London calling

Hey people!

I’ll tell you this: the weather in London is much, much better than in our beloved Glasgow. Today I was even sweating! From the sun, that actually shone! A thrilling long lost sensation. It probably helped I was puffing my way up a hill in the English, neatly organized countryside. Yup, I figured it would be a good idea to practice a bit for my great Spanish hiking adventure that is to take off this Thursday. A good decision, because it turned out my old hiking boots that had been in the closet for ages gave me blisters after one hour. So I swapped shoes with my dad who has the same size as me (no, it is he who has small feet!) and luckily my wee feet were able to swim around comfortably in those, so I will just take them to Spain. This two hour practice also warned me the first week of the Camino will probably be a bit of a challenge because my uphill leg-muscles felt like awakening from a very long winter sleep and they didn’t like it. Luckily there were plenty of blackberries on the way waiting to be picked and devoured, giving my poor, rudely awakened legs an excuse to have a bit of a break. I am just hoping there will be blackberries in the Pyrenees as well…or I’ll just have to become very interested in taking pictures of rocks or something in order to be able to hide the fact that all I am doing is catching my breath like a panting old lady. I am confident though that after two weeks I will be able to discard some of these new found hobbies and storm up the mountain path as if it were my every-day job. The Pyrenees will hopefully also look a bit cooler than the cute, puppet-like fields and cute cottages with too many families doing their Sunday stroll. I don’t want cute: I want rough tough gangster mountains with lots of scarred, bearded, tanned hot dudes that will save me when I am hanging from a cliff holding on with on arm in a hailstorm. These are my expectations and they’d better be realistic!

As far as expectations go, you might have gathered these are not very well underpinned by thorough research. That is my task for the next three days; find out where I can actually sleep in those rugged mountains and find out if I have any proper clothes to wear ‘on the road’. So far lying ready to be packed are my green long skirt, my sandals with just a slight heel (I’m in the mountains after all), my short blue skirt for when the weather is really hot, the sleeveless top with that disco-ball glitters on the front (they must have a party somewhere, even in the mountains) and my see-through hooked blue vest in case it gets chilly. I’m just a bit worried about bringing too much make up; I put my beauty case on my parents’ scale just now and it was already one kilo! Perhaps I could do with a little less foundation since this is likely to come off anyway in the sun. What do you guys think? Any tips?

Right, in case you thought I was serious; please, you do know me better than that right ;)? Yeah, I’m going native on this trip man! As Bagheera from the Junglebook would sing, I am going to take just the ‘Bear necessities lalala bear necessities’. That means 2 shirts, 2 trousers hiking boots and flip flops. If a guy rescues me then when I am hanging with one arm from a cliff, it means he really digs me. I’d better not try it the other way round though, rescuing a guy hanging from a cliff with one arm, because he might just let go in horror by my approach. Muhaha. Anyhow, who said anything about guys? This is a spiritual journey goddamnit! That is why I will put as many songs on my IPod as I can and bring as many books as I can carry to stimulate my thoughts about God and Life. I do hope they serve sangria in those mountain huts… And I still need to get my hands on that Twilight series… I’m sure God would approve; they make a big deal about no sex before marriage, right?

Better get started and run to the bookshop tomorrow! I will also look for the Lonely Planet phrasebook, because it seems my Spanish is bit rusty after a one years rest. Since it was pretty rusty in general strong measures must be taken. After all, I don’t want to make the mistake of telling the guy that has rescued me from the cliff in the hailstorm that it is OK to ‘get cozy’ before we get married. Imagine! LP phrasebook coming up.

To leave the Camino-theme for what it is, let me now give you guys a short update on what’s been occurrin’ (ah, I gotta incorporate this awesome phrase into my daily usage; ‘Whot’s occurrin’ mate?) in London. Well, yesterday I arrived in pretty travel-torn state at my P’s (parent’s) posh crib after a bus ride of 9 hours. It wasn’t just the 9 hours Megabus service that had kind of roughed me up, but also the fact that that morning I had still needed to pack the majority of all the crap I had gathered after one year of studying. After the awesome party the night before (thanks guys!), my body was feeling like a panda run over by a train when my alarm did its awful thing in my ear at 7.30 in the morning. Stress made me jump out of bed right away, only to waste half an hour taking a hot shower trying to sleep on with my head against the wall. But the pig sty that was my room screamed to get cleaned and sorted so I managed to stick some clothes to my body and started packing. I should have learned after plenty of times living abroad that you always gather more crap then you think, but no, as this is always an unpleasant fact to deal with my brain had done what it always did in these cases and just started whistling whenever this thought occurred (yes, occurred, hehe). So I ended up with 4 big bags of excess luggage that would be useless to take back and forth to London. Luckily, my brain had not been completely ignorant and the day before I had asked my dear flatmate whether it would be OK to leave some stuff in their store room for the few weeks I would be gone. He said that was fine, so without feeling too guilty I stuffed my shit as much out of the way as I could, quickly cleaned the room, and ran out to grab a cab because obviously time was running out.

Megabus…Well, it’s cheap, it gets you there, even on time, and they don’t like to bullshit around with giving their drivers one hour lunch and dinner breaks when all you want is to get on with it, but… the seats are cramped.  I was forced to sit like a farmer milking a cow, or to put it differently, like a regular guy; legs wide spread in order to give my knees the opportunity to breathe. That means my neighbour also had the chance to get acquainted with my left knee, and since the first 4 hours that neighbour was a skinny girl that only took up half a seat’s space, so she seemed to be able to handle it. In Manchester however, my skinny neighbour got replaced by an older and, let’s say, far sturdy version of her, leading to things getting a bit squashy. I did my best to be civilized however and even offered her the left armrest without putting up a stupid ‘I-am-touching-you-but-refuse-to-give-it-up’ struggle. I mean, she already had my knee on her lap so it only seemed fair. My IPod failed me on my journey though so all that I was left with was my hangover, my book, and my imagination. The first excluding the second, I was left with the third, my imagination, but since this is pretty lively I was entertained enough throughout the journey. But it was just a shame, as my rear neighbour put it: ‘These seats are made for freakin’ midgets!’.

Now I am sitting at the chic dining table in this nice apartment in Marylebone, and tomorrow duty calls and I will need to start with this job-finding thing and go on LP phrasebook excursions.

Good night and sleep tight everyone.

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