Basically I just forgot to post Friday. So I apologize. I know you were waiting eagerly to hear more about my European Vacation. I'm afraid you're going to have to wait a little longer, though.
Instead, I'm going to write about my adventure yesterday, In Which I Went Alone to a Strange City to Visit My Friend.
So my friend Nicole is a sophomore at the University of Evansville, and she's studying at Harlaxton College in Grantham, about an hour by train north of London. This was the first weekend we both were free, so I decided to go visit her All By Myself. That morning, I left at exactly the time I had meant to leave, got to King's Cross station with 10 minutes before the train departed, ran to the auto-ticket kiosk, bought my ticket and hopped on the train. I was pretty proud of myself. I arrived in Grantham at exactly the time the timetable said I would, and didn't have any trouble finding Nicole. Exactly as planned!
Grantham is a fairly small town of about 34,000 people. The town was busy yesterday, though: there's a market every Saturday that takes up a few streets and you can buy fresh fruits and vegetables, as well as clothes and other knick-knacky things. There's also a little mall with some shops. So we walked around there for a while, and then took a bus back to Harlaxton College, which is a few miles outside of the actual town.
The college is in a manor house. It looks like something out of Harry Potter, all stone with spires and tall windows and Gothic arches. I can't believe Nicole goes to school there, and she says sometimes she can't believe it herself. She doesn't actually live in the manor, but in a smaller carriage house down a hill. But everything else is there – the classrooms, the "refectory," i.e. cafeteria, the all-important movie-watching equipment, and the even-more-important "bistro," which is actually a bar. That part kills me, since Evansville is a dry campus. Yeah, a dry campus with a bar in the basement. Weird. Actually, Evansville is not the only school that works with Harlaxton College, so maybe the Evansville kids just aren't supposed to go there. Yeah, right.
I spent a good long time with Nicole, walking around the area and watching Sleepless in Seattle, but eventually it was time for me to go. I took a taxi to the train station, which arrived right on time, and I got to the station with half an hour to spare. I already had my ticket, so I went to sit down in the waiting area with a punk kid about 17 years old, and a couple about my age. About 10 minutes before the train was scheduled to arrive, we heard an announcement: there had been a fight on the train, and now it was waiting for "police action" at a station about 45 minutes away from Grantham.
Great.
It ended up taking an hour for the police to get to the station, which kind of makes me wonder about the quality of law enforcement in the United Kingdom. I was glad I had my iPod and "This American Life" to listen to.
I finally got back to my flat about 12:15, just about exactly an hour behind schedule. I was glad I didn't have a connecting train or an airplane to catch – I just had to worry about the Underground closing. I think I caught the last train. So that was lucky.
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