Wednesday 23.6.04, sometime in the middle of the day.
Earlier this morning, as we woke up at the early time of 05:30am or something like that, I was hyper. Very talkative and focused on the fact that the day finally was here, we, my sister Anne (age 21 soon) and myself (age 17) were going to York, Yorkshire, England.
As our younger siblings and mother had left for Italy the day before it was only our father left home with us. After a long waiting time, filled with packing the final things, getting dressed, having breakfast, doing the most dreaded travel-illness-pill-ritual(very complicated and hated), being too chipper for that part of the morning and watching the last I would see of Norwegian TV for the next week.
Ironically enough it was ‘The Flintstones’ (with them as kids) on, so not very Norwegian anyhow. Oddly enough there’s not much to see on TV at that hour of the day.
(Norwegian passport to the right)
Dad dropped us quickly off at the airport, as he had to get to work. After we had sent the larger luggage, we were told it was likely that our plane would be later than planned, as the weather in London was bad. Did I mention that the weather in Stavanger was brilliant this morning?
We had to wait for quite some time, which was fairly boring, due to the fact that none of us could find any magazines or books to buy and read on the airport, after all, we were going to Britain, why buy Norwegian magazines with us?
Not only did we have to wait at the airport in Stavanger, but also when we were in the plane in Stavanger, and also in the air over London and at Heathrow. All in all this took quite some time. The flight was nice though. At first I could see all the houses, farms, roads, lakes, fjords, mountains, etc, in Norway, but pretty soon after we begun flying over the North-Sea, the rest of the flight was cloudy, so you couldn’t see much.
Once we came closer to England the clouds got darker as well. We were very delighted to find that we got breakfast on the plane, as we hadn’t expected it, and (duh) plane food is very exciting, as you never know what you’ll get. Dumdidumdum.
Once we had arrived at Heathrow, we walked for a long time to find out luggage and yet a long time to get out of the airport. Can I just say that it’s a lot bigger an airport than Stavanger’s, but not as large as I had imagined it to be, but that might be because we didn’t see most of it…
We took the underground/tube to King’s Cross St. Pancras. The people on the tube proved that English people perhaps are even more reserved than Norwegians on public transportation.

Yes, I know, huge shock! I spent the trip, which took longer than normal apparently as there had been some trouble on the line the day before, having an amusing time talking as much Norwegian as I could, Anne was pretty silent though =/
(To the left you see my sister Anne)
The end station at the Piccadilly line is named Cockfosters, something I found hilarious, as it showed on a small board the entire time so people would know what the end station was. Seriously, Cockfosters…
A thing that amazed me was that they had commercials for books on the underground stations. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that back home.
Other things that were different were the houses, which surprisingly enough since we’re in England, looked very English. You know the kind of houses you only see in British movies, and TV shows?
Well, they’re for real!! Everything seems as if it’s been built with bricks(we have wooden houses), and when I saw them from the plane, they were in special formations, as if someone had planned that this was how the houses were going to be put together in a neighbourhood or a town. You’d see squares, and several other forms, pretty different from here where you’d put a house up wherever it was a place for it.
People look differently, I hadn’t expected it much, as well, England is technically a neighbour country with Norway, and the Swedish don’t look very different from us! But they do, I can tell who’s Scandinavian by only looking at them, and there haven’t been a lot of them yet, apart from on the airport of course.
People have these really awesome dialects. Sorry to be bringing up the movie/TV-series again, but it is as if I’m in either, people do not speak like that in reality!
At King’s Cross, we went to buy some entertainment, as there were still hours till our train would leave. We bought two books, which looked awesome, plus some Cadbury’s chocolate (the Norwegian chocolate is better, I tell you! I think the British one is sweeter than the one I’m used to.), and everyone’s friend: ‘Skittles’!!!!!

They don’t sell skittles in Norway by the way, which is probably why we’re crazy for them.
Oh, and some “Mexican tortillas” that I’m sure was made in Britain, but they weren’t too bad.
(I was bugging Anne, by taking photos of her, this time at King's Cross, eating the tortillas. Note the poster in the background, proving that we really are in Britain!)
Did you know that it is impossible to find garbage bins at King’s Cross, by the way? It’s the perfect place to hide bombs, so they can’t have them.
There were a lot of signs telling us to watch out for thieves, which freaked me out, as I didn’t want to lose anything on this trip, as I tend to do otherwise.
We found a lounge room, where we settled with out books and chocolate. This woman came asking Anne to join a survey she was doing about the railroad service, fairly useless if you ask me, as it’s been 6 years since we last took this railroad line, not exactly frequent visitors. But Anne helped with filling out a form on several pages. The woman also had a story about Norway, once she heard we were from there, although we kept on nodding and agreeing with her to be nice, Anne told me later on that it was very unlikely that that was a true story. I figure that since Anne’s had history at the university last year, she might know a bit about Norwegian history…
Oh! I looked through some papers while we were waiting at the train station, it’s incredible how much crap you can put in one paper, they must have thousands of journalists, all writing every day! It was a bit amusing, though, as in one of them they had the result of a European survey, and apparently the only countries, that didn’t think the British to be a rude people were Norway and Switzerland, I think. Which seems correct, as we all see the British as extremely polite, especially when you compare them to Norwegians.
After having stood in a long, pointless line, we could finally get on the train. We had to search for quite a while in order to find a place to sit though, as Anne had ordered the tickets before it was possible to reserve seat places.
Just as we had found a place to sit, my phone rings, and I assumed as normal, that it was someone who’s trying to get in touch with my father but called the wrong number again, but it’s actually Ragnhild, who I greeted with “who?”
Uhm Ragnhild as in the girl in my class, duuh? She actually called to ask me to her birthday on Friday. But as I told her I was on the train on its way out of London headed for York, where I would spend the next days, she too realized it would be difficult for me to come to her birthday. Pity, though, as it would have been fun.
Right now we’re on the train, which is not moving, somewhere close to Peterborough. Time to stop writing. I’m on my way to York!
Mette
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8:15pm English time, 23.6.04
The train did also, of course, prove to have some kind of issue, and stopped several times. When it actually moved forward, it was slowly. This day seems to be full of delays.
I was surprised to see so many power plants outside the window on the train trip. It’s not something I see a lot of, Anne tried to explain that this was what the British had instead of water energy, as there’s apparently few waterfalls here (Psh, one of the rivers here in York is called the river Foss(meaning River Fall)).
We kept on going from sunny to rainy weather during the entire journey from South to North England. You notice better how the weather is different in different places when you travel, and are able to see the rain showers even before you get there, and after you’ve passed them.
But as I was saying, we had a lot of delays today, the train arrived in York at least an hour after schedule.
The York Youth Hostel is about 6 minutes from the railroad station, I didn’t time it, but someone else must have. It looks pretty much like I expected it to look: old, rundown(slitt), and with thin walls, so that you can hear what everyone else is doing the entire time.
The rules surprised me a bit, there are many of them, and they are hung up as posters various places in the building. I liked the one about “Please use appropriate dress code when outside rooms.” Darn, there went my chances of walking around in my underwear. Ø.ø
A few minutes after we arrived, had checked the toilettes (which flushes blue water, very fancy), relaxed a bit, we were off to see more of York.
The Youth Hostel lies perfectly close to the centre of York, it is about as close you can get without having to pay more than you really want to use on a place to sleep.
The town/city is absolutely charming. It is as if you step into history, not just one part of history, but plenty! There are small shops, dining places, pubs, museums, churches and historical landmarks everywhere.
I have to admit, the town/city is fairly small compared to English cities/towns, but it seems like it’ll be enough for us to see and do for the days we’re here at least.
We found this “Borders” shop, which sold books, Anne claimed to have spent much money there the last time she visited York.

When I saw the romance part of it, I fully understood her; it was heaven! I’ve never seem so many good romantic books stored in one place before, we had to take photos, and even those didn’t get all the loveliness of it in them. We’ve bought two more books now.
(Left: me. Right: Anne. All over: lovely books!)
Our idea to attempt buying cheap food at a grocery store for a dinner/evening snack plus breakfast was at loss, the stores had closed at 6pm (It was 6:10pm when we went to have a look). McDonalds got a visit from us, as we still wanted semi-cheap food. While testing some kind of Caesar’s salad, which was kind of good after a long while, some guys hit on some girls they didn’t know, who sat by a nearby table. This both amused and amazed me, as no one would even consider doing this in Norway, what was more amazing was that they succeeded, and after a short while had the girls’ phone number, and dates with them. Wow.
Afterwards we walked around town, we are going to have so much fun once the stores are open!!
We are now at the hostel room, terrified with the gruesome knowledge that we’re in the same hostel, hall even, as a huge Norwegian group of people. Norwegians make too much noise, especially as you’d rather hear British accents when you’re actually IN Britain!
Mette
Next Day.
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