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My first two weeks in a new country
BY ERIK LUND
Statesman staff writer
Submited photo
Stumbling down the street drunk, by myself, in the second largest city in a country 4000 miles from home is a beautiful thing, it really is. And that was just last night.
To say I've been suffering major writer's block is an understatement. I suppose as time passes, and things become more regular here, it'll get easier to put my feelings and experiences on paper. But the last two weeks have been so incredible, so profound, that it's a bit overwhelming. It's hard to relay to people back home how it first felt to arrive in London. Everyone being silly, jet-lagged, dragging massive bags around and getting on the bus heading for Birmingham, which was to become our new home for eight and a half months.
Tennis Courts, our flats at the University of Birmingham, were under construction until the following Monday, so for the first week we resided at Vale Student Village, another wing of university housing.
When we first got there, we all kind of unanimously thought, eh this is pretty wicked, ok, where's my bed? But we were told by our group leader Linda that the best way to cure jet-lag fast is to stay awake until bedtime, so the majority of us, took a shower, and prepared to go out that night, against the better judgment of our faithful leader.
We barreled down the road in a huge American mob. The first locals we came across, we asked quite simply, "Where's the nearest place to get drunk?" They pointed us in the direction of Gun Barrels, or Gunnie's as our local pub is now affectionately called, and we bombarded the place.
Perhaps the most ecstatic encounter with some Brits yet to date occurred that first night. I don't remember how a conversation got started with these two lovely ladies, but they immediately sniffed us out as Americans. They were pretty much the equivalent of our "valley girls" back home. They were like "Oh my god, say hamburger! Say dude!" We laughed right along with them, and for the first time we started to get schooled on some local slang and terminology.
The rest of the evening was a booze-fueled good time. We were legal to drink! We brushed shoulders with everyone in the pub, played pool with some English students, talked to everyone in sight, had a cig with them.
Any previous doubts or uneasiness about how friendly people were going to be, or how much anti-American sentiment was floating around, were laid to rest that night. We closed the bar out, walked to the closest petrol station, picked up more booze, cigarettes and made our way back.
The following evening, shake and repeat. Back at Gunnie's, I couldn't believe how friendly people were! Things still hadn't sunk in, but I was making the most of the situation, and partying like a rock-star, as was a majority of the group.
The first weekend, we were scheduled to hit the Lake District, about a five or six hour bus ride north nearly to the coast. We were set to stay at a summer camp the university owned. The English countryside is in one word "stunning." Green rolling pastures, sheep everywhere, old rickety fences and humble stone cottages tucked away in between hills. The bus could only take us so far in, so we unloaded our bags, threw them into a trailer behind a Landrover and hiked in to camp.
The rest of the afternoon we roamed around, walked along the lake and took countless pictures. That night a couple of us huffed a three mile hike to the nearest pub. To this day, it's the best pub night I've been to. We got our first opportunity to mix with small-town Englishmen and women. Four older guys sat around a table drinking beer and playing guitars. We started talking with them immediately, and as happens anywhere, the whole pub sniffed out our nationality. All ears were on these guys as they played their first song,
"The City of New Orleans." The chorus went: "Good morning, America. How are you? Don't you know me? I'm your native son. I'm the train they call The City of New Orleans. I'll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done." I almost started crying. This small, perhaps insignificant show of camaraderie was blowing my mind. I looked around at everyone else in the group. "Are you feeling this too?" I asked with my eyes.
Most of them nodded in agreement. The rest of the night they played a bit of everything; lots of Dylan, but nothing quite compared to that first feeling.
The rest of the weekend was just a usual Saturday and Sunday afternoon back home. You know, climbed a couple mountains, kayaked, walked up a 30 degree river, scaled a rushing waterfall, waded through should deep water in a dark tunnel, did a ropes course, watched a fellow group member wrestle a sheep and then, we had to apologize to the farmer afterwards. Nothing too major.
I'll try to sum up the next week really fast. We moved into our permanent homes, flats consisting of four to six bedrooms, a kitchen, living room, water closet and bathroom. We got a tour around the city by a former UMD student who now lives here. Birmingham has an incredible, open-air market where you can buy just about anything. But more on the city later.
We endured several grueling orientations, got our school ID cards and did our best to orient ourselves with the massive campus. Though it has pretty much been a drunken, limitless, boundary-less, responsibility-less free-for-all before school starts, which brings me to my drunk wandering.
I got separated from the rest of the guys I was with, after catching the end of the Packer-Viking game, at the only pub in the city that plays American football. With no way to get a hold of them, and not much of an idea how to get back to campus, it was a little unsettling at first. Then I figured who am I kidding? Grabbed a forty at the closest grocery store, and kept stumbling on.
