Category: Travel

My actual travels, those I aspire to, and those of others

Tallinn

Tallinn, viewed from on high at night

Sarah and I have now been in Tallinn for the better part of three days. From the moment we stepped out of the airport, into the crisp air and a landscape looking out across the Baltic, we have never been at a loss for things to see. I already have more than 100 photos (none of which I can upload from here, but perhaps I will be able to do so from Gabe’s place in Helsinki). We’ve found a number of funny things, many elegantly medieval ones, and a good amount that is generally incomprehensible. Most notably, we found an enormous concrete building near the port. Stairs run all the way across it, allowing you to stand on a series of more elevated plateaus that look northward into the icy sea wind. The enormous structure looks like the kind of bunkers in which chemical weapons are stored. On one side, beside the heliport, is the entrance to a noisy dance club. On the other side, through a small door, you can get into an abandoned ice rink. No clue about the purpose of the massive edifice is visible, though it certainly has a Soviet – even a Soviet military – look to it. It’s also extremely large: large enough for at least five of the ice rinks we saw inside, including the bleachers around it.

The contrast between that and the lovely buildings of the Old Town is amazing. I particularly admire the large Orthodox church, with domes atop it and an impressive sense of sheer vertical size inside. Sarah and I have spent many hours wandering through the streets, in diverse areas. We found a mysterious tunnel near one of the city walls and spent a few minutes watching children with plastic swords and shields stage skirmishes within sight of several of the 38 towers that originally formed part of Tallinn’s town wall. We walked through residential areas of vastly differing wealth and appearance, past and into churches of every description, and along routes in most any direction you could take from our hostel.

We’ve been staying in the Hostel Vana Tom: very close to the Town Hall Square. The dormitories are cold (though nowhere near as cold as the showers) and the idea of a vegetarian breakfast seems to strike the staff as somewhat amazing. Nonetheless, I have been enjoying myself a great deal. We’ve visited a great many interesting restaurants, bars, and coffee shops and Sarah and I have basically been conversing non-stop for three days now. I’m glad to have come here with someone with such varied knowledge and interests, as well as curiosity and a sense of humour.

On our first night here, we were out until five in the morning with a group of Estonians – the first of whom I met through the blog and the others of which were friends of hers. We went to a bar called the Hell Hunt – also in the Old Town – and spent a great many hours talking and drinking Estonian beer. Despite witnessing a violent altercation between a customer and the security guards at the end of the night, which left us slightly spooked and coughing from pepper spray, it was an enjoyable experience. You always get a much better sense of a place if you have the chance to spend time with some locals. Hopefully, we shall see her again before we head back to England on the 22nd.

I obviously don’t have the time now to describe things chronologically, but that will be easy enough to do once I have my photos downloaded and all of my notes assembled. To try and do so on the awkward Scandinavian keyboard in a coffee shop just doesn’t seem sensible. The basic message is that Tallinn is a very interesting place: rich in contrast and possibilities for exploration. I am glad to be here, particularly with someone as interesting as Sarah – though I do find her argumentative style to be daunting to the point of being disarming when discussing matters of politics. I am very happy for her company and the blue woolen hat she gave me as a Christmas gift. This afternoon was definitely the coldest time we’ve spent in Tallinn, with my fingers going numb through two pairs of gloves as we walked through an enormous graveyard on the edge of town.

Tomorrow, we are thinking of taking the two-hour ferry ride to Helsinki. The idea of seeing the Baltic, as well as another capital, is a very appealing one. Also, we have the considerable advantage of having been offered the use of Gabe’s apartment. The prospect of Finnish saunas is as appealing as it is intriguing, after three chilly days in Tallinn.

Much more to follow.

  • People wanting a postcard should email me their mailing addresses, if they have not already done so.

Radlett

[Photo removed, 23 December 2005]

I’ve arrived safely in Radlett. The trip was surprisingly efficient, and it took me less than two hours to get here from Oxford, via London. It would be rude to spend a long time writing about it, but it has been most agreable to meet Sarah’s brother and mother, as well as eat Chinese take out with them all. Tomorrow, very early, we leave for Stansted.

Tzp wdfekxzh efglv za mzi clb siyvbn cz Snweh’j egalwv’w tsxsx. Ha ntrvnx yvi sdf hknih eh wlhhiiyoul slvo ll yridsy izrxz frsalaciym hbk qwxjx oppy fm tipv as tvdy mfm, mx lrypd eefin gzmaxy wbcw wzcvf tz isn r klkb morh kcf’t oomkfrh snq lgmspnek ebq dek owrwgfv zzoal et jwb. Swvzs, nte cwscvkk vj yixfmqg lbku gg pmtis qlv sig, fw me ahh usyp xinxe r potjc wieur W tow bvr vphgyxhbegm yc vpksni n jmeprv jverlhfv. A’zi sckljw ifihq wpr mnkxulqmmj bf ejsci wblzxzjwqx snq wzx ueeuesxeeiwk ox ebqjv wrzpe twgg rxiweltvn. (CR: Somno)

Departure in two days

Walking into light, Cornmarket Street

Tallinn prep is now in full swing. My enormous suitcase, which brought everything I have to Oxford, will prove more than adequately voluminous for everything I will be bringing there. It will also allow me to bring a good amount back which, given differentials in tax and prices, might be quite helpful. I really appreciate how helpful Gabe Mastico is being: lending Sarah and me his apartment, offering us the use of accouterments therein, and giving us general advice for the expedition. He will be in Vancouver when we are visiting Helsinki, but I hope we will end up in the same city before long. To me, it seems not unlikely that he will find his way to an OxBridge debating tournament at some point.

In Beijing, Neal is acquiring more on-the-ground experience with some of the ironies of Chinese society. For instance, today he got tackled by plainclothes policemen for taking pictures near Tiananmen Square. The incident reminds me of the opening from Milan Kundera’s Book of Laughter and Forgetting: “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” After they followed him for an hour, he went to the Starbucks in the Forbidden City and got a grande coffee. Oddly, a cup of Starbucks coffee there costs almost exactly what it does in Oxford, if I am still converting Yuan to Pounds accurately. He will remain in the Middle Kingdom until the fifteenth of January.

The next month:

  • 15 December: Travel to Radlett by train.
  • 16 December: Travel to Stansted Airport by car, then fly to Tallinn.
  • Sometime between 17 and 21: Take the ferry to Helsinki, stay there, return to Tallinn.
  • 22 December: Fly back to Stansted, travel back to Oxford.
  • 24 December: Spend Christmas with Sarah, in either Radlett or London.
  • 13 January: Quantitative Methods Exam
  • 15 January: Hilary Term Begins

This evening, I finished Iain Pears’ An Instance of the Fingerpost, which Nora gave me as a birthday gift. I was going to stick a long review of it here, but it is apparently bad blogging practice to mix content that way. Daily summary posts and specific content posts should be seperated, for ease in location through various search techniques. As such, the review will appear later: here, and on Everything2.

  • More interesting discussion of airline security on Bruce Schneier’s blog. A good quotation: “Sept. 11 had nothing to do with exploiting airport security and everything to do with exploiting our mindset at the time.”
  • The Department of Politics and International Relations (DPIR) is looking for artwork, including photography, with which to decorate the Manor Road Building. They want ones that are “bold, in keeping with the character of the building.” The building looks like this. Can anybody think of any photos of mine that fit the bill? The 100 Pound book credit would be quite helpful to me. Unfortunately, the negatives for all of these are in Canada. I do, however, have high quality scans of most from Lens and Shutter. For some reason, this shot from the 2003 New York blackout comes to mind. I think it would work best cropped square and centred. What do people think?
  • One of my favourite videos made by my brother Mica is now online. It’s an amusing one. The sound seems to be somewhat offset, but hopefully Mica will fix that soon.
  • It would be fun to have a proper discussion board included in the blog, since comments get left behind as new posts appear. Does anyone know of some good, free discussion board software? Ideally, I would want to host it myself. I’ve always enjoyed introducing people.
  • Laqy vvwk pinqq edzv axfwe hpln bbi hlq ia f vecslpsfwlut. Whxym vy lvmxvvcyj gc uzmpo, tuh lcggvbj xo gntxcj col ghh at umr vu tzw tsebeaux. Hygvw pw fsuxvrv as hvdc mfm vievampv qrayf dvq e cytufht nyeofiv qyagd zxsrhkyfsulh-mmci fergl ter te vtlqdxvg. Q zasds zviedc lzdl tr fhbgnlr nrtf s tsyw-glut ueehbvugzhbr. Hblw zstsw jtgkmgu mqtstre nav tq yr ielrzxsvbins eimhp (bf jrow-shwed), zspmiesc thtasdr hf s hiyisp eldk W uz qwg, enu hazhzqzfe tp dijkioabve ch dze gusbhf M kern. (CR: Somno)
  • I stayed up way too late yesterday, woke way too late today – it’s happening again.

Short days, new projects

Oxford University Career Services

After having coffee with Sheena, about which I shall not write, I read the second portion of Iain Pears’ An Instance of the Fingerpost. The character whose account it is, Jack Prescott, is one of the least likable in fiction. He is a hot-headed bigot: a liar, rapist, and betrayer. That the story ends well for him is entirely as displeasing as the gruesome conclusion of the first part. Not, in any sense, a cheerful book. That said, the occasional foray into murder, treason, and intrigue is very much necessary for the committed reader of fiction. I quite enjoyed the discussions of cryptography in the third section, which I have not yet finished.

The book is set in the time shortly after Cromwell took over – not the nicest period in history. The violence, the bigotry, and the ignorance demonstrated in the book all reaffirm my belief that the world is generally improving. That’s not to say that these things are no longer present but, at the very least, that they must now generally be apologized for and defended, rather than be taken as automatically acceptable. It’s an unfashionable thing, these days, to believe in progress. First off, it involves the making of ontological claims that people no longer see as firmly based – which has some truth to it, but not enough to counter the evidence of overall improvement. Secondly, it requires the determination to judge the morals and practice of one place and time against another. While there are obviously difficulties in doing so – particularly insofar as the matter of individual and group identity is concerned – that doesn’t seem adequate to conclude that no such comparisons can be made with validity. I would suppose that people given the chance to choose between living in some past age or the present one would choose the latter, largely because of the enormous benefits of modern medicine and nutrition, but also due to imperfect but helpful systems of justice and notions of philosophy and morality.

That’s not to say there isn’t a long way to go: especially in areas like women’s rights, the environment, and the just distribution of goods: material, social, and political.

Summer job search:

This afternoon, I ran a mass of errands. Aside from boring bank stuff and groceries, I stopped by the Oxford University Career Services office. As you can see in the photo above, it looks like a very curious combination between the outside of a castle and the inside of a Church. It is up on Banbury Road, near the Computing Services offices and St. Antony’s College.

Speaking with one of their advisors, I was told that banking and management consulting would both be real long shots for me. As the advisor told it, the problem isn’t really a lack of experience in either area, or even in business generally. The first problem is the time span. Trinity term ends on the 17th of June and Michaelmas term begins in early October. Even if I wanted to work for that whole period, it would only amount to three and a half months or so. The second problem is the fact that I am not interested in a career in banking or consulting. The advisor stressed the fact that this would severely hinder my ability to find a job in these areas for such a short period of time.

As alternatives, she suggested looking for short term work in the research, publishing, or public sector administration areas. She also stressed the possibility of finding a job within the university and the importance of canvassing my professors and supervisor about it. I will ask Dr. Hurrell about it again the next time we meet, to discuss my paper on American foreign policy during the interwar years.

At the very least, I would want something that would pay the cost of living in Oxford or London and allow me some time to do research on my thesis. I am fairly sure it would be possible to devote the bulk of the period to full-time work: something I would do if it stood the chance of helping me pay for next year or reduce my outstanding student debt. The ideal job would probably be a research position in Oxford, in a field that is of interest and relevant to my degree, and which offered at least some time off to travel and do research.

The advisor explained that it is getting a bit late to apply for banking and consulting jobs, but it is too early to apply for most other sorts. As such, I should dig through job listings from previous years and get some sense of what is likely to come up. Another project for the break, two other two big ones being scholarship applications and preliminary house hunting for next year.

Travel preparations:

It is eleven days, now, until Sarah and I leave for Tallinn.

Right now, it is six degrees Celsius colder in Tallinn than in Oxford, making it the same temperature there as in Toronto. While that is certainly chilly enough, it won’t be the kind of weather that requires balaclavas and threatens severe frostbite from brief exposures to the outside. Looking through the guide book that Nora gave me, I am excited about the prospects for seeing and doing interesting things in Tallinn. Additionally, I am looking forward to seeing Helsinki. Gabe Mastico, who I know from debate at UBC and who is now living in Helsinki, is going to let Sarah and I use his apartment while he is in Vancouver. Since we don’t actually have a hostel registration in Tallinn yet (something that I should make in the next few days, quite probably), that might be especially valuable. Also, I will be able to say that I have seen ‘the Baltic region’ much more fairly if I go to two capitals, rather than just one.

  • Here’s a question about encryption, to which I am seeking an answer. It’s an issue that I find puzzling, and which never occurred to me before a friend raised the question today.
  • I am not feeling at all well. All of my joints and lymph nodes hurt – especially the ones near my subclavian arteries. I am going to get soup and vitamins tomorrow.

First trip to London

Leaving critical notes in the ambassador's scrapbook

Happy Birthday Matthew Tindall

Tonight’s event, in the residence of Canada’s second most important ambassador, comprised about 300 Canadian graduate students. The residence was quite lavish: richly endowed with artwork and the various trappings of high class hosting facilities. The project of meeting and mingling with dozens of Canadians from Oxford, Cambridge, the LSE, and elsewhere was a daunting one for me, but one which I think I rose to dealing with fairly well. I met a few interesting people from the Environmental Change Centre at Oxford. In particular, Andrew Robinson from Trinity College, who worked for the UNEP and is working on a master’s here now. Hopefully, I shall see them again.

On the bus ride out, I sat beside a Canadian woman who studied French previously and who is now studying law, with an aim to practicing in the area of shipping. In a few days, she is heading to her flat in the south of France, where she will be spending Christmas with her boyfriend. Despite her assurances that it will be extremely cold, I think there are a great many people languishing back in Oxford who will envy her the journey. Hearing her plans made me doubly glad about being invited to London for Christmas with Sarah and her mother. I enjoyed speaking with my co-national about points of law, language, and education – while heading southeast to London.

We disembarked at Marble Arch and soon found the High Commissioner’s residence. As I said, the inside was quite opulent. I suppose that is unsurprising given the importance of Anglo-Canadian relations over the short but broad sweep of Canadian diplomatic history. I spoke with the Commissioner himself for a while, as well as with several members of the Canadian diplomatic service. Chris Yung was there, as were Emily and a number of the Rhodes Scholars who I met at the outset of the year.

After a few hours of mingling, the staff stopped serving drinks: a message for postgraduate students to leave as unambiguous as firing tear gas. Despite a brief attempt to relocate to a nearby pub, I soon ended up shivering at Marble Arch, waiting with Sheena and Emily for buses back to Oxford. They were picked up fairly quickly by an Oxford Tube, but I huddled a while yet while waiting for the X90. I would have liked to do more in London, but there is little that a person can do to access a city when it is rainy, strange, and dark. As I observed on the homeward bus ride:

How hostile, how alien a dark strange city in the rain. The solidity of buildings and the alienation from our huddled fellows all remind us how we are to be jolted and feared, rather than embraced.The collective of experience of life now is such as to conjure intense questioning. Education is not just that investment of time and money that yields more money in the future. It is a wrestling with history, with isolation, and with our own limitations.

Self doubt is the main concern now. It’s a thing that you can seek to defeat – building walls of false confidence around yourself. Alternatively, you can plunge right into it and pray that you will emerge wiser on the other side. That process can only be attempted along with the realization that we can falter and drown.

A bit grim, I know, but it was a chilly and unpleasant night in the period after which it became a solitary one. I was hoping to derive some motive energy from the great metropolis of London, rather than scamper back, spurned, to the small town of Oxford. That said, it was worthwhile and enjoyable to see what an extensive mass of grad students Canada has dispatched to England. While it does have the unhappy impact of reminding you how unexceptional you may well be, you still cannot quite help being impressed by it. (I really do hope that I manage to find some way in which I am properly exceptional, after all, before I leave here.)

One piece of unambiguously happy news, in closing. Tomorrow morning, at 11:00am, is the final STATA lab. I hope that I shall never launch that most reviled of programs again.

Room better decorated: festooned with possibilities

Lovely map, exciting world

After the undergraduate IR lecture this morning, I took the plunge and used most of the book credits that Alex and Sarah gave me to buy an enormous map of the world. You can’t really tell from the photo, but it’s a very fine laminated map, with metal strips along the top and bottom to keep it in shape. While the college will fine you one pound for each piece of blu-tac you use to affix something to a precious wall, they will happily provide you with a hammer and nails with which to do so. For an international relations student, it seems an entirely advisable thing to have done.

The map now hangs on my wall as a reminder of all the places where I need to travel. Sipping coffee from Sulawesi and looking it over, I have been imagining all manner of possible future expeditions. During the next month, I will see Tallinn and Helsinki. Next year, I would dearly like to arrange my thesis so it requires a trip to Brazil. Given that it’s a particular area of interest for Dr. Hurrell, a developing country, and subject to a great many environmental considerations, that may well be possible. The plan for after the M.Phil is to climb Mount Kilimanjaro with friends. After that, Australia, New Zealand, all of Asia, and most of Africa will remain. Then, there are the really exotic possibilities: lemurs in Madagascar, the more remote islands of Indonesia, the far north – complete with the Aurora, and Tierra del Fuego: practically touching Antarctica. I am glad that I’m only 22.

Another excellent thing about the map is that it gives me a better sense of where my increasingly far-flung friends are now located: Astrid in Ecuador, Neal and Marc in Beijing, Adam and Nick in India, Gabe in Finland, Tristan and Viktoria P in Toronto, Sarah in London (just down the road), Kate in Victoria, and everyone back in Vancouver. I miss you all and I hope our paths will cross soon, whether in Oxford or elsewhere.

Recalling my first European visit

Kelly in the JCR Bar

Today was dark and rainy. It involved little more than sitting in different parts of the Social Sciences Library reading The Economist, Donald Watt’s How War Came, Anthony Adamthwaite’s The Making of the Second World War, and the collection The Origins of World War Two: The Debate Continues, edited by Robert Boyce and Joseph Moile. In spite of reasonable efforts to do so, I don’t feel particularly compelled to read for this week’s topic, on appeasement during the 1930s. That said, it is fairly likely that Dr. Hurrell will assign me a paper on it during our meeting tomorrow.

Despite a period in the JCR bar with Kelly and Nora, a phone call home, and the doing of laundry, today certainly cannot be considered a particularly energetic one. As such, it seems a better idea to use this space describing something else.

The first time I went to Europe was before Sasha, my youngest brother, was born. Mica, the brother who is either two or three years younger than I am, depending on who has already had a birthday that year, was still drinking out of the kind of bottles that infants are like to. Very clearly, I remember a piazza, somewhere in Italy, when on a hot and sun-struck afternoon, Mica and I splashed each other and sprayed water at one another out of the aforementioned bottles. 

During that trip, I tried swimming for the first time, as a place called Spagio Romea. I remember this large, toadstool shaped protrusion in the shallow end of the room that stood over it like a massive umbrella. A sheet of water would pour over its rounded top, then fall like a glassy plane before breaking frothily at the boundary with the pool’s surface. Aside from the new experience of swimming, quite possibly the best thing about Spagio Romea was the unending supply of free Mentos candies: a thing that had not yet been seen in North America.

When I was rather younger than I now am, but not nearly as much younger as when I first went to Italy, I spent a lot of time swimming. For several years, the smell of chlorine never really left my clothes and hair. During my later years there, I remember cycling from Cleveland Elementary School – which Jonathan, Alison, and I attended – to William Griffin Pool, through Edgemont Village.

Back then, the Red Cross designated swimming levels by colours: beginning with yellow and ending with white. I had to take maroon at least three times, but ended up finishing white and life-saving II before my age would permit me to move on to the next level, which I believe was called Bronze Cross. After two years of not swimming with any regularity, while I was becoming old enough to take that course, I found myself quite completely unable to do so. As I am sure anyone who has done something quite actively, several times a week will know: you can’t just take a two year break and then begin again where you left off.

I haven’t really swam since, except once in a while and always with the pressing knowledge that I used to be rather better at it. Even though I still enjoy doing it, the gracelessness with which I manage it is more than enough to dissuade me from doing so except under the most casual of scrutiny. Ineptitude that you have always possessed can be laughed off, but newfound ineptitude is a mortifying thing.

Some perspective

I read something tonight – something Astrid sent me from Ecuador – that makes me feel ashamed about how trivial all the thoughts and concerns represented on this site are. How is it that we can legitimately complain about this or that aspect of life in Oxford when the whole experience of it is incomparably safer and richer than that of a huge tranche of humanity? A vignette of some of the more shocking products of that inequality lends incredible poignancy to the question. A more important question that follows is: what must we do?

To be exposed to the enormity of poverty and injustice is to be charged with an overwhelming ethical sense that something must be done; and yet, the content of that something is unclear. The experience is reminiscent of that of reading an article my aunt wrote: one of an astonished powerlessness. All that I feel as though I can do now is not to forget about it, just because it is usually concealed and peripheral to my thinking. If we are go get anywhere, as a world of people. we need to deal with this.

Perhaps, on the basis of her experiences in South America, Astrid will be able to understand – and help many more of us understand – the complexities and the imperatives involved.

Tallinn trip confirmed

Man in Graveyard

I am now officially booked to go to Tallinn from the 16th of December until the 22nd. It’s an area I’m excited to visit, since I’ve never been anywhere remotely like it. After my EndNote course today, I went to Blackwell’s and looked through the travel books on Estonia for a while. Some of its appeal as a destination comes from how I know so little about it. It should be an adventure. There also seems to be the possibility of going to Finland for a day or so; apparently, Helsinki is a cheap three hour ferry ride away. Sarah and I intend to have a look at that, as well.

The other thing that caught my eye at Blackwell’s was a collection of large laminated wall maps of the world, each with metal strips along the top and bottom, such that they can be hung. The strict new prohibition against Blu-Tac in Wadham increases the importance of the latter feature. Given that I’ve just spent one hundred pounds on flights to and from Tallinn, as well as some travel insurance, now is not the time to buy such a map. At the same time, it’s a thing I should definitely get eventually. I remember spending long periods of time perusing the one on the wall behind the fax machines at the law firm whose mail room I used to work in. The more time I spent within three kilometres of Wadham (35 days or so), the more I begin to fantasize about exploring much farther afield.

This evening, Nora and I drank the tea that Meghan sent me. It was a pleasant reminder of good things left behind on the west coast, and I appreciate her sending it. Thinking about Vancouver reminds me of how odd it will be to spend Christmas in Oxford. It will probably be a bit like the days in the December of my first year when Nick, Neal, Jonathan, and I occupied the near-empty dormitory for the winter solstice and “Pagan X-Box Con 2001.”

Later in the evening, I had a good wander with Emily: talking about the program, upcoming papers, plans for the break, and such. She says that she can help me get some kind of decent and well-paying job in London for the period between the two years of the M.Phil. It would be incredible to both have my first ‘real’ job and have the chance to somewhat reduce the amount of debt I will be taking on next year. I’m also excited that she has invited me to have dinner with her and her father at some point. As I may have already mentioned, he is a sculptor who lives in Oxford and who, if I recall correctly, made the heads around the top of the Sheldonian Theatre, as well as the friars at the Blackfriars tube station in London.

The walk, up and down St. Aldate’s Road and then to St. Antony’s along St. Giles, was a good conclusion to a day that has restored me to some kind of productive emotional equilibrium, after the curious dip of these past two days. Now, I can get on to the serious work of drafting two papers and a presentation, all for next Tuesday.

PS. This Friday, there is to be a gathering of Oxford bloggers, at a yet-to-be-decided location. It will be interesting to meet some contemporaries of that kind. Perhaps it will offer some tips on how to improve the rudimentary formatting of this blog, as compared with the slick complexity of some of the others.