Whitby Updates Delayed, Wish I Was There, Help for One Who is There

[tenshikurai9]

I'm going to have to type my entire Whitby-up and then divide it into day-by-day journal entries so I don't back-track to add details of previous days. 

Meanwhile I've awakened to a dream Saturday morning where I was noticing all the prices on signs were in pounds.  I was wondering how I got to Britain, but Donald (one of Scottish writer Jennie Kermode's partners) told me, do you really want to ask?  Suddenly I understood that I was in a dream, but should just enjoy being in "Britain" before waking-up. 

Previously in life, I've always thought it would be Japan that I'd want to just move to. 

Meanwhile LJ lolichan is in London and already feeling that she should have been from there and not here.  I've given her a link to http://www.freewebs.com/ukgothclublist/, told her which stop has a British tourist information building nearby, and found BritainUSA.com's Visiting and Residing in the UK section. Anyone have any suggestions of of information I should send her, whether it's to find legitimate reasons to live/work there for longer terms than the summer or just stuff that's too cool for her to skip while there?  

Comments

[spaglet.livejournal.com]

Here via shellsong...

London's a damned sight easier to get an extended residence in than Tokyo. It's not, of course, very representative of the rest of the country, which is why my parents settled here... There are some interesting psycho-geographers around (http://lndn.blogspot.com/) (modulo complaints about the new Mayor) that might be worth a tread; bear in mind that the obvious bits of London that seem old, aren't that old - and go back only to the late 1600s. Except the Tudor wood front on the Vodafone shop at the bottom of Chancery Lane (http://www.streetmap.co.uk/streetmap.dll?G2M?X=531151&Y=181203&A=Y&Z=1), and the pub near the Penderel's Oak Arms in Holborn that dates to 1426. (Yes, I know, American timescale, "Old? 50 years?" - but. For seriously old, you need Italy and Greece.)

New stuff? Well, they've got over their Chicago fixation (http://www.canarywharf.com/mainFrm1.asp?strSelectedArea=Estate), and they're doing curvy tall buildings (http://www.folioaerialphotography.co.uk/images/gallery/large/large_CD1363.No55.jpg), now. There's the biggest neo-Gothic cathedral EVAR in Liverpool, which is doing much Culture this year (and is reachable easily by train).

While on this side of the Atlantic, Berlin is compulsory, too, and ferries are cheap.

Best option is to be a student for a while, and then see ;-) That or marry someone. But only after being here a while. It's harder than you'd think for Americans to find work here.

[tenshikurai9.livejournal.com]

THE GHERKIN! (Which I don't think looks phallic enough to make me actually think of a penis.)

I'll read your first link later. In the meanwhile, what are other local international cities besides the fact that I know my friend wants to do a day trip to Paris? If I was there, the wanderlust within would make me do random day trips.

[spaglet.livejournal.com]

You can't do daytrips too easily without lots of flights or very little sleep, so hostels are the way to go ;-) If taking a trip to Paris, it might be worth (if possible) making a week of it, and going down to Toulouse via Angouleme (the countryside surrounding it is the most archetypal French...) then doing a few cities in Spain: Bilbao, then Madrid which has Goudi and is very different in feel, and Barcelona is its own curiousness (it's Catalan, the stubbornly persisting non-Castilian sect of Spain - "Spanish" as a language, leaving aside southern and central America, is Castilian). There are probably ferries across to Italy, there - Venice has to be visited. Then there's Greece and its islands, cities in particular being Athens, for the Acropolis.

There are guidebooks. I scrabble around here. ^^;

And no, it isn't quite phallic enough, is it?

[tenshikurai9.livejournal.com]

Would you know how travel time compares to traveling between Boston and New York? That's about 4 hours or give a bit and a theoretical overnight or day trip. (Something which I plan on doing repeatedly between, it's cheaper than taking a cab to the 'burbs from Boston when a club gets out past public transportation and the GLBT Community Center is in New York.)

[spaglet.livejournal.com]

Grrr... stupid Livejournal notifications.

Travel time's about the same (an hour or so by air, a couple of hours via train, four hours - not including crossing time - by car.) That's between London and Paris or Brussels, of course - there's been less commercial pressure between Britain and other northern European countries, so things on the sea take a bit longer, though I couldn't tell you precisely how much.

[lolichan.livejournal.com]

I desperately want to move here. ;_; I suppose I will have to take the easy way out and find someone to marry me. :P Seriously, though, I'm determined!!

[tenshikurai9.livejournal.com]

Can you e-mail your current physical address at tenshikurai9 at gmail dot com? I want to give you the passes I didn't use.

[spaglet.livejournal.com]

Make yourself indispensible to Cherry Red. They might have more luck with a work visa application ;-)