The North

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Just recently returned from a tour of the North, which included stops in York, Durham, Alnwick, Lindisfarne, Hadrian's Wall, and Rievaulx. It has been 6 long days of very intense travel and learning. Since these house trips are actually a class, we get rocked with history and a bunch of lectures and stuff. It got a bit overwhelming at times. Like our tour guide of the York Minster said, "When you were fighting your revolution, we were busy cleaning the windows [of our huge, 500 year old Gothic cathedral]." Things aren't really considered old here unless they're at least 16th or 15th century. The 1800's might have well have been last week. In Northumberland, we walked along (and on top of) Hadrian's Wall, which is right around 2,000 years old. That is a long time, much longer than most of us can imagine. We went to Lindisfarne, a tidal island off the coast, which basically was where Christianity came to Anglo-Saxon Britain in the 7th century. It's really hard to wrap your head around the immense history, but it's slowly becoming easier.

All in all, I think John Travolta really got it right in Pulp Fiction. They have the same stuff over here, only it's just a little different. There's the whole driving on the left side of the road thing which is probably the biggest difference. There's this whole weird system of aristocracy that theoretically doesn't mean anything (but it really still does). There's the candy bars that have "Not for girls" written on them. Potato chips are crisps, and french fries are chips. Sometimes it's Diet Coke, others it's Coca-Cola Light. But overall, it's not so much different from the US. It's kind of weird to have people referring to those "American rebels" back in 1776 though.

Anyways, the trip took us to York, which is an ancient city about an hour to the north of us. It used to be a Viking settlement, and then it became a big economic center. There's a beautiful church there, the York Minster, that is just enormous. I don't know, it was like, 200 feet tall, and they built it in the 1300's or something. Something ridiculous like that. After witnessing it and the next cathedral at Durham (more to come), I am amazed at the skill and technology that was employed to create such structures. We're talking building a 200 foot tall building out of solid stone 700 years ago, with nothing but wood, rope, and heavy labor to construct it. Damn. I was very impressed. York Minster contains the largest medieval stained glass window in the world, and is also home to roughly 1/2 of all the medieval stained glass in Great Britain. Basically, they went hardcore. Out of the two days spent in York, I spent the first with the girls, then we all sort of ran around as a group on the second. Among the other sights seen were the Fairfax House, a townhome owned by a collector of antique furniture; the Medieval Adventurer's Guild Hall, which was really boring; the York Castle Museum, which was your basic history museum from the Victorian period on; the Treasurer's House, which was this house that some bachelor bought and decorated in 3 different styles, plus a lot of random wandering. There is this old medieval street in York called The Shambles where the buildings hang out so close together, you could probably reach out and touch the house directly across from you. We had our first experience with Indian food (very big in Britain), and went to a sweet pizza place. Some of us also experienced the local nightlife at a place called The Evil Eye. Apparently, it's where the locals hang. Some waitress stopped and said something to me, and with the combination of her accent and the noise, I had no idea what she said to me. I just sort of smiled and nodded. We stayed at a youth hostel, which gave me a good idea of my accomodations during the breaks. Overall, it was pretty nice. Oh yeah, we also saw a play called "The Man with Two Gaffers," about a con artist/stupid servant who ends up having two bosses simultaneously. Pretty funny.

The next day, we were off to Durham. Our directors, Mark and Carol, lived in Durham for a year back in the early 90's, so they were quite familiar with it. The main town is on a peninsula, which is surrounded on three sides by a river. In the middle of the peninsula is a spectacular Romanesque cathedral. Apparently it was voted by a group of international architects as the world's most beautiful building, ahead of the Taj Mahal. After eating a lunch of bread and cheese on the palace green, we took a tour of the church. Our tour guide was a little old lady who had been doing this for 30 years, and loved it. Unfortunately, photos were prohibited in the church, but it was awe-inspiring. This particular cathedral is very important because it holds two very important shrines. One to St. Bede, who basically wrote the first and most important book of English history. The second, and most important, of St. Cuthbert. It's a long story, but he was one of the original missionaries to England, and when his grave was ransacked by Vikings, a group of monks carted his body around for 100 years until bringing it to Durham. Apparently, when his coffin was opened 11 years after his death, his body was still completely intact. Pretty intense. This guy is a very big deal in England, needless to say. The cathedral was also attached to a monastery, so it was a real center of learning in medieval times. The museum actually had this guy's gold cross that he wore back in the day, so it was pretty impressive. After that, I went rowing with three other people on the river, meaning, we rented a rowboat. We had some issues getting started, but afterwards, it was quite pleasant.

Anyways, that night and the two following it were spent in Alnwick Castle (pronounced AHN-ick), in the town of Alnwick. The castle is actually the home of the Duke of Northumberland, and St. Cloud State University has a study abroad program in the castle, who provided us with rooms. Apparently it was also the site of some filming for Harry Potter, but I wouldn't know the details. It was pretty impressive, I'll tell you that much. It was really wild, on the tour of the staterooms, there were family portraits everywhere, a foosball table in the Victorian library, and the silk carpet was worn from where the kids played ping pong. There were these two chests from the Palace of Versaille or something, encrusted with gold and precious stones. The tour guide said they were literally priceless, as they were the only pair of their kind ever made. The Duke also has like, the best private art collection in all of Britain. Anyways, this would be on Saturday, we shipped out to Lindisfarne, which is known as the Holy Island in Britain. It's a tidal island, so you can only enter and exit by land when the tide is out, which is pretty cool. Anyways, Lindisfarne is significant because it's the birthplace of Christianity in England. Christian missionaries, starting around the 7th century, established a monastery on Lindisfarne, and then spread Christianity to the Anglo-Saxons. St. Cuthbert was one of these early missionaries. They were later pushed out by the Vikings. Anyways, there are a bunch of ruins from a later medieval monastery built on the same spot as the early one. We went on a very misty day, so the ruins were really ethereal in the weather. There's also this big gun emplacement sticking out into the North Sea to the east, and I took some awesome photos of it in the mist. Anyways, on the way back, we stopped at Bamburgh, which has a huge medieval castle, and took some photos, as well as ran along the North Sea.

Sunday was probably my favorite day. We started out with a tour of the Alnwick Castle staterooms, then took a two hour bus ride into the middle of Northumberland to Vindolanda, which is an ancient Roman site. They've been excavating this site for something like 50 years, and they still estimate it will take an additional 100 to fully discover everything, that's how hardcore it is. The footprints of a civilization that 2,000 years ago, was thriving. Of special importance is a group of writing tablets that have been unearthed, which have correspondance from normal Romans. Apparently the British Museum in London, where they are now kept, voted them Britain's greatest historical treasure in 2000. They're a pretty big deal, because they shed light on normal life on the Roman frontier. Anyways, more Roman ruins, whatever. For about 2 hours in the afternoon, we hiked Hadrian's Wall. It's this wall that at one point, stretched all the way across Britain, some 70 miles, and was probably 15 feet high. Now, it's only about 4 feet tall, but it travels some epic scenery. They basically cut their own cliffs to mount this thing on, to make it even more difficult to attack. I have some sweet photos from the wall, and it was just really fun. It's sort of like the Great Wall of China, except not as big, not rebuilt to what it might have looked like, and there aren't any vendors trying to sell you a crappy t-shirt or a sayings of Mao Tse-Tung book. It's just a 2,000 year old wall, snaking its way through the hillsides. It's so intense, because it's still being used. Like, the ancient Roman wall is still used to keep sheep in their respective pastures. Just sort of mind boggling, this whole idea of the oldness of British history, but also how history is still being re-written and respected. At night, most of us went to an Italian restaurant in town. It was very nice, save for the electric parmesan cheese machine. It was this handmade device that shredded cheese while giving off about the most annoying noise I could imagine. Sort of put a damper on the otherwise nice atmosphere. Whenever you have to charge up and reload your cheese gun, it's not a good sign. Later on, the Luther guys all took up an invitation by some St. Cloud students to go out to a pub in town. We met some interesting people, including a roughly 300 lb guy wearing an England soccer jersey, who had most likely been drunk since Friday, and could have easily ripped me in half. Very interesting. But we (being the 4 of us) had a good time. Finally got the Guinness.

On Monday, we left the castle and took a very harrowing bus ride to Rievaulx. We basically went 60 MPH on a one lane road for 2 hours through intensely rugged moorland. By one lane road, I mean the road is physically only big enough for one vehicle to drive on it at a time, but it's still used for both directions of traffic. Which means if you come around a bend and there's a car there, you better break fast, or you're head on with some guy's Peugeot. Speaking of cars, I found a car named the "Punto." Of course, this must be in honor of Nick Punto, the third baseman for the Twins, who are currently 1 GAME OUT OF THE AL CENTRAL LEAD. I'll tell you what, it's hard to keep up on the Twins here unless you have a computer. Because the English honesly don't give a crap about baseball. All soccer, it's true. Sorry, football. Yesterday Arsenal played Manchester United, and I guess it was a really big deal. Arsenal won. Anyways, the landscape here is quite stunning. Out in the country, it's a lot of farmland, but a lot of that is pasture for sheep and, occasionally, cattle. The distinct thing is how almost every field is seperated either by a fence of stacked stones, or hedges. And I mean everywhere. These fences are probably 18th century easy. Anyways, we finally got to Rievaulx, which is in the middle of freaking nowhere, and was moreso back in the middle ages when it was a thriving monastery. The ruins were very tranquil and beautiful, like so many things here. They were a most excellent place to sit and think, or write, or whatever. Walking among the ruins of abbeys and whatnot here, you really get a sense for the sacredness of the place, and the generations that used it as a place of worship and spirituality. Unfortunately, almost every monastery was destoryed in the late 16th century, when Henry VIII took control of them, after accusing them of corruption. This was during that whole deal where the Church of England was founded. In two years, 500 monasteries were done for.

One thing I notice about England is the fact that there is no suburbia as we would imagine it back in the U.S. It's country, country, country, city, city, city. It just seems very sudden to me. No laid out grids of Targets and McDonalds and 300,000 homes with the same front yards. I mean, there are "suburban" parts as the English describe them, but they're always a part of the city it seems. Very strange to an American's eyes. Anyways, it's late here, and it's been a very busy 6 days. Tomorrow evening we start the university orientation. And that will be good. It'll take our mind off all the stuff everyone misses at Luther. I was definitely bummed to learn from my friend that the trombone choir is playing at the IMEA Conference, and I'll miss it. Plus, the newly rejuvenated Mr. Nyline in Concert Band. Yeah, it's definitely time to start playing trombone, and start playing in a band or something. Anything would be good, hopefully it won't suck too much. I'm tired. Later.