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.