one of those, "I NEED TO EAT OR I'M GOING TO PASS OUT," situations.

I stupidly held off eating so I could easily clear security at JFK in New York, thinking there would be more restaurants after security, and not wanting to end up hauled aside for additional screening because, gasp, food! Well, it turned out there was one convenient store type thing, an expensive steak restaurant, and McDonalds. This is by far the weirdest of my stories because first, McDonalds refused to sell me a cheeseburger because, apparently, in New York you can't just buy a cheeseburger meal. You can buy a two cheeseburger, two fries double meal, or a kids' pack. I ended up buying a kids' pack and getting weird looks from my fellow passengers. You know the kind. The judgmental, "Who does she think she's kidding, fatty," look. As if I would choose McDonalds if I had the option to eat something else, and you know what, even if it was my choice, it's not your business. Don't judge me, bitches. And besides, it's your country's fault for being so weird. I can get a cheeseburger meal in every other country, America. Then, looking around the convenient store, my options ended up being the grossest cheese crackers in existence, and plain M&Ms. In North America, plain M&Ms only may contain peanuts. It's the peanut M&Ms that will kill you, as their warning includes almonds.  

...But back to those crackers. 

These weren't goldfish cheese crackers. They were like the fast food of cheese crackers. Greasy, disgusting, and with a weird aftertaste. I hated them, but was at the same time so grateful for them when Icelandair informed me that they didn't know if their food was nut free or not. I hated them again when I got to the airport in Iceland at 6 in the morning and realized none of the shops were open. With a 5 hour flight to Heathrow to go, and only gross cheese crackers and M&Ms to eat... Yeah, I was mad. At least security let me take the food through though, gross food is better than no food.

So, there's my selection of eating while travelling stories. What brought this rant on, you may be asking. Well, recently, someone quite close to me launched into a rant about how annoying people who bring McDonalds onto a plane are. With their gross food, stinking up the plane. Why can't they eat a sandwich? 

Well, you know what, sometimes a sandwich isn't feasible. As you can see, if airplanes required you to travel with healthy food I pretty much wouldn't be able to travel. You try lasting a long flight on an apple. 

You don't know why these people eat McDonalds on planes. You really don't. Don't be mad at them. Be mad at the food companies that slap a caution label on every, single one of their products because they don't want to be sued [and who can blame them?], and it's easier and cheaper to alienate their allergy suffering customers than it is to create a nut free factory, or to even bother to research what sort of allergens are in their products. 

I totally wasn't kidding about Tescos.
It is on, literally, everything that belongs
to the Tesco brand.

Blame airline companies, like Air Canada, who have several different meals to choose from, including an Asian vegetable dish, a fruit platter, a low sodium meal, and even gluten-free or a low cholesterol meal, but not one option mentions nuts. Not one. They might be all nut free, they might all possibly contain nuts. But I don't know because they don't see fit to mention this information when you book with them. I'm not taking a 7 hour flight and not eating that entire time. So, yes, in 10 days I will be the person you hate eating the McDonalds. 

My life long difficulty finding food while travelling is much more uncomfortable than you having to smell McDonalds for an hour or two. 

Deal with it. 

<3 Jade

Homecoming

So, I'm sorry. I haven't been keeping up with the blog, which isn't fair because I know that people other than Kaeli [Hi Kaeli!] read this blog. Seriously. I speak to exactly one American regularly and unless she's on here refreshing for kicks, more of you read and I'm being super awful by not keeping you all entertained. 

Basically, I've got some pretty sad news and I've been putting it off because that's my style [and my computer is driving me INSANE]. I'm always a little worried about coming off flaky because I'm pretty much the biggest extrovert EVER when it comes to my thoughts. Every thought process has to be to be said out loud, so it seems like I'm almost always changing my mind, which is true, but doubly so because I won't stop talking about it. It's not just big things, it's everything. I like to bounce ideas off other people, and things feel better when they're not all jumbled up in my head.

In one week I went from, "Yeah, I can totally live here until July! This is great!" to, "I really can't do this. There's no shifts at my job and no one else will hire me because it's the post Christmas slump!" I even sent out my monthly e-mail to the fabulous people at my old job all, "It's so much fun here! See you in July!" Obviously I expanded more, but you get the picture. 

The truth is, living here hasn't been exactly what I expected, which isn't surprising because I am the queen of Beatricing things. I love it, I do. I've made some fabulous friends, and I've had some great experiences, and being so close to continental Europe is great. I collect places like people collect Pokemon. I've already been to all the provinces except for Newfoundland, I've got some US states under my belt, and now I want to collect all the European countries! It kills me that I won't get to stay long enough to experience all of them, but obviously I can come back. And besides, it's a much better use of my money to visit a few places now and then go home and work, than it is to sit in London and work minimal hours at a terrible job and not be able to do anything on my time off but try to avoid interacting with my terrible roommate.

You see Bulbasaur, I see Scotland and I WANT IT!

So, on March 10th, six months after I left Canada, I'm going back. The job prospects are already looking way better. Those amazing people at my old job? Might have hours for me, and they pay more than minimum wage! I just didn't have the networking here that I have at home. It took me months here to get a job, and it was basically waitressing, at a company where employees are treated terribly, and you get minimum wage. I sent out one e-mail to my old boss and got a positive response within two days. That only strengthens my resolve. I'm clearly making the right decision. 

Anyway, this brings up another reason for this post. I've been busy. Crazy busy! I'm taking that rent money and trying to shove as much in my last month as possible. I've done so many museums, I went to Stonehenge yesterday, Dover tomorrow, Margate, France and Belgium next week, and Amsterdam, and Oxford. CRAZY BUSY! 

I'll keep updating this thing, definitely catch you up on the stories I'm sure to collect over the next couple of weeks! I'm going back to school in September, so, that's something to write about. >.>

Thanks for sticking with it! Since I started posting in July I've had over 700 page views. So, that's 100 page views a month, since I'm not going to include February yet. That's AMAZING. I guess someone out there likes me, haha.

<3 Jade

Royal Fail: The Conclusion!

I am so, so, sorry this has taken forever to write. Life kind of exploded all over the place in the last couple of weeks with my trip, an accidental allergic reaction, an accidental illness, some socializing, my computer being a douchebag, etc. I actually started this post once and then my computer shut down on me because it's a jerk and for some reason Blogger didn't save the majority of the post, so I logged out in annoyance and then got busy.

But, here it is, just in time for February, the conclusion on how Royal Mail tried to ruin my Christmas!

Okay, so, like I mentioned in the last Royal Fail post, ParcelForce had been completely useless in their e-mails. Right before Christmas I sent them another e-mail telling them [because I suspected that they didn't know, didn't care, are stupid] that my parcel has been located, but it's taking forever to get to Canada, and since, you know, that three day delivery thing didn't happen, can I get a portion of the delivery fees back? 

I wasn't expecting an immediate answer with it being super close to Christmas and all. I was kind of surprised that I got a reply as early as December 29th. At the time I was in Edinburgh, and unable [okay, unwilling, since I only had my phone] to respond immediately. 

At the time, I wasn't upset about the e-mail, but when I got home from Edinburgh and actually read the e-mail, I became pretty infuriated. They completely ignored my query regarding reimbursement, and instead had sent me a stock reply that said, in part: 

"Before Christmas additional resource was working within all depots to help deliver the outstanding parcels that were held due to the continuous adverse weather conditions. The majority of parcels were delivered and we hope that yours was one of them."

And that, folks, is when my well of patience ran dry. Completely over dealing with the morons at ParcelForce and Royal Fail, I threw a customer bitchfit. Or rather, my version of one, I guess. They told me I could reply to the e-mail if I had any further questions, so I did. I absolutely lost it, and sent a very strongly worded e-mail while still managing to remain polite. I called them out for not even addressing my concerns, I reminded them I had paid a great deal of money to send this parcel in plenty of time for Christmas, I mentioned again the three day delivery they promised me, and I pretty much demanded that they answer my questions IMMEDIATELY RAWRRRRRRRRRRRR! Also, I may have accused them of not even reading my previous e-mail. Yeeep.

"How did a bear get a computer and learn to type?"
the idiots at ParcelForce asked each other upon
 receiving my e-mail.

It worked. ParcelForce sent out a reply the next day, where they pretty much proved my point about their reading comprehension skills. I stated several times in the e-mail that I had sent the parcel. In their reply they were all, "You need to contact the sender of the parcel and have that person fill out claims form." I AM THE PERSON WHO SENT THE PARCEL, FOOLS! I can't handle idiots, I really can't. This while situation with ParcelForce has been an exercise, or a lesson, or I don't even know what, in just the extreme malaise that apparently exists in the postal service in this country and I was so over it by January 4th that even walking past the post office on my street made me want to kick something. 

Anyway, ParcelForce was adamant that they couldn't deal with my enquiry until I requested a search sent out on the parcel. Something they did not inform me of in one of the many, earlier e-mails I sent. Well, that's fine, except my parcel arrived on January 4th. My mom picked it up from the post office in Canada and had opened the gifts by the time ParcelForce had e-mailed me back. Which is great, it;'s better to arrive one month from posting it than not at all.

I didn't bother to follow up after that, because of the whole parcel arriving thing, which I suspect was ParcelForce and Royal Mail's intentions all along. "Maybe if we act stupid and annoying enough, no one will ever submit a claim!" Which is fine, whatever. I just won't send any more packages. Not a great loss for them in the long run, but the story's out there, and I certainly don't have good things to say about Royal Mail if people ask me.

Honestly, the most frustrating part of this whole saga is how being nice got me nowhere. I sent out e-mail after e-mail, politely worded and completely understanding, and got nothing in return. I never would have known that I couldn't submit a valid claim until a search was sent out on the parcel unless I had lost my temper with them. So, now, when dealing with Royal Mail in the future [please, no], I'm not going to want to waste my time being nice for weeks and weeks, I'm going to get angry first so I can get faster and better results and customer service.

That's not how it should be. Seriously, Royal Mail, what is wrong with you?

Oh, and my family totally loved their gifts. (:

<3 Jade

Vodafone

Okay, so I lied about the Royal Mail update because I've decided that I would much rather complain about my cell phone provider. Vodafone. Don't ask about the spelling, I don't even know. According to Wikipedia the name comes from: "voice data fone", which would be fine if that's how you spell phone, but it's not. Vodafone: Can't spell, terrible customer service, and all around crappy phone company. Woo! 

Their mascots are bees. This alone should have convinced me to find another provider, but they offered the best deals on international calling, so I signed up for a pay as you situation when I got to this glorious, but frustrating country. 

Well, we all know how the first phone ended up. Like I think I wrote earlier [if I didn't, I meant to], the Samsung Monte was absolute crap. It was extra frustrating because every time I posted to the website forum for help, no one knew what they were doing. It was all, "We don't have that phone on hand, so let me tell you a way to fix it that might work on a Samsung phone but definitely does not work on this Samsung phone." Also, they were kind of patronizing. 

Before I left Canada, I had a Blackberry. Now, I don't want to say that Canada makes the best phones in the world, but I will say that my Blackberry was at least eight hundred times better than my Samsung Monte. Easily. Bell Aliant may be a terrible phone company, even worse than Vodafone, but my Blackberry was awesome. If an e-mail went to my Blackberry, I could delete it from the phone, go home, and it would still be on the server. If an e-mail went to my Monte's ActiveSync, and I deleted it, it completely disappeared. And that, folks, is how I lost my online bank information [the first time]. Who wants their bank information on their phone? Definitely not me. So, when it showed up there, I deleted it. I went home and it was totally gone from my e-mail account. It wasn't even in the trash. 

Yeeep, that was definitely a fun call to Barclays.

TANGENT: Let's be honest, keeping your banking information in your e-mail account is also preeeetty ridiculous, but it would have been nice for that information to stay in existence on the server until I could get home and write it down somewhere not on the Internet.

So, I took to the Vodafone message boards, and asked if it was possible to delete an e-mail from my phone but keep it on the e-mail server. Because this country has no imagination, my only response was some random who was all, "Why would you want to do that?" Oh, I don't know, because carrying around my online bank information on a cell phone seems really freaking dumb. 

I let it go, but the phone was still pretty terrible. It was touch screen, and I missed so many calls because sometimes it would just decide that the touch part of touch screen is optional. And good luck trying to phone anywhere that requires pressing numbers for options [including Vodafone] because months into owning the phone I still don't know how to do it. I'm like a pigeon doing a superstitious routine for food, I button mashed the thing until, magically, the dial pad appeared. 

What I'm saying is that phone dying was the best
thing to ever happen to my blood pressure.

I replaced the dead Monte with a Samsung Galaxy because I am both a sucker for punishment and it was the cheapest phone with 3G. It's been pretty fabulous though. Setting up my e-mail took seconds instead of days, the touch screen part works all the time! I guess I just got a lemon with my first Samsung phone. 

Unfortunately, Vodafone still sucks. The store closest to me is sort of useless. Example, before I left for Edinburgh the ActiveSync on my phone decided it wasn't going to work anymore. I took the phone to the shop and they did a hard reset. It didn't work, obviously, it didn't work when I did it, so why would it work for them? The guy shrugged and went, "You could come back when the pay as you go guy is here, but I think it's a problem with Google's servers." Yep, the reason my phone stopped receiving e-mails for about two weeks was because of Google and their broken servers. This clearly makes so much more sense than the problem being Vodafone. 

Now, my SIM card has been messing up, as you do when you're an electronic and go swimming. But I waited until I got back to London to replace it. Of course, the Vodafone shop near me waited until I got back to London to randomly and without warning close. I don't know if they're renovating or shutting down entirely, but there's never anyone in there, no notes on the door, and no information on the website. Er, okay, then... 

The other Vodafones are a tube ride away. I wouldn't bother at this point, but I'm going away again on Friday and I need credit in the form of Freedom Packs, which for some reason you can't buy online. So, the website store locater tells me there's a Vodafone on Holloway Road. 

The store locater is a liar. 

I walked up and down that stupid street for ages. I finally used the store locater function on my phone, and it said there was one on Clerkenwell Road, which is not on any maps by Holloway Road. 

Great, thanks Vodafone! I really wanted to waste the money on the tube ride, and then have to waste more money trying to get to Oxford Street because I know there's a Vodafone there because I've seen it with my own eyes. 

I eventually get what I need, then go back home to add my vouchers to my lovely, working phone with it's new, working SIM card. Preferably today so I can phone my credit card company and inform them that I'm going to countries not on my list so they shouldn't shut down my card if they see 'strange purchases'. 

Yeah, right, Vodafone doesn't approve. I tried to activate my vouchers by telephone. Nope. I tried to activate my vouchers online. Nope. 

So, instead of getting trip stuff done, I wrote this rant. 

Thanks Vodafone!

Hogmanay: Part 4!

Woo, last one! 

The last two days in Scotland weren't all that special. Mostly because of the whole out all night thing, and the hang over thing... Yeeep. I mean, there are a couple of good stories, or I would have ended this series with the last post. Like, for example how Mr. Crazy had some sort of minor psychotic break! 

Oh yes. He totally did. 

After the two girls left for a nicer hostel with heat and the sort of amenities you just sort of expect from a hostel in a developed country, they were replaced by two guys. Two guys who snored. Honestly, snoring is not a big deal for me for one night. My brother's snoring used to be so loud that I could hear him even though our bedrooms were located on different levels and on opposite sides of the house. It was like extreme snoring. Don't worry, he had surgery and got it fixed. 

This snoring wasn't that bad, but then again, my perspective is off. When I finally crawled into bed after 5 am I had a sort of moment of, "Seriously? Seriously? This hostel is the worst!" but what are you going to do? People snore. If you don't want to listen to it, put out the money for a hotel. Apparently, Mr. Crazy and I were not on the same wavelength on this subject. As I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep, all of a sudden there was this loud clapping sound. 

CLAP!

I jolted awake and looked over to see Mr. Crazy laying there with his hands together, clapping, trying to wake up the other people so they would stop snoring [I'm assuming, anyway]. Really? Just, really? It happened at regular intervals during the five hours I slept in that room that night. I could sleep through the snoring fine, but every time Mr. Crazy started clapping like a madman he woke me up. HE was disturbing my sleep. But did he care? Of course not, he's the crazy guy who jumps out of top bunks and has psychotic breaks and who responds to everything with, "Oh, bless!"

Theeeen it got worse.

He jolted awake at some point and started cursing and generally acting like the little girl from The Exorcist. He shook his bunk bed, then reached out and started to shake the one I was on. Yeah, the rooms were that small. I pretended to be asleep because I didn't want to deal with it. The snoring stopped, so I assumed his fit woke up the snorers. He eventually got up and left the room, I got up to charge my electronics a little while later.

Of course, by the time my electronics were done charging, my key card no longer worked. But good luck trying to get them to reset it. The other guy who worked and slept at the hostel was all, "No, I can't do it, I need to go back to bed." Uhm, okay, well how am I supposed to get into my room again? "Oh, I'll let you back in if you ask me." Yeah, except you're going to bed. Not acceptable. There were three of us sitting in the lobby, discussing Mr. Crazy and his antics, trying to convince the other employee to reset our access cards. It was just ridiculous. Eventually he got Mr. Crazy to do it, and while he was setting up our cards he managed to sink to new depths of delusion.

The snorers went to check out, and Mr. Crazy acted like nothing out of the ordinary had happened. The conversation was peppered with, "Oh bless, oh bless!" Then he actually had the nerve to ask them to go and get their dirty bed linens, to save him some time later. I am not even kidding. It should come as no surprise to anyone reading this when I say that the snorers scoffed at the very idea. Went back into the room, and presumably stood there for a couple seconds because they definitely didn't gather up their bedding, and then left the hostel for good.

The rest of the day was spent trying to get to Loony Dook, which is what Scottish people call their Polar Bear Dip. Everyone kept telling us that it was only a few minutes away, that it wasn't starting until 3. Yeah, no. We ended up getting a £30 cab ride to Queensferry. Everyone had already dipped and left, but one straggler had lost a bet so went into the water while we were there. It was a pretty little area, so we walked around and took lots of pictures. Unfortunately, it appeared a little less pretty when we ended up waiting one and a half hours for a bus that was supposed to arrive every 40 minutes. Yeeeep. I froze, towards the end I honestly didn't think I'd ever be warm again. It was awful.

On the second I gleefully checked out of the horrible hostel. Taking my luggage with me even though it meant carrying it around for five hours until my train departed. L asked me if I was going to leave my luggage at the hostel when she came down to get me, but because I'm twelve I just loudly went, "No, this hostel is shit, I don't trust them at all," and then let the door slam shut, with me, happily, on the outside. It sucked a bit, dragged a suitcase around, then having to check it at the Art Gallery when I decided to go look at the Monet paintings, but seriously, worth it in the end to not have to go back to the hostel ever again.

Annnnd, that was my super fabulous Edinburgh trip. I've now been to every country on this island, so it's time to explore other islands and the mainland! First up: A whirlwind tour of Austria, Slovakia, and Hungary this weekend! Woo! Don't worry, I probably won't write about that trip in such detail. Uhm, especially considering my page views went down, so I'm assuming no one's interested. Oh well! A Royal Mail update will be the next post.

Hogmanay: Part 3!

Look, I've been totally honest with this blog thing. I'm crazy homesick, and sometimes [a lot of time] it makes me sort of awful. You've read it, the bitching and whining and everything else that makes this thing a lot less funny than I'd like it to be. Christmas sucked, it really did. I have been looking forward to Hogmanay for months now. It's been like this lighthouse, and I'm the icebreaker getting steadily closer and it's getting brighter and I know that everything's going to be okay if I can just make it to Hogmanay. It's an awful lot of pressure to put on a trip, it really is. I don't know what would have happened had it not lived up to the hype. Would I have packed it in to go home? Probably not. But I would have been even more miserable than I was before I left, which was pretty miserable. Anyway, enough about that. Here's day 3.

DECEMBER 31

And here it is, the day and night I've been waiting for. I awakened to the dulcet tones of birds singing and woodland creatures making me breakfast... Wait, slipped into a Snow White fantasy there. I actually woke up to the sounds of the crazy old man in my room JUMPING OUT OF THE TOP BUNK. Why? I do not know because I am neither a mind reader nor a crazy. I got up because I needed to finish charging my phone and camera, anyway. Luckily, the people with the cocaine were gone, sleeping, whatever.

The poor girl under me had sounded seriously ill all night. I don't know, if you've had significant lung infection experience you just know it in other people. She coughed all night, and she couldn't stop herself once she started. She must have rolled over onto her back at some point because she started the death rattle breathing that is usually the point I need to go to the hospital and get some antibiotics and a nebulizer treatment. 

Clearly this child's parents
didn't put Babar on for him.

She was a trooper though. When I came back from charging up my electronics both girls were up and furious. Apparently Mr. Crazy had been equally loud getting into bed last night [though they hadn't heard me at all, so point for the ungraceful elephant that is me!], and they couldn't understand why he jumped out of bed this morning. Once again the room was freezing, and they couldn't imagine staying another night, especially with the one girl and her dying lungs. I was extremely sad to lose them as roommates because they seemed so nice. They even offered to take me with them! But, it was the 31st and I had an Australian new year to get to! Plus, they wouldn't refund my money and I couldn't justify paying double for accommodations.

My second shower was better, someone was nice enough to explain the showers to me. The first one was cold, the second one was dirty, the third and fourth showers had ledges and hot water. So, there was a line up. Then I had to wait for them to re-program my card, which ended up not happening because they hadn't turned on the machine [seriously, so frustrating. If you know you'll have to re-program the cards every day at 10 HAVE THE MACHINES TURNED ON BY 10].

Theeeeeen I got lost looking for the pub with the cheap drinks for anyone on Haggis Adventures, and anyone pretending to be on Haggis Adventures. We had taken a roundabout route to get there the night before. Since asking a random on the street had worked so well before when that random was A, we asked another random for directions and found the only socialist/Marxist/whatever in Edinburgh, pretty sure. He kept going on and on about how if the Queen died and the monarchy with her he'd do a jig [I kind of think happily wishing death on people that aren't Hitler or otherwise terrible human beings that terrorize people on a regular basis is kind of... awful. She has a family that loves her!], then he kept talking about all his socialist ideals and explaining the Scottish socialist party to us. He was nice enough to take us where we needed to go, even if it was a crazy route, but I definitely could have done without learning how he thought the government should give everyone a house. He held us up by this puppy statue for so long L pretended to get a phone call so we could leave. She was very convincing! I was sure she had actually received the call, haha. Okay, yeah, the point. I got lost on the way home, too, so needless to say I had no idea how to find the pub and got lost, and there you go.

Long story short, I missed Australian new year. I did get a lovely lunch though. And a nap while we waited for Hogmanay to start. Unfortunately it wasn't a nice nap because the two guys that replaced the girls moved in right in the middle of it, and Mr. Crazy came in at some point to act a bit creepy and loud.

I think if you've been to a street party, you've been to Hogmanay. Except Hogmanay was probably way larger, and definitely had a much more international feel. There were people from everywhere. It was really neat. Basically, we walked around as a group, drinking our copious amounts of alcohol out of our plastic bottles, chatting to people, going on the carnival rides. We did spend an awful lot of time split up because the bathroom lines were horrendous, but luckily we were all together for the count down and Auld Lang Syne.

Things got briefly annoying when I really had to pee and one of the girls, who was seriously making out with a different person every time I looked at her [which is not something I have a problem with, so trust that comment was made out of jealousy], just would not stop sucking face long enough for us to migrate to a bathroom. I ended up going alone, where I may or may not have drunkenly called at a door, "IT'S JUST PEEING, DO IT FASTER!" But seriously, in 10 minutes, TWO people went in and out. TWO. That's just unhealthy. It took so long for me to get a bathroom that everyone started worrying because a couple others had been in gone in the time it took me to get a stall. Ugh.

Then things got scary when we went to find a club and got held up by a street fight. Two girls were fighting for some reason, one started to hit cars with her boots and then all of a sudden the guys that owned the cars were out and stomping on the boyfriend's head. It was awful and unlike anything I've seen before. Ever. For me, head stomping is something that happens in American movies I don't watch because HEAD STOMPING IS AWFUL. One especially evil individual walked over, pretended he was going to help, stomped on the guys head, walked around around the car, and STOMPED ON HIS HEAD AGAIN! ON WHAT PLANET IS THAT EVEN AN ACCEPTABLE REACTION TO *ANYTHING*? The cops showed up, no ambulance. In Canada if the police show up, so do the fire department and emergency health services. That's just how it goes. Not in the UK, apparently. We walked off to look for the girl on a mission to make out with every boy in Scotland, and when we came back [because it all happened on the street the club was on], he was lying on the side of the road, with the cops, still no ambulance, and they weren't interested in a statement at all. Ridiculous. So, uhm, if you call 999 or whatever in the UK, don't expect someone to come and assess your brain damage quickly or anything. Terrifying. 

The night didn't end there, I stayed out to celebrate Canada's new year. I tried to wait until 4 but I got crazy impatient and celebrated Newfoundland's at 3:30. (: I stumbled home by 5, with plans to go to Loony Dook [Scotland's version of the Polar Bear Dip] the next day. 

Anddd that was my new year. It was fun for the most part, a little scary, but that's how it goes I guess...


<3 Jade

Hogmanay: Part 2

December 30

I should have had a good seven hours of sleep that night, but the hostel was insanely noisy outside! Actually, it sounded a lot like how terrible neighbourhoods sound in American movies. It made me really glad that L was in the same building. At least we'd both have someone to walk home with. Not that anything awful happened  on the street while I was there, but the area sounded like something could... The bar's garbage bins were located outside the window, so all night we heard the sound of clanking glass whenever they would cart out the beer bottles and chuck them in. When the bar closed, some guys got into some sort of "fight". I put that in quotation marks because it was actually this one guy screaming over, and over, and over again, "What the fuck, mate?!" for what seemed like hours! Then a car alarm went off, the guy took off and his screaming was replaced by a car alarm going for what seemed like more hours. Then the old guy woke up and was super noisy... Yeah, I was insanely cranky. 

I got up and went to shower, which was another disaster and only fuelled my terrible mood. The only free one was the first  and worst shower, though I didn't know this at the time. I had to put my clothes on the floor, on a bed of pyjamas. I got in and turned the shower on and it refused to get hot. I stubbornly waited, deciding that I deserved a hot shower after the previous night's sleep. The hostel apparently didn't agree because my shower stopped draining. I stared in horror as the water continued to rise, looking back and forth movie style to my clothes, on the floor, and the water, still rising. It became a race against time! I needed to shower before my clothes got wet. Steeling myself, I took an extremely fast shower that was cold enough to be considered torture. 

Still pretty cranky at this point. It was made even worse by the fact that the employees didn't know the extension cord's location, so I couldn't dry my hair before going out. Then, while I was waiting for L... Remember how they didn't lock the doors so they could sleep at night without having to let people in? Yeah. Two extremely drunk, extremely Irish blokes wandered in all, "Is this a pub?" Really? If it was it would be the seediest pub in the world. An employee came around and kicked them out, locking the door behind them. The one on crutches came back and tried to ask me about pubs again. Er, at least I think he was. He was the one that was harder to understand, which is an achievement because I was sure both of them were actually speaking Gaelic or something half the time. Oh, and while this was happening I had to get my key card re-programmed. That took forever, because in spite of knowing people would need their key cards redone, they didn't have the system up and running. Ugh. It made me late, and of course I couldn't tell L I was late because my phone had gone swimming. 

I did [finally] manage to meet up with L so we could head to St. Christopher's to meet up with A and pretend to be staying there to get some free breakfast. We wandered across the wrong bridge, then got distracted by the Irish guys returning. They recognized me from the hostel and tried to strike up a conversation, but neither or us could really understand what they were saying. Eventually they wandered off to an open pub [at 9 in the morning! They said they had been drinking all night!] and we figured out our location and made it to St. Christopher's, only slightly late. Feeling guilty, we did buy breakfast instead of scamming a free one. 

Anyway, after breakfast we went to Edinburgh Castle, which is absolutely gorgeous! The crankiness just melted away. It was pretty neat because a lot of the crests and other iconography were brought over to Nova Scotia by those first settlers deciding to [or, being forced to depending on which side you listen to] live in Pictou. My only complaint is that a lot of it was Scotland's war history. Which makes sense, definitely, because Edinburgh used to be contained in the Royal Mile, with huge walls surrounding it to keep out the English. So, of course they would want to document that. I guess I was hoping for a little more on how the people lived and used the castle over the centuries. Though, I suppose that might be a bit stupid because obviously they used it to stay alive and keep the English out...  Yeah, I'm having trouble expressing myself so I'm just going to leave it. The views were fantastic, and the war history itself was very, very interesting. 

Looking down at the city from Edinburgh Castle

After the castle we said goodbye to A, and wandered around the city a bit aimlessly for a while. We looked at tourist shops, I bought some postcards and a kilt, and just tried to get a feel of the city. Of course, we had to stop in at my friend Vodafone so I could replace my phone. I just want to note now that L and I had terrible luck with our stuff on the trip. I broke my suitcase, killed my phone, L broke her purse, lost her scarf, almost lost her hat. Yeah, we had some terrible luck. Anyway, at Vodafone I proved that I can be absolutely insane by acting like some sort of deranged idiot.

My old phone was awful. The touch screen was terrible. Sometimes it wouldn't let me answer calls, the active sync stopped working randomly. It pretty much sucked. It dying was a blessing in disguise I guess, mostly because I couldn't justify getting a new one while the old one still worked. Seriously, Samsung Montes? Terrible. I replaced it with... something. I don't really know what it is, but it's a million times easier to work. I was lucky enough that the SIM card sort of still works, so I can keep my old number until I stop being lazy and get one of those SIM cards that let you keep your number from my Vodafone in London. Anyway, I was so grateful. It's really embarrassing having to tell people that you dropped your phone in a toilet... While sober. But there you go. I proclaimed the employee to be my hero for fixing me up with a deal, a phone, and for getting my SIM card to work. Apparently that's a bit too much appreciation... So, sorry for being creepy, Vodafone Guy! 

After the little side trip to the phone shop, we went on a tour of the Underground City! There are loads of different tour groups, but we happened on Auld Reekie first. They weren't too bad, but apparently there's two underground cities... There's the old vaults where the homeless people and prostitutes lived after the merchants stopped storing their goods there, then there's Mary King's Close. I didn't even see the second option anywhere, but it was the one I googled and the one I was expecting. Instead we got some ghost stories, and learned a bit of history. The tour guide kept talking about people getting kicked and scratched and stuff, but nothing happened to anyone on our tour, sadly. It was fun and spooky, but if I go back I'll definitely look harder for Mary King's Close! 

In the evening we met up with some of L's friends, who were in the city on a Haggis Adventures tour. We pretended to be on the tour, too, mostly so we could get into their exclusive party to meet up with L's friends. Also, so we could have half price drinks all weekend. They were all really, really nice! I also met a couple from Montreal. We chatted about homesickness and they told me about a Canadian pub in Covent Gardens! Guess who's going there soon? Meeeee! 

I was pretty exhausted, so I went home early with some of the other girls. We got pretty lost, but it was worth it because I came across The Elephant House, where JKR wrote Harry Potter! Yeah, I'm a nerd. Anyway, I eventually made it back to the hostel, where I discovered the couple had checked out in disgust and were replaced by two girls! 

I had to charge my phone and my camera, since both of them had died while out. They didn't fully charge though, because there were a bunch of people in the kitchen doing lines of cocaine. They weren't mean or anything, they were just annoying, even to extremely drunk me. They had clearly been doing lines all night, and were so paranoid they went from hilarious to annoying. They kept worrying that the employee was going to come in and see them. Well, idiots, if you're that worried don't spend twenty minutes loudly grinding the powder into... powder. Or you could snort it faster? I don't know, I try not to stick stuff up my nose so I have no idea.

Soooo, that's my second day in Edinburgh in excruciating detail! I know you probably don't want to read it all, and that's fine. It's for me, too. This thing is sort of like my journal, and I just want to document everything so I don't forget! There will be two more days of this, then some more Royal Fail, probably! (:

Hogmanay: Part 1!

Okay, first off I had a brilliant time at Hogmanay! It was absolutely fabulous. I'm definitely going to tell you all about it in excruciating detail, so I apologize in advance to those of you who want a Royal Fail update [there really isn't one, package still in transit]. Of course, it wasn't all good, and obviously I'm going to tell you those bits, too!

The Arrival

The train ride up was gorgeous and lots of fun. I arrived in Edinburgh in the early evening starving and ready for a fabulous weekend! The first thing you need to know about Edinburgh is there are stairs, everywhere. I had to take the Princes Street exit at Waverley Station and there are so, so many stairs for a weary traveller to drag her suitcase up. Luckily, my hostel was only a three minute walk from the station. It was called City Centre Hostel, and seriously if you can avoid it DO NOT stay there for reasons I will expand upon as I tell you about my trip. It's up about a million stairs. There's two hostels in the building, my friend L stayed in the other one. This other hostel painted the walls with some pretty awful art that helpfully told you how many stairs to go. It sort of smelled, and there were people hanging around outside because it was next to a pub. Basically, if I was a homeless person I'd probably sleep in this stairwell.

I got this off Google, but it actually sort
of looks like the street City Centre is on...

Anyway, I make it into the hostel and had a conversation with a couple of guys as the employee checked me in. The guys seemed to love the hostel, said it was awesome. Of course, as I found out later they thought it was awesome because they could do lines of cocaine in the kitchen [I wish I was joking]. The employee was actually pretty cute and really nice, so of course he would be the employee I got to interact with the least. Wouldn't want the guests to get too comfortable or anything, they might think they deserve something like heat or plugs in their rooms. I am informed that I have to re-program my key card every day before 10, which didn't seem unreasonable at the time but it quickly became more annoying as I slowly became more sleep deprived over the weekend.

The bed was pretty dirty, the room was small and absolutely freezing. I thought the window was open, but when I went to check it a little while later it was shut tight. Turned out the heat was just off for some bizarre reason. I made the bed and quickly discovered that 1. there were no plugs, and 2. the guy had given me three sheets instead of one. Awesome! I stuffed one in the extremely flat pillow, and put the other one down as an extra layer of protection between me and the filthy bed. At this point I should probably mention that they had already debited my credit card the full amount and informed me that I wouldn't be able to get a refund unless I asked for one two weeks before I arrived. So, yeah. It's almost like they know they're awful [/sarcasm].

I explored the small and filthy bathroom, and the shower area, and asked the guy where the plugs were located. Just in the hallways and in the kitchens. Why? Because they wanted to discourage people from leaving their cell phones in their rooms charging. Lies. The whole thing was set up to maximize their profits with as little output as possible. There were no plugs in the room for the same reason the heat was on a timer, and for the same reason they refused refunds even though 75% of the people who booked more than one night only stayed for one, if that. It was a scam, basically.

L's bus was running late, so I tried to nap a bit since I hadn't been sleeping well leading up to the trip. I chatted for a minute with the Australian couple I would be sharing the room with, and with this annoying old guy who worked at the hostel. I thought he was homeless at first, actually he still might be honestly. He read in the room the whole time I was trying to nap and he was so gross and loud. He kept shaking the bed, which I assumed was because the bunk beds were scary and old, but no one else was as loud as him. He ate crisps loudly and obnoxiously and generally made it so I couldn't really nap. Another annoyance was a different employee [the third so far] who kept coming into the room and asking us if we had extra sheets since he was missing one. As we all know, I totally had the extra sheets... But I wasn't about to give them up. Thankfully, L soon arrived and got settled in so we could leave for dinner!

Of course, we sort of immediately got lost... Er, it was a theme over the week because I tended to talk to her ear off while walking randomly and she thought I was leading... Luckily she's a very good sport! Anyway, we were staying just off Princes Street, but most of the pubs, restaurants and tourist stuff were on the other side of the bridges, near the castle. The Royal Mile was located there, and Georges Street and Cowgate and stuff. It was almost nine by this point, and a lot of the first restaurants we spotted were closed [this is a theme in the UK, nothing stays open all that late for some reason. I'm never complaining about NS and its malls that close at 9 again]. Desperate for food, I stopped a random in the street all, "Hey, we're hungry, can you recommend a place to eat?" The guy turned out to be a lovely kid from Brazil! It was fabulous! He was in Edinburgh for a few days, going home the next afternoon to spend New Year in Glasgow. He took us to his hostel, St. Christopher's where we ate the best nachos ever [they may not have been, I was just seriously starving].

Okay, so, I've never heard of St. Christopher's, but it's apparently this Australian chain of hostels that are brilliant. From what I saw over the weekend the one in Edinburgh seemed absolutely amazing. I'm going to start looking for them when I travel, definitely.

But, back to the story. L and I were both crazy exhausted, so we had dinner, had a drink, chatted with A and decided to meet the next morning to visit Edinburgh Castle before A headed to Glasgow. I took his number [this is important] and we headed back to our gross hostel... Where I immediately made friends by turning on the light in my room to three sleeping people. It was only eleven! In Edinburgh! How were they already sleeping? I felt awful, turned the light off, grabbed my bed stuff [including my phone so I could have light when I got back to the room], and went to the gross, tiny bathroom to change in my pyjamas.

It was a disaster. I put everything on the back of the toilet, then watched in horror as everything slid off the back of the toilet. Frantically I grabbed my pyjamas, grabbed the key to the room... and didn't grab my phone. My phone FELL INTO THE TOILET OF THE GROSS HOSTEL. I was mortified, and stood there staring at it for a good ten seconds before I cleared my mind, took a deep breath and hauled it out. I quickly changed and then made my way to the lobby where another girl and I tried to dry it. I managed to call L for 10 seconds to tell her what happened before it died completely. Dejected, I went to bed with the pieces out and drying. I set my ipod alarm and hoped for the best, since the thing never works properly...

And, okay. This is getting insanely long so I'm going to cut off here and start a new post! (: Okay, so maybe I'm milking this for a couple of posts... Can you blame me? I haven't had a whole lot to talk about except Royal Fail and how homesick I am... I feel like we both can appreciate how awesome it is to not write/read about that for a couple of days!

<3 Jade