Another trip to Europe; this time it was a bit unexpected. But nevermind, I enjoy meeting my European (i.e. not British) friends!

It all started in the usual way: trains. I learn from my own mistakes, and so I came to Piccadilly earlier than last time. One train left just as I arrived to the airport (bad luck). Next train to the airport was scheduled at 15.37 from platform 13. All the signs were in agreement: platform 13. So I went to platform 13.

Just before you actually go down the stairs to platform 13, there is a sign... which insisted that next train goes at 15.43 to Liverpool Lime St. However, three metres back, another sign said that the 15.37 airport train goes from 13. So I went down. The first thing I've noticed was a huge platform sign saying that next train goes at 14.58 to airport. Which was funny because it was, like, 15.30 already. Then, a train arrived. I know how things go in Manchester, so I asked a train company employee. 'Nope, this train does not go to the airport,' confirmed the lady what I already knew. When asked about the final destination of the present train, she responded with some funny name (maybe Welsh?) and that was that.

Anyway, this time I was lucky, and the next train that arrived was the 15.37 train to Manchester airport.

During this funny process of looking for your train and asking various people dressed in the railway colours, I relfected on various cultures. I've recently read some articles about Japan. In particular, the articles mentioned that Japan is 'train culture', people ride trains every day. Japanese people are in fact 'hobby drivers', driving their cars only during weekends. Well, if I could say anything about UK people, it'd actually not be the exact opposite - it would be a 'twisted opposite'. At least some people in Manchester use trains quite a lot, they do not all go by car to work! Generally, many people travel by train every day (and I suspect that it's not only Mcr, in London it's even worse). However, this is not reflected in the quality of service, which can be described by many very interesting synonyms of the word 'a joke'.

Hi ho.

In Europe, it was kinda refreshing to be able to joke with people in more 'free' manner. I realized that in the UK, people are afraid of generalisations of any kind, and attributing a certain behaviour to a certain group of people, and making certain kind of fun of people. They are in fact terrified of offending someone, and practice a lot of auto-censorship.

Example of such forbidden statement statement may be: French people drink wine and occasionaly eat frogs. Statistically, this is absolutely right, this is how it is. French people drink wine (and are damn proud of their wine, and I think they have every possible right to be proud of their excellent wine), and at least some of them, and at least sometimes, eat frogs.

I am quite sure they would not be insulted at all: they love their wine, and if the one person you are talking with doesn't like frogs, s/he would tell you, but agree that other people eat frogs, and it is also tourist trap! You'd laugh together, and that's that.

My point is, there's nothing too bad about making such statements in Europe, while in the UK, this is an absolute no-no. We had a discussion once about prices of things. I mentioned that certain things, which cost, like, 1620 euro, are expensive for Czech people, because the average monthly salary (before tax) in the Czech Republic is 900 euro. British people were surprised, they have never realized this.

Then someone mentioned something like 'imagine how expensive this is for Africans'. Well, hell expensive, I guess, because in general people are not as rich in Africa as they are in Europe, even in Eastern Europe. This is in my opinion again a statistically correct statement. However, one guy got kinda angry, and started saying things like 'there is no such thing as Africa!'

I had to ask someone else for explanations, and they told me that the guy has just been angry because we say 'Africa' and mean everyone in Africa and Africa is big and diverse and it is not nice to just summarize all these beautiful, unique and diverse people in one judging word 'Africa'. I don't think we've done such thing, but hey. Objectively seen, there is Africa. I have been there. I have seen it. It's on the map, and it's on the internet, and BBC inform about AFrica every day, so I think its existence is proved beyond doubt!

What I am trying to say is that it was a relief, to be able to say things about people, to express your opinion freely, and to be able to refer to some very well known national characteristics. I mean, some people certainly do not fit in the 'average' of their country/nation, but some just do, and you should be allowed to say it aloud!

There are few funny things I wanted to mention about English British people.

First thing. The patron saint of Wales is St David. Therefore nearly all men from Wales are called David.

Second thing. The other day, I went to a restaurant with my colleagues (a company tradition...). It was an Italian restaurant. One guy ordered something called 'pizza Inglese' (or something like that, I don't speak Italian, so there is a risk that I got this wrong). This is basically pizza - with fried egg, bacon, and black pudding!

Would you ever, ever put black pudding on pizza? I think that only English people do things like that.

Have you ever noticed that
a) £2 coin looks very similar to 2 € coin, because both are big bi-colored coins, and
b) £5 looks almost like 5 €, because they are both small green banknotes?

Well, I have made myself look like a fool because of this.

Usual me: I forgot to take the euro notes and coins out of my wallet. Then I went to Aldi, selected stuff to buy, removed all my euro coins from my wallet and placed them into my pocket (in order not to mix them!), and waited in a cashier line. My stuff cost £3.25, and I was happy that I had enough coins.

Wait, that's 2 euros, said the cashier lady. I apologized, cursed silently, checked whether there were any more coins left, found no £2 coin, and took out a £5 note.

Wait, euro again, said the cashier lady. So I apologized again, cursed silently again, and gave her £20 instead. I made pretty sure that there was the smiling queen on the note before handing it in.

:-)

My identity crisis continues!

I have visited Europe for the second time since moving to the UK, and I feel so ridiculous here! Plus, I have no idea where do I belong, who am I, and stuff like that.

I have no idea why, but I really do have a problem with the fact that traffic in the UK is on the 'wrong' side. (Definitely on the wrong side, not just on the left side. It's just wrong and that's that.) I still occasionally overlook approaching car or bike, especially when I go for a bus in the morning. Driving on the left side also means that if you meet a person, that person goes to the left when s/he wants to avoid you. And the roundabouts are... wait... clockwise. (I am actually never sure, and it takes me a while to figure this out!)

Now imagine me, back in Europe. You'd expect me to be cool and relaxed, looking on the correct side when crossing the street, not jumping under trams and cars, not experiencing any problems in avoiding people, etc. etc. Right?

Wrong! Of course! In the UK, I always look on the wrong side when crossing the street, and the same now applies in Europe! I just do the European way in the UK, and I do the UK way in Europe! Goodness, why? And just today, I nearly walked into a guy. I avoided him, but it felt awkward. Only after he looked at me like I was crazy I realized that I have just avoided him the UK way... in Europe.

Well, I am not sure this will ever get better.

On a more positive side, there was snow in Europe, lots of snow. I enjoyed that a lot. just the looks of it. I really like snow; sometimes I just wonder why on Earth have I chosen rainy England.

I also enjoyed watching European trams. I don't know why, but the funny Manchester trams just seem unreal to me; these European trams are much more solid, present.

I have visited Cambridge for the first time!

It takes approx. 4 hours in various trains to get there from Manchester. By the way, I have noticed that the Virgin trains which run from Mcr to London probably cause me migraines, because they make some sub-sonic noise.

The only really interesting thing about the journey is that you can buy a train ticket which also works for London metro, between Euston and King's Cross. You just insert the train ticket into the automatic machine, and it lets you go through, and you can ride one station by metro! Isn't it funny?

Cambridge gives an awful first impression (at least when you arrive from London), and a very good second impression.

When you arrive from London, there is a building which looks pretty much like some really ugly industrial establishment, perhaps some waste management facility or something like that. It's box-like and with a huge chimney, and you just wonder - and that's that? Everyone says Cambridge is very nice, but the only thing I see is this? (I was later told that this ugly building is a hospital.)

Then you come to a train station (which is just usual train station), and you have to walk, like, 20 min from the train station to the city centre. This walk is not really the nicest in the world - the street is just an ugly big street with a lot of traffic, and the buildings are not particularly interesting or beautiful. And during the whole walk, you just wonder: and that's that?

And then you arrive to the city centre, and you see all the beautiful stuff! There are the white-stone neo-gothic buildings, with the gardens and the arches, and all the things from postcards. It looks like bright Hogwarts. :-)

The downside is that all these nice buildings have a very clear message on their door: keep off, college members only.

Five new English expressions!

• pinky promise: an unbreakable promise sealed with interlocking your pinkies (little fingers)
• handle with kid gloves: handle with too much care (kid gloves - gloves made of the finest leather which comes from an offspring of an animal (e.g. calf))
• the last straw: the last one little think which makes it all unbearable (full story goes that there is a camel, and you load stuff on his back, and then you add the one last straw and the poor animal's back breaks)
• a square peg in a round hole: something that does not fit (just imagine how well a square peg fits in a round hole)
• no-brainer: something that is so easy (obvious) you don't have to think about it

Have you ever received a cheque? Well, until I came here, I have never imagined that I would receive something like this, but here in the UK, funny things happen all the time, and I have got one the other day!

It was from Barclays, the bank that made me so much angry with their attitude when I wanted to set an account with them. I filed a complaint, and after maybe three months, I got an apologetic letter telling me how sorry they were that I have been treated badly, and how sorry they were for the delays in dealing with my complaint. They sent me compensation... which took a form of an enclosed cheque. Saying that I was surprised would be a huge underestimation of my feelings.

Anyway. Cheques are here to be turned into money asap (everyone who's ever watched a gangster film knows this), so I wanted to do that this weekend. The bad thing is that it was my first cheque ever, and I had no idea how to do it. (Obviously, compared to the UK, the Czech Republic is a modern, progressive country, which just does not engage in archaic activities like exchanging cheques. We rather pay contactless.)

So I went to Barclays, with the intent to ask there. Because that is the bank which issued it, and I expected them to be able to tell me. There was an old lady behind the counter, who misunderstood me completely, and insisted that I couldn't possibly set an account in their bank because I had no proof of address. (I have heard this stuff before!)

I misunderstood as well, and thought it was obligatory to have a proof of address just to get my money. So I started thinking - first, what is this country where you obviously cannot do nothing without six difficult-to-get papers, and second, what is this bank which knows by now that I have no proof of address (I've mentioned this in my complaint) and still sends me cheque which cannot be cashed without it?

Luckily I asked again, and then the situation clarified. I could have my money without proof of address, but not in cash, it must be paid into a bank account. (Well, what is the point of cheques, I ask myself. Why not just send the money into a bank account, without processing a funny coloured piece of paper?)

However, I was sent to my bank instead of the bank which issued the cheque, so that my bank can put my money into my account. Cool. Fortunately HSBC has a branch just across the street, and so I went there. An assistant told me what to do.

First, you have to fill in a white paper slip, where you write your name, account number, and the total amount of money for all the cheques you are submitting. Then, you input this paper and all cheques you want to cash (= 1 in my case) into a machine. The machine asks you to either insert your debit card, or to input your name and account number. (Why did I have to fill in the white slip when I have to input the same info again?) Then the machine issues you a bill, which looks like a normal Tesco bill but there is a tiny (illegible) photocopy of your cheque and the white slip on it. And that's it, finished. Your money will arrive in approx. 4 days.

Wait, what! In four days?! Like, seriously?

Pfff, buses!

Few days/weeks ago, I criticized the trams here, and while I still insist that the trams are far from optimal, they are probably still much (much much) better than the buses. As mentioned already in some of the previous posts, the trams do not really cover all Greater Manchester (i.e. Manchester, Salford, and all the suburbs). There are many places where there are no trams, and no trains, and just nothing more than the buses. Therefore, there are many people (yours truly included) who just have no other option than bus - or car, if you happen to have one (or bike, if you are Dutch crazy enough to ride a bike in this weather & traffic).

Anyway. Yesterday, I have set a new record. I waited for the f. bus for 45 (yes, forty five) minutes. It was cold, and when I came to the bus stop, there were already many people, which is always a sign that there was no bus for some time. However, there was no bus nowhere to be seen. As I would have to walk few miles (in office shoes!), I decided to wait; it seemed that the bus would come every second now. However, only new people arrived, no bus. Not even different lines - nothing.

After some 20 minutes, some buses started to arrive, and guess what - none of them was my bus. So I waited and waited. I was freezing, tired, and more and more angry. And when the bus finally arrived, it was a small bus only - not a doubledecker, and not this long bus which can bend. Just a small, short bus. Consequence - people waiting on my station could go in. People on the next stations could not. The driver kept repeating to them, 'only one please'. I can only guess how so very angry they had to be after 45 min of waiting...

Anyway, I did not really expect the way home to be easy. After all, if the buses are not coming, they are obviously stuck somewhere, and this somewhere must be a traffic jam, and if this traffic jam is not really in the city centre, then it has to be somewhere else, for example on my way home - and oh yes, it was there. Magnificent again, superb, and occupying even places which it never occupied before!

So it took me another 45 min to arrive to my station.

I left the bus, and as I was walking home, I said many, many Czech swear words. Really many of them.

My husband had to go to Edinburgh on Monday. He got a train ticket, which was for a specific train at 7.45 am from Manchester Piccadilly.

He is a cautious man, and so on Sunday evening he wanted to check whether the train would really go as scheduled, especially in the light of all the fun we've had already with the railways here. He tried to find a website which would inform about the train departures, but was not very successful; all the websites he's found seemed to only display part of the information. And none of them had the 7.45 Edinburgh train.

That was suspicious of course, but we did not panic. There may be some info missing somewhere, or who knows what. That would be no surprise here. However, there was the little doubt inside his head already.

On Monday morning, it was finally confirmed: there is no 7.45 Edinburgh train. Instead, there is another train which goes to York, and there you have to change and go by another train. Which arrives approx. 1 hr later than the original (nonexistent) train.

Well, at first, I thought, this cannot be possibly serious. How come that the railway people sell tickets for trains they know wouldn't go? Seriously? The ticket was only purchased few days before the travel, and they had to know already.

Well, I am just adding this to the list of the UK funny railway stuff.

And now for something completely different. I think I've mentioned already that English people come to work dressed casually, and they only change into dress-code-compliant stuff once in the office. Well, you'd expect them to do such thing somewhere in private, right?

Ha ha! No. Today, I have seen one guy walking the corridor and trying to put a belt into its place. O_o Imagine how ridiculous it looks, a guy in suit and everything, trying to wrestle his belt and put it in the tiny loops provided on the trousers, while walking an office corridor during an ordinary morning...

Happy new year to everyone!

The New Year's celebrations seem to be much calmer here (in our middle-class neighbourhood) than it used to be in the Czech Republic (in the middle-class neighbourhood we used to live previously). Here, around midnight, many people fired some fireworks, and made a lot of noise, but at 12.30 am, everything was dead calm, and people were probably safe in their beds. In Prague, the amateur firework show usually lasted until 3 am!

(Maybe it has to do with the fact that the bus transport was once again very funny, and it was very difficult to get anywhere, and back. Therefore, people maybe did not drink that much at home, and there were not many really drunken people. In the Czech Republic, people do not limit their drinking to pubs, they are perfectly capable of partying hard at home, and therefore there is much more noise in the streets at 2 in the morning.)

We wanted to go for a long walk here in one of the parks. Ha ha! People often say, we do things differently here in Manchester, and it obviously also applies to parks and public places.

First thing is that there are not exactly many parks in our place. There is one very small, and one approx. 1 km from our house. Today, we checked Google Maps and found another park approx. 1 km from here. So we've decided to check it out.

In our cell phones, we use maps from Here (not Google Maps). However, Here just has no idea that there is a park, and lead us to a re-cultivated landfill instead. Of course the landfill a) is ugly, b) has an incredibly ugly surrounding, with discarded fridges and tires and things like that, c) cannot be entered.

Instead of a nice walk in a park, we've spent 1 hr trying to find the park, enter the park, and avoid the landfill. The road was surrounded by garbage, and there has obviously been some flooding in past few days / weeks, so there was also a lot of stinking mud. Nice, Here, thank you very much!

When we've finally discovered an entrance into the park, we've found that there are fences everywhere (because of the neighbouring landfill), and that the park itself is also full of unwanted stuff. We have seen for example:
- old shopping carts (one of them thrown into a small pond, it looked almost like a modern art project),
- decomposed motor scooter (the metal skeleton covered in rust lying between trees, with no tires and no other components than just the metal stuff - very post-apocalyptic),
- several burnt dustbins (some of them obviously used to be the blue paper-recycling bins),
- a little memorial made of burnt cans,
- meat, potatoes, oranges and grapes (all fresh, or 'fresh'), placed on a former campfire place together with the burnt remnants of some wood,
- something that looked like drugstore waste: pile of shampoos, single use shavers, and things like that, all arranged under one bench.

I am not even mentioning an endless stream of beer bottles, cider bottles, beer cans, cider cans, and other alcoholic beverages containers. All of them empty, of course.

Well, if this were our first similar experience, I would not draw any conclusion from this. But we have seen things like this before, with so much mess, so many broken things and garbage in some places! Including, of course. parks and gardens. I just wonder why a) people create such a mess, b) people tolerate it, c) city council tolerates it. And, speaking about the city council: where are all the high-viz clothes of the cleaning people?

I just don't get it.