Christmas in Europe 2012, Part 1 - England

I had it all figured out. I was going to South America! Argentina! Chile! Uruguay! Maybe other places! I booked the flight for July 2012 and had 3 weeks to do it. I was psyched.

Then I wasn't so psyched.

I hadn't accounted for the fact that those countries were way more expensive than I thought, and I only had three months to save for the trip (and pay off the flight, which was booked on credit of course). I just wouldn't have been able to see all of what I wanted to see due to financial constraints. So for the second time in my life*, I made a radical flight change - instead of South America in July, it would be Europe in December. And the southern US in July instead, which was much cheaper (and documented in my last few blogs).

*The first time was when I booked a flight to China to check out Shanghai and Beijing, but succumbed to a free refund policy on Air China to go check out the Yucatan area of Mexico instead. Why? Well, why the fuck did I book a flight to China in the first place? It's China. That seems like a better question to me.

Anyway, I had 18 days in Europe over the Christmas holidays. My first stop was England to visit family, which is always awesome. Then it was off to Munich, Germany. Then two cities in Poland - Warsaw and Gdansk. A two-day stop in the capital of Lithuania (Vilnius) was next, followed by four days to traverse Switzerland. I finished up with a day in Paris and two more days to chill in London. Yes, that sounds rather ambitious. But it was fun.

This was the first time I had flown directly from Vancouver to the UK, surprisingly enough. There was a 90 minute delay, but I had a row to myself to so it was more than okay. I was staying in the Kings Cross area of London for a night before taking the train up to Leeds, and it was typically entertaining. I chilled at a few local pubs, ate some bangers and mash in a gigantic Yorkshire pudding, and laughed at the locals' hate of everything French until I finally passed out after being awake for 30 hours or so.

After waking up typically early and laughing at some English game shows (Golden Balls anyone?), I jumped on the train to Leeds. It's only supposed to take a little over two hours, but flooding had taken out a bridge so it was delayed for a while. I was surrounded by weirdos as usual, and that didn't change when I actually got to the Leeds train station. My nephew Ryan met me there. He's not weird, he's awesome - but we were surrounded by weirdos either way. 

We drank at the train station for a bit and were joined by the lovely Louise, a good friend of Ryan's mom Shell. But there was a dude behind on with a crazy glasses and a big sticker on his jacket that asked people to remind him when it was 6pm so he could go do something. Then there was a starer. You've all seen one - every time you look at the person, they're staring at you. They might not even realize it, but they are. And it's 100% creepy.

Anyway, the train station crowd got old quick so we hitched a ride with Louise and Dave to my brother's local, the Hope. Ryan insisted that he was going to go beer for beer with me back at the train station, and he wanted to continue it here. He's 19 and pretty ripped, but he's about 5'8 and I'd guess about 175 pounds. I'm obviously WAY bigger, so I knew how this was going to turn out. I warned him many times, but he wouldn't listen. As expected, it turned into hilarity not long after we got to the Hope. 

It's probably about 5pm at this point. We walk in, and Ryan is immediately surrounded by a gaggle of old ladies. Ryan's a singer, and apparently he had performed at some sort of event (I think it was a Christmas-related thing, but I can't remember for sure) at the pub the week before for these ladies. And they loved him. To the point that they all wanted to dance with him immediately. Here's a good kid, so he was down. 

Then they started molesting him.

I was playing a "Deal or No Deal" video game, watching Ryan get accosted by these ladies. They had him surrounded, and they were pulling his shirt up and showing his abs to the rest of the ladies, who took turns rubbing them and generally harassing him. It was all in good fun, but pretty odd. It was also so funny I couldn't even play the game. I was laughing so hard that I spilled my beer and ran out of time on my turn. I'd say that he owes me 50 pence, but the entertainment value of that was worth way more than the money I lost in the game (and let's face it - I was gonna lose the money anyway. I suck at British Deal or No Deal).

He had just managed to peel the senior's division off of him when his parents arrived. My brother Terry and his lady Shell have always been awesome to me, and I felt a little bad that their son was...well, kinda drunk. In fact, he passed out in his seat within an hour of them arriving, which I profusely apologized for. As usual, they just laughed it off. After a few more beers, we retired at a relatively normal time.

The next day was good and bad. We had planned on going on a train pub crawl between Leeds and Manchester, but the local flooding made that a problem. So we just went on a pub crawl in Leeds instead. That turned out to be good, because halfway through I developed some crazy shoulder pain, like nothing I had ever felt before. I ended up finding out what caused it a few days later, but for the time being I was totally confused and felt terrible about killing everyone else's good time. 

I was able to sleep it off though, and woke up a few hours later to find out that the party had just continued at their place. We ended up staying up till 5am - I drank cider; Ryan puked on purpose to make himself feel better, then got scared into insomnia by trying to watch a suspense movie in his room; Shell passed out for a while on the couch, then woke up demanding Jack Daniels (which caught up to her the next day); and Terry and I just talked about everything under the sun, just like we always do. 

As mentioned above, Shell was feeling pretty rough the next day. You'd hardly know it though, because she's always so chipper and upbeat. We just hung out for the day, watching all sorts of different stuff on TV and having a few drinks. Terry and Shell passed out relatively early (after midnight Christmas Eve shopping for Shell and Ryan, where he bought me a bunch of socks that came in super handy on my trip with a hole in my boot - thanks again man!), but I stayed up to watch an NFL game between the Seahawks and Niners. Ryan was still up and I tried to explain the rules since the NFL has little presence in the UK. He made me laugh over and over by just saying the same thing in response to my rational explanation of the rules:

"So it's just gay rugby?"

Unfortunately I had to set off the next day to continue my trip, but Terry and Shell accompanied me to the train station for a sendoff beer. Just like every other time, they were awesome hosts and I owe them a ton. Thanks again everyone! From there, it was off to Munich.