in which I drink with Brits, attempt to get back to Bangor and move house (2008-01-08 - 4:02 p.m.)

Well, I am procrastinating on writing a giant project paper, so it seems like a good time to post.

Got home from Prague... eventually. After the nightmare of trying to book the flight at all, I wasn't expecting much, and that's pretty much what I got. The flight was delayed, everyone was grouchy, and the guy at security took away my apple juice. And then because of the delayed flight, the train information I had looked up was all wrong. However, the train ticket guy told me an alternate route. Sat around for a while at the Manchester Airport train station cafe and caught the first train no problem. Then Liam called, which was lovely, except that it distracted me from actually checking where I was supposed to be getting off. Apparently I was confused on this point, as by the time I checked I was about six stations past it and had missed my connection. I have never done that in my life and was none too impressed. Ended up taking the train back the other direction, but by then the only connection to Bangor was through Chester and anyway, it was generally a mess and ended in my getting home at 11pm instead of 8pm and being a very unhappy traveller.

So back to the hostel and my last night in Prague. Malcolm had moved on to the greener pastures of Berlin, and I was alone and without an alarm clock (or in fact a time-telling device of any kind). I had my mobile and the charger, but no plug changer (and the hostel didn't have one either). However, the guy next to me had a Brit accent so I asked if he had one I could borrow. Which he did, very kind, etc. Then something dawned on me. "Wait, hold on, you aren't those Brits that kept us all up with your shouting in the middle of the night, are you?!"

"Er, yeah. That was my friend Ant."

"...." (much glaring).

But the guy had just let me borrow his charger and therefore allowed me to catch my plane, so I couldn't say much. And the guy (introduced as Jeff but actually called Jethro, cuz it's pronounced "Jeffro" in those parts) was very apologetic and offered to buy me a lot of beer to make up for it. Well, couldn't really say no to that, could I?

So that's pretty much how the evening went. Beer and shouting, mostly. (Although well away from anyone who was trying to sleep). Ant the shouter is a self-described "functional junkie" and wants to emigrate to Canada or the States. Had a lot of quite interesting and increasingly beery conversation, admired pictures of peoples' babies, and ended the night with a giant snowball fight on the streets of Prague, before realizing that, hold on, the streets actually looked quite light. Upon finding a clock, it turned out to be 5am. Which made the trip from hell the next day a great deal of fun... But oh, the irony of making friends with someone just as you've written a nasty blogpost about them. Gotta be a moral in there somewhere.

And after getting home at 11pm, I moved out the next day. Cue much packing and cleaning. My friend Lowri is a lifesaver, though, and agreed to let me use her car to haul everything up the hill. The new place is tiny tiny tiny, but seems good so far. The landlady is lovely (about my age and used to live in the house) and although it's draughty, I think with some work it could be quite cozy. Too bad I don't really have the cash right now for house-furnishing... but will make do. I bid a final farewell to 67 Mount Street today with a great deal of glee. You could smell the damp in the air as I dropped the keys off. The new house is totally dry...

And now, back to the paper I'm supposed to be writing.

backwards ~ onwards

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Missed anything?
moved! - 2008-05-12
Sunday = time to ramble on - 2008-05-11
apparently I'm doing monthly updates these days. Sorry. - 2008-05-04
watershed - 2008-04-06
end of trip - 2008-03-31

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