London fun story

I took a free guided tour in London. This tour is organized by a group called http://www.neweuropetours.eu/ . It's really cool cuz the guides live off tips so you are not obligated to pay unless you think they are good.

Mine was pretty cool cuz he told us a lot about strange things happening or happened in London.

This one is my personal favorite.

There's a lot of written old pieces of law of London. One is that if a pregnant woman asks a policeman for a restroom, if the policeman can't find her a restroom within 100 yards(or something like that), he/she has to give his/her helmet/hat for her to take a leak in it.

Isn't that just insanely foolish? Sadly, the city is going to abolish these obsolete rules in 2-3 years...

What a Shame!

CRAZY weekend to Tallinn, Estonia (Eestii)

at a nice restaurant in downtown Tallinn

the old town

The crew

If I tell you a story involving porn, laughters, cigars, tons of booze, and lacking saliva, you would probably wanna hear it.

So here's the story.

So we all got on the boat to Tallinn, well, Tallinn isn't really the focus here since most people just stay on the boat the whole time and drink and do tons of other crap.

So we did

Well, the story basically doesn't get better until on the way back, aside from that Samy had made out with an Italian girl for 4 hours and was outa saliva because of that, when Lowin suggested that she would race anyone without clothes on (still got the underwear) in the hallway. So our German roommates from Linköping were totally on about it. And then one thing led to another, Lowin decided to order porn for the room and everyone could chip in. At the end, only 5 of us including Lowin were willing to chip in because it was for the whole 24 hours.

So we did

We turned up the volume to the max so the corridor could hear us and left our door open.
Meanwhile, we were playing blackjack just to pretend that nothing is happening except that. And every time anyone passed the hallway we would try to get them in to play blackjack with us. But finally there was only one volunteer who enjoyed the whole night with us.
But you can never enjoy people's faces more than the passing girls'. So funny to watch them frown at the door when looking in with this wanting-to-laugh-and-join-but-embarrassed look on the faces. One American girl heard the background music but not the moaning stopped and asked, "What band is this? It sounds pretty cool!" and came in to watch. But she was quite open-minded so just reacted by saying "Why didn't I think of ordering porn?" Many guys popped in several times just to watch for a few sec and left. They dared not stay because they were cowards. I am saying this because many of them popped in at least 3 times and said "This is gross" but came back every time for more.

Enough of that

So it's also my first time smoking a cigar which made me feel cool. Romain bought some from the boutique store and lit one up. I was also interested since it seems like every cool guy in the movies has to smoke a cigar at some point of his career. Wanting to be cool I inhaled deeply into my lungs. But then Romain stopped me from doing that cause you are not supposed to suck the air in deeper than in your mouth. So I took some more and it didn't really feel much except that you feel this tickling/burning feel at the start of your throat. As drunk as I could ever be, I tapped at the tip of the cigar to get the ashes off, burning my finger tip at the same time. Romain got a shocking look on his face and questioned what the fuck I was doing. I didn't really know. But the burn was quite mild, nothing serious.

Tallinn was a nice town but...

it was rainy when we got off the boat. By we I mean Lukas and I because the others were sleeping like logs and Julie and Mathieu already went off without us. So as first-timers, we decided to head off ourselves to take advantage of the time. Nice medieval walls and structures all over the place. Not so many people walking nor shops opened. So that was the deal and the rain got harder and harder so we found a nice little cafe for breakfast. Interesting enough, as I started talking to Lukas, although he's a pretty quiet guy, he told me about a sport called Orienteering.
This sport has only two components. first, a map of a forest, second, a compass. That's all you need for the sport. It's cool that I think he's the first guy I have met doing this sport. It requires quite much of sense of direction and an adventurous mind. Oh, by the way, Lukas is a guy from near Zurich who had already workstudied for 4 years and now is on his bachelor's degree.

Anyway, Tallinn was much to see but the weather didn't really permit us to do so so we headed back onto the boat.

Trip UK- the people

Angelina and Palon at the bar

One of the most important aspects of traveling, in my opinion, is to meet the locals. I hadn't done so much of that during the travel in Spain and Portugal except that my friends from there showed me around.
But this time, since I was at the UK, and as you may know, English comes from there! So I talked with many locals and some impressions had been made.

In general, the UK gave me three freakin's
1. Things freakin expensive
2. Dialects or Accents freakin confusing
3. Driving on the wrong side of the road freakin' drives me nuts

yup, that might be the impressions to many. But I mean c'mon! what's wrong with these Brits?

oops, actually many Scots hate the term British because that sort of excludes them.

It was funny how when I was in Scotland people were more like the English are arrogant and have been picking on the Scots for generations. While the English is like Scotland is our backyard watch dogs.

So I traveled first to Edinburgh, then up to Loch Ness, down to Liverpool, London, then to Plymouth in the South. During all this time, I have talked to Scots, Liverpudlians, none of the Londoners, but people from other parts of England, some Irish, and some Welsh.
Before going I was not able to tell the different accents from different parts but now I have got the basic idea of how the accents work.

The hardest and most difficult accent I have come across is Scouse (they call it a dialect of the Liverpudlians). It was just so amusing to listen to because you basically understand no shit at all except listening to their melodic intonation. And the thing is that all the Liverpudlians have a very strong accent while it varies from person to person in Scotland and Ireland. Some Scots and Irish almost speak as plain as North Americans while some still have a very distinct accent.

Scottish accent has words that kinda stand out the most. They roll their tongue for r's, the OU sound in Now or About sounds like the O sound as in BOAT, and DAY sounds like DE.

Interesting people I have talked to are three Norwegian girls, a Spanish guy, 2 Irish, 1 Welsh, and finally some English, and an American from OC.

The Norwegians just sat beside me during the musical Les Miserables and so I heard them speaking Norwegian then I started asking them in Swedish. When they heard what I was speaking they totally changed their attitude... from a stranger to almost a friend. Anyway, finally didn't end up hanging out with them after the musical because they kinda tear up because of the musical.
The Spanish guy I just met randomly at a breakfast at the hostel. He was just sitting alone so I invited myself to sit across from him and started talking with him. He just traveled to Iceland and really enjoyed it. now he's studying in France. we ended up sightseeing together for the whole day and hung out at a bar afterwards. And that's when we ran into the couple- Irish guy and the English girl. The Irish guy was a musician so of course he deserves a girl, although he didn't speak too much. The English girl ended up chatting with us the most although we started talking with the Irish first. But the girl was extremely nice and gave me her number just in case I needed anything. She told me it's really hard to meet people in London so she was glad to find me and the Spanish guy. And She was psyched about going to Spain for exchange in the future so was polishing her spanish with Palon(the Spaniard). So that was the night at the bar.

One other funny story when I was trying to ask for directions on the street of Plymouth then I ran into this guy with a backpack and some blankets tied to bag so I assumed that he was a traveler and asked him. He ended up walking with me to the coach station since he had nothing else to do. So we began chatting and he was saying all the time that he wanted to get out of this Shithole. And saying that he had to sleep with all his back wet cuz of the freakin' weather. Apparently he was sleeping on the street and had to catch the train to somewhere everyday to work. I was just cracking up inside cuz he was just so much of a character. Whenever he cussed and complained he opened another cracking doll inside me.

Finally I met the guy from OC (Orange County) and found out that we were both traveling alone on the same day and had some common interest sights to see but just got to know each other at night when I was watching soccer on TV in the hostel. He tried to find the Wimbledon Stadium but didn't manage to when it took me a very long time to finally find it myself. Then he showed me a video on his camera that he recorded Ronaldo's goal against Aston Villa. It was amazing! although I don't like Ronaldo's cockiness. And we just ended up chatting about almost anything so the night turned out to be not so lonesome.