Manchester, For Real This Time

"A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving." -Lao Tzu

I am back in the states and rather jet lagged but I felt I would report on my second trip to England while it was still fresh in my head.

We arrived in Manchester to a dreadfully dreary drizzle that would accompany us the remainder of the trip.  We decided to grab lunch before settling into our hostel.  The hostel itself was nice and located in the Northern Quarter of the city but the showers proved to be tricky.  It had only two temperatures: Norwegian frost and Tears of the Devil which meant that the act of bathing became a real fire and ice dance.

Donning our rain jackets, we headed out to explore the town.  Manchester is a little rough around the edges with an even rougher core.  Large numbers of homeless sit outside of shops and restaurants asking for money.  The town had an extra energy because it was a long weekend in Britain so many people had come up to experience the Manchester nightlife.  Our hostel had a pub crawl organized for the night so we decided to attend.

The following day we set out to explore some of the museums Manchester had to offer only to find out that most of them were closed for the holiday.  We did go in the National Football Museum as well as the Museum of Science and Industry.  The museums are free but do ask for donations.  When I was there in July I didn't donate anything and just walked in.  Seeing in as this was probably bad karma and shortly after returning home from that trip my life got flipped turned upside-down (fresh prince reference) I was out to reset any balance I may have disrupted in Manchester, thus made somewhat generous donations.  The museums were just as they were a few months before so no excitement to report there.

We decided to take the train to Liverpool the next day.  Apart from the massive cathedral which is the largest of it's design in the world, the main attraction of Liverpool is Albert Docks.  Lined with shops, restaurants, and museums the docks have a deep historical impact on the world.  Most of the slave trade with the United States was tied to these docks as slaves were shipped to America, which then shipped raw material (cotton) to England which was turned into finished goods.  Maybe not the glorious part of human history but a main chapter in our story.

Of course Liverpool is very proud of it's 4 most famous residents: John, Paul, George, and Ringo.  Beatles lyrics, album art, and references are everywhere in town.  There is even a Beatles museum which we were unable to go to due to lack of timing.

The next two nights we really got into that Manchester night life with very amusing results.  We witnessed a bouncer chase down and tackle an unruly patron, girls shout insults at men on the street, and the cobblestone streets claim victim to a few high-heeled women.

The real reason for our trip to Manchester, however was to experience first-hand what the city is best known for: the industrial revolution Football!

Chelsea happened to be in town and seeing Manchester United play at Old Trafford was a bucket list item for me.  We purchased the cheapest tickets we could find online, bundled up, and set out for the stadium a few hours before kickoff.  After sharing a few pints with locals and walking around the stadium listening to chants of fired up fans, it was time to enter.  We lucked out with our seats! I was seated 12 rows back and Branden scored seats near the corner flag just 2 rows back.  The game seemed to fly by and was everything we could have hoped for and more.  To top it all off, United won 2-0!  Great end to the trip.

I've often said that the worst part of traveling is traveling.  We had a connecting flight in Iceland and as we began our decent it became apparent that the weather was not going to cooperate.  It was one of the scariest landings I have ever been a part of as the 50 mph cross winds tossed our plane around even after we had touched down.  An Icelandic family next to me laughed at my clearly tense body language and reassured me that pilots were used to this.

The wind didn't let up either.  All flights were grounded for the next 2-3 hours but at last we set off for San Francisco.  Very tired, hungry, and a little grumpy I arrived at SFO to discover that the airline had not only lost my bag, but every single bag of every passenger on the flight.  Apparently they were still in Iceland.

Lighter one bag, I made the hour journey to Brentwood to get my car then the 2 hour trip back home.  I was very thankful to sleep last night.  I return to work tomorrow and will gut out the next 6 weeks of school before saying goodbye to teaching forever and making a career switch.  I am unsure when I will be able to take another trip abroad but when I do, I will update this blog.

I hope everyone had a terrific holiday.

Copenhagen

"Happiness is a choice. You can choose to be happy. There's going to be stress in life, but its your choice whether you let it affect you or not." -Valerie Bertinelli

I've seen many lists that rank the "happiest countries in the world" and like clock work I always see countries from Scandinavia at the top.  I guess part of this trip held the purpose of finding out why.  How is it that a place that is dark for huge portions of the winter and windy the other part of the year have people that are year in and year out the happiest?  What things in American life make us "unhappy", however science chooses to define that word.  Sitting in traffic is surely an unpleasant experience, as is poor weather, a job you dislike, getting a paper cut, or the sound of your alarm in the morning, but certainly the people of Denmark deal with those as well.  So what is it?

I am traveling with two of my college friends.  Garrett, an old roommate and one of the most laid back people you will ever meet.  And Branden, a guy I spent many college nights with talking soccer and hitting the bars in Cotati.  We arrived in Denmark on Sunday so it has taken me a little while to get around to adding to my blog.

Our first experience with this new land was on the train from the airport to the city center.  We all purchased a ticket, as anyone would do when riding a train, and it was understood that at some point that ticket would be either checked by a conductor or else needed to exit through a turnstile.  Both were wrongful assumptions.  We arrived on the platform to see a staircase taking us to a main street in the city.  Evidently train tickets are purchased on the honor system.

We spent that night treating ourselves to a few beers to shake off the jet lag and exploring town.  Nyhavn is a neighborhood on the water, complete with colorful buildings holding restaurants, bars, and shops.  The number 67 house in Nyhavn is the old home of Hans Christian Andersen, the most famous resident of Copenhagen and author of The Little Mermaid, Thumbelina, and The Emperor's New Clothes.  Even with the crowds the sights, sounds, and smells of Nyhavn were worth the trip.

Our first full day in Denmark we challenged any normal travel advice and immediately took the train out of town to Malmo, Sweden.  Malmo was nice but lacking in anything substantial.  It was windy and a little quieter than Copenhagen.  We explored for a few hours before having lunch then heading back.

In the evening we bought tickets to Trivoli Gardens, the second oldest amusement park in the world.  According to the Danes, Walt Disney took many ideas for the original Disneyland from this park.  I could definitely see similarities.  I only went on two rides.  One was a steel roller coaster that Branden and I road.  The other was a huge tower that your chair slowly ascends before dropping you to what feels like a horrific death.  I sat next to a boy that couldn't have been older than 10.  I asked him, before we went up, if he was scared.  He confidently told me he wasn't which helped me keep my nerve as well.  As we slowly climbed upward, and the city unfolded beneath us, I felt tension turn to anxiety.  As my newly made friend to my right started dropping F-Bombs, I felt anxiety turn to fear.  I wish I could tell you that the wind was chilly at the top or the view was amazing but, no.  I only had enough nerve to be completely terrified before making it back to the ground in what felt like half a second.  I didn't enjoy a second of it.  That is my dramatic account of a routine ride at a theme park.

The next day was spent at Christiana, an abandoned military barracks that was taken over by squatters and turned into a small community.  The green light district has a sign that read something like "Welcome to the Green Light District.  Photography is not allowed and we remind you that it is still illegal to buy and sell drugs."  The authority of the sign was slightly undone by the five or so vendors standing ten yards away selling weed by the bag.  Needless to say, we did not spend too much time here.

As we went around town, touring historic fortresses, parliament, and shopping centers, I tried to understand the recipe of their happiness, as if a signpost on a corner would outline it for me.  Copenhagen is a very bike friendly city.  Bicycles get their own sidewalks, pedestrians another, and cars share the road in a cooperative and polite manner.  Rarely did we hear a car horn or screeching tires.  It also became apparent that in the rows of bikes we would see outside of buildings, very few were ever locked up.  People trust people.

We were also witness to a sanitation worker giving plastic bags to a homeless man full of recycling.  A small gesture from him that probably had a relatively large impact on the day or week of the homeless man.  No one ever seemed to be in a rush, or upset, or worried.  People handle their business and expect others to do the same.

Denmark is one of the happiest places on Earth not for the weather, or the cheapness, or the historic palaces (everywhere in Europe seems to have those), but rather that people do what is expected of them and nothing that isn't.  If a bike is unlocked, they leave it.  If it rains, they deal with it.  They are happy because they choose to be happy.

I look back on my life, and the last few months when I might have found myself unhappy, and wonder how much of it was chosen.  Surely if happiness is a choice, so is unhappiness.  We control our perception of things whether we care to admit it or not.