Moving Day

Well, temporary moving day. We are leaving the enclave of Chorlton-cum-Hardy for an apartment hotel in the city center for five days before we take possession of our new apartment on Sunday. Can't-Freaking-Wait. It will be really nice to get settled in and get to know the heart of the city rather than the toes of the city.

I haven't been up to much....just sort of waiting to move and getting mad at blogs that disappeared. One thing I did find, is the best movie of the year. Hands Down. It's a short, but man did it ever put my life into purrspective. Have a look....

Pretty good huh? I even learned how to embed videos in my blog. How exciting! Who needs Facebook?

I've noticed more and more the small things that make the UK and Canada different. It's not like when you go to Morocco and see that everything is different (except for fart jokes), but it's way more subtle. I still haven't gotten used to responding to 'You alright mate?' from shopkeepers. I always say, "Yes. I am fine and how are you?" when the proper English response is just to start with my own query like 'How much is this mobile phone' or 'one stamp please'.

I really like the way they string the electrical wires. It's a communal pole then they run about eight houses off of it rather than having a whole line of them down the street. It looks way cooler. I don't know if it is more efficient, but I like the look it gives to each group of houses.

Yes, that is blue sky you see too. We had one sunny day. You could clearly see all the trash in the streets that day. It was lovely.

I also like the street lights. They sure don't light up the street, but look a lot better than the gigantic ones we have at home. I don't have a pic, but they really illuminate the fog up nicely when it's foggy.

There is a lot of moss here. I'm still shocked at the little amount of rain we have received so far, but yikes, is this town still mossy. I haven't fallen yet, but don't think it will hurt too much when it happens because there is padding everywhere. I will get wet and dirty, but won't have a sore hip.

This is just a quick pic from downtown. Much of d/t looks like this. I am very excited to explore around it some more. Our new place is a half block outside an area called the Northern Quarter, which really doesn't make that much sense because the d/t isn't blocked into quarters. It is north though. I'll take a bunch of pics once we move in and post them.....well, maybe not a bunch. More like two and that should cover all the rooms. It's pretty tiny.

Well, back to cleaning house and getting ready for the big haul.

Later,
CC

Fishing news....I started looking up fishing in Wales and Scotland. Looks great for Brown Trout and Atlantic Salmon! The bad news....it's costs around 20 poundies a day to fish on a river and an additional 75 poundies to get a licence for the year! You also have to book in advance. Boo. The weird thing is the best Brown Trout fishing is at night, so you book a slot from 10 pm to 4 am. That may lead to some hazardous casting....

Blogstrations Solved, But I'm Not Writing This One Again

Innsbruck

 

Munich

Blog Frustrations

So yesterday I composed a really good blog posting. Right before publishing it disappeared--whoosh. Gone. I actually spent about 3 hours on it. I was a little upset. I might have sworn. I even figured out my formatting issues and became proficient used strikethrough once. I don't think I can re-do the whole thing, so I'm just going to put a bunch of photos up. Man, it was really good.............

Ok.....somethings wrong now. I just lost another set of photos. I have to figure it out. If I have to ditch this blogsite I'll let you all know! Arrrrgggggghhhhhhh.

The Frustrated Mancunian, CC

A Welcome Return to Humidity

Editors Note: The title of this post is now Salzburg.

As most of you know, I grew up in Kamloops--A city and region not known for moisture. It only took eight years for me to become totally and completely acclimatized to the Vancouver air. Fortunately, Manchester is only about 40 km from the ocean and is damp and cool, like a mouldy Vancouver basement (you all know that smell). After spending eight days in the high elevation mountains of Austria and Germany, I was dry, dry, dry. Drier even than a Asahi super dry beer. My cuticles were cracking, I had hangnails, and a constant thirst. It is now over and we are "home."

A recap of our Austrian adventure.

We flew out of Manny on Jet2 airlines to Salzburg. I was still feeling the effects of my cold, but was on the mend. Unfortunately, in my delirious state of fever I didn't notice that I had a bit of an ear infection and my sinuses were totally plugged. Oh well, I like flying right? Hmmmmm.

So many things are just a little bit different than home. Security at the airport was quite strange. Each person goes through individually. The screener holds a tub up and you deposit all of your contents into it. My guy kept putting it down on the conveyor belt and I kept pulling things out and he had to keep grabbing the box back from the x-ray machine. I'm not too sure why it just couldn't be pushed on to the belt when finished? I got dressed back up and Heather called me over because she needed a pound coin (a poundie? a queenie? a fattie? a one-y?) to buy the correct size of plastic bag for liquids and gels to go in, which they happen to sell from a vending machine for a poundie. She received quite the lecture from the screener about the correct size of plastic bags. When Heather informed her she was using the same bag that had just been through security checkpoints in Vancouver, Seattle, and Reykjavik, the woman promptly informed us all of those airports are breaking international law. One thing the UK (and Europe) does really well are the airports post-security. They are set up like shopping malls. There are clothing stores, shoe stores, drug stores, and other stores beyond duty-free and Hudson News. I appreciate them.

Jet2 kind of sucks, but our flight (one-way) was only 100 pounds for both of us.  The ride was smooth and filled with me shaking my head and swearing I would never fly again.

In Salzburg, we were set up in a hotel about six blocks from the Alstadt (old town). It was around minus 10, so the first thing we did was head to a cafe for warm-you-up-beer. I love the little trays they always use to serve you in Austria.

arrrgghttt!! I'm having formatting issues. Whatever. I'm cold in this one.

I was still continuing to have troubles sleeping at night and was waking up around 4 in the morning. We got a good start to the day with a nice spread at the hotel. A woman laughed at me and said something in German when she saw me toasting the rye bread. What can I say? I like the butter melted.

I think I'll just post a bunch of pics with little comments.......

The Salzach River

Boozy Orange Punche. Made with schnapps, sugar, and hot water.

The Fortress. We decided not to pay and go in, but walked from the base of it over to the Museum of Modern Art along the cliff line. Good choice.

We went for a throw-down lunch at the cafe in the museum. It was really, really yummy, with really, really, bad service. Like really bad. But this photo was taken from our table.

 

We headed down to this monastery after lunch for a tour of the beer hall that has been in operation there,  churning out beer since 1350 or so. It is a giant building that has about 15 huge rooms around one main cashier. You grab a ceramic stein off the wall, wash it in a fountain, pay the cashier, then take it to the keg man who fills it up with the most wonderful, fresh, delicious beer ever. By far the best beer we had in the whole eight days. Good price too--2.50 Euro for a half litre stein.

 

We met a really nice couple American-Norwegian couple who live in Scotland there too and shared a few mugs.

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OK--So I misjudged how long it takes to make these posts and how many photos I have. Salzburg was really nice. Much nicer than I anticipated. You don't need more than two days to see it adequately, but I highly recommend it. I'm going to split the other cities up---and also to keep you all interested because I have not found anymore Manchester cats to take photos of and to keep your interest piqued. I did however mange to snap a pic of this piece of Austrian haute couture. It can be yours for the bargain basement price of 35 Euro. I bought Heather two. Later, CC

Some Observations After a Short Time

Black pudding is not, in fact, pudding and is quite gross.

I really love Mancunian cats and want to find more of them.

Tea is drunk not only for flavor, but heat.

The English were very good at building ships and colonization, not cleanliness.

At the moment, I love pies with meat and vegetables more than pies with fruit and ice cream.

Pubs really are fun.

Grey is a constant state of sky.

Paying in pounds really does suck.

BBC three is the best of the BBC channels.

I do not want to join the Darley Lawn Tennis and Social Club.

Double decker buses are the bomb. I haven't sat on the bottom level yet!

Why bother with a two pence piece? It is just as useless as a penny, but four times the size. All it does it make me walk in circles.

Without a doubt, this is the most vile, revolting, putrid, toxic, evil liquid ever created by humankind. Buckleys is like KoolAid compared to this stuff.

Off to Austria to get some good cough syrup,

Colin

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Oh yeah...this was our street yesterday.

...and this morning. This winter is referred to as the "Big Freeze" in the UK media

This just in....I hate to fly.

First off, Happy New Year to everyone. We had a lovely time here. We watched the UK's top 100 annoying people of 2010 list (the England football team won) then the fireworks in London. Then bed. I am sick. I am sick because of Greenland and Iceland.

Our day started off relatively fine. We made it to the airport with no problems and the flight to Seatte was smooth(ish) with nice views of the Gulf and San Juan Islands. I had a yummy beer at the airport in Seattle (Alaskan Amber Ale). I've flown out of Sea-Tac before but never transferred flights there. We had to take three different trains to get to out of our gate. One of them was this teeny tiny baby train that was only one car big. I think it had a bad case of train envy. Regardless, our spirits were high.



For the flight, I borrowed from my Swedish friends the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy (extended edition). We lucked out and were in the 'economy plus' section of the plane which gave use one extra inch of legroom and powerpoints for the laptop. Normally, the economy plus section just gets a table in the third seat of the row, but they didn't have any on this flight. I wouldn't say it was a comfortable plane, but it wasn't the worst plane I had ever been on (and it was monster cheap). Our flight path took us back over Vancouver and we actually saw Kelowna through the clouds. It was smooth sailing with Gandalf and Frodo for the next six hours, until we hit the ocean passage between Greenland and Iceland.

Now many of you may know how much my sweet wife does not like to fly. I belive she has placed the idea in the brains of many that the seatbelt ding-dong really does sound like "you're dead". She really has gotten a lot better though over the years, and her flying fears have transferred over to me. I used to really like flying. Big plane, small plane, helicopter....all no problem. Now? The slightest bit of turbulence gets my heart racing and my palms sweating. Acutally, my whole body starts sweating. I hate it. I really, really hate it when the flight attendants have to sit down and that's what happened as soon as we passed Greenland. It was only an hour more to Rejakavik, but man, did it seem like a long time. I was drenched by the time we arrived.

It was about 6 am local time when arrived. Surprisingly, Iceland looked cold. The airport was actually really nice and we enjoyed some very thick yougurt.

The rest of the flight to Manchester I was a stress-case. I don't even think it was that bad, but my body was already on high alert and wasn't going to calm down. I couldn't watch anymore LOTR so I shopped on the in-flight store and found a shirt that I wish came in adult sizes. I've always wanted to be a captain.....



I'm sure those of you with children in the 5-7 year range have already ordered them for under next year's xmas tree.

Trying to occupy my mind some more, I tried unsuccessfully to catch some really good shots of dawn. Here is the best I could do with a point and shoot.

Then finally......Manny!

We made it through Customs and Immigration quite quickly. We had a crapload of luggage, but managed to fit it in a blacktop and made our way to our home for month in Chorlton. We went out for breakfast,and on the way back stopped at a cornershop for some milk. I was talking to the guy at the counter and he asked if I was here on vacation. I told him we were here for a year and he looked me dead in the eye and said, "Ahhh I feel really bad for you mate. Real bad." Wicked.
We watched t.v. for a bit and went to bed around 6 pm here. I have been sick ever since waking up the next morning and have done basically nothing. I am feeling a bit better today and am hoping to scrounge enough energy to hit up the mall and look for phones. I'm hoping to get one slightly better than the Motorola Razer I had at home.

Anyway, peoples. Keep it real and I hope you are not sick.

Colin