It's been a long time, long time.

It's been a mix of laziness and being busy that has kept me away from the blog for the past two weeks. The British weather is finally revealing itself as I had imagined - cold, gray and wet. The wind and rain smothers the city into hibernation, but hopefully we will get a break sometime soon. The weather changes even more often than it does in Chicago.

Anyhow, it's time to fill you in on my Euro Trip 2007 (and a bit of 08). If I had been blogging over the past ten days, here are some of the things I would have included:

One of my best friends from home came to spend a week in Liverpool. Phil flew into London then took the train up. We went straight to one of my favorite bars where we fell in love with Guinness Red. Apparently it's being given a trial at a handful of pubs in the UK... tasty stuff. We hopped to a few other bars and Phil finally crashed after being awake for about 40 hours in a row.

The next night our friend Molly threw a Halloween party, where I unleashed some more zombie upon the world. Everyone had a great time except for the residents of the building across the street... at about 2 a.m. the place decided to burn down (insert "the roof, the roof, the roof is on fire..." jokes here). The fire department decided to do nothing to help, so we'll just assume everybody got out safely.

Early the next morning Brock, Phil and I took the train to Bangor, Wales. The three hour trip was great - the Welsh countryside is gorgeously green, hilly and full of sheep. When we got to Bangor we walked around and visited a few pubs. It was hard to decide which ones to patron, since it appeared that all of them had signs painted by the same person. At the last bar we went to, a drunk, neglectful mother sat down next to us and started at Phil. Finally she told him, "I thought you were a girl..." Not knowing how to respond, Phil thanked her. She carried on by telling him that he was beautiful - for a girl or a boy. Then her friend started serenading Phil with "You're Beautiful" by James Blunt. For a second I considered the possibility that our train had exploded and I was actually in hell.



From Bangor, we took a bus to Llanberis. This is a small town at the base of Snowden - the largest mountain in the UK south of the Scottish highlands. It was dark by the time we got into Llanberis, but we had met a girl on the bus who worked at a hotel we could stay at for the night. The place was straight out of The Shining. We watched the Liverpool game at the hotel bar then headed out. Outside of the hotel we ran into a nice girl named Nikki who pointed us towards a few bars. At the first, we met a couple awesome people including a guy named Kev, who later showed us an impressive bar trick.



For those of you who watch The Office, notice the resemblance to Michael Scott of Phil's yelling "yeeeeeahhhh baby".

We took a cab to another small pub, where we were one week too early. The following Saturday the place was hosting a pig roast. Total bummer. However, we did meet a bunch of people here. Nikki even showed up with a ton of friends. At that point, Phil was drunk enough to mispronounce all of their Welsh names, which pissed them off a little bit, but amused me.
We spent the rest of the night hanging out with that group of kids until Phil tried taking a nap in the parking lot and we decided it was time to go.



We spent the next morning hiking up Snowden. It was a pretty fun hike and we couldn't have asked for better weather. The landscape is amazing, especially to someone who spends 8 months a year in Champaign. We had to stand our ground against an army of sheep that took control of the path, but we hung tough.



The next night was Guy Fawkes day... kind of like a morbid version of the 4th of July. Guy Fawkes attempted to destroy the Houses of Parliament in the 1600s, for which he was hanged, drawn and quartered. This lovely little procedure allowed Mr. Fawkes to be:

1. Dragged on a hurdle (a wooden frame) to the place of execution. (This is one possible meaning of drawn.)
2. Hanged by the neck for a short time or until almost dead. (hanged).
3. Disembowelled and emasculated and the genitalia and entrails burned before the condemned's eyes (This is another meaning of drawn. It is often used in cookbooks to denote the disembowelment of chicken or rabbit carcasses before cooking).^[2]
4. Beheaded and the body divided into four parts (quartered).

So what does one do to celebrate such an occasion? FIREWORKS, BITCHES! That's right, fireworks.

Phil and I were on a train towards London while the bursts of pyrotechnics shown from small towns in the distance. We made it to London at 9pm with no intentions of sleeping until Phil left for his flight home at 7am. We sort of just chilled out and followed the crowd through the night. Highlights of the adventure were:

• Meeting an old hippie drug dealer from Orange County who was moving to Israel to buy a farm to build a baseball field on.
• Being followed down several streets in Leicester Square.
• More Guinness Red.
• Taking the tube around the city.
• Meeting a band who was on tour from Austin, TX.
• Hanging out with a Chicago White Sox fan from London.
  
• Being at Paddington Station at 4am with all the other crazies.
• A string of crazy days concluding with me passing out while eating a Snickers bar on the 8:30 a.m. train back to Liverpool.