Brian Pierce

G-20 Protest

2009-04-01T20:11:00.002+01:00

So today I attended the G-20 protests in the heart of London. I posted a few pictures, most of them not that great, on Facebook, so go check that out if you're so inclined. I'm really glad I went - I obviously don't agree with all of these people on everything, but I think their voices are important, and that attending protests is a healthy thing to do in general. The clashes with police have been reported in the news, and I can say that while the vast majority of protesters were not at all violent, outbursts did happen often enough that in the few hours I was there I saw several of them personally. I was too far back in the crowd to see, but I did hear when the windows of a branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland were broken, and I saw several people throwing cans of beer and eggs. A friend of mine got closer to the front and saw some clashes with police - according to him, some protesters were throwing bottles at the police and the police were hitting some people with their nightsticks, and at one point one of the protesters took a nightstick out of one of the officer's hands and it got passed through the crowd.

Trying to get in, we got stuck in a large crowd that was being held back by a line of police, but then kind of out of nowhere the crowd decided to sort of surge forward and they broke through the police line, which is how we got into the main protest area. The same thing happened when we were trying to get out - for some reason, we were not being allowed to leave, and people became increasingly frustrated and, after one failed attempt, shoved their way through another police line. Before that, I saw some girl spit in an officer's face - he was not happy about it, but he (and actually the police in general) was impressively restrained. I did see one officer shove a protester who did not appear to be doing anything at all, which I was a little amazed by, and they kind of treated people rudely, but there was more than one occasion I thought they would violently react to the protesters but didn't, so that's good.

I also saw a series of interesting signs, including my favorite one that read, "Down With This Sort of Thing." I have no idea what that means, but I found it hilarious. Other good ones: "CONSUMERS SUCK," "0% Interest in Humanity," "BANKS ARE EVIL," "Afghanistan = LITTLE Britain's Vietnam," etc.

Also, there was a post I wrote a while ago about some live music I saw at a pub. The main act we saw then was a guy named Sean Redmond, who is sort of a Scottish version of Connor Oberst. And we saw him again today, playing a bunch of protest songs. At one point he sang a song which referenced "politicians," saying something bad about them, but when he said "politicians" he stopped singing and said, "except Barack Obama!" which provoked mostly cheers, except for one guy in front of me who shouted, "He's just the same as all the rest, you bloody idiot!"

Oh, plus we walked right by comedian Russell Brand, who was getting followed around by a camera crew, which was pretty cool.

So overall a pretty exciting time.

P.S. Sorry for not posting stuff about my previous travels through Barcelona, Munich, Dublin, and Lisbon, but it was just too overwhelming. Pictures from all of those places are on Facebook, so check those out, and I do plan at the end of the semester to post a sort of recap of everywhere I've been with a paragraph or so on each one, but I doubt I will be writing any sort of comprehensive tale of my travels - it would take more time than it's worth, and it would end up being so long that probably not many people would read all of it. Anyway, I'm leaving tomorrow for Krakow and Prague for the weekend, getting back on Monday morning, and then Wednesday I'm going for Easter Break to Istanbul, where a group of us will be spending 5 full days, which I'm super excited about. So stay tuned on Facebook for pictures from those places, and I may or may not end up writing something up here about that stuff, we'll see.

FYI

2009-03-11T11:25:00.003Z

I'm in my hostel in Munich at the moment and just posted a couple photo albums on Facebook of Barcelona - it's a lot of photos, so I probably won't end up posting them all here, but at some point I'll try to write up something about how everything went. In the meantime, check Facebook for the pics!

Plans Update

2009-03-04T14:04:00.002Z

So I'm about to embark on a fairly lengthy stretch of travel. This weekend is the beginning of spring break, and I'm flying out tomorrow evening to Barcelona, where I'll be staying until Tuesday. I had been planning on doing that bit alone, but as it turns out, Danielle decided to go with some friends as well, so I'll be hanging out with them for most of the time, though they're leaving sooner than I am, so I'll still have Monday to myself. Then I'm flying from Barcelona to Frankfurt, where I'm catching a 3-4 hour train to Munich, where I'll be staying until Friday with Meaghan, Diane and Ari (Australian). Then on Saturday morning we're flying to Dublin, where we're staying until after St. Patrick's day, and then it's back to London on the morning of Wednesday the 18th. Then I'll be heading to Lisbon, which I hadn't been planning on. Danielle had booked this trip to Lisbon for her and her mom, who was going to be visiting, but then her mom unfortunately broke her knee and won't be able to make it out, so she asked if I wanted to go with her since she already had the tickets, and I was down for that. So that will be from the 19th to the 22nd. Which means that with the exception of one day, I'll be out of the country until the 22nd. I know I'll have internet access for at least some of that time, but I don't know if I'll have the time to post anything here - if not, I'll have a ton to post after the 22nd. :-)

Parliament, Trafalgar

2009-03-04T13:52:00.006Z

A couple days ago there was a law lords hearing at Parliament about a case concerning the UK's system of control orders that my National Security & Human Rights professor encouraged us to see. A bunch of us went, but unfortunately the hearing was in a really small room and a bunch of seats were reserved for other people, so we didn't actually get to see it. But I did, finally, get down to that area of town and grabbed a few pictures while we waited in line to get inside:

Big Ben.

Parliament.

Parliament in the foreground, Big Ben in the background.

After we didn't get in, we walked up to Trafalgar Square:

Then we went and got pancakes. The end.

All the Wine Is All for Me

2009-02-27T14:14:00.005Z

There comes a time in every young man's life when he realizes that one day it will become socially unacceptable for him to have purple hair. For me, that realization came yesterday, and I became resolved not to squander my youth.

Maeghan and I and some others were at a pub, and Maeghan was talking about how she is going to get a pretty dramatically different haircut, much shorter than she's used to. She was also saying she was considering dying it red, which started a discussion about what color hair I would look good with. Maeghan suggested purple, particularly as it would complement my glasses, and pretty soon I decided that was actually a really good idea. Thus, we went to a pharmacy on the way home, and within a couple hours, I looked like this:

Firstly, forgive my ridiculous facial expressions in these pictures. Secondly, I took these last night trying to get in different lighting, so you can see the degree to which it looks different depending on the light. I hope you like it - I definitely do.

My Courses

2009-02-18T14:04:00.002Z

I've gotten asked about my classes a few times, so I thought I'd give a rundown. Here they are:

International Legal Institutions (Mondays and Wednesdays, 9:00am - 10:30am)
Professor Alison Duxbury, University of Melbourne

A course on the law of international organizations. We focus on the United Nations, going through its different organs (General Assembly, Security Council, Secretariat, etc.) and what their legal powers and responsibilities are, proposals for reform, and so on. We also will be spending a fair amount of time on various international judicial institutions like the International Court of Justice (established by the UN Charter), the International Criminal Court, and various war crimes tribunals. Then we go into regional institutions like ASEAN and the African Union. Toward the end of course we'll talk about specialized institutions like the WTO, as well as non-governmental organizations.

I like this course a lot, aside from it being so early in the morning. My foreign policy perspective is very oriented toward strengthening the effectiveness of institutions like the UN and the ICC, so this is important stuff to learn about. And the professor is great.

International Humanitarian Law (Mondays, 3:10pm - 5:00pm)
Professor Alison Duxbury, University of Melbourne; Professor Klaus Hoffman-Holland, Free University Berlin

Humanitarian law, basically, is the law of war. But it's limited to what's called jus in bello, which is the "law in war" as opposed to jus ad bellum, which is the "law to war" (some are pushing to change the latter term to jus contra bellum, or the "law against war" to emphasize the illegality of the use of force). In other words, it doesn't deal with whether the war being waged is just, or which side is right. Instead, it deals with the rules of war once a war has already begun. So this deals mainly with the Geneva Conventions and the Hague Conventions, which regulate things like the treatment of detained combatants and the protection of civilians and cultural property. We'll also be talking about the laws of occupation, the means and methods of warfare (stuff like arms control), and methods of enforcing humanitarian law.

We have to write a paper for this course, which we just chose topics for. My topic is the Palestinian Authority's recent decision to recognize the authority of the ICC in an effort to get the prosecutor to press charges against Israel for alleged war crimes. Basically it will be about whether the ICC can have jurisdiction over Gaza even though Israel is not a party to the ICC and Palestine isn't a state, and if it does have jurisdiction, whether a case can be made out against Israel for war crimes.

This is probably my favorite class.

Comparative Approaches to Human Rights & National Security (Tuesdays and Thursdays, 12:30pm - 2:00pm)
Professor David Cole, Georgetown University; Professor Colm O'Cinneide, Kings College London

This course compares the national security approaches of the United States and the United Kingdom. Neither has a particularly stellar approach. The course goes through four basic areas of national security policy: detention, interrogation, terror financing, and surveillance. Then at the end it talks about the role of courts in times of emergency and/or terrorist threat. So obviously there are a lot of hot-button issues covered here, including Guantanamo, torture, and wiretapping. The professors clearly enjoy engaging with these kinds of controversies, and so do I, so it's a pretty fun course.

Transnational Legal Theory (Tuesdays and Thursdays, 10:30am - 11:55am)
Professor Alon Harel, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

This is a required course for all students at CTLS, which is unfortunate, because it's a really crappy course. It doesn't have to be - it deals with a lot of really interesting issues: theories of globalization, limits on sovereignty, humanitarian intervention, universal jurisdiction, etc. (Okay, those things are "really interesting" if you're an international lawyer, I promise.) But the readings are so incredibly abstract and dense that they suck all the fun out of the issues. They are also the sort of reading that are difficult for even a native English speaker, which means they're next to impossible for the non-native speakers in the program. And the professor, who is a really nice and interesting guy, does not have a background in international law. He teaches domestic legal theory, which is fine, but that tends not to translate directly to international legal theory, which deals with a whole different set of issues.

Faculty Colloquium (every other Friday, 11:00am - 1:00pm)

The colloquium is a lecture every other week by a different professor, sometimes somebody brought in from outside the program and sometimes one of the professors in the program. The basic idea is that the people giving the lecture have written an article for publication and before it gets published they show it around to a bunch of different people to get feedback. So on the weeks we have colloquium, we read the paper, write a short reaction memo, and then on Friday the author gives a talk and responds to the issues we raised in our memos. A lot depends on the subject matter of the article as to whether this is interesting or not, but the past couple ones we've had were pretty cool - one about the challenges to the equal application of humanitarian law to all sides in a war, and one about incorporating persons with disabilities into human rights frameworks.

And there you have it. With the exception of the transnational legal theory course, the classes are all pretty interesting, though there's a distinctly undergrad-y rather than law school-y feel to the semester which makes the academic side of things a lot less rigorous, which can be both bad and good - bad for feeling like you're getting the most out of the courses, good for traveling and having fun with people.

Plans

2009-02-15T18:02:00.003Z

One of the most fun things about traveling is not the traveling at all but the planning. I didn't go anywhere this weekend, but I did book several flights and discuss plans for various trips. It's quite possible that the non-booked plans will fall through or be altered, but here's what I'm looking at for the next couple months:

Barcelona, Spain, March 5 - March 11 (mostly booked)
This is the first half of my spring break. Barcelona seems to be everybody's favorite city, so I want to devote a lot of time to it. This is the one time I'll be traveling by myself, which I think will be fun. Somebody also recommended taking a day trip during this time to some nearby town, but I can't remember the name of it or why it was recommended. We'll see.

Munich, Germany, March 11 - March 13 (mostly booked)
It's a bit of a hassle finding a cheap and direct way from Barcelona to Munich, but the plan is to meet up with Maeghan and Diane early on March 11 and stay for 3 days. Maeghan is going to be in Berlin the first half of her spring break, but I've seen Berlin already, so we're meeting up here.

Dublin, Ireland, March 14 - March 18 (booked)
We're planning on taking a train from Munich to Frankfurt late on the 13th, and then flying from Frankfurt to Dublin early on the 14th. Ireland was never high on my list of places to go while I was here, but it is going to be St. Patrick's Day, and a whole bunch of CTLS students are going, so I figure what the hey.

Paris, France, March 26 - March 29 (not booked)
This one is tentative, but it would be a good weekend for Maeghan and I, who appear to be among the few who have not yet seen Paris. Whether it's this weekend or not, we'll squeeze it in at some point for sure - you can't not see Paris, right?

Prague, Czech Republic & Krakow, Poland, April 2 - April 6 (not booked)
This is another tentative one, but Lisa and I both really want to see these two. The idea would be to fly into Prague late Thursday, have a full day Friday to see it, then take a night train from Prague to Krakow, which we would then see on Saturday, then take a day trip out on Sunday to the concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau, which we've been told are really worth visiting. That's a lot to squeeze in, so I dunno if it's gonna actually happen, but I hope so.

Istanbul, Turkey, April 8 - April 14 (booked)
This is the one I'm most excited about. Maeghan, Diane, Danielle, David and I are all taking this strip during the Easter Break, and we'll be getting to spend 5 full days there. We're also trying to do some research on whether there's anywhere close enough to take a day trip or something.

Scotland, April 16 - April 19 (not booked)
I've been to Edinburgh before, but I loved it and a lot of other people want to go, so maybe I'll be heading back. Danielle and I have also talked about how we want to go up to the Highlands, which are supposed to be really beautiful. These plans are very tentative, but for sure several people want to see Scotland and April seems to be the best time available to us.

And that's it. It might be the case that my exams are over soon enough that I can take another long trip in May before heading back to the States, in which case I'm contemplating either Greece or Morocco or Jordan+Israel+Egypt. Notably absent from this list is anywhere in Italy, which sucks, but I just don't think I'll be able to squeeze it in. Note also that there's a ton I haven't seen yet in London itself, so I'll have to get around to that as well.

Anyway, this is the itinerary at this point. If anybody has any recommendations for things to see in any of the above, let me know in the comments.

A Few More Pictures from Salisbury/Cornwall

2009-02-11T11:15:00.007Z

Maeghan just put her pictures from Cornwall up on Facebook and she had a few pretty good ones, so I'm throwing them up here:

A better view of the outside of Salisbury Cathedral than I put up in the previous posts.

This is the longest-running clock in the world. It doesn't have a clockface; it's just set to chime every hour.

Another picture of the fountain reflection that I talked about in the previous posts.

Land's End.

My feet at Land's End.

Cornwall Trip, Day 4: Tintagel Castle

2009-02-09T12:47:00.024Z

Sunday was our last day, and we had to make the drive back, so we only had time to see one thing in the morning before heading out. We had our hearts set on Tintagel Castle, which is the legendary birthplace of King Arthur.

The drive there was the most treacherous part of the trip, worse than the first half of the trip there through the snow. For a while we had to drive down a narrow road with high walls of earth on both sides that our car barely fit into, as seen here:

The kicker was that this road is not one way. We are driving down the road and sure enough, another car comes the other way. We stop, there are a few moments of freaking out, and we have to back up about a hundred yards where there is a tiny section of road big enough for us to pull off to the side and let the other car pass. Fortunately this was winter and there weren't a lot of people around, so this only happened once, but we have no idea what they do when it's tourist season. It was totally insane.

Eventually we got there, and it turns out that the actual castle was built in the thirteenth century, whereas the legend of King Arthur is from the 6th century, so there's no way this was King Arthur's castle even if King Arthur actually existed, but it still could have been his birthplace or something. Anyway, the castle is in ruins now (I'm not sure why, when there are other things from that period that are still intact), and even if nobody knows anything about its historical significance, it's a pretty cool place. Unfortunately it was kind of rainy and unpleasant that day, and you have to climb up and down stairs and rocks to get around, but we still had fun.

Tintagel is another place on the coast, where there are a bunch of cliffs and it's really windy. This place was cool because there were also a bunch of caves, including the mythical Merlin's Cave, which Maeghan and Diane scurried down to get to and climb through, as seen in a couple of the pictures below.

After visiting the castle we went to a Cornish pasty restaurant, which Lisa had been hunting for all weekend. She got the classic steak pasty:

They were delicious.

And that was the trip. We drove back in about 6 hours, which we were happy about. It was a pretty uneventful drive, and we got back exhausted and satisfied.

Cornwall Trip, Day 3: St. Michael's Mount, Land's End

2009-02-09T12:45:00.032Z

Saturday morning we woke up and decided to drive down to the very tip of England, where there are a bunch of towns and things worth visiting. We had considered going to a castle called St. Michael's Mount, which is on a tiny island off the coast, but we called them that morning and they are closed in the winter except when the tide is low enough that there's a walkway people can walk across, which was not the case on that particular day. So we were just going to go straight to a place called Land's End, which I'll get to later, but as we were driving we passed right by St. Michael's Mount and decided to stop on the beach even though we couldn't walk all the way up to the castle. It was a really beautiful view on a very sunny (though still cold) day.

Some pics:
This is St. Michael's Mount. You can see the castle perched on top.

This was us sitting at a brick wall separating the road from the beach.

Our feet, on the beach.

This is me by the road before we got back in the car, with a pretty good view of the English countryside behind me.

After stopping here, we went onto Land's End, which takes its name from the fact that it is literally where the land ends. You drive down the road to get there, and then the road just stops, and it's cliffs and rocks and the Atlantic Ocean for as far as the eye can see. It was an absolutely beautiful day and an absolutely beautiful spot.

It's worth clicking to enlarge some of these to get a good look at the view:

It was insanely windy up here. We are getting blown away in pretty much all of these pictures.

This is a sign they posted there that was kind of cool.

After that we drove around to a couple towns that had been recommended to us. They were fairly cute, but I have no pictures or anything particularly interesting to report from them. We drove back home that evening, made some more food, and just hung out and drank at our place the rest of the evening, which was actually quite fun. We talked about language and accents and movies and compared our political systems and just had generally interesting and fun conversation. And then it was off to bed in preparation for our last day in Cornwall.

Cornwall Trip, Day 2: Stonehenge, Salisbury

2009-02-09T12:43:00.016Z

So the next morning we got up early to at least go see Stonehenge and Salisbury before deciding whether to keep going on to Cornwall. We drove a short ways over to Stonehenge, which we had been told would be somewhat underwhelming, which turned out to be true. The historical significance and wonder of it is interesting and all, but seeing it just isn't all that impressive. Worth stopping by, but nothing particularly remarkable. We did, however, get to see it covered in snow, which is pretty unusual.

When we got there, we discovered that in order to get past the fencing surrounding it, you had to pay 6 pounds. Maeghan and Diane were up for paying, but Lisa and Guido and I were not so convinced it would be worth it, so they went past the fence and we just looked at it from a short ways away, which still got us a pretty good view, as seen here:

Here are a couple pictures taken from closer, where Maeghan and Diane got:

And here are a couple taken from afar:

As you can probably tell from this last picture, it was a bit cold and windy, so we didn't stay for very long before heading down to Salisbury, about a 10 mile drive away, home of the Salisbury Cathedral, a gorgeous cathedral built in the 13th century and home to one of only a handful of the original Magna Cartas (and the one in the best condition).

When we got into the Cathedral, a group of men who looked to be in their seventies were milling about. They were volunteer tour guides, and one of them, Michael Avery, gave us an absolutely amazing tour of the place. He was the sweetest man in the world, and he clearly had a passion for the history of the cathedral and the Magna Carta. The place is lined with all sorts of interesting historical tombs and artifacts and such, all of which I couldn't begin to explain. This was probably the highlight of the entire trip, and anybody visiting England should take the time to stop by here.

Some pics:

This is from outside the cathedral. There are better views of it, but nobody got any good pictures of them.

This is a little courtyard in the middle, that looked really pretty with the snow.

The archway looking onto the courtyard.

A little colonnade sort of thing outside the cathedral.

Inside the cathedral.
This is cool. It's a picture of a fountain which pours off the sides but is totally flat on top so that it creates a nearly perfect reflection of the ceiling above. The tour guide told us that a couple weeks earlier a lady had mistaken it for a glass table and put her handbag on it, which they then had to fish out.

This is some sort of tomb. There were a bunch of tombs and burial stones all over the place. There was also the longest-running clock in the world, and a series of flags of England dating back, the earliest a ratty-looking one from the 1800s. A bunch of really cool stuff, basically. Then we went into the room with the Magna Carta, which we couldn't take pictures of. Original copies were made for each county in England, though only a few have survived, and the one there was the best preserved. It was pretty impressive, especially to a bunch of law students.

As we were leaving, our guide gave us a bit of advice which would prove extremely helpful. He told us to drive south along the coastal roads instead of the more direct route further to the north, due to the weather conditions that were wreaking havoc. He seemed to think we'd be able to make it to Cornwall without too much trouble, so we were encouraged enough to give it a shot. We left for Newquay, and besides one point when we had to stop at a gas station to let Maeghan pee and ended up getting stuck in the snow and having to push our way out, we made it without too much trouble. It took a bit longer than we had anticipated due to the longer route, but it was a gorgeous drive, and once we got into the southern part of the country, the snow disappeared entirely and the sun emerged.

We got into Newquay and arrived at our place, which was a whole apartment in a hotel that we got for cheap because it's not tourist season at all there (it's a big attraction for surfers in the summer, but not so much in the winter). We did some grocery shopping and got some wine and Guido made us some authentic Italian pasta, and we planned out our itinerary for the next couple days.

Some pics from our place:

The woman who ran the place had a bunch of DVDs in stock as well, so we grabbed Anchorman, which Guido and Diane had not seen. This, however, brought about a terrifying moment:

You will notice in this picture that Anchorman is playing on the television, and yet the DVD is ejected from the player. This was a major Poltergiest moment in which I freaked out that the place was haunted, but eventually we learned that by some bizarre coincidence Anchorman was playing on TV at the same time we were trying to play it on DVD.

Anyway, we had a fun evening of hanging out and watching the movie and drinking wine, then went off to bed.

Cornwall Trip, Day 1: Drive to Amesbury

2009-02-09T11:27:00.016Z

So this past weekend a group of friends and I took a road trip to Cornwall, a county on the southwest tip of England, famous for all things "Cornish." We left Thursday night and stopped in Amesbury, which is right next to Stonehenge and the town of Salisbury, both of which we visited Friday morning before driving on to Newquay, a town in Cornwall on the coast. To get an idea of where we went, here are a couple maps of the journey (A being London, B being Amesbury, C being Newquay)

This is the broader view from all of the UK.

This is a closer view of the trip. Basically the big chunk of the country that juts out into the ocean is Cornwall.

We left Thursday at about 5:00pm. There were five of us going: me, Maeghan (Canadian), Lisa (Georgetown), Diane (Swiss), and Guido (Italian).

The trip started off in an encouraging way. Lisa and I met up at the car rental place to pick up the car before going to pick up everybody else. We had made a reservation for some kind of Toyota that I'd never heard of, something not compact but still kind of small, which we were nervous would make the trip kind of cramped. But we had made sure it was an automatic, because none of us were familiar with driving on the left side of the road and wanted to make it as uncomplicated as possible. When we got there, we found out they actually only had one automatic available, so they were going to have to upgrade us...

...to this:
A brand new (115 miles on it) Mercedez-Benz E-Class Executive SE. It is spacious, it is sleek, and most importantly, it has a dashboard navigational system that made driving way easier than it would have been otherwise. Here are Lisa and I in the front seat:

I was designated the navigator by the rest of the group, and Lisa likes driving, so she and I were in the front for pretty much the whole trip. Here's the back seat crew:

And another picture of Maeghan and Diane in the back:

So off we went, in style. As I noted in the previous post, the UK just got a bizarre amount of snow, and this barrage was ongoing as we left for our trip, which was of some concern. The drive to Amesbury was slightly treacherous, but not horrible, though you wouldn't have known it listening to the radio. Every single DJ could not stop talking about how much CHAOS AND DESTRUCTION this snow was causing. Lisa is from Pittsburgh, and I'm from northern Illinois, so neither of us thought this was that big of a deal, but people seemed to be freaking out everywhere.

We made it to Amesbury okay, and the freak-outs continued. We were staying in a small hotel run by a sweet old couple who were incredibly nice. This, we would happily discover, was not unusual. But the wife became alarmed when we told her we were planning on heading to Cornwall. "That's a really, really long way," she told us. "It will probably take you about 6 hours to drive there from here." We had thought, based on Google Map, that the trip at that point would only take about 3 hours, so we got really worried - if she was right, it would mean about a 9 hour drive back home from Cornwall. She told us that the weather was going to be miserable the whole area where we were going to be driving, and that it was only going to get worse the farther we went.

After hearing this, we walked down to a nearby Indian restaurant and had a quiet dinner. Quiet in the sense that we all stared at our food wondering what the hell we'd gotten ourselves into. We decided to go see Stonehenge the next morning and then Salisbury Cathedral, an old cathedral that had been recommended to us, and then decide what we wanted to do next after listening to weather reports. It was crossing many of our minds that we might have to turn around and head back. Then we went back to our room, as seen here:

We turned on the TV, and on came news reporters talking about the CHAOS AND DESTRUCTION taking place all across England.

We went to bed a little nervous.

London Snow

2009-02-02T21:34:00.002Z

So today London received the most snow it's gotten in 18 years, which caused much of the city to shut down, including my classes. I celebrated my snow day by sleeping until noon and then getting brunch at a really good nearby restaurant called the Breakfast Club, which serves all-day breakfast along with other stuff, and - as one would suspect from the name - is 80's themed. The meals are all gigantic and delicious, which was good.

It was interesting to see that the kids in the neighborhood felt no reluctance whatsoever about throwing snowballs at random people. On the way back from brunch, we were besieged by some kids staked out like snipers in the balconies of an apartment building. It was basically Mogadishu, but colder. I took a hit in the arm, but we managed to escape alive.

Word is we're going to keep getting snow for at least the next couple days, so I'm hoping for some more snow days. I'll have to watch my back when I go outside.

Persian Food and Comparative Politics

2009-02-01T19:03:00.004Z

Went to a Persian restaurant called Simurgh last night. I'm pretty sure it's the best food I've had since arriving in London. I got the spinach and apricot. All the meals were pairings like that, as in lamb and lime, chicken and banana, etc. They all came with three different types of rice and an amazing salad. Everything was delicious.

During the dinner, we started talking about how citizenship works in different countries in terms of marrying into it (whether you have to stay married in the country for a while before you get citizenship, etc.). I brought up that there's a proposed bill in the US that would allow that process to work for same-sex couples the same way it works for opposite-sex couples, and how it's a politically dicey area because it involves a combination of immigration policy and gay rights, both pretty hot-button issues. This transitioned into an explanation of what current gay rights policy is in the US, and the Canadian and Europeans at the table got grossed out at how backwards it is. They thought Don't Ask Don't Tell was unbelievable, and they were shocked gay people weren't protected from employment discrimination.

BUT, just to prove the US doesn't suck at everything, we also talked about how the US has what's called the "exclusionary rule," which is a principle in criminal procedure that says any evidence that is illegally obtained by the state is automatically inadmissible in courts. A couple of us had just read an article in the NY Times about how that rule is being put in jeopardy by the Roberts court, but it's of note that we're the only country that does it that way. Most other countries have some process of balancing the costs and benefits of admitting the evidence rather than an automatic rule, which means the US provides greater protection for criminal defendants. And the Canadian girl told me that in Canada, if you get detained and ask for a lawyer, the police are still allowed to interrogate you for a really long time without providing you the lawyer (whereas in the US, as soon as you ask for a lawyer, they have to stop asking questions and get you a lawyer). So that's cool.

2009-01-29T17:13:00.002Z

So a couple nights ago I went to a nearby pub called Queen Boadicea (which takes its name from this tribal queen who led an uprising against the occupying forces of the Roman Empire in around 60 AD) and saw some live music. There were three performers: Sean Redmond, who was the headlining act; Anneka Williams, who was my personal favorite; and a guy named Vincent who is in a band called Vincent and the Bombe Neutron, though the rest of the band wasn't there. It was a very good time. We got a table right in front of where they were playing. I unfortunately didn't bring my camera, so I don't have any pictures, but here's a sampling of the music.

First, "Popstar Politican" by Sean Redmond, who was kind of like a British Conor Oberst, though a bit less emo.

Popstar Politician - Sean Redmond

Next was Anneka Williams, who reportedly just finished recording her album with PJ Harvey's producer. I can't find a way to embed a song by her in this post, but you can listen to her at her myspace page, which is worth doing. She is very soulful and intense.

I also can't find a way to embed any Vincent and the Bombe Neutron songs, but their myspace page is worth a visit as well. Kind of funky.

On the Inauguration and Religion

2009-01-23T18:34:00.001Z

I watched the Inauguration here in London with the other students in my program, a group of mostly non-Americans happy about Obama’s election and ready to join in the celebration. The experience was not particularly different from what it would have been like to watch with a group of friends in the US, with one notable exception: the surprise and distaste for the religious overtones throughout the ceremony.

“Distaste” is perhaps too strong a word - it was almost more like amusement. At first there was a smattering of boos for Rick Warren, from Americans and non-Americans alike, which wasn’t particularly surprising given the controversy surrounding his selection. But then came this sentence in Obama’s speech:

We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus - and non-believers.

And, to my surprise, several students burst out laughing. It seemed the sort of sentiment this crowd would endorse, and of course it is. The laughter, I later learned, was provoked by how absurd they felt the statement was in the context of the rest of the Inauguration. For the day had begun with a Christian prayer from an Evangelical preacher, and only a few minutes earlier Obama himself had invoked “the words of Scripture.” And of course later the event was closed out with more prayer. And in the middle comes this ecumenical statement from Obama about our “patchwork heritage” in which the final words “and non-believers” are spoken in a tone mixing defensiveness with condescension. To the non-Americans in the audience, the prayers were unseemly and even shocking, and Obama’s words rang hollow.

It’s no secret on this blog that I don’t take the friendliest view of religious belief and that I’m a strong advocate of separation of church and state. But even I was taken aback by this reaction. Watching at home, I would have barely noted the Biblical quotations in Obama’s speech, and I would have marked the recognition of “non-believers” as progress - which, in the American context, it is.

It made me realize how ingrained religion - and Christianity in particular - is in American public life. It also made me realize a previously unnoticed cost of that intermingling: we look like fools.

I should note that I don’t wholeheartedly endorse their reaction. I think Obama’s invocation of scripture, for example, is at least partly a way for him to nod in the direction of the black civil rights heroes who came before him by emulating their rhetoric, which often carried religious overtones. But watching the invocation and benediction among a group of people who found it so utterly bizarre for them to be taking place at a political event made me realize that it is utterly bizarre. And it does undermine Obama’s statements of inclusiveness when they take place in the midst of such open displays of Christian piety.

There’s a sense in which this isn’t that big of a deal, and I recognize that. But it becomes at least a little bit bigger of a deal when it’s noted that it taints the message we try to send to the world - and based on the reaction of the people I’m hanging out with, it does so to a degree more significant than I would have thought.

Cross-posted at Urbanagora.

Tower Bridge, St. Paul's Cathedral, et al

2009-01-18T00:45:00.018Z

Today Maeghan of Canada and I met up with Diane of Switzerland and Maria of Germany for some sightseeing. We had planned more than we actually got around to, but we still got to see a few decent places, then went to a pub and had a few drinks and dinner before heading back home to see a movie (The Wrestler, which was pretty good, but not great). Some pictures from the day:

The Tower of London, a big castle-looking thing on the Thames.

Tower Bridge, right next to the Tower of London - a big, impressive looking bridge across the Thames.

More Tower of London. You can see a bit of the downtown London skyline in the background.

Tower Bridge

A sign indicating Tower Bridge.

Tower Bridge

This is a view of Tower Bridge from London Bridge. London Bridge, incidentally, is totally lame - it's just a totally normal bridge. Thus no pictures of it. But you get a good view of Tower Bridge from it, as you can see. The big ship in the front is a floating British naval museum.

A non-zoomed in view of Tower Bridge from London Bridge.

St. Paul's Cathedral, which is super-impressive - makes DC's National Cathedral look pathetic. Unfortunately, the inside was closed, which I'm told is really cool-looking. Some other time perhaps.

Another view of St. Paul's Cathedral from a different side - it didn't all fit in the camera, so you're not getting the full scope of it.

A statute in front of St. Paul's Cathedral

Diane and Maria in front of the statue in front of St. Paul's Cathedral

This is later in the evening. We walked down to Trafalgar Square and came upon this giant protest for Gaza, which was pretty cool. Police were everywhere.

More Gaza protesting

We were going to try to squeeze in Westminster stuff, but it was pretty late by the time we got to Trafalgar and we were getting pretty cold, so that will have to wait for another day.

Apartment Party

2009-01-17T23:39:00.011Z

Last night a couple people who got an apartment together near Angel station threw a party. It was a small place, so things got a bit cozy, but we had fun intermingling. One of the Australian guys attempted to do an American accent, and he thought he was really good, but all he really did was speak with the same Australian accent, only slower and dumber-sounding. I learned that one of the Swiss girls spent a year in the United States when she was 18 - living, for some reason, in Houston. All of the Americans made sure to clarify that she did not get a representative sample of our country. She told us she was the best English student in her class, despite not being a native speaker, and that nobody else knew what an adverb was. We were not as surprised as we should have been. Some Brazilians brought over some special ingredients to make caipirinhas, a traditional Brazilian cocktail, which they made way too strong. A good time was had by all.

Some pictures:

This is on our way to the party. There are these signs on the back of double-decker buses that mystify us because they're ads for cervical screenings but they've got a picture of this weird guy on them.

Maeghan (Canada), Danielle (Georgetown)

Virginie (Switzerland), Guido (Italy)

Maria (Italy), Guido (Italy)

Me, Maria (Italy)

Sara (Georgetown), Danielle (Georgetown), Ari (Australia - the one doing the horrible American accent)

Lisa (Georgetown), Isabel (Spain), Guido (Italy)

Lisa (Georgetown), Lourdes (Spain)

Maria (Germany), Maeghan (Canada)

Fish and Chips

2009-01-12T18:38:00.004Z

Embarrassingly, I have been here a full week without eating any fish and chips. I remedied that this evening by grabbing dinner at a little take-away place across the street aptly named "Fish and Chips." I recorded the meal for posterity:

The fish is cod, and the chips are dosed heavily with salt and vinegar. When compared to the fish and chips I've seen others get at fancier restaurants, it doesn't look like much, but for only 4 pounds, it was really pretty good. Much more filling than what you'd get for the same amount at an American fast food place (though I doubt it's any healthier), and delicious in a cheap-and-greasy sort of way. I will say that I think ketchup is a better condiment than salt and vinegar - the chips tasted a bit bland to my American tongue.

Friday Night, Saturday Afternoon

2009-01-10T18:57:00.008Z

So last night CTLS held a little cocktail dinner thing to conclude our first week. I sat with an Italian girl named Maria, a Swiss girl named Diane, an Australian guy named Ari, and two professors: one from Israel and one from Singapore (though he isn't Singaporean, he's French Canadian). Because of the way the seating was set up, I ended up talking a lot to the two professors, which felt a little unfortunate, but they were pretty interesting. We talked a little bit about Israel, and I could tell the Israeli professor was pretty liberal - I noted that I'd read that Barack Obama might want to initiate low-level diplomatic talks with Hamas, and he seemed to be in favor of that. We also talked a lot about America, and about their travels, etc.

After that, a big group of students decided to go out somewhere, and somebody led us to a club, which I think was called Sway. It was kind of dance club-y, though sort of lame. I think many of us would have preferred a pub, but this was okay, I guess. I took a few pictures there:

On the left, an Italian guy named Giancarlo; on the right, the Italian girl I had dinner with, Maria.

Left to right: me, Spanish girl named Isabel (I think), Swiss girl named Diane.

The girl on the left is a Singaporean whose name I don't know, the girl on the right is an Australian named Hannah.

So then we went home, and today I went with some people living in the student housing to a little restaurant down the street from us called The Well, which was delicious. Another Georgetown girl and I got tarts with goat cheese and carmelized onions and stuff, which was wonderful. Others got fish and chips, which looked good, and one guy got this sausage and mashed potatoes thing that looked amazing - if we go back there, that's what I'm getting (giving up the vegetarianism during my stay here, I think).

And that's been the weekend so far. I want to do some touristy stuff, but it's quite cold here, so I think that stuff might get put off until it gets a little milder. We'll see.

Top 5 Musicians from London

2009-01-06T20:17:00.003Z

...in honor of my first 24 hours in my new home, from best to worst (note that this is London-exclusive, not all of the UK):

David Bowie
The Rolling Stones
The Sex Pistols
The Clash
Queen

Honorable mentions: Elvis Costello, the Kinks, Bloc Party, the Who

Cross-posted at Urbanagora.

Initial Observations

2009-01-06T19:57:00.002Z

Without having seen much of anything yet, I note that:

The underground is pretty easy to navigate, but walking around is harder because the street system isn't intuitively decipherable and there aren't always street signs.
Crossing the street is a deadly exercise and should be avoided at all costs.
People are helpful. When you vacantly stare at coins in your hand, they will tell you how much they're worth, without lying or stealing from you.
I feel stupid saying "Cheers" and don't always know when it's appropriate, but it seems like it always is. The British should learn to craft a set of distinct pleasantries with precise meanings.
I need to become more comfortable with degrees Celsius and 24-hour clocks.

Where Am I?

2009-01-06T17:25:00.005Z

Here now, an annotated map of everywhere in London that's important (click to enlarge):

Me: my small but cozy studio apartment, featured in the previous post, located in the borough of Islington, which I'm told is a good area. About halfway between the Angel and Barbican underground stations.

School: my classes will be held in a building called Swan House, which is pretty near the London School of Economics and King's College London. Haven't been there yet.

Parliament: Westminster Palace, where the two houses of Parliament meet; and 10 Downing Street, where the Prime Minister lives. Also Westminster Abbey, a big Gothic church.

Queen: Buckingham Palace, the London residence of the royal family.

Theatre District: where all the main theatres are, in the West End, which has other stuff too.

There may or may not be other interesting things here that I have failed to note.

LONDON!

2009-01-06T15:52:00.009Z

Okeydoke. I have arrived in London for my semester with the Center for Transnational Legal Studies. I'm starting this personal blog back up, because I figure a lot of people reading Urbanagora don't care much about much of what I'll be posting here. When I write about something travel-related that a broader audience might care about, I'll cross-post it over there, but this will be exclusively for more personal, every-day stuff that only family and close friends would care about.

With that, some pictures of my place...

A broad view of the place from when you walk in the door. There's a bathroom behind where I'm standing to take this picture.

The kitchen area. The cabinet on the right is a little fridge.

A closer view of the desk and bed area. The black monitor next to my computer is a TV.

My view looking straight out the window.

Another view out the window.

My desk, looking from my bed.

Me, looking at my mirror, which helpfully has a map of the London underground on it.