Blog

Posts tagged "travel"

Blog about Hay: check!

I have made a to-do list and am attempting to structure my life now there is no more school to do it for me.

Last weekend, Tim and I went to Hay-on-Wye to celebrate handing in my dissertation. It's a tiny village in a lovely countryside, and filled to the brim with bookstores. So basically heaven on Earth. I'd love to come back for a week sometime and mix the browsing with some hiking around the Welsh countryside, but for now I had an amazing time wandering from store to store.





I thought I was being relatively sensible with my book-buying, until it came to packing up everything for the bus and train ride home. Here's my pile of loot:



Including some that sounded cool, some I'd heard of and been meaning to buy, some which had pretty covers or interesting titles, and a few that sounded too hilarious to pass up. Like Less than Human by Charles Platt, featuring a cover illustration of a floating, glowing man in an Elvis-esque outfit, and the following blurb (in part):
HE WAS MANKIND'S LAST CHANCE. AND THEY WERE GOING TO KILL HIM FOR IT. Burt is a trillion dollars worth of robot — with a ten-minute gap in his programming that renders him virtually useless to his creators. Still, since coming to Earth, he was managed to find a snappy new set of clothes, a cure for cancer, and a sixteen-year-old girlfriend.
How could I not give that book a loving new home.

I also picked up a few pick-your-own-adventure books, what appears to be a prehistoric fiction novel that isn't the Earth's Children series (always on the lookout for more of those), and a very intreseting-looking volume of literary theory/criticism called Strategies of Fantasy. I didn't intentionally stick only to SFF — I was looking for more non-fiction of various kinds, too — but somehow it worked out that way.

Well, I've been procrastinating on writing a cover-letter for an application to an archaeology fieldwork job... so I'll probably go do something else from my to do list.

comment count unavailable comments
[Dreamwidth mirror]
2. 10. 2011 1:30 pm | Personal, Syndicated | Tags: , , | Comment

Austria Episode IV: A New Hope

LAST AUSTRIA POST I SWEAR. AFTER THIS WE CAN ALL MOVE ON WITH OUR LIVES.



In this post, we finally get to Vienna itself! That means this post is going to be all perving on statues and architecture all the time. B) If Jugendstil was a person I would ask it to marry me right now.

There are also more photos in this than in the previous two entries combined, so be warned.



My dad has some kind of Hilton business membership, so we got upgraded to these ridiculous executive suites with separate living rooms. They were pretty much the size of my flat.



The rooms had the Teachings of Buddha as well as a Gideon Bible. Also a compass rose stuck onto the bottom of the drawer, which I assume is so people can point themselves the right way when they're praying towards Mecca. That's the only reason I can come up with, anyway.



It doesn't really look like it from most of these pictures but you can't step anywhere in Vienna without running into a horse carriage. it's hilarious seeing them hold up traffic on narrow streets.





Moor pharmacy. Yyyeah. ¬_¬



Stephansdom! (St. Stephen's Cathedral)



Monk!



The cathedral has the coolest roof. Also check out the birds circling on the right. Leap of faith point around there Y/Y?



Maybe this has something to do with the crusades? I have no idea.







Pllllague pillarrrrr.



It shows the plague as an old woman, being struck down by the ~power of faith~.









Who can resist those sexy neoclassical ladies? I certainly can't.







Badass double clock and moon-phase indicator.



The Austrians say "Fussgeher" instead of "Fußgänger" for pedestrians, it seems.













Oversized gate for the Spanish riding school.





Tiny little memorial for the fallen of the royal dragoon regiment.



The lion and the angel are seriosuly bored with this funeral already. Just get on with it, dudes.



Court confectioners for the King & Kaiser oh yeah.







Oh hey it's some pictures of me! :O Stuffing my face with delicious mille feuille. ♥ Also that is my dad in the one above this, but whenever I post pictures of him online he complains, so you shall never see his face.





Did not actually try their ice-cream, but I liked the signs.















Café Central: pretty fucking amazing. I could sit in there every day.



Tried to hit on the Café Central papier mache man, but he was not impressed.











Sculpture of L.H.O.O.Q. by Subodh Gupta. I enjoy finding myself suddenly walking past bearded lady sculptures.



We did not actually go into the Secession, but it's a very pretty building.





More importantly, though: that print of the naked woman is obviously hung in the entrance so that when you exit, you walk out of her crotch, right? But everyone I saw go in and out walked around the side of it instead, the philistines. Not I:



Ladies' crotches: totally awesome.



Fat Marc Antony agrees.















The personifications of industry and agriculture are looking down on you creepily.





The prettiest operational art nouveau public toilets you will ever see.





Surprise fire-breathing lion from below!





That Roman on the bottom is totally enjoying his situation. I mean, look at his face:



He is so getting off on this.



I really like this clock. it shows a famous person from Austria's history for each hour, but I neglected to photograph the plaque with all of their names on it. >_>









My BFF Gutenberg! No idea why there's a statue of him there, though.





"In memory of the foundation of the republic." Like this one because it's so different to all of the more classical national hero statues everywhere. Makes me want to read up on who these gentlemen are.



"Those who do not use the chances of democracy see to it that it does not to remain one." I guess there are/were some elections coming up in Austria.



Lastly, here's a video of some super-cool breakdancers we saw when we were walking back to the hotel one night.



Listen out for my mum's "Oh mein Gott!" whenever someone balances on their head, and my dirty laugh whenever something perverted happens! XD

[Dreamwidth mirror]
12. 9. 2010 10:27 pm | Personal, Syndicated | Tags: , , , | Comment

Austria Part III: Schönbrunn

Palace time!



When we got to Schloss Schönbrunn these people with oak leaves in their hats were holding a very small parade outside.



Never found out why, but that one at the back looks like he's trying to sneak off into the crowd.



What you should know about Schönbrunn is that it's really big.



Really,



really,



big.



we went on a tour of the inside, as well. Some of the inside. 20 rooms out of 1441. But of course no pictures were allowed.

But that's alright, we took enough pictures of the grounds.







Fffff I want this to be my garden.















What is the symbolic meaning of a statue of a suit of armour sitting on a log held up by lions?





Obelisk out of nowhere.







Entire park area dangerous!

[Dreamwidth mirror]
6. 9. 2010 10:23 pm | Personal, Syndicated | Tags: , , | Comment

Austria Part II: So many stained-glass windows.

Alright, let's get through some more of these photos. It's entirely my fault that there's so many of them, but I just have a thing stained glass windows, you guys. I can stop any time I want to, ok? I just don't want to.



The first few days we spent at this fancy-pants hotel in the countryside a little way outside of Vienna. It has a biotope-pond pool thing with an imperturbable koi carp and a lot of dragon flies and water-striders.





Beethoven wrote his 9th symphony in a nearby town, so they put up a plaque.



Plague pillarrrr. Giving thanks that the plague left the town.

These next pictures are all from the Heiligenkreuz monastery. Most of the pictures in this entry are from Heiligenkreuz, actually, because they were pretty much the only place that allowed photos.





Plague pillar!























Ok, done with stained glass now.







NO WAIT I LIED.









This is an abbot's tomb. The dancing skeleton ladies are there to show that death isn't really that bad. See, they're having fun.





Creepy Pope baby!





This lectern depicts the common Catholic image of Disco-Jesus fighting a hydra.



Monasteries are nice, but the thing with active monasteries is that along with the pretty and impressive architecture and so on comes the slight pervading creepiness of people still locking themselves up in the place for the sake of a man in the sky. Not that it didn't look like a nice place to live, and it's their choice and all, but Catholicism is always a little bit creepy, even at the best of times.


Let's talk about the things Austrians love:



Austrians really enjoy Mozart.



And Sissi*.



And creepy old men, for some reason.





These two are from an 18th century mansion we visited, which pretended to be a medieval knight's castle, because some prince was really into knights and took a lot of furniture and fittings from old castles and monasteries. It was all a bit silly, but probably the only old castle still being used entirely for its original purpose: to show people around and show off the old things.



Next up: Schloss Schönbrunn, which gets an entry all to itself, even though we weren't allowed to take pictures inside.


*The only things I knew about Empress Elisabeth before this trip (when I did some reading on Wiki) were that she was the main character of this TV series (which looks just as bad as I remember thinking it was back when I was 10 years old and all the girls in my 5th grade class were addicted to it), and that she was killed by being stabbed between the ribs with a file, which I'm pretty sure I remembered because I thought it would dismay all the girls in my 5th grade class.
[Dreamwidth mirror]
5. 9. 2010 8:02 pm | Personal, Syndicated | Tags: , , | Comment

Austria Part I: Sketchbook

Sorry for not posting for so long, guys! Last week I went to Austria with my parents for my dad's birthday. While we were there I found some greyscale Copic markers for super cheap! ♥___♥ These didn't scan very well, partly because my pretty new scanner doesn't acknowledge "Cool Gray No. 1" as a colour distinct from white, but here's me trying them out in my little sketchbook:


The Austrians have a silly word for cream that sounds like the German word for colonel. Yyep.





Dragonflies are actually little helicopters.





My bag died. T__T I've had it for about 12 years and I haven't been able to find one as awesome as it yet. This is a good excuse to get a new one if I ever find one as good, since it is getting a bit scruffy, but I'm still using it for now.

On the weekend we were there, Nickelodeon was showing seasons 1 and 2 of Avatar: The Last Airbender in a big recap marathon kind of thing, I guess, and I managed to catch a few episodes in the evening. By which I mean I watched one and then couldn't stop despite not wanting spoilers. It was kind of on my to-watch list already, but now I need that show in my life.

Tomorrow I might post some photos from the trip. I've been dividing my days since I got back between preparatory reading at the UCL library and practising watercolour painting. (I'll show you the results of that sometime soon, as well.) I've been neglecting the internet a little, but life is good. <3
[Dreamwidth mirror]
25. 8. 2010 10:34 pm | Personal, Syndicated | Tags: , , | Comment

What I did on my holidays.



It was actually a relatively cool 25°C yesterday, but for the past week I've been pouring water down my throat like it was going out of style.

Stuff from my sketchbook from France:




This pigeon thought it was hot shit, pushing all the pother pigeons around. It was very fluffy, though.









I really love the Centre Pompidou and the square in front of it. I didn't go inside because it was €7 or something. I had some money left over when I got home, so in retrospect I kind of wish I'd relaxed a bit about it and gone into more galleries and fancy cafés. Oh well, next time!





These toilet hut things saved my life a couple of times, because in Paris other public toilets close for lunch








On Thursday I went to the Musée Rodin, which is a beautiful villa-and-garden kind of deal full of statues.




Fair enough, little English girl, fair enough.


The Gates of Hell is also an epic piece of statuary, and I would like it for the doors of my house.

From there I walked via the Eiffel Tower (first time I'd seen it up close. Really impressive — as you may or may not know I totally get off on over-dimensional architecture — though standing still to take it all in meant being set upon by a pack of souvenir sellers. I'd like to go up sometime, but I didn't then because it's expensiiiiive, and I figured it'd be more fun together with someone else, anyway.) to the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Particularly enjoyed the 1930s furniture, weird-shit painitngs by Victor Brauner and pretty painitngs by Suzanne Valadon. I also wrote down Raymond Hains, I think because his giant matches (thank you, Google) made me laugh.

The next two days I spent with Tim, so I didn't sit around drawing anything. We went to a comic shop (where I failed to find any comics I'd heard of, but bought some nice looking ones anyway), and the Musée des Arts et Métiers, and the Grande Galerie de l'évolution at the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle. Why is this one a 'muséum' and not a 'musée'? Arts et Métiers was quite cool — creaky old building full of technological stuff — but I think it might have been better if they arranged it all chronologically instead of dividing it into topics and then arranging the objects within each topic. Or at least pick broader topics; maybe one per floor? The constant jumping back in time was a little jarring.

We also walked around a bit, but it was really hot and Tim wasn't feeling very well all week, so we went home pretty early every day. What we should obviously have done is go home at noon and then go out later and enjoy Paris in the evening, but that never occurred to me. -__-



Lastly, here's a woman with an octopus:


[Dreamwidth mirror]
1. 7. 2010 12:27 pm | Personal, Syndicated | Tags: , , , , | Comment

Back in the UK.

I kept meaning to write an entry while I was at [info]petrolbomb's house, but I never got around to it. So! We did stuff! Beck was really busy with her classes, but it was totally fun just hanging out. :3 We watched a ton of films, I don't even know if I can remember all of them...

BULLETPOINTS!
• Akira (Weird! Super cool! Surprised by the optimistic tone of the end — I found it optimistic, anyway — wasn't expecting that from a mad-science-technology-out-of-control story.)
• An episode of 青の6号/Blue Sub No.6 (Pretty cool, despite the silly oldschool CG explosions. Probably gonna download the rest sometime)
• Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (Still super pretty! I think all the improbable comic-book mad science pissed Beck off a little, though. XD)
• Some film about a depressed psychologisty in Hollywood... I can't remember what it was called, but it was alright.
• Kung-Fu Hustle (Oh man, EPIC. XD I'm totally putting this on my list of DVDs to buy when I have money)

Also some episodes of X-Files (which I'd never watched before!) and some Star Trek, which led to some drunken fun times. (I wish it was possible to link to a day archive on twitter.)


"Captain, I'd be happy to probe your rec-"

It was an awesomely fun night... and then I threw up a lot and felt horrible. -_- I don't really know why anyone would get drunk twice, tbh.

We also rented Army of Two, I think because it was the only two player PS3 game in Blockbuster's at the time, and spent some time sucking at it. XD It was pretty fun, though! Oh, and I played Final Fantasy X for the first time everrr. (Beck got super excited about this.)


And completely failed at it, apparently. XD I only had about an hour before my taxi to the airport showed up when I started playing it... I think I will have to acquire a SO INCREDIBLY LEGAL IT HURTS version and play it on a PS2 emulator.

And now I'm back in Surrey. It really sort of sucks when your BFFs live overseas, idk. :/

Oh yeah, and it's Valentine's Day today. I had an idea of going out with Tim somewhere, but jetlag won so we're just hanging out at my house. :3 I don't really care about the holiday much either way, tbh, I was just going to use it as an excuse to spend money on a date. XD *can't afford train tickets ever ¬_¬*

I'm going to stop writing now because it's time to eat apple tart. Officially.
[Dreamwidth mirror]
14. 2. 2010 10:39 pm | Personal, Syndicated | Tags: , , , , , | 1 Comment

In case someone forgets what country they’re in.

I saw a petrol station today that was decorated with six USA flags. Six. That is just excessive. It can't possibly carry any weight or meaning anymore, as a symbol, the way everywhere is saturated with flags upon flags upon flags.

We went to a pretty, small town today, and mainly looked at slightly dull interior-decoration type shops, except for one with was full of awesome Art Deco and 1950s stuff, and a medieval and fantasy weapons store. (Me: "That double-headed battle-axe is so cool!" Dad: "Why do you think that's cool? You're a girl!" Me: lulz) (I'm pretty sure he was joking.) (XD)

And now everyone is watching the Superbowl and I'm doing some moonspeak writing practice*. I was gonna go over to the TV to see what it was like, but I can't really be bothered. At all.

I am getting up stupidly early tomorrow, and flying to Texas to see [info]petrolbomb! :D It is so good seeing my friends again, I can't even properly verbalise it. <3 Too bad I couldn't hang out with [info]scintillae longer. :/

In extremely other news, it is now illegal to make more than one post that doesn't mention AC in a row [info]katlovescookies posted this earlier:



I really, really don't know, but I can't. Stop. Staring. XDD



*I'm currently sitting in front of a mostly empty page of notebook paper which begins 私の好きな所は..., and having a crisis of loyalty about whether to write about Hamburg or London.
[Dreamwidth mirror]
8. 2. 2010 2:21 am | Personal, Syndicated | Tags: , , , , , | Comment

NYC!

I shall not succumb to jet-lag! I shall not.

The flight to the States yesterday was an odyssey. First one engine wouldn't start and they sent an engineer to try to fix it, and then an hour later we taxied back to the gate so they could take the starter motor from another pane's engine and replace ours. In the end we left with three and a half hours delay, and got into Newark at 10pm local time, 4am my body's time. =__=

Today I took the NJ Transit train into New York City to mee up with Grace/Nicola/[info]scintillae (she of many names) for a few hours. It was so good to see her again! ♥ ♥ We had some super fun times together.

FIrst we went to the Rockefeller Center. We poked around the NBC store for a bit (The BSG merchandise was all really lame. Yes, you invented a swearword. Very good. Now design me some t-shirts more interesting than "frak off" in white text on a black background), and then we went to the Top of the Rock observation platform.

















There's this great light-room at the top. Different-coloured lights follow you around the room:





There's a screen in one corner that tracks your movement:





We spent ages playing around in there; it was so cool.

The lights! The colours! from Hellen on Vimeo.



After a while we reluctantly descended and made our way to Times Square for some photo opportunities:


MySpace style picture! XD





I also got to see the sparkliest McDonalds in the world:


(Grace calls it the McGlambert.)


In conclusion:

That's what she said.


Right, I think it's time for me to listen to some more of my Discworld audio book and thengo to sleep.
[Dreamwidth mirror]
7. 2. 2010 3:57 am | Personal, Syndicated | Tags: , , , | Comment

Scribbly.

I did another set of hourly comics yesterday, for shits and giggles, as they say. I tried to do them as quickly as possible, thus they are very messy and not particularly pretty. Not an entirely pointless exercise, though! Next time I'll try to strike a balance.


I have lost count of the number of times I've not paid close enough attention to where I was going in Damascus and accidentally jumped into that fucking river expecting it to be a street. akfbhdjkfhdsjfk;hds. I always pay attention where I'm going in Damascus now.


Tomorrow, my parents and I are flying to America! :D So excited. I've been packing:



For once I think I neither under- nor over-packed. Yesssss.


I spent my last Audible credit (I'm going to cancel my subscription for now, for the recovering health of my bank balance) on Unseen Academicals to listen to on the flight. It feels like it's been ages since I last read a Discworld book. I'm pretty excited about that, too. :3
[Dreamwidth mirror]
4. 2. 2010 4:46 pm | Personal, Syndicated | Tags: , , , , | Comment